Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

  “Cool. Now, can we get down to business, or do you want to plan out our retirement next?”

  “You’re catching on, English.” He smiled. “Seeing us as a long-term deal.”

  I didn’t know if I was smiling because he was calling me English, which was utterly ridiculous, or if I was amused by the fact he was planning our life together.

  We were on our way to the bed when he looked at me and said, “You’re not the same as everyone else. You think I sound crazy, but as soon as I looked at you, I wanted to write a song. That means something.”

  “It means I’m attractive,” I told him. “And you have a dick. You’re not the first man to use his dick to store inspiration.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You talk too much.”

  When I was out of the city and in the country, I felt choked, cut off from the vine. There weren’t enough heartbeats in the country; you had to be patient, have an ear for the voice of nature. I found that sort of silence too loud, so I squashed my life, compressed it into a dozen tiny studio apartments. I did that over and over, sampling the cities of America, learning their beats and then moving on. New York, and New Orleans, Chicago, and Miami. I wore bikinis and tanned to golden brown, and then I faded to a milky white and covered myself in down coats and scarves—my nose perpetually dressed in a cold. I found reasons not to go home to the city that I loved most. It was almost time, though. I was on my last stop.

  Except…David. He was making it difficult to think of leaving. I told myself that I was just having fun, so of course, I didn’t want to leave yet. But like all of my relationships, the desire to be with him would soon fade out and then I’d be ready to go home.

  David had this grin. His lips would compress in a pucker between two deep smile lines and he’d look at you like he could already see you naked. Sometimes when he was singing, he’d grin like that and girls would lose their shit, holding their hands up to the stage and screaming. I could imagine him in a larger setting, grinning like that to an audience of thousands. It made me feel sick to think about. But, when he smiled at me like that, I imagined having his babies. I never told him that, but I did. Me imagining babies. His grin thwarted my mission. I was a muse, not a wife, not a mother. More than anything I was scared. Perhaps Ann had been right.

  I learned that the best time to ask him questions about himself was post-sex while still tangled together and recovering. He’d taught me that trick the first time we’d been together, asking about my boots. Sometimes we took turns asking each other things; sometimes there was just one talker and one listener.

  “Why are you a singer? Why do you have a band?” We were camped out in my bed, the clean white sheets tucked around us. Outside the rain fell. As soon as I said those words, he rolled onto his back and started laughing. Then he repeated everything I said in the worst attempt at a British accent I’d ever heard.

  “Jackass,” I said. “So much for being interested in your life.”

  “Come on, English.” He rubbed his socked feet against mine and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m a singer because I’m a narcissist. Isn’t that the way? And I have a band because I can’t play all the instruments myself.” His eyes were all lit up. He got off on teasing me. I got off on it too.

  “No one is that basic,” I said. “We all have our shit.”

  He rubbed a hand across his face and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Why do I feel like I just hit a nerve?” I asked. I was suddenly excited. David was hesitant to talk about himself, he preferred to listen. To me, that was the mark of a true artist—someone who gathered instead of took. I propped my head on my hand and ran my fingers up his chest. If I could get him a little bit hard he’d tell me anything I wanted to know.

  “What is it? Tell me,” I urged.

  “I’m average,” he said. “Middle child all the way.” I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t. “—So I had to find something to be good at. To set me apart from my cocksucker older brother and my needy baby sister.” I laughed at his description of his siblings. Whenever people spoke about their siblings, there was both love and resentment present.

  “So, you…”

  “Started playing on my older brother’s guitar. Turns out I had a pretty good voice too. But I didn’t know that until a girl told me.”

  “What did she say? Who was she?”

  “She was my neighbor. She’d hear me singing in the backyard and one day she told me that I sounded like Mark Lanegan. I didn’t know who he was so I looked him up. The biggest compliment came when she asked me to sing at her birthday party. She was three years older than me. Paid me a hundred bucks too. First paid gig.”

  I imagined long legs, tan, dark brown hair—and I was jealous of her because she heard him sing before I did, recognized Lanegan in his voice.

  “Do you think you sound like him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”

  “But that’s what narcissists do,” I said. “They think about themselves…”

  He laughed, lifting my fingers to his lips and kissing them. He turned to look at me. “Do you think I’m good?”

  The vulnerability in his eyes warned me to be careful: soft eyes and thick lashes. He cared about my opinion. How had I become that to him in such a short time? And he was good…but he could be better. Maybe that was cruel of me.

  “I think there’s always room to be better,” I told him.

  “What does that mean?”

  I rolled away, aware that I’d committed a sin. I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut. The truth wasn’t necessary in every situation. Tact, Yara.

  “You’re good. No one can refute that. But, it’s almost like you’re faking it.”

  TACT, YARA!

  David got out of bed and walked out of the room. I couldn’t see his face so I didn’t know what he was thinking.

  “You don’t have to be a bloody baby about it,” I called after him.

