Love from Amanda to Zoey

by Ian Mark

  “You’re a jerk.” She said it softly.

  “Amanda?” She turned to me. “Can I take you to dinner tonight?” She smiled and nodded.

  So began the longest relationship I’d ever had. I never really got comfortable opening up to her. I had been telling the truth— I didn’t like hitting on girls then, and I liked it even less the older I got. But I still preferred it to the emotional intimacy of a relationship. I was a solitary person, and I figured I always would be.

  * * *

  I sat in my cubicle at work. I hadn’t even pretended to start working when Bob came by. He looked grayer than normal.

  “What’s up, Bob?” I plugged my phone into the charger. It had died sometime last night.

  “Not much, Zach, how are you?” He leaned against the wall of the cubicle and crossed one leg over the other. I logged onto Facebook to see if I had posted anything dumb last night and find out what happened to Kevin.

  “I’m alright, a little hungover. Anything I can do for you?” There was nothing of note on Facebook except a notification that Amanda had changed her relationship status. I changed mine to “it’s complicated” to be as much like a petty eighth grade girl as possible.

  “I was hoping you would drop in on that meeting later, you know, throw your two cents in and whatnot, just to show we’re on the same page with this.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Will you email me the details so I don’t forget?”

  “Course.” He pulled at the loop of his waistband. Bob was the kind of guy who didn’t like the casual dress code. He was more comfortable wearing a suit than the polo and khakis he wore today and every day. “See you there.” He made the short trip to the other side of the cubicle walls. I listened to him sit down. I could picture everything he did even though the wall prevented me from seeing him. Sit down, write a note to himself to email me, cough, take a sip of the shitty coffee from the break room, decide to send the email now, type out the details, sip the coffee, hit send.

  I heard a ping. I had one new email. I checked my phone. No calls from Amanda. Three from my mother. I decided to listen to the voicemail she left. It was a long message of little importance. She sounded frail. I hated that she didn’t sound as strong as she used to. She was a tough woman, my mother. She used to beat me and my dad in arm-wrestling. He didn’t like that. Always said she had an advantage because her arms were so short. My dad was an engineer.

  The only interesting thing my mother said was that she wanted me to meet some girl that was the friend or daughter or cousin of some acquaintance of hers. I called her back after I got off work.

  “Why are you trying to set me up with girls?”

  ”I saw on your Facebook that Amanda broke up with you. Are you OK?”

  I sighed. She would think that. I crossed the street to stop at the food trucks outside the NYU Stern building.

  “First off, I broke up with her.” I joined the line in front of the hibachi truck.

  “It doesn’t matter sweetie.” She didn’t believe me.

  “I did, Mom, why don’t you believe me?”

  “Oh, of course I believe you. Why didn’t you tell me?” It was my turn to order.

  “Can I get the shrimp and fried rice?” I handed over a ten. The old Korean man nodded and began making my meal, the wrinkles around his eyes becoming more pronounced as he worked. I stared at his ear hair.

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to have this conversation.”

  “What conversation?” She knew what I meant. She was going to make me say it.

  “The one where you ask if I’m okay and refuse to accept that I’m fine.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” The vendor put my food in a Styrofoam container, which he placed in a plastic bag. He added a few napkins and a fork and passed it through the window of the black and red truck to me. I nodded in thanks and headed off to eat my food. I cracked open the container and scooped out a little brown rice and a piece of the succulent shrimp. Just as I spooned it into my mouth, my mother decided I wasn’t going to say anything more and it was up to her to end the silence.

  “It’s just that… Zach,” I could see her searching for the right words. She stood in the kitchen of her new house, but I pictured her in our old house, like how she used to stand when I was a little kid and I would come home from playing outside and I’d be all muddy and she’d be on the phone. She would just look at me and smile and hold up a finger to tell me, wait. She used to lean against the door frame and curl her finger around the cord of the phone. She still used phones with cords to this day because she couldn’t understand how cordless ones worked. We had a bright red telephone that my dad brought home from some novelty shop. It had a rotary dial, that’s how old it was.

