Apathy and Other Small Victories (14 page)

“So it’s always been like it is now?” I said.

“No. Not like now.”

Good. I wanted to be brave.

“What’s different?” I said.

Really I wanted her to be brave first.

“He used to take his bowling ball with him.”

“Huh?”

“It’s still in the closet. He hasn’t touched it in months.”

I looked at her and she turned her head to look at me. I could not read her face. Then she untied her robe and let it fall around her.

I didn’t really want to know anyway.

So we had some sex, but slower than usual, on her open blue robe. And it was all right.

“I want to go skydiving by the time I’m thirty, and I need to learn how to play golf. I want to be through leasing by then too. From a financial standpoint it just doesn’t make sense not to own.”

Gwen had been talking about her life checklist and how it was important to set goals. She kept stressing the words
important
and
goals
, repeating the same goddamn thing over and over again. The way she was talking I knew that it wasn’t so much about her checklist as it was the absence of mine. I nodded and listened and never once acknowledged the obvious direction of the conversation, and this made her try even harder to subtly bring it up. It was like watching a hamster in a wheel, all that tireless futility.

So far, things had pretty much gone according to schedule for her. She went to Europe for a month after college with two friends and met a
ton
of interesting people and took lots of pictures. She passed the real estate licensing exam even though she had no intention of ever becoming a real estate agent. She taught herself to speak passable Italian, and learned the fundamentals of the stock market and retirement planning. I knew without asking that she’d lost her virginity the night of her senior prom. Good for her. She had a plan and she was sticking to it. Where I fit in though, I was not sure.

Sometimes I thought she was trying to change me, save me, rehabilitate or recycle me, whatever word people use when they want to make someone else into something that other person doesn’t really want to be. Maybe I was her good deed or her test case, or maybe she just wanted control. I never understand what motivates people to take such an active interest in someone else.

Sometimes I thought I was a number and a story, some background filler so that when she met her professional and romantic soul mate she could say she’d “done the dating scene” and settle down without any of the reservations she never had to begin with.

Sometimes I thought she might honestly like me, which was so ridiculous it almost could have been true. Empirically speaking, she really couldn’t: we hardly talked, she knew almost nothing about me besides my first name, and I was drunk every time she saw me. But you can never tell with these things. People get stupid and delusional, sometimes on purpose. They want to make obvious mistakes. It’s an easy way to turn a casual nothing of a relationship into some tragic half-assed epic, an excuse to use words like
love
and
loss
and get melodramatic about the life you wish you were leading. It’s the poor man’s
English Patient
starring somebody you never really cared about anyway.

Whatever it was I didn’t want to know. If I didn’t know I couldn’t be blamed when it ended. And it would be ending soon.

“I know it’s been hard lately with both of us working, you trying to go perm, me taking that automotive repair class at the community college, but I think it’s important that we make time for each other. That should be one of our goals.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We were in one of those restaurant/bars where people I don’t like go after work to unwind. The guys had their ties loosened and some had their sleeves rolled up and the girls were using their weak drinks as an excuse to act flirty. Everyone was too loud and there was always someone, somewhere, laughing. The top shelf bottles behind the bar were lit up with a depressingly ethereal blue neon light that looked like some douche bag’s idea of deep sea diving or heaven, and the dude at the door who checked my ID was wearing a tight black T-shirt and called me “Chiefy.”

If I was ever going to be assassinated this was where it would go down. One of these young professionals in a French blue button-down from the fucking
Men’s Wearhouse
would lurch out of the crowd and shout “Oswald!” for no apparent reason and plug me in the gut. Everyone would gasp and scatter, but no one would cradle me in their arms as I died.

“You know, for all the time we’ve known each other I still haven’t figured you out.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t think you’re shy, but you can be really quiet sometimes. It’s hard to tell what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Or I’d be sitting in a wooden booth over by the window and a sniper’s bullet would shatter the glass and simultaneously blow out the back of my head as I waited for my appetizers.

“Would you say you’re introspective?”

