Why We Came to the City

by Kristopher Jansma

  As he set about these tasks, he felt sick in every conceivable way. He was used to hangovers, of course, but lately they had been different. Now the hangovers started during the fun. It used to be that only with the coming of the morning did he have any regrets. But steadily the distance between the during and the after had collapsed. Now he regretted things even as they were happening or even before—knowing that they would happen, because he lacked the will to stop himself.

  George hunted for the remote control but couldn’t find it, so he eventually walked over to the TV and turned it off by hand. No mystery as to what he’d been trying to watch, drunk and butt-naked in the middle of the night, cuddling with a lamp. He’d left it on Televisión Española, which aired three reruns of ¡Vámonos, Muchachos! every night beginning at one a.m. The girls had discovered the show on their own, years ago, though back then he had never really understood the appeal. It was a multicamera sitcom featuring a group of six twentysomething friends in downtown Mexico City. Nobody else he knew seemed to have ever heard of the show. It didn’t even broadcast in HD, further contributing to George’s sensation that he was traveling back in time by watching it. It felt unmistakably like a 1990s show, in the vein of classic NBC Must See TV. Mostly the Muchachos characters seemed to have no jobs to prevent them bantering at the spacious Torrefacto café, with its pink and blue mod-style couches and patterned orange walls.

  The muchachos were Santiago, a nerdy orthopedic surgeon who had trouble talking to women, despite being a born romantic; his handsome roommate, Tomás, who worked at Torrefacto (though he was rarely seen actually working); the beautiful Constanza, a high-maintenance TV weathergirl who was in a tumultuous relationship with Tomás; Isidora, the architecture graduate student who shared Constanza’s loft, an utter and charming mess of a girl, perpetually disorganized and overwhelmed by life; her brother Aarón, who played guitar with a struggling band called La Palabra that was always about to get its big break; and Renata, by far the quirkiest of the gang, a speech therapist with her own sporadic practice, though she was so childish at heart that George wondered how she stayed in business. She and Santiago had a will-they-or-won’t-they tension that couldn’t really be characterized as sexual. The humor was all very PG: gags involving talking parrots and lost purses and cases of mistaken identity and sinks overflowing and letters being misaddressed. Someone was always getting locked out of an apartment while wearing nearly nothing. They were all always running out of minutes on their cell phones at just the wrong time. There had to be hundreds of episodes, and from what little George could find online about it, the show was still being made, airing in Mexico a year before rerunning in America.

  George had first come across it while trying to clean up the DVR. Sara had left the series on the record list, and over the course of the first six months, they’d amassed fifty hours of episodes. She couldn’t bring herself to watch it anymore and had asked him to delete them all, but George found himself unable to. Instead he began watching them, late at night, alone. He guessed he was sleeping only three or four hours a night, most times. He didn’t see how it was possible to still be alive on so little sleep, but he managed to get through the day, bleary and exhausted, only to get into bed and find himself wide awake. He would lie there in the dark until sound-sleeper Sara was out, and then get up and wash dishes, make himself an Old-Fashioned, reorganize the books and DVDs, water the houseplants, and watch an episode of ¡Vámonos, Muchachos! while drinking a second Old-Fashioned.

  Trying to settle his stomach, George chewed some stale crackers he’d found in the hotel kitchenette. His phone was ringing on the counter. A miracle he had drunkenly managed to plug in his charger. Allen’s face appeared on the screen, and George rejected the call. He couldn’t believe Sara had insisted on inviting him. Not only that, but she’d also made Rob bring him to the bachelor party!

  It was during that evening, when George had drunkenly done all the things that passed for bonding—playing blackjack together, stopping at Gary’s SuperLiquor to buy enough Pabst to drown a team of oxen—that Allen had asked him point-blank if he’d ever been with a woman other than Sara. (Where was Jacob when you needed someone to throw a little cold water on the situation?) George had been too obliterated by cheap beer and the relentless throb of the synthesizers to lie. Knowing it was all over his face, he shook his head.

