Severance

by Ling Ma

  You don’t need an eighties costume, I said. You can say you’re here for research, observing millennials in their natural habitat. I sat down on the edge of my bed, pushing aside the mountain of jackets.

  So you invited me to be the party ethnographer? Should’ve brought my notebook. He sat down beside me, crossing his legs, exposing ankle sock. The bed sagged.

  I shrugged and sipped from my rum and Coke. The dim light from the nightstand lamp dramatized our expressions.

  How have you been? Sitting very close, he spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone, intimating an intimacy that we never really shared. I noticed that his sports jacket featured a Liberty floral pocket square that someone else, another girl, I assumed, must’ve helped him choose. No way would he have chosen it on his own.

  How’s the postcollege job market looking? he pressed.

  I don’t know. I’ve been focusing more on, I guess, personal projects.

  Well, the reason I ask is—he reached into his back pocket—I didn’t come empty-handed. He opened his wallet. For a moment I was afraid he was going to hand me cash, but it was something else, a business card. It read MICHAEL REITMAN, CEO.

  It’s my brother’s company, Steven explained. There’s a position open. Give him a call.

  You told your brother about me? I studied the card uncertainly, trying to make out the letters in the low light. What’s Spectrum?

  Spectra, he corrected. They’re a publishing consulting firm that handles book production. It’s not art or design, but it’s something. They’re looking to fill an assistant position. My brother will have more details, if you get in touch.

  I studied the card again, avoiding Steven’s gaze. I didn’t need a job right away, but I needed something, a point of entry into another life that wasn’t just about milling around, walking. I could feel my parents’ disapproval hanging over me. I was embarrassed that Steven had sensed what I needed.

  Thank you, I finally said. But you didn’t have to.

  It’s nothing. I just mentioned you. Now he looked embarrassed. I know we’re not—

  Dinner is ready! Jane clamored through the rooms, gathering guests up.

  You go ahead, I told Steven. I’ll be right in.

  He stood up. Okay, I’ll see you in there?

  I smiled reassuringly. When he left the room, I closed the door. Then I crawled to the head of my bed, over the mountain of jackets, where I opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. The tinny, collapsible structure winced. The air outside was cool and humid. Tiny pinpricks of rain dotted my arms.

  The fire escape looked out on the backs of other apartment buildings and a communal garden that all the ground-level tenants shared, its disorganized, uncultivated plots overrun with ghetto palms and riffraff vegetation; a dash of wildflowers here, a fledgling fruit tree there.

  I sat down. A full minute lapsed before I started crying. Or more like a shallow, panicky mouth breathing, dry and sobless. I tried to focus my breath, steady it, in and out, like breaststrokes in deep, choppy water.

  Hey, you’re blocking all the rain.

  The voice came from below. I looked down. Through the grating, I saw a guy sitting on his window ledge, reading a book, smoking a cigarette. He was the summer subletter downstairs. I’d seen him at the mailboxes.

  Sorry, I said, automatically.

  He looked up, smiled impishly. No sorry. Just giving you a hard time.

  I’m getting some air, I explained unnecessarily.

  Okay. He blew out a lungful of smoke. Fire escape is all yours. Do you mind if I finish this first?

  I considered the top of his head. Can I have one?

  Sure. Then, after a pause, Should I come up?

  I looked into my empty room. I could hear Jane still rallying everyone to the table. I’ll just come down.

  The fire escape rattled beneath my feet. He helped me down the last steps, where, at the landing, I extended my hand. He had a surprisingly firm grip, given his thin, boyish frame. There was a sadness to his face, dark circles under his blue eyes.

  He asked, Do you want to wait here or come inside while I get you one?

  I peeked inside his window. Is this your room?

  Yes. He hesitated. Would you like to come in?

  I climbed in and looked around. He lived in the room directly below mine. It was the same room—our apartments shared the same floor plan—except cleaner, better. My room was messy, cluttered with too many things. His room was clean and ascetic, bare walls dimly lit by a floor lamp. There was something serene about it, a temple emptied of all ceremonial accoutrements and cleared of incense smoke.

