The Adults (31 page)

“Is ‘spiracle’ even a word?” Jonathan wanted to know. Before I could say, yes, dumbass, it’s an external tracheal aperture of a terrestrial arthropod, before Jonathan could laugh and pull me into him, the undercover tram officer heard my English and wanted to know why Americans never thought they needed permission to be so dumb.

“
Jízdenku
,” the tram officer demanded, like,
ticket
.

The tram police in Prague were like a secret police left over from an expired Communist tradition, dressed casually in jeans and fleeces, riding the trains silently like they were just another tourist, and then flashing a gold badge.

“
Jak se máte?
” I said back, and I was learning from class that only an American would say this since when the Czechs heard, “How are you?” it was like, well, my mother’s getting married and she needs to find a dress, and she will, I’m certain.

But not the tram officer. He did not even hear me.

“
Jízdenku
,” he said. “Or off tram. Or seven hundred koruny.”

Jonathan and I looked at our empty hands. I couldn’t find my tram pass. We stepped off the tram.

The first thing I noticed was the depravity of the situation. This was a trick my mother had once taught me. The snow was thick on the ground. My shoes were wet. A beggar was in a blue hooded sweatshirt kneeling in front of a yellow Lab that had a rat on its back. The rat was wet, rubbing his nose with his paws. The beggar had his cupped hands outstretched and was so still, his shape looked like a pipe that a careless passerby might decide to smoke. This was the traditional way of begging for money that I had seen all over Prague.

“Do you think the beggar trained the rat to do that?” Jonathan asked. He was so shamelessly American, the way he said beg-
ger
, the way he assumed this man was homeless only to be amusing. And the poor yellow Lab, I thought, no weapons, no money, no coat in this snowstorm—merely the instinct to kill. “Ruffski,” Jonathan said, staring down at the yellow Lab. “Ruffski!”

The dog sniffed at my suitcase.

“Isn’t it weird that to be homeless in the Czech Republic there are still all these rules to follow?” I asked Jonathan, and I thought that if I was going to answer a stupid question with a stupid question I could have made it a more efficient one, like, Jonathan, why don’t we just go back to the hotel? How are we going to get to the bone church at this hour? Or, Where were you? Why can’t you just love me in a regular way?

Instead, I said, “Like, you can’t just be homeless and poor and beg, you have to sit in this uncomfortable position all day long and you are still poor and begging, but really uncomfortable.”

Jonathan shrugged.

“Let’s go get highski,” he said.

We wandered through the city until we located Café Red, an underground bar where we could buy weed and smoke it right there. On the way, we walked through the streets. We were tourists who laughed at street signs. All the men in the street signs wore top hats and all of the little girls wore bows in their hair, bows that made them look less like pretty little girls and more like hybrids of children and bunnies.

“Hey, there’s the underground bar,” I said, pointing to Café Red.

“Why do you keep saying ‘underground bar’?” Jonathan said. “What’s so fucking great about an underground bar? It doesn’t become cooler the farther underground it is. Like, nobody says, ‘Hey, check out my fourth-floor restaurant, it’s so cool because it’s on the fourth floor.’”

We walked down the stairs. A black man with long dreadlocks was behind the bar, asking us what we wanted. “What you want?” the man said, and I noticed the Jamaican flag pin on his shoulder. “
What
you want?”

“Weed,” Jonathan said. He turned to stare at the tall woman in the corner of the bar, her long blond hair like a sheet of ice melting down her back. She was beautiful, dancing, slowly moving her hips to the sound of nothing. She had her eyes closed as if she could not bear to watch her own body communicate, as if her subtle movement only validated the inarticulate murmurings of the drunk foreigners, who, she understood, were nobody. Watching her made me feel like nothing. Watching Jonathan watch her made me feel worse than nothing.

“Fucking Americans,” the Jamaican said. But we got what we wanted.

We sat down on the seats. Jonathan put his hand on my leg so fast, I felt like part of the scenery, like the leather upholstery of the chair underneath him. He began to roll the joints.

