CHAPTER 5

The evening sun hung over the east side of town like an orange heat lamp. As Iris climbed back into her car, Ellie’s words still stung. She couldn’t just tell her boss to take her job and shove it. She lived in the real world, where people went to work and didn’t just sit in a bar all day picking out new tattoos. “Play dice for death.” What the hell does that even mean?

Her father would agree. She could almost hear him say the words. Iris lit a cigarette in protest. She didn’t want to grow up to be like her parents, whittling away the time, eating bran cereal and watching Wheel of Fortune. She didn’t want to be her mother, reading her grocery-store romance novels, pan-frying steaks for a husband who ignored her, and muttering her opinions into the clothes dryer. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it sure as shit wasn’t that. It all seemed so damned pointless.

Iris took the back roads home from Club Illusion to her run-down apartment in Little Italy. Up Mayfield Road, the tiny shops were playing Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at full volume. She turned down her block. Her street sign read “Random Road,” and it was fitting. It had been hilarious in college; now it was just sad. The rent was cheap, and that’s all that mattered when she was scraping by on $500 a month in school. Now that she was gainfully employed with a salary of $33,000 a year, she could do better.

Iris parked her car on the street and headed up the driveway, where three crumbling houses were stacked one behind the other on a narrow lot. Each shoddy house had been converted into shoddier apartments. Her neighbor was camped out on her front porch, guarding the sidewalk as usual.

“Hi, Mrs. Capretta,” Iris said cheerfully as she hurried past. It was a lame attempt to avoid the inevitable. The old woman’s face puckered no matter what she said. The nose pads of her thick glasses had sunk into her puffy skin decades earlier, and Iris secretly speculated whether Mrs. Capretta could even lift them off her face anymore.

“Pharmacist tried to cheat me today,” she growled. “Don’t go shop down the street. They’ll rob you blind!”

“I’ll be careful. Thanks!” After three years living behind Mrs. Capretta, Iris knew better than to argue or ask questions.

Iris didn’t know the names of her other neighbors. There were a couple grad students in the house in the rear, and an Indian family of four lived in the apartment below hers. They didn’t speak much English, but they smiled and gave her a little bow whenever they met in the driveway.

She grabbed the mail and climbed the crooked stairs up to the second floor of the collapsing house that she called home. She was greeted by a small puddle on the floor just inside her front door. The roof was leaking again. She stepped over it and made a mental note to call her slumlord in the morning.

The light blinked on her dusty answering machine.

“Iris? Iris, are you there? This is your mother. Give me a call, okay? It’s been too long, honey. I’m starting to get worried. Love you! Bye.”

It had only been a week since they’d last talked. Iris sighed and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Honey! It’s so nice to hear your voice. How are you doing?”

“Just fine. I’m kind of tired.” Iris was already tapping her foot. Her mother had no life of her own. She’d been a stay-at-home mom, and ever since Iris had moved away, she didn’t know what to do with herself.

“How’s the job going?”

“Pretty busy. I just got a special assignment, so that’s good.” Iris shuffled through the mail—junk, junk, student loan bill.

“How exciting! Well, it’s about time they took some notice of you, honey! You’re so brilliant. I was just telling your father the other day that it’s high time someone put you to good use. All this paperwork they’ve got you doing is ridiculous—”

“Mom! Stop. I’m being put to good use, okay? My job is not ridiculous.”

Iris tried to ignore the thinly veiled insult. Both of her parents were mildly disappointed in her chosen career. Her father felt civil engineering was reserved for the duller students, who couldn’t handle organic chemistry. In truth, Iris had no problem with any of her classes. Science, math, and finding the correct answers to complicated equations came easily to her. The problem was the questions were so painfully pointless. She didn’t really care about the diffusion rate of this gas through that liquid or whatever. Determining whether or not a building would fall down, on the other hand, actually seemed meaningful. Iris had tried to argue that constructing bridges and dams was a hell of a lot more important than working for some chemical company developing new house-paint formulations. It wasn’t enough that she had taken his advice and majored in engineering. He expected more.

“Of course, sweetie. It’s just that when someone graduates valedictorian around here, people want to know what they’re up to. I ran into Mrs. Johnson just the other day. She was convinced you’d become a brain surgeon.”

“Mrs. Johnson taught Home Ec, Mom.” Iris rolled her eyes. She tore open the loan bill that stated $574.73 was due every month for the next fifteen years. It was a prison sentence. “Everything’s fine. Listen, I have to go. I worked all day, and I’m beat.”

“Okay, honey. Thanks for calling. I just need to hear your voice every once in a while.”

“I know. Give my love to Dad, okay?”

“Okay, I love you, honey. Bye-bye.”

The line went dead.

“Who gives a shit what Mrs. Johnson thinks, Mom? Jesus!” Iris yelled at the dead receiver.

Sweatpants, a couple slices of cold pizza, and a beer later, she plopped down onto her secondhand couch. The VCR blinked 8:30 p.m. She chewed a fingernail. Her eyes scanned her tiny apartment for something to do. A bookshelf stuffed with college textbooks was wedged in one corner. On the other side of the room, a blank canvas was sitting on a dusty easel. It had been sitting there, along with her paints and brushes, ever since she moved in and decided that corner would be her art studio. That was three years ago.

Iris stood up and walked over to it. She poked the canvas with a finger and surveyed her neglected tools. They looked ridiculous to her now. Who was she kidding? She was no artist. While she was in school, she never had time to paint. But now she did. She didn’t have homework. She didn’t work nights. Outside of drinking with Ellie, she didn’t even have a social life. Most of her college friends had left town after graduation. Some went back home, and the others had gone on to bigger and better cities for bigger and better jobs.

Iris grabbed her lighter off of the coffee table and lit a cigarette. Why hadn’t she left too? She blew out the smoke and glanced back at the blank canvas. She didn’t have a good answer.

It’s temporary, she told herself. She might go to grad school next year. In a few years, she might send a résumé to a top-rate engineering firm in New York. She was being smart, taking it slow, and working in the industry for a few years before making any sudden moves. It was what her adviser had suggested when she confessed she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after graduation. It had made sense at the time, especially since she didn’t have the guts to say out loud what she’d secretly suspected for over a year—she didn’t want to be an engineer at all.

The thought was ridiculous. Five years of school, and now she just wanted to give up? It had only been three months. How could she possibly know if she liked it yet? Iris grabbed another beer from the fridge. It would take time. She had to give it a chance. It was her father talking in her head now. Besides, that student loan bill wasn’t going to pay itself.

Sometime around midnight she dragged herself to bed.