Down and Across

by Arvin Ahmadi

  I bit down harder, setting off fireworks inside my head.

  Stop thinking. Start doing.

  I paced around my hostel room. My vision was blurry. At some point, the Colombian girls I had shared the room with that week tiptoed around me and left. I felt lonely and vulnerable, like when I boarded that Greyhound bus nearly three weeks ago.

  Stop thinking. Start doing. Just when I was figuring out my puzzle, I had to jump and throw all the pieces in the air. Start over, or start another puzzle. That was always my theme.

  Stop thinking. Start doing. But what?

  I remembered the Metrobus stop down the block—the one where I hopped on for an impromptu tour of DC. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to run away again.

  I let my quarters clink into the fare machine and took a seat. We passed the same landmarks as last time: the pay phone I had crashed my bike into, Ford’s Theatre, the Spy Museum, Union Station, hair salons, and chicken joints. Then we reached a run-down neighborhood. Stadium-Armory. No stadium in sight, though. I tightrope-walked along the edges of sidewalks and wandered into convenience stores, wasting away my Friday night. I passed gangs and drug-dealer types, mostly minding their own business. I might have caught a few drug deals in action. Shady handshakes. Men drinking mystery liquid out of brown paper bags.

  Midnight came and went. I found myself outside a bar called Trusty’s, where drunk men and women trickled out in pairs—slamming the broken door open, laughing carelessly, and hailing cabs to go home and partake in acts I didn’t care to think about. Eventually I snapped out of my own daze and checked my phone for directions back to the hostel.

  In a perfect world, I would have hailed a cab. But for some sad, consequential reason having to do with the day’s events, I wasn’t convinced I had earned that luxury. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have been alone on a Friday night. And certainly in a perfect world, I would not have dropped my phone after being pushed into from behind.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “What the hell?”

  Stumbling past me was a freakishly tall man with green, frosted hair. He stopped in his place and turned around in slow motion. He looked me up and down.

  “Fuck you,” he slurred.

  I picked up my phone and noticed the screen had shattered into a web of cracks.

  “Seriously? You broke my phone.”

  This man stared at me, dumbfounded. His eyes demanded that I cower in the presence of his massive frame. There was a long scar above his right eye that trailed down the side of his face. Despite my fear, I stood tall.

  He huffed. “Fuck you,” he said again, shoving me this time. “You fookin’ terrorist.”

  I froze up.

  “He-ey!” he said, slurring the nonexistent syllables. Drunk. This man was absolutely drunk, and he was not pleased with my nonresponse. He pushed me harder. “I’m speaking to you, fookin’ terrorrrrrist.”

  I started pulling away when the man whipped his arms back and snapped forward, clinging around my small frame like a crane.

  “Let me go!” I screamed. A group of three teenage-looking girls were standing outside the bar, and I turned to them and pleaded, “Excuse me! Help!” They watched uncomfortably for a few seconds before scurrying away. Assholes.

  The man dragged me down the block. “Fuck your phone. I’m going to beat the livin’ shit outtaya,” he said. “I will fookin’ kill ya.”

  I tugged and jabbed, trying my very hardest to escape. He was too strong. I didn’t want it to end like this, in a sketchy neighborhood with a green-haired Aussie. Alone. Friend count: zero. The man dragged me halfway down the block, gripping my T-shirt. I could smell the liquor on his breath. I prayed for him to pass out in his own vomit, or for someone to see us and call 911. But the street was empty.

  Just before turning the corner, he stopped to cough, and I seized the opportunity to slip out of my T-shirt and break free, shirtless. The whole maneuver confused us both.

  It was drizzling. The rain trickled down my trembling body; I was so grateful to be alive. I sprinted for blocks to prove it, and then I hailed a cab.

  SATURDAY MORNING, I made up my mind that I would not go home. Not yet. I had every reason to call it quits and run away from DC. I was almost killed, I’d pissed off Fiora, and my parents would be back from Iran in four days. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I throttled the idea before it even had a chance.

