In the Middle of Somewhere (12 page)

“Yeah, fine.”

“Hey, I think I accidentally kinda made a friend.”

“Oh yeah, someone you work with?”

“No. I stopped him from getting beat up. Little smartass skater kid. Babyqueer. He tried to make out with me.”

“Um, you didn’t, did you?”

“I didn’t make out with a kid, Ginger. What the fuck?”

“Just checking.”

“Jesus, you think I’m a pervert.”

“Well, yeah, but not in that way.”

I start to giggle.

“He was skinny and smelled like cloves and he said he liked Kurt Vile.”

“Oh my god,” Ginger says, laughing, “it’s like you have your own little
you
. I remember when you smoked cloves. And, jeez, you were scrawny.”

Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don’t follow her at all.

“Aw,” I mutter. “The wine’s all the way over there.”

A
ND
THEN
it’s morning. I must have rolled over onto the phone and flipped it shut at some point because it’s lodged under my left hip bone. The light’s still on and my wine-stained coffee mug is perched on the windowsill, right about where my hand reaches if I stretch. My teeth feel grainy and I’m starving since I fell asleep without ever ordering pizza.

But, despite feeling a little muzzy, I’m not hungover and I’m going to see Rex tonight, so things are looking just fine.

My phone buzzes with a text.

Ginger:
You alive, kid?

I text her back,
Alive. Wish you *were* here
, and jump in the shower.

A
N
HOUR
later I’m showered, I’ve driven to Traverse City and bought a bottle of nice bourbon to bring with me to Rex’s tonight, and I’m parking in the lot at the library, congratulating myself on remembering to drive since I have a bunch of books to pick up and won’t be able to walk home with them. I have my laptop and I’m planning to get a ton of writing done today. Then I’ll get my books and run home with enough time to shower and change and get to Rex’s at nine. It’s a plan.

The Sleeping Bear College Library isn’t particularly expansive and it isn’t particularly nice; it kind of looks like a book prison. It also doesn’t have windows above the first floor. Still, I have a faculty carrel with an actual door, so I can tear my hair out in privacy. I collect a teetering stack of books and haul them to my carrel, ready to start the new section that I’m adding to chapter two.

A major part of what I need to do to get tenure is turn my dissertation into a publishable book. That means not just polishing what I’ve already written, but tearing it apart and rethinking central questions from a different perspective. Now, instead of having to prove to my committee that I know what I’m talking about and can make an interesting argument, I have to prove to an academic publisher that I have something to say about literature that hundreds of other academics will want to read.

After about three hours of deleting every sentence the second I write it, I begin to get into a rhythm, and I’m actually drafting some not-terrible stuff when I finally look at my watch and see that it’s already 7:30. I had meant to be home by now. I scribble a quick half page of notes to myself so I’ll know where I left off, gather my things, and go to check out the books I have on hold at the front desk.

A
LL
MY
life I’ve had this fear—no, not really a fear. A niggling thought that my annoying brain lands on again and again. I have it when I come out of a movie theater or a concert, or when I’ve slept all weekend without hearing from anyone. It’s this thought that just maybe, when I step outside, the world as I know it will be gone and it will have been replaced by another. It’s half horror movie and half wishful thinking, but I’ve had it ever since I was a kid. I remember I had it the first morning I woke up after my mom died. I woke up and she was there. For a second. But then I remembered that she wasn’t there anymore. That I’d woken up to a world where she didn’t exist.

Now, that’s exactly what has happened. When I got into my car this morning, it was a pleasantly chilly day, one that made me glad I grabbed a hoodie. I vaguely remember that when I walked into the library the wind had kicked up a bit, but it was only a few yards into the building. Now, nine hours later, it is a world of swirling, whirling winter. There has to be at least a foot of snow on the ground and more is falling heavily, gusting against the side of the library and the few cars in the parking lot. It’s wet snow, creeping down my collar and into my nose.

