Fishbowl (12 page)

He pauses at the view out the balcony door.

Ian swims in his bowl, tracking lazy circles in one direction and then, seemingly on a whim, switching to the other. The snail is a brown dot halfway up the glass. Ian stops to peck at it a few times and then continues his swim. The castle sits as a reminder of harder, more primitive times, not that castles were ever pink, made of plastic, or sunken into the ocean.

Connor revels for a moment in the absurdity of the castle, the miniature archers manning the walk, puzzling over how their tiny arrows could take down this giant goldfish floating by their walls.

The thesis papers stacked on the fishbowl ripple in a stirring of air, weighted in place by the coffee mug against the gentle pull and push of the breeze.

Connor sniffs the air in the apartment. It stinks of hours of sweat, exertion, and spunk. He decides against sliding the door closed. It’s as warm outside as it is inside anyway. He stands with his hand on the door handle, looking out on the balcony. Something is amiss and keeps him stuck in place, puzzling him into inaction.

What is it? he wonders. There’s something deeply wrong here, and I can’t put my finger on it.

The fresh air washes over him and into the apartment, as if it is attempting to cleanse all that has happened there since he moved in. It brushes past his naked skin, an invisible caress stroking him. Connor takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, attempting to clear the scene from his mind, clear his palate so he can see it with refreshed eyes and pinpoint the problem. He exhales fully and opens his eyes to scrutinize the balcony again.

It’s a simple scene before him and nothing that should cause him such concern, especially considering the state of the apartment at his back. But for some reason it cripples him.

The mug reads, “Paleoclimatologists do it in the dirt.”

He is filled with such deep self-reproach that he thinks of leaving the apartment and never coming back. Whatever is out there on the balcony makes him want to flee, to just go to the elevator, press the down button, and ride it to the lobby. He’d drop his keys in the super’s mailbox, shoulder through the front door, and keep walking. Across the street, across the neighborhood, past the city limits, and right on across the continent, walking away from everything he has and, by association in his mind, everything he is. Walking past highway truck stops and billboards for casinos, past small-town corner stores and dusty gas station parking lots. Eventually he would reach an ocean town, cross the sand-sprinkled boardwalk and ribbon of beach, and just keep going, wading out into the water until the sand dropped away beneath his feet. Then he’d swim, the water turning from a pale blue to black as the continental shelf slid away, plunging into the hollow depths full of unknown monsters, the alien kinds with dangly bioluminescent baubles hanging from organic filaments before their eyes. His body would become a mere speck of humanity hovering over an almost infinite depth of nothing. His movements would be so small in the water that, no matter how violently he thrashed, they’d have no impact. His legs would kick themselves into exhaustion, and eventually he’d fade into nothing, disappearing as if he never even happened.

Then Connor figures out it isn’t the apartment he wants to flee; it’s something much more difficult to escape. He wants to flee himself. As soon as he realizes this, he knows it’s the coffee mug that makes him feel this way. That kitschy custom mug with a dried coffee kiss on the rim.

The mug was a gift from Katie. Not from any of the other girls. She had it made at a specialty place where they also print novelty shirts, buttons, and stickers. Ian’s also a gift from Katie. She bought the fish for him after he told her about his dog and growing up alone in a community of retirees.

And now she’s coming up the building to see him, riding the quivering elevator to his door. She wants to see him, wants to know more about him. She cares about him. And while she’s riding the elevator up, Faye’s descending the stairs. His infidelity is safely secret.

Connor turns his back to the balcony and sees the empty bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. Katie had brought it. They drank it together and then pulled his mattress to the balcony door to look out at the thousands of city lights in the dark. Connor told her that he wanted to make love to her under the stars, but the city lights were too bright to see them.

Sure, he’d still banged her there on the mattress on the floor in front of the glass doors. He had wanted them to be near the window because he thought the couple in the next building over was watching them through the telescope he had seen in their apartment. And the couple in the apartment across the way
did
watch them doing it. Twice. But he and Katie had talked late into the night after they both came, and he had fallen asleep to the soft music of her voice.

A tea bag sits on the side of the sink.

