Hannah Tennant-Moore - Wreck and Order

“Nah. Been too busy. I was up ’til dawn this morning talking to this dude about super-massive black holes, which I’m now a follower of. Because they have such a strong gravitational force. I don’t really want to have this conversation all over again, to be perfectly honest. Coffee and a Mexican omelet, please, darlin’. Extra jalapeños. If you would.”

“Are you drunk?”

“A little bit I guess.”

“What time is it there?”

“Morning. So the black hole at the center of our galaxy is our physical god. It means we have a chance to know we exist. Which is all we can hope for, right? The super-massive black hole is not going to grant wishes. It doesn’t give a fuck.”

“You wrote me that you were going to stop drinking.”

“I will. I’ve been really pretty good. And you’re not giving me much incentive to follow the straight and narrow, being in a different hemisphere and all.” His old-fashioned expressions, gleaned from the crate of paperback classics he keeps by his bed — they surprise me still, soften me. He slurps coffee. “What are you doing there anyway? You’re safe, right? You’re not calling because you’re in any trouble?”

“No, I’m not in trouble. I love it here.”

“You sure you’re all right, beautiful girl? You sound sad.”

Something in need of unhinging comes unhinged. I speak quickly, about Suriya and Manuela, the violence of the waves, the purity test on wedding nights, the endless fucking curries. Jared exclaims and laughs. I see his open mouth — craggy tongue, crooked front tooth.

“I miss you crazy much,” he says. “Thank you kindly, gorgeous. Just some hot sauce, if you would. Mind if I eat?”

“I should go anyway. This is getting expensive. But I need to ask you something.”

“You have my undivided,” he says through a full mouth.

“I think I want to move back to California. Maybe we could live together. I want to try living with you.”

“You’re not shitting me?” He swallows, clears his throat. “You wanna move in together?”

“I think so. Are you still going to get a new job? That thing at the firehouse?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m trying. Why didn’t you write me earlier? You said you would write me when you got there. You said you would email me a lot.”

It’s always a relief when Jared identifies something I’ve done wrong, some clear way I’ve been inconsiderate. We’re both screwed up, we’ve both let each other down, we’re both trying. I guess it’s the same relief that makes all those girls in books and TV shows and movies eager confessors of their own faults. They date guys who mistreat them, sure, but that’s only to be expected, given that the girls are, like, total wrecks themselves. They drink too much and sleep around and probably deep down they’re afraid of commitment and they have no friggin’ clue how to cook anything but spaghetti. But if they can just get it together, then maybe the boys will get it together, too, and stop treating them badly, and they’ll all live happily ever after, except that they don’t even want to live happily ever after, they just want to have sex with the same dude a few times a week, you know?

“I’m calling you now,” I say, hopeful as the well-dressed girls on TV. “I want to live with you.”

“I want to live with you, too. Get your perfect ass back here. We’ll figure it all out.” Jared smacks his lips against the receiver.

When I hang up, I email Joe at Carp Weekly and remind him of our conversation in the parking lot on my last day of work, how he said that he wished I’d spoken to him before I left, he would have argued for a promotion for me. I barely notice the words I write, only the eagerness of the keys rising back after I press them, happy to be the same letter again and again.

—

Manuela has been busy getting Emil’s cottage ready for his stay. Although she doesn’t say so, I know it’s time for me to leave, give her some time alone before her son arrives. I feel good about moving on. I feel good in general, a little light-headed when I remember Jared’s voice on the phone and think about being near him again soon. He’s been the one constant, the one thing that’s held my interest all these years. Time to accept that. When I was younger, I didn’t want to be the one who was strong enough to be steadily open, even when he hurt me, even when all I wanted was to be left alone. I wanted to be the damaged one who was healed. But I’ve been trying to get what I want for so long now, steering my life away from this image, manipulating it into that shape, and it has felt mostly like mitigating failure all alone. If I give myself to this relationship completely — I don’t know. But something different will have to happen.

NAVANTHISSA

The bus is fast, airy, almost empty. A garland of fake magenta flowers jiggles over the rearview window. My feet rest on my backpack, divested of the Larousse, which sits now on Manuela’s bookshelf. She laughed for a long time over my lugging it around as if it were the guarantor of my days. Two girls in white school uniforms get on the bus. They stare at me, whispering and giggling.

A gap in the trees lining the road contains a girl in a bikini walking along a wide beach. She’s tall and thin and tan, a fine brown slice through the white air, a sure sign that the next stop on the bus belongs to me: a town of private cabanas equipped with boogie boards and outdoor showers and hammocks slung between palm trees, where white girls can walk in bikinis without getting harassed by gawking boys and have cocktails in hollowed-out coconuts delivered to their lounge chairs. On my first trip to Sri Lanka, I stayed on the beach for only two days. The paradise was like a math formula with no conceivable application. I could plug in the numbers and get the right answer, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now, though, even the metaphor irritates me. I am a person going to a place. End of story.

I check into a large motel on the beach. A group of twentysomethings chat on the sand out front, bottles of arrack scattered around their chairs. I change into my bathing suit and take high-kneed hops across the scorched sand to the water’s edge. A wave rears up before me. I raise my arms and dive into its ferocious tunnel, frightened and happy.

When I return to the beach, a Sri Lankan man wearing basketball shorts and several gold necklaces is standing next to my towel. He looks like a skinny man wearing a fat suit for comedic effect — preternaturally round belly, twiggy limbs. He smiles as I hurry to cover myself with my towel, glaring just past his face. “Welcome,” he says. “You just arrived?”

“Hm-hum.”

“You picked a good hotel. Have you tried the rum punch here yet?”

I turn my back to him.

“Let me order you one.” His accent is barely discernible.

“I came here to read and relax and I just want to be left alone.”

“Sure. No problem.” But he stands nearby until his phone rings. He answers in Sinhala, and his loud voice retreats down the beach.

I stretch out on the sand and close my eyes. The sun is so bright I can see the backs of my eyelids, a mess of slithering red threads.

“Take my chair if you want. I’m not using it.” A young man with sandy curls and bright eyes is standing over me. His large aureoles sag agreeably.

Lievin is from Holland, traveling around on PhD money while he supposedly works on his dissertation. He introduces me to the rest of his group. A Belgian girl — dyed-orange halo of curls, Minnie Mouse T-shirt — is reading on a lounge chair. The Israeli boy is as lovely and boring as an ad in a glossy magazine — green eyes, thick lashes, dark silk skin snuggled against small muscles. “Your rings are good,” he says, looking at my fingers. “This one means: I’m pretty. This one means: I’m weird.” He sits down cross-legged on the sand, his chin resting in his hands. “I’m glad you’re here.”