Flatscreen (24 page)

When in Rome, so I ordered a venti caramel-pumpkin-steamed-soy macchiato, booted my laptop, surveyed the scene. At least for this week, unemployed dads had been replaced by syrup-sweetened-coffee-seeking holiday revelers, done up in matching scarf/sweater sets, as if winter still applied indoors even though the heat was stuck at seventy. Everyone had over-the-shoulder eyes. This was their 54 (
54
, Dollface, 1998): you never knew who might walk in next. Maybe they were looking for old lovers in red cashmere, caffeine-high, nostalgic, cold enough to cuddle. Maybe I was one of them.

My drink was sickly sweet, the kind a five-year-old might “invent,” given free reign in the kitchen. No one I knew was there, only a small group of college freshmen at the next table, reunited over eight-dollar pastries, laughing too loud at inside jokes about “snarfs,” “MBS,” “Remember that time…”

Happy, slim—no freshman fifteens—comfortable in the knowledge they’d spend the next three years bullshitting before being gently dropped into the real world, complete with internship-padded résumés, alumni connections.

But I was done being bitter. Bitter had got me nowhere but tube-numb. Triumphantly turned away from the freshmen, scanned my screen, searched the web for employment opportunities.

No idea how to search the web for employment opportunities.

Googled “How to search the web for employment opportunities.”

Results were impossible to comprehend. Too many options, too many paid advertisements, too many links to sites offering advice for a small monthly fee of… I had no direction, prospects, résumé, qualifications, experience. Stumped, I sipped my drink, watched a bird peck at another bird out the window, unfocused my eyes. When I refocused, noticed a sign that said “Now Hiring.”

Manager gave me papers to fill out, said they were looking for people to work weekends during the holidays. He had a Sox tattoo on one wrist, Irish clover on the other. Brim down, bloodshot eyes—my kind of guy. A job that could prolong my inertia by making it financially viable. But it was a start.

“I have no life,” I told him. “Weekends are fine.”

“We’ll be in touch,” he said.

Distracted by my first job application, walked right into a woman, knocked her over.

“Eli?” Alison Ghee said.

On the ground, my former lover, not in red cashmere, not high? not quite angry, kind of smiley, looking, if not healthy, then at least sexy-downtrodden down there with fishnet tights, signature slanted bangs.

Helped her up, said, “I’m sorry,” brushed the floor-dirt from her coat. Then remembered how mean she’d been the last time I’d seen her, at Jennifer’s party.

“Thanks,” she said.

I grunted something that sounded like “Ummf.”

Actually, it wasn’t a grunt, and sounded more like “You’re welcome,” because it’s hard to hold a grudge against a grief-stricken girl who gave you her body amid an epic sex-drought, and might be convinced to do it again, this time in slow-mo, wet soul kisses interspersed throughout.

“What was that?”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Aw. So sweet.”

“I’ve heard that before from you,” I said, because I still held a bit of a grudge.

“Before?”

“Remember at Jennifer’s party, when you broke my heart?”

“Okay, no idea what you’re talking about. You’re the one who never called me after our thing or whatever.”

“You never gave me your number.”

“Touché,” she said. “Sorry, it was a weird time.”

“You really don’t remember the conversation we had at Jennifer’s right around Thanksgiving?”

“When I said weird time, I meant super blackout, fucked-up, angry, not in my right mind kind of time. I’m sorry if I said anything mean. I honestly don’t remember.”

“That’s okay. I know the feeling. I’ve never been in my right mind when I’ve said anything.”

“One of your better qualities.”

“That and I’m funny.”

Alison didn’t laugh.

“Are we even now?” she said.

“Not even close,” I said, though I was already imagining stuttering ILY on one knee with Grandma’s ring in a field of fresh daisies.

“How about I buy you a coffee?” she said.

“Sure,” I said, tossed my caramelized cup of bleh into the garbage, ready for a real drink now that luck had turned my way.

