The Ramblers

by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

  But now, for Tate, this fantasy feels oddly real. He can afford to fuck around and take pictures, live here in this swanky section of the city (his apartment, a newly renovated floor-through two bed, two bath, is, conveniently, around the corner) and still have plenty of dough left over to drink, and drink a lot. His mother is worried. She isn’t even here to witness his aggressive unraveling, but maybe she can just hear in his voice how badly he’s flailing. And she has every reason to be concerned, because he’s always been the good boy, her good little Tater-Tot, straight-arrow sonny-son.

  He didn’t even drink much in college. Everyone around him seemed to be hammered at all hours, fumbling around with nascent freedom and acting like total delinquents, prideful about stupid shit and blank heads, but he derived a curious pride from being the clearheaded one, the one with no real interest in altering his mind. He dabbled, got drunk a couple of times, but was never sold. I mean, shit, it was Yale and he was supposed to piss it away? No thank you.

  Now look at him: making up for lost time.

  “Three o’clock,” Jeff says now, gesturing to their right.

  Tate looks. She is tall, thin, tan, blond and bland like the Barbie dolls his sister, Emily, used to decapitate when they were kids. The girl is with a flock of friends. They wear black, drink white wine, hypnotize themselves with glowing phones, tapping, scrolling, swiping, pouting their lips to snap pictures of themselves.

  “Dude, they are young,” Tate says. In their early twenties, maybe? Probably NYU girls. It’s hard to remember being that young.

  Jeff shrugs. “Just what you need. You’re all up in your head about this Olivia shit and it’s up to me as your friend to yank you down and shake you up and remind you that there are other snatches in the sea. It’s my job, man. And you should appreciate that I’m working hard.”

  “I do appreciate it,” Tate says, lifting his glass to clink Jeff’s. “You want to know something crazy? I almost brought someone tonight. A girl.”

  Jeff rolls his eyes. “You almost brought a girl?”

  “Yeah,” Tate says. “Did my best but this chick’s all class and I don’t blame her because look at me, I’m a derelict at the moment. And look at this scene, man. She doesn’t belong in a hole like this.”

  “Who the hell is she? There’s not supposed to be a girl, Pennington. It’s supposed to be plural. Girls, okay? The last thing you need is another Olivia right now.”

  Tate considers this. Through this entire mess, Jeff has been the voice of reason, and maybe he’s right. Maybe Tate’s reaching for another girl because this is all that he knows. He was with Olivia since he was twenty-one, probably the age of those girls over there, and he doesn’t even know how to be on his own. Maybe he needs to find out.

  “Smith’s the anti-Olivia, man. Cool as shit.”

  “Smith?” Jeff says, laughing. “Isn’t that a dude’s name? You swinging the other way now? This is all getting interesting. I always did wonder about the fitted jeans and the passion for frilly poetry. It’s coming together now.”

  “It’s her mother’s maiden name, dipshit. I went to Yale with her but wrote her off as this blue-blood princess, but either I had it all wrong or she’s changed. It doesn’t matter, but she’s pretty cool, man. And the things is, Jeff, I can’t figure her out. We got sauced last night and went on this epic bender and ended up back at her place. This fancy pad in the San Remo, you know it? Gorgeous, two-towered prewar on the Upper West? She tried on a gown and showed me her drawer of sex toys but wouldn’t kiss me.”

  “Fucking tease,” Jeff says. “And the last thing you need is another one of those after Olivia. I hope I don’t have to remind you of all the times you called me frustrated that she was shutting you down and making you feel like a perv. You’re a man. You need sex. Eye on the prize over there, okay?”

  The sex thing with Olivia was tough. It certainly wasn’t their biggest issue—the shock-and-awe infidelity takes the cake—but it was a problem. He wanted sex, sex of the frequent and adventurous variety, and she wanted almost no sex, sex of the boring, let’s-check-this-off-the-list-and-keep-the-lights-off variety. He chalked it up to being married. Maybe this is what happens when you’re with someone for a while, he decided, but his needs were his needs and he resorted to extra time in the shower and a smattering of surreptitious porn. None of it was good.

  “Come to think of it,” Tate says, gesturing toward the blonde at the bar, “she’s not half-bad.”

