Private Citizens: A Novel

by Tony Tulathimutte

  “Good. Did you follow up on my email?”

  “Yeah, I went to Handshake. Helpful, I guess.”

  “Will you be home for the seder? Deedee’s coming.”

  “I really can’t. Things are crazy here.” Cory figured she could absorb some blame. “I guess they’re always crazy, though.”

  “De te fabula narratur,” Barr intoned.

  When she hung up, all was silent except for the trickling circulations of the radiator. She itched and felt afraid, but it didn’t matter. What difference did the existence of one frightened heart make on the scale of calamity? The optimistic forecasts gave us fifty years until the seas rose, then drought, mass displacement, resource wars. It was perverse: You wanted scientific consensus to be wrong about the ice core data, the carbon bomb in the permafrost, the declining albedo. You prayed that the delusional idiots were right. But the only comfort was that they’d suffer too.

  Cory went to the office kitchenette and used a belt and a green company T-shirt to lash a sack of ice to her crotch in an improvised breechcloth. She brought Pascal’s almond butter from the office fridge into the bathroom and sat on the rim of the bathtub with the light off, paddling scoops of almond butter onto her tongue. She chewed until it liquefied and spat it into the toilet in a gummy blob, flushing at every fifth spit.

  Returning to her bedsheet on the floor, she rolled her blanket into the width of a person and threw her limbs around it until it warmed to her own body and breath, which never failed to feel like she was embracing something she loved.

  Interlude: 2004

  For the rest of junior year the four of them are airtight, eating all their dinners together and avoiding campus parties in favor of grilling on the rooftop porch at Will and Henrik’s co-op. Will is briefly suspended for assault; he switches rooms with Linda upon his return, and everything is normal. Every day it’s studying and drinking Sierra Nevada and doing whatever drugs are on hand. They stage a moonlight raid of the cactus garden with hacksaws to steal three stalks of San Pedro and brew them into a viscous bitter olive-drab tea, which they drink in Henrik and Linda’s room, then watch the windows drip off the walls. For senior year they will land two adjoining rooms in the queer-friendly co-op.

  To celebrate Linda’s nineteenth birthday, Henrik finds a riverside cabin to housesit after spring break, and the four of them drive up to Guerneville in Will’s Camry. With an open beer between her bare knees, Linda lights cigarettes two at a time and feeds one to Henrik while he drives, the filter tacky with lip gloss. At a Korean convenience store they take pictures of the sign on the broken refrigerator that says NOT COOL. Cory plays a Joanna Newsom album and Linda calls it Eine Kleine Vagina. Over the roar of highway air they play road games. “I got one. The Sun Also Rises in My Butt.”

  “Their Eyes Were Watching God in My Butt.”

  “Shakespeare’s comedies. The Taming of the Shrew in My Butt.”

  “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

  “As You Like It.”

  “How about movies—A Few Good Men . . .”

  The car pulls into a long dirt driveway. While everyone else drags backpacks and coolers into the cabin, Linda claims the master bedroom by sprinting in and stripping off her clothes everywhere, inspecting the rooms; she walks out to the deck in her underwear to find Henrik in a primal Midwestern tableau, stacking a pyramid of charcoal in a grill beside a rack of Coors Light, his curly hair squashed out from under his ball cap. Will trips Henrik when he walks by and Henrik shoves him off his chair, then pulls him back up, both laughing. Cory rolls her eyes: dude energy off-puts her. She takes a deep chest hit off of her pipe and proposes a hike, but Will hates fresh air and Linda has cramps, so Cory and Henrik drive off to the Armstrong Redwoods.

  They hike a ruddy walking trail through the chirping forest, whose pillared trees vault straight to heaven. Hiking with Henrik is like walking an obedient dog: silent and inquisitive, occasionally pausing to sniff a plant or inspect a fat banana slug flexing across the path. He lets it crawl over his finger. Cory realizes she’s never been alone with Henrik for more than a few minutes, and that everything she knows about him comes through Linda. The trail is abrupted by a puddle so large and still that Cory wants to rest for a bit rather than disturb it.