I heave my bags of books onto my shoulders and trudge to my car. The snow is up to my shins and it soaks through my beat-up Vans and jeans immediately. I throw my bags into the backseat of my car and jump in, freezing. I’ll have to kick the snow away from the back of the car so I can get out of the lot, but I figure I’ll warm it up first. I turn the key in the ignition and—of course!—nothing. Crap. Thanks, car.

I figure I’ll walk home and call a cab to take me to Rex’s. It’s only a mile and a half or so to my house from here, and it’s cold, but it’s not too cold. I dig out my phone to check the time and remember that it’s still on silent from being in the library all day. When I flip it open to turn the volume back on I see I missed a call from Rex about two hours ago. He must have been calling to give me directions. I figure I’ll call to get his address when I get home, but as I’m slipping the phone back in my pocket, it rings. It’s Rex.

“Hi, Daniel,” he says. “Sorry to call again, I just wanted to give you directions to my place.”

“Um…,” I say.

“Is it—do you not want to come anymore?” he asks, sounding wary. “I mean, I understand. The snow and all.”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just. Crap, well, I’m just leaving the library to go home and I—my car won’t start. So I’m just going to walk home and then get a cab to your place, but I might be a little late. There are cabs here, right? Like, do I call a number or something?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rex says, and the line goes dead. Well, shit.

I pull up my hood and pop the car’s to take a gander while I wait for Rex. It’s probably just a dead battery since this one’s old, but I might need a new starter. It’s hard to see anything with the snow swirling around.

“Daniel!” Rex calls from the window of a dark-colored Chevy Silverado that’s pulling up next to me.

“Hey,” I say. “Sorry, man. I would’ve been fine walking, really.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he says, eyes flashing. “You don’t even have a jacket. You should have waited inside.”

“I wanted to see what was up with my car.”

“I told you it was going to get cold, remember? Because I didn’t want you to be unprepared. I know you’re not used to this weather.”

I’m annoyed at him for telling me what to do, but also a little weirded out because he actually seems concerned.

“Yeah, but it’s October. I thought you were just making conversation. Like, ‘oh, the seasons are changing.’ I didn’t know you meant there was going to be a freaking snowstorm. Anyway, it’s no big deal. It probably just needs a jump,” I say, patting the hood of my car.

Rex is looking at me with a mixture of annoyance and concern. Probably coming out in a snowstorm to pick up a guy he barely even knows wasn’t high on his list of pre-date activities.

“I’ll just get my stuff,” I say, and duck back into the car.

When I turn around with my bags of books and my backpack, Rex is right behind me. Even in the swirling snow I can feel his heat. He closes his eyes like he’s trying to get himself under control.

“Hey,” he says, looking into my eyes, “Sorry if it sounded like I was lecturing you. But every year a tourist freezes to death or gets caught in a snowstorm up here because they don’t know the weather.”

“Okay.” I nod.

He shoulders one of my bags and I follow him to the truck.

I’m soaked to the knees, so we head to my apartment so I can change and drop off all my books.

As we walk through the door of my apartment I’m suddenly struck with a familiar feeling. This apartment, like every one I’ve ever had, is run-down and musty, with garbage furniture, milk crate shelves, and floors that stay dirty-looking no matter how many times I wash them. I wish Rex would wait outside and never see my unmade bed, its mismatched sheets in a nest where I left them, my stove gummed with oil and dust and god knows what—not that I use it for much anyway—and my dresser with the drawers that sag out of their tracks from what must have been years of someone—Carl?—jamming them in and yanking them out, though dissatisfied with what they contained or the life that surrounded them I don’t know.

It’s a dump, depressing even with every light on. I’ve gotten used to it the last few weeks, since it’s become my haven from work and from a town that seems to know what I do before I do it, but now, looking at it through a stranger’s eyes, I once again see it for what it is.

