by Emily Gould
“I’ll think about it, okay? I’ll ask Dylan, anyway,” she finally told Amanda as they walked back to the bar so Amanda could drop off her empty glass and make a big show of leaving Max a two-dollar tip, winking as she left.
* * *
The next day, Laura didn’t have to work, so she invited Dylan over. Callie was out somewhere. The stage was set, she felt, for romance—actual romance, not just sex. (Though of course they would have sex.) She thought about sex all the time with a physical intensity that sometimes felt almost sickening, it was so exciting. Alone, at night, she would shiver remembering the details of the last time he’d been in close proximity. Lying next to him in bed, sometimes, after he’d fallen asleep, she would be so possessed with desire—even after they’d just done it!—that she felt feverish. It wasn’t an easily scratchable itch, either—when she was alone, she thought it might be possible to masturbate and then calm down, but that wasn’t the answer, somehow. Her thoughts of Dylan were too complexly real. It was distracting, and she actually had to force herself to think about something more abstract in order to come.
He was supposed to be there at seven, but it ended up being more like seven thirty, which for him was like being on time. She’d thought too late of making dinner, but there was no food around except eggs, bread, milk, and coffee. They bought four slices of pizza from Two Boots and took them up to Laura’s roof. The streets looked beautiful from there, miniaturized and shining all the way to the water.
They drank vodka straight from a bottle that had been in the freezer, with Laura matching Dylan sip for sip for no good reason. Then he rolled a joint and put two black blobs of opium in it, and they smoked it on Laura’s bed-couch, watching the walls as the room got darker and darker around them. She reached for him first, and he deflected her gently. She watched his lips and mouth as he sucked the last drops out of the vodka bottle, which was warm now, sickly tasting. He wanted to go out for more, but she was already feeling woozy. She just wanted to be lying down and getting slowly, endlessly fucked.
Instead, she watched as Dylan canvassed the apartment for more alcohol, eventually finding a dusty bottle of red wine between the piles of clothes on the floor of Callie’s room. “It’s fine, we’ll get her a new one tomorrow; she would never even notice anyway,” Laura told him, just wanting him to get whatever he wanted so that he would want her.
He poured himself a coffee mug full of wine and put it down on the floor, then got out Laura’s guitar. He played one of her songs. She felt loose and careless.
“There’s this girl Amanda who’s been pestering me about doing an interview, and it would be good for the Groupies to get press. But she wants you to be there, too.”
“Of course, baby, that’s so exciting. Wow, you guys are like a real band now,” he said, and she thought fleetingly that he would likely not remember the conversation. He segued into a Clips song, extending a riff endlessly, looping it around, making it more and more boring. He’d made Laura’s song sound boring, too. She had a weird brief flash of wanting to grab her guitar away from him and show him how to play it better, but his hands moving on the guitar’s body distracted her. She wanted him to touch her so badly. It had been a couple of days, maybe three days, since the last time they’d fucked. In the close, dark, small room she could smell him, sweat and nicotine and the cheap detergent they used at the wash-and-fold Laundromat unless you specifically asked for Tide and paid a dollar extra. She waited as long as she could and then reached out to stop his hand as he strummed.
They were too fucked up. He could still get hard, but neither of them came. They moved gently against each other for what seemed like hours. The hot room smelled like a body, like their bodies, sweating onto each other and rolling over to find a new cool patch of sheet to press each other into until it started to get light and they both finally fell asleep. They slept late, and when they woke up, everything had changed.
3
Laura met Dylan’s mom for the first time on September 13, when she drove down in the doggy-smelling family minivan from Concord to pick up Dylan and whoever else wanted to come home with him. Davey and Callie came, too. It felt wrong to leave, but it also felt dangerous to stay. Being around a mom, anyone’s mom, seemed like a good idea. Deep underneath the more panicked and pressing concerns, it occurred to Laura that these were strange circumstances in which to meet her boyfriend’s (he was her boyfriend, right?) parents for the first time, but there were nothing but strange circumstances to choose from.