  “It was nice of you to plan this trip,” she says, propped on a log mangy with slime-green moss. Henrik nods in acknowledgment. “You do so much stuff for Linda,” she adds, implying some distant insult.

  “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday. I’d be an asshole if I didn’t.”

  “Well, she can be tricky. Especially when people do nice things for her.”

  “I figured she’d like getting off campus. She always complains how she never got to travel or do nature stuff growing up.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. It’s not so easy to get gratitude out of her. She’s not super forgiving. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m being such a B-word,” Cory says.

  Henrik stands in a patch of sunlight nearby. “I know what you mean. She hides most of her warm feelings in this impenetrable performed aggression, partly to indulge this idea of herself as transgressive, partly out of the tendency to repay poor treatment, partly for attention, and partly because she suspects she won’t be taken seriously no matter what she does. Since I’m the nearest I wind up taking the biggest hits. I can’t strictly say I even trust her. But it’s moot because I’m aware of all that and still love her. If that makes me a doormat I guess I don’t care. That must sound all kinds of screwed up, and probably you’ll say something about me having to respect myself and be my own person in order to function in a relationship, but self-esteem is secondary to me. I’ll do anything for her. My only goal is to make her happy; that’s it.”

  This, and Henrik’s secretive smile, makes Cory fluttery and a little sick of herself. She should be grossed out by his total self-abasement, but she’s only envious; she too would settle for being the doormat. Why is she trying to solicit damning opinions from him? To bait him into revealing something that she can report back to Linda, or to form a bond with him that excludes Linda? Despicable either way. She gets up from the fence and starts off straight through the puddle, getting cold mud in her sandals. “That’s really nice, Henrik.”

  Around then, Will is browsing the VHS collection in the cabin’s darkened living room with Linda curled like a prawn on the couch behind him. He recites kitschy taglines. “Five Kids. One Sea Lion. No Rules,” he says. “It’s called Slappy and the Stinkers. Oh god, and here’s a copy of Mac and Me. Wait—what if the guy who owns these is being ironic too?”

  Linda moans. Her cramps feel surgical. “I hope my uterus is still under warranty.”

  “Did the Tylenol kick in yet?”

  “No, but the Xanax and Percocet did.”

  “Ever wonder what it’s like to be sober?”

  “Ever wonder what it’s like to get laid?”

  Will makes a strange whinny intended as laughter. Linda sits up. “No way.”

  “What?” he sulks.

  “You’re a virgin? Dude.”

  “Whatever. Like it’s not obvious.”

  “But you’ve kissed someone before, right? On the mouth?”

  Will turns away and changes through a few phases of matter. “You should take thirty more of those pills.”

  “Gosh. Can I give you some advice?”

  “You’re seventeen.”

  “Eighteen today! Seriously, this is some vital inner-sanctum girl info. Come here and I’ll whisper it to you. I need to tell your brain directly.”

  “Oh wonderful, advice.” He goes and takes a knee beside her where she’s lying. “I’ve gotten every piece of girl advice there is to give. You can’t tell me shit.”

  “No, this is a secret. Nobody knows it but me, and I’m telling it to you,” she says. Her breath, slightly foul, moistens his ear. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s okay to touch girls. All you gotta do is convince us to want you
to.”

  “No shit. That’s your secret?”

  “Out of desire, curiosity, pity, boredom, it all works. If all you want is to touch.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “It is easy. I would say too easy.”

  She turns his head by the chin and moves in to collide with a kiss that he tries to feint, only she presses on to lunge off the couch until he’s on his back. She clutches his shirt in both fists and all he registers is force, his glasses mashing against his eyelids. It’s not pleasurable and feels nothing like the crook of his elbow. When she lets him go, she slaps his cheeks bracingly, pap-pap-pap.

  “You’re such an asshole,” he says. “That’s not even an original move.”

  “What, you don’t like secrets? Come on, I didn’t even use tongue.”

  Will gets up and goes into the bathroom so she can’t see him pout. His face in the mirror looks the same. “Henrik will not be thrilled about this,” he calls out.

  “Go ahead and tell him. He’ll think it’s funny.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Bro, quit tripping! I just did you a favor. You made out with a barely legal teen. Now you’re blessed.”

