by Tao Lin
Sean moved from the sofa to the bed. I maneuvered deviously from the sofa to the bed, he thought. He was just a child, he knew. A little boy. He had written a novel, though. He, too, had written a novel. There were clams in the novel. A pile of them, on some lost and lightless seafloor; trembling, making whizzing noises, like straws, and then shooting apart, finally—exploding—from the force of bemusement and lovelessness. The clams were symbolic somehow; they had to have been. Or had they? It was a desperate, unfun novel—very strange, told with an incomprehensible sort of irony. It had real people also, not just clams. Sean had spent a year on it—a year, he now realized, that he remembered nothing about. Try harder to remember your own life from now on, Sean thought, and then fell into a dreamless sleep. When he woke, he went immediately and took a shower. He walked out into the night, thinking languageless thoughts. He felt new and released—newly released, like some rare and squinting animal; a flying wombat or African wild ass. His eyes felt complex and weightless inside his head. He ran suddenly across a street. At night, he knew, there could be the belief that something never before felt might be felt, something new. You could allow yourself quite easily this view of the world—this thrilling, midnightly faith—of there being something out there that loved you, that, at night, worshipped and searched for you, like a past life seeking its next, wanting desperately the continuation of itself. And though it would probably never find you, it would also, you believed at night, never give up, and this was enough—that something was out there and desperate and on its way. This was less in the city, though. In the city, it was mostly just too loud. There were too many buses. Sean went to a sushi place on St. Marks. He had miso soup, and ice water. Maryanne, he thought. Who is Maryanne? He looked across the restaurant at his waitress—a dark and neighborly thing, sort of ominous—and thought, I am in love with that person; then went home and dreamt the discolored dream of being in love with someone who did not exist. He woke and did not stop himself (Maryanne, he thought, Maryanne, Maryanne) as there was a worldless sort of desire—a faithless, gaping, windstorm-y thing—that could swell in you as you had to end one day and move into the next; and to relieve this, the indestructible hole of it, you made severe and alarming promises of nothing and everything; you built elaborate thoughts, like houses—mansions, other worlds—and you moved, wrenchingly, stupidly, in; not knowing, feeling, or believing anything, except that you had arrived, made it to some sort of love, some vaporization of love, like a cream of water, perhaps, but a love nonetheless, in this vast and lacerated place inside your head, inside your thoughts, and so could, finally, then, sleep.
In the apartment Sean had music on very loud. This was despairing guitar music from the mid 90’s. Chris had gone somewhere with Annie for the week. It was 3 a.m., and Sean was cleaning—going around with a trash bag, stuffing things in; humming harmonies and sometimes singing.
In the morning, Sean went for Chinese takeout. Back home, he put on despairing acoustic music. He ate, poured juice. The music was very good. Sean stopped for a moment and held himself very still. This is good, he thought. I’m being serious, he thought. “I am extremely happy,” he said aloud. He put his food down. He jumped on his brother’s bed. He lay down. He wanted to laugh or something. Love, he thought. He got up, turned off the music. He watched TV. He went to sleep.
It was dark out when Sean woke. He put on music, washed the dishes. He wiped the TV and the desk with wet paper towels, and the floor. He showered with the door open, the music loud. He went out for coffee. He stopped at a bookstore and got a job application. Outside, crossing Fifth Avenue, he looked up at the buildings and felt a kind of rapture, something of apology and thanks and intelligence—though maybe just a thing of coffee and wakefulness—forming, like a good idea (the world thinking hard, finally), here, in the little wind, the slightly infrared space between the buildings, the wet, shucked gemstars of the traffic lights, and all the glassy windows above, bright and comprehending as eyes, watchful as a world that wanted, truly, to know—and to love—all its lost and bewildered people.
Sean woke on his brother’s bed. “Sean,” Annie said. She and Chris were back. “Come with us to see a blockbuster Hollywood movie.” Her hair was dyed an inconsistent green, like a fern plant.
“Maryanne wants to meet you for a blind date,” Annie said in the movie theatre. She sat between Sean and Chris, leaned against Chris and looking at Sean. “Maryanne. Isn’t that a pretty name?”