  “You always take breakups so hard. I don’t want you to react like last time.” She was referring to me crying after my ninth-grade girlfriend, Susan, broke up with me after three weeks. That was the last time I told my mother about any of my entanglements until Amanda insisted I change my relationship status.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom, really.” What I didn’t say was that my new strategy of coping was to get fucked up every time I thought of Amanda until the memory of proposing to her was completely erased due to alcohol and drug abuse.

  “I have to go, Mom.”

  “Okay, sweetie. Call me soon, I want you to meet Zoey, I really think you’ll like her.”

  “All right, Mom, fine.” Who knows? I thought, Maybe Zoey is the one. A cynical smile crossed my face.

  “I love you,” she said. Every single phone conversation we’ve had since I was a freshman in college had ended like this one.

  “Goodbye, Mom.” I tapped end call. Finally, I thought, Now I can eat. I removed the Styrofoam container from the plastic bag and sat down. I had wandered without realizing it into the middle of Washington Square Park. It wasn’t too cold, so I decided to stay. The trees were beginning to rebound from a harsh winter, and their variety of greens cheered me up. It never ceased to amaze me the effect simple colors can have on our brain chemistry and subsequently our moods.

  I carried the container and the bag in each hand as I walked towards the fountain. It wasn’t on, of course, and a group of kids were standing in the middle of it. A middle-aged woman was organizing them for a photo with the arch in the background. I walked around the opposite side so I was directly between the kids and the arch. I threw the plastic bag in a black metal trash can as I moved. I found a space in between two of the shorter kids where I could see the woman’s camera. I heard her counting down to take the picture. I pulled my hood on with my left hand and put on the goofiest face I could while staring into the camera. The flash went off, and I moved on.

  I sat down on one of the benches along the middle circle of the park, around the fountain. The difference between now and what it would be like in a few months was striking-- there were few kids, fewer colors, and the mood was more just one of persistence at getting through the day rather than hopefulness. I saw students rushing to class, businessmen talking loudly on their phones and none of the carefree people, of all ages, that fill the park when it’s warm out.

  I ate slowly, making up stories for the students as they passed. There goes a pre-med who just wants to be in Tisch but her parents won’t let her. There goes a Sternie whose GPA has steadily dropped over the course of the semester and now he won’t get a job while all his friends start working on Wall Street. Watch as he tries to hide the quiet desperation that has filled him since he realized one year, 3 months, two weeks and five days ago that he just wasn’t good enough, no matter how hard he worked, to succeed in the field he had spent years and thousands of dollars in loans studying. It was the eyes. They could never hide the eyes. He dressed in the business casual of a Sternie, and he looked good. Maroon button-down with a black skinny tie, and black pants. Handsome, his shoulder-length black hair and strong jawline gave him the fac
e needed to succeed in business. But his light brown eyes cried out as he walked by, revealing the shortcomings of the brain behind them. I surmised all this in between bites of shrimp and fried egg, in the five seconds it took him to walk across my field of vision. I did not turn my head to watch.

  Bzzz. A text message. I removed my phone from my jeans and noticed a stain near the crotch. Damn. It looked like I might have to put on a new pair for the first time in a few days. Yo wassup man? It was Randy. Eatin lunch. Randy had graduated summa cum laude a year before me from CAS. That’s the College of Arts and Sciences. He was unemployed. Just picked up. You wanna swing by after work? He spent his time getting high and yelling at his mom for yelling at him to get a job and move out. Sure.

  I finished my shrimp and rice. I grabbed a few strands of rice and squeezed them together. I licked my fingers as I stood and threw out my container. The trash was full and I struggled to squeeze it in. As I walked away, a gust of wind blew the uppermost trash off the pile, including my container. Fuck. I ignored it. I pictured my dad lecturing me as he stuffed the trash down in the kitchen of our old home about being responsible. Then I went back and got my container and carried it to the next trash can.

