“Or like what?”
“Like ‘winning.’ I don’t have that kind of fight.”
“Oh,” said Erin.
“Ever,” said Paul quietly.
Erin said with Kent she had the kind of fight where it turned into “proving a point,” then escalated into yelling. Paul asked if she fought with Harris, her second boyfriend.
“No,” said Erin.
“You have a curling effect,” said Paul touching her hair. “I like it. Is that what you’re going for?”
“Yeah,” said Erin smiling endearingly.
“You didn’t fight with the second one at all?”
“We had fights like you and I, like discussion-style things,” said Erin. “I don’t think we ever yelled at each other. Except, did we ever, no — no, we never yelled.”
“How do you feel about me compared to your other boyfriends?”
“I like you more,” said Erin.
“Than all of them?”
“Yeah,” said Erin.
“I like you—”
“You—” said Erin.
“—more also,” said Paul.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Paul.
“Sweet,” said Erin. “You seem to encompass major things of what I want, in ways I feel like only segments of other people. . have.” She patted Paul’s chest and said “I like you” as they approached an intersection of corridors, wide as four-lane streets, where last year, leaning against a pillar in the left corridor, Paul read the last few pages of Kōbō Abe’s The Face of Another, which ended with the narrator, hiding behind a pillar, about to attack his “imposter.” Paul realized they were walking the wrong direction, and they turned around.
“What do you think your parents think about me?”
“They. . like you,” said Paul, and laughed quietly.
“Do they usually act like. . the way they did?”
“Yeah,” said Paul uncertainly. “I think they’re always focused on me, not the other person. But, yeah.”
“I wondered about that.”
“My mom’s probably thinking about drugs a lot,” said Paul, and Erin laughed and hiccupped, it seemed, at the same time. Paul said “I mean worried about drugs.”
“Is she addicted? Do you think?”
“Yeah,” said Paul grinning.
Erin said she’d noticed that Paul sometimes sounded “really angry” when talking to his mother in Mandarin. Paul said he didn’t feel angry, that he had gotten into a habit, from being a spoiled child, of talking to her like that and that it used to be “way worse.” Until he was 7 or 8 his voice, incomprehensible to anyone outside his family, had been a harmonica-like, almost electronic, squealing-bleating noise, which wholly outsourced the task of articulation, in the form of deciphering, to the listener. Paul’s brother would tell him to “stop screaming” or “stop whining.” Paul’s mother, the listener probably 95 percent of the time, a shy and anxious person herself, probably had strongly encouraged and liked how unrestrained and unself-conscious Paul had been.
“I was surprised,” said Erin. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”
“I really don’t like it,” said Paul.
“It’s interesting,” said Erin stepping onto a down escalator.
“I’m embarrassed about it.”
“I do it with my parents,” said Erin smiling.
“What have you read by Kōbō Abe?”
“Just The Woman in the Dunes.”
“What else do you think about me?” said Paul, and laughed sarcastically, which Erin also did, then both abruptly stopped and hugged and, stepping off the escalator, approached one of eight automated turnstiles. Paul said “just hold it to the thing” about Erin’s MRT card, then in a deeper voice than normal “wait, wait” and, after a pause, that he was “going to poop.”
Paul could see himself, after exiting the bathroom, shakily enlarging on the screen of his MacBook, which Erin pointed at him, as he maneuvered toward it in a flighty zigzag, perpendicularly against people walking to and from turnstiles, escalators. “I just vomited, like, water,” he said.
“Oh my god. Really? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m just getting the feeling of a lot of emptiness.”
“Oh. I was going to go poop but the—”
“Go, go,” said Paul.
“—like the thing, or, okay,” said Erin.
“Wikipedia? What?”
“The thing in the floor? I wasn’t sure how to use it.”
“You went in there?” said Paul.
“It’s just, like, a hole in the floor, interesting.”
“What if I couldn’t find you?”
“Huh?” said Erin with a confused expression.
“What if I couldn’t find you? You went in the bathroom?”
“I just went in for a second, with the intention of—”
“Go, go,” said Paul patting Erin’s shoulder, and she went. Paul set his MacBook on the floor. His legs moved in and out of view for a few minutes. “Hello?” he said in Mandarin into his iPhone. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving now, okay, bye.” Erin was skipping toward him and, it seemed, flapping her arms. Paul said his mother called to remind them they can’t eat or drink on the train. Erin smiled and said “oh, helpful” sincerely and they passed turnstiles, descended two floors, waited two minutes, sat in a train. Paul asked what Erin hadn’t liked about her other boyfriends.
“Like, things that have just bothered me?”
“Let’s just talk about. . Harris,” said Paul.
“Okay. Um, bothered me that he, like, had a lot of friends and a big social life. And didn’t seem to be okay with how I just had him and one other friend. He’d be like ‘you need to focus on me less and get more friends.’ I felt bothered that that was constant. And I didn’t like it that sometimes he seemed to make insensitive comments. There was one incident where I had to get a. . surgery-type thing on my, like, cervix. . thing.”
“What was it?”
“To remove precancerous cells, or something.”
“Whoa,” said Paul.
“They had to, like, burn—”
“Is that normal?”
“Yeah, relatively, but I couldn’t do anything for three weeks, then finally when we did. . this weird-looking thing came out? And, I don’t know, I felt really self-conscious, and the first thing he was just like ‘ew’ and, like, backed away from me and I was like ‘I can’t help it.’ I don’t know. It bothered me at the time but now. . I don’t know.”
“Are you on birth control right now?”
“No. I haven’t had my period but I’ve also taken three pregnancy tests, I’m not pregnant.”
“When did you take three pregnancy tests?”
“Periodically. One time I didn’t have my period for a year and a half. I feel like I should get on birth control. Because I have my period when I’m on it.”
“Isn’t it healthier to not be on it?”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m not on it.”
“It seems fine,” said Paul vaguely.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Paul trying to remember something he wanted to say on the topic of friends. “It. . doesn’t matter to me if I come in you or somewhere else.”
“Okay,” said Erin.
“Um,” said Paul distractedly.
“This is probably the most that a guy has come in me without being on it. But I figure if anything happens we’re probably similarly. . minded.” Erin looked at Paul with an ironic expression and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because you want to have kids,” she said in a mock-serious voice. “Soon. Right?”
Paul nodded, aware he probably appeared confused.
“That was our goal in getting married,” said Erin.
Paul patted her thigh twice and grinned a little.
“We’re not in sin anymore,” said Erin completing the joke, mostly to herself, it seemed.