The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

by Marina Keegan

The fact that I had to watch it a third time was almost comical. The approach this time ended up as a complex and detailed imagining of exactly what Danny and Olivia did together offstage. Wishing each other luck before their first entrance. Squeezing hands behind thick black curtains on the side of the theater. Rapidly changing costumes at intermission and catching glimpses of each other’s underwear.

  When the show was over, I acted extremely cool. Involving myself in the standing ovation and congratulating Olivia when she came out the side of the theater. I even winked at Danny, which he thought was funny, or pretended to. The cast and crew were hopped up on nostalgia—and the whole thing felt a lot like the last night of camp. We grouped up in cars and headed to the Beachcomber, where the local alcoholics and bad bands were as prominent as promised. I actually got a bit drunk off gin and tonics and Danny must have been listening at the dunes because he paid a lot of attention to me. The morning hovered over all our actions with a kind of euphoria. I decided I hated Cape Cod as much as I hated its summer heroine, and the hours until I could cross back over its metallic bridge ticked down with each exceedingly dizzy hour.

  The six of us ended up at Ricky’s just like the night before. Danny, the bearded Noah, the delicate Eric, Olivia, and me. We had to do the whole ordeal with the square penis again, running up the stairs and kneeling before Ricky lumbered up to kick us down. Everything felt very exciting and very immature at the same time and I genuinely fluctuated between resenting my hidden worship of their rural hipsterdom and declaring (internally) that their fun was a little too intentional. Eric forced us into the kitchen, where we were supposed to engage in “slap shots”—a game he insisted was hilarious but involved taking a shot and promptly getting slapped. Ricky didn’t understand and the rest of us were too tired for that kind of thing so we ended up sort of loitering and looking in cabinets.

  “Game,” said Noah, opening and shutting the refrigerator for no reason. “Game!”

  “Yes!” Olivia agreed. And it was settled. Danny and Noah went to set something up and Ricky pulled Eric out to clear the table and assemble some kind of smoking situation. I went to place my wineglass in the sink but stopped when I realized Olivia was still standing there and we were alone together for the first time. I looked at her.

  “Do you want another drink?” she asked, casual.

  “No thank you,” I said. Still standing in place. It was silent, awkward.

  “Did you like that wine?” she said finally, twisting a ring.

  “It was fine.”

  “Really? I thought it was kind of sweet.” We looked at each other for a beat and I walked over to the sink to place my glass in its wet bottom.

  “Here,” she said, and I placed hers next to mine. It was all very intentional, very clean. And I knew in that instant that Olivia cared deeply about Danny, or she would have left the room. I’d been watching her all weekend but I realized she’d been watching me too. The understanding was empowering.

  “You were very good in the play, you know.” We circled. “Your physicality was really spot-on.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Danny told me you used to act.”

  “I did, yes. It just wasn’t that fulfilling in the end. I needed something more . . . permanent. That’s not the right word.” We looked at each other again and Olivia’s face broke into a massive smile. The fullest smile I’d seen her make all weekend.

  “What?” I’d been going for condescension.

  “Nothing. Just—there’s a lot of Danny in you. The way you talk. Your expressions.” For some reason it felt like an insult and I had the desire to smash her face into a wall again. “I mean, you were probably smart to do something else. It’s stupidly hard, especially these days. And let’s be honest, none of us would be up here if we were actually going to make it.” It was a strange thing to say.

  “Danny’s going to.” My response was immediate. “I know Danny’s going to.”

  I’d surprised her. She looked at me sideways because she could tell that I meant it. “I mean, he’s really talented, don’t you think?”

  “Of course,” she said. Still trying to figure me out. “He’s fantastic.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  I smiled. And it seemed like things were shifting. Danny was on my team all along, he had to be, and looking for proof was not the point. Maybe it was the wine or the exhaustion, but for some reason I believed in Danny in that moment like I’d never believed in him before. I raised my eyebrows and left the kitchen.

  When we came out, they were setting up Yahtzee. Eric had taken out the pieces and Ricky was scrambling around for pens. Noah was rolling a spliff.

