Welcome caller, p.8
Welcome, Caller, page 8
“I dunno, you tell me,” she says with a shrug.
“What?”
“This is your trip!” Jazz says. “You decide where to go.”
“There’s no plan,” Malcolm says, more of an incredulous statement than a question.
“Don’t need one. This is about doing what makes you happy in the moment,” she says. She digs into the glove department and pulls out a sucker, shoving it into Malcolm’s chest, all while keeping her eyes on the road. “Don’t think, dude. Just do.”
Malcolm hesitantly unwraps the sucker and sticks it in his mouth. Strawberry.
“I’ve always wanted to go to New York.”
Jazz whoops and bangs on the ceiling of her truck. It’s covered in years worth of doodles and writings from their group, marking their places in her life. He can see where he wrote his name in big block lettering the day she bought this truck, right at the front for all to see.
Malcolm laughs and hollers, his shouts drowned out by the fury of the wind.
Malcolm feels younger with every minute that passes inside the truck. He feels 18 again—newly adult and unstoppable. He feels 16—sneaking into abandoned parks with Jazz after curfew. He feels 12—just on the brink of learning about the cruelty of the world, but not yet crossing that boundary. The world is good here, singing along too loudly to The Cure with his best friend. The world is kind.
The sun is high above the horizon, blinding white in a canvas of clear blue. Malcolm forgot how beautiful the sky can be when it’s not painted in the gray of storms. What few clouds there are in the sky are sculpted to perfection, not a single wisp to be found, only flawless cotton candy mounds.
Malcolm’s stomach growls and he remembers quite suddenly that the only thing he’s had for breakfast is a coffee. He makes Jazz pull into a McDonald’s before they go any further, and they make it just before breakfast ends.
“So,” Jazz says, gulping down a bite of hash brown. “What’s in New York?”
“Hrrm?”
“You said you wanted to go to New York,” Jazz explains. “What do you wanna do there?”
Malcolm thinks for a moment, pulling off a stray corner of cheese from his McMuffin and sticking it in his mouth. He sucks the grease remnants off of his thumb with a shrug. “I dunno. Just seems crazy that we live a few hours from there and yet I’ve never been.”
“Fair point.”
“D’you ever think about that, Jazz?” Malcolm says, turning to stare out the car window. “There’s a whole world out there to see, and we just decide on one place to stay forever. Why don’t we go out and see things? We have feet. We have cars, we have bikes. You don’t even have to go that far to see something new.”
There’s a pair of siblings in the minivan next to them who seem to be arguing over an iPad. The older one sticks their finger in the younger one’s ear, and the younger one’s mouth opens in what Malcolm assumes is an ear-splitting screech. Malcolm turns back to Jazz, only to see her staring at him with an odd look on her face.
“What?” Malcolm says.
Jazz shakes her head, her eyes returning to the road. “Nothing, man. I’ve just missed you.”
He’s not entirely sure what she means by that. They see each other practically every day. But she’s turning up the music before he can ask her, and his thoughts are drowned out by the thrum of the bass.
When he reclines his seat to take a nap, Jazz smacks him on the arm and switches the music to ‘Wake up sleepyheads’ by the Modern Lovers, blasting it to max volume so every inch of the car is vibrating. He glares at her and gives her the finger, and she laughs as she shouts along to the lyrics.
They’re halfway to New York when Jazz finally turns down the music.
“Hey,” she says, poking him as if there was anyone else in the car she could’ve been talking to. “Do you remember that field trip in sixth grade? To the aquarium?”
Malcolm blinks up at the ceiling, searching his brain. He finds the memory and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Holy shit, yeah. Yeah! With Ms. Duran?”
“Yes! Ms. Duran!” Jazz starts laughing, and he can’t help but join her. “We got into so much trouble that day.”
“I would’ve been fine if it weren’t for you!” Malcolm says, beaming at Jazz with an open smile. “You’re the one who dragged me into shit!”
“Oh, come off it, you liked our adventures more than I did.”
