Michael Seidlinger - The Strangest

A thought, at once clear, blurs as it registers:

I don’t fit in here.

I think this is weird. What I’m doing is weird. How I’m acting has been weird all day. But then I say aloud, “This isn’t routine.”

And it’s true. This is not routine.

I feel … I cannot describe it.

It’s like I can almost interpret what I have been doing and all the different possibilities, variations at which I could complete the action, but I end up choosing the last one. If a multiple choice question, I would be choosing “d” for every action.

My level of comfort, my relative ease, did not wake up with me.

My ability to understand has been fractured, split in half.

Where did my week go? How did I do? Was I a good employee?

Moreover, what am I today?

Zachary the boyfriend?

What is that?

I catch myself tapping my fingers against the side of my belt.

Stop that but then I begin tapping my toes.

When I see Veronica, I pass by.

I hear one of the bodega owners greet me.

I think it was “Hey Zack, happy birthday!”

But something about right now is beyond my control. I move and act in the only way I am used to … which isn’t enough.

There is a part of what happens that functions as resistance while another part functions as a problem.

Veronica tells me I’m strange.

I no longer know what she means by that.

Back at my apartment, Ben, the super, greets me, “Happy B-day Zack!”

Veronica thanks him. I nod, glance down at the ring of keys in his left hand and, without realizing, I begin talking to Ben.

“Any word on the robbery?”

“Naw, unfortunately. It’s been bothering me, bothering everyone in the building.”

“That’s a real shame …”

“Yeah,” Ben raises an eyebrow, “yeah it is.”

Veronica and him exchange a glance.

She says, “Were the tenants insured?”

Ben relays the details, which, for the most part, I am surprised to have already been largely aware.

After we talk, he greets me again.

This time I say thank you.

Veronica tells me again, “You’re strange.”

After dinner we drink the second bottle of wine. The couch isn’t big enough for what we want to do so we move to the bedroom.

I spill wine on the bedsheets.

“I don’t care.”

Veronica laughs.

I feel different.

But that sentence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So I say it aloud, “I feel different.”

She nods, “You’re acting different.”

“How so?”

She shrugs, “Dunno. More … jovial?”

Jovial? What kind of word is that?

Another laugh. “No, not jovial, just more subdued. Not so tense. I was worried about you earlier at the theater. I couldn’t sit still. I don’t think I paid attention to a single frame of the movie I was so nervous.”

“Me too! I kept trying to concentrate on one image but by the time I started the image was replaced with another image.”

Then she leans in and kisses me.

I think I kiss back.

“You’re strange,” Veronica says, “but sometimes that strangeness is good.”

“When is it bad?”

But she kisses me again.

And after the kissing we have sex.

Then we fall asleep.

Then sex again.

I think I fall sleep before she does.

This time we fall asleep for good.

I think I have a dream but I can’t be sure.

What I do know is that at one point during the night, I wake up, see that she has her arms wrapped around me, neither of us wearing any clothes, the sheets half covering us. Not at all concerned about the coldness of the room.

The bottle of wine empty.

My eyes have trouble focusing on any detail.

I attempt to think about the day, and why any of it happened. Laptop and phone cannot be seen in the lightlessness of the bedroom.

But then few details seem to stand out. Except for her. I attempt to stand up from the bed but she moans in her sleep. Holds on to me tighter.

I think up something I would have typed:

Is anything different?

Then I must have fallen back sleep.

In the morning she is gone.

There were words in my head, words that couldn’t have been mine. They exist in three phases and culminate with me saying them. When I say them, I am the one that hears them. Nobody else. There is nobody in my bedroom. I thought she would have been here. Her. I don’t know why.

The words I don’t type, leaving only one phrase, the worst one.

The hardest to grasp.

“I love you.”

The words that sound final yet don’t mean anything.

They don’t mean anything unless there’s someone to hear it.

I get out of bed before the words pin me down.

I see the note taped to my laptop screen. The words return, this time in her handwriting. She was here but now she is not and the latter quickly becomes most important. She’s not.

I turn on the laptop. I turn on the faucet.

I listen to the water running down the drain as the day catches up with me. Her letter is marked with the word and every time I read it, the word doesn’t register. And there are reasons why she isn’t here.

Work.

Wanted to wait for me to wake up.

But couldn’t.

How early is a morning shift?

I find my phone on the floor. Battery drained. I plug it in and listen to the water while it charges. I type and then erase.

I type number strings and then erase them.

Breakfast is leftovers of a meal that no longer has any lasting taste.

I eat the noodles cold, let the rest ride the water down the drain. I flip the switch and listen as the food is ground into a paste.

I am wearing clothes that don’t feel comfortable. They feel old, sweat through, smelling of something indecipherable. I go back into the bedroom and change into new clothes. The routine, as it were, there is only one thing left to do. I check the phone. It has enough to go on until I get to the store. I turn off the faucet. I go to turn off the light but it’s off.

I did this all in the dark.

Try to type something but instead I close the laptop.

Today the typing feels as distant as anything else.

What is genuine is how I can almost predict what happens next.

Someone is at the front door. Different kind of knock. It goes back to the same considerations: Look through the peephole and the person sees you too. Don’t look and don’t open the door. Person might not go away.

It isn’t Ben the super.

It isn’t him. Rios, who I recognized from the bar, stands at the door, bringing back elements of a previous day. Familiar, I can feel my heart beat faster, palms clammy. I want to type it out but I start with direct eye contact.

Rios doesn’t skip a single step, picks up back where we maybe left off.

Open the door and I should have asked but I didn’t.

Rios has a different sort of knock. Heavier, with more implication.

When I open the door, he greets me and says, “Super guy’s cool.”

I take a step back, not wanting Ben to see.

“I have work today.”

“Yeah, bummer. But hey bud, there’s something happening and it might be cool of you to join in.”

Something happening.

What is it like to work on a Saturday, everyone asks.

Each like makes me more confident of this conversation.

I make eye contact; I believe that there’s not a whole lot that is bothering me. Rios crosses his arms and can’t stand still. He looks like he’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes. When he leans in to tell me more about what’s happening later today, I catch a single trace of something. Not quite body odor.