  “You know when I was in Taiwan, those monks I was staying with played this game like all the time where they had these dice and these cups and I never really understood how it all worked but they would bet all this crazy shit, like bags of rice or like chickens,” he said, licking the joint as he rotated it between his fingers.

  “Dude, you gotta stop talking about Taiwan. You’re becoming the kid who went to India.” Danny tore off a scorecard and placed it in front of him.

  “I didn’t go to India.”

  “That’s not the point.” He looked toward Olivia and they shared a smile.

  “Noah spent last summer in Taiwan,” she said to me. “If you’re lucky, he’ll show you his album of eight million photographs later . . . but it will be hard because you can’t really understand unless you’ve been there.”

  “Oh fuck all of you,” Noah said. He’d finished rolling and everyone was finally gathered around the table.

  “Here,” Olivia said, pulling a chair back for me. I sat down but I didn’t like that she was talking to me now like we were friends.

  We started playing. Things began slowly but sped up as we sobered. Apparently their late nights often ended in a game, and their strategies for when to count a three of a kind were beyond me. It was competitive. Danny, Olivia, and Nick were peering over at each other’s scorecards and keeping track of who was on track for the thirty-five-point bonus.

  “Fives, fives, fives,” Noah chanted, using his palm to cover the top of the red plastic cup and shaking. He spilled and we stared. He got a single five and scooped the rest of the dice back to roll again.

  “Fives, fives, fives!” He got another five.

  “I’m literally going to kill you if you do that every time you roll,” Danny said.

  “But it works!”

  “Fuck off.”

  He rolled a third time to reveal two more fives and stood up to high-five Eric. “Aye yi yi! Five-sa fives!” Danny swiped up the dice for his turn and ended up a lucky but last-minute small straight. Still, he was losing and he didn’t like it.

  The game meandered on and stories began to take over. It was getting late but going to bed meant good-bye so we pushed forward. My anger had begun to fade to apathy as the prospect of tomorrow loomed nearer and I could get in the car and be done with the whole ordeal.

  But that’s when I saw it happen. Noah was telling a story about a production of Othello in this Queens warehouse where a castmate filled his water-glass prop with vodka as a prank before he walked onstage, forcing him to take small shots throughout his climactic scene with Emilia. Ricky was eating it up and everyone watched him as he mimed his narration with his whiskey and Coke. Even I was laughing, but I turned an eye toward Danny as he finished his last turn. If it had been a second earlier or a second later I would have missed it, but for some reason I looked back at him at that moment and saw his hand dart up toward the table and switch a two to a four. Just like that: rotating the die on its side and sliding his hand back to his lap. It was subtle. Quick. But it said everything. Absolutely, absolutely everything.

  “Yahtzee!” he shouted. Standing up and grinning right at Noah. “Yaht-zeeee!”

  “Bastard,” Noah said.

  “Dann
yyy,” Olivia whined.

  “He always wins.” Eric took a final hit off the joint. “You suck.”

  Danny beamed and moved his shoulders side to side in a little dance.

  But everything was so instantly, remarkably different. I was shocked. Literally incapable of comprehending what I’d seen. I felt stabbed, like the air was forced out of my chest, and I looked at him aghast, hurt, shut behind walls. It was unfathomable to me. The game didn’t matter. The stakes were so low. There was no part of me that would—could—ever consider doing what he did. But it was so easy for him. The easiest thing. And that, I realized, had been there all along.

  I’ve wondered sometimes if things would have turned out differently if I hadn’t seen him turn the die. If I’d lingered a few more seconds on Noah’s bearded laugh or taken a sip of my drink. Or if I’d chosen to say something. Stand up, wide-eyed, and make the public accusation. Embarrass him, force him to grovel in front of his darling and her cohorts.

  But the articulation of his crime would have been meaningless; he would never have understood just how deeply that tiny turn of his wrist had pierced me. Just how utterly I’d been reduced. Mocked. Betrayed.

