Justin Taylor - Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever

We have a good time.

I’m in Leah’s kitchen, which is also her living room. We’re sitting in high-back wooden chairs, getting drunk on Maker’s Mark. I guess we’re about halfway there. Her apartment is an almost uncramped studio near the park. At least the tub is in the bathroom. Recipes are stuck to the fridge with fruit magnets, though Leah only ever eats out or orders in.

She’s been telling me about this studio class she’s taking called Across Mediums: Conversations Within and Between the Arts. It sounds interesting, or at any rate she seems to be enjoying it, and like evidence supporting an alibi, here’s a copy of The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara on the table. It’s thick, paperback, black; the cover dominated by a yellowed headshot of the poet. He has close-cropped dark hair, a high forehead, full lips. He’s looking over his right shoulder, gaze brimming with a melancholy not entirely unsweet.

I open the book, flip to a random page, and read what I find out loud:

“the unrecapturable nostalgia for nostalgia for a life I might have hated, thus mourned

but do we really need anything more to be sorry about wouldn’t it be extra, as all pain is extra”

“Don’t be afraid to jump around,” she cuts in. “That’s the way to read him, my teacher says.”

So, on another page:

“if Kenneth were writing this he would point out how art has changed women and women have changed art and men, but men haven’t changed women much

but ideas are obscure and nothing should be obscure tonight

you will live half the year in a house by the sea and half the year in a house in our arms”

This time I interrupt myself. “Who’s Kenneth?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “He’s always mentioning people. You get the feeling they’re all somebody. There might be notes in the back.” There aren’t. She gets up from the table. I put the book down and finish what’s in my glass.

Leah’s got her head in the freezer, checking to see if the new ice is ready. I get up from my chair and go to her. I grip her hips, momentarily, then slip my hands around her front, get underneath the fabric of her tee shirt, and clasp them over her belly. Holding her close against me as chilly air washes over us.

“Hey there, you,” she says, and presses back.

I circle her nipples with my index fingers, feeling myself tense as they tighten.

She turns her neck to the side, as if yielding to a vampire.

I kiss her on the neck, then pull her closer still — I want her to tip her head back so we can kiss.

“Couldn’t this be it?” I say, speaking the words into her hair. “Isn’t this good enough?”

She reaches behind herself, thrusts one arm between us and pushes. Her other arm drawn across her beautiful breasts like a shield.

Leah doesn’t throw me out, but she also doesn’t try to hide that I’ve upset her and how badly. We can’t talk about it, or I know she won’t so I don’t even try, but it’s what goes unsaid between people that builds up like masonry. You have to either knock the bricks out with other things, or let them keep stacking until eventually you are alone in a room. So the important thing is that we are sitting here, together, sharing a silence that is both charged and cozy, working on a fresh round of drinks.

When they’re finished, Leah doesn’t offer to refresh them again. She says she thinks she’ll get ready for bed. I wobble a bit when I stand. We say good night and I see myself out. We have always forgiven each other everything. It is easy to believe that we will survive love.

Leah’s building is on Amsterdam and 108th. There are subway stops on Broadway at 103rd and 110th. Does it make more sense to walk north to the closer stop or walk the extra five blocks south and have one less stop to ride?

I’m walking down 108th, toward Broadway, not knowing which direction I’ll turn when I get there. Then, instead of turning one way or the other, I decide where I really want to be is inside this bar on the corner. I’ve never been in here before. I take a stool at the far end, order a Maker’s, shoot it, then order a beer to sit and sip on, though before I know it half of that’s gone, too. It’s pretty busy in here — a student hangout, apparently, though of course that can mean a lot of things. The Pixies are on the too-loud stereo. Straining to listen to the conversation nearest me, I am able to discern the word epistemology . English majors.

“Do you know what time it is?” Richard says. “Of course you don’t or you wouldn’t be calling.” I’m on the sidewalk in front of the bar. “So. How drunk are you, exactly?”

I say, “Nobody knows me like you do. I don’t understand it.” I’m not even slurring too badly, all things considered. “What did you mean when you said we were all the same? Who?”

“Christ,” Richard says.

“I’m not a fucking TYPE Richard I’m a fucking PERSON.”

“It’s not one or the other, Todd. You’re a type of person, and I’m sorry if that hurts to hear, but it’s true. Also, I’m not that sorry. You typed me right off as a needy used-up old fag, and now that you know I’m not you’re trying to recast me as magic negro to your plighted hero.”

“Fine, okay, you’re right. Everything, you’re right. So okay, fine, hit me with it — what am I? Type me.”

“You,” Richard says — dramatic pause—“are the type who hears the deadbolt turning but can’t tell whether the door is about to be opened or has just been locked shut.”

A taxi is sailing up the street. I stick my arm out. It sees me, pulls an outrageous U-turn in the empty intersection, sidles up to the curb. “I’m coming over,” I say to Richard. “I’m going to make it right between us.”

“No you’re not,” he says.

“I am,” I say. “I already gave your address to the driver.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and give his address to the driver.

“It’s already right between us,” Richard says, “in the sense that it’s never going to be anything other than this. You try to make things better, and that’s sweet, sort of, but the fact is they aren’t yours to change. I’m sure it’s the same with your other — situation, though please don’t take that as an invitation to start talking about what’shername.”

Richard hangs up, but only because he’s a showoff, and needs to always have the final word. He’s in love with the sound of his own voice cutting out, and imagining what that absence sounds like in my ear, but by the time I get to his place he’ll be out of his snit, and ready to be good to me. He may even offer to pay for my cab.

Steven’s calling. He does this once or twice a month, depending how things are going for him. Three times means pretty bad . We haven’t had one of those in a while. If he ever called four times I might be worried or curious enough to pick up.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, rings if it’s on the charger, and I’ll look at it and see it’s him and not answer. I haven’t spoken to him in ten and a half months, which I prefer to think of as a year, since we are coming up on our one-year “anniversary” anyway. What he does is leave a voice mail and then not two minutes later call again and leave another, so each “call” is actually a pair of them: binary stars.

You can imagine what a hurry I’m in to go retrieve these messages. Sentimental reminiscences, mostly, slurred by drink and tending toward the graphically sexual. The rare wild plea for another chance.

I do love knowing how deep in him I run, still. My lasting power in and over his duplicitous heart. That in the depths of his misery this is what he comes back around to: some vision of me that makes him throb.