  The words fall from him, but his mind is on Smith, who is leagues more beautiful than the girl. Smith was named by The Rumpus, the campus tabloid, as one of Yale’s fifty most beautiful people, a detail they joked about Saturday at the tailgate.

  It was just a few hours ago that he rang her doorbell and she stood there, hair wet and combed, face makeup-free, in nothing but a thin white bathrobe. Fucking sexy as shit, but he didn’t say this. He played it cool even though it took every ounce of restraint. She flashed a coy smile and invited him in and they sat in her living room, the kind of living room old and important people have, and she kept apologizing for last night.

  That wasn’t me, she said again and again, and he wanted her to stop saying this. Finally, he cut her off.

  Whoever that was, I liked her.

  She said nothing at all about the wedding, so he brought it up, asked if he was still invited, and she nodded. He confessed that he had nothing to wear but his ill-fated wedding tux, which he kept as some masochistic memento, that he would shop for something new, and did she want to come? Again, she nodded. Then he asked her to get dressed and come downtown with him and he could see it in her eyes that she was considering it, that part of her wanted to go, but she said no, that she needed to work some more on her wedding toast and get some sleep. And then, like that, his buddy the doorman was hailing him a taxi.

  “Look, Pennington, it’s clear that I’m no expert on this, but methinks you need to take a breather from relationship garbage. You need to have fun. You need to shellac yourself in alcohol and bring hot girls home to that rad pad of yours. That Olivia screwed you up good and I get that it blows, but, dude, it’s high time to move on. You need to kill that beer while I get you another and then you need to pick your pretty-boy head up and look around this joint and decide who it’s going to be. Because I’m not letting you go home alone.”

  Tate laughs and obediently drinks up. His head is light, his body near numb. Maybe Jeff’s right. Maybe he’s fucking right. What he needs is a good mindless fuck. A release. To steer clear of melodrama and keep things simple, in and out, black and white. He takes the final sip and pushes the glass from him. It topples over. The sight of the glass rolling down the bar strangely delights him.

  “Easy, tiger,” Jeff says, sliding a fresh Guinness in front of him. “So, how’s the new pad working out anyway? That place is ridiculous. Please tell me that you know that. I’m working my ass off and my place is nothing like yours. Not that I’m bitter.”

  “Good, man. Good. The place is good. Needs a little attention, but it’s good.”

  Tate bought his new apartment sight unseen. There were pictures online and it looked fine. All he cared about was that there was an extra bathroom he could convert to a proper darkroom. He sent Jeff to take a look for him and the report was a solid thumbs-up, so he made an all-cash offer over the telephone. Initially, he’d planned to come and crash on Jeff’s couch for a while, but then he worried he’d run back to her. Buying was a better anchor.

  He looks over again at the cookie-cutter blonde and knocks back his beer. He knows better. He knows he’s just short of blotto, that it’s time to kill his tab and go. His mind is soft, scrambled. He needs sleep. But no. He will at the very least talk to her, prove some hazy, fucked-up point. He will extract her from her babbling minions. Butter her up with the dregs of his own Midwestern charm, which Olivia all but extricated. It will be good for him to do this, to man up, to follow through.

  Go get ’em, Pennington, one of the asshole guy
s says as he stumbles over.

  He’s hovering now. It’s almost too easy. Their bodies are already touching.

  She’s equally gone; her eyes are pickled and vacant. A ballerina, he hypothesizes. Maybe a model. Those legs. Twisting around and around.

  Like magic, the other girls scatter. Tate and the nameless babe stand at the bar, leaning over its top.

  Time blurs by. He switches back to whiskey.

  “Dylan Thomas had eighteen whiskies here once. The record.”

  “Dylan Thomas?” she says.

  “Though lovers be lost love shall not? The guy in the big black and white photo hanging in the other room?”

  Nothing. Zip. Her face is blank and he finds himself thankful for her ignorance. What a fucking joke. They drink and drink, melt into each other.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he hears himself say.

  She smiles yes, slides her hand into the back pocket of his jeans. He feels himself stiffening, adjusts his pants.

