A Different Bed Every Time

by Jac Jemc

  Twins, or Ambivalence

  The giant twins, Bittern and Barn Swallow, cannot handle the uncertain gazes that fall upon them when seen apart from each other. Their secrets exist in the negative space between them. Bittern and Barn Swallow have ears like hands reaching, mouths that curl indication into their emotions. Bittern and Barn Swallow have shirts stained with distorting drool and don’t feel one bit bad about it. That’s just the way their lips spill. Deep in thought, they sink slowly through mindlessness. They haul sacks of wrist-watches to the Laundromat, shake the bags loose into the washers, and listen to the rattling machines drink up the mechanics of those portable clocks. Bittern and Barn Swallow don’t care. They keep reaching inside for some feeling and pulling out more of their blank white stuffing. They try to believe something is possible. They keep shaking their heads and nodding, hoping one of the gestures will feel right. Every minute they feel like nervous soldiers with nothing to do. They collect useless items from garage sales, slap their dollars down, and carry away whatever is handed to them. A plastic flower, a peg doll, the sneaky thorned stem of a useless length of barbed wire. When they get home Bittern hula hoops till he’s tired out and Barn Swallow fans him absently with a silk palm frond. Their eyes droop uneven and careless. Bittern and Barn Swallow look at their junk and feel nothing. They watch a space exploration special on an old black-and-white TV. Seconds into the program the spacemen arrive in space and exchange knowing smiles. Bittern and Barn Swallow look at each other, not understanding the meaning of a shared experience. In a bright and oversized world, Bittern and Barn Swallow look out of their brains, like one thing keeps fading into the next. They do not look up information in books or read magazines or have a clue what is going on anywhere. They prop themselves up on their front stoop like gargoyles and look down instead of out. So much time on those godforsaken concrete stairs, all sorts of people and things moving by, and Bittern and Barn Swallow stare at the cracks in the sidewalk. Bittern and Barn Swallow are grown but still afraid of haircuts. They pay a brave girl to come to the house and urge them to sit still and stop shrieking: it will grow back; it always does. Bittern and Barn Swallow will walk this girl home with some hope in their minds they cannot quite get around. Bittern and Barn Swallow will pick blossoms that do not belong to them. They will give the girl fingers she does not want. They will hide cherry stems, threaded needles and their tongues low inside their mouths. Bittern and Barn Swallow will share their friendliness like it’s something else. The girl will get herself home. Bittern and Barn Swallow will smoke and put distance between themselves to test their limits and then hurtle back together, like losing the grip on a strip of elastic. Bittern and Barn Swallow will chew off moles that look suspicious and spit them into the gutter. They will fail to understand why it is still just the two of them leaking beside each other. They will peer into the hairdresser’s window and she will try not to notice them. She will arrive at other people’s homes, one hand tight around mace and the other fist clutching a horror story. Those men will live simply and long-haired a while longer and then they will attest to each other a mixture of joy and sorrow that seems to convince them they have lived long enough. They will clarify after the fact. They will decide and then forget their decision. They will remember too late that the ground has gone and fall from the sky.