  Somehow I had lost my phone. I must have dropped it while the drunk Irish or Australian man was dragging me down the block.

  No device, no friends, nothing to do.

  I lay in bed the rest of the day—on my back, on my side, on my face—staring at walls and the ceiling and nothing at all.

  DRIP. DROP. DRIP, DRIP. I peeked out my window to confirm the sound of raindrops. It was supposed to downpour today.

  I felt restless; I hadn’t eaten anything for more than twenty-four hours. I didn’t have any way of checking online or texting Trent, so I took a chance and walked over to Tonic. I was drenched by the time I arrived.

  “Welcome to Tonic,” said the guy behind the bar. It wasn’t Trent.

  “He—oh. Hi there,” I said.

  I recognized the bartender. It was almost like looking into a mirror. I knew his full name, address, zip code, and organ donor status.

  “Can I help you? We’re opening in a few minutes,” Carlos Zambrano said.

  I smiled. You’ve already helped me a couple times.

  “Is Trent around?” I asked.

  Carlos’s face lit up. He must have just made the connection between us . . . and something more. There was a twinkle of concern in his eyes.

  “Trent’s not in today,” Carlos said. “Are you Scott?”

  “Heh. Yeah, that’s me.”

  Carlos reached into his back pocket. “Here,” he said, extending his arm. It was a letter. “This girl came by yesterday morning to see you. I told her you weren’t around. She was furious, dude. Crazy. She screamed like an insane person. ‘Scott, Trent, they’re going straight to hell.’ She stormed out of here and came back an hour later with this.”

  Carlos dangled the letter like it was a flaming piece of shit. I snatched it, my heart racing.

  “You want any food or drink, man?” he said.

  Could Jeanette have done something to Trent? Was this a breakup note? Could either of them have tried texting me since Friday night? I collapsed onto a bar stool, sliding my elbows down the bar top until my chin was resting on it. My stomach grumbled. I felt wholly inoperable, drained by anxiety and hunger.

  “A burger would be great.”

  Dear Saaket,

  I consider myself a decent and open-minded woman who is driven by her values. Godly values like honesty, respect, and appropriate behavior. Recently I’ve learned that you don’t live by any of these values.

  I could not believe the text I received from you Friday night. Your confession was nasty and outrageous. I couldn’t even look at myself knowing that I had been hanging out with you blindly for over a week. I couldn’t forgive myself for being such a fool.

  But I wanted to understand your side. My faith has taught me to be forgiving, understanding, and so I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I came into Tonic today to speak with you like an adult, Saaket. I wanted to understand the true nature of your relationship with Trent. A part of me even wanted to help you. When you weren’t there, I got very irritated. Then I got smart. I went home and did my research. I Googled. I checked the White Pages. Facebook. I learned who you really are.

  You are a liar, Saaket. I know your real name isn’t Scott. I know you’re in high school. Do you know how embarrassing that is for me? Thank the Lord I didn’t stray so far as to break the law. (I never would.) I also know that you were never really employed at Tonic. I called the restaurant’s management office and informed them that an underage person was working behind t
he bar. They didn’t even have your name on record. Isn’t that funny? I informed them that you were a friend of Trent’s, and they assured me that they would take care of the two of you. It would be a shame for the restaurant to get slapped with a lawsuit.

  In conclusion, we are done. It’s not like we were ever serious, anyway. But I am purging the idea of you and your ungodly friends from my mind. I’m not sure what business you had in DC or why you even approached me at the zoo, but I have no desire to be a part of it. I hope you find a way to live with yourself.

  Praying for you,

  Jeanette

  I sat there speechless for God knows how long. I was waiting for a sign—someone to explain the words I had just read. The Sunday-brunch crowd started to form, ebbing and flowing around the bar, enviably carefree. I hardly took two bites of my burger; I felt sick to my stomach. Half-baked theories rushed through my head. Who had texted Jeanette on Friday night? What did they tell her? What had happened to Trent? Was he okay? Did Fiora have anything to do with this? A part of me believed that she did. The conflict reeked of her touch—a mess not unlike my cycling accident. The whole thing was rooted in Fiora. It had to be her.

