Flings (13 page)

Mike takes the off-ramp too fast, barrels hard into the long, tight curve with the wheels sliding beneath him, seeing now how the night will end—his car flipped over on the embankment, lights and sirens swallowing the dark, him and the kids in separate ambulances, in and out of consciousness, Miranda's phone ringing in her kitchen, her blue robe pulled tight around her body as she stumbles half asleep toward the noise—but no, that's not what happens because Mike stays in control, gasses into the turn, the Saab like a part of his body now, an extension of his will as he holds the road and makes it through the loop, straightens out and comes to a stop at the light, where he can take his hands off the wheel and flex them, wipe his forehead and neck, check to see if Ken and Angie have woken, which, thankfully, they haven't, and if he has any luck left they'll stay asleep until he gets them back into their own driveway, where he'll wake them up one at a time, gently, like he used to do when they were kids.

T
hey met at the mixer the week before their semester started. He seemed ambitious, a pleaser; she walked away annoyed. But it was a small program and she was resigned to running into him in hallways and at events. Perhaps they'd have workshop together. They were poets and this was graduate school.

A computer lab in the basement of their program's building on West 11th Street: grapefruit-colored chairs with screwheads poking through the fabric, the old desktops purring as their cooling fans kicked into gear. She could usually be found there before class, checking her email or some goth band's tour schedule. She was a smart girl but young—fresh out of her undergrad with no “time off” and the city made her feel younger still. Her classmates were mostly in their late twenties, early thirties; some were even older. She was quick to anger and to judge, and knew these things about herself. She had some mastery over her emotions, but it was hard to sustain. Often she did not even try. Dark circles weighted her warm brown eyes; below those, a perfect nose and pout. She drew people's attention but couldn't keep it—or maybe could have but didn't want to. Frequently she herself was uncertain which it was, and refused as a matter of inchoate principle to consider the question at any length. Psychology was for losers! Her name was Abigail Paige. A loner in tight black jeans and fingerless gloves—somehow exquisite in whichever shirt she'd happened to pluck from her bedroom floor that morning—she had a hard, lithe beauty despite greasy hair the color of late wheat.

When Cal came into the lab and Abigail was there he took a station close to hers, the next one over if he could get it. He'd interrupt her to ask how things were going, what was new. She pointedly ignored him but sometimes slipped and gave an answer. He lit up when she did that and she felt a hot, sharp shift inside of herself, like a needle between her guts. Then she'd clam up, furious, as though she'd been taken advantage of in some small but definitive way.

When Abigail came in and Cal was already seated she made a point of sitting far down the row from him, every unoccupied terminal between them another condemnation. But if Cal felt rebuked he did not let on. In a way, she was coming to realize, he was as guarded as she was. He broadcast his pleasantries, kept everything else to the vest. Cal was a wall masquerading as a window. When she sat far away from him in the lab he simply did his work, or whatever it was he was doing, and then when he was finished took a stroll by her station to say hello before he left.

Somewhere early on she told him a lie. It came unprompted, a non sequitur, practically: she said that she had a boyfriend in Baltimore with whom she was quite serious. She said they had been together several years and saw each other as often as they could. He was getting his start down there and who knew but maybe she would ditch New York and poetry school to go be with him. The imaginary boyfriend had a big house in a bad neighborhood, tended an organic garden, played drums. They'd get dogs and take them running. If she went.

Cal was apparently undeterred by this boyfriend. But then, he hadn't declared himself or made a proper move on her either. Was it possible he did just want to be friends? This thought, she found, sent sine waves of dread thrumming up from the base of her spine to the base of her skull. Abigail wanted to be wanted, and to be asked a direct question to which she could reply with an equally direct negation. As in: Fuck you, hopes.

But he didn't ask.

