Tao Lin - Taipei

“I don’t remembering complaining to him,” said Paul.

“You said you don’t feel happy around me,” said Erin.

“I said I don’t feel happy no matter what. I also said I don’t feel interested in anyone except you.”

“You said you felt interested in other girls sexually.”

“That isn’t complaining,” said Paul. “We talked about a lot of things.” Charles had seemed to be having the same “relationship problems” with his girlfriend as before Mexico and had said he was planning a similar, solitary trip to Asia. Paul had suggested Charles write a novel called Mexico, plotted around his problems with Jehan, who was still in Mexico but had been active on the internet, regularly writing on Charles’ Facebook wall and, unless it had been a different Jehan, adding Paul on Goodreads.

• • •

After dinner, in Paul’s room, Erin asked if she was “going home now.” Paul lay unresponsive on his mattress facing away. Erin said she “wanted to buy groceries from LifeThyme before leaving.” Paul rolled onto his back and, with only the top half of his head visible, said “I think it would be better if you didn’t stay tonight” through the muzzle-y screen of his blanket. He felt “completely motionless,” he thought, on his mattress, with his eyes closed, as Erin gathered her belongings. He heard her say “I agree with what you said about how if it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but I wanted to say that I like knowing you and I hope it works out.”

Without knowing exactly why, but sensing, on some level, that his feeling was mostly vicarious — that he was experiencing what he suspected Erin would experience, in a few seconds, once she discerned his sincere lack of response — Paul felt a sympathetically cringing sensation that he wished Erin hadn’t said what she had said. Mechanically, with the lightness of bones that could move, he stood and hugged her briefly, without looking at her face.

Six hours later, when birds were chirping but it was still dark outside, Paul was sitting on his mattress watching what he’d recorded in Calvin’s room. He noticed that he hadn’t been in Calvin’s room — he didn’t remember where he’d gone, maybe downstairs to the kitchen — for a few minutes, during which Erin had spoken in a louder, more confident voice and openly debated if she wanted a beer. Maggie, Paul saw in the movie, had asked Erin if Paul drank alcohol and Erin had said “sometimes,” then Maggie had asked what kind and Erin had said “beer, and sometimes tequila,” in a subtly, complicatedly different voice like that of a shyer, less friendly version of herself. Hearing this, aware that Erin would normally attribute non-firsthand information, that she’d say she had read about him drinking tequila, Paul began crying a little.

He lay against a pile of blankets and pillows, away from his MacBook, unsure why he felt emotional. Gradually he realized he’d intuited her voice sounded different because she had probably assumed, to some degree, that only she knew — and only she would ever know — of the aberration in her behavior and, while saying “beer, and sometimes tequila,” maybe had distractedly felt an uncommon nearness to herself that Paul, knowing this in secret from her, had also felt.

Two months later, in mid-July, around a week after Paul turned 28, Calvin and Maggie were in Brooklyn for five days to act in a low-budget movie. They were no longer in a relationship. They met Paul and Erin on a Friday night at Sel De Mer, where Erin gave everyone Xanax and Calvin shared a marijuana cookie with everyone and Maggie, who hadn’t eaten meat in two years, ordered lobster. They confirmed to snort heroin in Paul’s room after dinner, then go to the Union Square theater to “group livetweet” whatever movie fit their schedule. They would sit separately during the movie and communicate only through tweets, in service of making the experience “more fun and interesting,” said Paul, who anticipated wanting to be alone in the theater.

At Paul’s apartment Maggie volunteered to help Paul juice fennel, celery, cucumber, lemon while Erin showered and Calvin did something in Paul’s room. Paul, who had been silent most of the night, partly because he and Erin ingested 2mg Xanax each before dinner, asked if Maggie had asked her brother about “the thing,” which he was surprised he remembered.

“Shit. Yeah. I forgot to tell you.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t remember,” said Maggie absently.

“Are you depressed about you and Calvin?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk to him. I feel really depressed.”

Paul organized three bags of heroin into four different-size piles — Maggie only wanted a little — while Erin bought tickets for X-Men: First Class at 12:35 a.m. Paul drew lines connecting three names to three lines of heroin and heard Calvin say “I think I just figured out I can be happy no matter what people around me are doing” to what seemed to be himself and earnestly thought “funny” in a monotone with a neutral expression, then snorted his heroin and showered and ingested 15mg Adderall, two Advil, half a marijuana cookie. Paul vomited on the street twice before they got in a taxi with Erin in the front passenger seat and Maggie in the backseat between Paul and Calvin, who was commenting on the taxi’s TV, which was talking about Shaquille O’Neal.

“You should tweet it, stop talking about it,” said Paul, and opened his door at a red light to vomit, but didn’t and received from someone a plastic bag, which he vomited in twice with an overall sensation of disconcern-based serenity. He tweeted “in cab to theater, ‘already’ vomited twice (jk re seeming to imply xmen will make me vomit)” and read a tweet that said “put hand through cab glass to pet Paul as he vomited into a bag, cabdriver looked at me in a sitcom-like way” and said “Erin, you forgot the hashtag” while staring at his own tweet. “I forgot the hashtag also. We’re all just going to keep forgetting it. What’re we going to do?”

“I recommend copy and pasting.” said Erin.

“We’re all just going to keep forgetting it,” said Paul “pessimistically,” he thought, and when he exited the taxi he walked into, instead of onto, the sidewalk and fell stumbling ahead in an uninhibited, loosely controlled, briefly uncontrolled manner reminiscent of childhood, when this partial to complete abandonment of body and/or limb (of rolling like a log on carpet, falling face-first onto beds, being dragged by an arm or both legs through houses or side yard, floating in swimming pools, lying upside down in headstands on sofas) was normal, allowing his unexpected momentum to naturally expend, falling horizontally for an amusingly far length. He imagined continuing forward in a pretending of momentum, transitioning into a jog, disappearing into the distance. He vomited on the street, then turned around and jogged to Maggie, who stood motionless with a preoccupied expression.

“I’m okay,” said Paul. “Where are they? Calvin, Erin.”

“Buying water,” said Maggie.

“How do you feel?”

“Floaty,” said Maggie with a neutral expression. “Good. How do you feel?”

“Good,” said Paul smiling. “I just used too much.”

When they entered the theater the movie had already begun. Paul sat in a stadium-seated area, above and behind everyone else in the front area. After a few minutes he went to Maggie, who was in an isolated seat, on the right side of the theater. Maggie pointed at Erin and Calvin, twenty feet away, talking to each other.

“We agreed to sit separately,” said Maggie.

“I want separately also,” said Paul.

“I feel upset,” said Maggie.

“I’m going to see what’s happening,” said Paul, and crossed an aisle, past five empty seats, to Erin, as Calvin left the theater. Erin said Calvin had wanted to share her phone. Paul said Calvin “should just go charge it for like ten minutes.”