Friends Like Us

by Lauren Fox

  And then, and then, he pulls me on top of him again, his arms around me, our rhythm improving, and suddenly I’m deep in it, in the sweetness of another body; it all takes a turn for the better, like a movie that gets off to a slow start but picks up toward the middle, and all the awkwardness that came before was just an unimportant prelude to this: the two of us. Lost. Absolutely.

  And so. Here we are, resting together in the graveyard of my dignity. Declan is naked from the waist down, his long toes curling off the edge of the mattress; from the waist up, he’s wearing a white T-shirt, a big black wristwatch, and a pie-eating grin. My purple sheet and green down comforter lie like wrapping paper on the floor.

  “You are … surprisingly expressive, Willa,” he says. He shakes his head, smiling, runs one hand up and down his stubbly face, and pulls me close. I nestle into the soft cotton of his shirt, breathe in the musky smell of him: lavender-scented laundry detergent and sex.

  “So tired,” I mumble, which would be true if the prickliness rising from my spine to my neck were the woozy hum of fatigue instead of the hot cringe of embarrassment. I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Mmm,” he says. “Me fluhhh.”

  I wait awhile, silent and still, listening to the shallow whisper of his breathing. It grows slower and more even, and it doesn’t take long before it’s safe for me to lift his heavy arm from my body and roll away. I sit up and swing my legs off the edge of the bed, tap my heels gently against the mattress, and examine my hands, disembodied and ghostly in the whitish moon glow of the room. I glance over at Declan. His mouth hangs open slightly; everything about him is long and pale and slack. He looks more like he’s switched off than asleep now, except for his penis, odd little accessory, friendly lapdog curled in repose. You’re welcome. In the half-light, it winks at me.

  I grab my robe from the back of the door, wrap it around myself, and sneak out of my own bedroom. The worn fleece is velvety against my body; being touched exposes nerve endings, and my skin feels like it’s softly humming. I tiptoe through the hallway, on my way to the kitchen for water, but the flickering blue light of the television stops me in my tracks. I place my palm against the wall to steady myself. The rush of adrenaline feels as much like horror as delight.

  “Well, well, well.”

  “I’m sleepwalking,” I whisper. “Never wake a sleepwalker.”

  “That didn’t sound like sleeping to me, toots.” Ben points the remote at the TV; the blue light goes black, and for a second I feel like I might, in fact, be sleepwalking, dreaming about being naked in the hallway of my high school, and there’s Ben, short, chubby, fifteen-year-old Ben, witness to my humiliation. “Sit down, luv,” he says, doing a credible imitation of Declan. I make my way to the couch.

  “What are you doing up?” I say.

  Ben snorts. I hear, but can’t see, him scratching his head, a sound like mice scrabbling through drywall. “Don’t change the subject.” He leans over and clicks on the lamp. “That was quite the commotion.”

  Like the heat wave, I feel myself shift without warning, become melancholy and regretful. “Don’t tease, okay?”

  “I like Declan,” Ben says.

  “Good.”

  He plops his feet onto the coffee table with a thump. “Not as much as you do, obviously.” It’s almost unbearably intimate, being here with Ben, naked under my robe, postsex, so near to the warm, sleeping bodies of Declan and Jane, Ben’s long, hairy legs stretched out in front of us. “Sorry,” he says. “Couldn’t resist.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But stop. I mean it.”

  He pulls a bag of potato chips out from behind the couch, offers me one. I shake my head, lean back. The rickety chair I’m sitting in wobbles and creaks. We’re just playing at being adults here, in this apartment furnished by Ikea and the curb. I pat down my bed-hair. Ben flicks the TV back on, and for a while we watch a rebroadcast of the local news. The reporter has a Wisconsin accent so powerful it sounds like she might actually be speaking German. “Oh, ja,” she says to the weatherman. “That break in the heat today sure felt fein.”

  “You know what I love?” Ben says.

  “Hmm?”

  “Those teasers they do before the commercials. Will tonight’s rain bring massive flooding to the area?”

  “Is the carpeting in your home trying to kill you? Stay tuned!”