  Remember how the universe sometimes takes exactly what’s on your mind and places it in front of you? I didn’t learn my lesson the first time, so instead of a train or a bus to take me back home, I got Fiora rushing through the door.

  “Why aren’t you picking up my calls?” she said, exasperated. “You weren’t at the hostel, and you’re not answering or texting me back.”

  I stared at Fiora, scanning her face in an effort to understand what she was doing at Tonic without asking explicitly.

  “Hello?” she said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Trent got fired. Jeanette is furious. She sent you a text saying she ‘took care’ of you. The girl is crazy, Saaket. Do you know what the hell is going on?”

  Hold on, I thought. I jerked my head just slightly.

  “Do you have my phone?”

  “I don’t,” Fiora said.

  “So . . . How do you know that Jeanette texted me?”

  “I— Oh, jeez.” Fiora rolled her eyes, but it wasn’t in her usual mocking fashion. She had something to hide. “She didn’t text your phone, Saaket. She texted mine. Thinking it was you.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Look, I can explain. Remember at the zoo . . . ?”

  My eyes grew astronomically wide. I stared at Fiora with a livid expression—the kind of gaze you fire off at a stranger who spills on your laptop, or a friend who knocks over your house of cards. What have you done?

  Before Fiora could begin to answer, Carlos approached us.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “I think you should take this outside.”

  Fiora marched straight out of Tonic into the summer rain. I tried yelling at her to stay under the awning where it was dry, but Fiora wouldn’t stop walking. I ran up and grabbed her by the shoulder.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “What the hell is going on, Fiora?”

  Fiora turned slowly. Raindrops splashed around her face, bursting at the moment of impact like water balloons. They slipped down her forehead onto her probing eyes, her lush lips, and they soaked her hair into thick strands of rope. I usually despised wetness—be it sweat or salt water or rain—but in that moment, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Here we were, Fiora and I, afflicted by the same natural form of shittiness. Twenty days ago we didn’t know each other. Fiora, Trent, Jeanette: I had never met any of these people. I ran away to DC with the sole goal of meeting Professor Mallard. Here I was, twenty days later, facing a shiny new web of problems.

  “Fiora,” I repeated, calmly this time. “What happened?”

  “Friday night,” she said, her chest rising and sinking with each deep breath. Fiora closed her eyes. “I was home alone. I had a couple glasses of wine. Just a couple, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was so angry about earlier in Dupont Circle, the horrible things that Jeanette said about you and Trent. I felt angry with myself for setting you guys up in the first place . . . forcing you to meet her and inviting her out with us that night at Saint-Ex.”

  I wiped my eyes—rain, not tears—and nodded. “Can’t say I disagree.”

  “And I was pissed about my mom. I’d emailed her my Times puzzle, and you know what she wrote back? ‘Oh, I didn’t know you still did those things.’ Maybe she congratulated me somewhere in the email, but the point is she didn’t do the goddamn puzzle, and clearly I remind her of my dad now, and—”

  Fiora closed her eyes again and shook her head and made a face that admitted she was running her mouth offtrack. So she backtracked:

  “I got tipsy, right? And remember how I’d texted Jeanette at the zoo pretending to be you? Remember that? So Friday night, I thought, ‘What the hell? Let me mess with this cold-blooded bigot a little.’ I texted her . . . I texted her mean things, Saaket. It was supposed to be a joke. I didn’t think she’d actually do anything about it.”

  I wanted to shout at Fiora. Just completely chew her out. I was fuming, but I controlled my anger. I let myself feel the rain dripping down my arms, keeping me calm.

  “What . . . exactly . . . did you text her?”

  Fiora shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It was stupid. I made up stupid things about you and Trent to piss her off.”