“Jesus fucking Christ, this is worthless shit,” Jonathan said after his first drag. “We’d be better off with oregano.”

“Like that guy is even
from
Jamaica,” I said. “It’s fucking Disney World here.”

“Like, hey, what part of Cleveland are you from?” Jonathan said. We both knew it was a joke, so we didn’t even have to laugh. Jonathan was the only person who ever understood me like this, and he used this as leverage to get what he wanted.

I put the joint to my lips and apologized to Raisinet in my head. I felt the burn in my lungs and the panic rise to my diaphragm and I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t choking. We sat in the booth for what felt like an hour, then Jonathan said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s go find that bone church.”

“We just got here,” I said.

“Emily, there are chandeliers made out of peasant bones and that’s something to see.”

“I know that,” I said. “I was the one who told you about it. And I said it exactly like that.”

“All right, then, why are you fighting?” he said. “Let’s go to the bone church.”

But I was tired. I inhaled and thought: We are never going to find the bone church. How exhausting. The poor dog.

I didn’t move. And Jonathan didn’t stop staring at the blond woman while muttering, “Ruffski.” Jonathan didn’t think I could hear him. The burning oregano was regulating my breath, and I thought it was possible that I had never properly breathed until this moment. My stomach extended, and the smoke burned my lungs, like an old newspaper on fire, quick to light, quick to burn out, then: ash and I felt gone. The Jamaican from Cleveland had returned to our table, his face hovering in the smog around us. I couldn’t tell if he was on fire or if the place was on fire or if nobody was on fire at all but me. “What you want?” he asked. Jonathan waved his hand for the man to go away.

“Nothingski,” Jonathan said.

There was a man I presumed to be French staring at me from the other side of the bar, sitting under the long red fluorescent light that read: Ď
OBRY DEN
, like,
good day
, like, this is what it looks like when the Devil says hello in the morning. The presumably French man winked. I could barely move my mouth to explain the urgency of this to Jonathan.

“Why do you make Shakespeare references when you haven’t actually read much Shakespeare?” I asked him instead.

“I don’t knowski,” he said.

“It scares me that you make references to books you haven’t read,” I said.

“Hey,” he said. “Let’s never mind that. Let’s just go to the bone church.”

The presumably French man winked at me.

“
Le
Little Mole, can you hear me?” Jonathan said. Stop staring at her, I thought. I wanted to scream in his face. The blond woman was only the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. “
Le
Little Mole!”

“Stop calling me
le
Little Mole!” I shouted at his face.

The French man was staring. The blond woman was touching her thighs. Jonathan sighed. “
Le
Little Mole, I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Then don’t tell me, please.”

Which is what I should have said to my mother when she told me that she and my father were getting divorced: I don’t want to know how a man can get up and leave his three-thousand-dollar desk behind him. I don’t want to know if he buys a new one. It should have been what I said to Mark when he leaned over my shoulder and said, “Who’s over there behind that tree?” It should have been what I said to Ester right before she admitted Laura wasn’t my sister. It should have been what I said to Janice when I sat passenger in her old car: don’t tell me. I don’t want to know how many fingers Mr. Basketball can fit inside you, Janice; I already know. Two, sometimes three, depending on how relaxed you are. It was like I already knew: to be happy I am going to have to stop listening to everybody I love.

“Okay,” Jonathan said.

“Okay,” I said.

This was an example of a warning sign: as a child when Jonathan had walked into his kitchen and said, “I’m bored,” his mother would make him do things like wash all the walls with a toothbrush or count out five hundred toothpicks just to put them back in the box; then she’d lean over his shoulder and say, “Are you bored yet?” He would shake his head, no no. “Good,” she’d say. “Jesus was
never
bored.”

“Just say it,” I said. “You’re bored with me. Is that what you have to tell me? I’m nothing like what you thought I would be.”

He leaned over and covered my mouth with his. He pulled away, and we looked each other in the face.

“I’m not bored,” he said. “I’m married, Emily.”

