Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

“What kind of conference?” William asked. The drinks arrived, and he wondered how fast he could finish his and get the hell out of there. She fished one of her five cherries out and began to nibble on it. “Mifamurtide. It’s this new drug that just finished a phase three trial. They’re approving it soon in Europe. It’s got to go well because we really fucking blew it last month in Copenhagen. It wasn’t my fault, of course. It was this idiot, Parker, who screwed up the goddamn time zones or hit his snooze button or something and didn’t show up, and of course we left all the materials with him. I had to get up there with nothing and do the presentation from memory. I mean, it was the worst thing ever to happen to anyone. You don’t even know.”

William nodded agreeably. He couldn’t decide if he was being polite or pathetic, but either way he sensed he’d regret it.

“I just hate it when people waste my time, you know?”

He couldn’t decide if this was a veiled dig at him, or if she was just too obtuse to realize how it could come across.

“Thank god it all worked out. And my boss was so impressed, he took me on his jet to stay at his villa in Panama. It’s, like, on the top of a private mountain that used to be a volcano. The only way to get there is to, like, take a helicopter? And the whole thing is, like, fucking glass walls so we’d be just, like, sitting in the kitchen, and you can see whales out in the ocean, like, blowing water a hundred feet in the air. Out of those blowholes?”

William tried his hardest to seem impressed and jealous, which he assumed was the point.

“‘Atlantis ROSE,’” she burst out, singing along to the same song. “‘Drums wreathe…’”

“Sounds like things are great then,” William said.

“ So great,” she replied, again doing a little dance in her seat to the song as it ended.

“Are things… serious between you and your boss?”

Sung-Lee burst out laughing. “Him? No. He’s, like, married or whatever. It’s not even a thing. And—” Then as if it were a big secret, she leaned in to say, “He’s got the grossest back hair? I had to just tell him at some point — keep your shirt on, you know?”

Last time they’d gone out, she’d been insufferably demure. Now she was like her own evil twin sister, and it was no improvement, except that, he supposed, she did seem much happier. He couldn’t stop watching her fingers fiddling with the edge of her navy lapel.

“You seem different,” he said at last. “I mean, in a good way. I mean, I guess, I’m impressed when people can do that. Just take on a whole new attitude.”

Sung-Lee again leaned in. “I started doing Entrance . Have you heard of it?”

“No. Is it some kind of drug?”

She shook her head and then stared up at the ceiling as if searching there for the words to explain it. “It’s like— so incredible. It’s all about the radical reinvention of your brain’s whole structure through hypnosis. Well, it’s not hypnosis. It’s a semiconscious state induced by rhythmic motion and chanting. At first it’s sort of like yoga almost, but then you go into this full-on trance state. That’s why they call it that. En-Trance. Right? And while you’re in the trance state, you can just unlock all these things. It’s all about realizing what you’re doing to hold yourself back, like through hatred or fear or nihilism or eating gluten. You identify the things you want, and you finally allow yourself to take them—”

William lost the end of her diatribe as a garbage truck rolled by outside, thudding and crashing and beeping and flashing its lights as men in neon vests hopped off to collect black bags of trash that gleamed in the streetlights. He looked back up at Sung-Lee, coaxing the last of the cherries between her lips. Was he a thing that she had decided to allow herself to take? Or was he something to unlock? Some kind of shackle; the gluten of her love life. He watched the men outside throwing bags of trash as if they were nothing but black air. He could see Sung-Lee following his gaze to the door. What did he want?

“Let’s go up onto the bridge,” William said.

• • •

On the very edge he stood with Sung-Lee under a wash of golden light, watching boats cutting through the darkness hundreds of feet below their feet. Her hair blew up into his face, and her arm pressed against his as she pointed excitedly at a pair of helicopters going wing and wing, only feet from each other. Surely it was no accident that she was crushing her butt into his thigh. His hands seemed to remember, as he pressed one against the small of her back. This was what a real body felt like. When he turned to kiss her, she didn’t disappear. Her lips opened, even greedily, at his touch. Tongue behind savage little teeth. Her chest heaving up, and her hands weaving, rising, up his spine. A powerful wind enveloped them, pushing downriver. She smelled like poppies and Earl Grey — had she just bitten his tongue? Yes. He tasted pennies. His hands whipped around her waist and down the back of her skirt. Her hips swayed, danced a little, as she had in the bar. O … oh … oh. Dreams weave the rose.

Her cheekbones were glowing. He stopped, not sure of himself now. Her dark, heavy lashes lifted, and the soft brown pupils beneath studied him, twitching. He’d forgotten, almost, what it was like to really see a person. And to see someone seeing you. She traced a finger along the horn of his nose and the line of his lips.

She shouted over a passing UPS truck, “When the fuck did you learn to kiss like that?”

William watched the corners of her lips rise up into the folds of her cheeks. A smile like a perfect parabola. The tips of her fingers ranging…

“Did she teach you? The girl you left me for. Last time.”

“I’m so sorry about that,” William yelled back. “I know I should have called.”

But she grabbed him and kissed him even harder. There was a lull in the traffic as she whispered now, right into his ear, “Don’t hold grudges. That’s fear and hate, William. And besides I definitely don’t stand in the way of true fucking love.”

“I mean, I don’t know if I’d—” Except he would. It was. Or had been. True fucking love.

She looked in his eyes. “You’re still in love with her.”

“She — died,” William said. He knew she knew this; their mothers talked.

“Like that matters,” she said. Then very seriously, she asked him, “Have you kissed anyone else since she died?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. Then he added, “No.”

This seemed to be the right answer. She began kissing his neck, and he could feel her hands on him again. He turned away and looked at the other people on the walkway. Families. Couples. Faces, waists, feet. Hair on shoulders. But none were the ones he wanted.

“Let’s go back to your apartment,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

He paused, pretty sure he didn’t want to tell her he’d moved back home with his mother a year ago. He was surprised, actually, that she didn’t already know, which meant that his mother hadn’t been telling people about it.

“They’re spraying it actually. Pill flies.”

She kissed him again, almost angrily, “Then let’s go to my place.”

William whispered okay, and she melted against him, and he gripped her tightly, knuckles white. They didn’t speak again about Irene as they walked back to Manhattan and caught a cab to the Upper East Side. Instead she talked to him about her annoying coworkers, her ex-boyfriend Jeremy. William felt himself sweating. He wondered why he was doing this. Because he was scared of her? Yes, but there was something else. The more she touched him and the more he touched her back, the more he felt something else. Someone else.