  I live right above you, I informed him.

  I know. I can hear you walking late at night. You pace. He caught himself. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound creepy. You just have this skittish way of walking.

  A skittish way of walking?

  Like, restless. I hear your roommate too. She gets up very early. I can hear her grinding coffee.

  Does she not have a skittish way of walking?

  He contemplated this. Um, no. Your roommate walks very purposefully, but you, you’re more unsettled, unsure. Not an insult, just an observation. He had found his pack of American Spirits and handed one to me, not touching the filter. I liked that consideration.

  I rolled it around between my fingers. My roommate gets up early, I allowed. It’s a long commute. She has this fashion PR job in Jersey.

  Here, sit down. I can’t find my light. Let me get one from the kitchen.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. It was a mattress on the floor, carefully dressed with white sheets. There was no chair. Affixed on the walls were two plastic hooks, one for a towel and the other for a jacket, next to the doorframe. In lieu of a dresser, clothes were neatly stacked in three rows on the floor, against the wall: jeans, underwear, and white Tshirts. A small floor lamp was arranged next to a few library books. Rousseau. Foucault.

  When he returned, he was holding the largest butane lighter I’d ever seen. May I? he asked.

  I nodded, and he attempted to light my cigarette, ridiculously, the gas flame licking my cheek.

  Should we go back outside? I don’t want to smoke up your room.

  No, stay. Smoke up my room. He sat down on the bed. We smoked. He seemed content to say nothing.

  So, I said, searching. Tell me about what you do. I regretted it as soon as I asked. It was the question everyone asked everyone else in New York, so careerist, so boring.

  What I do for money or what I actually do?

  Both, I guess. I exhaled a plume of smoke.

  I temp for money, usually copywriting jobs. I freelance a bit too, a few articles and interviews. But what I actually do is write fiction. And you, what about you?

  I live off my parents, I said, surprised by the casualness with which I dispensed this information. I didn’t elaborate that they were both deceased, and that the family coffers or whatever would last me just long enough—maybe, say, for the next ten, fifteen years—for me to be comfortable with not working, long enough to be useless. The fruits of my immigrant father’s lifelong efforts would be gobbled up and squandered by me, his lazy, disaffected daughter.

  But I’m looking for a job, I added. I have an interview coming up at this place called Spectra.

  What are you interviewing for?

  Um, I have no idea.

  He smiled, as if to himself. By this point, my cigarette had gone out. I hesitated. There’s a party that I’m supposed to be hosting.

  What, now? He started.

  I nodded. They’ve probably begun without me. You’re invited, if you’d like.

  I’ll walk you up at least. He came over to me. I thought he was going to pull me up, but instead, he licked his thumb and touched my cheeks. I realized that he was clearing off dried streaks of mascara. I’d forgotten that only moments earlier, I’d been crying.

  I’m going to pretend you’re not cleaning me with your spit. I closed my eyes. Is it coming off?r />
  No. You might have to use my bathroom.

  Can I use your bathroom?

  Sure. It’s down the— Actually, you know where it is.

  I walked to where my bathroom would have been. Unlike our space, the bathroom was also tidy, full of generic Duane Reade products lined up in his medicine cabinet, which I opened to look for prescription pill bottles. There weren’t any. I couldn’t see his private grievances.

  I closed the cabinet and looked at myself in the mirror. My private grievances were all over my face. I looked upset. My skin looked dry and tight; I’d probably forgotten to moisturize. I threw some water on my face.

  When I opened the door, he was waiting in the hallway. Together, we entered my apartment the same way I had left it: up the fire escape, through my window, and into my room. We walked into the living room, to a dinner that had just begun. Everyone looked up.

  Who’s this? Jane asked.

  This is um— I turned to him, realizing we’d never introduced ourselves.

  Jonathan, he said.

  Jonathan, I repeated. He’s our downstairs neighbor.

  Can I get you something to drink, Jonathan? Jane said. If she was annoyed by our lateness, she didn’t show it. We have kamikazes, rum and Cokes, anything.

