by Adi Alsaid
By the time we got switched over to concessions, I was getting tired of his reticence. “Alright, dude. You’ve been brainstorming for a while now. What do you have for me?”
Pete was trying to jam as many napkins as he could in the dispenser. Our record was 258, which I’d set last summer by cheating and taking out the spring-loaded bottom, then throwing that particular dispenser away. “Vis-à-vis...?”
The doors to the theater opened, the first customers of the day arriving: a group of stay-at-home parents coming in for a matinee that they would not be able to pay attention to because they’d be checking in on their baby and running out to calm the crying. “Have you seriously not been brainstorming this whole time?”
Pete tilted his head at me like a pretty Irish puppy. “In regards to the napkin thing?”
“No, you dolt. A strategy to get Iris to yield!”
“Ah.” He nodded once, then muttered something about losing count and went off to attend to the mommy-and-me crowd. I scooped popcorn for him, a little pissed that he hadn’t been on the same page as me. We’re usually pretty in sync, and it felt weird not to have him on board with me for this. I had to wait fifteen minutes for a break in the first-showing crowd, the whole while berating Pete in my head and trying to keep a smile on my face while toddlers pointed at the candy they wanted and then wailed when their parents opted for anything else.
During the shuffle of actually doing our jobs, we ended up at opposite ends of the concession counter. But people that had been working with us for a while had picked up on the fact that I would do whatever I could to talk to Pete, whether that was talking loudly across the entire row of coworkers or making them switch cashier spots with me, and they usually chose the latter. Brad tried to talk to us about it last summer, but quickly came to the realization that we ended up doing a better job if we were allowed to hang out together during our shifts.
“Okay, you’ve had more time now,” I said once I’d finagled my way down the registers toward him. “What’s my approach?”
“Forget about convincing her.” He shrugged. “Write about you and Leo.”
“I am going to eye-roll you so hard it’ll reverse the earth’s rotation, sending us back in time to before you were born, so that I can slap your mom about the terrible choice she made bringing you into the world.”
“That’s rude, my mom’s lovely. And you really don’t have to go back in time to slap her.” He squinted, and looked up and to the right, like he’d just had an idea and was riding the thought off in to the sunset. “Also, the logistics of rolling your eyes so hard that you turn back time is—”
“Pete.”
He came back to Earth, leaning against a popcorn machine and then jumping back when it tilted under his weight. “’Sup?”
“Stop suggesting I write about me and Leo. I don’t want to think about him. I want to write about Iris and Cal.”
He rubbed his elbow, a red welt forming where it had rested against the popcorn machine. “I think you have to accept the reality that this isn’t something she wants, and that if you continue to wish for her to just change her mind, you might end up right back where you were the other night, worrying about missing your deadline. My best advice is to find someone else.”
“There isn’t anyone else,” I said, resisting the urge to say it in the whiniest voice possible. Have you ever just sunk into that bratty whiny voice? It’s fun. Cathartic, even, like stretching a particularly tired muscle. “My words won’t come with anyone else.”
“Force them to.” Pete shrugged. “You said Iris gets sad when she dwells on her relationship? Allow yourself to dwell too. Write about it.” One of the moms ran out from her theater and took the whole stack of napkins that Pete had counted for the dispenser. She cringe-smiled at him then ran back, her sandals clapping against the floor until she hit the carpet portion of the hallway. Pete turned to look at me, his expression kind.
In defiance of what he’d said, I thought of Leo, as if to prove that I could do it without being touched by sadness. I thought of the speech I’d prepared for him, how I still hadn’t had the chance to read it. I thought about whether I still wanted to be back with him, even though he’d practically wiped me from his life. The answer was an immediate and resounding yes. I missed getting pho with him, missed walking home from school with him, missed coming up with stupid songs with him. My stomach dropped at the thought.
“God, you really belong as the voice of reason in a third act somewhere.” I fiddled with the computer screen on my register, hitting random buttons and then canceling the order, just for the pleasure of the little beeps. “Too bad this isn’t a movie and those truth bombs don’t do anyone any good. I tried writing about Rachel and Diane, nothing happened. I’m gonna write about Iris and Cal.”
Pete bit his lip. Always so damn calm, even when I just dismiss everything he says. Sometimes I wish he’d blow up at me and call me a selfish jerk. But that’s not who he is. “I don’t know what else to say. Keep trying.”
* * *
Mom wanted me to stay home after work, complaining that she “hadn’t seen me in so long that she wouldn’t recognize me walking down the street.” I managed to convince her to let me go to the coffee shop down the street from us though, just for a couple of hours so I could work on my column.
“Hmm,” she went. “What do you mean by ‘a couple’? Is it two or three or just a stand-in for an indefinite number you’d rather not name?”
“Mom, when you sniff out my teenage evasiveness it really makes you unbearable.”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know, Mother. Writing doesn’t work like that. There’s no formula to it. I could be done in fifteen minutes. Or I could be done in fifteen hours.”
