Justin Taylor - Flings - Stories

“I broke up with that asshole.” Abigail practically spit the words at him. The lobby had high ceilings and a bank of windows. Students swirled around them, headed hurriedly to and from. The poetry program met in the evenings. Outside, the day had waned to a dim gray wisp. He hadn’t responded to the thing she’d said. What was he waiting for?

“So if you ever want to, you know, hang out.” She heard these new words enter the world, spoken in her own voice. After all this time, she had asked him out? She could have slapped him, scratched his eyes from his head, for teasing this out of her.

Oh, but the look on his face was priceless, and Abigail felt with some satisfaction that even though the plan had gone totally FUBAR, the main goal — to turn his world upside down — had still been achieved. “Yeah, I’d like that,” he said. “What are you doing after class?”

“I have plans tonight,” she said (another lie), “but we could do something Thursday.” It was Monday.

“Great,” he said. “How about Chinatown?”

“Yeah, Chinatown’s cool,” she said. And who knew, maybe it was.

They ate soup dumplings and a noodle thing with mushrooms in a brown sauce, and maintained their good cheer even upon learning that the place did not serve hard liquor, only Chinese beer. Afterward, they wandered the chilly, fetid streets until they saw a sports bar on Baxter that would have made more sense in Hell’s Kitchen. They ducked in and drank a round; then she said it was getting late and he took out his wallet to pay. They’d split dinner, but he wanted to please at least buy her a drink. There was only one bartender and he had his back turned, down at the far end. It was busy in the place; on the blaring TVs the so-and-sos were up 56–49 over the who-gave-a-shits. She put her hand over his hand. He looked up. She put her lips to his ear. A husky whisper rich with urgency: “C’mon.” He furrowed his eyebrows; she kept her hand over his. They walked casually out of the bar, but as soon as they hit the sidewalk she broke into a run. He, still by the arm, was dragged along behind.

“What the fuck was that?” he said at a corner two or three streets up. He was working to catch his breath, which came in long labored plumes.

“That was fun,” she said, and only then released his hand. He looked at her sideways.

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess it was.” They stood at the mouth of the Canal Street station.

“Thank you,” she said, and there went his brow again — she could see he was about to ask her, For what? Well, that wasn’t a question she was prepared to answer, so she threw her arms around him, the hug nearly over by the time he realized it was happening. She released him and was off running again: down the stairs, away. She sent a “good night” echoing up from around the corner of the landing where she’d disappeared.

Second date: Let’s do something outside. They were in the midst of a warm spell, strange surprise in the dead of February, and he wanted to take advantage of what he called the “temporary reprieve.” She was from New Hampshire and chalked the weird weather up to global warming — we’re so fucked, she said; the whole world is — but anyway she agreed with him as far as getting some fresh air while they could.

They met in Long Island City, where the G and the 7 lines cross. (She lived in Sunnyside and he lived in Bushwick; they were fifteen minutes apart by car, but neither of them had one.) They walked down to the waterfront, where new high-rises were under construction. They snuck onto the private piers, then ended up on a baseball field in a nearby park, where she could feel him working up the nerve to kiss her, but they were interrupted by cops who drove right up onto the diamond with their lights on to inform them that city parks close at dusk. They went deeper into Queens, through a vaguely unsavory industrial area, past unfenced lots and over half-buried train tracks. The neighborhoods continued to shift until they found themselves on a small street with groomed trees complementing a bench. They sat down and had their first kiss, finally. She took him back to her apartment, to her room, and was astonished — though hardly unhappy — to find herself the target of his rampant, heaving need. Deep within her the pins in a lock were aligning; a book or a door was flung open.

When he excused himself to the bathroom she stayed supine, goggle-eyed in the low light of a desk lamp she kept on the floor at the room’s far end, its neck craned back at the wall, casting a big bright spot like a shadow on fire.

In the morning they went to a Greek diner near her apartment and got breakfast specials. She mopped her syrup with her toast and said that places like this were the reason you lived in Queens. They saw each other again a few days later — she stayed over at his place — and before long it was almost every night: one apartment or the other, but mostly his. He liked to be in his own space, he said, and she was surprised to find herself acquiescing to him on this and other matters. He wasn’t demanding or bossy; he just said what he wanted — that film looks insipid; I’d rather have Mexican — and assumed that if she disagreed with him she’d let it be known. That was reasonable for any couple, besides which she was no pushover. He’d learned that last semester, hadn’t he? He seemed to have a clear vision of her in his head: a fickle piece of work whose attention he now commanded; a beautiful, wild girl whose heart he’d won. It made sense that he thought this; it was the bill of goods she’d sold him. She saw herself this way, too, sometimes, but in passing flashes: a phantom only ever glimpsed as it was slipping away. To herself she was the same insecure striver she had always been, who made a mantle of her outsider status not because she valued it so highly but rather because she could never figure out where the inside of anything was. There was a part of her that had never left middle school and never would. She knew this about herself and didn’t like it. Her heart had an outer layer, steel tough but eggshell thin; beneath it she was all seething core.

He didn’t care about music enough and had the worst taste in poetry. He read the silliest things imaginable — Stephen Dunn! It was impossible to respect his work, and she horrified herself with the lying reverences she produced by way of praise. He read her work with exacting patience and returned it scribbled blue with suggestions and line edits she had made a point of not asking for. They were three months in and had started to say “I love you.” It was true.

Then one night in the fourth month he had a crying fit. They were in bed, lying close but apart, drowsing, when suddenly he sat up straight. Balled fists on the mattress and everything, like a little kid.

At first he was incoherent, not making words even, but eventually he got around to them, ranting for an hour, maybe longer, through and between choked sobs. What was he talking about? His argument — if that’s what it was — had too many particulars and subpoints that entered the discourse, then dropped from it without notice or priority. The main gist, she gathered as he settled himself into timid sniffles, was that he was breaking up with her but hoped most earnestly that they might remain close as friends.

Her disbelief defied all analogy. She was cotton-mouthed and wide-eyed, had sat up at some point during his long aria, now fell flat backwards as if pushed (a feather’d have done the job nicely), and what should happen next but the schizoid snit slimed in for a presumptive farewell turn — wiped his face cursorily, incompletely, on a snatch of bedsheet and then was looming over her. So shocked was she that she kept still as he slid her panties kneeward. She regained herself and tucked those panty-bound knees up to her tits — she liked that word for them; he didn’t and refused to say it, but no matter, they were dead to him now. She planted the rough flats of her feet against his soft furry chest and kicked him off her. He flailed and flew clear of the bed. She got dressed. He watched her from behind the bed, peering like a meerkat. How had she ever fallen into loving him? She stormed from the site of her shame into the deep city night.