At first glance, Daisy seemed like momness personified: short, practical gray hair framing a pretty face; a soft, sweatered body, helping them load their bags into the trunk and offering them all long, sincere hugs, with an especially long hug for Dylan, who winced.
They stopped for lunch at a Chili’s in Connecticut. At the table, looking at the long, laminated menu, Laura felt as though she were in a dream, a terrible one. In the car she had felt oddly soothed by novelty and motion. But going to a chain restaurant with a boyfriend’s mother felt familiar, except under the circumstances bizarre, and also thousands of people had just died horribly blocks away from what was now her home, and it seemed not only possible but also likely that something just as bad or worse was going to happen next. She felt grief and terror and, most pressingly, the absolute dry-eyeballed gut-clenched agony of being sober for the first time in three days. She decided to order a beer.
But when the server came to take their order, he asked for her ID, which in her hungover haste she’d left in a different purse back in New York. “Sorry, miss, I can’t serve you,” the waiter said with a condescending smile. It was humiliating that he assumed she was underage, though of course very recently she had been.
She smiled back like it was no big deal and ordered some kind of pasta with chicken. Dylan’s mom ordered an iced tea, and everyone else also ordered water or soda. When the waiter left, Daisy turned to Laura with her eyes very wide and bright.
“I can see why you’d want a drink!”
Laura tried to smile.
“I don’t drink, myself. I’m in recovery.”
“Mom,” said Dylan, in a warning tone.
She turned to Laura and looked straight into her eyes and grabbed one of her hands. Laura’s own family were not big touchers. Laura prevented herself from recoiling.
“I didn’t mean to imply anything about your drinking, dear. We all have our own ways of coping, right?”
Laura nodded mutely and sipped her water. She tried to think of something to say that would erase the awkwardness and enable Daisy to see that she was a sane, stable person and a great match for her son. But what was the right thing to say? She wished Dylan would step in here and give her a clue.
Davey jumped into the breach, ultimately. “So, Ms. P., it was so nice of you to come and get us, and to let us all come crash at your house.” He made it sound like they were all in high school.
“Oh, please, call me Daisy,” said Dylan’s mom. She smiled. “I’m just so happy you all can come stay with us. I’m so happy you’re safe.”
Dylan’s childhood home was a red farmhouse, surrounded by tall, thick-trunked maples whose green leaves were just beginning to yellow. There was a black Lab on the porch and a curlicue of smoke coming from the chimney like in a child’s drawing. The dog made a beeline for Laura and rose up ecstatically as she petted her, pushing her back into Laura’s hand and circling her with polite barks of welcome. Laura felt loved and trusted immediately by the dog, and when Dylan saw this he smiled a genuine smile, a smile Laura had never seen before. She felt a surge of hope and gratitude, and she continued petting the dog as the rest of them went into the house and put their things in bedrooms, Daisy chattering happily the whole time.
Later, after a long dinner accompanied by glasses of soda, Dylan’s quiet, bearded dad and Daisy went to bed, and Dylan and Callie and Davey and Laura headed out into the dark woods behind the house with a flashlight. They walked a short path till they got to a clearing wi
th stumps in a small circle, and Dylan took a small blown-glass pipe out of his pocket and packed a bowl.
“We have to ration this because it has to last us till we get back to the city,” he said very seriously.
“That’s soon, right?” Laura didn’t want to seem eager to leave, but she was. Something about Dylan’s family and the eerie quiet of their rural home was the opposite of calming. No matter how disturbing and dangerous things were in New York, at least she felt at home there. She wanted to be with Dylan, but for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint, she didn’t want to be with his mother.
“We were supposed to leave for LA on Tuesday,” said Davey. “I mean, we are. Are we still going on tour?”
