Tao Lin - Bed

“Let her,” Annie told the man. But he had taken back the camera and entered a store. He and the second man stood inside, behind glass. One of them was pointing at Michelle. There seemed to be four of them now — four men, each one strange in his own unique way. Sean did not understand. He laughed suddenly. The novel had clams, he thought. He laughed again.

“Do you want a camera for Christmas?” Annie asked Michelle. “Photographers are well-respected and artfully political. Artfully political,” she said carefully.

“I want a horse-drawn carriage for Christmas,” Chris said. “To run myself over with. Just kidding.”

“I want us all to live together in a house somewhere, not doing anything.” Annie said. She looked at Michelle. “A ginger-bread house. What do you want Sean?”

I want to be in love and out of this place, Sean thought immediately, and then felt the nausea of that thought, the massive, animal flu of it. He didn’t want anything, ever, he thought extravagantly. Actually, he knew exactly what he wanted. He had thought about this before — last week when he was kind of depressed. He wanted to enter into himself, sit inside his own body, and look out from there, to see what he would do. He wanted to continue doing things, but wanted just to watch that happening, and not actually do anything. “I want—” Sean said.

“He took my picture!” Michelle screamed. She began to climb Sean, who watched her noncommittally, then picked her up, cradling her legs and upper back.

“Michelle’s the smartest in her class,” Annie said. “Her teachers are all useless. All teachers are all useless. Where’s Chris?”

Chris was walking toward the restaurant. Annie ran to him. Sean, carrying Michelle, stared at Annie running, then began to jog in her direction.

“You’re bumpy,” Michelle said. Sean looked down and saw that Michelle’s eyes were wide-open and calm, which made him feel happy. “You’re not good at being smooth,” Michelle said. Chris was ahead, going very fast, and Sean began to run, to keep up. He concentrated on rolling his feet, letting the heel land first. He felt that he might fall and dent his forehead; or else very quickly descend into the concrete, like stairs.

At the restaurant they sat at the sushi bar. They sat Chris, Sean, Michelle, Annie. Chris ordered three house salads, which were rushed out immediately in a sort of prolonged tic on the part of the waitress. “Sorry,” said the waitress. She smiled directly at Sean. How many times had Sean been here in this one very long day? He counted in his head. One, two, three. Sean smiled back at the waitress. Little did she know, Sean thought, the life he lived — it was less a life than a museum and a church of life. A repository of things clubbed-on-the-head, stuffed, put on display, worshipped from behind glass. This was a place impossible for romance, a place where tea was brewed, earnestly, from paint chips, glass shards, and small change. In this world, Sean knew, one could put faith in a toe bone, a blood bone, a cartilage of eye — all the unloved contributors of one’s own body-world. Though, what was a blood bone? Were there, perhaps, bones in the blood? Tiny ones that swam? Skeletons of some lost and wayless plasma-people? What about clams? None of this, Sean thought very carefully and slowly, was true, of course. He made an effort to concentrate on the real world — the actual place outside where real things happened every day, supposedly.

Annie was hugging Chris and asking about his salads and Chris was unresponsive.

Then Annie was back in her seat saying to Michelle, “Your eyebrows are going to grow muscles if you keep looking that way. Do you want big eyebrow muscles on your face? It’s okay if you do. You can do anything you want.” Annie took something from her pocket and put it in her mouth. She did that twice. “You’re a very privileged young girl,” she said. “Would you like horse-riding lessons? Would you like to eat exuberant salads, with variegated wild nuts? That can be arranged.” Annie was looking at her hands, which were clasped in front of her. “Your life is ahead of you and it’s crazy. A jumping, darting thing. A winged-frog thing, being dart-gunned. Do you want to be a quiet girl or a loud girl? Happily sad or sadly happy? Who will you love? For what reasons? Would you like piano lessons or violin?” Annie turned slowly, at the neck, toward Michelle. “It’s not too late to be a concert pianist. It’s not too late to believe in a loving God.”

“Stop,” Michelle whispered. “Stop doing that,” she shouted.

“You didn’t mean to whisper,” Annie said. “So cute.”

Michelle pushed Annie, who leaned into the push, canceling it.

“Just, stop, please,” Chris murmured. “Bad …”

“I don’t love you,” Michelle said to Annie.

Sean had been thinking about one time, a long time ago in Florida, when Chris had chased him down and tied his arms behind his back with a belt, his legs together with shoelaces, and then sprayed him with the water hose. Sean couldn’t stop laughing, even while being sprayed in the face; it was in the front yard, on the grass, and Sean had later pulled the hose, taut, into the living room and sprayed his brother, Chris, who had been eating a plate of microwaved nuggets. Actually, Sean hadn’t done that, but he was imagining it now — skylight, sliding glass door, chicken nuggets — without taking into consideration if it had really happened.

He was imagining this and smiling and staring at Annie, and then Annie was smiling back at him and they smiled at each other for a very long time, nothing else happening in the world.

Then Sean was yawning and blinking a very slow blink. He noticed that he was staring at something not Annie. His eyes weren’t focusing. Focus, Sean told his eyes. He exerted willpower at his eyes. There was a fork. I’m used for eating, said the fork. Throw it, Sean thought. He wanted to have fun. He touched his mouth and felt that he was still smiling. Good, he thought. He yawned and put some of his fingers in the hole of his mouth. He wouldn’t ever sleep again, he thought promisingly, never again. Clams, he thought. He saw that Chris was pointing his finger, ordering appetizers off the menu. All of them, Sean thought, give him all the appetizers. The waitress had her notepad. Sean couldn’t decipher her face. He felt that he knew her intimately. She had a pen and a notepad and then she was leaving. “Beer,” Chris shouted. “Saki.”

“Oh, wow,” Annie said. “Maryanne has the same consonant-vowel configuration as Michelle. I guess that isn’t very interesting.” Michelle stood and began to attack Annie. She kicked Annie. She hit Annie with a spoon. Annie had a worried look on her face. “Oh, Michelle,” she said. “Hit me, please. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. How do I help us? You and Chris. You and Sean and Chris.”

Sean looked at his brother, who seemed to be weeping, very quietly and strangely, his face down, almost touching his salad bowls. Sean wanted to spray him with the hose. He wanted badly to do that ten years ago. I’ll do it, Sean thought. The logic of this blanked his mind. Then Michelle was holding his hand, leading him someplace, and now they stood outside the restaurant, looking in through glass.

Annie was hugging Chris at the sushi bar. She turned and looked for Michelle and Sean and saw them standing outside, holding hands. The precocious child, her daughter — how she loved her little Michelle — was staring right at her, fiercely but sleepily; her eyes a bit unfocused. Sean, the young boy, was yawning. He had the admonished, ever-surrendering face — the wet eyes — of someone who would only ever love from a distance, in secret, a kind of nauseous, searching half-love, a love dizzied by its own halfness, made faithful by its own dizziness. He was yawning again. He hadn’t slept, Annie knew.