Tao Lin - Taipei

“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.”

“It’s okay,” said Paul. “I’m sorry about the butter thing.”

Laura blushed and looked down by slowly moving her eyeballs. Paul apologized and said he wouldn’t talk about it anymore and that he liked Laura’s eyebrows, which were black, in contrast to her naturally blond hair. They talked tensely, with a few long pauses, about the difference between Scottish and Irish people and Paul began to worry about the rest of dinner, but after they finished the 40oz and mutely focused on their menus a few minutes they settled into a calm, polite, somewhat resigned manner of leisurely occupying each other. When their mashed potatoes, chili, corn-bread, noodle soup arrived they talked less and Paul began to feel a little sleepy. Laura thanked him for showing her this restaurant, which she wanted to try lunch from soon.

Outside, on the sidewalk, Laura immediately walked toward the 1st Avenue L train station at an unleisurely pace, seeming less rushed than resolutely continuing with a prior, focused, unobstructed momentum. Paul realized, with some confusion, that he’d obliviously assumed they would do something together after dinner; more than once, as they waited for the bill, he’d considered suggesting they see a movie at a theater that was in the opposite direction they were currently walking. Laura was crossing streets and sidewalks at unconventional angles, as if across a field, in a diagonal, it seemed, to get there sooner. Paul wanted to stop moving and sit or lay on the sidewalk, partly as a juvenile tactic to interrupt Laura’s departure.

On the train Laura became significantly more talkative and, it seemed, happier. Paul thought of how at every job he’d had, in movie theaters and libraries and restaurants, almost every employee, probably especially himself, would become predictably friendlier and more generous as closing time neared. At the Bedford station, before exiting the train, Laura apologized again and unsolicitedly said “maybe I’ll feel better and come over later, in a few hours,” which seemed to Paul like a non sequitur, or an extreme example of the “closing time” effect.

In his room, with the light on, Paul lay entirely beneath his blanket, aware that Michelle was the last person who’d affected him this cripplingly — to zero productivity, not even listening to music, motionless between his blanket and mattress like some packaged thing. He heard a ringing noise, or the memory of a ringing noise, which meant another of his limited number of nonregenerative hearing cells had died, though his room was nearly silent. He became aware of himself remembering a night when he and Michelle, alone in her mother’s mansion-like house in Pittsburgh, made salad and pasta for dinner and sat facing each other, bisecting a long wood table like a converted canoe. Paul had begun to feel depressed without knowing why — maybe unconsciously intuiting what life would be like in a giant house with a significant other and a routine, how forty or fifty years, like windows on a computer screen, maximized on top of each other, could appear like a single year that would then need to be lived repeatedly, so that one felt both nearer and withheld from death — and within a few minutes was silent and visibly troubled, staring down at his salad. Michelle had asked what was wrong and Paul had said “nothing,” then she’d asked again and he’d said he felt depressed, but didn’t know why, then at some point she went upstairs, where Paul found her on her bed, in her room that seemed too big for one person, in a fetal position on her side — oval and exposed, on top of her sheets and blanket, as an egg. Paul dreamed something about his cube-shaped room being a storage facility in which he’d been placed by an entity that believed in his resale value. While in storage he could interact with others, look at the internet, go on a book tour, but if he damaged himself he would be moved to a garbage pile, on a different planet. He woke a few times, then remained awake, obstructed from sleep by his own grumpiness and discomfort, the main reasons he wanted to sleep.

He reached outside his blanket and pulled his MacBook “darkly,” he felt, toward himself, like an octopus might. It was 12:52 a.m., almost three hours since leaving Angelica Kitchen. Laura, to Paul’s surprise, had emailed twice — a few sentence fragments apologizing for her awkwardness at 11:43 p.m., a paragraph of elaboration at 12:05 a.m. Paul emailed that he understood and liked her and thought she was “cool.” She responded, a few minutes later, seeming cheerful. After a few more emails she seemed almost “giddy.” They committed — earnestly and enthusiastically, Paul felt — to get tattoos together tomorrow.

• • •

Laura arrived around 4:30 p.m., seeming tired and distracted, with cheese and a bottle of wine and knitting materials in a plastic bag. Paul said they should go to Manhattan before night and Laura asked why and Paul said for tattoos. Laura said she wanted to stay inside to work on her set of a dozen “monster masks,” which she wanted to use in a music video for one of her songs (and which, based on photos Paul had seen on the internet, she seemed to have been knitting for more than a year). They shared a Klonopin, and when it began to get dark outside Paul suggested a restaurant two blocks away, but Laura didn’t want to go outside, so they ordered Chinese food — minnow-size pieces of slippery chicken in a shiny garlic sauce, six fortune cookies — and ate only a little, then shared an Ambien and sat, at a distance from each other, on Paul’s mattress.

Paul patted the area beside him and Laura said “stop trying to make sexy time” in an earnest, slightly annoyed voice. Paul grinned and honestly said he wasn’t and felt confused. Laura, who had finished most of the bottle of wine herself, lay curled in a corner of the mattress and was soon asleep. Paul absently looked at the internet a little, then woke, three hours later, around midnight, to Laura putting her things into her plastic bag. She was going home, she said, because she had to feed Jeffrey and had work in the morning.

The next night Paul was with Mitch and Matt — another classmate from Florida, one year ahead of Mitch and Paul, currently “on vacation” alone — at Barcade, a bar with dozens of arcade machines. After one beer Paul texted Laura “hi, how’s it going” and interpreted her almost instantaneous response of “super” as her wanting to finish an undesirable task as quick as possible. Paul texted he was at Barcade with “high school friends” and if Laura wanted to come. Laura texted “I’m all out of quarters” after five minutes. Paul texted “I have some quarters for you” with a neutral expression and a cringing sensation, then showed Mitch and Matt the texts, saying he felt depressed. Matt’s friend Lindsay (whom he was staying with while on vacation) arrived and everyone walked six blocks to a bar with outdoor Ping-Pong tables. Daniel arrived with his friend Fran, 22, whose intriguing gaze, Paul noticed with interest, seemed both disbelieving and transfixed in discernment, as if meticulously studying what she knew she was hallucinating. Paul looked at his phone — it had been more than an hour since he texted Laura that he had quarters and, as expected, she hadn’t responded — and heard Daniel say “a Mexican place” and something about “six tacos” to Mitch.