Tao Lin - Taipei

“Nothing,” said Paul automatically. “We just talked about feeling depressed.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember,” said Paul.

“Try to,” said Erin.

“You can just read it tomorrow.”

“Can I read it now?”

“Just read it tomorrow,” said Paul.

“Why can’t I read it now?”

“Okay,” said Paul, and opened his MacBook.

He woke, on his back, to Calvin looking at him from the doorway. He asked if Calvin had used any drugs today. Calvin said he hadn’t, and they looked at each other.

“You haven’t?” said Paul. “Today?”

“Well, a Percocet, when I woke up.”

“When you woke up,” said Paul in a monotone.

“Oh yeah — your alarm is going off,” said Calvin to Erin. “That’s what I came here, to tell you.”

“Oh, damn,” said Erin, and left the room.

“Are. . you and Erin. . having problems?”

“No,” said Paul, and laughed a little.

Calvin appeared tired, slightly anxious.

“I mean. . no,” said Paul looking at the ceiling. “No.”

“I’m going to my room,” said Calvin after a few seconds.

When Erin returned, five minutes later, Paul asked where she’d been.

“In the bathroom,” she said. “Where were you?”

“What do you mean? I’ve been right here.”

“I was in the bathroom. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“What do you mean ‘where were you?’ I was here when you left.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was trying to make a joke. It was. . ‘in bad taste,’ I guess.”

“Don’t apologize about that,” said Paul.

After a few seconds Erin rolled over. “I misinterpreted what you said,” she said facing away. “I don’t want to do that in the future.”

“Stop apologizing,” said Paul.

“I’m not apologizing,” said Erin.

“Okay. Just stop talking about it.”

Erin went in the bathroom attached to the guest room, and when the shower turned on Paul immediately heard a quiet, soporific crying like something from nature. He saw Calvin and Maggie jogging into the room and covered himself with a blanket and they jumped on the bed, then repeatedly in place.

In Calvin’s SUV, that night, on the way to Target to buy hair dye, because Calvin wanted to dye and cut his hair “really weird,” and Maggie had earnestly said “I think I want to color my face too,” Erin asked if anyone wanted Xanax; everyone did, in different amounts, which she apportioned. To her right, gently isolated in a one-person seat, holding half a Xanax bar, which was guaranteed to have an effect on him within forty minutes, Paul felt a quaintly affecting comfort and a self-conscious, fleeting urge to ask someone a question or say something nice to someone.

He thought of how, from elementary through high school, if a girl had been nice to him at school or if he got a valuable baseball or Magic: The Gathering card or if he accomplished something in a video or computer game — if for whatever reason he felt significantly, temporarily happier — he would get an urge to talk to his mother and sometimes would go find her, at her makeup station in her bathroom, or outside watering plants, then reveal something about his life or ask her a question about her life, knowing he was making her happy, for a few minutes, before running back to the TV, Nintendo, or computer. Sometimes, half mock scolding, mostly as an amused observation of human nature (she’d also say she recognized the behavior in herself, that she was the same way, with certain people), Paul’s mother would tell Paul, who almost always answered her questions, her attempts at conversation, with “I don’t know” in a kind of vocal cursive, without disconnected syllables, that he shouldn’t only talk to her — to his “poor mother,” she’d say — when he felt like talking.

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.

In college, junior and senior year, when he’d deliberately remained friendless — after his first relationship ended — to focus on writing what became his first book, he would force himself to email his mother (his only regular communication, those two years, once every two to four days) even when he felt depressed and unmotivated. He would always feel better after emailing, knowing his mother would be happy and that, by mastering some part of himself, he’d successfully felt less depressed without bothering, impeding — or otherwise being a distraction in — anyone’s life.

Target was closed for an unknown reason. Paul was quiet during the ten-minute drive back to Calvin’s mansion, dimly remembering once sitting close with Erin in another back-seat, also at night, holding cups of hot tea for warmth. His memories had increasingly occurred to him without context, outside of linear time, like single poems on sheets of computer paper, instead of pages from a book with the page number and book title on top.

They used all their MDMA in Calvin’s basement while eating cake, ham, salad, cookies — the first time Paul had eaten food for comfort while on MDMA — then went upstairs to Calvin’s room, where Calvin and Maggie drank beer, which Paul and Erin, who had eaten only a little food, declined. Paul began recording, at some point, with his MacBook. “Isn’t it a thing?” he said after ingesting Codeine and Flexeril. “That people warn against? Combining drugs.”

“Yeah,” said Calvin, and laughed.

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Erin shyly.

“I’m on like eight things now,” said Paul.

Calvin asked if Erin wanted to smoke marijuana and she asked if Paul would be okay with that and Paul said yes, thinking he didn’t like that she had asked. While Erin and Calvin smoked in the bathroom, with the door closed so Calvin’s parents wouldn’t smell it, Paul and Maggie created a GIF of a baseball cap moving around on their heads. Maggie, when Paul said he wanted to smoke marijuana, said he shouldn’t because of his lung collapse history. Paul began coughing nonstop after smoking and repeatedly said his chest burned and fell, half deliberately, to the floor, grinning in a stereotypically marijuana-induced manner, he could feel, as he tried, with his MacBook, to find information on the internet about his situation.

“I feel like I’m unsarcastically viewing this as a major ordeal,” said Calvin.

“I’m just trying to Google ‘burned lung,’ I’m not doing anything to indicate what you said,” said Paul in an agitated voice while grinning. “I’m just idly looking up ‘burned lung’ variations on the internet.”

“I was also viewing this as major until Paul just said that,” said Erin.

Paul lay facedown, at some point, on one of the two beds in the room and heard Calvin say “what if he’s dead?” and imagined Erin shrugging. When he woke, four hours later, on his side, Erin was holding him from behind.

They spoke once — at a rest stop, when Paul said it was his turn to drive and Erin said she was okay with continuing — during the eight-hour drive to Brooklyn, arriving around midnight and sleeping until late in the afternoon, when Erin said she was buying groceries from LifeThyme and driving back to Baltimore. Paul asked if she wanted to “stay and eat dinner on Xanax” before leaving.

At Sel De Mer, that night, Erin said Paul had been ignoring her all weekend and that she felt depressed. Paul said he’d focused on doing what he wanted, on talking to Charles, instead of complaining that he was unhappy. Erin said Paul did complain, to Charles.