Tao Lin - Taipei

“Eight tacos,” said Paul absently.

“I said six tacos,” said Daniel.

“Six tacos,” said Paul. “Was it, like. . a taco platter?”

“No. This place has small tacos.”

“It wasn’t a taco platter?”

“It wasn’t a taco platter,” said Daniel.

“I don’t get it,” said Paul without thinking.

“Bro,” said Daniel grinning.

Paul asked Fran what she had eaten.

“Enchiladas,” said Fran.

“I can never remember what those are,” said Paul, and went to the bathroom. When he returned Lindsay invited everyone to her Cinco de Mayo party — in five days, at her apartment — then everyone, except Fran, who Daniel said was an undergrad at Columbia and had left to do homework, walked eight blocks to a bar called Harefield Road to meet a group of people Paul knew as acquaintances from his involvement in poetry. Seconds after sitting in the outdoor area Paul openly said “I want to comfort myself with food” without looking at anyone, in a relatively loud voice, with a bleak sensation of unsatisfying catharsis from having accurately, he felt, expressed himself. “I’m just going to eat whatever tonight,” he said, and stood, asking if anyone knew about food options at this bar. Two acquaintances said there were, at this time, around 2:30 a.m., only paninis. One of Daniel’s two suitemates, who said she’d written an article about Paul and reviewed books anonymously for Kirkus , went with him to order a panini. Paul asked if she liked a baseball book, which she mentioned having reviewed, and she talked without pause for what seemed like ten minutes, during which Paul, staring at her calmly, thought “she’s definitely drunk” and “normally I would be interested in her, to some degree, but currently I’m obsessed with Laura” and “she seems maybe focused on not appearing drunk, which is maybe affecting her perception of time, of how long and off-topic and incomprehensible her answer has become.” Paul carried his panini outside and “openly exchanged witty banter while feeling severely depressed,” he thought while speaking to various acquaintances. One said she’d met Paul, when he lived with Shawn Olive, at least three times. Paul said he didn’t recognize her, but also had forgotten that he’d once lived with Shawn Olive. He ate half his panini and said it was unsatisfying and left the bar and returned with Tate’s cookies and Fig Newmans, which he offered to each person. He asked Lindsay what her roommate, whom she’d been talking about, was doing. Lindsay said “sleeping, watching TV, or smoking weed” and Paul said “we should go to your apartment,” aware he was somewhat desperately, if maybe sarcastically, trying to direct his interest away from Laura, toward any girl he had not yet, but still could, meet tonight.

“This bar’s special feature: ‘paninis until really late,’ ” said Paul to a drunk-looking acquaintance on the way out.

• • •

In Lindsay’s apartment’s common room Paul sat eating Fig Newmans on one side of a five-seat sofa with Mitch and Daniel on the other side. Lindsay’s roommate was sleeping. Paul was vaguely aware, as he reread texts from Laura, of people pressuring Matt to smoke marijuana. Matt was standing alone in a corner of the room — seeming in Paul’s peripheral vision like a figure in a horror movie — saying things, as explanation for his choice not to smoke marijuana, about his grandfather’s alcoholism. Paul half-unconsciously mumbled something — to himself, he felt — about feeling thirsty and within a few seconds Matt was standing above him asking if he wanted water. After bringing him a glass of water Matt asked if Paul wanted to use his MacBook to look at the internet. Paul felt endeared to a degree that — in combination with his distraught emotional state, and as he dwelled a few seconds on how Matt’s behavior was like the opposite of pressuring someone to smoke marijuana — he felt like crying. Matt returned with a large MacBook from the room he was sleeping in while on vacation.

“Thank you,” said Paul smiling.

“You’re very welcome,” said Matt.

“You’re being really nice to me.”

“You’re the guest here,” said Matt, and Paul gingerly asked if he “by chance” had an iPod cord, sensing he would enjoy further indulging an appreciative subject with his gratuitous helpfulness. Paul accepted Matt’s iPod cord with a sensation, he felt, of daintiness, which remained as he transferred mostly pop-punk songs from Matt’s MacBook to his iPod nano. Around 4:30 a.m., in his room, Paul bit a piece of a 150mg Seroquel and listened to songs he hadn’t heard since high school, mostly the EP Look Forward to Failure by the Ataris. He woke at night fifteen hours later and, while showering, felt like he lived in a module attached to a spaceship far enough from any star to never experience daylight.

Three days later Paul exited the Graham L train station carrying beer and guacamole ingredients in a paper bag from Whole Foods for Lindsay’s Cinco de Mayo party. Sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk against a Thai restaurant was a girl with dyed-black hair. As Paul approached she looked up knowingly with an innocent, wary gaze.

“Hi,” said Paul. “Are you Fran?”

“Yeah,” said Fran.

“I’m Paul.”

“I know,” said Fran, and slowly closed her notebook.

“Are you doing homework?”

“My friend’s homework.”

“Nice,” said Paul staring transfixed at Fran’s delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off. Paul began talking — slowly, before accelerating to a normal speed — about how Daniel had sounded “really drunk” on the phone but had sent witty, insightful, elaborate texts of mostly long, elegant sentences. Fran said Daniel was like that when on Klonopin. Paul asked if he could have a Klonopin and Fran gave him one and looked to his left, where he was surprised to see Daniel standing in place, a few feet away, looking at Fran with the fixed, discerning, earnest gaze of a three-year-old processing information without considering utility or personal relevance. Paul asked Daniel how many Klonopin he had taken.

“Five,” said Daniel.

“Jesus,” said Paul.

• • •

When Paul entered the party, ahead of Daniel and Fran, Lindsay wreathed a plastic snake around his head and pulled him toward a hallway designated for photographs. Paul mumbled the word “bathroom” and walked away grinning into the kitchen, where Matt was standing alone, not apparently doing anything. Paul asked about his vacation. Matt said he drove a rental car without a plan to Maine and ate seafood in a restaurant alone, did other things alone. “It was really good,” he said, and briefly displayed a haunted and irreducibly unenthusiastic expression before reaching for chips. Paul walked out of the kitchen and looked at Fran sitting alone on the sofa where he’d eaten Fig Newmans five days ago and returned to the kitchen and, while peripherally aware of a self-conscious Matt slowly creating guacamole, asked Daniel what he’d meant — in one of his dense, interesting texts — when he said he felt like there’d been “strange occurrences lately.” Daniel said he read all of Paul’s books last autumn while in San Francisco and told his friends he had a feeling that when he came to New York City he would meet Paul and they would become friends. Daniel was alert and expressionless as an advanced cyborg as he explained that he’d gone to Paul and Frederick’s reading because Amy didn’t want to be alone with Lucie and that none of them had known Paul was reading.

“I’ve felt similar things,” said Paul. “Since Kyle’s party, when I met Laura. Or, I mean, actually, the night before that, at the reading near Times Square, when we met.”