Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“Oh, no, no, we’re not going anywhere,” Andrew said. The fact that Zoe and Jane were probably going to get a divorce and move was a silver lining, not that he could admit that to Lizzy. When they were kids, Zoe was fine — smart, funny, sexy, all that. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her — it was that Elizabeth liked her too much. Whenever she came home from a dinner with Zoe, he could feel the prickly edges poking up, the remnants of whatever Zoe had said about him. Elizabeth always denied it, but he knew it was true — Zoe loved talking shit, and she always had, and when you got old and married, what else was there to talk shit about, except your marriage? Jane was fine — she was solid. He liked her food, and he liked that she was chill. Jane was not the problem.

So much made him angry. The traffic, the congestion, the population. Harry had one more year of school. Then things would be different. When Harry was young, when he was a child (which Andrew supposed he wasn’t anymore), they would troop up to the natural-history museum to look at dinosaurs, they would ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth. They had fun. Being the parent of a teenager meant that not only were you no longer having fun, you stood for the opposite of fun. Andrew wondered how long that had been true — God, they were so stupid , he and Elizabeth. How long had Harry been this other person, capable of sex and lies? How long had it been since he was a baby? There was no way to tell. Andrew closed his eyes and stuck his head closer to the window. The breeze felt like cool water on his forehead.

“I see what you’re saying,” Dave said, even though Andrew wasn’t saying much. “A couple of years ago, I was in Joshua Tree with a couple of friends, including a healer, and we took ayahuasca every night for a week. When I went in, I thought, how do I know how my body will react? Maybe I’ll just call a cab and go back to L.A., you know? After the first night, I knew I was in for some real magic. Have you ever done it? It’s like opening your third-eye point for six straight hours. Everything just comes pouring out.” He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “That’s when I knew I had to make EVOLVEment a reality.”

“What were you doing before?” He didn’t mean to be impertinent — it felt a bit like asking your therapist what her problems were, but it was hard to imagine Dave at a desk job, or even at a non-desk job where he had to wear real clothes. As far as Andrew could tell, Dave didn’t own a pair of socks or a single pair of pants with a zipper.

“Some body work, some life coaching. Taught yoga. You know, the circuit.”

“Of course.”

“What about you, Andrew? What circuit are you on?” Dave smiled. He had great teeth, the kind of teeth that orthodontists probably dreamed about — big and white and perfectly straight, with the tiniest gap in between his front two. Preacher teeth. Talk-show-host teeth. Guru teeth. Andrew had always thought that gurus would look sort of like Gandhi or, at the very least, Ben Kingsley. Under the beard, Dave looked like an amiable frat boy, a lacrosse player.

“I guess I’m not really sure,” Andrew said. “I was on the music circuit. Then I was on the documentary circuit. The dad circuit, for sure. I was good at that one. Killed it at the playground. Then the magazine circuit. I think right now I’m in the figuring-shit-out circuit.” He paused, and exhaled through his mouth. “Is there a list I can look at?”

Dave reached over and patted him on the leg. “It’s cool, man. I have a feeling that it’s all going to come together. It’s about being in the right place at the right time, you know? Energy. It’s about preparation, and energy. And you have it — I could feel, like, buzzing around you, like. The second you walked into the house, I just knew.” The car was slowing down. Andrew looked around — they were already in the Rockaways, that funny little toothbrush of Brooklyn (or was it Queens?) that stuck out into the water, parallel to the mainland. Dave pulled over and stopped the car. For a split second, Andrew thought Dave was going to kiss him. That was what gurus did, wasn’t it? Gain followers and then sleep with them all? Andrew wouldn’t have been surprised if Dave had slept with every girl at EVOLVEment and half the boys. They were all so gorgeous, their bodies so strong and toned. Their bodies were meant to be used! Andrew wasn’t sure what his body was for. They were parked in front of a slightly ramshackle house with wood-shingled walls that reminded Andrew of his parents’ summer cottage on the Vineyard, a house he hadn’t visited in almost twenty years. To the left of the house were four smaller identical houses, like little ducklings following their mother down the street.

“This is it,” Dave said. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

“This is where the herbalist lives?”

Dave laughed. “No, the herbalist lives in a shitty apartment near the taco place. This is the next phase.” He held up his hands so that his thumbs almost touched and leaned over so far that he was almost lying across Andrew’s lap. “Do you see it, man?”

“See what?” Andrew scooched over in the leather seat and leaned out the window. “Good breeze. How close are we to the water?”

“One block,” Dave said. “One block to the waves. The Waves! Maybe that’s what we call it.”

“Call what?” The houses were sweet. The windows and doors looked weathered but solid. He liked it out here. Maybe this would be their next act — a beach house in Brooklyn. He could finally learn to surf. Elizabeth could sell condos to the hipsters from Williamsburg. Harry would be off at school, and he’d come back to visit and they’d both be tan, wearing flip-flops.

“Our hotel, man.” Dave reached into the pocket of his T-shirt and pulled out a joint.

According to Ruby, all Zoe and Jane did was take turns yelling at her. Jane usually yelled at the restaurant, in the guise of giving Ruby things to do: “Clean the bathroom! Really do it this time!” or “Wipe down Table Six. Get the broom — there are Cheerios everywhere. This is not a Chuck E. Cheese!” Zoe chose to yell at home. Those outbursts were more erratic, but she couldn’t help it: Sometimes she was angriest that Ruby had left the shampoo bottle right side up instead of upside down, which meant that it took longer for the shampoo to come out, and if the cap was open, the bottle would fill with water. Sometimes she was the angriest when she thought about Ruby’s body exposed in public after dark, how anything could have happened to them, to both her and Harry, that they were in danger and they’d put themselves there. Sometimes she was angriest about the college applications, and Ruby’s SAT score, and the fact that it was the middle of July and there was nothing on the horizon except more of the same. It was hardest to yell about that, so that’s when she made popcorn, covered it with some nutritional yeast, and left it in front of Ruby’s bedroom door instead.

What made Zoe feel even worse (and what she wouldn’t admit out loud, not even to Jane) was that she was also relieved. If Ruby had been leaving for school, then she and Jane would be forced to sort through their shit without any breaks, with no pauses for good behavior while Ruby was at the dinner table. Right now, it felt like their marriage talk was on pause, and Zoe was okay with that, for a little while. It wasn’t like she was dying to get divorced. It just seemed inevitable — because how many downgrades could one marriage get? From lovers to friends to roommates to fond acquaintances? Things could always get worse. Elizabeth and Andrew seemed to be hovering somewhere below fond. How many years would it take for her and Jane to start poisoning each other with arsenic, or to “accidentally” run over each other’s toes in the driveway? How many years would it take for them to end up a Lifetime movie, based on real facts? Zoe wasn’t sure how much further down she wanted to go. Jane had always been jealous, of Elizabeth and other friends, and of everyone else she’d ever loved and/or touched. It didn’t matter if the relationship was sexual or platonic or somewhere in the middle — Jane was a fucking gorilla, and she wanted her woman close. At first it had seemed so sweet, almost old-fashioned. Jane held Zoe’s waist when they crossed the street, she carried her over the threshold when they got married, she knew and worshipped every inch of Zoe’s body, every mole, every notch. Now Zoe wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.