  I didn’t say much for the rest of the night. Sat stiff in my chair and even stiller in our bed when he stroked me. He asked me if something was wrong just before we fell asleep but it didn’t seem worth it.

  “Are you still upset about Olivia?” I nearly laughed. Olivia was nothing, I wanted to say. It was a carnival. That’s all.

  I woke up at sunrise to a dead-low tide, placed my skirts and flats in neat piles inside my bag, padded down the staircase, and walked out the door into the now crisp Cape Cod air. The drive to New York felt short and I didn’t stop until I reached the city and walked in the door and padded up the staircase and turned off my phone to sleep for a long, long time.

  * * *

  I remember trying to explain to my mother why the Yahtzee was so essential but she didn’t understand. We were getting lunch on Bleecker and I was trying to convince her I was doing okay. She’d driven up from Pennsylvania but all I let us talk about was my sister’s sister-in-law and the Oscar nominations. It was pouring rain but it stopped by the time she paid the check and the restaurant’s awning dripped outside the window. We had plans to spend the afternoon at the Met but the prospect seemed unbearably exhausting. I imagined myself holding a brochure and walking from room to gigantic room with waning focus. I’d read descriptions on marble walls and realize I’d stopped comprehending. I’d begin to look for benches. I’d become dehydrated. Outside, the sun would blare and crowds of people would wait, sunburned, to get inside. I’d want to go home and sink into bed or at least sit down for more than two minutes. But I wouldn’t be able to. And it would hurt me. Frustrate me. The waiter came back to pick up the check and a cupcake passed by with a sparkler candle flicking.

  Cha-cha-cha, I thought. Cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha.

  In years to come he would whisper it at parties as the cake paraded by or mouth it across a restaurant table at a sibling’s birthday dinner. On our wedding night, Danny winked at me when the cake came out and we both knew what he was thinking. My mother always said how amazing it is that things seem so absolute when you’re young. But the sand slides down in chutes until the dune craters are all full. Inevitable, the magazines write, and we shake our heads with somber nostalgia for the grass and its crickets. We always will.

  The Emerald City

  To: Laura.Kenzie@gmail.com

  From: William.Madar@CPA.Kellogg.gov

  Date: Jun 16, 2003 at 10:56 PM

  Subject: melting! (the Green Zone hit 108°)

  Laura darling,

  I stopped carrying my gun today. To be honest, we don’t really need them. It’s like we’re all inventing our adventure—crawling through the Baghdad gardens like the seeds are mines, like the bruised pears might blow our damn legs off. Wolf still carries his M-9 on the boulevard, belting it to cargos like his comic book idols. (The nerds in the Coalition Provisional Authority are keen on the war glory stuff.) I’m no wannabe soldier, though; I don’t have to tell you that. Not joining the Army is just about the best decision I ever made. I stopped romanticizing this place long before the juniper trees blossomed and they reopened the Green Zone swimming pool. I eat Afghan bananas in an office in a palace in a peace zone for God’s sake. Outside, it’s just a bunch of bodies slamming against stones, lurking in desert hidey-holes until their human fuses explode.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about you, if that means anything. There’s this river here, Laura, this river that bends through the irony of Saddam’s old statues and monuments and other marble tyrannies. The Arabs call it “Dijla” but every Bible reader east of Persia knows it’s the Tigris—pouring through the sand straight from Mesopotamia. Probably the first thing to get a name when Civilization started pointing and writing. Well when it’s hot and the guards don’t have a captain around, they let some of us down to sit on the blast walls by its bank. Wolf and Michael bring beers and laugh about the Texans or talk about college. But when I look at water, I think of New Hampshire. The way you smelled like blueberries and pine when we’d sit on that dock.

  I’m so self-indulgent, Laura! But I suppose you’re used to forgiving my poetry. God knows the soldiers would crack up if they read this. It’s funny enough that a skinny architect ended up redistricting Iraq. But it’s nice doing something that (theoretically) helps the world. I was sick of designing parking lots and industrial boringness. But you know that.

