Eeeee Eee Eeee (2 page)

Joanna is saying something.

Andrew turns down the music. He feels bored. “What did you just say?”

“I know this. My sister listens to this. It’s I Hate Myself.”

“No one listens to I Hate Myself,” Andrew says.

“I just said my sister listens to I Hate Myself.”

Andrew wants to meet Joanna’s sister for dinner.

“I live here,” Joanna says.

After eating salads with Joanna’s sister they will listen to music and kiss. After eating salads with Joanna’s sister they will avert their eyes. To be polite she will swear to God she’s having fun, and take a lie detector test. She won’t be Sara. Sara is better. Sara didn’t listen to I Hate Myself. ‘Complex.’ ‘Shit-eating grin.’ Shit-eating grins are complex. Why would you grin if you just ate shit? A neighborhood is
passing on the right. Joanna’s neighborhood. Andrew in his head has an image of a mouth larger than Andrew’s head and the mouth is laughing. Sometimes reading or watching TV Andrew recognizes that a thing is meant to be funny and hears this laughter, in his head, then feels that his face is very calm and neutral, like a hamster’s. At night sometimes Andrew’s heart beats fast and his thoughts are illogical and wild. In bed he looks at the ceiling and feels excited and alert, and can’t understand why he, or anything, exists.

“You passed it,” Joanna says. “You passed the first turn too; when we left Domino’s. That’s why you made a U-turn and got a ticket.”

“The first turn you didn’t say anything; how could I know?”

“I did,” Joanna says.

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t.”

“I swear I said, ‘Turn here, Andrew.’ ”

“You didn’t say my name.”

If Joanna were Sara, Andrew would tickle her. He mock jerks the steering wheel to the
left. He looks at Joanna. She isn’t looking. One time a kid was roadside on a bike and kept glancing over his shoulder as Andrew approached; Andrew mock jerked the car and the kid fell off his bike into a ditch. Sara liked that story. Sara called a guy at Duane Reade a motherfucker. Sara’s tongue was very cute, licking her blue Popsicle. Sara Tealsden. Stop thinking about her. Drive Joanna to Joanna’s house.

“I’ll turn up here,” Andrew says. U-turn. Another promise not kept. Of the two people in the car Andrew is the one without a future; the other person, Joanna, will go to college, make myriad friends and life connections, join clubs, get internships, and even marry someone and have children. What was Andrew doing the entire time in college? Everyone was constantly busy and partying, or attempting suicide. Andrew was always telling people how he’d just slept fourteen hours. He joined a water polo club. He had leg cramps and got out of the pool and winced. The instructor said, “You won’t be coming back again, will you?” Andrew said,
“Yeah I will.” At a deli Andrew saw the instructor and walked up to her and said, “I’ll see you next week.” He did not go back. He turns the music up, puts it to a different song. Pick a happy one. There are no happy ones. There is no future. It goes to a very depressing song by Samiam.
I don’t want to spend another long and lonely weekend by the phone without anyone to call / I’ve had a lot of time to think and I’m so tired of thinking I know why he put that bullet in his skull
. Sincere, at least. Andrew does not know the meaning of the word ‘sincere.’ That can’t be true. Talk to Joanna. Meet her sister. Kill Joanna, her sister, and Steve. (“Kill me and my siblings.”) Suitcase full of cash; high-fives on a diamond boat. Andrew feels sorry for Samiam’s singer who is probably currently listening to I Hate Myself. Andrew feels sorry for anything, even inanimate objects and moments in time. He once recorded a song in his room; he feels sorry for those moments in time when a person named Andrew recorded a sad song in his childhood bedroom by dubbing drums with guitar then singing a poem over it. He should
put the song on the Internet. Name it “Jhumpa Lahiri.” Her Pulitzer Prize would slide into the night and be run over by a car. Sara would laugh. Steve would comprehend that it was funny but not laugh. Joanna probably would not laugh. Joanna’s sister, maybe (she listens to I Hate Myself). Matt would stare at Andrew for ten minutes. It’s depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat. The chance that Andrew and Joanna’s sister would like one another is probably two percent. Einstein,
God doesn’t play dice with the universe
. When Andrew hears something like that his face becomes very neutral and a sarcastic voice in his head says, “Profound.” He doesn’t want to drive anymore. What will he do tonight? (“Go fuck yourself.” “I will. Tonight.”) He wants to drive into a mountain and make the mountain explode. Florida has no mountains. Florida has no Sara. No Sara; no future. No marshmallows. Andrew stops thinking.