The next morning she made tea before she went to work.

Now, the reminder of her sits there in a salt flat moat of Earl Grey residue.

These pieces of her are around all the time. Everything reminds Connor of her.

She’s here in the waxy yellow Q-tip in his bathroom garbage can and the strand of hair on the tile in the shower. She’s here in the glamour magazine draped over the edge of the couch. They’d done the “Are you too picky about your guy?” quiz together. Katie, yes. Connor, no.

Connor’s stomach clenches with regret. How could he have missed the point? He is a tiny archer in the pink castle watching the giant goldfish float past the turrets. It is so obvious. The continental shelf, the infinite black below, the inconsequential speck of him in the vastness of it all; him, he could be so much more with her. With her, he wouldn’t walk away. With her, he was safe and at home floating in the deep black below.

All of this stuff she has left in his apartment, the constant reminder of her presence in his life, makes this ocean a little less lonely. And looking at it all, he finally realizes he doesn’t mind any of it. She has been in his life for such a short time, but all of these bits of her make something bigger. She is the most beautiful and wonderful thing, and how could he not have seen that?

Why does Faye even exist in my life?

Why is there a Deb in it, also?

He looks at the porno magazines in one hand, the tissues in the other, and they tell him that he has wronged her. They highlight his shame and make him long to be better for Katie. They make him realize he is committed to her.

What’s wrong with me that a Katie isn’t enough?

Faye, great in the sack, sure.

Deb, very great in the sack, legendary.

Both of them are. That is it. Nothing more. The only difference is that one is a blonde and one is a ginger. Deb and Faye, interchangeable bodies with varying availability.

Katie, also great in the sack, beautiful, with a laugh that never fails to make him crack up, and, he thinks, she could really be something more. Connor thinks back to when they dragged the mattress in front of the window and talked, looking out at the city night. There was no struggle to fill the gaps in their conversation. There was no trial of thinking of something to say. In fact, it was three in the morning before he knew it.

That means something, right?

Looking around the apartment, there are so many more pieces of Katie scattered about his space and he likes it. That has never happened with a woman before.

So why do Faye and Deb exist in my life?

His reaction to Katie calling and coming up exposes what is important to him. It reflects what he truly feels. He couldn’t get caught with Faye because it would hurt Katie, which means that Katie is more important than anyone else and that is something that hasn’t happened before. Ever.

Could this be what love is about? Connor wonders. He wonders if this could be a sign, an abrupt “This is love” in flashing neon.

Or is love more gradual? Something a person grows into.

Is it a sign? I need a sign.

Then the apartment goes silent. The bedside lamp goes dark. The fridge’s compressor stops running. There’s a distinct silence that falls over the building, more of a feeling than a lack of noise. The quiet buzz of everything electrical is gone, not that it was noticeable in its presence, but it is definitely noticeable in its absence.

Connor listens to the traffic hum far below on the street.

Connor knows something is wrong with him.

Connor knows something has to change, but he has only just started to figure what that is.

The floor lamp in the corner of the room comes on again, and the fridge clicks and starts to whir. The stove clock flashes a row of green eights.

I love Katie, Connor thinks. And I have never been so sure of anything before.

21

In Which the Evil Seductress Faye Discards the Remnants of Her Love and Begins a Very Long Descent

Faye opens the door to the garbage room. Its hinges squawk horribly, and the handle is tacky with filth. It swings shut again behind her, and she wipes her hand on the pink nightshirt. The walls are painted an off-white color and sport variously hued smears and stains splattered with increasing density near the metal trapdoor in the wall blocking the garbage chute. Faye lifts the hem of the pink nightshirt and uses it as a glove to open the trapdoor. She gags on the smell that emanates from the darkness below. It’s a warm, fetid exhalation that breaks like a rotting liquid against her face.

She drops the garbage bag into the chute. The sight of the sour-apple condom, wet and plastered against the side of the opaque plastic bag as it disappears into the offal of the dark chute, makes her yearn to wash her hands. The soft sound of the bag bouncing from wall to wall fades, and Faye lets the handle slip from her grasp. The trapdoor bangs shut, the sound amplified in the small space. Faye uses the hem of the nightshirt again to open the door, and when she steps into the hallway, she takes a deep breath and lets it out through her nose, trying to expel the sticky smell in her nostrils.