She allowed that he was kind of all right looking. In a way. A little shorter than her—which she liked, actually—and somewhat koala-faced, but with lips so full you could tug them (she guessed) like a dog with a chew toy and needless to say she liked that, too. He looked better when dusted with a few days' stubble, and if he ever let his haircut grow out he would pretty much be there. Artfully ripped blue jeans and vintage shirts made his uniform. It fit. As the chill slid in he layered on cardigans and hoodies. He hated winter coats, he said, and meant to hold out—if possible—until he left for Christmas break.

On New Year's Eve it dipped below zero. She smoked pot alone in her Queens sublet and watched the ball drop on TV, unable to believe her own proximity to where this ritual idiocy was taking place. When her mom called at midnight she was too blitzed to form words so she set the phone to vibrate and watched it jitterbug across the coffee table. She wanted to choose the perfect album to masturbate to, but the studious care she brought to such deliberations quickly lulled her to sleep—clothes on, lights on, stereo still off.

By the time classes resumed in late January she had made up her mind. She was all set to go to the computer room as usual, and what would happen was she would get there second, see where Cal was sitting, and take the station next to his. She'd sit down. He would notice the chair moving in the corner of his eye but wouldn't register the identity of the person. Then, when she was settled, she would turn to him and say hello, and he would understand instantly that things had changed.

Instead they ran into each other in the lobby of the building, the first time such a thing had happened. Cal was in predictably high spirits, smiling. “What's new in Baltimore?” he asked.

“I broke up with that asshole.” Abigail practically spit the words at him. The lobby had high ceilings and a bank of windows. Students swirled around them, headed hurriedly to and from. The poetry program met in the evenings. Outside, the day had waned to a dim gray wisp. He hadn't responded to the thing she'd said. What was he waiting for?

“So if you ever want to, you know, hang out.” She heard these new words enter the world, spoken in her own voice. After all this time, she had asked him out? She could have slapped him, scratched his eyes from his head, for teasing this out of her.

Oh, but the look on his face was priceless, and Abigail felt with some satisfaction that even though the plan had gone totally FUBAR, the main goal—to turn his world upside down—had still been achieved. “Yeah, I'd like that,” he said. “What are you doing after class?”

“I have plans tonight,” she said (another lie), “but we could do something Thursday.” It was Monday.

“Great,” he said. “How about Chinatown?”

“Yeah, Chinatown's cool,” she said. And who knew, maybe it was.

They ate soup dumplings and a noodle thing with mushrooms in a brown sauce, and maintained their good cheer even upon learning that the place did not serve hard liquor, only Chinese beer. Afterward, they wandered the chilly, fetid streets until they saw a sports bar on Baxter that would have made more sense in Hell's Kitchen. They ducked in and drank a round; then she said it was getting late and he took out his wallet to pay. They'd split dinner, but he wanted to please at least buy her a drink. There was only one bartender and he had his back turned, down at the far end. It was busy in the place; on the blaring TVs the so-and-sos were up 56–49 over the who-gave-a-shits. She put her hand over his hand. He looked up. She put her lips to his ear. A husky whisper rich with urgency: “C'mon.” He furrowed his eyebrows; she kept her hand over his. They walked casually out of the bar, but as soon as they hit the sidewalk she broke into a run. He, still by the arm, was dragged along behind.

“What the fuck was that?” he said at a corner two or three streets up. He was working to catch his breath, which came in long labored plumes.

“That was fun,” she said, and only then released his hand. He looked at her sideways.

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess it was.” They stood at the mouth of the Canal Street station.

“Thank you,” she said, and there went his brow again—she could see he was about to ask her, For what? Well, that wasn't a question she was prepared to answer, so she threw her arms around him, the hug nearly over by the time he realized it was happening. She released him and was off running again: down the stairs, away. She sent a “good night” echoing up from around the corner of the landing where she'd disappeared.

Second date: Let's do something outside. They were in the midst of a warm spell, strange surprise in the dead of February, and he wanted to take advantage of what he called the “temporary reprieve.” She was from New Hampshire and chalked the weird weather up to global warming—we're so fucked, she said; the whole world is—but anyway she agreed with him as far as getting some fresh air while they could.