Back in the booth, suddenly silent again, watched the freshman reunion like it was some kind of Platonic ideal (
Plato’s Pleasure Palace
, Omega Films, 1976), forever unattainable to us two fuckups.

“Why didn’t we turn out like that?” Alison said.

“I think we’re more interesting at least.”

“You’re a romantic.”

“That’s possible.”

She grabbed my application, looked it over.

“Wow. Really aiming high, huh?”

I gave her a “You’re on thin ice” look.

She countered with a look of “Sorry, but you walked right into that one, and besides, just because I’m supposed to be nice doesn’t mean I have to treat you with kid gloves.”

Fair enough.

“Guess I’m not
that
romantic.”

“Did you really get shot?”

Pulled up my pant leg, exposed the scar.

“Gangsta-ish.”

“Totally, right?”

Out the window, leftover rain colored leftover snow shit-colored.

“I hate winter,” Alison said. “I fucking hate it. I hate snow.”

“Being inside’s not so bad.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m being dramatic. And I’m sorry you got shot. No one should have shot you. It’s hard enough without people shooting you.”

“Thanks,” I said, almost adding the word “babe” before remembering it wasn’t that kind of movie, or any kind of movie.

A baby screamed at the next table, uncalmed by the rain-drums rattling middlebrow, middle-register world rhythms over the house speakers. His mother—constrained by societal values—didn’t smack him. She said, “There, there.”

“Were you a happy child?” Alison asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really remember.”

For some reason thought of this dream I’d been having where the only way to get out of the dream is to kill yourself, but you know it’s a dream so it’s okay, but what if it’s not a dream?

She said, “It wasn’t until high school that I realized not everyone hated themselves.”

Apartment was a mess. Alison didn’t seem embarrassed that I was embarrassed. Swept the clothes from the bed with a sweeping gesture I’d seen in movies.

“Suave,” she said, hopped on the bed, removed her shoes, huddled clothed beneath comforter. Put on a Miles Davis CD Kahn had left me while I was in the hospital. Trumpet blew long, unhurried, not like the way people talk around here: Kahn, Benjy, Mom, Dan, all quick-spitters, words like bullets, more like Coltrane than Miles. The trumpet’s voice was like Alison’s: breathy, meandering, shaky but also sure.

“Do you have a job?” I said.

“Had one.”

“What happened?”

She sang, “Then I got high, then I got high, then I got…”

“So what do you do now?”

“Fuck strangers. For money, of course. Sometimes for drugs. Sometimes just for fun.”

“Really?”

“Just kidding, fat boy. I get money from my dad. I watch TV most of the time. Stupid shows. Soaps and stuff that I
watch with my mom.
Days of Our Lives
, she loves it. Sometimes I just go for walks in Kapler Park. After it’s rained. I like it after it’s rained.”

Saw her walking through Kapler Park post-rain, exhaling smoke, enjoying the dampness in the air even though it frizzed her hair, made her sniffle; enjoyed it because the wet pavement smelled like life. For a second her sad-eyed loner lifestyle didn’t seem pathetic, but somehow triumphant, because she’d experienced grief, still managed to walk on a dewy morning, take in the scent of dead wet flowers crushed by the storm at the edge of the woods, watch the sun slowly emerge from between two clouds.

“I watch TV too,” I said, kissed her.

This time we faced each other. First I pulled off her panties, licked.

“Do you know where the clit is?”

“I’ve studied a few diagrams.”

“Lick that.”

Success. She rumbled like a Rumble Pak, vibrated like a broken fridge, said, “Eli,” “My feet are tingling,” “Right there.” I slurped love syrup until she grabbed my shoulders, pulled me up so I was looking in her eyes, kissed me again, touched her tongue to my teeth, then ears, stomach, sides, thighs, everywhere but … until, finally, grazing the underside with her chin, little licks, baby kisses into full-on sucking into “Can I sit on you?”