Faye follows the signs to the stairwell. She has never been in the stairwell of the Seville and no wonder—Connor’s on the top floor. She always takes the elevator, but this time she will take the stairs, just as Connor asked, just so she won’t risk a chance run-in with his girlfriend.

Not that I would be able to tell her from any other chick I see in the building, Faye thinks.

Faye knows of her existence, and she knows her name because Connor talks about her, but she has never even seen the girlfriend. In her mind, Katie is a generic girl with legs and arms and breasts and eyes and hair. Nothing more specific than that.

Faye knows Connor has other women on the go in addition to herself and this girlfriend. It doesn’t bother her much as their relationship is strictly physical. Faye has other lovers on the table too. She talks about them openly in front of Connor just to see him squirm, which he does.

Faye believes there are different people out there for different reasons, each serving a purpose in her life. No one could be expected to satisfy her every need. Some are great to talk to, and some are great to go to bed with. Some are there to help her move heavy stuff, and some are meant to go to the movies with. She thinks herself too complex and men too simple for her to be tempted by any single one of them … exclusively.

Twenty-seven floors’ worth of stairs to the lobby, Faye thinks as she steps onto the landing. She wonders why she agreed to hike down the building. Connor will pay for this. This and having to play garbagewoman are the limits of her affections for him.

No, she thinks, not affections, more lust. They are the limits of her lust. “Affections” implies there is something deeper than the simple physical attraction they share, something more than their bodies periodically colliding.

She lets a sigh escape into the stairwell, and the stairwell sighs back to her. To her right is one half flight heading up to a trapdoor to the roof. There’s a latch and a padlock on the little hatch. To the left is the beginning of her descent, wide open and spiraling downward. Leaning over the rail and looking down the column of space between the flights of stairs, an Archimedean whorl of handrail stretches out below her and shrinks with the depth. She catches a glimpse of a hand grasping the rail several floors below. It was a flash, gone as quickly as it had appeared, and it makes her wonder if the fleeting appendage existed in the first place or if it was a trick of her mind.

Twenty-seven fucking floors, Faye thinks as she takes the first step. She wonders if she should count them all and hold that number against Connor for some reward. Then she thinks twice of counting stairs, even for one flight. It would get boring. Totally not worth it. She can make him pay without the final count.

“Take the stairs,” he said.

“Fuck off” was her initial reaction, but she had stayed that in one of the few bouts of self-control she could remember suffering.

Normally, Faye would have told Connor off, but he had been so cute, his face begging, his body all sexy and lanky like some sweaty man-animal bike courier after a long August shift. His skin coated with a matte of old sweat from their grappling. The curves of his musculature and the way his sweatpants hung off his hips, no shirt, and desperately pleading on top of that. It was hot.
He
was hot, and his body was amazing and those sweatpants were packing heat.

She swishes one knee past the other as she descends, just to remind herself of the feeling of him, the feeling of his pressure on her inner thighs.

Connor’s only one of three current lovers. There’s that guy in the university library. Faye isn’t sure of his name, but he’s always in the psychology section, at that study corral in the corner that’s blocked from the stacks of books by a fabric partition. He has round, wire-framed glasses and always has a well-groomed beard to accentuate his sharp jawline. He’s always reading books and is so sexy in a geeky way. They never talk, just fuck quickly and quietly behind that partition. It’s the library after all.

Then there’s Janine at the pool. Faye had never dug on a chick before, but she does on Janine. Janine’s so civilized except that she makes shrieking animal noises when they have sex. Like a baboon. She has an amazing body too, toned by swimming miles every day, one pool length at a time. Sometimes, Faye goes to the campus pool to see if Janine’s there, which she often is. Faye sits in the bleachers and watches the smooth, repetitive motion of her cutting through the water. Sometimes they swim together, no talking, just the cathartic repetitions of movement and the burbling whisper of water past her ears. It calms her mind. Janine is a great break because Faye’s beginning to find men exhausting.