Nicotine by Nell Zink Page A

affection and trust, a sense of knowing him already forever. She notes that his genitals are pressed against her at waist level (he is a full twelve inches taller), and she wriggles, expecting a reaction—some kind of bulging—maybe a curl of something expanding in too-tight underwear?—some undeniable message that he likes her?
    He hugs her affectionately while his crotch communicates indifference and boredom.
    She considers kissing him in a more goal-oriented manner, maybe getting aggressive with her tongue. Then she remembers the tobacco in his mouth.
    She kisses him on the neck, standing on tiptoe, and thanks him for a lovely afternoon.
    â€œYou should come by tomorrow when there are more people around,” he suggests.
    BACK IN MANHATTAN, SHE LIES on her back in bed, trying to sleep. She tries to think about Rob, but her pose reminds her of Norm. She turns on her side and then on her front.
    Her breathing echoes in the springs of the mattress, reminding her of Norm. The week when he could do nothing but breathe, each breath more labored than the one before. Waiting for his heart to fail, his kidneys, his liver, anything. Holding the e-kit in reserve. What a mistake.
    She remembers his thirst. The memory comes in the form of an invisible serrated machete cutting downward through her chest. Or maybe not invisible. Somehow black and white and dense.
    She turns on the light and sits up against his headboard. She drinks from his water glass. She sees herself surrounded by his furniture. She lights one cigarette and then another, as though fumigating for ghosts.
    She lies flat again and is haunted by Norm’s last days for three solid hours before falling asleep.
    THE NEXT DAY SHE DROPS by Nicotine around noon. There is no one around but Rob. He gives her the full tour. He is very proud of his house.
    â€œWhen I found this place, it was a burned-out shell,” he says. “Classic landlord BS, a so-called hot eviction. It must have got out of hand, because I can’t imagine they wanted to lose a slate roof. But this place is solid. There was almost no damage, except to the plaster upstairs. And the basement was underwater, so obviously the boiler and the electric and the plumbing were fucked, but I pumped it out and got a loan from CHA to put a flat roof on it before the rain really did a number on the brickwork.”
    On the second floor, he opens the double doors—each landing has the same layout, with a large room to the left, behind a single set ofdouble doors, and a smaller room opposite—and says, “This is where Sorry lives.” The room is bright and pretty, with big windows. It continues around the corner of the house, through an archway like the one that connects the dining room to the storage area downstairs. An improvised wooden sofa, covered with attractive textiles, rests on cinder blocks. The walls are hand-lacquered in yellow with a red stenciled border. Silk scarves hang from the lamp shades. There is a very large, pale, moth-eaten Chinese rug.
    â€œIt’s so big and nice,” Penny remarks.
    â€œThat’s because this house was never cut up into apartments. It has all the same rooms as when it was built.”
    They mount the stairs. The third floor is home to Anka (short for Anne Catherine) on the left and Tony on the right. He doesn’t open their doors. He simply says Anka is a talented painter who works at an AIDS magazine, and Tony is a mystery—an older guy, maybe forty, who seems so normal and stable you have to wonder. “What’s he doing here?” Rob asks, rhetorically. “Honestly, I don’t know.” Anka smokes only lightly, he says, and Tony smokes their housemate Jazz’s organic homegrown by the ton, when he can get it.
    â€œShe grows her own tobacco? Is that legal?”
    â€œYou can have a few plants if you don’t do anything creative,” Rob says. “You hang up the leaves to dry for a month. Then