  “Apparently enough to get Trent fired,” I shot back. “Do you understand that, Fiora? Jeanette sabotaged him. He lost his fucking job because of her. Because of me.” I couldn’t stay calm knowing that a good person like Trent had suffered for his kindness. For helping a foolish person like me. “Most of all, because of you, Fiora.”

  “Okay, okay,” Fiora said grudgingly. She ran her fingers through her wet, unwieldy locks of blonde hair. “I’m sorry I meddled.”

  Somehow that wasn’t enough.

  “That’s it, right? You’re sorry. You move on.” I shook my head. “That’s not how it works for the rest of us, Fiora. Trent’s going to have to find another job. I’ll probably go home. Even Jeanette . . . we really hurt her.”

  “Oh, fuck Jeanette,” Fiora said. “Jeanette,” she repeated with a thick, mocking French accent. “You didn’t even care about Jeanette.”

  “Who are you to tell me what I do and don’t care about?”

  Fiora opened her mouth to speak but froze. She turned her back on me.

  “This is your fault, Fiora,” I said.

  She flinched. “You know, Trent never officially got you that job.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “He was paying you out of his own pocket.”

  The pit in my stomach grew heavier. It slipped into the crevasses of guilt.

  “Why would he do that for me?” I asked slowly.

  Fiora turned back to face me. “Because he’s a good person, Saaket. You were desperate.”

  We locked eyes. Fiora gave me a terrible, hopeless smile.

  “I’m the desperate one?” I clenched my fists and tightened up so much, I thought I’d burst like a tea kettle. “I’m not the one who had a mental breakdown because her boyfriend broke up with her. I’m not the one who does crossword puzzles because—”

  “Because what?” Fiora said.

  “Because you’re desperate to escape,” I said, forcing the words out. “From your own reality or whatever.”

  Fiora threw her hands up, laughing like a maniac.

  “Here we go,” she said. “We have achieved peak irony. The runaway is telling me I’m desperate to escape. You want to hear about reality, pal? You came to DC chasing after this thing you really wanted. Grit. But the more I see you, the more I realize you’re doing it all wrong. You’re obsessed with the future, Saaket. You’re obsessed with tomorrow, when the only shit you have control over is today, right now.”

  “That’s hard to believe,
Fiora, since your in-the-moment lifestyle screwed with all the rest of our lives. Maybe if you considered the future—the consequences of your texts to Jeanette, we wouldn’t be here fighting. No one would have gotten hurt.”

  “Maybe if you never came to DC, we’d all be fine,” Fiora said coldly.

  “Easy for you to say. If you had parents like mine—”

  “Enough about your stupid fucking parents!” Fiora snapped. “It kills me the way you talk about them. Do you realize how good you have it? Let’s talk about that reality. I mean, I get it. They’re strict. Maybe too strict. But at the end of the day, it’s because you’re the one thing they care about more than anything else. I don’t have that. My dad’s got his own life, other women in his life, and I’m just an afterthought. Trent has it even worse. We’re the real runaways, Trent and me—desperate as hell to get away and get on with our lives. What’s your excuse?”

  Fiora’s tone demanded an answer. She stood there resilient to the pouring rain, and I felt myself coming undone in its spitter-spatter.

  I wondered what would happen if I just disappeared right there. If I vanished from existence. I didn’t want to die, since that would be tragic and painful, but to simply fade out of the world. Would anyone notice? Would my problems carry on or cease to exist? Would there still be thoughts to overthink? Would it all have been worth it?

  Fiora’s tone demanded an answer, and I wasn’t equipped to give one. I had to believe she saw the helplessness in my expression, because she shook her head and took off.

  Maybe she wanted to disappear, too.

  I never fully understood Fiora. I never pretended to. But what was wrong with caring about something you don’t understand? No one fully understands the universe. It’s incomplete. But we care about it anyway. We have to persist.

  The universe had rained on me, and now I was soaked.