“Maryanne, who is Maryanne,” Chris said.
“I like that name,” Sean said. He was thinking of a dream he had, a few days ago, in which love was a skeleton that hovered through the night; just one skeleton for all the world—a logistical mistake, Sean understood in his dream—gliding toe-swept over oceans, under bridges, through walls; the bones and ghost of it entering and leaving bedrooms at night, like a wantless thief; a clean, dead thing with the temperament of a cloud. The dream had gone on and on and was soothing in a chalky, religious way, like a sourceless and messageless yet somehow affecting prayer. Now, though, the whole thing seemed just irritating. The skeleton, Sean now felt, was not love, but some failed manifestation of love—high-flying and loud, jangling its bones, chomping its jaws in a false and godless laughter.
“Maryanne was dropped on her head as a small girl,” Annie was saying. “But instead of making her brain-damaged, it made her think beautifully and oddly. She was knocked sideways on the IQ scale, not downwards.”
“How come?” Sean said. He had spent the rest of last week renting low-budget, existential films, drinking beer and coffee, gazing somehow nostalgically from across the room at the bookstore job application—kind of depressed.
“How old is your sister?” Chris said.
Annie sat up very straight. “My sister,” she said. “She isn’t restrained by time or space. She’s not like that. I don’t know. She’s not a robot. This isn’t science fiction masterpiece theatre.” Annie paused. “I could say she’s ten or twenty but that wouldn’t be true. She’s just there. She’s not even a sister, really.” Annie laughed. She stood up. “Hey, wow,” she said. “There’s Maryanne.” She pointed at a girl sitting alone in the front row. “Sean, go sit by her. She’s lonely. Maybe a little hopeless, sitting in the front row. But look at her hair. She’s fixed it up, shampooed it.”
“I don’t know Maryanne,” Sean said.
“Where’s Maryanne?” Chris said without moving. “Thanks, Sean. For cleaning the apartment.”
“Maryanne,” Annie shouted. Some people, not the girl, turned around. “Go before the movie starts. Just point up here for confirmation, I’ll be waving.”
“No,” Sean said. Annie pulled him up. Sean looked around. The world seemed strange, but then it wasn’t strange anymore, it was just the world. “Okay,” he said. “But come with me.” He would go, he thought. He would get himself inescapably in love, like a good trouble; love would stare blankly at him, he would not flinch, and love, then, would murder him, drag him to a gray, underground place, freeze his corpse, and, over time, eat him. Annie pushed Sean into the aisle. She sat back down. Sean felt tall and dizzy. He went carefully down the steps. At the front row, he smiled at the girl, said something, and pointed back up at Annie, who was standing and waving. The girl stood up. Her face was startled and afraid. She was middle-aged. She touched her hair and sat down. Sean was looking, now, at the floor, and it seemed to Annie like he had fallen asleep, standing there. The lights went off.
Sean came back up and sat down. There was a small pounding at the back of his head, a tapping against the inside-back of his skull—the brain bored with itself; wanting out, perhaps, drilling slowly, wearily, at the bone.
“Don’t worry, Sean,” Annie whispered. She looked at him. She patted his thigh.
“Good one,” Sean whispered to her. It really was good, he thought.
Later, during the movie, Annie whispered in Sean’s ear, “That’s what you have to do. Pretend you know these people. Pretend they lov
e you. They can love you. Think about it.” The movie was about James Bond, who had a speedboat that could, if the situation called for it, which it did—twice—fit in the palm of his hand. He was a very busy man, too busy for love—except for a terse, witty, hyper-sexy sort of love.
After the movie, they went for sushi. “Still believe I have a sister named Maryanne?” Annie said. “Think I’m making that up?”
“Maybe,” Sean said.
“I do,” Annie said. “She has the cataractous gaze of a child prodigy entering into a scorched land. One time she tossed an ice cream cone underhand into a third-floor window. The cold thing went without a sound into that hard, brick building. It was like a little epiphany of the physical world.”
“I like that,” Sean said.
“Annie. Listen to yourself,” Chris said. He stood up. “What are you doing right now?” He adjusted his pants and sat down. He had a look on his face, Sean saw, like he might scream in such a horrifyingly quiet, mutated, and frequencyless way that the rules of the universe would then have to be changed.
