Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

“You alone?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Okay,” she sighs.

I want to go back to bed.

“The campaign. I’m getting even more requests.”

“I –”

“And $isi talked to some people and told them about how it was your initiative and now there are some people, some media outlets, interested in doing a bigger story. They want to talk to the guy who thought it all up, you know, give it a personality or something; it’s an article –”

“I don’t want to give it my personality,” I say. It’s not the greatest idea. I don’t want to reveal that I’m the personality behind anything, especially behind this , since it’s not really anything I have a lot to say about, other than I just wanted to give $isi a nice going-away gift because at one point I felt it was my fault she got a tumour. And I wanted to make some money off her before being officially fired. So that’s the personality .

“$isi is pretty adamant that you get the recognition. I mean, brain tumour awareness has skyrocketed.The stigma is fading.The positiveness is taking over –”

“The positivity.”

“Right, sure. People think it’s really neat that someone had the – had the balls to do – bad analogy, I know – but the balls to make it seem acceptable. I mean, it’s much bigger than Walk for the Cure – it’s another level; people are really pretty impressed. They want to meet the man behind this thing, who wanted to fight the stigma, to change that perception –”

Naturally, people are emotional about tumours. There are many good side effects of the campaign: girls shaving their heads for their sick friends or for their idol, $isi, to show their support, to show that they’re all the same. I read all the press about it already, the speculations on what it means for young women to show such solidarity and such sensitivity where normally they just focus on frivolous things: boys and clothes and tampons – but that I’m the driving force behind it all? Nonsense.

“There’s a journalist who wants to interview you for an article in Elle , not for Brain Tumour Awareness Month because that’s in May –”

“I don’t think that was my motivation.The stigma-changing.”

“And so you told me. But maybe you’d like to change your motivation? Maybe you could be okay, for once, with the fact that you had some impact and that people are fucking interested, no?”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes, I’m fucking angry.”

“Is this really about the tumour?”

Silence. Of course not. I know that she was probably pretty excited she finally had a legitimate reason to call me, even though it broke our rule of no contact, and I know that she is not a one-agenda-minded person, that there’s always some manipulation going on with her. And, right now, our relationship is that manipulation’s drive, the real reason behind the phone call.

“I’ll think about it. This article.”

“Okay. Are you really okay?”

She probably wants me to say no. She wants me to say that I’ve changed my mind and that I want to see her, that I want her to have my baby, two babies – or seven! – and that we’ll try everything: in vitro and renting out wombs, and we’ll apply for a little Ukrainian or a little Mexican just in case, and that I will sell my bachelor pad and amend my ways and become the proper full-time boyfriend that she hopes I will become.

“Yeah, I’m really good, Gloria.”

I think of Bride upstairs, all naked, her skin collecting all kinds of moisture from the humid air around her.

“Great,” she says, her voice small, so small that it’s hoping I will notice how small it is and change my okay to not okay.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Yes, sorry. I’ll get Trish to call you to follow up.”

“How is Trish?”

“She’s great. She’s dating a really nice guy now, a lawyer.”

“Good for her. Have a good day, Gloria,” I say and hang up before she says I love you or fuck you or I hate you .

I want to run upstairs. But I pace myself.

I feed the dog. I open the fridge to check what’s inside to see if I can get inspired about breakfast. I count backwards from twenty. I count backwards from twenty again.

I run upstairs.

Upstairs, Bride is not in bed anymore. She is standing by the window, holding a piece of paper. I walk up to her, noticing how elongated she is, leanness and smoothness; a space between her legs that filters an entire bar of light that falls on the dark wooden floor behind her and doesn’t stop until it reaches the bed. Jason told me a space like this is valuable in the PUA community – a girl with space gets a whole extra point: an Eight becomes Nine. Nonsense.

She turns around. Her eyes are red. “What is this?” There’s an aura about her, dark clouds that managed to pass the sun between her legs and envelop her in heaviness.

I take a closer look at the paper. “It’s a letter from a girl.”

“Why do you keep this shit?” she almost whispers, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen her vulnerable. I feel relief, even happiness.

“Because I’m a sentimental fuck, that’s why. Why do you have it in your hand?”

“Because it was right there.” She nods in the direction of my desk. Quite possibly, it was there. But also quite possibly, she had to open the desk to find it, which also makes me happy. But I need to appease. I want to fuck her one more time before she goes.

“I’m sorry, Bride. It was very insensitive of me to leave it lying around. It’s just a letter from a crazy girl who liked me too much and who is no longer in my life.”

“Dolores.”

“Yes, some girl named Dolores.”

“What was she like?”

What was she like ? “She was just some girl,” I say.

“Am I just some girl?”

“No. No, you are special,” I say. I realize I mean it. I’m troubled by this.

“Special.”

I laugh, I’m not sure why.To pretend that I didn’t mean it?

“Oh God. I’m being crazy.” She laughs too, and the dark clouds around her part as abruptly as they came on. Her body, stiff and tense a moment ago, goes slack as if someone let a bit of air out of her. “I’m sorry.” She walks up to the desk and sets the letter down carefully.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, surprised by this change of tactic on her part: first the instant anger, but now this sudden apology.

She says, “I was so excited about meeting you and then we had the most amazing sex ever. I get confused by sex sometimes, by the intimacy. It felt as if we were in a relationship. As if I owned you.”

My anxiety is a little bird stuck in my throat, fluttering, fluttering. I swallow, swallow, hoping to drown the fluttering fucker, push it down, make it disappear.

“Wanna come back to bed?” I say, and she nods and walks up to me, naked and sweaty and smelling of sex with a hint of mental illness.

I try not to think how I wanted her to say she does own me. I, too, am possibly smelling of mental illness. I just can’t smell it on myself.

I lift her chin and kiss her, still not entirely done with the bird in my throat. Perhaps it’s not worth it? My dick has a different idea as it pushes insistently against her thigh, and she presses herself against it and says, “Okay, let’s go.”

WHEN SHE FINALLY GOES HOME, BRIDE DOESN’T LET ME drive her but instead calls a guy who she says owns a tattoo shop on the boardwalk. He must be a zombie subordinate from Bride’s zombie compound judging by the level of his barely open-eyed indifference to anything around him, including Bride. I wonder if they’re lovers, but Bride ignores him too.