  Sometime later the screen door squeaks open, and Cory and Henrik enter carrying grocery bags. “You guys have fun?” Cory says.

  “Both of us very much!” Linda says, across the room from Will, who folds his arms.

  The day is still bright and Linda’s cramps have yielded, so she puts on her black bikini, Henrik mats down his chest hair with sunscreen, and they both drop molly and take turns inflating the muddy blue raft they find under the porch, its valve smelling like a new shower curtain. The two of them float down Russian River on their mingled breath, straddling a picnic basket. Hot sunlight hits them through damp water-cooled air. Henrik drags his arm in the dimpled brown water, the raft turning as it glides. A jumping smallmouth bass tail-whips a spiral of water beads into the air. They discover a slow leak when their butts start sinking into the raft. Henrik can’t swim, so they get out and cling to the raft and tread water. When it’s fully deflated they kick themselves over to the shore, taking their picnic basket and abandoning the raft to the current.

  Dripping, shaky, they limp over the searing gravelly bank that dries their footprints instantly and spread out their picnic. The sun keeps dimming to a sharp white pupil behind shredded clouds. Linda feels dementedly carefree, gorging on bread and smoked gouda, summer sausage and Peroni. “Look”—she wedges the empty bottle up into herself almost to the label. Briefly she’s reminded of impressing Gavin by jumping into the lake, but no, this is empowering, she’s establishing the terms of what’s permissible. To dare herself better, get him to follow.

  They return to the cabin just after sunset stinking of each other. Linda turns on the outdoor hot tub without bothering to skim out the slimy leaves and acorns that have fallen through the vinyl cover. They climb in before the tub warms, the cool water scalding the sunburns on her back and arms. Once the tub is going, she sees Henrik staring at her with an oblique smile, and she lets him, slumping down to let the scummy froth tickle her chin. She wonders if she’s gone too far in letting him please her this much, whether she has any obligation to turn down favors; but let him enjoy himself, she thinks.

  When they enter the cabin wrapped in soaking towels, Cory and Will are playing Scrabble next to the spattering fireplace. Henrik and Linda change and make out in the bedroom before rejoining the others. “Will ate all the guacamole,” Cory says.

  “I offered you some,” Will says. “You’re the one who got me stoned. Hang on.” He plays the letters IMSO_Y and laughs until he coughs. “See? I’m sorry.”

  They keep playing, with Linda advising Cory over her shoulder, and Henrik pecks around Will’s iPod looking for Beach Boys songs to play through the TV speakers. A barn owl makes predatory screams outside the open window. Beer yields to wine.

  “Hey, guys?” Henrik says, standing up. “I want to say something.”

  The attention crystallizes. They are all curious to hear what an occasional speech from Henrik will sound like, and he thought he would come up with something, but he decides it would be grandiose and goes straight to the crux. No need for a ring, he just gets down on his knees—plural. “I want to get married,” he says to Linda.

  The air in the cabin condenses with heat. Will, arms crossed since the afternoon, crosses them tighter and squints. Cory covers her mouth, and her eyes zip between Henrik and Linda. The pause is longer than anyone would like, while Linda chews her lip and considers. A bit sudden, she thinks, but right on schedule. She knows he’s had these ambitions, in his sad devoted way reminding her that he only wanted to be with her as long as she wanted and not a second longer. Clearly there was no way she’d lock it down, but she doesn’t want to harsh an otherwise perfect weekend. There’s no malice, really, only denial and cleverness that froth together into one word: “Okay!” As in: okay, you want me to marry you, good luck with that. Even as he pins her arms to her sides in an overeager hug, even while she’s crying, she knows he thinks she means Yes, when she actually knows she means Not really. Or so she thinks.

  While Henrik pours prosecco, Will and Cory golf-clap and trade glances, having versions of the same guilty thought: that this is not only disastrously ill-fated, but a vandalism of the group spirit, making them third and fourth wheels, or more properly, the two wheels on a tandem bike that Henrik and Linda are riding. They toast to the engagement, and they drink to drink. Four bottles are slain and a fifth is spilled before Will calls Henrik out for a smoke.

