by Mike Roberts
“Right,” I said, giving up. “I always forget that.”
Cokie laughed and finished the rest of her drink. Picking up her phone off the table. “What do you think? Should we go?”
“We can’t go now. We just got here.”
“All right. Buy me another drink, then,” she said as she boosted herself up on the arms of her chair. But something made her sit back down.
“You did the right thing, you know. Leaving.”
“Leaving Texas?”
“No. Going to Portland. It’s the only thing that ever made anything change.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding now.
Cokie smiled tightly as she stood back up. “Anyway. I just felt like I needed to say that to you.” I nodded and watched as she disappeared into the dark of the bar.
* * *
It was true that I had bought a plane ticket to Portland without telling anyone. After hanging up with Lauren, after one more endless fight. I went online and I did it.
It wasn’t just me, though. Everyone had changed their mind about Washington, D.C. The people with the good jobs, and the people with the shit jobs, were all suddenly over it. Everyone was moving to New York City. A decision we all went to great lengths to pretend we had arrived at on our own, independent, and in spite, of everyone’s identical decision. This tidal shift attached itself to all our friends, and was suddenly sucking hard on me. I wanted to get out of the city as badly as everybody else did. I just didn’t want to go to Brooklyn now to do it.
I waited to tell Lauren I wasn’t coming, though. I waited because I knew how she’d react, and I was finally done with all of that. I was sick and tired of having to defend myself in everything I did. Why did I move to Portland? Because it wasn’t New York, and it wasn’t D.C. I hardly knew a single soul there. All I knew was that it didn’t look anything like any place I had ever lived. And that was enough to start.
But all of this felt perverse to Lauren. It felt hostile. It felt random and jarring. And she wasn’t wrong, either. But I was determined to make a break now. This was an act of self-preservation. I was finally pulling the rip cord.
By the time everyone started showing up for New Year’s Eve, Lauren and I weren’t speaking. Unfortunately, this level of suffering barely registers on a night like this. With a house full of kids running wild with obliviousness, this party was happening with or without us. That was the reason for the fake countdowns, in the end. I was desperately trying to speed the whole thing up. I wanted to end the year, over and over. In room after room. Counting down from ten and celebrating nothing.
But Lauren didn’t like this. She tracked me through the downstairs of the house, watching the whole thing unravel. Eyeing me uncertainly, with her arms at her sides, as the party counted down in farce. Three, two, one … Happy New Year!
Splash! Lauren threw her drink in my face.
I looked up and took a staggering step forward, as the whole room filled in between us. Cutting us off, like they were heading off a fight. This was hilarious, of course. But Lauren and I were the only ones left laughing. In tears, we were laughing so hard. Laughing our heads off, as the music came back up, and the party pushed us apart.
* * *
Cokie set her phone down on the table as I came back with our drinks. “I told Patrick that you’re coming,” she said brightly. “He’s excited that you’re back.”
“Oh,” I said. “Huh. That’s sort of funny.”
“Yeah.” Cokie smiled. “Why is it funny?”
“I don’t know. I sort of feel like I don’t even really know Patrick Serf.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you know him.”
“Yeah. I mean, I know him. But only in the way that I know any of those kids now. Only in this superficial sort of way. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
“Do you not like Patrick?” Cokie asked.
“No. It has nothing to do with Patrick,” I said with a smile. “All I’m saying is that I think of him as your friend. And Lauren’s. The only time I ever saw Patrick Serf, in my life, was when I was with you.”
“You’re with me right now.” Cokie laughed, clearly amused.
“Right.” I nodded, letting it go.
But this was really how I felt. I’d never known where I stood with any of those kids, and now it didn’t matter. I had nothing against the famous Patrick Serf, but his name alone rattled like a joke that had been told to death and was no longer funny. I just could not pretend to care about one more meaningless birthday, or the friends of friends who were waiting at the next bar. I was here because of Cokie.
But this had been going on forever. These were the circumstances through which I even came to know Cokie in the first place. She was my friend, yes, of course, but she was always Lauren’s friend, too. And, more to the point, she was Lauren’s friend first. Even now, I couldn’t help but feel like an interloper. It was part of the reason I pulled back from the D.C. kids in the first place. I moved to Portland because they were all moving to New York.
“Do you think you’ll still be living here a year from now?” Cokie asked me.
“I hope so. I mean, this is the happiest I’ve ever been in New York.”
“Huh,” she said, sounding surprised. “I feel like you have this whole secret life.”
“Is it a secret?”
“It is to me,” she said pointedly. “I don’t even know where you live. I’m not even entirely sure when you got back.”
“It wasn’t really planned, I guess. I had some friends from Portland who were looking for a roommate. The timing just sort of worked.”
“And what do you do for money?”
“I have a job building film sets out in Red Hook.”
“Oh, wow. Really? What does that mean?”