  I got up too, pulled on my clothes in a huff. I heard the stitching rip in my shirt as I yanked it over my head. I was angry he’d taken offense, angry I’d said what I had. What was wrong with me? I blew things up in less than a month. I needed to take a walk, clear my head. I was halfway to the door still trying to wedge the heel of my foot into my shoe when he grabbed me around the waist. He lifted me easily and I didn’t struggle when he carried me back to the bed and tossed me down onto my back. It was one of those moments when I realized I could be mature and talk this out instead of leaving town and starting a new life. I had already decided on Santa Fe.

  “Just because you hurt my damn feelings doesn’t mean I want you to go,” he said. “My feelings are my problem, not yours.”

  I propped a leg on my knee and stared up at the ceiling, not convinced. I could smell him on the sheets.

  “How mature,” I managed. It was true, but it came out sounding sarcastic. Not many people could do what he’d just done.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m faking too,” he said. “It was a hard thing to hear. Like you’re in my brain fucking around with my insecurities.”

  I sat up right away. “Is your family supportive of what you do?”

  “Are you kidding? No way. They want me to do something respectable with my life. This has all become as much about proving them wrong as it is about the passion.”

  “Well, there’s your problem then,” I said, sighing. “When you try to prove your art you’re going to fail every time.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  He wasn’t being snarky. It was a genuine question from a genuine man. A naked man. He never seemed to notice that he was naked, not even now as he leaned against the doorframe, half erect.

  “I’m not an artist, but I’ve been with artists.” I glanced down at his dick and cleared my throat. “The real ones and the fakes. I’ve seen them succeed and fail, and the ones who fail always had something to prove. It became about the proof rather than
the art. The purity was lost.”

  He stared at me for a long time. “I get the impression that you think I’m deeper than I actually am. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

  I laughed. Maybe he was right. The last man I’d slept with read books on philosophy as wide as my face, and took trips to places like India and the Congo to discover himself. He’d bored me to death with his self-exploration, never taking a moment to step outside of his own head and explore what was inside of everyone else’s. David was his opposite.

  “I’ll tone it down,” I said. “I’m just so hungry for information.”

  “Don’t change,” he said softly. “I sort of like it. I know myself better with you around. I also get more headaches…”

  “Because I’m too much all the time?”

  “Because you’re so beautiful you make my eyes hurt.”

  That was enough to woo an already lovesick girl. I pulled off my pants, took off my shirt, and climbed back into bed.

  “Are we together, Yara?” he asked. “Are we in something?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want a relationship. You know that.”

  “Okay.” He nodded.

  “Now come here,” I said, patting the bed. “You’re naked.”

  I woke up one morning with one of David’s songs stuck in my head. It was a song called “Five Dollars,” and it made no sense even when he’d tried to explain it to me. After he left my apartment for rehearsal, I made myself coffee and played the song, listening carefully to the message he insisted was there. It was catchy and I couldn’t shake it even when I put on a Cat Stevens record and tried to listen to something else. And if his song was in my head it meant that he was in my head.

  I got dressed in my sweats, deciding to take a walk down to Pike for breakfast. The fresh air, and crepes, and the hustle of the Market would cleanse my mind of David Lisey. My favorite crepe place was buried under the Market. The locals knew where it was, but the tourists had to stumble across it, and then it was hard to find the next time they tried to go back. My hair was pulled up in a greasy ponytail and the only thing I was wearing on my face was a little Chapstick. Pike Place Market was my favorite thing about Seattle. Its off-kilter shops and weird shop owners reminded me of Camden Town back home. Not in an obvious way—if you held the two together they’d look and smell nothing alike. There was a subversive quality to it, an overthrow of pretentiousness. I passed Rachel the golden pig everyone loved to pose with and turned left. Someone was straddling her back, lifting their arms in the air for a photo. I turned my head at the last minute and pulled a tongue to photobomb them. I was having deep thoughts about tourists when I rounded the corner and spotted David. He was standing right in front of me, the donut shop behind him. At first, I smiled because just a few hours ago he was inside of me. But, then I saw that he wasn’t alone and my emotions deflated like a balloon. There was no ducking away, no hiding.

  “Oh hi,” I said, flustered.

  I tried not to look at the girl he was with but there was the fact that I knew her. Nya was clinging to his arm holding a plastic bag in her free hand. They could have just run into each other, I thought. Wait to react.

  “What are you guys doing here?”

  The drummer and the bass player from his band were also with them. They all came to an abrupt stop when they saw me.

  “We just had breakfast,” Nya informed me. “And now we’re going for a walk.”

  “Oh,” I said. I couldn’t look at him. I looked over his shoulder at the colorful pepper displays hanging from a market stall.

  “You remember Ferdinand and Brick,” he said, motioning to the two guys flanking them. “They’re in the band.”

  Everything about Ferdinand was large. I had to tilt my neck back to look into his face. He nodded at me, amused. Brick, the most solidly built of the three, had sleepy eyes and dreadlocks wound into a hive on his head. He looked bored despite the building drama.

  “Where are you off to?” David said it so softly I almost didn’t hear him.

  “Breakfast,” I said. “Crepe De France.”

