Fishbowl: A Novel

by Bradley Somer

  There’s no mistaking what this woman is doing in the stairwell, just as there’s now no mistaking the hesitation in Connor’s voice that she heard before he buzzed her through the lobby door a few minutes ago. He told this other woman to take the stairs, assuming that she was coming up in the elevator. There’s another woman in Connor’s life whom Katie didn’t know about, and this is her, in the flesh and a few stairs away.

  Katie stands for a moment, dumbfounded by these cascading revelations. They happen so quickly that she reels with each one; each layer reasoned out falls into place upon the previous one to build a picture of that which she did not know mere seconds ago. That old world she was in is gone. This is a new one in which this other woman exists.

  And now, reason is done, revelation has been had, and reaction can reign.

  Katie thinks to punch this other woman and even thinks specifically where she would punch her, right in the snatch. Katie thinks to scream at this woman wearing her nightshirt, becoming a raving and ranting banshee, waving her arms and backing this other woman against a wall and accusing her of sabotaging her love. Then again, maybe this woman doesn’t even know of her existence. Is it her fault that she’s the other woman, or is it Connor’s? Before her mind even frames the question, she turns all her hurt and rage toward Connor, somewhere up there, thirteen floors above their heads, still thinking she is ignorant to his harem.

  This other woman stares at Katie, who can do nothing under her gaze but choke back a sob of confusion, brush past her, and run up the stairs. Once she’s out of sight, Katie’s vision is a jarring and twisting one of the stairwell leading her upward toward him. It’s his fault more than it’s hers, she reasons through the blurring rush of emotion. It’s Connor who had the ability to say no, not to pursue, not to hurt. And he had chosen to do it all.

  Or is it my fault? Katie wonders. Is it something I did or didn’t do? What need does Connor have that I’m not fulfilling? Am I expecting too much of him too soon?

  They have only known each other for three months, she reasons, actually, less than three months by only a few days. Still, things have been so good between them. They have never strained to talk to each other and have never been uncomfortable in each other’s company. Katie had pictured them together a year from now. She saw them beyond that too, going to a movie or having a morning coffee and reading the paper together. She hadn’t yet pictured them married or with kids or old together, but surely, that was only a matter of time too.

  The sign reading “Floor 21” bounces by.

  Exhaustion sets into Katie’s body. She’s drained, but she panics that she can’t get to him soon enough, to stand in front of him and make him explain himself. She begins to doubt what she saw five floors below.

  Had she been too quick to judge, or had she seen what she suspected of him instead of the truth? Maybe it wasn’t her nightshirt. Maybe it’s all a coincidence and that woman shops at the same store she does and bought the same nightshirt she has. Maybe it’s all a mistake and Connor will be there waiting for her, none the wiser about the woman in the stairwell, just like he doesn’t know the elevator’s broken.

  He would be confused by the raving maniac she has become. He would smile at her and explain that he didn’t know what she was talking about. He would calm her fears and she would believe him and then everything would go back to normal.

  That has to be the truth, Katie thinks. Please let it be the truth. It’s all an unfortunate coincidence and he’s waiting for me and he’ll take me into his arms and, after a few moments, he will tell me that he loves me.

  He will say, “Katie, I have never known anyone like you, and even though we have only been together for three months, less a few days, I know you’re the one for me. All the things I thought were so important until now don’t matter anymore and I’m scared because of that. You’ve changed everything for me, so completely and so definitely. Even though I’m terrified by how consuming my feelings for you are, I’m also excited by the thought of spending the rest of my life with you.”

  And she wouldn’t say a word because she wouldn’t have to. She would just bury her face in his chest, and his chin would rest on the top of her head. There would be something between them that was so strong and complete that it wouldn’t have to be spoken; it could just be felt there, between their bodies. It would be so much stronger than any words she could say.

  Everything can still work out. There’s no way it can’t this time. Even though she had stood in front of the other woman sneaking down the stairwell, and even though Connor had been caught, she so strongly doesn’t want it to be true that she feels herself willing to be lied to just to make everything she’s thinking about go away.

  Even though she wanted it, the door handle to the twenty-seventh-floor hallway comes too quickly into her hand. She pushes through the door even though she wants to stay amid her delusions in the stairwell forever because she figures not knowing at all is so much better than realizing the truth. It hurts so much less than the confirmation of her suspicions.

  As Katie rushes down the hallway toward Connor’s door, she wishes she had never taken the stairwell. She wishes that she’d never seen that woman and that everything was as simple as it had been a minute ago. She wishes Jimenez hadn’t been there in the elevator, telling her it was broken. She wishes she had never walked past the catcalls of the construction site a few blocks up Roxy, and she wishes she had called Connor on the phone instead of arriving unannounced. It would have been so much easier if she had never said yes to going to coffee with Connor and so much simpler if she had never taken Anthropology 305, “The Crossroads of Scientific Magic and Cultural Realism,” if she had never gone to college, if she had never left the house.

  It all would have been so much easier but, she realizes as she reaches for the doorknob to Connor’s apartment, not necessarily better.

  If he tells me it isn’t true, I’m going to believe him, Katie thinks.

