Taipei (25 page)

The next night in a bookstore near Taipei 101, the third-tallest building in the world, an hour after ingesting MDMA, walking aimlessly with held hands, Paul “grimly,” he earnestly felt, asked what Erin was thinking about, and she said she was having paranoid thoughts again, “like maybe it’s not the drugs, maybe we just don’t have anything to talk about anymore.” Paul thought she was right, but argued against her by saying they had been spending too much time together—that, in his other relationships, one or both people would have work or school. They sat holding each other on the floor in the fiction section and decided to not ingest their remaining two ecstasy and to be apart from each other four hours a day. Paul was wearing a striped sweater he and Erin bought, a few days ago, solely because it was comically not his normal style.

Manually descending a down escalator, about an hour later—holding Erin’s hand, leading them past people standing in place—Paul realized he was (and, for an unknown amount of time, had been) rushing ahead in an unconscious, misguided effort to get away from where he was: inside himself. Concurrent with this realization was an awareness of himself from a perspective thousands of feet above, plainly showing he was doing what he logically knew he did not want to do (that he dreaded doing, in the same way he dreaded
the remaining seconds on the down escalator, the minutes walking to the MRT station and waiting for the train, the six-minute walk from the station to the apartment, waiting for the elevator and lying in bed until an instantaneous transport to the next day’s minutes—was there no reprieve even in sleep?—he’d always felt comforted by sleep and now felt confused by it) and yet, even now, discerning this, kept doing what caused this realization.

On Christmas Eve, when Erin returned from the bathroom and lay on the bed, ready to sleep, it seemed, Paul asked if she’d had any thoughts, since arriving in Taiwan, about showering.

“Not really,” she said after a few seconds.

“I noticed you don’t shower at night anymore. Or haven’t the last two nights.”

“I don’t shower every night.”

“You did . . . before Taiwan.”

“I only shower at night if I noticeably smell,” said Erin. “There’ve been nights I haven’t, with you.”

The next few minutes, sensing something combative and offendable in her—that he hadn’t before—Paul felt increasingly careful of his word choice and tone of voice. Erin stood, at some point, and was moving around the room. Paul said something about an area of the bed smelling bad, and Erin said “I’m stinky, all right, you’re right, I’ll go shower, I have stinky feet” loudly, and left the room, closing the door with force. When she returned, maybe ten minutes later, Paul’s heart was still beating considerably harder than normal and he immediately left the room. In the nearly pitch-black hallway Dudu’s wet nose softly touched the back of Paul’s leg, when they apparently moved in the same direction, toward the bathroom. In the shower Paul earnestly thought about
how to extricate himself from the marriage—what to do about their film company, how to behave the next ten days, what he and Erin would separately do each day, what to say to his parents—but when he returned to his room Erin apologized, which he hadn’t expected, and he reiterated that they’d happily agreed, a month ago, that if either person wanted the other to shower or brush their teeth, or anything like that, they’d state it immediately and directly and impersonally, instead of accumulating resentment.

“There are things I’m still sensitive about,” said Erin.

Paul said he had felt most upset by her sarcasm when she said she was stinky and how she left suddenly and sort of slammed the door. Erin said she had been joking, in an effort to downplay the situation, and hadn’t meant to slam the door. Paul said he hadn’t felt—or suspected, at all—that she was joking. Erin slept on her side facing away.

In the morning Paul read an email from his mother, whose bedroom shared a wall with his, asking him to please try to be nicer to Erin, who remained on her side facing away, though she seemed awake. Paul showered for around forty-five minutes, continuing to mentally prepare to be single, and was unaware of the time until, after putting on clothes, his father said the taxi he’d called to drive them to the café hosting Paul’s reading—his mother was already there—was downstairs. Paul expected no response—or a begrudging one, maybe—as he explained to Erin, who was still facing away, in a voice he controlled to sound neutral that a taxi was waiting and that she didn’t have to go to his reading but it would be awkward if she didn’t because reservations had been made for dinner immediately after, in a nice restaurant, with many relatives, to celebrate their marriage. Paul felt emotional and surprised when, after a few seconds, during which her body
visibly relaxed, easing a tension Paul hadn’t discerned, Erin stood and softly said she didn’t know the reading was today and, prioritizing the situation, over her feelings, became accommodating and goal oriented, quickly and gracefully getting dressed and preparing to leave.

In the taxi’s backseat, between Erin and his father, Paul pointed at a bright red, metal, pointy roof outside his father’s side’s window. “Look at that roof,” he said in Mandarin, and pushed a blue ecstasy into Erin’s mouth—against teeth, then inside, touching her tongue a little—while his father talked about slanted versus flat roofs. Paul, grinning convolutedly, pointed again and asked how to say “corrugated” in Mandarin and put their last ecstasy in his own mouth.

Dinner, after the reading—with Paul’s parents, uncle, uncle’s girlfriend, uncle-in-law, great-uncle, two aunts, five cousins—was in a restaurant whose interior lighting, circuited into pillars and walls and the ceiling and bathrooms, though probably not in the kitchen, had been coordinated to undulate fluidly and cyclically, as one, yellow to red to purple to blue to green, seeming egregiously LSD themed.

