by Iris Smyles
A thin sleep, punctuated by the Bacchanalian screams issuing out from the Oprah program. I imagined Jess and me running into each other months from now. I wouldn’t expect to see him. He’d be the furthest thing from my mind. But then there he’d be on the sidewalk and, naturally, we’d stop to talk. I’d be beautiful and stoic, and with a look we’d say everything and nothing; we wouldn’t laugh at all.
6
I emerged from my bedroom at 6:00 PM and found The Bastard watching the baseball game on the small kitchen TV with the foil crunched around its antenna. He was eating spaghettied lettuce with jam instead of sauce. He had cut the lettuce into long thin strands and then boiled it.
He said he’d heard about an office party of a friend of a friend’s and we could head over to midtown at around 8:00 PM. I went to the fridge and retrieved a couple beers from what was left of an eighteen pack. I handed one to The Bastard.
“Wanna play backgammon?” he said, turning the sound off on the TV and heading over to the stereo to put on his favorite CD, Felix’s Cool Hits Volume IV. He’d made it upstate at his mom’s and brought it with him. It included Daft Punk’s “One More Time.”
“Sure,” I said, cracking a beer. “But then I need to figure out what to wear. You have to help me.” Back in college, I tested my outfits on May. Now I have The Bastard.
We played a round of backgammon and then Felix watched baseball and danced, while I tried on dresses and asked his opinion. Then we danced together, and after that we were ready to go. We played one more round of backgammon for the road and chugged our beers. I lit a cigarette and regretted it while smoking it. “I like everything about smoking except for the actual smoking,” I said, puzzled, putting it out halfway through.
We took the subway uptown and played a word game. I said, “Sh,” and Felix said, “ishkebob.” I said, “Sh,” and Felix said, “atner comma William.”
We made it to Thirty-third Street and walked down the wrong side of the block three times before we found the address and walked in behind some girls. “Well, what do we have here?” The Bastard cooed when we got on the elevator. The girls giggled.
The elevator doors opened and a rush of music flooded in. We stepped out into a large wood-lined loft with great windows framing the night on all sides. We followed the music past a maze of cubicles before arriving in an open space—a makeshift dance floor lined with clusters of office personel, a DJ booth, a bar, and a young man tinkering with a multi-colored light fixture as a woman looked on, holding his drink.
I went to the bar and got a beer but couldn’t finish it. I took a seat on the side somewhere and stared wearily out at the party, at the men and women gyrating jerkily, caught in a limbo state between drunk enough to dance but not drunk enough to dance well. Others stood on the side, laughing at their “crazy” co-workers. A woman cut in on a group of guys by grabbing one of their behinds before breaking away in blushing laughter. Three women in identical pencil skirts and a variety of bangs scowled in the corner with crossed arms. One removed a compact from her purse and reapplied her lipstick.
Normally I am very active at parties—dancing, telling jokes, meeting people, inventing games—but I felt so tired right then. I thought about the night before, about Felix turning green on the sofa after we smoked that blunt, about my wet oxford shirt, about the faces of Jess and the girl becoming larger and smaller after I’d gone on stupidly, “These are the rules to Awakenings. . . .”
A suited man a few feet in front of me began twirling his dance partner really fast. She spun and spun and almost fell before he caught her by the waist; they both laughed. The music was loud and the floor was loud, too. When people danced by, it groaned as if it were tired from holding everyone up. I started groaning with it, the way you do when you’re home alone sick and you know no one can hear you. I watched everyone and felt almost good that I was feeling bad, that I was allowed as a result to sit out this round. I took out my phone to see if Jess had texted.
A man with blonde hair came over and insisted I dance with him. He had an accent. “I am from Sweden,” he explained. He was very handsome: chiseled jaw, blue eyes, possessed of that rare yet conventional beauty that requires no special beholder. I refused him three or four times. I never say no to dancing but I was feeling so bad. He confused my saying no with my playing hard to get, and so he came on stronger. Finally I agreed just to get him off my back.
He held me in his arms and told me all sorts of things about his career and life, most of which I don’t remember. I found him boring and my head felt so hot. He complimented me on my rosy cheeks.
We danced and danced. He threw me back and forth and I grew irritated because I thought he was breathing more than necessary; I didn’t care for the sound. He said I was very beautiful, which made me feel sad instead of happy. I tried to right myself and store his compliment in the appropriate part of my brain, but couldn’t. I felt so odd. Like all my emotions were outside of me, clustered in different parts of the room. And as he threw me this way and that—now I was dancing in happiness, now melancholy, now dread—none of it felt at all real, because I knew we were only going to move again. What would any of it matter after we left that part of the room, after we left that part of the night? The Swedish man came on stronger. He begged to know what I was thinking.
Finally, I told him: “Look, I like you. I’m just not in the mood, okay?”
He told me he wanted to take me ice-skating tomorrow in Central Park. He told me he wanted to take me to the Museum of Natural History. He laid out all the dates you plan when you’re about to start a big romance, a new relationship in the beginning of winter or the end of fall depending on how you see things. He described the things you do with another person when you are less sure of your feelings than of your desire to feel them. He suggested dates that are so romantic in themselves that you don’t even have to be. Perfect moments in which you might feel nothing, but it doesn’t matter, because at a well-lit restaurant you can order a fish, because he can just dance you over to the part of the room where love is, and there, together, you can sway for a while and at the end of it, go home.
