So far, my memories with men have been good. I’m lucky in that way. I’ve been smart about who I’ve picked. They all appreciated it, and I appreciated how much they appreciated it. We were good and warm to each other. I try to insist on condoms, but no one is a fan, and hence the taking of birth control, which I sometimes forget to take, hence the purchasing of Plan B, which you have to be over seventeen to get, and so until my birthday, I went with my cool neighbor Gretchen who bought them for me. That’s how I know they’re expensive: I had to come up with the money myself, although she’d always offered to pay. After she bought the package and handed it over, she always said, Kid, I have one request, you know I have one request, which is don’t get pregnant, you don’t want a baby, you don’t want to lose your whole self to becoming a parent, and you don’t want to have to decide about an abortion, nobody does.
To which I could only agree.
That woman who walked in her door with a pineapple didn’t want a kid or an abortion either. All she wanted was to be half-loved on a nice night, to have the man say she had nice hair and a nice heart. It’s not such a terrible thing to want. I’ll be wanting it my whole life.
I left way early on the way to school this morning, in the dark, and I let myself into my mom’s store, which, although not having a pharmacy, does have prepackaged bundles of flowers. I got the roses, not the stupid carnations. Then I drove back up the mountain and dropped them off at the woman’s door. I wrapped them in a plastic bag, and an old towel I always have in the back of my car, and I hoped they wouldn’t get too cold by the time she found them.
There were lights on, voices inside; they were getting ready for work. I suspected she wouldn’t be there much longer, so the flowers would be safe. I won’t have kids either, is maybe why I did that. Maybe if I’d been born at another time, I would have. But the world is too fucked up and there’s no way I’d bring an innocent creature into such a confused place, where men shoot themselves in fields, and other men shoot police officers, and whole countries stone women and gays and where the human heart clearly doesn’t have much inherent kindness.
The man she slept with, whether husband or a lover, wouldn’t be sending roses. People, in the end, are mostly takers. Not givers. Including me. He probably didn’t even know she had to suffer through the Plan B. And even if he did, he’d never understand the trouble of it, the cramps of it, the particular lonely of it. Oblivious to everything.
After I left the roses, I got in my car, drove down the mountain to my school, turned in my paper, went to classes, changed my tampon, took my ibuprofen, complained to the galfriends. Later I went to lunch where I bought a small carton of milk. It went down my throat. I’ll keep moving on, for the sake of my parents, I guess—just like Sy should have kept carrying on, just for the sake of his kids—we owe each other some shit. We owe each other some occasional flowers.
Chapter Sixteen
Pinball
Sergio took first dates to the pinball place, all the way in town. In the winter, especially. All those bright lights, chatter of machines, more color than any other place short of Mexico. He also liked getting off the mountain, to remember there were such things as college students and the homeless and the professionals. It was good for dates too, a comfortable family place with lots of middle-agers, and most women were reminded of their pasts, of their first video games, and at least they could talk about that.
One-and-done. That’s what most of his dates in the last years had been, not that there were many of them. But he’d just re-upped his Match.com profile, deciding the other day to put himself out there more, ever since his friend Wyn had talked about knocking on the right doors, and knocking hard.
So here he was. And even if it didn’t work, at least he got the pleasure of this place even if the date was a bust. He wasn’t sure why he had trouble finding the right person—if it was him, a failure of will, his feelings still confused because of his affair with Anya, or a confusion about life and love in general since Sy’s death, or if it was just a matter of statistics, how it did in fact take dozens of people to find a good spark.
This date, for example: She was too small for his too big, too athletic to his round. Her name was Flora, even, and she would forever make him feel ungainly and inadequate, and if there was one thing he wasn’t interested in, it was feeling not-good-enough. He wanted to be comfortable. He liked himself; he was never going to lose the extra twenty pounds, he didn’t want to. She looked far smaller than her profile pictures, which amused him; normally it was the opposite.
They were seated across from each other over Ms. Pac-Man now, the console down low and between them. The sticks were old and mushy, but it was the original game, not the new ones with lasers and ghosts, and, most objectionably, in which the players were also competing against each other. In this game, it was just two players amicably taking turns, eating fruit and avoiding ghosts—which had struck him, on one date long ago, as a nice metaphor for a relationship. Didn’t one want a partner to witness the fruit-joys of life and help one avoid the ghost-death dangers? Get the cherry! Watch out for the ghost, he’s turning the corner on you! That was what he wanted in a real partner: someone to say those things to him, to let him do the same.
The other great thing about this game—the reason he liked to do it first, if it was open—was that he could sit across from his date and simply watch her play. Even if it was a no-go, he got a certain enjoyment out of watching a woman, her eyebrows shoot up, her face registering concentration. The simple joy of eating Pac-dots and the sorrow of withering once touched by a ghost—seeing all this cross a face was better than the game itself. It didn’t feel creepy. In fact, it felt the opposite. Sort of a melancholic appreciation of the beauty of changing human emotion.
