Tao Lin - Bed

LJ began to wrap her hair around her neck. She had very thin smoke-brown hair. She hadn’t been mentally focused for a while now. She had been thinking about … she couldn’t remember what.

“Don’t,” Jason said. “You’ll choke to death.” He went to unwrap LJ’s hair from her neck.

They stopped walking. LJ let Jason unwrap her hair some. What was happening, she thought. She twisted away and fell. She sat and looked at the top of the grass covering the rest of the field, swaying light green and flaxen, a failed and reoriented sea. “You’ll choke to death on a stiff Chinese dumpling,” she said. She grinned at Jed, who was looking down and doing a kind of sideways walk — shifting, it seemed. LJ didn’t understand it.

Jason put a hand out as if to help LJ up. “A stiff Chinese dumpling,” he said. “You don’t know what that means.” He was pointing now. With his other hand he took out an apple and began to nibble at it. “You can’t act this way. You won’t,” he said. “When you know the world ended already you’ll be different.”

“That’s the most meaningless thing I’ve ever heard,” LJ said. She sat Indian-style. She widened her eyes and looked up at Jason and shouted, “What are you looking at?” Her voice was normally small; louder, now, it sounded a little like singing. Jason’s face turned red, and LJ felt bad, and blushed. She had thought she was just playing. She didn’t know.

“A dumpling,” Jason said. “That’s bad. That’s racist.” He threw his apple into the air and it went into the sky. He ran towards McDonald’s.

A cloud moved and blocked the sun.

“Aren’t you afraid of snakes?” Jed said. He spun in place, 360 degrees. One time LJ whispered in his ear that she liked him and he didn’t believe her.

Snakes, LJ thought. She didn’t know what that was. She remembered the squid. She would probably have to apologize soon. It’s just a giant squid . She wasn’t thinking when she said that. They should have gone and looked at it, and sat on it. “Gigantic squid are good,” she said, and lay back into the grass. Jed felt afraid and went and looked down at her.

LJ’s eyes were slowly moving. She was looking at the air, which seemed grayish, a little outer-space-y — but bright, too, because of the little dusts of light that were traveling through it. Her mom had told her that there wasn’t ever any reason to worry about anything or be sad. Her mom had said that everything you ever did was a result of the thing that happened right before, because of cause and effect, and that that went on forever, going back, so that there wasn’t ever a first thing, and there wouldn’t ever be a last thing, and in between there was just the middle, and there you were, always, right in the middle, and you couldn’t stop or change anything — so you didn’t have to.

“It’s dangerous. You’re surrounded,” Jed said, very slowly, concentrating as he spoke. “There are bugs on the ground. It’s dirty.”

LJ began to roll in the grass. She giggled, quietly and forcelessly — the sound of it like something you heard in your head after the first sound from outside.

“Don’t!” Jed said. He thought of anthills and Indian arrowheads. “Stop that!” He felt a little dizzy, being so loud. LJ stood and quickly hugged Jed, then stepped back. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re weird.” She was smiling.

Jed looked at her. His heart felt tiny and slippery — and sealed, like a marble, like it wouldn’t ever get any bigger, wouldn’t ever be able to pump enough blood. LJ pushed Jed’s shoulder and ran away. After about twenty feet, she stopped and turned around. She took out a bonnet from her pocket and put it on her head. It was a black bonnet. She grinned and widened her eyes. She looked surprised. How pretty she was, it made Jed feel — not good or bad, but just feel, like it was something in him that was opening up, something new and secret, that only he would ever know, and he could fill it with sadness or longing or whatever, but here it was, opening centerless and vacuum-y as something attempting itself, and it would be over soon, and nothing, then, really, would’ve happened.

LJ ran back towards the wall, and it began to rain.

They both had colds for awhile. LJ’s mom phoned Jed’s dad, talked about colds and the flu. Jed’s dad wasn’t saying anything and after a while LJ’s mom said, “What am I even doing right now?” She waited a second then hung up, and didn’t call again until late in July, on a hot Sunday night; Jed answered.

“I’m drunk,” she said, “I’m doing a hundred ten on the highway.”

“LJ?” Jed said. He knew it wasn’t LJ.

“Jed. Oh Jed,” LJ’s mom said. “What’s going to happen to you?”

Jed’s dad picked up on another line. Jed went into his room and sat on the carpet. He was frightened. What was going to happen to him? He took out some computer game magazines and looked at them, but couldn’t concentrate.

“Think about LJ,” Jed’s dad said to LJ’s mom. “Your daughter LJ. Your family.”

“It doesn’t matter,” LJ’s mom said. “That’s nothing, that’s nothingness. I don’t care. What does a nihilist do? That’s what I am, a nihilist. I don’t know things. There isn’t one thing out there that I know . Oh, now what. Now what! My car is shaking, my god, what kind of a car shakes. I’m going ninety, I’m slowing down.” She was only a little drunk. Actually, she had had just one beer. But she hadn’t slept. She hadn’t been sleeping at all.

“I’ll talk to you,” Jed’s dad said. He just didn’t want to be in a relationship. He wanted to live ethereally, intrinsically, not doing anything — like a plant. He just didn’t find people appealing anymore, not LJ’s mom at least. He liked the monosyllabic, deadpan type, he knew, the type that withdrew when angered, became quiet and a bit endearing in the face. LJ’s mom was melodramatic and threw things — large things — when angered. “Just park on the grass,” he said. “Slow down. I’ll come — pick you up. We’ll talk. What about your book?” He knew that he should talk smoother, use more conjunctions — not be so monotone, so funereal . He shouldn’t have brought up the book.

“Yeah, talk about my book!” LJ’s mom shouted. “When have you ever fucking wanted to talk about my book! Okay. Well then! I’m slowing down. Lewly J. Oh god, what am I doing? I won the lottery, moved to Florida. What will I do tomorrow? What will I do once I’m dead? What will happen to us?”

“It will—” He didn’t want to say that it would all be okay, that things would get better. Things would get worse, he knew. There would be old age, cancer, arthritis, global warming, tidal waves, acid rain — life was just a tiny, moonstruck thing, really, and the world was just a small, failed place. “We’ll go out,” he said. He was bad at optimism, at invigoration, at whatever this was right now. “You, me, Jed. LJ. We’ll go to the beach.”

“Yeah right!” LJ’s mom shouted. “ The beach ,” she screamed. “What bullshit! You think you’re so nice. Sitting at home or whatever.” She paused. She was crying now. “What have you sacrificed? What have you ever done for someone else? Why can’t you—”

Jed’s dad didn’t say anything — he knew she was maybe right, that if he tried hard enough, he could love her, and so why didn’t he? If you had to try hard in life not to hurt people, not to harm others, didn’t you also have to try hard to help people? To love people? Were there limits to this? Some threshold? Could you ever do enough? — and she cried a little and then hung up.

Later that night, she drove onto Jed’s dad’s yard and fell out of her car. Jed’s dad woke up and came outside. She was lying on the grass. She smelled of alcohol and perfume. “This is just a weird dream,” she was saying. “This is all just a weird dream.” She was rolling and she rolled onto the sidewalk, scraping herself, and then was stopped by the mailbox. Jed’s dad pulled her up and she fell back down. “Dream film doesn’t develop in the real world,” she shouted. She put her face into the grass.