  Just seltzer water if you have any.

  I’ll get it, I said, walking to the kitchen while Jane pulled up an extra chair for him, clear across the other end of the table, while I was seated next to Steven.

  Once we were all seated, we beheld the magnum opus at the center of the table: the shark fin soup was arranged in a crystal punch bowl with a ladle, prom-style. Actually, two punch bowls, one for the original soup, and another for the mysterious vegan version that Jane had made.

  Jane served all of us, ladling it out into bowls.

  The shark fin had a strange, gelatinous texture. We chewed for a long time, then swished the soup down with red wine.

  I should’ve bought white, Jane said. Better with seafood.

  The tannins, someone agreed.

  It’s not bad, Jonathan said, and really seemed to mean it.

  The rest of us forced the soup down our throats. Jane passed around a glass candy dish full of oyster crackers, which guests sprinkled in their bowls. It didn’t make the soup any more palatable, any less sour or musty. I wondered if I’d made it wrong. The recipe had called for fresh shark fins. Instead, I had soaked the dried fins in filtered water for a few hours, to reconstitute them, before I’d made the soup. Aside from that, I had followed the recipe precisely.

  I guzzled more wine than I could handle. Steven turned to me, his low voice forcing me to lean a little closer. He was saying something about his brother, how his brother was a better man than he because he was a fair man. Or something like that.

  And you’re not a fair man? I asked Steven.

  A family man, Steven corrected, slurring. My brother has always been a family man. Whereas I have only performed at it. And badly.

  I realized he was addressing his divorce, the emotional repercussions he must have been struggling with. He’d never spoken of his family, and whatever information I’d gleaned was vague and clichéd: the distant wife, the troubled children.

  You’re fine, I said. You’re okay. Nothing bad is happening right now.

  He smiled, eyes bloodshot, and spooned his soup.

  Suddenly, I felt a bit nauseated. It was so hot and smoky and perfumed inside.

  In keeping with the vaguely Orientalist theme, Jane had bought a mah-jongg set that we were all supposed to play after dinner, but no one could figure out the game.

  Candace, I thought you knew how to play this, someone yelled at me.

  Why, because I’m Asian?

  We gave up. We disassembled the card tables that made up our dining table and moved them out into the hallway. The living room was cleared.

  Suddenly, the sound of the fire alarm cut through the room. Everyone winced, covered their ears against the shrill, electronic shriek.

  What’s burning? someone asked. I don’t smell anything.

  It’s all the cigarette smoke, another person yelled.

  Shit. Well, crack a window.

  Should we stop smoking? a girl asked, her hand frozen, clutching her cigarette.

  Jane waved her hand. Guys! Just dismantle the alarm! She climbed a kitchen chair to the smoke alarm on the ceiling, located the battery hatch, and removed it.

  The alarm had broken a spell. Afterward, everyone began to relax. We hooked up an iPod to the speakers and took turns DJing. People jumped around in unison, a faux mosh pit, with happy, sunny pop music. In the kitchen, others played a drinking game called Bullshit Pyramid. Someone else had brought Twister, and the mat was laid out in the middle of my room. I wandered from room to room, circulating, playing at everything and losing, laughing hysterically as I scattered the cards, stumbled on the mat, jumped up and down, out of sync.

  When other people are happy, I don’t have to worry about them. There is room for my happiness. In this happiness, I lost track of Jane. I lost track of Steven. I lost track of Jonathan. I had seen him talking to a bunch of people as they sat around on the floor. Later still, through a curtain of smoke, I saw him in my room, looking through my bookcase. Those books aren’t mine! I wanted to yell, even though that was not true. They were all mine. My Ántonia. Windowlight. Namedropper. Crime and Punishment, the one thing I saved from freshman English. The Metamorphosis. The Sweet Valley High series, paperbacks of teen horror and sci-fi that I had pilfered from visits back home. Christopher Pike. R. L. Stine. Coming-of-agers. I Capture the Castle. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. A collection of defunct magazines from the nineties, Index being my favorite. How long had he been in there? And even later, I glimpsed him in Jane’s room, watching some Italian movie on a laptop with a group of people, the loud exclamatory Italian phrases like typewriter keys clacking. Come stai?! What was there to do but smile. I smiled and waved. Come join us, he yelled after me, as I went down the hallway to do something else, I forget what. After that, I didn’t see him and I figured he had probably gone back downstairs, through the fire escape of my room.