“‘Adventures’ she says. Sneaking into the otter exhibit is not an adventure, that’s a crime.”
“A misdemeanor, at most,” she says dismissively.
Malcolm throws his head back and laughs. It fills up his body, into the tips of his fingers and the top of his head. When he settles again, his body relaxing back into his seat, he feels as if he’s had a drink. His cheeks are warm and he can’t seem to stop smiling, even when he accidentally makes eye contact with the motorcyclist passing by. He likes to think they smiled back underneath their helmet. (They probably didn’t.)
Jazz is thankfully not a complete sadist and does let him drift off for a short nap. He remains in that state of half asleep and half awake, the music and the sun bleeding through his eyelids preventing him from fully going under. He imagines himself in scenarios to match the music playing; a passtime he’s sure that everyone does but hardly anyone admits to. When the song is loud and brash, he imagines himself running along the edges of buildings, leaping through the air like a vigilante. When the song is slower, he allows himself to indulge in something a little sweeter. Something like holding someone’s hand where no one else can see them, a badly kept secret that makes their cheeks flame and their stomachs flutter with exhilaration.
He’s grateful that Jazz thinks he’s sleeping. If she were to look at him right now he’s sure she’d read his mind and call him out on his disgustingly romantic imagination. He’s embarrassed enough that she knows about his radio show crush, she can’t know that he starts having domestic daydreams as soon as he gets warm and sleepy like Lady Governor in a sunbeam.
What was left of his pleasant daydream is interrupted when the car jostles violently over a pothole in the road, sending Malcolm’s head crashing into the door with a painful thunk. Jazz dissolves into a fit of laughter as he rubs at his skull with a mumbled curse. He starts to lean back in his seat again to try a second attempt at sleep, but Jazz stops him.
“It’s good you’re awake, actually,” Jazz says. “I need you to tell me where the fuck we’re going.”
“I told you already.”
Jazz rolls her eyes. “New York isn’t exactly specific. We’re not just gonna trek the entire state, are we?”
Malcolm pouts, but stays silent. He hadn’t actually thought about that.
Jazz continues, “Do you wanna see Times Square? That statue lady? What?”
“Did you just call the Statue of Liberty ‘that statue lady’?”
“I don’t know her personally.”
They make the vague decision to drive to New York City; if there’s anything worth seeing in the state of New York, it will be there.
“My uncle’s been there,” Jazz says. “He said after a few days in the smog you’ll start blowing black snot out your nose.”
Malcolm makes a face. “Yum.”
Malcolm doesn’t believe in Hell. However, if he were to guess what it felt like, he thinks it would be similar to the act of trying to drive into New York City.
“The hotel is literally right there,” Jazz growls, gesturing to the building in the distance. They could probably get out of their car and walk to it.
Everyone who has ever endured the traffic in NYC deserves a personalized gift basket, Malcolm thinks. Chocolate covered fruit. Baguettes. Maybe a Xanax.
He’s pretty sure they’ve driven eight feet in the past twenty minutes. It takes an additional fifteen to finally get to the hotel, and Jazz nearly bursts Malcolm’s eardrums when she screams in triumph at the sight of an open parking space.
They haul their shared suitcase out of the trunk, and Malcolm falters when he sees Jazz bring something else out along with the luggage. The portable radio from his room.
Malcolm squeaks. “When did you take that?” Jazz simply winks at him and marches towards the hotel lobby, radio in hand. He shouts at her back, “Stop trying to be aloof! You’re not aloof!”
Malcolm follows her into the building, grumbling all the while. She’s already checked them in at the desk and starts to lead him toward the elevators, so he gives his eyes time to wander. His eyebrows raise up, up, and even further up his forehead as he takes it all in. It’s well decorated—and clean. He’s never stayed in a hotel so spotless. There’s always at least one questionable stain on the browning carpet. This place doesn’t even have carpets. It’s all sparkling white tiles that he can see his reflection in.
“Can we afford this?” Malcolm says. “I’m fine with booking something cheaper. I saw a building that looked haunted a few miles back, maybe they’ll take us.”