  The apartment door is unlocked, so she doesn’t knock. She just enters.

  He’s there, sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing nothing but his sweatpants. His head is held bowed in his hands, as if it’s too heavy to hold up without help. His elbows are planted on his knees as if he isn’t strong enough to support its weight with the weak mechanics of his arms. He looks up at her, cheeks wet and tears streaming from his eyes. A glistening pearl of snot snails its way from his nostril to his lip.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice cracks, raw with emotion. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  38

  In Which the Villain Connor Radley Admits He Made a Terrible Mistake and Then Inadvertently Makes Another

  “I’m sorry,” Connor says. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  Katie stands at the door. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t say a word.

  Connor looks at her, his eyes begging hers, misinterpreting her fury for confusion. And as quickly and pointedly as he sought her gaze, he averts his. His guilt will not let him look at her. He hangs his head again, staring at the dark spots on his gray sweatpants, where his tears make constellations in the fabric.

  He draws a ragged breath before continuing.

  “I’ve only realized now what I should have seen months ago.” He wants to say more, but his body clenches as he chokes off a sob. The sound comes out as a weak hiccup. He waits for the wave of emotion to pass.

  “Let me explain,” Connor stammers. He sucks in a wet sniff and runs the back of his arm across his face in an attempt to clean up his leakings. Then he falls silent, sitting on the bed with his head hung.

  Katie crosses the room to the kitchen and leans against the counter. She looks out at Ian on the balcony. His bowl is a dewy drop in the larger scene, his body an even smaller golden pixel in the picture. A stack of paper is piled on top of his bowl and weighted there with the coffee mug she bought Connor. She lets her gaze be led slowly around the apartment by all the things she left behind, connecting the reminders of thei
r time together, her residual presence in his place. There’s a beauty magazine draped open on the arm of the couch where she didn’t leave it. She doubts Connor had been leafing through it for makeup tips. There are her slippers in the corner. She tries to remember if that’s where she left them. While Katie continues her appraisal of the room, Connor sits, meek and whimpering.

  Her eyes finally fall on him and the puddle of misery that is his face. She feels overwhelming anger now more than anything.

  “Go on,” she says in a measured voice.

  “There was this woman—”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, was, just until now but definitely was. When you called up … she was here.”

  “I know. The elevators are broken, and I had to take the stairs to get up here.” Katie fights to keep the emotion she feels from creeping into her voice. She doesn’t want to be the hysterical one even if she deserves to be. “You gave her my nightshirt.” She crosses her arms and doesn’t know how much longer she can stave off her tears.

  “There’s something in me that needed her then. I needed her here and I need you too. Now, I know I need you more and I was so blind to that before. I guess I just got caught up in the excitement of someone new—”

  “New? We’ve only been seeing each other for three months,” Katie says. She can’t stop herself. She starts to cry. “Less a few days.”

  “I know, but even that’s still so new I didn’t know I felt this way about you until now. I didn’t know I could feel so seriously about someone. About you.” Connor’s lip trembles. “Faye—”

  “Her name is Faye?”

  Connor nods. “Faye’s a leftover of my old life and she’ll never happen again. I promise. All I need is you. It’s just that I’ve never had someone like you in my life. I’ve never had someone that I missed when she was gone and I never had someone who I’ve been this open with. I’m telling you about Faye because I did this wrong, I know it, and I want to make it right, start again clean. I can’t be without you and I don’t know what to do about that.” Connor raises a hand from his knee and holds it out to her. “I haven’t felt this before.” He looks at her, his puffy eyes rimmed in red and jeweled with tears. One breaches his eyelid and traces a smooth line down his cheek. It pools into a trembling drop on his chin before becoming another dark spot on his sweatpants. “I’ve never felt love before and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I do. Katie, I love you.”

  And there are the words Katie has been waiting for. They are the reason she’s here, though this is a circumstance completely different from the one she envisioned so many times.

  She believes him. He does love her. She can see it in his face and see it in the tension coursing through his body. That manic anxiety can only be love. Those words, they were the simplest thing, the only thing she wanted from him, those three words.

  Now, they’re entirely less simple.

  She feels like laughing. She feels like crying. She doesn’t care that she will look crazy if she does both at the same time.

  “No,” Katie says. The word comes out as a percussive bark though she hadn’t meant it to. She takes a deep breath before continuing. “No. You do not get to say those words. Not now. Not to me.”

  “Katie.” Connor stands and takes a step toward her. “I know you’re mad—”

  “You’re wrong.” She’s crying uncontrollably. She can’t hold it back anymore. “I’m not mad. I’m hurt. You hurt me.”

  Connor crosses the room to her. She swats Connor’s outstretched hand away. Then she takes a swing at him. He steps back to dodge her fist.

  She’s screaming at him now. She becomes that hysterical person she had been fighting not to become. “What kind of twisted fuck says all those words together, all those ones you just said? They’re all backward and fucked up. I love you, so I fucked Faye? That doesn’t make any sense. You don’t make any sense. I feel sorry for you for being so fucked up. I feel sorry for me for being so blind to you. Do you know how badly I wanted you to tell me that you love me? No.” She laughs through her tears. “An emotionally retarded sociopath like you couldn’t possibly know, and I pity you for it. I pity you.”