  “Is there a mass murderer on the loose in your neighborhood? We’ll let you know after the break!”

  “Should you lock your doors and windows right now? We’ll tell you, after sports.” The plastic chip bag crackles. “Actually, I’ll have one,” I say, reaching for it.

  Ben hands me the bag. “Are those chips you’re eating deadly? Find out, after traffic and weather!”

  “They are stale,” I say, crunching. “But probably not lethal.”

  Ben grabs the bag back from me. “I like Declan,” he says again.

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “You know, I’m pretty sure he likes girls.”

  He throws a chip at me. It lands in my hair. I eat it.

  “It’s just, he seems like a good guy,” he says.

  “Yep.” I think about Declan’s hands on my waist, how they hovered there lightly, and a little shiver runs up my spine. It’s the ghost of women everywhere, reminding me that sex does not equal love. “He is. He’s a good guy.”

  Ben scratches his head again, rearranges his legs on the coffee table, cracks his neck: a game of charades, and the word is “fidgety.” “When I liked you in high school,” he says, “it wasn’t just a crush.” My brain explodes, splattering the walls with goo. Ben scratches his ear, cracks his knuckles, crosses his arms. One word, three syllables. “I mean, I feel like I can tell you this now, now that I have someone and you …” He stops himself, grins at me. “Well, you had someone.” He holds out his hand before I can jump in. “Sorry, sorry! Anyway, it seems silly,” Ben continues, “with all that’s happened since then, but I really thought I was in love with you. I saw us together. Married, kids. The whole package.”

  I’m glad for the dim light, for the bag of potato chips, for the TV on softly in the background. “You and Jane are my best friends,” I say.

  “Well, exactly.”

  Neither of us says anything else. After a while, I start to feel my customary urge to cure an awkward moment with a balm of weirdness. I stuff a huge handful of chips in my mouth, fill my cheeks like a salt-addicted squirrel, chew slowly, swallow. Ben shakes his head and laughs. I’m imagining, again, my life ten years from now; we’re in the backyard of that small white house, Ben and Jane and someone and me, and those happy, romping, low-maintenance background children … only this time the someone belongs to Jane, and it’s Ben with his arm around my shoulder, Ben’s dream and mine coming together in a strange, bright, impossible collision.

  “I’ve gotta go to sleep,” I murmur finally, muddled and exhausted, pushing myself up and out of the half-broken chair.

  Ben yawns and gets up. We’re almost the same height, inches from each other. His face is stubbly, his gray T-shirt inside-out. “One more thing,” he says. “As long as I’m on a roll. I’m not going to ask you what happened in Marcy. Because I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter.” I’m wishing for another mouthful of potato chips as Ben clicks off the light, mercy-killing the conversation. “So good night.”

  “ ’Night,” I whisper, retying my robe and turning back toward my room.

  Declan opens his eyes as I climb into bed. “I thought you’d gone home,” he mutters, and he rolls onto his side, his back to me, as, in the silence, I think about what Ben said, that what happened in Marcy isn’t important. And I am drifting off to sleep, wondering why.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Does anyone really know how to pick out a cantaloupe?” Ben lifts a leathery melon, strokes it gently, brings it to his face. “Are you ripe?” he whispers.

  Jane pushes her sunglasses up onto her head and squints as the cloud that was obscuring the sun blows away. “
They are the most inscrutable of fruits.” She presses her sunglasses back down onto her nose. We’re wandering around the farmers’ market, past stands of Swiss chard and kale, snap peas and sunshine squash, okra and chutney: locally grown ingredients for recipes none of us will make. We move forward empty-handed, en masse, the four of us, toward a stall that sells only tomatoes, neatly arranged baskets of small yellow and orange and purple orbs bright and jolly as Christmas ornaments. As if any of us would have a clue what to do with a tiny, purple, veined tomato, what kind of complicated pasta dish would welcome such a thing. In fact, I pride myself on not knowing.

  Declan taps his index finger on an oblong orange heirloom. “Where I come from, tomatoes are pink and swollen and tasteless, and served on a bed of iceberg lettuce.” To-mah-toes. “I miss the old sod.”