“Shut your hole,” Jazz says. “I’m using my heapings of beekeeper money to land us this schmoozy place. This is your time to have fun, dude, don’t worry about anything else.”
Malcolm wants to argue further, but Jazz has stopped in the middle of the hall, pointing through a wall made of clear glass which allows them to see into the back of the hotel.
“Mal, look,” she says excitedly. “Pool.”
Malcolm glances outside, where there is, in fact, a decently sized swimming pool. There’s a family of four out there already, laughing and splashing at each other’s faces. “Jazz. We didn’t pack swimsuits.”
“So?”
“No, Jazmine,” he says, dragging her to the elevators.
They don’t spend much time in their room near the top of the building. Jazz shrugs off her jacket and takes a minute to bounce on their single bed, touching her hand to the white popcorn ceilings, and Malcolm winces when she doesn’t take her shoes off. Nearly everything in the room is some shade of white. He feels a bit out of place, with his unwashed hoodie and Jazz’s sleeveless Nirvana t-shirt. He has to remind himself that they bought this room; they’re not the intruders he feels like they are.
He heads over to the large window, looking out and down at the vast city. He doesn’t think he’d be able to live here. It would be pretty shit to have one of his episodes in such a busy place where there’s almost nowhere quiet to hide and calm down. ‘Overwhelming’ is New York’s entire aesthetic. But he can’t deny that it’s a breathtaking view.
They leave the room, and Malcolm has to drag Jazz away from the sight of the swimming pool once again. It’s a weird shift, stepping out into the city after being in that hotel. The hotel smells of citrus, the sharp scent of disinfectant and something else that’s supposed to disguise the chemical smell but does a poor job of it. The air outside the building is stark in contrast. It smells of sweat and dirt and gas. It's pretty gross, but it smells like life.
Malcolm decides he prefers it outside.
13
The similarities between Bugswick and New York begin and end with the fact that Malcolm has now been in both of them. If you count Jazz’s presence, that’s two similarities. Other than that, not a single inch of the bustling city feels like his home. Malcolm’s surprised to find that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just new.
Walking through New York was a bit like when Malcolm went to see the Queen Mary with his parents as a child. There was a room in which you could look down into the water and see the ship’s propeller; and he’s not sure if it was the dim lighting, or the way the ocean remained unnaturally still in that dark selected space, but when he looked down into the sickly green water, his breath caught in his chest. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Of course a large ship would have a large propeller to match, but something about the machinery’s size was incomprehensible in Malcolm’s young brain. It could rip someone to shreds if it wanted to. It was gorgeous. It was terrifying.
He got that same feeling as he craned his neck up towards the sky now. He’d never seen buildings so tall. He felt infinitesimally small within their shadows, but he found that he didn’t mind very much. There were thousands of people living their lives around him, going to work, driving through infuriating New York traffic. They were ants to the city, just like him.
Jazz manages to snap him out of his thoughts when she shoves a hot dog into his hands, the bun warm and soft.
“I thought you were vegetarian again,” Malcolm says as Jazz takes a massive bite of her own hot dog. He chuckles when she pants and wheezes through the steaming mouthful, trying to cool it down without losing her bite.
“We’re in New York,” she says, fanning her mouth.
“So?” He squints at her. The silver rings adorning her fingers flash against the sun, blinding him every time they hit a certain angle.
“So, it doesn’t count.”
“That’s not how it works,” he laughs, taking another bite.
“It’s how mine works.”
“You can’t just change the rules of vegetarianism!”
Jazz shoves him halfheartedly and he stumbles, cackling. He’s sure it’s a disgusting site, his mouth wide open to show the world what he had for lunch, but he’s too happy to really care. From what he’s observed in the dark corners of New York, a man laughing with his mouth full is the least disgusting thing people see around here.
“You think we’ll see the rats?” Jazz says. They’ve started walking with no particular destination in mind, bumping their shoulders together every few steps.
“The what?”