They met in Long Island City, where the G and the 7 lines cross. (She lived in Sunnyside and he lived in Bushwick; they were fifteen minutes apart by car, but neither of them had one.) They walked down to the waterfront, where new high-rises were under construction. They snuck onto the private piers, then ended up on a baseball field in a nearby park, where she could feel him working up the nerve to kiss her, but they were interrupted by cops who drove right up onto the diamond with their lights on to inform them that city parks close at dusk. They went deeper into Queens, through a vaguely unsavory industrial area, past unfenced lots and over half-buried train tracks. The neighborhoods continued to shift until they found themselves on a small street with groomed trees complementing a bench. They sat down and had their first kiss, finally. She took him back to her apartment, to her room, and was astonished—though hardly unhappy—to find herself the target of his rampant, heaving need. Deep within her the pins in a lock were aligning; a book or a door was flung open.

When he excused himself to the bathroom she stayed supine, goggle-eyed in the low light of a desk lamp she kept on the floor at the room's far end, its neck craned back at the wall, casting a big bright spot like a shadow on fire.

In the morning they went to a Greek diner near her apartment and got breakfast specials. She mopped her syrup with her toast and said that places like this were the reason you lived in Queens. They saw each other again a few days later—she stayed over at his place—and before long it was almost every night: one apartment or the other, but mostly his. He liked to be in his own space, he said, and she was surprised to find herself acquiescing to him on this and other matters. He wasn't demanding or bossy; he just said what he wanted—that film looks insipid; I'd rather have Mexican—and assumed that if she disagreed with him she'd let it be known. That was reasonable for any couple, besides which she was no pushover. He'd learned that last semester, hadn't he? He seemed to have a clear vision of her in his head: a fickle piece of work whose attention he now commanded; a beautiful, wild girl whose heart he'd won. It made sense that he thought this; it was the bill of goods she'd sold him. She saw herself this way, too, sometimes, but in passing flashes: a phantom only ever glimpsed as it was slipping away. To herself she was the same insecure striver she had always been, who made a mantle of her outsider status not because she valued it so highly but rather because she could never figure out where the inside of anything was. There was a part of her that had never left middle school and never would. She knew this about herself and didn't like it. Her heart had an outer layer, steel tough but eggshell thin; beneath it she was all seething core.

He didn't care about music enough and had the worst taste in poetry. He read the silliest things imaginable—Stephen Dunn! It was impossible to respect his work, and she horrified herself with the lying reverences she produced by way of praise. He read her work with exacting patience and returned it scribbled blue with suggestions and line edits she had made a point of not asking for. They were three months in and had started to say “I love you.” It was true.

Then one night in the fourth month he had a crying fit. They were in bed, lying close but apart, drowsing, when suddenly he sat up straight. Balled fists on the mattress and everything, like a little kid.

At first he was incoherent, not making words even, but eventually he got around to them, ranting for an hour, maybe longer, through and between choked sobs. What was he talking about? His argument—if that's what it was—had too many particulars and subpoints that entered the discourse, then dropped from it without notice or priority. The main gist, she gathered as he settled himself into timid sniffles, was that he was breaking up with her but hoped most earnestly that they might remain close as friends.

Her disbelief defied all analogy. She was cotton-mouthed and wide-eyed, had sat up at some point during his long aria, now fell flat backwards as if pushed (a feather'd have done the job nicely), and what should happen next but the schizoid snit slimed in for a presumptive farewell turn—wiped his face cursorily, incompletely, on a snatch of bedsheet and then was looming over her. So shocked was she that she kept still as he slid her panties kneeward. She regained herself and tucked those panty-bound knees up to her tits—she liked that word for them; he didn't and refused to say it, but no matter, they were dead to him now. She planted the rough flats of her feet against his soft furry chest and kicked him off her. He flailed and flew clear of the bed. She got dressed. He watched her from behind the bed, peering like a meerkat. How had she ever fallen into loving him? She stormed from the site of her shame into the deep city night.