“You passed where you said you would turn,” Joanna says after a while.

“I’ll turn soon.” Andrew drives thinking,
turn at the next one. I will turn at the next one. Mass grave in the side yard
. He merges smoothly into the turn lane. (“Tell me what happened.” “I made a fucking U-turn.”) “I’m obsessed with a girl,” he says. “What should I do?”

“You’re not obsessed,” Joanna says.

“She is Sara. She doesn’t call me. I made her admit she liked me. She likes me. But we’re too alike. When you’re with someone and neither of you can stop saying good things. Then you both get very aware that life will end soon. I think that’s why we don’t talk that much. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

“You’re rationalizing,” Joanna says.

Andrew drives without thinking.

He feels calm. He feels a little good.

(“My sister is more depressed than both of us.”)

“Are you passive-aggressive?” Joanna says. “You don’t call but expect her to, like she’s your mom.”

“She’s not my mom.” Andrew’s mom is in Germany. Steve’s mom’s plane crashed. “I
don’t know what ‘passive-aggressive’ means. It’s a cliché,” Andrew says. He feels tired. What will he do for the rest of his life? “How old is your sister?”

“My best friend’s cousin’s name is Sara,” Joanna says.

Best friend’s cousin. “I can’t process what you just said,” Andrew says. Steve’s dad, screaming. “Sara,” Andrew says. Everyone should be named Sara. Rename the dogs. Interpret them as one entity. ‘Sara.’

“Maybe I know her,” Joanna says. “I think three of her cousins are named Sara. Turn left.” She points at her neighborhood; ‘Windy Brook.’ Andrew has an image of himself and Sara sitting by a stream with their feet in the water.

“My sister’s twenty-five,” Joanna says. “Why?”

Andrew turns into ‘Windy Brook.’ “Your sister should start a band with me. My friend Steve and I are starting a band.” Andrew will marry Joanna’s sister. Steve will feel left out. Killing-rampage.

“Ashley plays bass guitar,” Joanna says. “She’s okay at it. I mean really good. I’m not jealous; I don’t know why I said she’s okay. She’s great.”

“Everyone should be named Sara.” A bear with a hose on ‘full-blast’ setting, watering flower plants—crushing them, really—stares at Andrew’s face as Andrew drives by. Andrew thinks about squinting or something and blankly stares back at the bear.

“My sister is a genius on bass guitar,” Joanna says, and gives some more directions.

“I feel like how Honda Civics look. That’s why I drive a Honda Civic,” Andrew says. “Just kidding.” He wants Ashley’s phone number.
Can I come inside to ‘court’ your sister?
Inappropriate. Be patient. Wait ten days; don’t strategize. Wait exactly fourteen days, get her email address under the pretense of starting a band; use the email address to get her phone number; use the phone number to ask her to dinner under the pretense of something else. Wait fourteen days then go on a killing-rampage,
culminating in Seattle with putt-putt, in the rain, with Steve’s dad’s severed arm. She’s twenty-five. Probably in Uzbekistan for the Peace Corps. Andrew is twenty-three. He should join the Peace Corps. He and Sara were going to vacation on the Canary Islands. Andrew does not know what the Canary Islands are. She said it, not Andrew. They had many ideas and plans. They climbed a tree. Andrew drops Joanna off. She runs across her yard with her pizza, jumps over a stump, goes into the house. She could have gone around the stump. It was more fun to leap over the stump, like a gazelle. So that’s how you have fun. Andrew sits in his car, feels bored and sarcastic, and starts to drive away. Joanna runs wildly at the car. Andrew is confused. Joanna knocks on Andrew’s window; she will invite Andrew inside to ‘court’ Ashley? Andrew puts the window down. Joanna is grinning. Shit-eating? A normal grin. She pays for the pizza. “Thank you, Andrew,” she says, and runs away. Andrew sits in his car thinking about
rafting around the Canary Islands with Sara using an inflatable marshmallow raft. A bear comes out of Joanna’s house.

Andrew puts the window up.

The bear stares at Andrew.

Andrew puts the window down a little.

“Do you need something?” Andrew says.

“Yeah,” the bear says.

“Oh. What do you need?”

“Come here.”

The bear points at a house.

“Do you need help?” Andrew says.

“Come here,” the bear says.

“Where?”

“Do you want free money?” the bear says.

“Why?”

“Do you want a hundred dollar bill?” the bear says.

“I don’t know,” Andrew says. He puts the window down all the way. “Why do you have free money?”

