Taipei (27 page)

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After the reading, which was on the second floor of a bar, Paul stood in a shadowy room, at a billiards table, eating his baguette and soup. He said “we should have an orgy tonight” to Calvin, who seemed hesitant but curious. Maggie entered the room and stood with them and Paul said “we should have an orgy tonight.”

“Yeah, seems good,” said Maggie in an uncharacteristic monotone.

“But we should film it,” said Paul.

“No, I don’t know,” said Maggie with unfocused eyes.

“Once we’re on MDMA we won’t care,” said Paul. “About anything.”

“Maggie’s seventeen,” said Calvin grinning weakly.

“That’s not underage. We can black out her face.”

“I’m not doing that,” said Maggie.

“It’s not worth doing at all if it’s not filmed,” said Paul.

“I don’t want to be filmed,” said Maggie.

“She doesn’t want to be filmed,” said Calvin.

Erin entered the room and began playing catch with Maggie with a billiards ball. Paul sat on a stack of ten to fifteen chairs and continued eating his baguette and soup, feeling distantly like he was avoiding something that would eventually end his life, except it wasn’t avoidable and when it did end his life he wouldn’t know, because he wouldn’t know anything.

“Should we switch cars, on the drive back?” said Calvin. “Like, Paul and Maggie in Maggie’s car, me and Erin in Erin’s car?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul.

“Someone else decide, I’m going to my car to get my sandwich,” said Maggie, and went downstairs. Erin was cleaning a stain on the billiards table, it seemed, at the edge of Paul’s
peripheral vision. Paul went downstairs, where he sat alone in a booth and texted Maggie, asking what kind of sandwich she was eating.

At a red light, around half an hour later, Paul threw a clementine at Erin’s car, which was ahead. The light turned green and the clementine missed Erin’s moving car. Paul got back in Maggie’s car, said he wondered what Calvin and Erin were talking about. “I feel sleepy from the food and Percocet,” he said around ten minutes later.

“I like sleeping when I’m cold rather than when I’m warm.”

“Me too,” said Paul. “Are you going to be hungry tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Maggie after a pause.

“I kind of want to eat spaghetti,” said Paul, and laughed a little. “Or something.”

“I’ll make spaghetti,” said Maggie. “No, I don’t want to eat spaghetti,” said Paul. “Oh, I thought you wanted to eat spaghetti.”

“I don’t know,” said Paul quickly, and a few minutes later Maggie said her brother turned 4 recently and would say things like “my three-year-old self hates cucumbers” but wouldn’t talk about his two-year-old or one-year-old self, which Maggie thought was interesting and wanted to ask why, but kept forgetting.

At Calvin’s house everyone ingested more Percocet and Xanax and went in the basement, where Maggie and Calvin each ate a bowl of cereal and Paul, ignoring everyone, to a large degree, talked to Charles on Gmail chat, eventually eating three bowls of cereal. In bed, around 1:30 a.m., Erin asked what Paul and Charles had talked about.

“Nothing,” said Paul automatically. “We just talked about feeling depressed.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember,” said Paul.

“Try to,” said Erin.

“You can just read it tomorrow.”

“Can I read it now?”

“Just read it tomorrow,” said Paul.

“Why can’t I read it now?”

“Okay,” said Paul, and opened his MacBook.

He woke, on his back, to Calvin looking at him from the doorway. He asked if Calvin had used any drugs today. Calvin said he hadn’t, and they looked at each other.

“You haven’t?” said Paul. “Today?”

“Well, a Percocet, when I woke up.”

“When you woke up,” said Paul in a monotone.

“Oh yeah—your alarm is going off,” said Calvin to Erin. “That’s what I came here, to tell you.”

“Oh, damn,” said Erin, and left the room.

“Are . . . you and Erin . . . having problems?”

“No,” said Paul, and laughed a little.

Calvin appeared tired, slightly anxious.

“I mean . . . no,” said Paul looking at the ceiling. “No.”

“I’m going to my room,” said Calvin after a few seconds.

When Erin returned, five minutes later, Paul asked where she’d been.

“In the bathroom,” she said. “Where were you?”

“What do you mean? I’ve been right here.”

“I was in the bathroom. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“What do you mean ‘where were you?’ I was here when you left.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was trying to make a joke. It was . . . ‘in bad taste,’ I guess.”

“Don’t apologize about that,” said Paul.

After a few seconds Erin rolled over. “I misinterpreted what you said,” she said facing away. “I don’t want to do that in the future.”

“Stop apologizing,” said Paul.

“I’m not apologizing,” said Erin.

“Okay. Just stop talking about it.”

Erin went in the bathroom attached to the guest room, and when the shower turned on Paul immediately heard a quiet, soporific crying like something from nature. He saw Calvin and Maggie jogging into the room and covered himself with a blanket and they jumped on the bed, then repeatedly in place.

In Calvin’s SUV, that night, on the way to Target to buy hair dye, because Calvin wanted to dye and cut his hair “really weird,” and Maggie had earnestly said “I think I want to color my face too,” Erin asked if anyone wanted Xanax; everyone did, in different amounts, which she apportioned. To her right, gently isolated in a one-person seat, holding half a Xanax bar, which was guaranteed to have an effect on him within forty minutes, Paul felt a quaintly affecting comfort and a self-conscious, fleeting urge to ask someone a question or say something nice to someone.

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.

He lay against a pile of blankets and pillows, away from his MacBook, unsure why he felt emotional. Gradually he realized he’d intuited her voice sounded different because she had probably assumed, to some degree, that only she knew—and only she would ever know—of the aberration in her behavior and, while saying “beer, and sometimes tequila,” maybe had distractedly felt an uncommon nearness to herself that Paul, knowing this in secret from her, had also felt.

Two months later, in mid-July, around a week after Paul turned 28, Calvin and Maggie were in Brooklyn for five days to act in a low-budget movie. They were no longer in a relationship. They met Paul and Erin on a Friday night at Sel De Mer, where Erin gave everyone Xanax and Calvin shared a marijuana cookie with everyone and Maggie, who hadn’t eaten meat in two years, ordered lobster. They confirmed to snort heroin in Paul’s room after dinner, then go to the Union Square theater to “group livetweet” whatever movie fit their schedule. They would sit separately during the movie and communicate only through tweets, in service of making the experience “more fun and interesting,” said Paul, who anticipated wanting to be alone in the theater.