“Breathing toxic chemicals.”
“That’s it?”
“No,” I said. “There’s also a series of small, repetitive tasks.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” Cokie said snidely. “Why are you doing it if you don’t like it?”
“So that I can write.”
“Oh.” She stopped herself again. “Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, I go in every day for three weeks, and then they don’t need me again for ten days.”
“So you’re still working on your book.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not really. I sort of reached the end of that book.”
“Fuck,” she said, sounding guilty. “I really meant to read it, you know.”
“I know you did. But you were in law school. You actually had an excuse.”
* * *
A Cattle, a Crack-Up was everything I thought a “novel” was supposed to be. It was big, it was dense, it was ambitious. And, at one point, it was maybe even perfect. But I had long since passed that point. Eclipsed it. Obliterated it. Transcended it. A Cattle, a Crack-Up had ceased to mean anything to me. I was writing about things I could not possibly know or understand. The novel had evolved into a pantomime of something real. It was all one big performance, in the end. And, weirdly, that was my favorite thing about it. I couldn’t write that book again, even if I tried!
“But a lot of people read it, right?” Cokie asked.
“Sure. I mean, I have a literary agent. It got sent out.”
“You have an agent?” she asked. “And he knows you’re building film sets?”
“First of all, it’s a woman. And, yes. She’s aware I have a day job, thank you.”
Cokie laughed. “Tell me what happened.”
“God. Who knows what happened. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?”
“I mean, she couldn’t get it placed. No one had any idea what to make of it. The book was totally and utterly rejected.”
“Oh,” Cokie said, sitting back. “That sucks.”
“It’s not so bad. Lane told me some artists just aren’t recognized in their twenties.” Cokie laughed. “Besides. I’ve already started something new.”
“W
hat is it?”
“I dunno yet. Something that’s in my own voice, hopefully. The voice I actually speak in. The one I use in an email. Or a joke. That’s the way I’m trying to write.”
“Oh.” Cokie nodded. “Good. Keep doing that.”
* * *
I had taken the train into Manhattan, to visit with Bettina Kleins at her office in the Flatiron District. Bettina and I were going out to lunch to talk about “next steps.” This had been my idea, in the end. I was eager to distance myself from A Cattle, a Crack-Up and express to her the ever-evolving state of my novel-in-progress. A book built on the acknowledgment that all memory is episodic memory, and every narrator is an unreliable narrator. Exactly as it must be, I was convinced now. This is what it actually feels like to know another person. I wanted the book to express those negative spaces, between two bodies, where the relationship breathes. I was interested in the gaps and discordances of experienced time. I was working through the role of memory and imagination as it functions, in its fullest capacity, to fill those empty spaces with meaning. Because what was this construction, after all, if not fiction? I even had a metaphor worked out to communicate this signal change in philosophy.
I wanted the next novel to be assembled like a mixtape. With all of the emotional modulations of an object that is constructed with an order and intention. Or its opposite, even. A seemingly random series of Polaroid photographs, spread across a tabletop. In each image you would see the protagonist. You’d recognize the changes in his face, and the shifts in his bearing. The tenuous state of his relationships, and the limitless discoveries of self. And suddenly you would find yourself internalizing the passage of time in each next image. You would begin to make all of these connections for yourself. The cities that he lived in; the apartments that he kept; the jobs where he worked. And you would shed all of these skins, one by one. Forgetting them completely once they were gone. Friends and lovers going in and out of focus, as you flipped through the pictures, fast, then slow. And, almost without realizing it, you would begin to see the narrator, right there in front of you. You would finally take his voice into your head. Because it is this transfer of consciousness that is your one and only constant in the novel. The narrator’s story must keep moving forward.
“Mm,” Bettina said, after a long, and slightly agonized, pause. “Polaroids and mixtapes are good, of course. But can’t it be more digital, maybe?”
“Can what be digital?” I asked, feeling stricken. “You mean the metaphor?”
“Exactly!” Bettina exclaimed. “You need to start thinking more about the Internet. Your first book seemed to whitewash the whole world of technology. The world that actually surrounds us. The one that we live in. And I get it … they were living on a farm, and blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, you wrote A Cattle, a Crack-Up like the Internet never even existed.”
“Huh,” I said, sitting back in my chair, feeling stunned by this. “I never thought of it that way. I think that’s a really good point, Bettina.”
“Well. It’s just a thought,” she said, waving it away as she signaled for the check.
* * *
It was midnight, and Cokie was standing up from the table, asking how it got so late. Laughing as she tried to find her arms through the holes in her coat. I couldn’t help but think of Lauren and the last time I saw her. Every single part of me assumed that we would follow up once I got to Portland. But Lauren never did, and neither did I. Long past the point of waiting each other out. Past the point where there was even anything left to say. And there is no going back after that. The best thing for everyone, then, is to just do nothing.
