Collision Theory

by Adrian Todd Zuniga

  My drink arrives on a black napkin two minutes later and I hand the bartender my credit card. He makes a throat-slashing gesture with his right hand and mouths, “Close it out?” I shake my head so he’ll leave it open.

  The Mezcaline Smash tastes smoky and tart and burns the bottom of my throat, but it’s just fine. I hold my fingers around it, taking occasional swallows, while I stare into space. When Carly’s not there seventeen minutes later, I decide that if she doesn’t show up, so be it. After Sarah, I learned to drink alone just fine. I learned to drink alone, no problem.

  Then Carly whirlwinds in and says, “Sorry I’m late. My Uber driver ignored his GPS, so it was a circus of wrong turns.”

  I say I didn’t know she was late and she tells me I’m sweet.

  I watch as she musses her hair then sheds her oxblood-colored leather jacket. It’s Carly, clearly, but not the same Carly from earlier. Away from her workplace surroundings, there’s a shimmer to her. I feel myself sit up in response.

  “What’d you order?” she asks.

  I point at the menu, flat on the bar. “This one.” Then I slide my drink toward her. “Want to try?”

  She takes a soft sip, then waves the bartender over. When he arrives, she points at my drink and says, “One of those feisty things.” Then tells me, “So, EO’s going to make an offer.”

  “Wow. Seriously?”

  “They suck,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say.

  Her drink arrives and Carly leans to access money in her front pocket, but I tell the bartender, “Put it on mine.”

  “Thank you,” she says with a smile, followed by a sidelong glance, before she goes back to sniping at EO. “And I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bum you out. An offer’s great. But that place is such a dud.”

  “So you invited me here to tell me not to accept?” I ask.

  “I invited you here to warn you,” she says. “The only reason to do a deal with EO is if you’re just in it for the money. Which, maybe you are.”

  With my bank account’s current state of affairs, I might have to be. These drinks are twelve dollars a pop, plus the expense of being here at all: the Uber to SFO; the flight here; the rental car; the hotel for a night.

  “But,” Carly says, and slugs down half her drink, “here’s the shitty plot twist. EO makes offers like this all the time to block competitors from accessing good ideas. But if by some miracle, The Clone Trio does make something totally lunatic with your premise as a jumping-off point, you’ll get nothing in the way of credit. And if you try to use your original idea after that, in any form, they’ll sue the shit out of you. It’s their favorite hobby.”

  “Yikes,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Carly says. “Drives you to drink.” She guzzles down the rest of hers. “Another?”

  “Sure,” I say. With an EO offer pending, I can risk putting myself a little further in debt.

  When the bartender passes, she points to our glasses and tells him, “The same.”

  •••

  Carly hurries through her second drink and, now tipsy, her interest in me is amplified. She fires off a string of rapid-fire questions. “Why did you move from New York City to San Francisco? Besides the fact that the winters there are brutal nonsense. But why not LA? Oh, but first who was the agent that set a meeting with EO’s bigwigs?”

  I respond by asking, “Do you meet to discourage everyone who’s getting an offer?”

  “Never,” Carly shrugs.

  “Then why me?”

  “Because it’s annoying the shit out of me that I can’t figure out where we met.”

  “Because we haven’t?”

  Carly waves this off with one hand. Then all of her quiets, and she runs a finger along the side of her sweating glass. “Plus, I’m a little sad,” she says. “And maybe you seemed a little sad, too.”

  Carly raises her drink, and holds it out in front of her.

  “To spilling my guts,” she says. “And to throwing you under the bus.” I raise my glass to hers so they clink. “And while I’m on a roll, I don’t mean to come off all bratty and condescending about EO. It’s just they have so much money to buy up good ideas, but then they bury them or turn them into their crappier ideas.”

  “Why don’t you quit?”

  “And miss the chance to be the company’s under-empowered, self-righteous moral center?” She laughs. “No chance! Plus, the pay is stupid good.”