The French man was calling me over with one finger. The blond woman was still touching her thighs.

“All right,” Jonathan said. “I just had to say it. There, I said it. I’ll say it again. I’m married. I’m married, I’m married, I’m married.”

I felt the tiny fire start at the tip of my throat.

I thought maybe this was just another joke, so we turned to each other and laughed. We laughed until we were in tears. I did not look at the French man, though I knew he was staring. If I made eye contact, he became part of the joke too, which, I slowly realized, was not a joke at all. Nothing was even funny. The dog was dead. But Jonathan couldn’t stop laughing, his face almost a dangerous shade of blue, so he pointed to the door and walked out of the café, like,
Excuse me, I have to remember why this isn’t all that funny so my lungs don’t explode inside me
.

And, to think,
still
. I was still definitely not an adult. No adult looked at another adult and laughed about nothing until their face turned blue. I was never going to grow up if I continued to sit here; I knew this for sure. We needed to leave. We needed to go to the bone church, bury the dead dog like responsible people, go back to the hotel, and walk through the doors and stare up at all the vaulted ceilings and trace our fingers on the French windowsills. We needed to sneak into the warm pool and swim lazily next to the glass swans, wash the chlorine off in the shower, scrub our bodies with free soap and love each other because the sterile scent of our skin reminded us of luxurious things we used to love.

But I was still there with a half-smoked joint and a dead dog and a table with
stůl
written on it in red marker.
Stůl
. Table. And Jonathan was
married
? In this underground bar with no windows, everything was dangerously without context, especially the English language: tay-bull. Mare-ead. What did that even mean?

I sat back with my head against the seat and my hands on the
stůl
and my feet itched. It felt like there were cockroaches at my ankles, live scorpions in my mouth, fire rushing up my leg until the whole of me was devoured, my body not quick to burn, but slow to catch. Pathetic flesh crumbling to ash.

The French man slid up next to me. Jonathan was nowhere to be seen.

The French man wanted to know all about me, like my habits and hobbies and preferences regarding all things, but he didn’t know much English.

“
Salut
,” the French man said, like,
informal hello
, like,
Nice pants, babe
. “
Ça va? D’où viens tu?
” like,
Where are you from, but only in a really casual way
.

We discovered that our common language was functional Spanglish.

“
Quiero saber
you,” he said. Like,
I really want to know you in a scholastic way.

“
Le
Little Mole,” I said. “Like the cartoon. I fight crime.”

And then, even as I felt sure I hated Jonathan, I knew I loved him more than anything I had yet loved in my life. Soft food against my tongue, Mark and I lying on the stone wall as kids, the memory of my parents’ laughter in the kitchen, bobbing in the backwaters of my brain: all slowly drowning evidence that I was worth more than this.

“
Le
Little Mole,” the French man said, and shook my hand. I peered around the French man’s head. Where was Jonathan? He could have been anywhere. Jonathan never said, “Be right back.” Though why would he? Wasn’t it always implied?

“
Le
Little Mole,” he said. “
États-Unis?
”

“America,
sí
.”

“Te gusta Praha?” Are you happy here?

“
Pan muy malo
,” I said.
Have you noticed there is a bread problem here?

“What
es tu
address
en Praha
?” he asked.
You’re funny, I will find you
, like,
You’re already the arrow in my heart and where have you been shot from?

“No address,” I said.
I would never tell you where I live, WEIRDO
.

“Por qué no?”

“No libro.” No book.
I meant,
No pen.

“
Maquillaje
. Or, how do you say, lipstick?”

“No.”

“Write in
mi sangre
,” he said, and pointed to his arm.
Mi sangre
, my blood. He smiled, and I sensed his instant dedication, like I was already the skin over his muscles and he had no choice in picking a covering. He put his hands in his pockets to find a pen, a pin, a tiny knife to release the
sangre
, and I understood I must leave before this was no longer a really weird experience. But the man had moved closer. I was lead against the leather of my seat, his hand was on my thigh, and I measured how fucked-up I was becoming by how normal this felt.