  Connor reaches out for Katie again. She swats his hand, but he persists. And she hits him and punches him, and he brings his arms around her to embrace her. Katie punches him as hard as she can. She knows she’s hurting him, but after a short time, she can no longer swing at him because he is holding her too close to his bare chest.

  She gives up. She’s suddenly very tired, and there’s no punch she can throw that can hurt him as much as he hurt her. So, she stands in the warmth of him, her body pressed against his naked skin, both of them shaking with sobs they no longer care to control.

  Connor says her name again and again. “Katie, Katie, Katie. I know I fucked up. I know I hurt you. You’re right. I’m a moron. I’m an asshole. I’m horrible. Katie, Katie, Katie, let me make it up to you. I can make it up to you for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes. I’m ready to do that. Every day of forever. You can hate me and make my life a hell and make me suffer every hour until I die and that’s okay with me, as long as I’m with you until then. It will be the purpose of my every waking breath to try to make this up to you. I know I have no right to ask anything from you, not after what I did, but can you do this for me? Can you please hate me for the rest of my life?”

  Katie can’t help but gulp out a laugh at the absurdity of it, him asking her to make his life a living hell until he dies, just so they could be together.

  Connor continues, “Katie, Katie, Katie. Hate me the rest of your life because I love you so much.”

  A breeze blows over them through the patio door and brings them the quiet hiss of traffic from the street below. After a few minutes, Katie’s crying subsides. Connor’s body stops trembling too.

  “Connor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let go of me.”

  He does and steps back.

  Katie continues, “I’m getting my stuff and I’m going. I can’t see you right now, but if everything you’re saying is true, then maybe I’ll see you around sometime. Maybe it’ll be good then because it definitely isn’t now. I look forward to the day I can forget this. If I forget it with you, then I look forward to the day I can forgive you. But how can I ever trust you again? If all you’re telling me is another lie, which I think it is … then I hope you rot in hell.”

  A moment passes.

  “Okay,” Connor whispers. “I’ll see you around sometime.”

  “Help me get my stuff together?” Katie asks.

  “Okay.”

  Connor grabs a plastic bag from under the kitchen sink and puts two boxes of herbal tea into it. Katie picks up her magazine from the couch and tucks it under her arm. She gets her slippers from the corner of the room, goes to the bathroom but can’t find her toothbrush. She meets Connor in the middle of the room and loads her belongings into the bag.

  “I’ll grab the mug,” Katie says. “You take care of Ian.”

  “I will,” Connor says. “And here—” He scoops a pair of lacy panties from where they had been peeking out from under the pillow on his bed. “Don’t forget these.”

  Katie looks at the panties bunched up in his hand for a moment. Then she cocks her head at Connor and smiles.

  “You can hang on to those,” she says.

  Connor’s face breaks into a naughty smile. “Really?” He bunches them up in both hands and brings the rosette of lace up to his face.

  “Yes,” she says. “Keep them. They aren’t mine.”

  39

  In Which the Evil Seductress Faye Judges a Cloacal Kiss to Be an Insufficient Source of Pleasure

  As the slapping sound of footsteps recedes above her, Faye shakes her head at the memory of the weird girl who seemed to be so close to a random violent emotional outburst. She thinks she can hear crying echoing back down to her, but it’s hard to tell in this sound-altering space. />
  Faye takes one last glance behind her before continuing downward and resuming her thoughts about how many ways Connor will pay for making her take the stairs. She won’t let him forget.

  Faye passes a sign on the wall that tells her she has ten floors to go, ten floors of daydreaming of all the ways she will exact her toll on him. So far, all them involve piles of clothes on the floor. Some of them involve ropes and others handcuffs. One of them involves the cork from a wine bottle, a rubber band, and a wooden spoon. A few of them involve her trying to wrap her head around the idea that she could do to him what he said Deb likes having done to her. Surely that would be an interesting form of punishment, though she’s not sure she could really follow through with it and ever look at herself in the mirror again.

  The idea of Deb doesn’t bother Faye as much as the idea of Connor clearing her out of his apartment for the girlfriend. The other girls in Connor’s life are not a problem for her. The problem is that this one holds something more over him than she does. Not that that’s a big deal either, but it means that Connor will, at some time in the near future, realize that his feelings for his girlfriend override his feelings for her and she is the one who will lose out. While the existence of her and Deb in Connor’s life may be unfair to the girlfriend, the girlfriend is just as unfair to them. And Connor is at the center of all of them, the common factor and therefore the problem.

  I mean, she thinks as she releases her hold on the railing and sniffs the palm of her hand, are we meant to be together forever? What are we, penguins?

  Her hand smells like metal, like the handrail she had been intermittently guiding herself down the stairs with. It smells of the thousands of hands that have touched it in the past. And she decides that, while penguins are cute, she is not one and it’s just not in her nature to be mated to a single partner until she dies, no matter how nice a pebble he presents her with.