“The rats! The New York rats!” Jazz says, crumpling up her hot dog wrapper and stuffing it into Malcolm’s shirt pocket. He takes it out and throws it away. “People from New York always talk about, like, rats stealing their pizza and shit.”
“They do?” Malcolm wrinkles his nose.
“Yeah, dude! I wanna see them.”
“Of course you would,” he says. Jazz spots a large crack in the sidewalk and makes a giant leap, stomping onto the crack with both feet. Malcolm does the same. (Neither of them are very fond of their mothers.)
After several minutes of debating what they should do next, they make the decision to go to a museum; although it takes much longer to decide which one. Apparently, there are a lot of museums in New York City. Like, a lot. They found out that there’s a Museum of Sex, which apparently has a ‘boob themed bounce room,’ according to what Jazz found online. (She wanted to go. Malcolm said no.)
They end up flipping a coin that Jazz found on the ground (he makes her wash her hands before she touches him again) and they end up at one of the many visual art museums of New York. There’s a large statue of a mythical creature of some sort at the front that Jazz valiantly tries to climb, but Malcolm forces her down before the guards can see.
The air is chill and clean inside the building, similar to that of the hotel but not as stiflingly barren of life. There are marks on the floor where people have tracked in the dirt from outside, and a certain kind of earthy smell that feels familiar and comforting. It reminds Malcolm of the library at school that he used to visit during lunch.
“Hmm,” Jazz hums as she stands in front of an abstract painting. There’s a collection of harsh slashes and splatters where Malcolm can see the painter dashed their brush across the canvas. There’s the beginnings of a rectangle painted in the corner, but one line is absent. “Yup. I see.”
“See what? What do you see?” Malcolm says, looking at her curiously.
Jazz nods her head solemnly, stroking her chin. “Absolutely fuck-all.”
Malcolm has to slap his hand over his mouth to keep from snorting in this incredibly silent art exhibit, although the slap makes a disturbing noise all on its own.
“They’re just fuckin’ shapes and colors, dude, I’m not an art critic,” Jazz says in a quiet voice, although her shoulders shake from her effort to keep her composure.
“Didn’t you make a shit ton of abstract art a few years ago?” Malcolm says. She wanted to be a professional painter at the time, before she moved on to glass blowing for a good six months.
“That doesn’t mean I knew what I was doing!”
Malcolm’s cheeks hurt, his stomach cramping in his effort to keep his laughter contained. He doubles over, holding onto Jazz’s arm for support. They fold inward towards each other, like wilting flowers. Their energy is far too high for such a classy place, but they can’t seem to stop it. He can feel Jazz shaking now, her lips pursed as quick puffs of air escape from her nostrils, desperately trying to keep her laughter down.
They settle down eventually, thank god, and make their way to the room adjacent to them. Then Jazz points her thumb towards a statue with a decently sized package and makes a ‘not bad’ sort of face, and Malcolm loses it all over again. He has to leave the room for a minute before they can continue.
He never thought he would enjoy himself so much at a museum. Being here with Jazz was just like that field trip to the aquarium; they weren’t breaking into any otter exhibits this time, but they were having so much fun. Even as they left the museum, the sky a warm pink with the setting sun, Malcolm was clutching his stomach as giggles leaked out of him. He felt air-light, like he could float up into the atmosphere at any moment.
The pizza they ate for dinner was greasy and heavy and the most delicious thing he had ever eaten. He almost blotted the top of the pizza with his napkin, something his mother had always taught him to do, before he saw Jazz’s raised eyebrow. He knew what she was silently asking. Is that what you want to do, or what you think you should do?
He threw the napkin to the side and let grease drip down to his chin with each heaving bite. He smiled at Jazz with his cheeks full of cheese and pepperoni.
It’s near 11pm when Jazz says they have to get back to the hotel.
“What?” Malcolm says. He puts back the black cowboy hat he had been trying on. They were in some sort of country-themed shop with more cowboy paraphernalia than he thought existed. “Why? It’s not that late.”