  Prison Windows

  Roadrunner doesn’t know what it is to be contained, to look at things you’ll never touch, to be stacked and lined up and smeared but separate from everything else. Roadrunner and I go and see her papa in the prison, and his eyes get all yogurty and wet when he sees us. We hug hello, the fat cotton of her papa’s jumpsuit scraggling against Roadrunner’s skinny cotton T-shirt. I dig into my purse for the baggie of quarters and hand them to Roadrunner to buy her daddy treats. All around us, old men and penny pinchers and wise guys sit alone on one side of tables, and their families sit on the other. The laminated tile and drop ceiling remind me of cafeterias and church basements At the periphery of their vision, you can see nowhere sliding into view. All these men have the electric buzz of the catatonic stunned awake. They tell stories; they want to let their nightmares jester around in someone else’s ears for a change. The edges of these men have been filed off, the guards watch to make sure of that, to ensure no sharpness comes through eager for sudden harm. I leave my cheap legs naked when we go see Roadrunner’s daddy so he can have something to think about after we leave. If Roadrunner acts up, I tell her I’ll sell her to the five women who live down the block, with their hats and their teeth and a neighborhood’s worth of tall tales raising them up. “Roadrunner,” I say, “sing your daddy the anthem; sing him that sea shanty you learned in music class,” and she does, and everyone’s silence sticks tight to the walls until she’s finished. I stare at Roadrunner’s daddy and remember well the muddy swerves of his temper when he drank too much. I remember his tongue, carnivorous and dozing against my own. I remember wishing I’d washed the floor as he laid me down and the smell of him after his suit had cooked him for an entire hot day in the sun. I have dreams and don’t even try to decipher them, because as much as I want them to come true, there’s as much I want to ignore and forget. I bring Roadrunner’s short shoulders under my warping hands. My voice cracks and drains. The ragged engine of my tears starts up when the bell rings and it’s time to go. A blue fever of sadness slugs through me as we file out onto the street. Roadrunner flips a pack of playing cards in the air and catches them. I have been tipped over. Roadrunner, with her breathy exhales, runs to the corner quick and then rushes on back to me.

  The Tackiness of Souls

  Minnie Fishman, burdened with a funny name by hippie parents, wants to hide in a corner at the office party, but her awareness of the wallflower cliché forces her to be social. Minnie Fishman, thirty-one, whispers in her coworker’s ear that she’s exhausted. She doesn’t say that it’s all these people who are exhausting her, that she’s tired of being “on” all the time, that she’s scared that if she finds someone she might actually like she’ll be too jaded to connect. She finds herself at the bar with Bobby, the handsome gentlemen all of the women coo over at the water cooler. He’s friendly, and it’s not difficult to strike up a conversation. Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.

  Minnie excuses herself and sees the door to the pub open. It’s Daniel. At the office, Daniel is the one she watches over the cubicle dividers. While sitting at her desk she can recognize the cadence of his footsteps down the carpeted “hallways” and adjusts her body language accordingly to open herself up to possible interaction. She is a producer at the ad firm. He is a creative. She thought he might not come to this holiday party, but here he is. His loose curls fall onto his thin face. He runs his hand through one side of his hair and behind the exposed lens of one of his round wire rims, his bloodshot eye rests on a purple crescent of fatigue. Daniel wears an oversized Christmas sweater with a Rudolph appliquéd on the front, complete with a light-up red nose. Before he closes the door behind him, he takes a last pull on his brown paper bag and chucks the package in a trashcan by the door. Minnie grimaces; she knows this is the sort of behavior that’s endangering his position at Maximum Creata. This is someone she imagines being able to swallow whole and fears will devour her entirely if given the chance. He is the one who makes her want to empty the liquor from her belly in one go, and here he is after all.

  Think the impossibility of beginning the build on a house, compare it to the decision to include Led Zeppelin in your music collection, remember trying to write your best friend’s eulogy.

  Minnie abandons any thoughts of leaving early. She prays being near Daniel in a social situation will create enough of a connection to get her through the night. Minnie is sure Daniel notic
es her and loves her back the way he loves every girl. In fact, Minnie is sure everyone likes her, or if they don’t know her, they notice and want to like her. She hates this inexplicable vanity and recognizes its false nature, what with its being rooted in blind faith and all. She knows this, but she also never performs the resource checks on her vile delusions. Half the time she doesn’t believe them herself. If the mind is a scientific article, hers will be ignored for missing references.

  Think supermodels going to self-esteem therapy, compare it to Bill Gates bouncing a check, remember the advice columns in Cosmo that suggest you play up your likable qualities to attract a man.

