He thought of how, from elementary through high school, if a girl had been nice to him at school or if he got a valuable baseball or Magic: The Gathering card or if he accomplished something in a video or computer game — if for whatever reason he felt significantly, temporarily happier — he would get an urge to talk to his mother and sometimes would go find her, at her makeup station in her bathroom, or outside watering plants, then reveal something about his life or ask her a question about her life, knowing he was making her happy, for a few minutes, before running back to the TV, Nintendo, or computer. Sometimes, half mock scolding, mostly as an amused observation of human nature (she’d also say she recognized the behavior in herself, that she was the same way, with certain people), Paul’s mother would tell Paul, who almost always answered her questions, her attempts at conversation, with “I don’t know” in a kind of vocal cursive, without disconnected syllables, that he shouldn’t only talk to her — to his “poor mother,” she’d say — when he felt like talking.
Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.
In college, junior and senior year, when he’d deliberately remained friendless — after his first relationship ended — to focus on writing what became his first book, he would force himself to email his mother (his only regular communication, those two years, once every two to four days) even when he felt depressed and unmotivated. He would always feel better after emailing, knowing his mother would be happy and that, by mastering some part of himself, he’d successfully felt less depressed without bothering, impeding — or otherwise being a distraction in — anyone’s life.
Target was closed for an unknown reason. Paul was quiet during the ten-minute drive back to Calvin’s mansion, dimly remembering once sitting close with Erin in another back-seat, also at night, holding cups of hot tea for warmth. His memories had increasingly occurred to him without context, outside of linear time, like single poems on sheets of computer paper, instead of pages from a book with the page number and book title on top.
They used all their MDMA in Calvin’s basement while eating cake, ham, salad, cookies — the first time Paul had eaten food for comfort while on MDMA — then went upstairs to Calvin’s room, where Calvin and Maggie drank beer, which Paul and Erin, who had eaten only a little food, declined. Paul began recording, at some point, with his MacBook. “Isn’t it a thing?” he said after ingesting Codeine and Flexeril. “That people warn against? Combining drugs.”
“Yeah,” said Calvin, and laughed.
“I don’t think that’s true,” said Erin shyly.
“I’m on like eight things now,” said Paul.
Calvin asked if Erin wanted to smoke marijuana and she asked if Paul would be okay with that and Paul said yes, thinking he didn’t like that she had asked. While Erin and Calvin smoked in the bathroom, with the door closed so Calvin’s parents wouldn’t smell it, Paul and Maggie created a GIF of a baseball cap moving around on their heads. Maggie, when Paul said he wanted to smoke marijuana, said he shouldn’t because of his lung collapse history. Paul began coughing nonstop after smoking and repeatedly said his chest burned and fell, half deliberately, to the floor, grinning in a stereotypically marijuana-induced manner, he could feel, as he tried, with his MacBook, to find information on the internet about his situation.
“I feel like I’m unsarcastically viewing this as a major ordeal,” said Calvin.
“I’m just trying to Google ‘burned lung,’ I’m not doing anything to indicate what you said,” said Paul in an agitated voice while grinning. “I’m just idly looking up ‘burned lung’ variations on the internet.”
“I was also viewing this as major until Paul just said that,” said Erin.
Paul lay facedown, at some point, on one of the two beds in the room and heard Calvin say “what if he’s dead?” and imagined Erin shrugging. When he woke, four hours later, on his side, Erin was holding him from behind.
They spoke once — at a rest stop, when Paul said it was his turn to drive and Erin said she was okay with continuing — during the eight-hour drive to Brooklyn, arriving around midnight and sleeping until late in the afternoon, when Erin said she was buying groceries from LifeThyme and driving back to Baltimore. Paul asked if she wanted to “stay and eat dinner on Xanax” before leaving.
At Sel De Mer, that night, Erin said Paul had been ignoring her all weekend and that she felt depressed. Paul said he’d focused on doing what he wanted, on talking to Charles, instead of complaining that he was unhappy. Erin said Paul did complain, to Charles.
“I don’t remembering complaining to him,” said Paul.
“You said you don’t feel happy around me,” said Erin.
“I said I don’t feel happy no matter what. I also said I don’t feel interested in anyone except you.”
“You said you felt interested in other girls sexually.”
“That isn’t complaining,” said Paul. “We talked about a lot of things.” Charles had seemed to be having the same “relationship problems” with his girlfriend as before Mexico and had said he was planning a similar, solitary trip to Asia. Paul had suggested Charles write a novel called Mexico, plotted around his problems with Jehan, who was still in Mexico but had been active on the internet, regularly writing on Charles’ Facebook wall and, unless it had been a different Jehan, adding Paul on Goodreads.
• • •
After dinner, in Paul’s room, Erin asked if she was “going home now.” Paul lay unresponsive on his mattress facing away. Erin said she “wanted to buy groceries from LifeThyme before leaving.” Paul rolled onto his back and, with only the top half of his head visible, said “I think it would be better if you didn’t stay tonight” through the muzzle-y screen of his blanket. He felt “completely motionless,” he thought, on his mattress, with his eyes closed, as Erin gathered her belongings. He heard her say “I agree with what you said about how if it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but I wanted to say that I like knowing you and I hope it works out.”
Without knowing exactly why, but sensing, on some level, that his feeling was mostly vicarious — that he was experiencing what he suspected Erin would experience, in a few seconds, once she discerned his sincere lack of response — Paul felt a sympathetically cringing sensation that he wished Erin hadn’t said what she had said. Mechanically, with the lightness of bones that could move, he stood and hugged her briefly, without looking at her face.
Six hours later, when birds were chirping but it was still dark outside, Paul was sitting on his mattress watching what he’d recorded in Calvin’s room. He noticed that he hadn’t been in Calvin’s room — he didn’t remember where he’d gone, maybe downstairs to the kitchen — for a few minutes, during which Erin had spoken in a louder, more confident voice and openly debated if she wanted a beer. Maggie, Paul saw in the movie, had asked Erin if Paul drank alcohol and Erin had said “sometimes,” then Maggie had asked what kind and Erin had said “beer, and sometimes tequila,” in a subtly, complicatedly different voice like that of a shyer, less friendly version of herself. Hearing this, aware that Erin would normally attribute non-firsthand information, that she’d say she had read about him drinking tequila, Paul began crying a little.