Amie Barrodale - You Are Having a Good Time

“Well, sort of.”

“No.” He looked at me with a funny smile. He had his mouth closed, twisted a little to the side, like he was hiding it. “You are.”

“I’m going to get a drink.”

The bar was crowded. People were standing two or three deep behind the chairs. Waiting to get through gave me time to relax. I drank a drink standing there and got another one and went back to him and Lee.

He invited us to come hang out with him in back. He and I got caught up in the crowd and we let Lee go ahead.

He asked me what music I liked.

“I don’t really know any music. I just sort of go on song jags where I listen to the same song over and over again.”

“What?”

I repeated it, and he said, “What bands do you listen to over and over again?”

“I like that Arthur Lee band Love.”

“What?”

“That Arthur Lee band Love.”

He nodded, and his eyes and cheeks swelled up a little. He showed a lot on his face. He said, “Who else?”

“I like your guys’ band.”

He swelled up more. His face turned red. I was happy that he was still vulnerable enough that he could be flattered. I said, “What movies do you like?”

“ Sophie’s Choice . With Meryl Streep?”

“I’ve never seen that, but my friend Zbigniew says the book’s really good.”

“The book is garbage.”

“Zbigniew has pretty good taste. He said the language is beautiful in it.”

“The book,” he said again, “is garbage.”

“Well, I’ll look for the movie.”

He asked me what I did, and I said, “I’m an editor at a magazine. Actually, maybe you could write for us.”

This was my old trick.

“Do you have like a card?” he said.

“No.”

“Here.” He reached out and touched the arm of the girl beside him. He said, “Do you have a card?” The girl handed him a card. He started to write his phone number down.

“Don’t give me your number!”

He looked startled.

I said, “I hate the phone.”

“It’s just for texts.” He crossed his number out and said, “Fine.” He wrote his email down on the card.

* * *

A few hours later, in the booth where we were all sitting, the drummer elbowed my ribs and whispered in my ear. “Just talk to me.”

“What?”

He whispered with a hand over his mouth, “Come over here and just talk to me.”

We got into a different booth. He said, “She was doing a metafeminist critique on you,” and he glanced at a girl we’d left. She was at the other booth. She was about my age, maybe a couple years older. She was friends with him and with his wife.

I was drunk and I can’t remember what we talked about. We talked for a long time. When the bar closed, the three of us — the drummer, Lee, and I — went to Lee’s house. Actually, we made a stop at the drummer’s house first. He was blacked out, I think. He was repeating himself. As we drove up to his house, he kept asking if we wanted “coke or X.” When he came back with the Ecstasy he kept saying, “You only need half. Half is good.” He put half in my mouth and kissed me. Up close his white pocked cheek was like brushing the surface of the moon.

When we got to Lee’s, the drummer and I went into Lee’s bedroom. I realized Lee was coming, too. I stopped in the doorway and waited a second. Lee understood. He turned back, and passed out on his couch. The drummer and I took Lee’s bed. I was seeing white pills, like television static moving evenly across the blue field of my vision. He went to close the door and came back to where I was kneeling on the bed. I reached a hand up to touch his face. Then I took off his pants. I thought he had a very small penis. I tried to get him hard.

He said, “I’m sorry, it’s just not.”

I stopped what I was doing. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s just. Sometimes it’s just not.”

He got me onto my back and went down on me, but I couldn’t feel anything because I was drunk. I tapped his shoulder, and he came up.

He said, “Called up.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Sure.”

“No, it isn’t.”

When we woke up in the morning, he checked his phone. He switched it off and said, “That’s it. We’re divorced. I’m going to be sleeping in a ditch.”

I was sitting on the side of the bed, buckling my shoe. He said, “Wait.” I turned and looked at him. He said, “Let me see your underwear again.” I flipped my skirt up. I believed he wanted something to jerk off to when I left. I got up and put my back against Lee’s wall, facing him, and slid along it toward the door, watching him.

He said, “Wait, let me get your number or something.”

“You already have it,” I said. It was a lie.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

* * *

I had my computer on my lap in the back room of Starbucks. I got an email in my junk mail saying that I had a message from Wartime82. I figured it was some Third World salesman, but I was bored and so I logged on to read it. The subject heading of the message was “Sleuth.” In the body the drummer wrote: “Hey, found you here. I’m in London right now, sleeping off a Xanax buzz. La-la-la, one of the summer crowd, taking pleasure in the English sun. I hope this day brings you many pleasant moments.”

I wrote him back, describing my shoes, which I had gotten free at work. I said I’d asked my coworker about them, and he’d become grave, looked me in the eye, and said, “They’re cool.”

I need to tell you I was crazy. I was crazy at the time.

After about ten days, I wrote to him again. I described the pit bulls that were up for adoption on my street, how they were leashed to the iron poles of the scaffolding, like a gauntlet of wild dogs, and how each one wore an orange vest that said, “Adopt me.”

He wrote back: “I’m here at Radio France HQ and a Frenchman, wearing a pirate-y-looking shirt, is pulling me away from the computer. Bye for now.”

* * *

My psychiatrist was an overweight woman who specialized in eating disorders. She worked out of the bedroom of a ground-floor Union Square apartment. The bedroom had one window on the floor of the windshaft. It got a diffused gray light. She had Victorian figurines on her bookshelves, and a bunch of books about food. They took different approaches — scientific, clinical, mystical, experiential. She also had baskets of toys on the floor and on the dirty velvet couch.

At the beginning of each meeting I had to fill out a form. One of the questions was “Have you been having any strange thoughts?”

I always wrote, “No.”

She had monochrome auburn hair and wore turtlenecks under unbuttoned shirts. She was always asking me if I did late-night snacking. I had the impression that she was convinced I snacked at night. Sometimes I would get frustrated and say, “Do you mean, have I ever eaten after dark?” I would force her to explain she meant waking up in the middle of the night and going to the refrigerator half asleep to eat. “No, I don’t do that.” She’d make a note and, the next time we saw each other, ask the question again. She kept her patient files piled on her desk. She had them piled uniformly about a foot and a half high, so she created a writing surface out of them, but she had to raise her arms to write.

She recommended some medication. She described the pill she recommended. She said it was known to cause weight loss, a side effect. I was open to that. She warned that it had some unusual side effects, including word loss and lethargy. I thought that would be all right. She advised me to let her know if I experienced anything more unusual than that.

That night I wrote to the priest. “You were right. I met another one. He likes me, I think, but I am afraid he will tear me apart.”