  “That’s so fifties, yo!” Allen had screamed. “Shit, you’re like my fucking grandparents.”

  Like George’s fucking grandparents, too, he supposed, or even like his sleeping-in-separate-bedrooms-for-the-last-twenty-years parents.

  Allen didn’t seem likely to drop it. “What if there’s something weird down there, and you don’t even know it because you’ve never seen any other ones?”

  George made a face. “I took AP Biology, Allen. I have an Internet connection.” Then he gestured up to the stage at the current dancer, who was bottomless, just as advertised. “I know what a—I know what one’s supposed to look like.”

  After briefly clutching his head in his hands, Allen threw an arm around George. “That’s craziness. I mean, I just couldn’t. It’s—evolutionarily counterproductive!”

  “Oh, you’re a biologist now?”

  “Look. The male of the species is naturally drawn to polyamorous behavior, and the female is structurally inclined toward birthing and child care . . .”

  George didn’t hear much after that, partly because of the bass coming off the stage and partly because he had heard this all before from Allen, who was fond of sharing stories of his conquests, late at night when they were up editing grants, or poring over thousands of data points in the lab, sometimes even in the middle of the day just walking down the halls at the institute. Allen was an aficionado of all the new online dating sites: Match.com, OKCupid, Chemistry .com, ScienceConnect. He even had an app for his phone that let him scroll through the profiles of nearby available women and indicate with a swipe of his finger if he was interested in them, as if he were seated at some sort of sex buffet. Sara said she couldn’t figure what on earth these women saw in him, but according to his locker-room talk, Allen was getting laid left, right, and center.

  George suddenly felt a profound desire to know: “Is it really so great sleeping with all these different people?”

  Allen paused as if, for an instant, he couldn’t comprehend the question. Then, incredulous, he responded. “Man, it’s awesome. I—George . . . you’re making me sad. I’m sorry. This is your night, and I’m happy for you and Sara and all but—what a question!”

  George stopped listening. Jumping into bed with some woman he’d only just met seemed pleasant in theory but awful in practice. Not just being naked in front of a stranger, not just having his anatomy and performance evaluated by someone whose standards were unknown, not even the awkwardness of what to do with all that you’d used up in one another afterward, but mainly just the idea of being that close to someone he didn’t know crucial things about: Middle name. Best friend’s name in middle school. County of birth. Number of siblings. Feelings about Elvis. Preference for or against nuts in brownies. Ability to ride a bicycle. Major allergies. Burial locations of childhood pets. Most embarrassing moment of adulthood. Approximate number of pairs of shoes owned. Use of contact lenses. Song to be played at their funeral.

  George supposed he had always been a monogamist. Even back in kindergarten he had gotten in trouble. A meeting had been called with his mother and Mrs. Remington. Young George had been systematically working his way through the girls in the class, asking them each to marry him under the swing set, with a ring made out of a twisted juice-box straw. And as an adult, now, when he did spot a beautiful stranger, riding home on the T at night, he never fantasized about jumping into the empty conductor’s cab for eleven anonymous minutes in heaven. No, he’d imagine beginning some awkward conversation: she’d drop something, or he’d trip over someone else’s umbrella, and they’d chat amiably f
or a few stops about something in the news. They’d discover some shared love of something—the fresh berry crème brûlée at Finale, or how the Gardner Museum still left blank spaces on the walls where a half dozen paintings had been stolen in the 1990s, or the six-story fish tank at the New England Aquarium. And then the fantasy would fast-forward. Some weeks or months would go by and, by chance, George would find himself alone one rainy afternoon, walking by Finale, or the Gardner, or the Aquarium. And there she’d be. They’d see each other by accident. Remember. Laugh. Act like old friends. Go to grab a cup of coffee. But this wasn’t the weirdest part of the fantasy. Not in the least.

  The weirdest part was that always, he’d imagine that somewhere in those intervening weeks or months, something would have happened to Sara. She’d have left him or been in a terrible accident. It was usually nothing specific, just that she was gone, and he was sad. The whole thing was awful—but it was the only way he could clear his conscience so the fantasy could continue. Even in his wildest dreams, he couldn’t fathom cheating.