“Is anything that was supposed to happen still happening?” said Callie. “My boss at the store hasn’t even returned my calls.” Laura realized that it hadn’t occurred to her to call in to Bar Lafitte, but it was possible they were open; people needed bars.
“I don’t know. Do you want to go back, Laura? It feels sort of … safer here,” Dylan said.
She watched him as he drew smoke into his lungs with a desperate pull. He didn’t seem like he felt safe. She didn’t really feel safe, either.
“I want to go home,” she said.
The next day was pleasant, or as pleasant as it could be. At least the disaster had moved to the periphery of their focus, only coming to the forefront when they turned on the radio or looked at the newspaper. During the day, they took a long walk in the woods with the dog and then piled into the minivan and drove to a café. For whole long stretches of time, up to ten or twenty minutes, Laura even forgot why they were there.
After lunch they walked up and down the two blocks of stores, and Callie pulled them into a wine store. They got a few bottles, just the kind of thing that, if you were a guest in someone’s house for a couple of days, would be normal to bring. Though when they got home, around 4:00 p.m., they divided the bottles and the boys went down to the basement, where Dylan still kept a drum set and some guitars, and Callie and Laura sat on the front porch with coffee mugs full of wine. It started getting cold, and the sun turned the browning lawn copper.
Laura and Callie exchanged glances when they heard Daisy’s car in the gravel drive. The bottle of wine, mostly empty, stood between their mugs. As she approached, Daisy smiled at them until she saw the mugs.
“Girls, I’m sorry, but it’s very hard for me to be around any kind of drinking or drugs or addictive behavior. Can you please keep your drinking out of my house?” Her voice wasn’t chilly and commanding, it was wheedling and sad, a little-girl voice. She went inside, letting the door slam behind her. They heard the dog greeting her, then the sound of Dylan’s parents talking in his dad’s office in voices that started out hushed and then became louder.
Laura felt ashamed but also angry at Daisy for making her feel that way. She felt bad for Daisy, of course, but also it was an international crisis, a time of intense worldwide mourning and panic, and people who drank wine should be allowed to drink wine at such a time.
“Asking people around you not to drink because you have a problem seems really selfish and inconsiderate,” she whispered to Callie.
Callie finished her mug in one long chug. “Totally. I mean, we’re also being inconsiderate, but she’s being cuckoo.”
In the kitchen, Dylan and Davey were standing at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables badly and laughing. A boom box with a cassette deck was playing Led Zeppelin, a welcome change from the nonstop disaster coverage on NPR. Whatever they were cooking seemed far from completion. Laura walked up behind Dylan and put her arms around him, sniffed and got a lungful of weed’s buttery-popcorn smell. If she and Callie had been inconsiderate, Davey and Dylan had been worse.
Just then, Daisy burst into the kitchen and stomped over to the fridge. She swung it open with some force, assessed its contents, then slammed it shut, as though it wasn’t her own fridge but some impostor’s fridge put there purely to annoy her.
“What’s for dinner?” she asked the boys.
Davey smiled. “Old family recipe.”
“I didn’t know you could cook,” said Laura.
“He can’t! We just thought it would be fun,” said Dylan. “We’re making a stew, Mom. I got the meat out of the deep freeze in the basement.”
“That’ll take ages to defrost!” Daisy’s voice was high, panicky.
Dylan shrugged. “Well, it’ll defrost eventually. We can put it in the microwave. Right?”
Daisy was rummaging through the fridge. She pulled out a block of cheddar cheese and, peeling back an edge of the plastic packaging, took a bite out of it.
“I happen to be very hungry right now. What people who drink don’t realize is that alcohol has calories that make you feel full. Other people need to eat food.”
Davey had his back to the confrontation, still determinedly chopping carrots. Laura and Callie exchanged glances and tried to move toward the far corner of the room as invisibly as possible. The dog stayed in the kitchen, staring at Dylan and Daisy with her head cocked expectantly.