  They waltz home, holding hands. The air is thick and it’s fucking cold. He could use some California weather right about now. Her fingers are small, skinny things, noodle-like and limp. He yanks her along the charming, moonlit sidewalk he photographs by day, winds them around the corner through clusters of people pondering their next move. He leads her up his stoop, and once inside, he sees a package addressed to him. He grabs it, tucks it under his arm, and they seem to float up one flight. He trails her, his hand on her perfect ass. It takes a year to unlock the door.

  “Beer?” he offers. The nameless girl accepts. He wonders if she has any idea that he has no clue what her name is, whether she’d care. In the kitchen, he pulls two bottles from the otherwise empty fridge, pops them open with his teeth. She’s still in the other room, looking at his photographs, which lie around the room, some framed, some just prints on the floor.

  “Did you take all of these?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  That word. That fucking word.

  “Who’s that?” she says, pointing at the photo he shouldn’t even have.

  He hesitates. Keeps it simple. “A bride.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  The word again. Tate walks to the picture, studies it, studies her. Her dark tumble of hair and dark eyes. Abruptly, he flips the frame around to face the wall. He doesn’t need her staring at him anymore. Yes, he’s to blame for this pathetic flagellation. He slipped this in his suitcase on that last day in their apartment before he left for New York because it was one of his favorite portraits, told himself it was about art and not about denial. Even then, he knew this was total bullshit. When he finally unpacked days later, he saw it and cried like a baby and contemplated hurling it across the room, but instead propped it against a bare wall.

  And now he’s kissing the nameless girl. Her lips are minty. He takes her hand, leads her to the bedroom. They fall together onto his unmade bed. Disembodied, cartoonish laughter rises up from them like smoke. Hers, high-pitched and trilling. His, deep, forced, anger laced. She takes off her own clothes, sits cross-legged in the center of the bed, eyes glowing in the dark, waiting.

  Her peach is bald, juicy, spread open.

  He unbuckles his jeans.

  A crashing sound comes from the other room. Tate startles.

  “Shit. What was that?” she says, shooting up, pulling covers up over her, tucking her long, bleached hair behind her ears.

  He jogs into the other room. The photograph of Olivia has toppled over, to the floor. Shattered. Shards of glass glisten everywhere. He kneels down. Glass pierces his palm, but he doesn’t stop picking up the pieces. Even in the darkness, he can see the blood on his hand. He tastes it. Keeps going.

  She stands behind him now, the nameless girl. Naked. Ready.

  “Come,” she says. “Do that later.”

  “You should go,” he says abruptly, his voice firm, without looking up at her. He can see her face without seeing it. Humiliated. Confused.

  Tate stays right where he is, hunched on the hardwood floor, frozen in place next to the broken picture of his pretty cunt of a wife—she’s still technically his wife—his hands splintered with glass. He stays there until the front door slams, until it’s clear he’s alone. The guilt is immediate, a tidal wave. He feels sorry for this girl with her happy blond hair and black clothes and sweet body who had the shit luck of walking into that bar, of stumbling into him, his life, this.

  He tells himself a little story: That she will be fine. She will get over this, this strange run-in with a fucked-up fuckup. She will meet her pretty little friends for pretty little brunch salads tomorrow and they will find a way to make it funny. And then she will do it all over again tomorrow night and the next. She will meet another guy. And another and another until one sticks and stays. And then he will marry her, this guy, and love her deeply and desperately, forget himself and follow her wherever she wants to go.

  They will settle into a home, a life, a capital-F Future.

  One day, she will turn to him and she will fucking say it as if she is saying something mundane like “We are out of milk”: I am not happy. I have not been happy. I want to be happy.

  And the guy, the foolish guy, will panic. He will promise to change, will promise to do anything, anything at all, to give her what she wants. But it will be too fucking late. What she wants, it will turn out, is something else, someone else. A brand-new life. She will move on to the Better Man, start over on page one. And the first guy will drink and drown and try but fail to fuck pretty girls, and get all cut up by shit like life and broken glass.

  Fuck, he’s a mess.

  In the darkness, Tate stands. Through his drunken fog, he gazes down at the shards, shining like tears. He decides to leave them there. He pulls the photo from its matting, takes one last look, and rips it to confetti shreds. Sprinkles them, like ashes, over the hardwood floor.

