At Laura’s friend’s party Paul sat alone at the snacks table, eating crackers and drinking wine, sometimes with unfocused eyes. Then he was sitting on a mattress in a space-module-like bedroom, in which six to ten people, smoking marijuana, watched a video off a MacBook of obese people screaming in pain earnestly while exercising and being screamed at motivationally, in what seemed to be a grotesque parody, or something, of something. Paul felt strong aversion to the video, and also like he’d already experienced this exact situation — he remembered his aversion to the video and the way someone to his right was laughing — and wanted to ask if this already happened, but didn’t know who to ask, then realized he wanted to ask himself. Around an hour later, after more crackers and wine, Paul thought he heard Laura drunkenly say something like “let him through, my new boyfriend,” loud enough for probably ten to fifteen people to have heard, as she beckoned him to sit with her and her three closest friends, including Walter, on a four-seat sofa. Walter drove everyone on the sofa to Laura’s apartment to smoke marijuana, around 3:30 a.m., when the party ended.
On the sidewalk, outside Laura’s apartment, a heavily impaired Paul explained that in high school his lungs collapsed three times and one of the doctors said smoking marijuana would increase the chance of recurrence by 4,200 percent. Laura said he wouldn’t have to smoke. Paul said the smoke would be in the air and that he was allergic to Laura’s cat and had a horrible headache. He hugged Laura, then walked toward the Bedford L train station, half a block away.
• • •
The next night Laura emailed that she wished Paul wasn’t allergic to Jeffrey so he could be with her, in her room, listening to the rain. Paul asked if she wanted to eat dinner together tomorrow night. Laura said she felt like she missed him and “well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” characteristically answering a question indirectly and ending an email casually.
Paul was aware he felt mysteriously less interested in her after reading that she felt like she missed him and realized he hadn’t considered what a relationship between them would be like: probably not sustainable, at all, due to a mutual lack of strong interest. He was aware of not acknowledging her line about missing him in his response, which included a short list of restaurants he liked.
Paul met Laura the next night outside the clothing boutique in SoHo where she worked. “I think this is a bad idea, I always go home after work to nap,” she said with a worried expression, walking slowly away from Paul, who signaled a taxi, which they exited fifteen blocks later at a deli, where they bought a 40oz and two bottles of beer.
Seated, in Angelica Kitchen, they looked at each other directly for the first time that night. Laura seemed anxious and tired. Paul said the restaurant was organic and vegan and Laura said she had been trying to eat better since meeting Paul, who grinned while saying “you’ve been trying to eat butter?” twice, during which Laura began to blush.
“I thought you said ‘butter,’ ” said Paul grinning.
Laura looked at her hand touching a fork on the table.
“I thought you said you’re trying to eat butter.”
“Stop,” said Laura moving the fork slowly toward herself.
“Stop what?”
“You’re making fun of me, I think,” said Laura looking at him tentatively.
“No, I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.”
Laura was motionless, looking at her lap with downcast eyes, like she was waiting for Paul to finish. Paul asked if she believed him and she didn’t respond and he felt stranded and withering and asked again if she believed him, then quietly said “I honestly thought you said ‘butter.’ ” He nervously moved a spoon to his lap and, aware they were both looking down, felt himself absorbing the irresolution of the butter misunderstanding as an irreversible damage. He asked if she wanted to leave, for a different restaurant maybe. Laura poured beer from the 40oz into Paul’s glass, already 95 percent full, and said “let’s just drink more, I just need to drink more” and apologized for “being like this.”
“It’s okay,” said Paul. “I’m sorry about the butter thing.”
Laura blushed and looked down by slowly moving her eyeballs. Paul apologized and said he wouldn’t talk about it anymore and that he liked Laura’s eyebrows, which were black, in contrast to her naturally blond hair. They talked tensely, with a few long pauses, about the difference between Scottish and Irish people and Paul began to worry about the rest of dinner, but after they finished the 40oz and mutely focused on their menus a few minutes they settled into a calm, polite, somewhat resigned manner of leisurely occupying each other. When their mashed potatoes, chili, corn-bread, noodle soup arrived they talked less and Paul began to feel a little sleepy. Laura thanked him for showing her this restaurant, which she wanted to try lunch from soon.
Outside, on the sidewalk, Laura immediately walked toward the 1st Avenue L train station at an unleisurely pace, seeming less rushed than resolutely continuing with a prior, focused, unobstructed momentum. Paul realized, with some confusion, that he’d obliviously assumed they would do something together after dinner; more than once, as they waited for the bill, he’d considered suggesting they see a movie at a theater that was in the opposite direction they were currently walking. Laura was crossing streets and sidewalks at unconventional angles, as if across a field, in a diagonal, it seemed, to get there sooner. Paul wanted to stop moving and sit or lay on the sidewalk, partly as a juvenile tactic to interrupt Laura’s departure.
On the train Laura became significantly more talkative and, it seemed, happier. Paul thought of how at every job he’d had, in movie theaters and libraries and restaurants, almost every employee, probably especially himself, would become predictably friendlier and more generous as closing time neared. At the Bedford station, before exiting the train, Laura apologized again and unsolicitedly said “maybe I’ll feel better and come over later, in a few hours,” which seemed to Paul like a non sequitur, or an extreme example of the “closing time” effect.
In his room, with the light on, Paul lay entirely beneath his blanket, aware that Michelle was the last person who’d affected him this cripplingly — to zero productivity, not even listening to music, motionless between his blanket and mattress like some packaged thing. He heard a ringing noise, or the memory of a ringing noise, which meant another of his limited number of nonregenerative hearing cells had died, though his room was nearly silent. He became aware of himself remembering a night when he and Michelle, alone in her mother’s mansion-like house in Pittsburgh, made salad and pasta for dinner and sat facing each other, bisecting a long wood table like a converted canoe. Paul had begun to feel depressed without knowing why — maybe unconsciously intuiting what life would be like in a giant house with a significant other and a routine, how forty or fifty years, like windows on a computer screen, maximized on top of each other, could appear like a single year that would then need to be lived repeatedly, so that one felt both nearer and withheld from death — and within a few minutes was silent and visibly troubled, staring down at his salad. Michelle had asked what was wrong and Paul had said “nothing,” then she’d asked again and he’d said he felt depressed, but didn’t know why, then at some point she went upstairs, where Paul found her on her bed, in her room that seemed too big for one person, in a fetal position on her side — oval and exposed, on top of her sheets and blanket, as an egg. Paul dreamed something about his cube-shaped room being a storage facility in which he’d been placed by an entity that believed in his resale value. While in storage he could interact with others, look at the internet, go on a book tour, but if he damaged himself he would be moved to a garbage pile, on a different planet. He woke a few times, then remained awake, obstructed from sleep by his own grumpiness and discomfort, the main reasons he wanted to sleep.