I said goodbye, and he grabbed me around the waist. He said, “Don’t leave like this. I want to see you again.” He looked into my eyes, and I nearly laughed—who was he looking at?
The Bastard crashed on my couch again that night. The dry spell had followed him to the party and he’d left empty-handed. He found me waiting for him in the hallway, my face burning, my throat scratchy. “I think I’m getting sick,” I said.
On the subway, Felix didn’t say much. I went quiet as well. I thought about the shape of my heart and pondered its many unseen sides. I thought about it like an old carousel, like the one in Bryant Park already closed for winter, with people all the time getting on and off. All these people whom you expect will always be in your life—Martin, May—go away, while some guy you met in the bathroom of a dorm party, some guy who made a joint disappear into thin air, turns up years later and takes up residence on your couch. He’s the one you talk to.
I felt like my heart was spinning in my chest, like it was going so fast that there was no time for anyone to get on or off anymore, like all I could do was hold on tight so I didn’t fly off, too. “I don’t want a relationship either,” I’d told Jess as we slow danced. “I was with someone for a very long time and now I just want to have fun. This, this is just fun.”
At home, I went to my bedroom and shut the door leaving Felix alone in the living room at the computer. I changed into my pajamas and lay in bed with the phone on the pillow next to me. I thought of Martin, about our movie. Perhaps it would end with us meeting as friends, me looking at him over a cup of coffee, saying how it was hard at first, the first few months after our breakup, how for a long time, I wasn’t ready, but now I am. “I’m ready to get back out there, I think, ready to try dating again. You know anyone who might be right for me?”
And then, as if it were the furthest thing from our minds,
I’d notice him and he’d notice me. We’d look at each other with surprise and delight, with the expression one wears while tripping on destiny in a romantic comedy. We’d look at each other as if we were the freshest idea and simultaneously the obvious answer, as if audiences everywhere had never stopped rooting for us.
And then I got an idea for an experiment. The kind of thing that was just too funny not to do. The kind of thing I absolutely had to do “for science.” I opened my phone and typed in the dark. “So I hear you’re single again. . . .” I paused for a second and then sent it to Jess. I’ll email May about all of this tomorrow, I thought. She’ll think it’s hilarious.
Then, tired from all the falling in love, I shut my eyes and tried to fall asleep instead. Felix was still up puttering around in the next room. I could hear him tapping softly at the computer, probably answering another email from another girl who rides the subway every day, some lonely girl who saw his post on Missed Connections, a complete stranger who “felt it too.”
CHAPTER 2
THE CAPTAIN
He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion of these despised things, which were so far beneath his planning for the future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime minister of England; and she spoke, involuntary in a lowered voice, with deference:
“What do you want to be?” she asked.
George answered promptly.
“A yachtsman,” he said.
BOOTH TARKINGTON, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
ON HEARING OF my plan to sell the T-shirts via eBay, The Bastard became excited and suggested that the shelf once emptied could be his room. “It’s practically a crawl space!” Felix shouted, motioning toward the boxes and bags still filling it. “My own place,” he dreamed aloud, “I could bring girls back here. . . .”
I became excited, too. In selling the shirts, not only might I make a little money, but I’d be performing a good deed by providing a home for The Bastard. With this in mind, The Captain came over with his digital camera yesterday.
We began by spreading a sheet from my bed across the bedroom door to affect a professional backdrop. We had to hang it a few different ways before we could find an area without blood stains.
“Get off my back!” I yelled at The Captain after he made another crack about it.
“I’m not on your back,” The Captain said lethargically. The Captain’s always lethargic. And pale.
“Yes, you are. You’re right on it. And you can get right off! I’m a woman. We bleed. It’s a sign of my fertility. I’d be very turned on right now if I were you.”
The Captain—tall; pale, like the deck of a ship bleached by sun, salt, and air; and lethargic—looked at me and suppressed a smile. Or perhaps he was actually trying to smile but could only muster a crease. It’s hard to tell with him. I went into the bedroom to change into my first shirt and underwear set.
A few nights ago over drinks, he promised to help me set up an eBay store where I could sell my shirts. “It’s really easy,” he said. “I can help you with it, if you want. We’ll just need to take some pictures.”
The plan was that I’d model each shirt, and then we’d crop my face out afterwards. I confess I was excited to resume my modeling career. “I was a foot model back in high school,” I yelled from the bedroom. You should see my instep! I was the envy of all my classmates in ballet school,” I went on, and then added that it was my dream to be a plus-size model.
“I thought you wanted to be a writer.”
I re-emerged from behind the door. “That’s my other dream. Hand me a cookie.”
He looked around. “I don’t think you’re big enough to be a plus-size model.”
My face fell.
The Captain rushed to soothe me. “You’re too skinny, I mean.”
I pointed to the Mint Milanos next to a pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. The Captain reached in the bag and handed me one as if it were a single rose.
