Taipei (6 page)

Lori repeatedly asked Paul why he wouldn’t speak and, not receiving an answer, began provoking Paul to “say anything,” seeming as committed to eliciting a response as Paul was to not responding. Lori was loudly asking, with genuine and undistracted and bemused curiosity, which Paul felt affection toward and admired, as he stared away from her, out his window, why he couldn’t speak—and if he could just “make any noise”—when Hunter, who’d been talking to someone in the front passenger seat, sort of forced Lori to stop by aggressively asking about her current boyfriend. As he had consistently, the past eight to ten years, Paul felt endeared by Hunter, who used to be an equal, but now—and for the past three or four years—was like an overworked stepfather or sensitive uncle to Paul, the mentally disabled stepson or silent, troubling nephew.

Paul hadn’t seen Laura since she slept over, five days ago, when he brought a mix CD and Ambien to her room, which was more than half occupied by a full-size bed. She offered him red wine she was drinking from a wineglass and typed “sex tiger woods” into Google and clicked
dlisted.com
. Adjacent to a photo of Tiger Woods, smiling on a golf course, were blocks of text, in which “Ambien sex haze” was in bold around ten times.

Laura typed “ambient” into Google.

“No,” said Paul grinning. “That’s the music, delete the
t
.”

Laura laughed and typed “ambien and alcohol and klonopin and” and grinned at Paul and, though she had a Klonopin prescription, Paul knew, and was probably on Klonopin, said “just kidding” and deleted all but “ambien and alcohol.” Every result, it seemed, warned strongly against combining Ambien and alcohol, but Laura said she drank “a lot,” so it would be okay. Paul crawled onto her bed and touched her cat Jeffrey and, after a vague amount of time, became aware of a slight blurriness to his vision, like he was seeing from two perspectives in time, milliseconds apart, and that he felt vaguely sleepy and not nervous. He asked if Laura could turn off the light, which seemed uncomfortably bright. He felt confused, to some degree, by everything, but at a delay, as if continuously realizing past confusions, which could no longer be resolved, so were not problems. They seemed to be watching a foreign movie off her computer, then Paul noticed the light was on and that they were lying against a mound of blankets, kissing lazily, with eyes closed and long pauses, maybe sometimes asleep. He became aware of his mix CD, of some of his favorite songs, sounding unpleasantly, almost nightmarishly, noise-like. Paul realized they were trying to undo his belt and weakly imagined what would happen if his jeans were removed and heard Laura say “we just met” from what seemed like a nearby, inaccessible distance and wondered if he was asleep, or dreaming, but knew he was awake, because he was moving physically. He was trying to remove Laura’s clothing. He felt like he was trying to remove the surface of a glass bottle by pawing at it with oven mitts. He expressed confusion and Laura said “it’s just a skirt . . . and tights” and stopped moving completely, it seemed, as Paul continued touching her strange outfit with hands that felt glossy and fingerless, suspecting at one point, with some sarcasm, that she was wearing a corset.

“It’s been two hours, I think,” said Paul after staring at his phone around ten seconds. “Jesus,” he said, and sneezed.

Entering Lucie’s party, an hour and a half later, Paul felt like if he wasn’t careful he would fall in an out-of-control, top-heavy manner toward whomever he was greeting and hurt himself and multiple others by reflexively grabbing people and pulling them down with him in a continuing effort to remain standing. He realized he might be unconsciously hunching his back, to be nearer the floor, when Lucie, though four or five inches shorter, appeared to be above him as she thanked him for linking her magazine on his blog. Paul introduced Lucie and other people to Laura by saying “this is Laura” a few times without looking at anyone’s face, while moving toward areas with less people. “Hey,” said Paul, as he passed Mitch in a crowded space, and mumbled something about “going somewhere,” which in combination with a peremptory nodding was meant to convey they would definitely talk at length, later tonight, since they hadn’t seen each other in a long time—months, maybe.