  Minnie’s sorrowful state syncs up perfectly with Daniel’s usual condition of misery. A self-diagnosed manic-depressive, Minnie’s moods shift for years at a time. She makes these judgments and tells no one. Minnie has put in her time as an optimist, reading SARK, buying “Carpe Diem”—type magnets to distribute to her friends. Now, Minnie feels like a completely different person. In private she reads heavy philosophy and in public she reads whatever’s been nominated for the most recent book award. Music is easier; everyone listens to sad music.

  Think the subliminal enculturation of depression chic, compare it to the uniformity of “Dare to Be Different” T-shirts, remember young girls’ homogenous drawings of horses.

  Minnie stands by herself at the center of several groups of people, but not in any of them. She stands and slowly rotates on the periphery of these clusters, pretending to be enthralled by the energy surrounding her but looking a little lost. When people try to draw her into conversations, she comments on how great it is to see everyone so happy. She knows she’s awkward and is convinced she likes this quality in herself because it makes everything exciting. She’s happy to never know what will come out of her mouth. In this position, turning between groups, she can pretend she doesn’t see Daniel approaching, but in all honesty her reason for moving around like this is so that she can keep an eye on him. She sees the red light of Daniel’s sweater peripherally as it comes toward the center of the room, and soon he is standing shoulder to shoulder with her and saying nothing. If she were an honest person, Minnie would sink into Daniel with relief, but instead she holds still, nodding and smiling at a story her coworker tells.

  Think an electron falling into its natural valence shell, post—“excited state,” compare it to a marker and its cap snapping together, remember how fabric starts to fray only where cuts are made.

  After a few moments of this direct shoulder-to-shoulder connection, Minnie Fishman makes the effort to speak. “So, I read this book, The Lightness of Being Unbearable, something like that—” she feels his shoulder shudder with laughter next to hers, and she continues in her nervously proper voice, “—and I was looking for someone to talk to about it.”

  Think of the constant running script of conversations that might occur, compare it to the coupling of scissor blades and the benefit of this marriage, remember Henry Miller and Anais Nin.

  Minnie and Daniel have spoken before. In all honesty, they kissed at last year’s Christmas party, but Minnie can’t be sure Daniel even remembers that. They were both soused. Just months before Daniel came to work in a T-shirt she recognized as being from her elementary school, and the coincidence was too great for her to keep her mouth shut. She asked where he’d gotten it, expecting to hear he’d happened upon it in a thrift store. Instead she learned that he’d just stopped seeing a girl Minnie had gone to school with. She did the math and discovered Daniel and his girlfriend must have still been together when he and Minnie had shared that kiss last December. Since then they’d nodded to each other when passing and occasionally eaten lunch together.

  Think meeting someone and realizing they’ve lived in the building next door to you for years, compare it to the drone of the emergency broadcast system, remember the fear of being buried by the possibility of words and being scared into silence.

  Minnie had been sitting in the lunch room a few weeks ago. Daniel sat down with a Hot Pocket and asked her, “Do you read?” Minnie knew he knew she read and was a snob about words and their usage. Minnie had been crowned “The Queen of the Red Pens” for the way she hacked at the advertising copy. Minnie knew he expected her to say, “Of course,” so instead she said, “Never.” She couldn’t hold it though and her disgusted scowl collapsed into a broad grin. He told her he’d just read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and he was thinking of starting a company book group. She nodded, seemingly indifferent, but as soon as she got home that night, she ordered the book. When it arrived she read it in one night. It may have been that she knew as soon as she read it she would have a reason to talk to him again. However, the thought of speaking to him, let alone coming up with intelligent things to say about a book, terrified her. Several months earlier she’d decided she needed to read all of the books on her shelf she’d been meaning to get around to. Each night she made her dinner and settled into the couch until she’d finished or fallen asleep, but sleep had been elusive lately. The books were an excuse to ignore the problem.

  Think deliberation disguised as psychosis, compare it to scoffing at laughter from the apartment next door, remember the claustrophobia of a syllogism.