  * * *

  When I got to Randy’s mother’s apartment, it was evident he had started without me. I had gotten off work later than usual. The walk to Randy’s always took longer than it should too. I got so distracted. Randy lived out on Avenue C in Alphabet City. I walked down West 8th, and the transition from upper class Greenwich Village to run-down Avenue C always caught my eye. Each block was a step lower down the social ladder. As you went, the number of boarded-up buildings went up, and the number of white people went down.

  I arrived at Randy’s mother’s dilapidated apartment building and pressed the button next to Amendola. I noticed the increase in graffiti since my last visit. FUCK IT, it said in curly black letters just to the left of the door. Under that was an unintelligible symbol presumably indicating authorship of the above. The buzzer rang. I pushed the door open and stepped over the broken vodka bottles in the entryway. A middle-aged black woman with wizened skin and thin curly hair dyed black looked me over. She turned away. She didn’t dislike me, she felt no emotion towards me whatsoever. I climbed the three flights to Randy’s tiny one bedroom, taking care to skip the step I knew our mutual friend Clyde had puked on recently.

  Randy opened the door wearing athletic shorts and an open blue button-down over a beater. He was barefoot. A wave of smoke followed behind him. The smell hit me like a man finally giving in to temptation and beating his wife.

  “Kev’s already here.” Randy smiled. I hadn’t said anything funny, so I figured they’d been smoking for a while. The corners of his mouth poked out from beneath his bushy brown mustache, and he ran a hand through his greasy hair.

  “How’s the job hunt coming?” I walked past him and grabbed the joint he was holding. I placed it in my mouth and inhaled deeply. Pinching it between my teeth, I was able to continue smoking while removing my shoes and jacket.

  “Fuck you,” Randy said. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my question or my theft of his marijuana. I took the five steps through the kitchen and past the bathroom, barely looking at the mounting pile of dirty dishes stacked in the sink and general messiness of the apartment. “There’s a lot of people out there looking for the Art History major that’s going to put their company over the top.” I turned to look at him. Five years ago, he had been on top of the world. His whole future ahead of him. So many paths to choose from. He had chosen badly, and all the potential in the world couldn’t help him walk back the other way down that path and choose again. I finished the joint and threw it in the overflowing trash.

  “That sucks, man, you know I’m just messin’ around.” I nodded towards the disgusting kitchen. “Devin leave again?”

  “Quit calling her that.”

  “That’s her name, ain’t it?”

  “She’s my mom.”

  “You want me to call her Mrs. Amendola?” I smirked at him. He walked past me into the bedroom that was apparently now his.

  “Whatever man, let’s just get high.” No argument from me. I followed Randy and his personal smoke cloud into the bedroom. Kevin sat on the bed, shoes off, head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. I could barely see him from all the smoke. He was still wearing most of his suit from work, though the jacket was discarded over by the window, lying on the floor. I noticed the tiny wire pulled from the smoke detector above me. Randy joined Kevin on the bed, I took the only chair in the room, an old cushioned rocking chair, the color of which could only be described as burnt mustard. It had patches on it where Randy’s cat Washington had scratched at it. Kevin passed Randy the blunt he was holding. He picked up a bong. I caught Randy’s eye and looked at the vaporizer in the corner. He nodded.

  Kevin started coughing. He put the bong down quickly. After a few moments, he took the blunt back from Randy, who picked up the bong. Kevin took a hit.

  “So what happened with that Kate girl last night man?” His voice was lower than normal from the smoke. I packed the vape and answered without looking up.

  “I got laid man. You?”

  “Nah, she just wanted to fool around.” Randy and Kevin laughed. I wasn’t high yet.

  “They were only freshman, you know that?” I looked up now. Kevin and Randy were each tugging on the bong. The blunt had gone out. I pulled open the dresser next to me and took out a pre-rolled joint. I tossed it on the bed. Randy won, and Kevin dejectedly picked up the joint.