It was inevitable that we would find each other at midnight, I knew. Kissing out of fear of kissing someone else. We kissed because we knew that it was over. With the room spinning around us like a mirror ball, and our friends screaming “Auld Lang Syne” in derision. Shouting it into the void of the year gone by. Lauren and I swayed back and forth in the center of the room. Holding each other up, with all the movements of a slow dance. Belly-to-belly, with all the intimacy of a stabbing. We stared into each other’s eyes as we lifted each other up by the hilt.
Ours was the first kiss of the year Two Thousand Six.
It was Lauren who locked the doors at midnight, trapping everyone inside the house. We hid ourselves in the bedroom, where we kissed in the dark. Laughing like the first time. Lauren and I stripped each other bare, and fucked on the hard and unforgiving mattress. The only real part of us that was left inside the room.
This was where I woke the next morning. With the dazzling sunlight shining off the hardwood floors. I got out of bed, and I stood there, watching Lauren sleep. I couldn’t bear to wake her now. I couldn’t risk another fight. There was nothing left to say, besides. This was the end.
* * *
Cokie and I stood out on the street, searching for a cab. Watching three different cars pass us, in succession, with their lights off. I turned around again and realized she was staring at the sky.
“That’s where the 9/11 lights come up.”
“What?” I asked, certain I’d misheard her.
“The memorial lights. This is where they are. Right over that building,” she said, running the blade of her hand up and down. I stared into the empty sky, seeing nothing.
“I don’t know what that means, Cokie.”
“The 9/11 lights. They put them up at Ground Zero for a week every September,” she said. “You’ve seen them.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think so.” I was sure now that I never had.
“Oh.” She smiled as she set her chin against my shoulder. Cokie pointed to a gap in the clouds. “Right there. That’s where the World Trade Center used to be. Not that you could’ve seen it from Fort Greene, obviously. But you could definitely see the lights. I mean, if it wasn’t March.” Cokie laughed to herself.
“Wow,” I said softly, staring hard into this empty space. I was surprised, and almost embarrassed, to find myself moved by it. When I turned back around, Cokie was standing out in the street with a taxi.
“You’re not coming, are you?” she said with a sigh.
“No,” I answered. “Sorry, Cokie.”
“I’ll pay for the cab, you know. I’ll get you drunk at the bar.”
“I’m already drunk.”
“Yeah. Fuck. Me, too.” We laughed stupidly, feeling dizzy on our feet. “When am I going to see you again?” she asked, as she tethered herself to the open door.
“I don’t know. Soon, I hope.”
Cokie didn’t say anything. “Come here and give me a kiss goodbye, then.”
She stood up on her toes and kissed me twice, on the mouth, quickly. These funny, happy little pops. A wry smile on her face as I pressed the door closed. And Cokie was gone.
I watched as her taxicab floated off and disappeared. I thought not of Cokie’s columns of light, but of a dome. With a glow emanating off the fronts and tops of buildings. With a ceiling that was vaulted high above the bridges. An invisible skein of atmospheric gases that was buoyant on the surface of the night.
I watched a small mass of color coming toward me across the intersection. Bouncing and bobbing in the flexed light. A group of joggers was suddenly standing there, running in place. The lights changed and the runners came bounding off the sidewalk. Rushing toward me as I stepped out onto the avenue to meet them. Their bare legs and billowing breath, huffed and clutched, as they ran right through me. Changing sides, and disappearing. And, for a fleeting moment, I could swear that there was silence. Left alone in the great city tableau, once more.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With gratitude for, and acknowledgment of, the help I received in finishing this book, I wish to thank: Soumeya Roberts; John Knight; Andrew Neel; Luke Meyer; Nait Rey; Jessica Arcangel; Laura Heberton; Sara Eklund; Adam Khatib; Ethan Palmer; Tom Davis; SeeThink Films; FSG and FSG Originals; Writers House; Hanly Banks; Annie McGreevy; Daniel Kine; Tracey Ennis; Matthew Schnipper;
Kevin Donahue; Lindsay Nash; the Roberts and Purnell families; and last, best, most, Molly Purnell.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Roberts is a novelist and screenwriter from Buffalo, New York. His first screenplay, King Kelly, premiered at the 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival, and his second, an adaptation of Brad Land’s memoir Goat, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Cannibals in Love is his first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
A Day at the Races
The Summit
Tomboys
Men with Plain Names
The Ambulance Ride
Yoko
Self-Portraits in Disguise
Life During Wartime, Part I
Life During Wartime, Part II
Cannibals in Love
The Wedding
Mentor, Tormentor
AIDS
A Cattle, a Crack-Up
Balentyne
Texas Landlady Blues
Christians in a Rainstorm
Great Expectations
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2016 by Mike Roberts
All rights reserved
First edition, 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roberts, Mike, 1980– author.
Title: Cannibals in love: a novel / Mike Roberts.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.