  In the bathroom, he blots the blood with the old Yale T-shirt she used to sleep in. He wraps his hand in photo-matting tape because it’s all he has. He reaches down and grabs himself. He’s no longer hard, but it doesn’t take much and he’s stiff again. He stands in the dark bathroom and strokes himself and thinks of her tonight. Shy in her bathrobe, her long legs crossed, traces of fear in her eyes.

  He comes. He comes hard and fast.

  Fuck it.

  9:53AM

  “I’m a grown man, Mom.”

  Tate shoots up in bed.

  Dregs of his dream linger. In it, he stood naked in an endless cornfield just like the ones near his childhood home. The corn was high, flesh toned and phallic, ready to be harvested, and all he could see was the blue sky above. He heard a commotion, someone calling his name, and suddenly she was with him. She was a giant, all tits, twenty feet tall. She bent down to pick him up in her palm, stroked his head, his chest, his cock. He trembled, exploded, looked up and her face was a fitful hologram, old and new and old and new. Back and forth between Olivia and Smith. Both of them. Neither of them.

  He lies back down. Stares up at the ceiling.

  His head throbs. It occurs to him that he’s probably still drunk.

  He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the mattress, looks toward the window. It’s light out. Morning. The bedside clock confirms this. It’s not just morning but late morning. Almost ten.

  Next to the clock, a Heineken bottle lies sideways, glowing green. Tate reaches out to feel the sticky surface, peers down its nose, decides there is a little left, one final drop. He holds the bottle up to his mouth. There is indeed a mini-swig remaining, enough to coat his tongue. The beer is sour now, punishingly warm.

  He scans the room. He’s lived here for a few months now and it looks as it did when he moved in. The walls are still bare, gray-white in hue. There are tiny holes in these walls, from the previous owner. Tate’s real estate broker said they could make a fuss about this, have the walls patched before closing, but Tate told her he didn’
t really care. He just wanted to get on with his life.

  He stands now, walks to the window, and peers out. There’s still some snow on the streets. Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have left California. Snow in November? His place is on the second floor, just above the ground. So close that he can see the tops of people’s heads as they shuffle by, on their way to the coffee shop, on their way to work. Close enough that he can read the sinister headlines of their newspapers, see the bald spots beginning to come.

  Tate turns around, peers back into his room. The bed floats in the center, a wide white square topped with a tangle of sheets he hasn’t washed in weeks. On the other bedside table, he spots another beer, his bottle’s twin, this one upright and full next to his little black leather bowl, a bowl full of matchbooks, names of bars printed on their backs. Relics of all the nights he’s pissed away in the last few months.

  She smoked sometimes. Said it was because she was anxious. Everything made her anxious—her work at the law firm, the nightly news, standard doctor’s appointments, the traffic on the freeway. She kept a pack of Camel Lights tucked in her pocket at all times and Tate knew when she pulled one out that it was time to ask her what was going on. And he did this. He did this every fucking time. He asked. He listened. He talked her off a litany of ledges. And she seemed so genuinely thankful for him in these moments, these moments when she was crumbling and going dark. Maybe this is odd, but he found her most irresistible when her face was twisted with worry, when she really needed him.

  After she passed the California bar exam, they traveled to Thailand and there was this one night where she started talking in her sleep. Just sat up, eyes closed, and started mumbling shit. That she never felt pretty enough, that her mother said it was a good thing she was smart. And she remembered none of it the next day, but it was the most brilliant clue, he thought, to what she needed, and so he told her all the time how beautiful she was. It was never a lie.

  She was beautiful.

  Is.

  Was.

  Fuck, that word again. The past tense haunts him. She never believed him when he told her this. She’d argue with him, tell him to stop lying, point to the evidence—pockets of cellulite on her thighs, the small bump on the bridge of her nose—but he wouldn’t have it. She was not perfect, but she was stunning. He did all that he could to convince her of this, but in the end it wasn’t enough. It seems she needed a different kind of affirmation in the form of an older, more powerful man. A knight in shining corporate armor to ride on into her desolate, document-strewn office and say: You’ve been working so hard. Let’s grab a drink.