In an empty kitchen, a few seconds later, Paul realized Mitch, who worked for Zipcar, had driven him and Laura—and others—to this party. Paul stared into a refrigerator, bent at his waist, waiting for himself, it seemed, to think or do something. “Trying to choose two beers,” he thought after a vague amount of time, and chose two at random, then found Laura and went with her through a window, onto a fourth-story roof, where they passed a shadowy area, emanating the language-y noises and phantom heat of four to six people, to a higher area, where they were alone. Paul, dangling his legs briefly off the building, scooted backward, passively cooperative, as a distracted-seeming Laura pulled him away
from the edge. They sat facing hundreds of the same type of four-story building, the expanse of which, in most directions, darkened dramatically, creating an illusion that one could see the Earth’s curvature, until blurring, in the distance, into a texture. Sometimes, looking at a city, especially a gray or brown one, at night, Paul would intuitively view it as a small and irreducible thing that arrived one summer and rapidly grew, showing patterns of color on its expanding surface, then was discolored by autumn and removed of its exterior and deadened by winter, in preparation for regrowth, in spring, but was unable, in its form, to enter the natural cycle, so continued growing, in a manner as if faceless and skinless, through summer, autumn, etc., less in belligerence or tyranny, or with some abstruse knowledge of its own rightness, than as a stranded thing, sightless and uninstructed, with an objectless sort of yearning. Seeing the streets and bridges and sidewalks, while living inside a building, locked in a room, one could forget that it was all a single, alien, seeking entity.

Paul realized he and Laura had been staring into the distance—unaware of each other, it seemed—for maybe two or three minutes. He looked at her profile. Without moving her head, in a voice like she was still considering if this was true, she said Paul was “devious” for bringing her to a party where another girl liked him.

“What girl likes me?”

“Lucie,” said Laura after a few seconds, still staring ahead, systematically reinterpreting her and Paul’s prior interactions, it seemed, with this new information.

“Why do you think she likes me?”

“I can tell,” said Laura, and lit a cigarette.

“She has a boyfriend,” said Paul.

Laura said something seemingly unrelated about cooking.

“You should cook for me,” said Paul distractedly.

“You won’t like it—it’ll be dense and unhealthy.”

“I like pasta and lasagna,” said Paul, and thought he heard Laura ask if his computer was in Canada and was nervous she might be confusing him for another person. “What computer?”

“You said your computer was getting fixed in Canada.”

“Oh,” said Paul. “Kansas, not Canada. Yeah, it’s still there.”

On their way back inside Paul and Laura passed the shadowy area, from where an unseen Amy said something implying Laura had stolen her cigarettes, using the word “cute” antagonistically. Paul had an urge to accelerate, but Laura, ahead of him, continued at her leisurely pace, maneuvering carefully through the window, into the kitchen.

Paul followed a slow-moving Laura through a long, dark, almost boomerang-shaped hallway, which felt briefly room-like, as they sort of lingered in it, or like it wanted to be a room, with furniture and guests, but maybe was shy and too afraid of causing disappointment, so impaired itself with two conspicuous openings to conventionally shaped rooms, a sort of recommendation against itself. Paul and Laura entered a large room of sofas and tables and eight to twelve people, including Daniel, who encouraged Paul to “test-drive” a foot-massage machine, which was on the floor, audibly bubbling hot water.

“Take off your shoes and socks,” said Daniel.

“I don’t want to use that,” said Paul, and turned around and distractedly sat on a backless, deeply padded, uncomfortable seat, which yielded at least a foot from Paul’s weight. Laura was ten feet away, in a throne-like chair, facing Paul, but not looking at him, or anyone, it seemed. Paul openly
stared at her for around ten seconds, to no response, then moved chips and guacamole onto his lap (partly because he felt anxious about Laura seeming to refuse to look at him) and focused on steadily eating while repeatedly thinking “eating chips and guacamole.” He looked at his hands, and felt his mouth and throat, doing what he was thinking, and felt vaguely confused. Was he instructing his brain? Or was he narrating what he saw and felt?

Laura seemed less distracted, but more worried, than before. Paul moved toward her with what felt like a precariously sustained gliding motion and sat against and above her, on the chair’s sturdy armrest, in a comically awkward manner he hadn’t foreseen and was preparing to reverse, by returning to his seat, when Laura lifted his arm and placed it ungently around her neck—maybe a little disappointed that she had to do it herself—where it remained, independent and heavy as a small boa constrictor, for a vague amount of time, during which Paul, remaining almost completely still, felt increasingly reluctant to move, or speak. At some point, maybe three minutes later, Paul asked if Laura wanted to go to the other party.