  “Yeah, I kind of figured when we went back to Hayden. The Miley Cyrus poster also gave me a clue.” He looked around for a lighter, dramatically patting his t-shirt as if he had a breast pocket and then checking his back pockets. He knew he didn’t have a lighter, he was just making it obvious he wanted one. I reached for my peacoat.

  “That doesn’t bother you? They said they were seniors.” I unzipped the inside pocket of my coat and pulled out a condom and my Bic. I tossed the Bic to Kevin and put the condom back in the pocket. Kevin missed the lighter and it fell next to the bed.

  “Nah, man. Look, you’ve been out of the scene for a while with Amanda. But that’s just kind of the way it works.” Kevin found the lighter and expertly lit up the joint. Randy coughed from behind the bong.

  ‘What do you mean?” I noticed for the first time what was bugging me. It wasn’t the cliche Bob Marley posters Randy had put up in Devin’s absence, or the strikingly incongruous Van Gogh copy that he had hung up above the headboard. There was no music playing.

  “Well as you--”

  I cut Kevin off. “Randy can we play some tunes man? It’s so quiet in here.”

  Randy jumped at his name. “Sure man, I just don’t wanna be too loud, the landlord’s been looking for rent and I don’t have it.” He got up off the bed and grabbed his MacBook. It was still covered in NYU-related stickers. Macklemore quietly filled the silence. Kevin looked vacant, but was alert enough to take advantage of Randy’s absence and grab the bong. He passed the joint, which was down to a stub, to Randy as he sat back down.

  “What were you sayin’ Kev?” I wanted to hear this. I wanted as many girls as possible in the next few weeks. I needed to win this break-up, to show Amanda she should ask me to come back. I needed any advice I could get, even from Kevin, who could be kind of a creep when it came to women.

  “I don’t remember.” Kevin looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “It’s simple, Zach.” Randy cut in. He finished the joint and looked at me. I reached into the drawer and tossed him another. The vape had heated up, so I leaned down and took a deep, long hit. I looked back up. Randy was preparing for a speech. He always talked the most when we got high. Amanda frowned at me in my head and I felt a headache coming on. I took another hit. God, I wanted to be high.

  “You, well, we, are getting older. The age of girls that are looking for one-night stands has remained the same as it was when we
were freshman.” Randy enunciated each word clearly. It was like he was back in college, serving as a TA and loving it. “The women that are our age are starting to look towards stage two, and they don’t want a guy who will sleep with them and never call them.” Kevin pulled at his tie in discomfort.

  “Just take it off man,” I said to him. He didn’t respond. I took another hit of the vaporizer. And another. My chest started to feel warm. Ahhh.

  “Kevin.” He looked up. “Just take the tie off if it’s so annoying.”

  “Ahhh, I would. I just always forget it when we leave.”

  “I’ll remind you.” I looked back to Randy. He appeared to have forgotten he was talking. He ran his hand through his hair. “What do you mean, stage two? What is that?” I took another hit of the vaporizer. I blew the vapor out towards the smoke detector and laughed.

  Randy brightened. He had all these theories of life. I was sure this was another one, that he would describe passionately until he tripped again and came up with a new one. “It’s my new theory. There are two stages to life, right? Potential and realization. We spend the first twenty-two years of our lives talking about potential.” He stopped talking suddenly. He looked out the window. “Did you hear that?”

  Kevin and I glanced at each other. “What?”

  “I thought I heard the doorbell.”

  “You’re getting paranoid, man,” Kevin started making strange faces at Randy. “You scared of your landlord? Or your mommy?” Randy punched Kevin’s arm. I took a hit. Kevin punched Randy’s arm. I laughed. They both looked at me and started giggling. Randy stopped and got serious. A bead of sweat glistened as it slid from the side of his left eye down his scruffy cheek.

  “So for two decades we have people helping us. Tryin’ to get us to be our best, and helping us pick a career. We have so many options. Then we pick. That’s the end of stage one.”