  I don’t know how many hours passed. I stopped and started. When I was tired, I sprawled out on the rug. When I was hungry, I nibbled on chips in the kitchen. I drank Sprite and wine coolers I found in the fridge. I was like a homeless person in my own house.

  I was enjoying myself, but it was an insulated enjoyment. I was alone inside of it.

  Around four, the party began to wind down. The sky had begun to lighten outside the window. Guests were gradually leaving, one by one or in groups, peeling themselves off the rug of our living room, where we hovered, drinking and passing a spliff. Jane was sleeping on the floor. The mountain of coats and jackets on my bed diminished until only a few remained. I identified Steven’s sports coat, which he had taken off sometime during the night. It was missing its pocket square.

  I picked it up and walked through the apartment. Steven? I called.

  I found him in the bathroom, gripping the sink. He had sweat through his shirt. He was utterly, swervingly drunk, and with that drunkenness came complete, terrorizing amorousness. But no, he was not just drunk. Something else. He had ingested something, it was so clear that he had ingested something. Maybe he had taken it willingly, or maybe someone had slipped it to him as a joke. My friends could be assholes.

  Steven was touching my face, his eyes glassy. You look so sad, he said.

  I’m not sad, I replied. Are you having a good time?

  You’re so beautiful, he said, not answering me. You’re really beautiful, he repeated.

  Thank you, I said, maturely. Would you like me to call you a cab?

  He shook his head vigorously. No. I want to stay.

  Okay, you can stay. But why don’t you lie down. I led him to the living room, toward the sofa. I was removing his shoes, attempting to unknot his gray leather shoelaces, so fine like mouse whiskers.

  No. I want to say som
ething. I want to tell you something, he said urgently.

  What’s that?

  He took my face in his hands and looked at me. I am alone, Steven said. I am without family, I am alone.

  You’re not alone, I said, though I did not know this to be a fact. And, because I was not close enough to him to tell him the truth, I added, You have people all around you. You’re on TV.

  I missed you, he persisted.

  You have people, I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

  No, you’re not hearing me. You’re not hearing me even though you understand. I missed you. All summer, I kept thinking about you.

  Is that why you came? I asked, thinking of the times he had deflected my IMs, the times I had deflected his.

  He looked at me. You invited me. Why did you invite me?

  I didn’t answer this. Instead, I said, A lot has changed for me this summer.

  Like what? He was grabbing my wrists. How are you different? You look the same. Exactly the same.

  He lurched toward me. I pulled back. Undeterred, he lunged again and attempted to kiss me, madly, desperately. When I pulled back again, he came crashing to the floor, dragging me down with him. Jane, lying on the rug a few feet away, didn’t stir. With the both of us lying low, he started kissing me. It was like tumbling down a dizzying Escher staircase of beer-tasting embraces and caresses. I kissed him back. Through the yuzu aftershave, I could remember what it was like to kiss him, at the beginning of the summer, when he first took me over to his loft. I went around, looking at his things, his books, the framed art on the walls, his furniture that he’d paid someone to arrange. I opened up his bathroom cabinet and sniffed his collection of aftershaves. I opened up his closet and looked at his wood hangers and shoe trees. He got off on my curiosity. When I kissed him, it was like I was kissing all his things, all the signifiers and trappings of adulthood or success coming at me in a rush. Fucking was just seeing that to its end, a white yacht docking.

  Now Steven was the one to disentangle himself. Hold on. Let’s go to your room.

  We walked to my room, to the very end of the railroad, where I saw Jonathan. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, reading. My heart dropped. As we came into the room, he looked up at Steven and me, putting two and two together. What was there for me to do but smile and try not to look too disgusting.