Matt Bell - How They Were Found

I’d once thought I wanted to eat something that could end me, but now I knew I really wanted something else, something approximately the opposite. Something this woman could give me.

Later, after it was over, I realized she’d wanted the same thing, that I’d failed her by not tearing her to pieces, by not taking her inside me one bite at a time.

Too focused on myself, what I thought instead—right before I pulled out of her, before she pushed me against the stall divider with her tiny wrists full of their fragile bird bones, and definitely before she slipped past me without giving me the last kiss I so desperately wanted—what I thought then was, This one time will never be enough.

Still misunderstanding everything, what I said was, I’m going to need to see you again.

Her mouth laughed as she exited the bathroom, the sound so loud my ears were already ringing by the time I got my pants up. I raced after her, out of the bar and into the cold parking lot, where I lost her to the night’s thick blanket of confusion, its sharp starlight and fuzzed out streetlamps.

I waited for the sound to stop, and eventually it did. Nothing she’d done would turn out to be permanent. Her smell would be gone by morning, and the teeth marks on my face would take less than a week to scab over and then, to my terror, heal completely.

For the first time in months, I went home to my apartment and emptied the kitchen junk drawer onto the dining table. I picked up the tiny nails and paper clips and stubs of pencils and erasers and whatever else I could find and then I jammed them into my system. I considered pouring myself a drink, then stopped and took a long hot swallow from the bottle. I smashed the unnecessary tumbler on the corner of the counter, watched as the cheap glass shattered everywhere. Stepping carefully so as not to cut my bare feet, I picked up the most wicked shard I could find. I held it in my hand, then set it in my mouth, rested it on my tongue. I swallowed hard, and when I didn’t die I went back for more.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH ALLISON AND JEFF WAS WHAT WAS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME, to other people Allison knew and, she presumed, to lots of people she didn’t know. They had met, dated until it seemed like they should probably move in together, and then lived together until it seemed they should stop. In between, they talked about getting married, about buying a house, about having a family, but they didn’t do any of those things. Now they were broken up, and there had been no fighting, no harsh words, just the knowledge that something had ended.

He was gone and she was still here.

That is what she has decided she will say to people when they ask her how she’s feeling and if she’s all right.

She will say, I am still here. She will say it like it means something all by itself, like quitting or being quit on is the easiest thing in the world.

When Allison wakes up the morning after the breakup, she sits up in bed and listens. She’d dreamed Jeff was there, but of course he isn’t. She goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower, where the mirror reveals she’s wearing one of Jeff’s old shirts he must have left behind. She hates missing him so obviously, but tells herself that she put it on after two bottles of red wine and so isn’t really responsible for the decision.

As she gets out of the shower and starts toweling off, she hears the television blaring in the living room. She knows she didn’t leave it on, as she barely watches it. She wraps her towel around herself, too wet to be running around the apartment, but she doesn’t care. Her head’s pounding as she charges through the bedroom and into the living room to confront Jeff and tell him to get the hell out and then she screams, because the person on the couch is not Jeff.

By the time she’s finished, Allison has seen enough that she doesn’t have to ask who this person is.

What she has to ask is how this person is. Not on a friendly level, but an existential one.

The intruder isn’t Jeff, but improbably, he is Jeff, too. A smaller version of Jeff, maybe four or five feet tall. Smaller, but not younger, although this person does remind her of her Jeff a few years ago. He’s got the goatee she made Jeff shave off and he’s smoking a cigarette clenched nonchalantly between two thin fingers, even though Allison made her Jeff quit the same time she did.

This miniature imposter, he waves at her with a perfect copy of Jeff’s overly enthusiastic wave.

Allison asks, Who are you? How did you get in here?

The tiny man shrugs. He’s wearing a t-shirt that Jeff used to wear when they first started dating. Jeff had gotten it from a track meet when he was a runner in high school, and by the time they met it was threadbare and faded. She’d made him throw it out and yet here it was, looking the same as it had that day.

She asks, Can’t you talk?

He shakes his head, turns back to the television. Allison doesn’t know what to do, so she walks around to the front of the couch and sits beside him. He looks the way old photographs do: recognizable but not too, like someone she used to know but not the person she’s just broken up with.

Little Jeff—she doesn’t know what else to call him—he looks up at her with a smile as he takes another puff from his cigarette. It’s been over a year since she’s smelled smoke in the apartment, and the smell makes her both irritated and nostalgic. She opens her mouth, wanting to ask for a cigarette, then represses the urge, as she always does. It’s one thing Allison is proud of: When she quits something, she stays quit.

It’s a Sunday and Allison doesn’t have to work, so she takes Little Jeff to the movies. It’s where she and Jeff went on their first date, one of the few places where she can be reasonably sure she won’t have to talk for at least two hours. They watch a comedy that Allison swears she’s seen before, even though the ticket price assures her it’s a new release. During the beginning of the movie, Little Jeff sits beside her, his eyes fixed on the screen and his hand making a perpetual motion from the popcorn bucket to his mouth and back again. He chomps loudly, irritating her, but before she can say anything he finishes eating, then reaches over and holds her hand, his small fingers cool and comfortable and reassuring in hers.

After the movie, Allison drives them to the chain restaurant closest to the theater. This is where she and Jeff went after their first movie together. She sits across from Little Jeff without saying anything, both of them smiling a bit too much while she tries not to embarrass herself by making a mess of her food. By the time Allison gets home, she’s sure this has been the best day she’s had in months. All weirdness aside, she’s happy, and that’s something.

In the apartment, Little Jeff strips to his underwear and climbs into bed, a development Allison isn’t comfortable with. She doesn’t know what to say, so she goes to sleep on the couch. She thinks again about her first date with Jeff, how she wanted to sleep with him but didn’t want him to think badly about her. She wonders what Jeff thought that night. She wonders what Little Jeff is thinking right now.

The next day at work, Allison is supposed to be proofreading the newest edition of a calculus textbook, but there’s no way she can concentrate. What she does instead is search the internet: Doppelganger. Clone. Homunculus. She follows the links from one site to the next, trying to find a description that at least approximates the person in her living room.

What she finds is nothing very useful.

She opens a new document and types CHARACTERISTICS OF LITTLE JEFF then makes a list: Smoker. Doesn’t like health food. Chews with his mouth open. Watches too much television. Doesn’t put his clothes in the hamper.