  Back in the smoky, moist barroom, Minnie receives the response to her inquiry: a shoulder shrug and a smirk from Daniel.

  Think of it as a metaphor for the future of this relationship, compare people who are smart to the ones who are hungry, remember that time your ex-boyfriend called you masochistic and how it made you feel accomplished.

  Minnie shakes her head and walks away from his cryptic and lackluster response. An hour later she sits in a booth with coworkers and they are screaming along to some song that she loved when she was a teenager. They’re dancing in their seats—violently enough that they will feel an unfamiliar twist in their backs tomorrow. Daniel sits down next to her and grabs her hand and plants his face inches from hers. Minnie stops singing, but Daniel goes on. He sings and sings and Minnie manages to maintain both eye contact and her cool until the guitar part comes up and he leans in to whisper, “I bet I can freak you out.”

  Think of being one “yes” short of severely depressed on the online mental health scale, compare it to how you have to collapse as much air as you can from your lungs before you can use an asthma inhaler, remember you haven’t eaten anything but candy canes for the last ninety-six hours.

  Minnie doesn’t blink as she says, “Too late.” She is drunk and the heels of her shoes are skinny. She stumbles over him, out of the booth. She’s out the door and on the street before Daniel has even straightened his legs. He catches up as she climbs into a cab and he crawls in after her. This isn’t what Minnie Fishman wants, but she also doesn’t tell him to get out. When they get to her apartment, he tries to follow her and she says, without looking at him, “Let me know when you get home safely.”

  Think about all that business touting medium as message, compare it to statues whittled away to their craggy essence at the art museum, remember shouting, “Just kiss her already” at the movie screen.

  Back in her apartment, Minnie crawls into a leotard and huge black pants. She’s too keyed up to sleep. She puts some music on and dances, low to the ground and primitive. The phone breaks the flow.

  Think how words become benign in languages you don’t know, compare it to the satisfaction of a twist ending, remember smashing your forearm against the doorknob accidentally and admiring the deep shades of the bruise.

  “Minnie?” Daniel says. She asks if he got home okay, and of course he did. Daniel tells Minnie how happy he is they left. He tells her he can’t stand being around people lately but that he felt like he had to go to the work party, to put in an appearance and see if his feelings had changed. Minnie silently hates him for being the same as her, wishes neither of them were this self-centered. Her body bends to the memorized height of her couch cushions. They talk for an hour, and then Daniel asks Minnie what she’s doing. Minnie doesn’t answ
er. He knows. “Do you want to go to the Golden Nugget? I’m starving.” She says, “Just let me get my jacket,” and hangs up without waiting for details. Finally, she feels powerful.

  Think the fulfillment of peeling dried glue off your hands, compare it to a reverse-reverse psychology, remember that your definition of criticizing ads has always been to underline the phrases you like and the words you don’t.

  Minnie waits outside her building twenty minutes later, face scrubbed clean and her tousled hair scraped into a neat ponytail. Clear and flat. He pulls up in his blue car, hubcaps gone. Minnie climbs into the car, the stereo playing cheesy pop, not what she expected. They drive and listen to the music, and in a minute the CD stops. “Happens in the cold,” Daniel says. They ride the rest of the way getting by on grunts and quick exhalations. Both are overcome with nerve and reservation because they know the truth of the noises the other is emitting. They pull into the lot and no one moves.

  Think of the tense of your calves before you jump in the shark tank, compare it to red eyes showing up in photographs, remember the definite end to the warmth from the heaters of this ’93 Grand Am when its engine is off.

  Minnie is relieved that Daniel waits while she navigates the faulty passenger seat belt, but happier he doesn’t hold the Golden Nugget door open for her. Minnie hates chivalry because she doesn’t possess the presumption to demand it at all times. They sit down. It is empty and four a.m. The waitress takes their order. Daniel orders a skillet and a cup of coffee. Minnie orders chocolate milk, and Daniel’s face eases into a smile before he collapses with a whimper into his hands.