Flora looked up and caught him staring. “I just got killed.” She crinkled her nose. “Inky did me in. Or was that Sue? Game over, I guess.”
“Should we move on to something else? Try a game of pinball? We could get another beer if you want.” He made a move to rise from his chair, but she put her elbows on the console and her face in her hands, so he sat back down.
“I have a proposal for you,” she said. She took the rubber band off her ponytail, let her hair loose, then ponytailed it up again. It looked the same as it just had, except slightly messier. “We just met,” she said. “I realize that.”
“True.” If he thought this would go anywhere, now would be the time to flirt. He’d say how he liked her eyes, that she was prettier than her profile pictures, which was true. But something about it wasn’t right—it wouldn’t work, and putting effort into something that would fail would make him feel tired and suspended. He wanted to get married. He wanted a real future with a real someone. He wanted to build something of quality, something that lasted. Basically, he’d been fucking around for a while now—had not made the wisest decisions, regretted it, and it had all become so absurd, so ugly, so not-what-he-wanted that he had finally and fully clarified that what he wanted was a real life and a real family.
She blew up at her bangs and sent them floating up for a moment. “Do you drive all the way back home, back up to the mountain, when you come to town?”
“No. I stay at a friend’s house, a friend from high school. Run some errands in town the next morning.”
“So you’re staying in town anyway?”
He nodded, finished his beer, set the empty glass on top of the blue ghosts sliding across the screen.
“Nights are lonely. Nights are the worst.”
His eyes watered; the flashes of light stung them all of a sudden. It was still early, and he briefly wondered if he’d slept badly last night, and then remembered that he had, that he had been awakened several times by a rat clawing around behind the wall, not only the noise of it, but the worry about how he’d get rid of it.
Flora blew her bangs up again. “It’s hot in here. Feels good, though, because I’ve been cold all week. What a winter. Anyway, I kno
w a little about you because I know a few people living up in that little town. I called around. I know, for example, that you’re not a creeper or a murderer. You’re a nice guy, you hold the door for Violet at the post office, you help shovel roads in the winter. You are a biologist. You work for Parks and Wildlife. You also work with wood. You build furniture. And breadboards. Your sister moved in with you, you got her a job at Violet’s.”
He was surprised. “You’ve done a bit of reconnaissance, I guess.”
She gave a quick shrug. “I heard the story about you, how once you sat down in someone’s beanbag, and the pepper spray you’d been carrying around in your front pocket for an aggressive bear, and, well, it went off and it—well.”
He laughed and blushed a little, surprised again. “That pain was amazing. Worst ever.”
“You jumped in the shower and it only made it worse. You were hollering in there.”
“Yes.”
“What did you end up doing?”
“I drove home, cussing all the way, and drank a whiskey and paced around my house for a few hours yelping like a madman. I joke that that was what scared the bear away. Never saw her after that night.”
“I’m sorry.” But she looked amused. “Anyway, I know you’re not a mean person.”
“No, I’m not.” Something about that stung. He was tired of a world in which you had to prove yourself a decent human being.
“Well, Sergio, I’m wondering if you want to come home with me and sleep next to me. Not sex. I don’t mean that. I mean, just lying there, companionably. Just to, you know, have company during the night.”
He scratched his eyebrows by running his fingers toward each other, then pinching the bridge of his nose. Then he remembered that doing so often made his eyebrows big and bushy—a resemblance to Oscar the Grouch eyebrows, he thought—and so he smoothed the hairs back the other way.
“I don’t know if that would be hard for you, or weird for you. Or even possible. At the moment, I just want someone to hold me and to talk to me. If you could do that—if you wanted to do that—awesome. If not—awesome. Either way. Just putting it out there.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry if that’s super weird.”
“You know, you’re really pretty. I’m just saying so. I’m guessing you don’t have that much trouble finding men to sleep next to you.”
A sadness crossed her face, and he was surprised at how closely it resembled his own feeling at the moment. “I do, actually,” she said. “Especially someone who could just be there and not want to . . .”
“I get it. I’m sorry.” He looked around the room. All those flashes of color. The Lord of the Rings pinball machine was the closest to them and it roared Get a hold of yourself! Someone across the room cussed and hit the side of the game, a gaggle of young kids stood around the change machine, the air-hockey puck glowed in the dark as it pinged across the table.
“What are you thinking?” She asked it genuinely, her eyes also roaming around the room.
“I’m thinking about a rat that’s moved in behind my wall. They do that, in the winter. One of the hassles of living in the country. It’s really hard to get them out, once they’ve gotten snuggly in there.”
“Don’t worry. I’m no rat. This would be an occasional thing.”
He chuckled because he wasn’t sure he’d even meant that. He looked at her, at the bit of light from the Pac-Man caught right above her pupils, at the richness there. “Okay, I’m thinking something else random, which is this: I’m not sure a man could ever ask a woman that question.”
“True.”
“I don’t know if that’s our culture or cowardice. It might actually be cowardice.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve often thought that women have a bit more oomph. Willingness to risk.”
“Maybe.”
“I wish I could ask that kind of question.”