“I’d say I’m self-absorbed.”

“Hah hah, hmmm, then how are you such a good listener?”

I’ve been accused of that all my life. It’s like someone who prays every night saying God’s a good listener. Just because you’re talking to us doesn’t mean we’re listening. With me and God, you never really know.

I held up my hand and showed her my two fingers crossed, like I was making a promise I knew that I would break.

“What’s that?”

“That’s me and God,” I said.

She was dumbfounded. I was getting pretty drunk.

“Half the time I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I bet you think that’s pretty mysterious.”

“Sure.”

“And I suppose you think that’s pretty sexy.” She stepped closer to me like we were going to dance.

“Yeah.”

“David Copperfield’s mysterious. I wouldn’t say he’s sexy.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Sexy and ‘I got my name from a Dickens novel’ don’t really go together. I mean, there aren’t any underwear models named Oliver Twist. No pun intended! Hah hah hah, hmmm.”

She’d given up on me ever playing witty sitcom couple with her, so she’d started taking on both parts herself, feeding herself lines and then driving them home for canned laughs. Watching someone banter with themselves is fucking creepy. I felt like Howdy Doody.

“Even if you were a Dickens character, I’d still think you were sexy,” she said, and batted her eyelashes like she was epileptic.

That kind of inane horseshit line was usually the preface to her ripping my shirt at the collar and pulling it down into a tube top, exposing my delicate, milky shoulders and pinning my arms at my sides. Then she’d rape and fuck me until I was a limp body ready to be flung into a mass grave.

But we were in public, surrounded by people in business clothes. I figured I was safe. But then she was biting her bottom lip and squinting her eyes like she was considering it, like maybe she’d yank me into the bathroom and brutalize me in a filthy stall. Oh jesus no.

“Gwendolyn? Omigod! How are you!”

There was a girl with shoulder-length brown hair and lipstick the color of weak coffee standing beside us. She had a pinched nose and her face was too big for her head.

“Julie! I haven’t seen you since Shari’s birthday! How have you been?”

“Busy enough for three people. I need to go schizo just to lead my life, hah hah, hmmm.”

“Some things never change!” Gwen said.

“What about you? Are you still at Panopticon?”

“Five days a week! Hah hah hah, hmmm.”

“Hah hah, hmmm—Oh, have you met Chad? Chad, this is Gwendolyn. We played rugby together in college.”

“Please, call me Gwen. Only my grandmother calls me Gwendolyn.”

Chad was tall. His hair was parted on the side. He’d recently had a haircut. He had broad shoulders and cuff links. He probably played lacrosse at school. Everyone in this bar was a college athlete except me.

“This is Shane,” Gwen said, and I had to shake hands with these strangers and listen to Gwen tell them that I worked at Panopticon too and then not correct Julie when she assumed that was where we met. Then the two of them talked about people I didn’t know and would hopefully never meet. Chad kept looking at me like he wanted to have a guy talk about sports or the market. I wanted to interrupt and say, “I’m just a temp at Panopticon you know,” or “I’m a good alphabetizer.” I wanted to ask Chad if he’d loan me $300 and help me carry home all the saltshakers I planned to steal from this place tonight. But I didn’t. I wanted to call him Chip by mistake, but I didn’t do that either.

“So nice to meet you Shane,” Chad and Julie said as they were leaving.

“Sure,” I said.

“Running into Julie, that’s so funny!” Gwen said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why don’t you tell your goddamn grandmother to call you Gwen instead of Gwendolyn?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said she’s the only one who ever calls you Gwendolyn. Tell her to call you Gwen.”

“Shane, what are you talking about? Both of my grandmothers died before I was born.”

I never wanted to see her again.

“Anyway you always make me talk about myself. Let’s talk about you instead.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Just tell me something.”