  George tried to forget all this as he climbed into the hot shower. Fifteen minutes left to go. Shampoo. Conditioner. He couldn’t find his toothbrush, so he used a fingertip to scrub his teeth. He knew Sara would tell him to just throw up. He considered jabbing his finger back a little farther and seeing what happened, but the thought of it was somehow even worse than the thought of his belly remaining full of last night’s post-rehearsal tequila shots. If she’d been there, he would have done it. To show her that, despite his poor decision making the night before, he was now, that morning, 100 percent committed to getting things back on track.

  But without her there, he couldn’t manage it. There was so much he couldn’t manage without her. He bent down right there under the stream of water and prayed that he would never have to. Sick unto death, he thanked God that he was going to marry Sara in just a couple of hours. Through the fog in the bathroom, he could see the clock on the wall. Ten minutes left. He closed his eyes, let the hot water run over him, and tried to picture her body—they had been so busy in the lead-up to the wedding that it had been a few weeks since they’d slept together. She’d been working so hard to fit into her dress that he’d begun to almost not recognize her.

  Truth be told, in the past two years things had slowed down considerably in that department. Which was his fault, not hers. Just as he couldn’t bring himself to relax and enjoy a cold drink or a long walk or a night out, he had been struggling to keep his head in the room when he was alone with Sara as well. Clothes off or on, really. When they were having dinner or watching TV, he was aware of always being halfway somewhere else. It used to be the other way around—whenever he was away from her, she was all he thought about. Of course he knew that these things changed over time. People went from being lovers to companions over the course of a relationship. He just didn’t think that would start to happen before he turned thirty, before they’d even said, “I do.”

  But after what they’d been through—essentially managing a hospice out of William’s living room—he felt as if his twenties were already far behind him. What still felt right on top of him was the loss. Irene’s absence. At night, while ¡Vámonos, Muchachos! was on commercial breaks, he would sometimes stumble over to her urn on the mantelpiece and clink his drink against the curved metal handles as if to say hello. Occasionally he’d lift it off the fireplace and carry it over to the couch so it could watch with him. Sara had not been happy, the first morning she’d found him there like that.

  Soon after this incident, they’d agreed it was time to scatter the ashes. Jacob had told Sara how Irene had asked to be scattered in France, and she’d agreed they ought to do it on the honeymoon. There was a spot in the mountains nearby where the cliffs rose two thousand feet above the most beautiful turquoise water. Sara knew that one of Irene’s greatest regrets was never having left the country, and here was their chance to rectify that. George didn’t know if it was really the right move, but he wanted to make Sara happy, and he wanted to get things back on track. There would be the wedding night, in the bridal suite, and there would be ten more beautiful days in a French seaside paradise, where absolutely nothing could go wrong.

  He turned the shower off and stepped out, getting his breath back, beginning to feel again, the top layers of his sickness lifting, leaving only the deeper part behind for him to live with. Towel around his waist, he sneaked into the bedroom, only to find that his brothers weren’t there. The bed was made. Their tuxedos were gone from the closet, and there was a note on the dresser saying that they were going to find some breakfast and would meet him on the roof. The note ended with Where’s Jacob?

  George grabbed his tuxedo out of the bag and began to assemble everything. He had seven minutes. He slipped on the boxer shorts with hearts on them that he’d bought for the wedding, followed by a pair of thin black socks, and then he got his arms into the starched white shirt. As he did the buttons, he roamed around the hotel room, watching the molted boa feathers dancing. It was as if a whole cast of Sesame Street characters had disintegrated in there. George wafted his arm in the thin space, sending a flurry of colors up into the air again. They fell like confetti.

  He slipped on the tuxedo jacket and looked at himself in the mirror. It was perfect. As if nothing had ever happened. He walked to the shade that he’d drawn over the balcony doors, wanting to let some light in before he left. There was an explosion of reds, purples, yellows, greens, and blues as the shade pushed the air away. And there, on the other side of the glass, he saw Jacob, sitting at the patio table, already groomed and fully dressed in his tuxedo. He looked vaguely miserable, tapping the tip of his pen at the corner of a piece of hotel stationery like a crazed woodpecker.