I took a bite. “Just look at all this gristle,” I said, chewing and pinching my thighs as if they were Salisbury steaks.
“You could be a ‘skinny but flabby’ model. Is that a category?”
“Skinny but flabby, yeah. . . .” I considered, before wiping away the crumbs that had fallen onto my navy blue “Second Base” T-shirt.
The Captain snapped a few shots while I held in my stomach. “Tell me when you’re going to take the picture so I can hold my breath.”
The windows in my apartment are pretty large, and for a second we both looked out, wondering what the people across the street would think. I’d bought a set of blinds a while back but never bought a drill with which to install them, so I did the next best thing, which was to lay the rolled-up blinds on the floor beneath the window. They’re pretty nice blinds. I tried to get the ones James Stewart has in Rear Window. I’m a big fan of most if not all of Hitchcock’s window treatments.
“It kinda looks like we’re shooting amateur porn,” The Captain said. “Especially because you have all those weird bruises.”
“They’re decorative!” I said defensively, regarding a big one on the back of my thigh—from a party last weekend. I kept going in and out a window to smoke on the fire escape and got all banged up. “It’s amazing that it’s left such a mark,” I said, examining it. “It didn’t hurt at all at the time. Do you think I might have that disease where you can’t feel pain?”
“Alcoholism?”
“No. I think it’s called something else. Hold on, the sheet is slipping. Maybe we should tape it.... Captain, hand me the tape.”
After securing the backdrop, we moved on to the underwear, a black cotton bikini bottom. “Turn around so I can get the words on the back.”
I turned around so that my butt, covered by a swatch of black fabric with hot pink letters that read, “Bad Ass,” was facing him. “How’s that?” I said, straining to look over my shoulder.
“Hmmm,” he said, positioning the camera at various angles, searching for a flattering angle of my backside. For the shirts I’d been able to suck in, but we were a little stumped as to what to do about my sagging rear. “Hmmmm,” he said again.
“Maybe I can, like, tape it or something.”
I’d heard celebrities use tape for photo shoots, so I tried to improvise with a role of scotch tape from my drawing table. It didn’t work. After a couple minutes I just had a bunch of tape hanging off my butt.
“It looks like you’ve sprained your ass,” he said.
We troubled over this for a long time. “I don’t want people to take the phrase “Bad Ass” literally,” I worried aloud. “Like Bad—out-of-shape—Ass. No one’s going to want to buy that.”
“Your ass is not bad.”
“But it’s not good, either. No one’s going to want to buy these if they think it’s going to make them look like me,” I said, poking at one of my sad cheeks. “Sad Ass,” I mumbled, considering a new design.
Then The Captain had an idea. He suggested we do a shot with the underwear around my ankles.
“I have great ankles!” I said, trying to recover my confidence, which is very important for a model. So I put on my Ocean Pacific swimming trunks with the pictures of blowfish and seaweed on them and lowered my Bad Ass underwear to my ankles, which is when we encountered the next problem.
I hadn’t shaved my legs in a while. I hate shaving my legs; it always makes me pensive. I’ll be in the shower lathering up and think, if time and space are infinite, my existence will recur an infinite number of times, which means I’ll be shaving forever....
“Should I shave them right now?”
“No, it’s alright. I can just fix it in Photoshop later. Same as the bruises,” he said, fiddling with the camera.
The Captain snapped a few shots of the underwear around my ankles, but the pictures were still not coming out quite right. “Let’s take a break,” I said and repaired to th
e kitchen. “I’ll be right there. I’m just going to heat up some dinner,” I called out before setting the microwave.
“What’s that crackling?” The Captain said.
“The silver lining on your dinner. I don’t have any microwave-safe dishes. But these only have one or two trimmings of silver, so it just crackles—harmless optimism,” I said, waving my hand and then jumped with excitement upon the microwave’s last beep.
“Mmm, this is an old family recipe,” I lied, bringing out a bowl of raw carrots, paprika, a keychain with a wooden tropical fish dangling from it that a taxi driver sent me in a handwritten letter following a long drunken ride, a few marbles, and a pair of purple sparkly shoelaces in a soup of warm milk.
The Captain watched as I set the bowl down on my coffee table. “Do you think it needs pepper?” I asked, worried I under-seasoned it.
“What is it?” he said, suppressing a sneer, or trying to sneer. Again, not sure.
“It’s my own recipe. Take a photo! I want to make a whole cookbook. I have about five recipes so far. My favorite is grilled lampshade drizzled with Tic Tacs in a balsamic vinaigrette over a bed of pencil shavings. I haven’t made it yet, I just wrote down the idea. I’ll make it for you next time. We can do the book together if you want. We can wear fake mustaches in our author photos. Or,” I said, standing up, “dress up as gorillas.” I always stand when I get excited. I was excited, imagining us as gorillas.
The Captain took a quick shot of me, and then another of my dish.
I repositioned myself in front of the backdrop and posed.
After about an hour, we were finished. We still had a few shirts left to photograph but decided to save them for another time, to just start with a few for now. I took a couple of beers from the fridge and gave one to The Captain and then sat on the couch and lit a cigarette. Then I got up and went to the stereo and tried to find something good to play.