Tao Lin - Taipei

“I know. That’s what I said. He’s doing that now.”

“Calvin went to charge his phone,” said Paul to Maggie, and returned to his seat. He tweeted “someone in my row is snoring #xmenlivetweet” and “kevin bacon had something like 10 hands #xmenlivetweet.” Maggie tweeted she wanted more heroin. Paul tweeted “i can hear someone snoring ~8 seats to my left #xmenlivetweet” and saw Maggie leave the theater and stared absently as Kevin Bacon talked to people. Kevin Bacon walked outside, where it was snowing, then he turned around and talked to the same people as before, who had followed him. Paul tried to remember why Kevin Bacon had gone outside. He read tweets from Maggie that said “feeling lonely #xmenlivetweet” and “i am in the bathroom contemplating chugging my beer,” which had no hashtag. Paul saw that Erin had left the theater. Paul cautiously entered the women’s bathroom, a few minutes later, hearing Maggie’s voice and movement noises from the handicapped stall.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Paul in a loud, authoritative voice, and the movement noises stopped.

“Yes?” said Erin after a pause.

“It’s me,” said Paul.

“Oh, shit,” said Maggie, and the door opened.

“I was scared,” said Erin, partly in view.

“You’re in the women’s bathroom,” said Maggie.

“Sorry,” said Paul grinning, and left and sat on the carpeted floor near an emergency exit and tweeted “where is everyone. . i’m sitting in darkness near the women’s bathroom #xmenlivetweet” and that he was going to try to scare Erin and Maggie again. He read “just stood up, lost ‘all control’ of left leg and fell into an arcade game, making a loud noise and ‘yelping’ #xmenlivetweet” by Calvin. He read “someone just said ‘we did it!’ while seeming to float in an indoor ‘future area’ #xmenlivetweet” by Erin. He heard Maggie’s voice and walked quickly to her and Erin and thrust his glass bottle of water at them but water didn’t leave the bottle until, as the bottle neared himself, some splashed onto his chin and neck. Calvin was sitting on the floor by the candy machines, smiling calmly at his phone. Erin gave Paul and Maggie tea-tree toothpicks. Paul went in the theater to his seat and tweeted “why is ‘beast’ flying a jet plane. . #xmenlivetweet” and “is this world war 2, i don’t understand anything #xmenlivetweet” and “i’m going to stand to look at who has been snoring loudly for ~15 min. #xmenlivetweet” and “someone seems to be laying across 2 seats sleeping #xmenlivetweet.” He became aware of the tea-tree toothpick’s wiggling, outside his mouth, and of his intensely concentrating expression, as he worked on editing a tweet, a few minutes after credits had begun scrolling down the screen, when the white shape, of Erin in a white dress, in Paul’s peripheral vision, stopped enlarging, indicating an arrival.

In the lobby, by the bathrooms, Paul said he felt nauseated. “I feel,” said Erin, and was quiet for around five seconds. “Never mind.” Paul asked carefully, with vague aversion toward himself, if she usually thought of what to say before speaking, or would start talking without thinking. “I think at least fifty percent of it before talking, I think,” said Erin. “Why?”

Paul said it was annoying sometimes to wait for her to think, and they stopped talking — Calvin and Maggie were ahead, sometimes looking back — until they got on the L train, when Paul apologized for saying it was annoying and said he understood her behavior. Erin quietly said it was okay. Paul asked if she felt okay and she said she did, and asked if Paul did. Maggie jumped in front of them and posed with the sleeping, drooling, middle-aged man in an opposite seat. “I’m okay with everything,” said Paul distractedly, with some confusion, after moving his iPhone into position and photographing only the middle-aged man because Maggie had returned to her seat.

“Are you sure?” said Erin.

“Yeah. I’m okay with everything if you are.”

“I am,” said Erin.

“I feel nauseated,” said Paul a few minutes later. “But I’m okay with everything. If I’m not talking it’s because I’m nauseated.”

“Okay,” said Erin. “Thank you for telling me.”

In the large deli below Harry’s apartment Paul walked away, at one point, from everyone else and, alone in an aisle, turned into a barrier-like display of heavily discounted tomato sauce. None fell, or seemed to have been disturbed, or affected, to any degree, and no one saw. After buying beer, fennel, celery, a plastic bag of apples, three lemons and walking six blocks Paul and Erin sat on a sidewalk waiting for Calvin and Maggie to get their sleeping bags from where they’d been staying.

“You’re really quiet suddenly,” said Erin.

“I’m really nauseated,” said Paul, and rested the weight of his head facedown on his open palms, covering his eyes and cheeks and forehead. It began raining lightly, in a mist, as if onto produce, or probably an air conditioner was dripping condensation. Paul weakly tried to remember what month it was, stopping after a few seconds, and moved his shoulders to indicate he didn’t want to be touched when Erin began rubbing his back.

Maggie was in the bathroom and Paul was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, around half an hour later, absently reading descriptions of mutants on X-Men: First Class ’s Wikipedia page—“scientist who is transformed into a frightening-looking mutant in an effort to cure himself, but is kind at heart”—when Calvin asked if “anyone” wanted to sit with him on the front stoop while he smoked.

“Me. I will,” said Erin, who had been drying her hair with a towel after showering, and Paul saw her looking at herself in the wall mirror. He clicked “Kevin Bacon” and looked at the words “Kevin Bacon (disambiguation)” without thinking anything for a vague amount of time, until Maggie entered the room, when he stood and went in the bathroom and heard Erin say “actually, I’ll have a beer” and Calvin say “really?” and “cool.” The thick carpet of the bathmat, folded like a soft taco, was in the bathtub, sopping and heavy. Paul thought with some confusion that Maggie must’ve put it there, maybe for slippage prevention. While showering he thought about what he’d done during the filming, last year, August to December, of X-Men: First Class : hid in his room, gone on a book tour, gotten married, visited his parents. He entered his room wearing boxer shorts — Maggie was sitting in a far corner looking at her MacBook with a serious expression — and turned around and put on a shirt, sat on his mattress, placed his MacBook on his lap, stared at the words “Bacon in 2007” with slightly unfocused eyes. Maggie said she had a stomachache and moved onto the mattress asking if Paul wanted beer, which she held toward him and which he mutely held a few seconds before moving it near Maggie, who drank some and put it on the floor and resettled herself on the mattress with the sides of their knees touching.

“Calvin and Erin have been gone so long,” said Paul.

“Maybe they’re watching the sunrise,” said Maggie.

“I don’t think you can see it from here.”

“Maybe they went somewhere.”

“I don’t think you can see it from anywhere near here.”

“I don’t know where they are,” said Maggie.

“Do you feel depressed still?”

“Yeah,” said Maggie.

“Because of you and Calvin?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you end the relationship or him?”

“It was me,” said Maggie. “He didn’t want it to end.” She said she felt depressed because she’d been really close with Calvin, so now something in her life felt missing. Paul asked about the singer, of a punk band he listened to often in high school, who had kissed Maggie, she’d said in an email, in someone’s car after a concert. Maggie said the singer didn’t want to bring her in his hotel room because his friends would think it was weird she was 17 and that he wanted to perform oral sex on her but she didn’t want that and he’d said they could “get naked but not have sex” and Maggie had said she didn’t know what that meant. Then the singer had told intimate secrets about his ex-girlfriend. Paul had idly opened iMovie on his MacBook and they’d been absently looking at it, not recording, as they talked and he accidentally clicked — and quickly closed — one of the movies.