Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

Elisa watches him until finally he raises both palms, as if revealing the absence of more to tell.

“What did it feel like?” she asks, softly.

“It felt bad,” he says. “I don’t like making people cry.”

“No, before that.”

“Before what?”

“Before she started to cry. When you had her under the sheet and were poking her. What did that feel like?”

“I don’t know,” Billy says. “I thought I was being funny, I guess. I was just playing around.”

“The woman in the story. Are you bigger than her?” Elisa asks.

“Yes,” Billy says.

“Are you stronger than her?”

Billy doesn’t think of himself as strong , exactly, but is he stronger than Denver? “Yes.”

“And what did that feel like?”

“Being bigger and stronger, you mean?”

“Being bigger and stronger. Exerting power. Using it to scare someone.”

“I don’t think she was scared, exactly.”

“Let me tell you something,” Elisa says. “If you say stop it to someone who is bigger than you? And stronger than you? And they don’t stop whatever it is that they’re doing? It’s scary. Trust me.”

“Okay,” Billy says. “What are you trying to say here?”

“What I’m trying to say, Billy, is that you seem like a gentle, peaceful guy, a real nice guy, and I think you’ve worked hard to come across that way, but I think there’s a part of you, and maybe it’s a part that you don’t look at all that closely, that wants to be powerful and that doesn’t give a good goddamn about anything else.”

Something inside Billy twinges. A flinch moves through his face. Elisa’s eyes change character again, communicating some faint satisfaction, an approval, almost, at seeing Billy hit upon something inside himself that may be true.

Billy turns his empty shot glass with his fingers, tries to reflect upon the part of him that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Elisa is right: that part is there. It moves inside him like an animal, cloaked by shadows. He can kind of glimpse its outlines but it moves away from his inspection, not wanting to be fully perceived.

“Thoughts,” Elisa says.

“None,” Billy says, and he expends some willpower to ensure that that’s true.

“All right then.”

The third round of shots lands on the table. They raise them.

“To thoughtlessness,” Elisa says, and tosses hers back.

“To thoughtlessness,” Billy answers, and he does the same.

“You want to know the worst thing I ever did?” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Sure.”

“Don’t give me that sure . Either you want to know or you don’t. I’ll tell you if you want to know. But you have to understand that this isn’t some hipster game for me.”

“Okay,” Billy says. “I get it. I want to know.”

Elisa regards him suspiciously.

Billy puts on his most earnest face despite a sinking certainty that it actually makes him look totally goofy and insincere. “You can trust me,” he says.

“No, I can’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway, as a gesture of my good faith.”

“Okay,” Billy says.

“I killed a man,” Elisa says.

“What?”

“I killed a man,” she says again. “It was an accident.” She takes a deep breath. “I killed a man,” she repeats, like it’s something she has to say to herself regularly, “and I was never caught.”

Billy scans her face for some sign that she’s making a joke, or just fronting like a badass. But she’s wearing that same implacable calm. Wow , he thinks.

“What were — what were the circumstances?”

Elisa looks away sharply, glancing down at her watch, a heavy beveled thing that looks like you could crack open a nut with it. “It’s ten past six,” she says.

“Yeah, so?”

“So we should get back over there.”

“What? You’re gonna just — leave me hanging? You can’t do that.”

She gives him a look, one which adequately communicates Don’t think you can start telling me what I can and can’t do . “I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I’ll tell you the circumstances the next time we meet.”

“Oh,” Billy says. He grins. “You think there’s going to be a second time?”

“No,” Elisa says. “But one should always plan for the unexpected.”

A lesser species of disappointment emerges within him, but he says, “I accept these terms.”

“You say this,” Elisa says, “like you had a choice.”

He settles the tab for both of them even though he still doesn’t know how he’s going to make rent. When he does this, as nonchalant as anything, he can detect her, out of the corner of his eye, watching him.

This could be good , Billy tells himself, as they cross the street. Just don’t fuck it up. Let it be easy . He doesn’t raise the question of whether it’s a good idea to get involved with someone who has killed a man.

They reach Barometer’s heavy set of doors. He holds one of them open for her in a showy display of half-ironic gallantry, his motions a little broad from the buzz he has going.

See? he thinks. You can be charming when the situation calls for it . He watches her enter, permitting himself a glance at the segment of black panty hose he can spot between the hem of her red tartan coat and the top of her boots. Maybe it’s more than a glance; maybe it borders on a leer. But he feels like it’s the quickest, most subtle leer he can possibly manage with three shots of bourbon floating around in his circulatory system. Still, a little embarrassing.

Don’t worry about it , he tells himself, nobody noticed , but even as he tells himself this he feels the prickling sensation of disapproving eyes on him, and he tracks over to the source of the sensation, and that’s when he sees her, alone at a table for two: Denver.

IMMANENCE AMBIGUOUS INTRODUCTIONS • I’M NOT SAYING BUDDY • TOTAL FAILURE OF CHARACTER • ABSOLUTE CORPOREALITY • KAFKA TELLS A JOKE • FAMOUS LITERARY BRAWLS • A STORY ABOUT SOME THINGS • SOULS • STOUT • RHETORIC

There had been a night, at the tail end of summer, when Billy and Denver had gone out for drinks with Bingxin Ying, a petite gallery owner with violet lipstick, an asymmetrical haircut, and an intense manner of aggressively probing the air while she spoke. The outing was in celebration of the closing of a deal: Bingxin was putting together a new show, Eidetics , to run at her gallery for the next three months, and she’d acquired five of Denver’s early shorts. The conversation, half conducted in art-speak, quickly went over Billy’s head, but he’d been content to lurk in the back of the booth, eat the skewered selection of fruits that had come with his drink, and watch Denver glow in reception of what he guessed was a rather abstract form of effusive praise.

Content for a while, anyway. Then came a moment when Bingxin made a vigorous stabbing motion with both of her hands and, over the music, had shouted “What impresses me the most about your work is its commitment to immanentization of the ephemeral.” Billy had watched Denver beam, had watched her say “Thank you” with a real sincerity that he wasn’t sure he’d ever successfully invoked, and he actually felt a little jealous. No, more than a little: straight-up capital-J Jealous. He made a mental note of the phrase. Immanentization of the ephemeral ?