  They go onto the deck under total night. Will decides, at the strike of his lighter wheel, not to bother telling Henrik about getting kissed by Linda, because he’d just rationalize it as horseplay, and not even Will thinks it meant anything to her. Beyond this, Will realizes no advice will work because Henrik would just claim privileged knowledge of Linda, and Will would become the guy who tried to get between them; even if Henrik did take it, Will would become the guy who ruined his chance at happiness. “Some stunt in there,” Will says.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to make a big show of it.”

  “Have you been planning this long?” Will scratches his cheek with his cigarette hand. “Seems hasty.”

  Henrik nods several times. “I haven’t talked about it with her but I have thought about it a lot. It could end badly, but I’m not sure that’s a reason not to do it. In my head nothing’s changed.”

  Will feels himself engorging with disbelief. It bugs him that supporting Henrik means letting him ruin his life in a relationship that will almost certainly exclude Will. With a hard pull on his cigarette he almost inhales the filter, and the half-second spin of nicotine heartens him. “Dude, Linda is playing you, I gotta say it. She’s smart and hot and all, and I think she really does like you, but this is all a big amusement to her. She’s going to grind you up like a cider apple, okay? You might have trouble getting angry but I fucking don’t.”

  Being very him, Henrik does not increase his energy to match Will’s, instead tilts his head and reflects. “You don’t have to be more concerned for me than I am.”

  “Just have a modicum of fucking dignity is all I’m saying.”

  “I have enough.”

  “You’re for real about this?” Cory asks Linda, who’s doing weird fake ballet moves all around the living room.

  “Sure am,” Linda says. “Who am I to back down from a dare?”

  “I don’t think you get how serious Henrik is about you.”

  “I’m serious too.”

  “Then I don’t think you get what serious is.”

  “Girl. Either I break his heart by saying no, or I give him a shot and we change our minds later and none of us have to regret not trying. Simple choice.”

  “Yeah, everything’s pretty simple when you set up a fake-ass dichotomy.”

  “Don’t get mad. It’s my birthday,” Linda says.

  “I’m just saying. You’re so
young. You hit voting age literally today.”

  “You’re condescending to me because of my age, Miss Twenty-Year-Old? I’m not hearing that shit. I’ve dated more boys than you, I know what I’m doing.”

  “That right there? Is how your inferiority complex makes you overreact in spite of yourself. Reassure yourself that you’re still edgy enough to self-destruct. That’s what I’m warning you against. Also fuck you too.”

  “Whatevs.”

  “Right. Whatevs.”

  Doom settles in the next morning when they wake up, poisoned by fun. In the chilly stench of ash and opened cans and sticky floors they drop trash into trash bags and slosh water out from the coolers. Nobody wants to look at anyone else. Linda’s loud vomiting in the bathroom prompts no inquiry.

  Nausea keeps trickling through her on the ride back to campus. She’d convinced herself she was being clever in accepting Henrik’s proposal, but now she knows she felt it, that exquisite twinkly rapture, the sensation of her internal organs somehow latching to his. After all her effort to make nothing out of something, she’d meant Yes, and her tears had been as real as they were wet. It’s not fair, she thinks. How did he trick her into tricking herself? She’s dealt with so many needy pricks, now this one wants to plant a flag on her? Hell no. This was supposed to be about agency and choice and she’s taken the first fucking bid. She isn’t graduating with a fucking MRS. Out there is the world. More is coming to her. But first she must conceive an end.

  CHAPTER 11

  DIY

  Pride will spit in pride’s face.

  —Thomas Fuller

  Turnout for yesterday’s Dyke March was huge, and in the predawn hours before Recreate ’08, Cory was scrambling around Dolores Park with trash bags to chase down muffin wrappers, beer cans, soggy pink streamers, plastic tiaras, paper bags translucent with grease, and inside-out latex gloves, all tumbling around in a circular breeze, her neck pleading uncle at each stoop. After two hours she lay back on a dewy hill to rest. Dark-bellied clouds menaced the sun; the forecast had been waffling between partly cloudy and occasional showers. She blew upward, as if to swizzle them away with her feeble dowel of air. The sky peered down, gradual and unmoved. With a flabby exhale she fell asleep.