“Chill out, Mom,” Dylan said, and sighed. He had a resigned air, as though he was used to having this conversation, or conversations like it.
“We’re making dinner. I thought you’d be happy not to have to cook. We can order takeout and have the stew tomorrow if you’re really worried about how long it’ll take.”
“Takeout! Do you think you’re in New York City?”
Laura felt herself suppressing nervous laughter. The whole situation was ridiculous. Daisy and Dylan had to know that on some level. She waited for one of them to burst out laughing.
Instead, Dylan walked over to Daisy with his arms outstretched as if to hug her, but the knife he’d been using to cut vegetables was still in his hand and Daisy backed away quickly. Behind her glasses Laura could see a big expanse of the whites of her eyes. The next moments registered mostly as a blur of color: greens and oranges of the cut vegetables, the white tile kitchen, Daisy’s pastel-purple sweater, Dylan’s black shirt and silver knife.
“Are you trying to murder me?” Daisy screeched.
“No, Mom, Jesus Christ, I’m trying to hug you. What the fuck?” he shouted.
Daisy collapsed in high-pitched, keening sobs. She sounded, again, like a child, not an adult. Dylan embraced her, he had to, but Laura saw his face over her shoulder, stony and artificially aged-looking. She caught his eye momentarily, but he shook off the contact, staring up at the ceiling.
Dinner was very late, and no one talked much. Daisy didn’t eat with them; Dylan’s dad said she’d gone to bed early.
Dylan and Laura were supposed to sleep in separate rooms, but of course she snuck in to see him after she figured everyone else would be asleep. She crawled into his childhood single bed with its nubby flannel sheets and pressed her body against his, but he stayed on his side of the bed, looking away from her.
“Is that how she always is?”
“Could I make it any more clear that I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Okay, sorry, I thought it might help to be able to talk about it.”
“You don’t understand. That’s my mother.”
“I also have a mother. I know what it’s like to fight with your parents. You’ve never even asked me—”
“Well, we don’t know each other that well,” he said, and rolled away from her.
As angry as she was, she was still powerfully attracted to that turned back. He was so muscular and warm. She wanted to wrap her arms and legs around him and take long breaths of the smell of his neck and slightly greasy hair. So she did, but he just lay there, even as she brushed the sides of his body with her hands, dipping her fingertips below his waistband, gently testing the waters. When he finally rolled toward her, she felt overwhelmed with relief; she’d won. But there was no warmth in his face as he yanked up her T-shirt, pulled down her underwear, and without any indication that he enjoyed what he was doing, pressed into h
er. He kept his head turned to the side, his shoulder pressed into her face. When she made a sound, he pressed his shoulder down harder, so she stopped making noise.
In the bathroom afterward, after she peed to prevent herself from getting a UTI, she looked down at the swirls of snotty goop in the bowl. She walked back to bed, to the bedroom with Callie in it instead of the one with Dylan, and after assessing the depth of Callie’s slumber, she turned over on her stomach and rubbed out a quick orgasm.
4
Laura slipped into Bar Lafitte as quietly as she could at the beginning of her afternoon shift. The door was open, but she didn’t see anyone around, so she started doing the side work she and the other waitresses sometimes occupied themselves with so that they wouldn’t get too bored, stacking drink menus and wiping down tables and chairs with a damp bar rag. She allowed herself to zone out, polishing one tabletop till she could see her blurry reflection in its surface. It was a shock when Stefan’s voice called out her name from the top of the staircase where he typically sat at the table he called his “office.” Laura tensed, preparing for a lecture. After all, she hadn’t been at work for more than a week and hadn’t even bothered to call. For all she knew, she was about to get fired.
Instead, she found herself wrapped in a lingering and, thankfully, very platonic-feeling bear hug.
“I’m so happy to see you! I knew you were likely fine, but one couldn’t help but worry.” Stefan seemed almost to be on the verge of tears.