“You’re in a bad mood,” Annie said. She hugged Chris. She looked at him. “I love you,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” Chris said uncertainly. He looked away, loudly said, “I’m joking,” then looked back and began to talk about whether or not it was a crime against humanity to buy coffee from Starbucks. It was a public company, so was driven by profit, would create a greater divide between the rich and the poor. But people were maybe better able to fall in love inside of Starbucks, with those plush sofas. But were people supposed to love other people, themselves, the entire world, or love itself? Chris looked around. He said that he hadn’t been thinking about any of this until now; he’d been thinking about chess—how bizarre and depressing it was—and then was somehow all of a sudden talking about Starbucks. He said he felt a lot better now—maybe. He wasn’t sure. He spread his fingers on his head and began to massage it. Annie peeled Chris’s hands off, replaced those hands with her own, quoted Einstein (“Only a life lived for others is worthwhile”) and then said something about learning to love, how it was a kind of memorization, a set of facts to place in your mind, a kind of future memory—a framework—to move into. Sean was trying to listen, to figure that out, when he got up—unconsciously, he thought while doing it—to use the bathroom. He washed his hands. Maryanne, he thought. He made a smile at the mirror above the sink. He made an angry face, a neutral face. He moved his head very close to the glass—the tricky, world-in-world depth of it, like a wise and airy ice. He could fall in, he knew, into the higher intelligence of the mirror, the keen and confident indifference of it, how it continuously took you in and doubted you and reflected your doubted self back into the world. Sean stared at his face. Where did he come from? What must one believe in? Where did love come from? He felt that these were three very legitimate questions.
In the morning Annie came over with a little girl. Sean hadn’t slept yet and was about to. Chris was watching TV. “Is your crab-cake recipe better than love?” the TV was saying. “Better than, um, sex?”
“Hi, small girl,” Chris said.
“This is Maryanne,” Annie said. The girl looked about five or six. She held onto a corner of Annie’s dress, which was layered red and white—she had on two dresses.
“Who’s Maryanne?” the little girl whispered. Her hand was very tiny.
“You’re Michelle,” Annie said to the little girl. “Most of what I said was not true,” Annie said to Chris and Sean. “Of course the truth is like a box of 56 crayons.” She paused. “Goddamn,” she said in a kind tone. “It’s okay to say goddamn around Michelle.”
The little girl wandered over to Sean.
“Hi, Maryanne,” Sean said.
“Michelle,” said the little girl.
“I forgot,” Sean said.
“Hi,” Michelle whispered. She moved very close to Sean. “Do you have a pet?”
Sean scooted away from Michelle then back to where he just was. He shook his head. Something was scrolling across the cramped sky of his mind, a white and messageless banner, folding across itself.
Michelle took something out of her pocket. A lima bean. She held it close to her chest and petted it while looking at Sean. Her eyes seemed flawless in a cut and auctionable way—a bit outlandish, Sean thought critically. He stared at her.
“That’s her pet bean,” Annie said. “She says it’s a dog. Michelle, share what’s its name.”
Michelle put the bean in her pocket and stepped back, away from Annie. “Let me do it myself,” Michelle said. Her face turned red. She held Sean’s hand and glared at Annie.
Sean looked at Chris, who was staring at the TV, which became very loud suddenly—“For the last twenty years I loved someone who loved someone else, who was not a thing of the human species, but a major S&P 500 corporation. So I just collapsed and fell on the bed. The bed was not a waterbed. It was park bench.”
Sean made an effort to wish the world well, but then accidentally gave it—he felt this with clarity—a damning curse. He thought of maybe lying down. He was very sleepy. The little girl is holding my hand, he thought. He lost track of things for a moment, and then time seemed to pass blunderingly, suddenly, by, in a flapping bunch, like an unclogged flock of something. Sean was taken aback. Time had certain obligations, he knew.