“Yes,” she said.

Paul felt like parts of his and Laura’s bodies, as they stood on the front stoop hugging tightly under one umbrella, waiting for Walter’s car, were oppositely charged magnets covered with thick velvet. Paul crawled into Walter’s car’s backseat, spilling red wine; unable to find the cork, he wrapped the bottle in a plastic bag. He faced ahead, seated between two people, and realized no one had cared, or noticed, at all, it seemed, about the wine. Paul thought “I’m in hell” when people began to loudly mimic the guitar parts of the
Led Zeppelin playing from a tape deck, resulting mostly in demonic-sounding noises and a kind of metallic, nightmarish screeching. Paul couldn’t discern if they did this regularly, or if it had just been improvised. “Ambien has a negative effect on music for me,” he thought.

At Laura’s friend’s party Paul sat alone at the snacks table, eating crackers and drinking wine, sometimes with unfocused eyes. Then he was sitting on a mattress in a space-module-like bedroom, in which six to ten people, smoking marijuana, watched a video off a MacBook of obese people screaming in pain earnestly while exercising and being screamed at motivationally, in what seemed to be a grotesque parody, or something, of something. Paul felt strong aversion to the video, and also like he’d already experienced this exact situation—he remembered his aversion to the video and the way someone to his right was laughing—and wanted to ask if this already happened, but didn’t know who to ask, then realized he wanted to ask himself. Around an hour later, after more crackers and wine, Paul thought he heard Laura drunkenly say something like “let him through, my new boyfriend,” loud enough for probably ten to fifteen people to have heard, as she beckoned him to sit with her and her three closest friends, including Walter, on a four-seat sofa. Walter drove everyone on the sofa to Laura’s apartment to smoke marijuana, around 3:30 a.m., when the party ended.

On the sidewalk, outside Laura’s apartment, a heavily impaired Paul explained that in high school his lungs collapsed three times and one of the doctors said smoking marijuana would increase the chance of recurrence by 4,200 percent. Laura said he wouldn’t have to smoke. Paul said the smoke would be in the air and that he was allergic to Laura’s cat and had a horrible headache. He hugged Laura, then walked toward the Bedford L train station, half a block away.

 • • •

The next night Laura emailed that she wished Paul wasn’t allergic to Jeffrey so he could be with her, in her room, listening to the rain. Paul asked if she wanted to eat dinner together tomorrow night. Laura said she felt like she missed him and “well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” characteristically answering a question indirectly and ending an email casually.

Paul was aware he felt mysteriously less interested in her after reading that she felt like she missed him and realized he hadn’t considered what a relationship between them would be like: probably not sustainable, at all, due to a mutual lack of strong interest. He was aware of not acknowledging her line about missing him in his response, which included a short list of restaurants he liked.

Paul met Laura the next night outside the clothing boutique in SoHo where she worked. “I think this is a bad idea, I always go home after work to nap,” she said with a worried expression, walking slowly away from Paul, who signaled a taxi, which they exited fifteen blocks later at a deli, where they bought a 40oz and two bottles of beer.

Seated, in Angelica Kitchen, they looked at each other directly for the first time that night. Laura seemed anxious and tired. Paul said the restaurant was organic and vegan and Laura said she had been trying to eat better since meeting Paul, who grinned while saying “you’ve been trying to eat butter?” twice, during which Laura began to blush.

“I thought you said ‘butter,’ ” said Paul grinning.

Laura looked at her hand touching a fork on the table.

“I thought you said you’re trying to eat butter.”

“Stop,” said Laura moving the fork slowly toward herself.

“Stop what?”

“You’re making fun of me, I think,” said Laura looking at him tentatively.

“No, I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.”

Laura was motionless, looking at her lap with downcast eyes, like she was waiting for Paul to finish. Paul asked if she believed him and she didn’t respond and he felt stranded and withering and asked again if she believed him, then quietly said “I honestly thought you said ‘butter.’ ” He nervously moved a spoon to his lap and, aware they were both looking down, felt himself absorbing the irresolution of the butter misunderstanding as an irreversible damage. He asked if she wanted to leave, for a different restaurant maybe. Laura poured beer from the 40oz into Paul’s glass, already 95 percent full, and said “let’s just drink more, I just need to drink more” and apologized for “being like this.”