  “The Irish are famous for their fine cuisine,” I say.

  Declan nods. “Accept no substitutes.” I pretend that he’s talking about us and reach for his hand. I notice Ben noticing, then quickly looking away. “We used to eat cabbage at every meal,” Declan says, directing the statement at all of us, like a stand-up comedian. “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus of course the three o’clock cabbage break.” I have the sudden urge to draw Declan as a talking vegetable, round and green and leafy.

  It’s been three weeks since we first slept together, and I’m teetering on the brink of something, a shift in perception, a significant revelation. Could I be falling for Declan? My heart is running after my body, panting, trying to catch up. Our connection seems to be rearranging my chemical balance. I find myself thinking about him all the time, drifting off into gauzy fantasies about our future.

  A sweet, fruit-scented breeze kicks up. A family pushes past us on the path, two disheveled parents—an unshaven father and a mother who looks strangely unshaven herself, blurry around the edges—and three children dancing around them, chanting a chorus of “I want, I want.”

  “Sebastian,” the mother says, “I am not buying you broccoli right now. If I have to tell you again, I’m taking away that cookie.” I look around to see if anyone else has heard. Jane and Ben and Declan are a moving triangle in front of me, absorbed in a conversation about a particular Irish delicacy made of pork sausage and boiled potatoes.

  “I’ll tell you about fish pie,” Declan says. “And blood pudding!” Jane cringes; Ben laughs.

  How easy would it be just to subsume myself to this, to Declan’s big personality, to his hunger? Maybe part of desire is just knowing that you’re desired. How enticing to give myself over to the idea of love.

  “Blood pudding!” I say. “A dessert and a bodily fluid, all rolled into one!” Declan shakes his head and starts to tell me that blood pudding is not a dessert, but I wave him away.

  Jane takes her glasses off, twirls them around her fingers, then fixes them on top of her head. She falls back with me, the walking triangle morphing into a square. Looking at her, I see, for a second, only the ways that we don’t resemble each other at all. She’s glowing and clear skinned, her hair loose to her shoulders, her eyes wide and brown. And it’s true, my hair is loose and to my shoulders, my eyes wide and brown, but I feel furrowed in a way that Jane isn’t, crimped, blemished, flawed.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just Google your future?” she says. I twist my hair up into a bun and then let it fall back, the coiled strands tickling my neck. “You would type in Where will I be in ten years? and the Internet would tell you.”

  “Psychic Google!” I say.

  “I had a job interview,” Ben says, half turning toward us, “before I started working at the library.” He takes a bite of the chocolate croissant he just bought and offers a piece of it to Jane. “For Citizens Rallying Against Pollution. And the director said, ‘Where do you see yourself five years from now?’ and I said, ‘In my living room, eating a bowl of spaghetti in front of the TV.’ I did not get the job.”

  “I would have hired you, mate.”

  “Thanks, mate.”

  Ben is getting ready to apply to graduate school for social work, here and in Chicago and Madison. He may not know exactly where he’s going, but at least he’s picked a general direction.

  “Ben,” I say. “There is no such organization as Citizens Rallying Against Pollution.”

  He grins, waiting.

  “Oh! CRAP!” Jane says gleefully, clapping her hands. She takes her sunglasses off again, even though the sun-to-cloud ratio hasn’t changed. For no good reason, this irritates me.

  I grab her wrist and snatch the sunglasses from her. “Jane!” My voice comes out snappish and scolding. “Make up your mind about those glasses!” Ben, Declan, and Jane all stop suddenly and stare at me. Ben’s mouth drops open slightly; my cheeks go hot. I shove Jane’s glasses onto my face. “Well, you’ve proven that you can’t handle the important responsibility of sunglasses,” I say lightly, trying to cover for myself.

  After a second, Jane laughs, a high musical sound, like a chime: her immediate forgiveness, unpondered and lovely.

  “Right,” she says. “I can’t be trusted!” And now those sunglasses are riding heavily on the bridge of my nose, the frames slightly too big for me and the lenses, as it turns out, an annoying shade too dark. I suppress the urge to take them off.