“Come here.” The bear steps toward the house he pointed at before.

“It’s a trick.”

“Yes or no,” the bear says. “Do you want free money and a free laptop computer or not?”

“I own a home computer.”

The bear has a twenty-dollar-bill and a blue blanket and holds them in front and walks to Andrew’s car and puts the blanket on Andrew’s head and rips off Andrew’s door and the top of Andrew’s car. The bear picks up Andrew and carries Andrew to the house he earlier pointed at and in the side yard sets down Andrew, who takes the blanket off his own head. The bear kneels, opens a secret passageway under a patch of grass, and points at a ladder that goes underground. Andrew goes to the ladder. “Do it,” the bear says.

“Do what?” Andrew says. “Why?”

“Do it,” the bear says.

The bear takes the blanket from Andrew and drops it down the passageway.

“Oh,” Andrew says. “Good thinking. Good idea. Now I’m required to go get the blanket, or else I’ll appear ‘irresponsible,’ or something,
an irresponsible human being littering in the wilds of North America. Yeah. I don’t know. Okay.”

Andrew climbs down the ladder.

The bear climbs down the ladder.

They climb together.

They are climbing.

The bear kicks Andrew’s head.

“Was that your head?” the bear says.

Andrew doesn’t say anything.

“Andrew,” the bear says. “Was that your head?”

“Stop talking.”

“What was it?” the bear says.

“A laptop computer.”

They keep climbing down.

“Where’s your sledgehammer?” Andrew says.

“Sledgehammer,” the bear says. “What are you talking about?”

It gets colder.

The bear makes noises like, “Hrr. Hrr.”

“Not all bears are the same bear,” the bear says.

They climb some more and reach a corridor.

Andrew picks up the blanket.

They walk through the corridor.

There is a nook in the corridor.

A moose is lying in the nook.

The moose’s eyes are open.

The bear takes the blanket from Andrew.

The bear tells Andrew to keep walking.

“A moose,” Andrew says.

“Keep walking,” the bear says.

Andrew keeps walking and reaches a cliff.

Below the cliff is a city of dolphins and bears. Sometimes there is a very tall statue of the current president of the United States. Andrew recognizes the president’s face.

The bear stands next to Andrew.

“Hrr, hrr,” the bear says.

“You’re cold,” Andrew says.

“It’s a cold and lonely world,” the bear says.

“Just kidding,” the bear says. “Sort of.”

“I’m going to sit,” Andrew says.

Andrew sits. A dolphin comes from the corridor. Andrew stands. The dolphin has a sledgehammer. Andrew looks at the sledgehammer;
the dolphin slaps Andrew’s face. More dolphins come from the corridor. The cliff is crowded. More dolphins come; a dolphin is crowded off the cliff; as it falls it goes, “EEEEE EEE EEEE!” Andrew laughs a little. Two more dolphins fall and the cliff is not as crowded anymore. The dolphin with the sledgehammer says, “Watch this.” The other dolphins look. The dolphin with the sledgehammer slaps Andrew’s face.

“Stupid,” says one of the other dolphins.

And throws a smoke bomb.

When the smoke clears there are many bears and no dolphins.

A bears throws a smoke bomb on the floor.

When the smoke clears there is one dolphin. The dolphin slaps Andrew’s face, throws a smoke bomb; smoke clears and there is the first bear. Andrew looks at the bear, who is taller than Andrew.

“Are you okay?” the bear says.

Andrew touches his cheek.

It’s swollen.

“Are you okay?” the bear says.

“I’m okay,” Andrew says. “Are you okay?”

The bear looks at Andrew.

The bear kneels and opens a trapdoor.

There is another ladder.

The bear points at it.

Andrew feels bored.

“No, wait,” Andrew says.

“What,” the bear says.

“I already did that before.”

“There’s two more,” the bear says.

“I know,” Andrew says. “I already went. Uh, the squirrels.”

“Hamsters,” the bear says.

“I forgot. But I went; do you believe me. The hamsters are sad.”

“Go again,” the bear says.

“Go again.”

“Go again,” the bear says. “It’ll be fun.”

“Do you have a name?” Andrew says. “Do bears have names?”

“Andrew,” says the bear.

Andrew feels nervous. “I’m Andrew.”

“My name is Andrew,” the bear says.

“No,” Andrew says.

“Uh, yes,” the bear says.

“Oh,” Andrew says.

“Go again,” the bear says. “We’ll have fun.”