  •••

  Carly’s nearly through her third drink, and I’m only halfway through my second when she asks why Ryan wasn’t there. “A creative partner falling out?”

  “Not at all,” I tell her. “He really is sick.”

  I explain that we’re best friends, and how he showed up after being away in London, and how grateful I was that he did, the both of us heartbroken, and me, especially, needing the support. Needing a boost. And then our Elvis idea came about, and how it landed me here, on this stool, in this city, on this night.

  “What’s her name?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “The heartbreak initiator you’ve been carrying around.”

  “Sarah,” I say.

  “Sarah. Sarah.” Like it’s a flavor her mouth is trying to figure out. Her brow creases and she looks away. Then she relaxes and takes a finishing swallow of her drink.

  “Jake,” she says and puts her glass down hard.

  “Jake?”

  “That’s the butthole that head-fucked my heart,” Carly says with a laugh. I laugh, too. She licks her lips and starts to giggle. “Where are you staying?”

  “A hotel on Franklin,” I say.

  “The 101 Cafe?”

  “The one above it.”

  “Let’s go there and eat a BLT.”

  “Now?”

  “Twenty minutes ago,” she says. I take a second to let the moment register. “Oh, just say yes. I’m a fucking joy.”

  Carly stands and trips back, but catches my arm to save herself from a drunken tumble.

  “See!?” she says, then laughs hard, thanks me for the save, and surprises me with a kiss on the cheek. Then she waves down the bartender who delivers the bill. I sign it and follow her to the exit.

  Eighteen

  Three weeks after Sarah stood on the ledge of my roof, I was eating alone at a restaurant. I was eating all of my meals alone then, followed by going home alone and sitting alone. No movies, no video games, I would sit. Focus on DVR’d television commercials that lived between meaningless, candy-coated sitcom storylines and false dramas. I preferred the commercials because they served as a guide. What was I supposed to eat now that Sarah was gone? They were happy to tell me. What was I supposed to drink now? They weren’t shy. What kind of car should I own now? Enough commercials and I knew.

  I knew which shampoo would make my hair an easy-to-style silk. What motor oil would best synthetically lubricate the car I didn’t own. Which brand of adult diaper would best fit my needs. What beer would triumphantly lead to an island of bikini’d women. Which pizza would bring me closer to God. What kind of life I was supposed to live.

  But within all of these, I couldn’t find the commercial that answered: What was I going to do now that Sarah wasn’t coming back and nothing I could do would change it? No commercials offered an explanation. But if I wanted a son of a bitch of a truck with a four-ton payload, I knew whom to call.

  Those days, nothing had flavor. I was head-down at a restaurant that was walking distance from my Brooklyn Heights apartment, halfway through chili that tasted like peppered candle wax. Right after I’d taken a bite of cornbread that sat on my tongue like polluted air, Sarah was standing across the table from me. My fork dropped from my hand. All the moisture vanished from my mouth.

  “My God,” I said. Seeing Sarah, after never thinking I’d see her again, made my whole body
go wonky. I squinted, trying to find the truth. “This isn’t possible.”

  Her eyes glowed with sad wonder as she wrote on the inside of her right forearm with a dry-erase marker. Then she showed me: And yet.

  Which raced me back to three years before, at a party in the West Village. Sarah walked in and the room tilted in her direction. My breath stuttered, afraid she’d be lured away. But I got to her first. I shook her hand. Before she’d even said hello: I knew.

  She quietly told me that it was her first night out in a while. A few weeks before her thirty-four-year-old brother had passed, cardiac arrest in the night that killed him in seconds, and since the funeral she’d been lying low. But now she needed to talk about him, about it. Then asked if I had any brothers or sisters. When I told her I was an only child she said, Thank god. Any more dead siblings and I’m going to lose it.

  The apartment we were in was full, but it felt like no one else was around. This was before. When my mother was in perfect health.