  We wander for a bit and then pause at the artisanal cheese booth. We huddle around it, piercing our selections with toothpicks: Mango Gruyére. Sicilian truffle.

  “You all worry too much,” Declan says. He pauses to chew. “Things have a way of working themselves out.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I shake a hunk of apricot Gorgonzola at him. “You owned your own company when you were twenty-four.”

  “Which has now officially gone belly-up,” he says, popping another lump of Tuscany cave-aged pecorino into his mouth. It’s just like Declan to turn a momentous announcement into an offhand remark spoken through a mouthful of cheese. Although it’s true that my freelance assignments had petered out, he’s never mentioned that the agency was going under. He shrugs, preempting concern. “What can you do? I’m not bothered. Especially now that I know I can get free brunch on Saturday mornings.” He skewers three more hunks of cheese on his toothpick like a shish kebab as the cheese lady behind the makeshift counter plants her hands on her hips and glares at him. He’s clearly gone one cube too far.

  Nobody knows what to say. We’ve never owned our own failed advertising agencies; we’ve never lost our livelihoods. We’ve never had livelihoods. So we stand there, ruminating like cows, as herds of people trudge past us, until Jane finally slings her arm around Declan. “Come on. Poor thing. I’ll buy you a loaf of stale bread, and we’ll see if we can find you a nice bowl of gruel.”

  They lope off together, Declan and Jane, and Ben turns to me. “He’s one of us now.”

  “Holy Citizens Rallying Against Pollution,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it weird that he didn’t tell me?”

  “I suppose so.” Ben puts his hand on my back and leads me to a bench off to the side of the crowded square. He sits, pats the seat for me to join him. “Want to know something else weird?” A ball of Camembert congeals in my stomach and threatens to bounce. No, I think. No no no. I suddenly and completely do not want to know something else weird. I don’t want to hear what Ben has to say. I don’t even want to sit down next to him, in the proximity of something else weird, but he takes my hand and pulls me down onto the bench. “I’m thinking about asking Jane to marry me.”

  On the patch of grass in front of us, six small children run after each other like a dog chasing its tail. A soft lake breeze blows in, carrying the faintest whiff of something rank, dead fish or the septic-tinged odor of Cladophora algae, reminders that Lake Michigan is a living, belching organism. One of the toddlers on the grass splinters off from the game and runs toward his mother, flings his arms around her neck, and kisses her; she closes her eyes and sniffs his hair with such naked pleasure that I turn away.

 
; I want to say something to Ben, I’m not sure what: Mazel tov? Or WAIT! Okay, yes, WAIT! because all at once I see it, as clear as the peeling paint on the bench we’re sitting on: This is the time in our lives when mistakes are made. And not just What a bummer it would be to end up at the wrong college or Should I pass on that interesting volunteer opportunity, but the big mistakes, the ones where you say yes and you walk down the aisle and you become my parents or Jane’s. Or Ben’s, who have been happily married but pleasantly distant from each other for thirty years, the kind of parents who take separate vacations. But none of this seems like the right response to my best friend telling me he’s going to ask my other best friend to marry him. I edge toward him and lean in, throw my arm around his shoulder in a quick hug. “I call best man and maid of honor.”

  A little blond boy twenty feet from us screeches suddenly, and then they’re all screeching, like an air-raid siren. “You don’t get to call it, Willa,” Ben says, over the din. He squeezes back. “It’s not like shotgun.”

  “Too late,” I say. “I already called it.” I rest my head on his shoulder for a second, move away.

  And then, on this perfect summer day, clouds skittering around the sky, children testing their lungs across the grass, we just sit for a while, next to each other, quietly, waiting for Jane and Declan to reappear. Ben reaches into the white paper bag and feeds me a piece of his croissant; with the back of his hand, I wipe crumbs from my mouth. I close my eyes to the shrill whistle of the children and to the image of Jane in a wedding dress and to my own psychic vertigo, a lurching befuddlement of emotions. Maybe this dizzy feeling is just my heart, adjusting to a new reality. Or maybe it’s the mad, contagious confusion of those toddlers on the grass in front of us, spinning wildly before they fall.