Emma Rathbone - Losing It

I sat there for a second, taking this all in. I found him outside. But before I could tell him he owed me thirty dollars, Henry yanked him away. “Come on!” he said.

Then we were swinging down the street, jerked along by the dog, who frantically ran around and made hairpin turns. I almost had to run to keep up with them. Bill kept laughing and looking back at me appreciatively. Was this going really well and I just didn’t know it? Was he on something? Were we having a great time? I tried to align myself with just that, that the recent turn of events on our date had exhibited the kind of spontaneity usually associated with people who were having a lot of fun together and were mutually delighted by the kind of madcap things that were taking place, that just naturally arose from our special chemistry.

I pictured us making out on a ski lift, his face rugged and tan. I saw us in an imports store, and he’s playing peekaboo behind an ethnic mask.

We passed a hot dog stand, a yarn store. We walked through a pavilion where some men were setting up chairs for an outdoor concert. “Where are we going?” I said, out of breath, when I caught up with them on a street corner.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Finally we ended up at an old carousel, at the end of the historic district of the downtown area. It had golden poles and red and blue and green horses. But the paint was chipping and the whole thing was surrounded by chains. It had obviously been out of commission for some time. A tall building cast a shadow down one half of it.

“Ah, man,” he said. “This is so great. Isn’t it great?”

“Did you come here as a kid?” I said.

He was kneeling, tying Henry up, and he exploded with laughter.

“Come on,” he said, out of breath. He climbed over the chains and got on one of the horses. He started whooping and waving his arm around.

“What are you—”

“What? C’mon!” he yelled.

Henry was barking. I wanted to run away. A woman holding two white shopping bags walked by; her eyes flitted back and forth between us. She picked up her pace. I climbed over the chains and got up onto the carousel. I hitched my skirt up and hoisted myself onto one of the horses next to him.

“Well,” I said. “This is—”

“My friend Trevor?” Bill was looking away from me, toward a redbrick apartment building in the distance. “He’s such a cutup, he’ll do anything!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, we went to Meade Park the other day. You ever been there?”

“I’ve driven past it.”

“We went out there to”—he made a knocking-back-a-bottle drinking gesture—“‘relax’ yesterday. There were all these little kids. There were rides and stands. It was some kind of festival. So me and Trevor, we go over to that giant chessboard, you know, the one under the tree? And you can haul all the pieces around?”

“I’ve always wanted to use one of those!” I said.

“So we go over there, and there are all these little kids on it, you know, pushing around the pawns and things?”

“Okay,” I said.

“So Trevor goes over there, and he’s been drinking from his flask of tequila? So he goes over and he starts talking in a Mexican accent.” Bill suppressed a giggle. “He goes, ‘What do I do with theeees theeeeng?’ And this one kid is like, ‘What?’ And Trevor picks up the king and goes, ‘Theees keeeng, man, what do I do?’”

Bill’s eyes were shining. I started chipping a piece of paint off the ear of my horse.

“The kid is all serious. He’s looking around, looking at his mom. And she’s standing in the corner and she is, I mean, she is mad.”

Bill pushed down another gale of laughter. He bit his fist. The sky was turning orange and there were faint musical notes in the distance — an ice-cream truck getting closer. “But the best part, the best part is— Okay, so all the kids have gone back to playing their game, and we’re watching from the side. And then just when they start up again, when the same little kid decides to make a move, Trevor, he goes over there and takes the king and runs off with it — everyone is like, ‘What?’—and puts it under this, like, canopy, and then he runs back and he’s like, ‘Checkmate, you little shit!’”

He bursts into helpless laughter.

I laugh, too, drawn along, though I’m not sure what the joke is.

“Checkmate!” Bill says, doubling over again.

“Yeah,” I said, giggling. “An age-old chess maneuver, getting drunk and cheating.”

“What?” he said.

“What?” I said.

He turned his head away from me, back toward the redbrick apartment building. A plastic bag crawled by in a warm breeze. Somewhere, the ice-cream truck blared and passed us. Bill was now quiet, looking at something in the distance. I wasn’t sure what was going on.

“No, it’s just”—I tried to laugh—“it’s just a funny game strategy.”

When he looked back at me, his face was different.

“Why can’t— What about you?” he said.

“What?”

An awful petulance had come over his mouth.

He jerked his chin up. “Look at you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Look at you. You’re disgusting.”

“What?” I was still half smiling.

I looked down. I’d had to hike up my dress to get on the horse, and it had ridden up my legs, but it wasn’t showing anything.

“You look desperate.”

“Wait—”

“And you know what?” His features were twisted and malicious. “When you eat? Your gums stick out. It’s disgusting.”

For a moment, all I could do was sit there and stare at him. An elderly couple walked by. One of them was holding a stuffed teddy bear. They looked our way, smiled at us ruefully.

Bill was staring to the side, fuming, his face cold. He shook the pole that went through his horse. “Just like fucking DeeDee,” he said.

I slowly started to climb off the horse. I let myself down onto the carousel floor; my skirt fell around my legs.

He shook the pole again. “Just like fucking DeeDee. She’s this fucking bitch at work,” he said.

I stepped off the carousel and picked up my bag. Bill laughed a bitter little laugh. I walked over the chains, as if floating, and then floated silently down the street in the direction of my car.

It wasn’t quite dark. Reggae music wafted over from a restaurant where a few people stood on the patio. A man in an overcoat, despite the warm air, stood under a streetlamp and talked to himself. I concentrated on my shoes.

All the way home I tried not to think of anything, but to focus on the cones of light in front of my car. I didn’t want it to drain back into me. I didn’t want to think about what I felt — that I’d stayed and stayed and stayed, so far past the point when I should have gone home. I felt smeared with Bill’s presence. His drifting, loud, unmoored face floated in front of me. The road was lonely and deserted. A minivan with the lights on inside passed me, someone jabbing at the ceiling.

—

Back at Aunt Viv’s, the sound of my key in the front door lock seemed to boom through the night. There were crickets and currents of honeysuckle in the air. A hot belt of tears formed behind my eyes.

I was surprised to see a light on in the kitchen. I hesitated at the stairs, and then wandered down the hallway. Aunt Viv was at the table, wearing a floor-length nightdress, writing in a leather book with a newspaper open on the table. Next to her hand was half a glass of wine.

She looked up and smiled a sleepy smile. “It was too hot in my studio,” she said.

“Oh, that room upstairs?” I said, standing in the kitchen doorway. I almost added, “That you always keep locked?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry.” I walked in and dropped my bag on a seat, trying to seem casual. I got a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water. I took a few deep breaths, standing there, looking into the drain. Then I turned around and leaned against the sink. For the first time I noticed that the tops of Viv’s shoulders were completely red.