“Whoa,” said Erin. “Looks like Times Square.”
“We’re leaving,” shouted Paul’s mother a few minutes later, when Paul and Erin were looking at the Wikipedia page for 28 Days Later, which Erin had said was one of her favorite movies. Paul was rereading a sentence (“As he gets hit by a car in his flashback, he simultaneously dies on the operating table”) for the fourth time, in idle confusion, when the apartment’s metal door closed in a loud and distinct but, Paul thought, non-ominous click.
Ten minutes later Paul was at the dining table staring at an email from Calvin (“hi bro. did you get the steaks my dad sent you? lol. .”) while waiting for Erin, who was in the bathroom. Paul typed “hi” and his eyes unfocused. He typed “,” and saved “hi,” as a draft. He minimized Safari and saw his face, which seemed bored and depressed, his default expression. He maximized Safari and imagined millions of windows, positioned to appear like one window. He closed his eyes and thought of the backs of his eyelids as computer screens; both could display anything imaginable, so had infinite depth, but as physical surfaces were nearly depthless. Paul typed “ppl are powerful computers w 2 computer screens & free/fast/reliable access to their own internet” in Twitter, copied it, closed Twitter, pasted it in his Gmail draft of tweet drafts. He was thinking about the fast-food restaurant Arby’s, which he’d always felt a little confused by, when Erin appeared behind him and patted his shoulders with both hands moving up and down.
“Let’s hug as hard as we can,” said Paul, and stood and they did. “I think being squished really hard is what people who cut themselves get. . to feel.”
“Have you cut yourself?”
“No. Have you?”
“No,” said Erin carrying the MacBook toward the front door.
“Why would being squished feel good?” said Paul absently.
“Hm,” said Erin. “Do you have m—”
“Raarrr!” screamed Paul with his mouth open.
“Jesus,” said Erin grinning.
“Does it smell?” said Paul about his breath.
“Maybe like coffee a little bit. But it’s okay.”
Paul jogged to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and tongue, rinsed his mouth, jogged to the front door. Erin asked if he had her “ID thing”—he did — then touched his arm and quickly said “do you feel okay?” in a high-pitched voice. Paul, who’d begun to feel the MDMA, looked at Erin’s hand and imagined feeling utter disbelief, increasing to uncontrollable rage, that she would touch his arm, at a time like this. “Yeah,” he said with a neutral expression. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” said Erin. “Wait, is my—”
“Smells vaguely of barbecue, but it’s good,” said Paul, and patted her shoulder.
“Vaguely of barbecue,” said Erin grinning.
In the mirror-walled elevator they stared at themselves on the screen of Paul’s MacBook, which Erin held waist level. Paul moved in a parody of a robot and lightly slapped Erin twice. Erin slapped Paul once and, after exiting the elevator, yawned audibly, as they approached an atrium of spiral staircases and a gigantic Christmas tree.
“Look,” said Paul with a fish-like expression.
Erin laughed loudly. “Jesus,” she said.
“You made a Jack Nicholson facial expression.”
“Really?” said Erin, and laughed.
“Your eyebrows went,” said Paul demonstrating.
“Whoa,” said Erin loudly. “I made a soundboard laugh.”
“Oh,” said Paul. “Oh,” he said quietly, and moved toward a potted plant and, before reaching it, jumped in place, slightly confused by his own behavior. Erin said she thought Paul was going to “jump on.” There was a suctioned, whooshing noise as they exited automatically opening doors onto a wide sidewalk. Paul turned left — into Erin, who almost dropped the MacBook — and sustained an uninhibited, yelping noise for three or four seconds, imagining himself as a butler in a Disney movie in comically prolonged recovery from almost dropping an elaborately layered tray of desserts and drinks. Paul had an urge to practice the noise repeatedly, with increasing frustration, trying to perfect it — cut-scene to him in a straitjacket.
“Jesus,” said Erin grinning. “Should I get dramatic shots of the street?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Dramatic ass shots,” said Erin.
“It’s your night,” said Paul in vague reference to the Cinderella archetype of a beautiful, oppressed, sympathetic character that experiences a hectic reversal of fortune. “I keep thinking ‘this is our night’ for some reason,” he said a few minutes later, and his eyes felt shiny, and he thought of shyness, acceptance. “I wonder what it’s going to be like for us, for our twenty days here,” he said as they crossed a street. “What are we going to. . do?”
“What if we get divorced by then?”
“It seems possible,” said Paul. “Twenty-eight days.”
“Twenty-eight days,” said Erin grinning. “Twenty-day immersion technique.”
“Have you ever spent twenty straight days—”
“Yeah,” said Erin.
“You have?”
“With Jennika. This summer, in Seattle.”
“I mean with a boyfriend,” said Paul, and imagined himself becoming physically faceted by rapidly facing different directions, in 15-degree movements, advancing blurrily ahead as a barely visible, wave-like curvature.
“Oh. Yeah. Probably.”
“Who?”
“First boyfriend. Kent.”
“Sleeping together?” said Paul suppressing an urge to scream it in mock disbelief. Erin said they were together “like every day” in the beginning and that “it seemed okay.” Paul asked what she meant by “okay” and visualized “it seemed” darkening and “okay” brightening colorfully. He mock studied “okay,” which suddenly enlarged and disappeared by “flying” through him, it seemed. Paul felt vaguely, uncertainly amused. Erin was explaining that she and Kent didn’t fight until she used his computer to write a paper and saw a folder of naked girlfriend pictures, which Kent said were from so long ago he couldn’t remember and that the girl lived in Poland and he didn’t talk to her anymore, all of which were lies.
“How do you feel about our fights so far?”
“I feel. . they seem to be okay,” said Erin descending stairs into a powerfully air-conditioned MRT station, marbled and quiet and clean, with the austere plainness of an established museum. “I still feel the same amount of interest toward you. But I think I worry more. I worry like ‘he might actually have a reaction toward this so I’ll think about it more.’ Or something. How do you think about them?”
“They seem fine,” said Paul.
“Is. . this how it usually goes?”
“Yeah,” said Paul with the word extended.
“Like the fights are similar?”
“Um, yeah. . I don’t have the kind of fight where it’s, like, ‘fighting,’ ” said Paul as they passed a bakery where he photographed and ate a crispy, red-bean-paste-filled croissant last year. “Like, yelling at each other and trying to ‘win,’ or something. Or, like, forgetting about it.”