Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

When the door finally opened, I nearly pushed Kaede over to get inside.

"Is it one of the pickers?" she asked.

Her eyes were red from booze, that usually perfect bob all askew and wild. I didn't say anything, just put my hand on the small of her back. She reached up and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. Together, we wobbled our way down the hall to her apartment.

"You should stay here," she said, letting me into her place. "You know, just in case."

"Sure," I told her. "What, on the couch?"

"No," she said, reaching past me and locking the door. Her arms looped around my waist, her face turned up at mine so I could smell the sweetness of booze on her breath. When she spoke again the words were slow. "My bed's much more comfortable."

THE NEXT MORNING, while I was struggling to ignore a pounding headache and find my socks amid the mess on her bedroom floor, Kaede lay in bed piecing together the night before.

"There was a fight, right? Did you start it? I feel like it was your fault, for some reason."

I threw a pile of shirts to one side, only to discover a pile of pants.

"Or was it because of something you did? Man, I was so drunk."

"That's what happens when you drink, I guess. Imagine that."

She was silent for a minute. I could feel her watching me as I went rifling through her stuff. "Paul, do your friends always fight for you?"

"Jesus, Kaede," I said, kicking my way through laundry and books. "You've got no idea what you're talking about. And I don't know how you expect to get any sort of project done when you can't even keep your bedroom in order either. Look at this place. It's like a twelve-year-old got her own apartment."

She sat up in bed. "Get my project done? Excuse me?"

"Yeah, you know, the one where you come rolling into town, taking pictures of people's homes — like we're animals in a zoo or something. These are real lives, Kaede. We're not just something for you to leech off."

"Oh, give me a break. At least I'm doing something, Paul. Look at you, rushing around to get your stuff together so you can go sit in your parents' store where no one ever comes."

I froze. A million things went through my head to scream back at her for this. I pictured myself grabbing fistfuls of her stuff and whipping them around the room. But I was not the type of guy to lose it. I breathed, looking away. Very calmly, I peeled my jacket off the back of her desk chair, made my way in silence down the hall, and quietly closed the front door on my way out, walking sockless in my shoes all the way across town to work.

Maybe half an hour later Kaede showed up in her uniform, breezing in through the front door while I was going through some paperwork. She browsed absently through the postcards, moved a few things around on the shelves, not acknowledging me until she held up a maroon and gold Canada sweatshirt to her body. "What do you think?"

I had no reply, just made a note on the page I was working on and turned to the next.

"You guys are so tense."

I flipped through the pages as though I were looking for something.

"In Japan they have places for people like you, for businessmen."

I glanced up from the files. I was a businessman now?

"To blow off some steam," she said, coming toward me. "Shops where people buy a ticket and they can smash things."

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

"People go nuts for it. Apparently it's a huge release, destroying all these delicate things — china, crystal, glass. They just smash the shit out of everything."

"What do they use?"

She clasped her hands together and swung them, whistling.

"Baseball bats?"

Kaede nodded. "And whatever else — tire irons, swords, you name it."

"Swords?" I struggled not to laugh. "People pay to do this?"

"Lots."

I stood there looking around the shop at my stock, wondering. But Kaede acted first. She grabbed a snow globe from the shelf. "Let's smash this."

"Whoa."

"Come on, aren't you mad at me?" She winked. "Won't this be a good release?"

I paused, she let out a frustrated huff, and before I knew what was happening, she hurled the thing against the tiled floor. It shattered, sending its contents — an igloo, a snowman, a couple of evergreens, a handful of white confetti — flooding outwards on a wave of murky water and broken glass, leaving half the cracked globe rocking back and forth on its side.

"What the fuck are you doing? That's our stock!"

But she just handed me another one, giving me a look like, Come on.

"Kaede."

That look again.

I took the globe from her hand, felt the dust that had accumulated on the smooth glass, weighed it, then dropped it beside the other one. It bounced harmlessly, rolled a bit, and came to rest against the counter. Kaede picked it up, looked at me with a frustrated expression.

I sighed, took it from her. "Okay," I said, "fine."

When the globe exploded I honestly felt something, a rush, as though a floodgate inside me opened up when the glass bulb split and spewed its contents all over the store. I looked up at Kaede. She smiled, already handing me a paperweight in the shape of Horseshoe Falls. This I hurled at the ground, laughing, screaming, "Motherfucker!" Ceramic shrapnel sprayed up as it hit. My body was buzzing. I put my hand out, greedy for more.

Kaede took another paperweight from the shelf, juggled it from one hand to the other, then put it back. "We need to save things for other people."

THAT NIGHT KAEDE made me spaghetti at her place. Over dinner we planned the whole thing, settling on twenty dollars a person — all my friends could afford, I figured — and decided that a week would give us enough time to get everything ready. Kaede made it clear that we had to be very specific in the area we allotted each participant. Otherwise, she advised me, there would be mayhem. "In Japan there are very strict rules. Do you think we need to do the same?"

I thought of Dave. "Yeah, that's probably a good plan."

When dinner was done I offered to clean up, but I'd only washed two dishes before we were peeling each other's clothes off right there on the kitchen floor. She pushed me down and climbed on top, hands running up my chest. In the light I noticed her face: a weird half-smile played at the corners of her lips, as though she were trying not to laugh. I scooped her up and flipped her around, wedging myself between her legs.

She went rigid.

"Kaede — is something wrong?" My pulse quickened. I'd been too rough, too creepy.

"Um, sort of." She looked uncomfortable. "It's just that — well, these tiles are really cold. I know it's boring, but can we just go to my room?"

After we'd finished, chatted each other to sleep, and then rolled away to opposite sides of the bed, I woke up in the middle of the night freezing. In need of clothing, I stumbled in the dark into the kitchen to retrieve my boxers and T-shirt. On the walk back to the bedroom I stopped at the living-room window. I'd forgotten that strange shape, that kid, whom I'd seen the night before. I stood for a while gazing out into the night. But there was nothing, no sign of any movement or anyone skulking around in the shadows, no kids or adults or anyone to speak of.

Back in bed I lay there on top of the sheets staring at Kaede's back, curled away from me. I spooned up behind her, wrapping an arm around. Whether she was asleep or not she looped her fingers through mine and pulled me even closer. It was good, comfortable, but every time I started fading into sleep I'd hear noises from outside. I'd snap awake and lie there, hugging Kaede, imagining that little shape scuttling around the building, bursting up out of the night with its face pressed to the window. I didn't fall asleep until the first light of dawn began to crack its way through the curtains.