“I’m hungry,” Chris said. He stood up. “I want the salad. The Japanese place. St. Marks.” They left for the restaurant, the same one as the night before. After eating, they stood outside. They looked at the sky. It was cloudy and a little pink. There was nothing to say about it. Annie bought ice cream. Sean wandered into a deli and came out with a coffee whose largeness seemed highly creative.
On Fifth Avenue, Annie ran ahead. She bent at her knees and jumped a little. Her ice cream cone floated up into the air, brushed against a closed second-floor window, fell on the sidewalk. Annie’s mouth moved in something like a laugh—Chris, Sean, and Michelle saw—and she ran into a store and came back out when everyone else had caught up.
“What is wrong with you,” Chris said. His voice was neutral and disconnected, more sound than language. Sean mimicked his brother aloud—“What is wrong with you”—and laughed. Chris looked at him.
“What is wrong with you,” Chris said again.
Sean laughed again.
“I’m helping you,” Annie was saying to Chris. “Doing strange things will help you. Didn’t you like that?” She hugged Chris. She looked at him.
“Sorry,” Chris said.
“You seem happy,” she said.
“No,” Chris said. “I mean—maybe.” He pointed weakly at something across the street. Sean thought of clams and laughed. Chris looked at him.
Back at the apartment, Michelle had been in the bathroom for a long time. Sean—on the sofa—finished his coffee, put the cup on the table, and felt a vague desire for the cup. I’m a red cup, said the cup. Sean picked it up, set it back. The cup was huge. Sean grinned. Annie and Chris were on the bed. “We’re sitting here waiting for Michelle,” Annie said. “We’re not doing nothing, we’re doing something.” They could hear Michelle in the bathroom, talking in hushed, secretive tones.
“What’s my job?” Chris said slowly. “I forgot how I make money. Oh. Never mind.”
Michelle came out and whispered something in Annie’s ear. Annie went to Chris’s desk and swept all the stuff there—all the useless crap, Sean thought instantaneously—to one side.
Michelle took her bean out of her pocket, and then a little bed, which was toilet paper inside of a sushi soy-sauce holder. She stole that from the Japanese restaurant, Sean thought enthusiastically. Michelle put the bed on the table, the bean on the bed. She covered exactly half the bean with toilet paper.
They were all watching her do this. “Stop it,” Michelle said. She moved her body so that it blocked what she was doing.
Chris turned on the TV—a dating show.
“The bean—the dog
is treated so well,” Annie said. “That’s no good. Without pain, pleasure is an unsatisfying, irritating thing. With pain … it’s an urgent, leaving thing. Is that too pessimistic? Michelle?”
Michelle ignored Annie in a way that was visible on her face. She crawled to the middle of the bed and curled atop a blanket, which Sean had earlier folded very neatly into a square. On the sofa, Sean felt that his posture was very straight. “I feel good,” he said aloud. He felt very awake.
Annie picked up Michelle by picking up the blanket she lay on. Michelle’s face turned red and she scrunched her eyes very tight. Annie set Michelle and the blanket on a corner of the bed and then lay down. “Christopher,” she said. Chris turned off the TV. They went to sleep. It had gotten dark outside. Sean stood at a distance and looked at Chris, Annie, and Michelle. They all lay very still. They seemed to be pretending somehow. We’re not a part of your reality, they said. Look at how good I am, said the bed. Useful. Yeah, Sean thought. He looked at them for a very long time and went into an exquisite sort of daze. He felt enlightened and spearminty as gum. He went outside, walked around, bought coffee, came back, sat on the sofa. He felt like he’d hopped out and instantly hopped back in, with coffee. He watched TV on mute. He drank coffee. The TV was showing a movie and Sean found it extremely amusing and impressive. The second the movie ended, Chris woke up and said in an annoyed tone of voice that he wanted to go to the same Japanese place again. It was after midnight. Michelle took the bean out of its bed and went into the bathroom. “Be careful,” she said from inside. Her voice was sleepy and loud. “Please. Good. I love you. That’s love.” Michelle came out. She stood by the door, and began to blush.
“The bean uses the bathroom,” Annie said.
“No, stop, you don’t even know,” Michelle screamed. She faced away from Annie. She went back in the bathroom, came out, punched Annie’s thigh. They all left for the restaurant.