Justin Taylor - Flings - Stories

Glancing over at his sleeping son, Mike notices the white cap of a prescription canister peeking out of Ken’s pocket. He understands immediately that this is what that preshow meet-up with the high school buddy was about. Mike’s hands are tight on the steering wheel. He’s way over the speed limit. A bead of sweat draws a wet line down the back of his neck. For some reason, Brad Rosen’s face appears in his mind then, bright as a firework, clear as a dream: a sallow, sad kid with bad mustache down walking through his mirror-world version of Mike’s house, easing the sliding glass door open and slipping out into the yard. He loves Mike’s daughter so much he almost hates her. The knife blade catches moonlight when he raises it and there’s the red line blooming across his throat, unretractable, blood pouring onto the grass.

Tomorrow Lori will tell him about how good it was to see her old girlfriends; she will roll her eyes while using the word “appletini”; she will be lying to him or telling the truth. He will believe her or not believe her. They will celebrate New Year’s Eve. She will lie with her head hanging off the side of the bed so he can watch her finger herself while he fucks her mouth upside down. He’ll tell Barry about it and Barry will clap him on the back and tell him next time he ought to take a picture. A few hours later Barry will text him, “was serious btw. got a great little library going. plenty to trade.”

Mike takes the off-ramp too fast, barrels hard into the long, tight curve with the wheels sliding beneath him, seeing now how the night will end — his car flipped over on the embankment, lights and sirens swallowing the dark, him and the kids in separate ambulances, in and out of consciousness, Miranda’s phone ringing in her kitchen, her blue robe pulled tight around her body as she stumbles half asleep toward the noise — but no, that’s not what happens because Mike stays in control, gasses into the turn, the Saab like a part of his body now, an extension of his will as he holds the road and makes it through the loop, straightens out and comes to a stop at the light, where he can take his hands off the wheel and flex them, wipe his forehead and neck, check to see if Ken and Angie have woken, which, thankfully, they haven’t, and if he has any luck left they’ll stay asleep until he gets them back into their own driveway, where he’ll wake them up one at a time, gently, like he used to do when they were kids.

They met at the mixer the week before their semester started. He seemed ambitious, a pleaser; she walked away annoyed. But it was a small program and she was resigned to running into him in hallways and at events. Perhaps they’d have workshop together. They were poets and this was graduate school.

A computer lab in the basement of their program’s building on West 11th Street: grapefruit-colored chairs with screwheads poking through the fabric, the old desktops purring as their cooling fans kicked into gear. She could usually be found there before class, checking her email or some goth band’s tour schedule. She was a smart girl but young — fresh out of her undergrad with no “time off” and the city made her feel younger still. Her classmates were mostly in their late twenties, early thirties; some were even older. She was quick to anger and to judge, and knew these things about herself. She had some mastery over her emotions, but it was hard to sustain. Often she did not even try. Dark circles weighted her warm brown eyes; below those, a perfect nose and pout. She drew people’s attention but couldn’t keep it — or maybe could have but didn’t want to. Frequently she herself was uncertain which it was, and refused as a matter of inchoate principle to consider the question at any length. Psychology was for losers! Her name was Abigail Paige. A loner in tight black jeans and fingerless gloves — somehow exquisite in whichever shirt she’d happened to pluck from her bedroom floor that morning — she had a hard, lithe beauty despite greasy hair the color of late wheat.

When Cal came into the lab and Abigail was there he took a station close to hers, the next one over if he could get it. He’d interrupt her to ask how things were going, what was new. She pointedly ignored him but sometimes slipped and gave an answer. He lit up when she did that and she felt a hot, sharp shift inside of herself, like a needle between her guts. Then she’d clam up, furious, as though she’d been taken advantage of in some small but definitive way.

When Abigail came in and Cal was already seated she made a point of sitting far down the row from him, every unoccupied terminal between them another condemnation. But if Cal felt rebuked he did not let on. In a way, she was coming to realize, he was as guarded as she was. He broadcast his pleasantries, kept everything else to the vest. Cal was a wall masquerading as a window. When she sat far away from him in the lab he simply did his work, or whatever it was he was doing, and then when he was finished took a stroll by her station to say hello before he left.

Somewhere early on she told him a lie. It came unprompted, a non sequitur, practically: she said that she had a boyfriend in Baltimore with whom she was quite serious. She said they had been together several years and saw each other as often as they could. He was getting his start down there and who knew but maybe she would ditch New York and poetry school to go be with him. The imaginary boyfriend had a big house in a bad neighborhood, tended an organic garden, played drums. They’d get dogs and take them running. If she went.

Cal was apparently undeterred by this boyfriend. But then, he hadn’t declared himself or made a proper move on her either. Was it possible he did just want to be friends? This thought, she found, sent sine waves of dread thrumming up from the base of her spine to the base of her skull. Abigail wanted to be wanted, and to be asked a direct question to which she could reply with an equally direct negation. As in: Fuck you, hopes.

But he didn’t ask.

She allowed that he was kind of all right looking. In a way. A little shorter than her — which she liked, actually — and somewhat koala-faced, but with lips so full you could tug them (she guessed) like a dog with a chew toy and needless to say she liked that, too. He looked better when dusted with a few days’ stubble, and if he ever let his haircut grow out he would pretty much be there. Artfully ripped blue jeans and vintage shirts made his uniform. It fit. As the chill slid in he layered on cardigans and hoodies. He hated winter coats, he said, and meant to hold out — if possible — until he left for Christmas break.

On New Year’s Eve it dipped below zero. She smoked pot alone in her Queens sublet and watched the ball drop on TV, unable to believe her own proximity to where this ritual idiocy was taking place. When her mom called at midnight she was too blitzed to form words so she set the phone to vibrate and watched it jitterbug across the coffee table. She wanted to choose the perfect album to masturbate to, but the studious care she brought to such deliberations quickly lulled her to sleep — clothes on, lights on, stereo still off.

By the time classes resumed in late January she had made up her mind. She was all set to go to the computer room as usual, and what would happen was she would get there second, see where Cal was sitting, and take the station next to his. She’d sit down. He would notice the chair moving in the corner of his eye but wouldn’t register the identity of the person. Then, when she was settled, she would turn to him and say hello, and he would understand instantly that things had changed.

Instead they ran into each other in the lobby of the building, the first time such a thing had happened. Cal was in predictably high spirits, smiling. “What’s new in Baltimore?” he asked.