  Later, we were standing in the kitchen. I asked if I could call her and she told me she wasn’t putting her number in a flip phone. She pulled an Expo dry-erase marker off the refrigerator. Then wrote my number on her arm. A week later, she called. A week after that, she spent the night for the first time. Weeks later, we fell, I thought, invincibly, in love.

  Two years later, she was gone.

  But now, in this restaurant, somehow Sarah was across from me again. Her arm stained with the words, And yet.

  The moment was undercut by some loudmouth at the table behind me who was using profanity like commas: “So this fucking dog won’t eat the fucking treat. Bullshit! Stupid little fucker. I said, trade in that dinky-ass toy fucking poodle for a fucking pit bull, already.”

  I swallowed deep and told Sarah, “This is all my fault.”

  She wrote on her arm, This was my decision. She underlined my.

  “Oh, and don’t get me started on video games,” the loudmouth said. “The other day, I walk in and see my fucking son pull a cab driver out of this fucking car then shoot the son of a bitch in the goddamn face with the touch of a fucking button.”

  His fucking son?

  “Video games are bullcrap,” his wimpy friend agreed.

  “Fucking-a-right. I don’t need him learning to shoot a goddamn rocket launcher into the base of a fucking building to get a high score.”

  Sarah eased into the chair across from me, coiling one leg under her, while the other stretched to the hardwood of the restaurant floor.

  I took the deepest possible breath, but couldn’t speak. She erased her arm, then wrote, What now?

  “I can’t go home,” I told her.

  She shook her head, then started to rise up.

  “Wait,” I said.

  The waiter stopped. “I’m sorry?” I waved him away as Sarah got to her feet, ready to go.

  “I’ll do anything so you’ll come back.”

  On her arm she wrote, Prove it.

  “How?” I begged. She was backing away.

  Rosemary, she wrote. My mother’s name.

  “He’s going to go fucking brain-dead if he keeps playin’ them shittin’ games.”

  I turned around to The Fucking Man and said, “Hey. Hey.” He looked at me. “Could you shut the fuck up?”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  I turned back to Sarah, who was nearly gone.

  “Sarah. Please.”

  “Fucking excuse me.”

  I’d have given anything to lure her back. Almost anything.

  “Hey, you little fucking prick.”

  There was no way I could go home.

  Now The Fucking Man was out of his chair and in front of mine. His jet-black hair was slicked back. There were hard lines surrounding his mouth. He pushed me in the face with his wide, sweaty hand. I wiped my face with my sleeve then looked up at him obstinate. He pulled his right arm back, then hit me hard across the face. I heard a woman yelp while I was swung hard to my right. I tried to brace myself, but all I accomplished was to wipe the dishes and silverware nearest me off the table resulting in shatter, splatter, and pings. When I tried to correct, I went too far and slumped off the left side of my chair at the feet of The Fucking Man.

  He stood over me. I looked up at him to see beads of sweat all around his mouth. His lips pressed into a frown. Droplets of snot steamed from his nostrils. He looked ridiculous. I started to laugh for the first time in weeks.

  “You think that’s fucking funny, you little fuck?”

  I nodded. I was dizzy, and wished Sarah was still here.

  “Fuck you, you piece of fuck,” he said and backed away.

  Piece of fuck? I laughed!

  The Fucking Man turned back toward me. I heard his friend squeak, “Bobby, come on.”

  My body was propped against my chair when he hit me across the face a second time. The force of the blow sent the chair spinning away, and me onto my back.

  A woman’s voice: “Oh my god.”

  Metallic blood ran like a spigot onto my tongue. I tried to spit it at The Fucking Man, but it fell out of my mouth and ran hot down my chin.

  I blinked slowly. I was struggling to stay conscious. When my eyes closed, all over again, Sarah was flying. I could see it. Her dress’s rapid, slapping ripple. Arms wide and her head turned hard to the right. Her entire body tilting slowly away from me with impossible grace.

  Before everything went black.