“Well, I suppose you could.”
“I’m just buying some time here while I think on your proposal.”
“I know. I can see it.”
“Sometimes I think I missed some kind of call. Because of a lack of courage, and I see that in a lot of early-middle-aged men around me. We find excuses.”
“Well,” she said, finishing off her beer. “I don’t know.”
He took a deep sad breath and looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’d like to spend the night with you. Without sex. As long as you are not an axe-murderer.”
“I am not. But you can call Violet. She’s the aunt of a friend of mine. Violet doesn’t know me well herself, but she can put you in touch with my friend. Then you can call my friend and confirm I’m okay.” She used her arms a lot when she talked, weaving them about above the Ms. Pac-Man game, her hands signaling the connection between Violet, and her friend, and her friend’s phone.
“I’ll trust my gut. Can we do one thing before we go, though? Can we play one game on the Big Bowler? It was built in 1959, out of oak, and when it breaks, it’s hard to fix. There aren’t any parts anymore. They asked me to make a lever in the back, which I did.” They were walking now, toward the back of the pinball place. “It’s like bowling, except smaller. See? I like this part, this little sign: FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY.”
She reached down and touched the oak panel that returned the ball. “Wow. How beautiful it is. All this wood.”
He liked that she said that, and they bowled a game, cheering the small bowling ball down the wood paneling. She clapped and he turned his head away from her; he didn’t want to think about sex now that it was both more, and less, of a possibility than it had been before. Instead, he thought of all the spheres in this place—the balls of the skee ball game, the bowling ball she now held, the power pellets and Pac-dots, the pinballs.
He won, even though he’d tried to mess up a few, but she was happy about it. “Thanks for showing me this place,” she said on their way out. “But we didn’t even play a game of pinball. Maybe next time. As, you know, friends. You bring all your dates here?”
“Often.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s a nice first date.”
“No one has ever asked me what you just did, though.”
“I wonder how many people have secretly wanted to?”
Now they were at their cars, which were iced over with a new brittle snow. It was incredibly cold out, well below zero, and while she was warming her car, he came to help her scrape the windshield, and they complained about how miserable it was, how miserable this whole winter had been. That snow from the first blizzard a month ago still hung around in shadowed places, and the sun had often been covered by roiling gray clouds, unusual for Colorado.
He followed her to her place. He texted his friend, who texted back, “Well, good on ya, ya lucky bastard. See you next time,” and then Sergio parked and grabbed his bag and followed her around her house to a back entrance. She was renting the back half of a brick house in the old town area, perfect, she said, for a graduate student like herself. It was quiet and convenient and she helped out the woman above her in exchange for low rent.
When they were inside, he stood in the little living room while she flipped on lights and moved about. It was warm, thank god. There were a lot of houseplants, some with Christmas lights hanging between them, and some good artwork with bright colors and he liked it. It felt comfortable.
“I’m tired,” Flora said. “I know it’s early, and perhaps you don’t want to sleep yet—”
“Actually, I do. The rat kept me up all night—”
“Oh, good. Well, not about the rat. I’m going to go in the bathroom and change into pajamas and climb into bed. Make yourself at home. There’s tea and milk and food and all the usual stuff, in all the usual places. You don’t seem like a thief, but I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have anything worth stealing.”
When he got to the bed, in his own sweatpants and T-shirt, he said, “Do you do this a lot? Ask people to stay over
?”
“You’re the fourth person I’ve asked.”
“How did the others go?” He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her. She was so small and beautiful, the white comforter pulled up to her chin. She didn’t look nervous, but he was, and he wondered if he’d sleep at all.
“Three people agreed. One was a one-night deal; a one-night-sexless-stand, I guess you could say.” She smiled at her little joke. “Two of them came over periodically, but one of them moved away. The other still comes over every once in a while. We text each other. Something along the lines of ‘I’m a little too lonely tonight.’ And he shows up at my place, or I go to his.”
“And there’s never any . . .”
“No. In his case, he’s an old teacher of mine. It’s off the table. He knows it. What we want is some warmth. I have this theory, which is that people tend to talk about real things, big things, when they’re side by side, instead of, say, looking at each other over dinner. Personally, I think more people should be doing this, more of the time. Depression and alcoholism would decrease.”
“You have a lot of theories.”
“We all do. That’s another theory of mine, that we all have lots of theories.”
He climbed in beside her, careful to stay on his side of the bed. “Well, it’s just brave. There’s some assholes out there. But I think you’re right about depression decreasing. It’s just that people aren’t used to such an idea, and once you touch another person, it changes things.”
“Yes, true. But I think there are sins of omission. A failure of character. People so often don’t get what they want because they don’t even bother to formulate the thought and ask. It’s almost as if they force themselves to not think outside the box. Cognitive dissonance and all that.” She turned her head to him. “With that in mind, what I’d like to do is shimmy up next to you, put my head on your chest, and have you wrap your arms around me. If that’s okay with you. And no sex. Really, I am so not kidding about that.”
The Blue Hour Page 17