“So, I’m just going to grab a shower,” I tell Rex. “Do you want some…?” I glance around the kitchen. Do I have anything to offer him?

“I’m fine,” Rex says.

“Wine,” I say, “or water?”

He shakes his head.

“Okay, well, make yourself comfortable. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

I grab the Ginger-approved outfit and duck into the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of myself as I run the water, and make a mental note to buy a heavy winter coat, like, now. My lips are almost blue and my cheeks are dead white against the black of my hair, which my hood has squashed into an unattractive helmet around my head. I look tired.

“Great,” I say to the Daniel in the mirror.

As I step under the mercifully hot water, I think I hear the opening notes of
Wish You Were Here
from the living room, but then the hiss of the water is all I can hear.

I
T
’
S
NOT
entirely true that I’ve never been out on a date, though I never told Ginger about it. Richard and I went on one date before falling into the pattern that I thought was dating and he apparently thought was just getting his rocks off. It was soon after we met at a lecture on campus. Richard was a grad student in the chemistry department, done with coursework and writing his dissertation like I was. The lecture was dull and the question and answer portion that followed downright painful, and I caught him smiling at me when I accidentally rolled my eyes at some pompous nonquestion that the chair of the history department asked like he was a king bestowing a knighthood.

We chatted. He was handsome and funny and incredibly smart and so not my usual type. He was very clean and well dressed, like a perfect ivory tower Ken doll. But there was something about him that made me feel… grateful that he thought I was interesting enough to talk to. He asked me to dinner the next night and I looked up the menu online in a panic to see what I could order that wouldn’t wipe out my cash for the whole month. Not much.

It was, I suppose, a good date, if a good date is interesting conversation, common tastes, and an appreciation of each other’s senses of humor. But the entire time we sat there, I could tell he was half listening to me and half planning what I was useful for. There was a cold, calculating air to him that made it feel more like an interview than a date. I was dressed all wrong for the restaurant Richard had chosen, I picked a wine that was (he informed me) a terrible choice given what I ordered, and when it came time to pay and I pulled out cash for my half, he slid the check from under my hand with a subtle shake of the head, as if I were embarrassing him. He paid the check, I realized later, the way I’d seen the fathers of fellow students pay checks when they took their kids out to dinner: with absolute knowledge that the person across the table wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for them, and with the gratification of being able to lift that person out of their sad world of cafeteria food and ramen noodles for one special night.

A treat. That’s what Richard thought he was giving me.

At the time, though, I was so distracted by trying to shove cash back in my wallet and thank him that I didn’t think about it. As we left the restaurant and I told him he needn’t have paid for me, he smiled indulgently and told me I could buy him a drink next time. That he wanted to see me again was a balm to my wounded ego; that he
expected
to see me again wasn’t something I thought about until later.

I
PULL
on my black jeans and the maroon shirt that Ginger gave me, cuffing back the too-short sleeves and thinking about my best friend doing battle with the pro-lifers on South Street. Every few months they mass at the Planned Parenthood near her shop and make everybody miserable. Ginger insists that she doesn’t just fight with them because she finds them ethically and politically abhorrent, but also because she thinks signs of aborted fetuses are a deterrent to getting tattooed.

I towel-dry my hair and put a little wax in it so it won’t turn into a knot the second the wind blows. I look okay. A lot better now than I did when I got in the shower. There’s some color in my cheeks and my eyes don’t look so tired anymore. I brush my teeth, take a deep breath, and go to find Rex.

He’s in a crouch, picking at the painted-over windows in the living room. When he sees me, he gets to his feet.

“You look great,” he says, looking me up and down.

“Thanks. Um, should we go?”

“It’s not safe to have these windows painted shut,” he says. “If there was a fire… or carbon monoxide.”

I laugh a little at the shitty luck of living my whole life the way I have and then dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say.

“Seriously,” he says. “Carl should fix them for you.”

“I’ll mention it if I see him,” I say, mildly irritated.