“You only tell me it’s fifteen hours when you want to get away with something.”
“Listen,” I said. “What I do with my time is none of your business.”
“It is entirely my business what you do with your time. That’s my job as your mother, above all other business. It is literally the number one item on my business agenda.”
I squinted my eyes at her, knowing that I had no ground to respond, but also to convey that I didn’t want her to press any further.
“Before I let you out of the house, I’d like to press further. What are you writing about?”
I don’t know if my mom reads my column. We don’t really talk about it much, but she gets this funny look on her face every time the topic comes up, and then she kind of lets me do whatever I want.
I squinted a little harder, hoping to scare her off. Teenage squints are powerful like that. She clicked her tongue and shook her head, “You think that look scares me.” I stopped squinting and instead I activated my second phase of deflection, the I’m-confused-you’re-so-weird look. “Fine,” my mom said. “I’ll respect your privacy. But don’t let me slip into the back burner of your mind, or I might burn until I’m nothing but an ashy nuisance crusted into your best pot.”
“Goddamn, Mom. Harsh.”
“Language,” she said.
* * *
Little Bean is hipster chic, all wood paneling and hanging ferns, string lights draped across the coffee shop like it was the patio at someone’s wedding. I bought myself a drip coffee and snagged the only available seat next to an electrical outlet. It’s my favorite spot, not just because the outlet gives me freedom to hang out for long stretches of time, but because it’s in the corner near the window, allowing me to look out the window at pedestrian traffic, but also at the hip baristas with their septum piercings and couldn’t-care-less affectations, and the curious array of customers that came in: those plugged into laptops and headphones, those on dates or friendly meet-ups, those rushing in for a to-go order, a quick detour in their lives.
I opened my computer and brought up the saved blank document that should’ve been my
article, as well as my notebook, flipping to the notes I’d taken about Diane and Rachel. I pulled up Hafsah’s last email to me, hoping that seeing her name would intimidate me into inspiration. For the same reason, I pulled up a picture I’d taken of Pete a few weeks back at Books of Wonder. In it, he was holding a graphic novel and eyeing me like I was disturbing the very fabric of his world.
“There! Now I’m ready to work.” I would have said it out loud, if I were even more unhinged than I really am. Instead I thought it, and cracked my knuckles for the symbolic effect. Then I did absolutely fuck-all for forty-five minutes. I texted Iris that I’d had a fun night. I texted Pete asking him if he’d had any breakthroughs thinking of ways to convince Iris.
PETE
Dude, I can’t even convince you to do anything but pursue these lovebirds, clearly my powers of persuasion aren’t that great. Interview yourself. Or someone else, if you must.
I slouched as low in my seat as a nonslug being has ever slouched. All the excitement after my phone call with Hafsah that morning had been swallowed up by that unfortunate whirlpool of writer’s block hanging over my head. Then I spotted them. At a table across the coffee shop sat a blonde girl and a black guy. They had two different college stickers on their laptops and they were touching each other the way you would if you hadn’t seen the person you love in months.
Sure, I was making, at the very least, a dozen assumptions about these two people. They may not have even been a couple. They could have been having an affair, or displaying stickers for colleges their parents went to. They could have met after college. But I was in the state of mind that allowed me to push away from my seat, grab my mostly empty coffee cup, and walk over to them.
“Hi!” I said, cheery as one of those people in Times Square who tries to get you on the tour bus if you look even slightly like a Dutch family of four on vacation.
The couple looked at me exactly the way they should have. The blonde girl put a protective hand on her boyfriend’s forearm. The guy retreated slightly, as if I was accusing him of something. “Sorry,” I said, “that was aggressive. I write a love and relationship column for Misnomer, the online magazine.” The couple exchanged confused looks. “Anyway, I noticed your college decals. Do you two happen to be in a long-distance relationship?”
“Um,” they both said, because of course they did.
I was moments away from fleeing and begging Iris to change her mind, but then the couple said yes.
“How did you know?” the girl asked, half impressed, half still-wondering-how-deranged-I-was.
“Have you ever watched the show House?”
They both blinked, and I knew it was time to dial back Normal Lu and call up Journalism Lu. I took a breath, thought of the joys of a column coming together, thought of how good it felt to write again, how this couple might be the ones that broke the block for me. “Let me start over. My name is Lu Charles, I’m a writer for Misnomer,” I said with a smile that hopefully hid my mental state. “I’m working on a column about dating the summer after senior year, and I’m hoping I could ask you a few questions?”
They looked at each other and smiled, and I knew then and there that I had them.
For twenty minutes I sat with them, interviewing them, pushing my pen furiously across my page, taking note of all the details that made this couple unique, all the specifics of their love lives. I listened to the very best of my abilities, asking questions that would really get to the heart of who they were and how they let love be stronger than the circumstances fighting against it.
Then I thanked them, returned to my computer, and failed to write a single word.
All I could think about was two-person paintball teams, and Iris crying at the fountain in Columbus Circle.