  Nineteen

  As I drive us to the 101 Cafe, Carly’s primly seated: straight spine, hands crossed in lap. She stares out the window as we zip past tree-fronted homes beneath a lead sky streaked with cirrus.

  “When’s your flight?” she asks.

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Hm,” she says. “Good.”

  She smiles and shifts subtly in her seat.

  A minute later, Carly looks over at me like she’s searching for some flaw.

  “What?” I ask.

  “We’ve seriously never met?” she says.

  “If I say yes, will you stop asking?”

  She laughs and gives my shoulder a soft shove, then looks out her passenger-side window.

  When my phone rings on the console, Carly says, “I’ll get it!” and picks up my phone with a laugh.

  “Blocked ID?” she says, and I freeze as a cool of sweat covers my entire body.

  “Oh, shit,” she says. “Is this Sarah?”

  “Please,” I say, and grip the wheel hard. “Don’t.”

  She sets the phone back in the console in a hurry. “I wouldn’t ever,” she says, and reaches over and touches my arm.

  I swallow deep, trying to catch my breath. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s all okay. All this after stuff sucks.”

  •••

  I park in the hotel’s open-air parking structure, and as we both get out, I sneak a peek at my Missed Calls to see: Blocked ID. I quick-scan in every direction, searching for Sarah. There’s no sign, but I seize up at the thought of being with Carly, while Sarah’s in the lobby, or the restaurant, or outside the elevator, waiting.

  “What?” Carly says, waiting for me at the back of the car.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  “Well, there’s tons I haven’t told you.” She comes toward me.

  “But Sarah,” I say from another planet entirely.

  “But Jake,” she says, like it’s a game. She stops right in front of me and say, “Hey. Hey.” Demanding my attention.

  The second I give it to her, she grabs my face and kisses me. The kiss is reckless and full and wet. Before I think to withdraw—what if Sarah sees?—Carly eases away, smiling. Then she pulls my arm like it’s kite string and leads me toward the sliding glass doors of the lobby.
>
  Inside, as Carly leads me down the short stairs to the 101 Cafe, spindles of panic let loose in my lungs. I try to pull away from our hand-in-hand, but she holds on tight and gives me a fun but fierce, “No.” After a beat she tells me, “God, I’m hilarious, especially when I’m drunk.”

  Once we’re under the soft, dim light of the packed restaurant, walking on waxed beige linoleum spotted with speckles of red and brown, I scan every face present in the leather booths and leather-backed stools, a search for Sarah.

  At the end of the counter, a man with a beard that’s squared at the bottom says he’s sorry, but it’ll be at least a twenty-minute wait.

  “We’re staying in the hotel,” Carly says. “Can we take it to our room? Or have it sent up?”

  “Sure,” the host says, and hands her a menu.

  Without looking she asks, “Do you have BLTs?”

  “Yep. Avocado?”

  “Yes! And two orders of pancakes.” Carly scans the menu, then flips it. “And two glasses of champagne.” Then she asks me, “Two okay?”

  Concerned by how much all this will cost, I still tell her, “Two’s great.”

  “No, four,” she tells the host. Then asks me, “Four, yeah?” She puts her hand on my chest and says, “I’m getting this. You got drinks.”

  I don’t see Sarah anywhere.

  •••

  Outside the elevator, Carly lights the button for the elevator with her knuckle, which flashes me back to earlier on. It puts me on high alert, a renewed panic: Sarah might be inside.

  “It’s just three floors,” I say and make a move to take the stairs.

  But then the ding of the elevator’s arrival and Carly says, “Right on time.”

  When the brushed-silver doors open, and there’s no one inside, I expel a hurried exhale, then stand stiff in the back corner.

  “You’re such a weirdo,” Carly says, leaning casually against the sidewall.

  The doors open at the third floor. If Sarah’s out there, I want Carly to go first, to create enough distance between us for plausible deniability.

  But then she asks me, “Which way?”