“Okay. When I was seven years old I thought I was a superhero. My name, was Leaf Man… .” And I told her that lie of a Leaf Man story. It wasn’t a total lie actually. I really did have the GI Joe underoos and the cape made out of St. Patrick’s Day napkins. But I always knew I wasn’t a superhero, and I never jumped out of any trees. I thought about it, but I was too scared. I knew I’d get hurt real bad. Those poems about the fearlessness of children are fucking bullshit.

“Oh my
god!
That’s so you! You must have been hilarious as a little kid!” she said, laughing.

“Yeah.”

“Taped together St. Patrick’s Day napkins? Hah hah hah, hmmm.”

I wanted her to pay the check so I could get out of there. Once we were outside I was going to say my stomach hurt and that I would soon have explosive diarrhea, then I’d go home and never return her calls. Maybe I’d write her a letter saying that I’d left town because of a family emergency that I couldn’t really explain, but that I would always remember what a special and professional person she was and cherish our time together. Or maybe I wouldn’t write her at all. I just wanted to get out of there.

“I feel like we’re really connecting again,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you tell me something else?”

“Like what?” I didn’t have any more stock footage in the archives to show her. One made up story is usually enough.

“Why don’t you tell me how much you like me?”

Jesus.

“
Like
is such a strong word,” I said, genuinely smiling.

“You
bastard!
” she said, and kept her mouth open, mock horrified. Then she came at me pretending to be angry, thinking she was playing along. And she was playing along, just not in the way she believed.

This was our final act together, since I planned on never seeing her again. This was it. But I wanted it to have a happy ending, even if it was somewhat mysterious and abrupt. I wanted to leave her with nothing but sweet memories of our sham relationship, to feel good about all the time we’d wasted together. I don’t care if it’s founded on lies and misconceptions, I like to be remembered fondly. I was feeling so magnanimous just then I would have even bantered with her maybe, if she’d bought me another drink or five. But then she started tickling me instead.

I have never reacted well to tickling. I squeal like a little girl and fall to the ground and curl up in the fetal position to protect myself. There’s nothing I can do about it. It just happens. The tickling years, from kindergarten through early high school, when there’s a chance you’ll be tickled at random, for no reason whatsoever, were for me a season in hell. But once you reach a certain age it doesn’t matter anymore. You just don’t expect to ever get tickled again. It’s like pissing your pants or crying. You assume those days are finally behind you. But they never really are.

And there I was, twenty-eight years old, being tickled in a crowded bar surrounded by young professionals. And God wept for the world that he had made.

Luckily Gwen didn’t tickle like most people. Gwen tickled with her fists.

Ugh. Ugh. She jabbed me twice in the ribs before I even knew what was happening.

“You
think
so? You
think
so?” she said, rabidly playful, catching me once in each kidney. And then we were street fighting. I had the height advantage but the close crowd negated my long reach, so I tried to get in tight and tie up her arms, grapple with her until a bouncer separated us or threw us out or clubbed me in the back of the head and killed me. But she was too quick and slippery. I couldn’t get a hold. And there was no one coming to save me.

She caught me with a left hook to the gut that sent me stumbling back, my legs wobbling. Wobbling from the alcohol, I’d like to tell myself, and often do. As I reeled I fell into the rounded back of a fat guy who had just bent over laughing at something one of his buddies said, and that sent me staggering towards Gwen like the skinny kid on the playground who’s getting tossed by the circle of bullies, helpless momentum the only thing keeping him on his feet. Unfortunately Gwen had come forward for the knockout, so when that fat guy pitched me I stumbled face first into her solid linebacker’s shoulder. How I stayed up I’ll never know. There was a flash of black in my eyes and my head swerved, and I saw the headlights of oncoming traffic even though I wasn’t in a car. There was a moment of perfect silence like just after diving into a pool. Then I felt the heat in my hands.

“Bathroom,” I mumbled as I broke past her, weaving through the crowd with my hand over my mouth like I was yawning for a really long time, pinching my nose as I tried to catch the blood in my mouth. It was hot on my tongue and I almost gagged. It wasn’t too far from blowing your nose right into your mouth. Maybe it was worse. There was nothing else I could do.