  “That’s where we came from,” Nya said, matter-of-factly. Was it just me or was her voice aggressive?

  You’re not allowed to feel anything about this, I told myself. And it was true. No emotional contracts had been drafted. I’d rejected his request for a relationship at least a dozen times. We weren’t officially anything, but we liked each other and we liked to fuck. Still, you’d think he’d wait a couple hours before going on his next date. I wondered how long he’d been seeing Nya. And then I felt it, oh yuck…jealousy.

  Suddenly I didn’t feel like eating.

  “So how many girls do you fuck in a day?” I asked. It was casual. I could have been asking about the weather. What’s the point in making yourself look like you’re not hurt, you know? We spend so much time pretending nothing can touch us that men have actually started to believe it. Both Ferdinand and Brick looked suddenly alert, eyes wide, while David looked steadily at me. I had to give it to him—nothing fazed this fucking wanker. I didn’t look at Nya, not even once. She was a terrible server and I was going to fuck up all of her drink orders from now on.

  “We aren’t sleeping together, Yara,” he said gently, fighting back a smile. “But, I can see how it looks that way. We ran into each other and Nya suggested we grab something to eat.”

  “Oh she did, did she?”

  Nya dropped his arm. I wanted to find something to still be mad at, but I was sort of embarrassed.

  “Well,” I said. “If you intend to fuck someone else you should let me know. Sexual courtesy and all.”

  His mouth twitched, but he kept a straight face.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Though I don’t plan on…er…fucking anyone else in the foreseeable future. I like fucking you. You have a really fantastic pussy.”

  Brick clapped once and then crossed his arms over his chest. My move. I scratched my head.

  “Yes, but you know how women are. Always offering and when something is right there, men usually take it.”

  “Usually?” David placed a hand over his heart. “I am a member of one church. I’ve not been church shopping. I don’t know what type of men you’re used to…”

  Ferdinand, the bassist, reached out a hand and squeezed David’s shoulder while looking at me, his lips pressed together trying to suppress his own laughter.

  I cleared my throat, my face burning. Nya had taken a step away from David and was looking around for an escape, her plan to steal my guy thwarted.

  “I also…quite as well…enjoy it,” I managed to choke out. “The music is decent and—”

  “Decent?” Ferdinand said. I ignored him. He wasn’t part of this congregation.

  “Well, good then.” David nodded. “So we’re going steady and our relationship seems to be solely based on sex.” He sounded quite cheerful about it.

  “No,” I rushed. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Which part?” he asked. He looked at Ferdinand. “I’m confused, Ferdinand. Are you confused?”

  “Yeah, man. You two are perfect for each other. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Church and shit.”

  “I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore either,” I said to David. And then I added, “I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “Oh, English. You’ve found trouble,” he said. “I’m glad you’re my girlfriend.”

  English.

  “Fine. All right. But you have to take me out to dinner tonight to celebrate. Somewhere fancy and expensive.”

  “Fine,” he mimicked. “But, as my girlfriend, you have to give me a blow job in the car before we go into the restaurant.”

  “I don’t swallow,” I said.

  “No one’s perfect.”

  I pushed past them, my face stony and determined. What the ever-loving fuck just happened? Also, suddenly I was hungry again.

  David made good on dinner. And having dinner with David w
as like having dinner with any other guy. That was a lie. Having dinner with David wasn’t at all like anything I’d experienced before. He was…fun—unpretentious. The dip underneath his neck and above his collarbone was smooth and tan. I wanted to touch that spot, lick it. He didn’t seem to care if I was having a good time either, because he was having a good time, and he assumed I was lively enough to join him. He broke out into song at random times too, singing things instead of saying them. It could have been annoying but it wasn’t. The way his lips moved when he sang was sexy. He wore a plaid sport coat and grey pants that were rolled above his ankles. He opened doors and ordered the calamari. The conversation lagged while we ate and every few minutes he would glance up at me when I wasn’t looking. Was he studying my face? Wondering why he came? Perhaps I wasn’t what he thought. No. I pushed those feelings away. I was acting like this was the first time we were hanging out. We’d been spending time together for weeks, just not as a couple. I flinched at my own thoughts and David tilted his head to the side.

  “What are you thinking about, English? Are you having a freak-out moment?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Why are you grinning like that?”

  “I like that I have the power to cause these freak-out moments.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. “You’re ridiculous.”

  But I was grinning too.

  “When you play with your wineglass stem like that, Yara, it makes me kind of hard,” he said, between bites.

  I blushed and pulled back my hand. My London best friend, Posey, used to say I had a habit of running my fingers along phallic looking objects. “It’s like you have a stroking obsession, Yara,” she’d say, shaking her head.

  “I didn’t want you to stop,” he said. “I just felt like you should know.”

  I laughed.

  “Look,” he said after the server came around to fill our water glasses. “This place is boring the fuck out of me. We’re too young for this shit. Let’s eat fast and get out of here.” He leaned forward like he was going to tell me a secret. “And then, tacos later.”