Sex was slow. Mind too fast, analyzing every moan and minuscule movement. Was that an “AH!” or an “uh?” and why was her hand pulling my hand over the straps, under the chin, music too loud? whose leg was…

Then Alison did a thing with her hips, kitten-clawed my handles, up-tempo-ed, kissed my neck, squeezed my nipple, bounced in 6/8 time to Tony Williams’s tat-ta-ta-tit-tat-ti.
Tried to keep up, keep steady, keep the world outside because now I was inside, inside her, outside myself, conjoined like that dream only I didn’t want to separate, just stay this way forever, two-headed eel into infinity, squish-squash-egad-eel sounds, swapping air and hair, opposite of numb, fuzzy with feeling, noticing everything: idiosyncratic beauty, proof she was a single unit, not some representative F/21—tiny pink dots around her nipples, errant curly hair sticking awkwardly from her eyebrow, glassy film on the surface of her eye (contact lens?), fingernails like stained glass in the rainbow reflection of an upside-down DVD, belly-button blond hairs, butt shape indescribable, blinking in fuck-rhythm, hairspray hair loosed by sweat (mine?), small trickle down forehead, small trail of saliva, all muscles working at once, factory gears faithfully turning for mass pleasure production, outside body tied to internal city ever onward in our fuck palace.

“I think I’m…”

Alison held my hand, said, “You can if you want.”

I let loose a load, didn’t feel any lighter, flopped heavy onto Alison. A good heavy, like sinking into earned sleep.

“I like the weight of you on me,” she said.

After, in the living room, Alison scraped candle wax off Mom’s old menorah with her fingernail, collected it in the palm of her other hand.

“Tonight’s the first night.”

“We should light the candles.”

“I don’t know if we have candles. I think we just have the menorah.”

“Oh.”

“This is the first year we didn’t light them.”

Wondered if Kahn had lit candles in our old house, if Erin was there singing prayers like a lullaby, as Kahn,
who’d been drinking scotch all day, closed his eyes on the couch, put his feet on the chipped coffee table, pictured his old sperm swimming through his ex-wife’s body—Sheila’s body, another aquarium—being swallowed and nourished by her body at the same time, growing into a person, into that voice singing songs from before the sperm, from a different time when people meant the words.

“Me and Jeremy used to,” she said. “When he lived at Beth Shalom.”

“Used to what?”

“Go in there on the last night—the eighth night, right? We went late at night. Smoked a bowl and went up there, up on the stage. Spooky being in there so late with just those candles. We would lie down right under the candles. There was the big menorah and the little ones, like they were the big one’s children. We didn’t kiss or anything. He just unzipped and I pulled my skirt up to my waist.”

“I’m sorry.”

Alison brushed her bangs from her eyes. They fell right back down.

“I don’t even believe in God,” she said.

“Me neither.”

She let her body fall sideways so her head was resting in my lap. I took a strand of her hair, wrapped it around my finger. Wanted us to be tied together, as if I was her mother, her hair the still-uncut umbilical cord. Closed my eyes, felt like I could fall asleep. Maybe I did fall asleep, or she did, but at some point must have both been looking at the Coke clock because she said, “It’s late,” left.

This time I got her number, told her I’d cook her a gourmet dinner next Friday.

Possible Ending #10 (American-Made Film About French People):

Sex saves us all. Forget the pleasures of work, family. Lick raw egg from each other’s nipples, bathe in bloody bathwater, burn our bodies with candle wax, wax our bodies with waxing wax, stick candles in our etc. Otherwise we drink too much, recite poetry, read from crusty stolen books, ash into wine bottles, inhale asbestos, complain of chronic ailments like gout, tennis elbow, fuck each other’s friends, fight, break apart, reconcile, eventually die in black night, but not in the morning, which is really the afternoon. In the morning I dangle in morning light, eat grapefruit. She saunters in wearing my shirt, half-unbuttoned, hair hanging, unwashed, champagne in our OJ. The only meal ever is breakfast. Breakfast is birth.