  He looked up at George and mouthed, “What time is it?”

  George slid the door open. “Five minutes to one.”

  “You’re supposed to go up for photos.”

  “Yeah, I know,” George said, standing back and turning around for Jacob to admire.

  Jacob tapped the pen again. “I was supposed to wake you up an hour ago.”

  “It’s okay. I got up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What?” George couldn’t remember ever hearing Jacob say that word before.

  “Sorry,” Jacob repeated, looking down at the paper. “I got caught up in this.”

  There on the paper, he could see a poem—or the rough guts of a poem at least—covered in cross-outs and inserts and arrows shifting things from here to there.

  Jacob looked at the page in annoyance. “What’s a word that rhymes with fellatio?”

  George grinned and, before taking off for the elevators, reminded Jacob to be up on the roof in fifteen minutes for the group photos. He had three minutes to spare. Sara would be coming up just behind him. He hadn’t felt this happy all year, knowing he wouldn’t disappoint her.

  • • •

  Everything came together just as it was supposed to. The rooftop of the Waldorf was wide and clear, and the views of the city in all directions were nothing short of jaw-dropping. It wasn’t too windy or too cold. One of the first warm breezes of the year blew through the assembled Murphys and Shermans that day. Everyone behaved. Brothers and sisters fell in line; mothers hugged each other; everyone smiled. Whatever problems and dramas and concerns had existed before were forgotten.

  Later the photos would show George holding a glowing Sara in his arms and she looking up at him with absolute, pure adoration. They kissed with a sea of high rise towers behind them. They danced to invisible music; she spun weightlessly. Hand in hand they walked away, smiling back over their shoulders. Her dress was white all the way down to the hem, where it appeared to float just above the ground, as if by magic. She buried her nose in the bouquet of white roses, the shadow on her eyelids echoing the turquoise in the peony buds.

  In the group photographs, all six bow ties were straight, and ever
y heel and hem was the right height, and everyone’s hair stayed where it was meant to stay. The photographer told jokes like “How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?” (“Ten tickles”), which were so terrible, they actually were funny. And when it was all over, they crowded into the elevators and went down to the front of the lobby, where two white limousines were waiting for them. Every parent, aunt, sister, brother, grandparent, and friend was ferried to the church in under two minutes.

  Enormous, majestic flags rippled over the church entrance as everyone piled out of the limousines and moved to their stations. The guests, who had been arriving for the past half hour, were being ushered in smooth rotation, each oohing and aahing over the programs, especially the floral trellis detailing that Sara had created with the designer, based on a 1920s Heiligenstein vase. The lettering on the inside wasn’t, as George had feared, unreadable in the dimmer light inside the church. In fact, it exactly matched the brick face inside the sanctuary—and the Oldenburg font choice was a real winner.

  And there was Clarence! Made it with ten minutes to spare. He’d actually climbed out of the cab he’d been stuck in on the southbound lanes of the West Side Highway, crossed the northbound lanes on foot, and scaled the six-foot retaining wall along the park so he could catch another cab going south along Riverside Drive. He arrived with both wedding bands in his pocket, as safe as could be, and when the organ began to play the processional, he walked calmly up the aisle with Adeline on his arm, followed by the rest of the wedding party.

  St. Bartholomew’s organ pipes—the oldest in the city—were imperious and soft at the same time. George could feel their vibrations in the air around him. His mother looked lovely, not unlike Audrey Hepburn, with her hair still up in its twist, as she walked him to the altar. There George felt something overhead that he hadn’t felt in some time, hard to describe as anything but a not-aloneness. As if the George beneath the George that everyone could see were in good company. It was like tasting that bottle of wine on Shelter Island, or even like seeing that dead body for the first time. A flicker of something beyond what was known and measurable in the universe. But soon all thought of it was gone, as he saw Sara coming down the aisle with her father.