  Truth is I don’t know what to say, really. The Green Zone’s hardly exciting these days, especially not for us civilian office slaves contracting for the CPA. Perhaps I should just pretend to be your lost lieutenant, sniping terrorists with your picture at my breast.

  Mostly, we just battle time. Sweating through zip-off pants and moving like moths to the air-conditioned pockets of this place. They finally moved my department out of the hotel offices and inside occupation headquarters in Saddam’s old palace. (Now it’s all diplomats and policy snobs.) I’m still living in that trailer, though. But despite the heat, it’s not so bad. I’ve set up this shelf and managed to buy a coffee maker off a friend who works in the kitchen. There’s a Pleasantville quality about it all—the matching trailers lined up with manicured grass and palm trees. Even the roads are surreal—Hummers driving at slow-motion speed, obeying the zone’s 35 mph cap.

  My work’s the same. I’ve officially been promoted to Deputy Secretary of Housing Reconstruction and Redistribution, but titles don’t mean much around here. I’ll finally have my own translator though (thank God). I think the Iraqis are starting to realize the permanence of things. Last week, Wolf and I checked on the Shi’as we moved into one of the In-Zone complexes and hardly any families had unpacked. This woman boiled chickpeas on a suitcase counter, forbidding her children to unzip their duffel bags. She was just stirring this pot, stirring and stirring and shaking her head. Wolf gave the kids Tootsie Rolls, but she threw them back at him. I looked her file up later and it said her husband died in the bombing.

  These people don’t get it, Laura. They don’t get that our trailers won’t leave come September. Then again, I’m not sure the CPA really gets this either. I’m starting to think we’re here for the long run. Which is hard when I tend to garrulous musings on blueberries and pine.

  Look, Laura, I’m sorry if this is weird. I know we said we’d leave things ambiguous—but when you didn’t show up at my good-bye party, I wasn’t sure what to think. If you want me to stop writing, I will. Really, I will. Just know that I’m thinking about you. Know you’re my tether outside these walls.

  Is Manhattan hot? Have the Japanese invaded or is it still too early in the summer? I’d tell you more about this strange country if I could, but I’m caged up. They’ve built us this greenhouse and won’t let us out.

  Anyway, my fan died, so I should probably s
leep before I melt. I swear this whole desert’s going to melt into glass by August. But don’t worry about me, Laura, really don’t. It’s safer than the city in here, I promise.

  Your long lost soldier CPA officer, Will

  * * *

  To: Laura.Kenzie@gmail.com

  From: William.Madar@CPA.Kellogg.gov

  Date: Jun 24, 2003 at 12:39 PM

  Subject: greetings from kebab-land

  Laura!

  I’m eating a kebab right now and it’s raining outside. This juxtaposition is just about the best thing to happen all month. CPA turned the palace ballroom into a chow hall, so I’m writing to you from quite the elegant milieu. My romanticism pees itself in places like this—you know how I get around high ceilings. I picture Saddam and his sons roaming the naves at some dance. Perhaps stopping at this very spot to smooth out a beard or straighten a robe. We joke that the ghosts of Husseins haunt the hallways at night, creeping out once they lock the marble doors at nine.

  I’m in a great mood, Laura. Perhaps the best since I arrived. I was worried when you didn’t reply last week that you weren’t going to, so when I saw your name in my inbox this morning, I was ecstatic. I know you said not to talk about it, but I’m glad we’re staying in contact like this. I miss you, and having someone on the outside is more important than you can imagine.

  There’s other good news: they assigned me my translator last week and I finally feel like I’ll be able to get some work done. Relocating Iraqi families is hard enough without memorized Arabic phrases and awkward insertions of ana asif, ana asif, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Her name’s Haaya and she’s amazing. Her dad was an official of the Iraqi Ba’ath party in the 80’s, but her mom’s “a soviet.” When she was twelve, government men killed her father and brothers while she watched from upstairs—punishment for siding with Kuwait. After that she lived in Russia—but two months out of Moscow University and she’s back in the desert—whispering English into turban-less ears.