* * *
At home, I tried to make my mom happy by not disappearing into my room immediately. I answered questions about my day monosyllabically, faking enthusiasm while slurping through some puttanesca. I watched Jase miraculously switch from murdering people virtually to playing football and virtually causing concussions. I wondered briefly about whether he was interested in romance yet, if he was starting to develop crushes, think about love, dream about people. Probably. But I wasn’t about to broach the subject.
After a while of being a decent family member, I opened up my computer. Instead of writing, I perused social media, clicking through pictures of Iris and Cal, which then led me to clicking through pictures of me and Leo.
A text came in from Pete.
PETE
How’s the writing going?
LU
Splendidly.
PETE
Mmm-hmm.
Having a friend with ESP is really annoying. I clicked away from my blank document as if Pete might be looking over my shoulder. I had six days to interview someone and write a column. It usually took me at least two days to draft something worthwhile, especially if I was working at the theater. I could probably get some work done on the train ride to Princeton on Friday when Jase and I went to visit Dad, but I definitely needed to have someone locked in to write about by then.
I looked over at my computer screen at a picture of me and Leo from that day we went to Coney Island in the winter. We’d had this notion that it would look beautiful after a blizzard, and it kind of did, but it was mostly miserable and depressing with everything shut down. We’d had fun for about six minutes, taken some selfies, and then gotten the hell out of there as soon as we could. I think we watched a movie at his place that day.
In the picture, the wind is blowing his hair across his face. He couldn’t quite get it into the samurai-esque man bun yet. Sitting there on the couch, I tried to remember what Leo smelled like. For some reason I couldn’t conjure it up; that particular aroma of his skin and clothes or whatever je ne sais quoi results in the symbiosis of a person’s scent. It felt strange not being able to remember his smell.
Maybe that’s what made me stand up from the couch, set my computer gently on the coffee table and stare at my phone as if it were buzzing in my hand. What I was really doing was scrolling to Leo’s name in my phone. I hadn’t done that since the last time he’d stood me up, the day I met Cal.
I tiptoed out of the living room and down the hall to my room, shutting the door quietly as the phone rang.
“Hey,” Leo answered. He lingered on the y kind of like I had with Hafsah, but not like that at all.
“Hey.” I tried to decide between sitting or pacing, then realized my room had about two steps’ worth of pacing in any direction and plopped myself down on the corner of my bed. “How goes it?” I asked, which is not how I usually talk, because I’m a normal human person. I swear.
“It’s, uh, good.”
Someone strike this conversation from the annals of history.
“That’s good. So good. Really happy for you,” I said. I examined my fingernails and brought my thumbnail up to my mouth to chew on it, even though I had literally never done that before in my life. Through the parted blinds I could see the neighboring building, the column of bathroom windows, one of which was currently lit up. A blurry silhouette was showering, one royal blue bottle of shampoo or conditioner visible in the portion of the window that was pushed out into the night air, allowing mellow billows of steam to waft out.
“So, what’s up?” Leo asked. I could hear something on in the background on his line, a reality show, maybe, or a Broadway cast recording.
My showering neighbor reached over for the visible bottle of shampoo, his hand recognizably male. Was I heeding Pete’s advice to interview Leo, or was I going against his advice to forget about him? I suddenly wished I’d prepared questions before dialing. Pretty terrible journalistic move to arrive at an interview completely unprepared.
“Leo, I was wondering...”
A long pause from his end. “Yeah?”
I chewed off the corner of m
y thumbnail, cursing myself when it peeled away into my mouth. I spat it out quietly into my hand and tossed it into the nearby trash bin. My eyes were glued on the showering neighbor, but I’m pretty sure that if a human-sized wolf appeared in the window brushing its teeth and waving at me, I probably wouldn’t have reacted at all. I was remembering Coney Island, the excitement of the subway ride there, the quiet disappointment on the ride back. Leo had played a game on his phone, taking the spurned plans pretty well. No matter how I felt, Leo could make the best of bad situations. He was not easily angered or annoyed.
“Can we talk?” I reached for something to fiddle with in my hands, landing on a receipt from the Comedy Cellar from the other night with Iris. I was slightly jealous of teenagers of old and their ability to play with tangled phone cords, tethered to a place but at least free to play endlessly. “About us?”
A quiet sigh from Leo. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
Leo didn’t say anything. You ever hear your past with someone in the pauses they take?
I thought about telling him the real reason I was calling, but couldn’t decide if that was more or less weird than just playing the heartbroken-ex card. I crumpled the receipt and then smoothed it out on my thigh. “I just...” I trailed off. “I wish we could talk about it. Analyze things. Figure out what went wrong, what would have gone wrong regardless, what we did right. I wish we could talk about it like it was a harmless thing.”
More pauses from Leo. “I’m not sure what to say to that.” An awkward chuckle. Not even a chuckle. A throat spasm at best.
“We went through something, Leo. Good or bad, it was something. Good and bad, probably. And I was thinking that maybe...”