Paul’s father talked the most, by far, usually to no one specific, during the hour-long dinner. When he spoke people became attentive to him, but passively, at their leisure, with neutral expressions, as if watching an infomercial, neither annoyed nor entertained, feeling no obligation to respond or engage. Whenever he finished with a topic, sometimes to the accompaniment of his own laughter, people seemed to uniformly and inhumanly return, like foam mattresses, to how they were before, profoundly unfazed. At one point, in what seemed like a major faux pas, in part because Paul’s cousin’s father, Paul’s uncle, was present and seemed depressed, Paul’s father tried—for maybe five minutes, with no external
feedback except two or three grunting noises from his target—to recruit Paul’s cousin, a few years older than Paul, to work for him selling lasers on commission. He’d tried the same, at previous dinners, with both Paul and Erin—and, at dinners last year, just Paul, who suspected his father felt as amused by his behavior, in this regard, as Paul and Erin, who’d said “your dad tried to recruit me to work for him” four or five times the past week.

Paul’s relatives, though somewhat withdrawn and/or alienated from one another, seemed peaceful as a group, maybe because there didn’t appear to be any pressure for anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do, such as talk or smile. Paul’s mother and her older sister, best friends for decades, now seemed like polite, recent acquaintances who secretly disliked each other for admittedly irrational and/or superficial reasons.

After dinner Paul and Erin followed Paul’s uncle and Paul’s uncle’s girlfriend to their car, to be driven, at Paul’s mother’s suggestion, to where young people went to buy clothes. Failing to operate a refrigerator-size parking meter, which Paul had never seen before, Paul’s uncle grinned and said something in Mandarin conveying idle bemusement regarding his decreasing ability to comprehend and maneuver himself through an increasingly surreal environment. In the BMW’s backseat Paul remembered, with embarrassment, when as a child, on the way to Ponderosa, in this car, his uncle suggested to Paul’s mother, his little sister, a restaurant that was the same as Ponderosa but used “fresher ingredients.” Paul’s mother had asked Paul, who had responded with a noise, causing six to ten relatives to eat at Ponderosa.

Paul didn’t notice his uncle had turned around in his seat, and was grinning slightly, until he heard him say “you’re getting out here also” in Mandarin. The car was parked on the side of a street and Paul’s uncle’s girlfriend had gotten out.
Paul’s uncle, who spoke English fluently, congratulated Erin then carefully said two sentences to her and maybe Paul, who was remembering how he’d been surprised—and complicatedly moved—once when his uncle talked about buying and liking Michael Jackson’s music, in this car, after asking if Paul, who doesn’t remember what he answered, or how old he’d been, maybe 10 or 11, liked Michael Jackson.

At the airport, after a silent taxi ride, around 7:30 a.m., Paul’s mother stood with Paul and Erin in line to check in luggage. Paul peripherally noticed his mother facing away, a little, with only her neck slightly turned. He looked at her and she turned her neck farther, so that he was looking at her looking elsewhere, then she turned, openly crying, toward him and said in a child-like but controlled voice that she was leaving before she started crying harder. She reflexively opened her mouth in a similar manner as when Paul had “caught” her, last year, putting sugar in her coffee, but the effect now was of further embarrassment, past helplessness, to disengagement, then withdrawal.

Paul, whose eyes had become instantly watery, hadn’t seen her like this before. He thought of her mother, who had died before Paul was born—and was aware, with momentary clarity, which did not elucidate or console, but seemed to pointlessly reiterate, of how, in the entrance-less caves of themselves, everyone was already, always orphaned—and they briefly hugged and she hugged Erin and uncharacteristically left.

6

Paul was in Bobst Library’s first basement floor, seated at a computer, becoming increasingly, “neurotically,” he knew, fixated on his aversion toward Erin’s red backpack, on the possibility that she would have it with her when he went upstairs, in fifteen minutes, to meet her and that, in its presence, he would feel upset. He hadn’t seen her in three weeks, since a few days after returning from Taiwan, when she returned to Baltimore, where a drunk driver had repeatedly rammed her mother’s car, breaking her mother’s hip and badly injuring Erin’s face, which the hospital had said would heal, without
scarring, in four months. Erin was wearing large, black-rimmed glasses—to block her face, she said, and they hugged.

“Sorry,” said Erin with a blank expression.

“About what?” said Paul, aware he’d felt only self-conscious when he noticed the red backpack, in his vision like a dot on a screen during an optometrist’s exam.

“Face,” said Erin. “My face.”

“You look good, don’t worry.”

They walked holding hands toward Union Square, ten blocks north. Paul sometimes looked away, so Erin wouldn’t see his depressed expression. He’d begun to worry, some days, for hours at a time, that he was permanently losing interest in Erin, despite earnestly wanting, he felt, the opposite, if that were possible. “You have the red backpack,” he said grinning slightly, with some confusion.

“I do,” said Erin in a tired voice.

Paul sustained his grin tensely.

“What do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul looking away.

“I know you don’t like it.”

“It’s . . . just,” said Paul.

“I’ll buy a new one tomorrow.”

“No,” said Paul quietly.

“I have a gift card.”

“I thought your mom was buying you one for Christmas.”

“So did I,” said Erin.

On his mattress, on their sides, holding Erin from behind, Paul thought he wouldn’t end the relationship now, or at any time while Erin’s face, which after two and a half weeks looked like it had been recently stung by eight to twelve bees, was still healing, even if he knew he wanted to, which he didn’t.

But he wouldn’t not end the relationship now, if he knew he wanted to, because it would be pitying and misleading, which Erin wouldn’t want, based on what he knew, but maybe she wouldn’t care, if she didn’t know, which she wouldn’t. Paul thought that he would stop thinking about himself and focus on Erin, but instead, almost reflexively, as a method of therapy, began thinking about suicide, then became aware of himself, a few minutes later, earnestly considering—or maybe only imagining—trying to convince Erin that they should commit suicide together. After an initial, default “open-mindedness” they could easily become fixated, then would want to do it quickly, while it made sense. They would find information on the internet and hurry to a subway station, or wherever, collaborating intimately again, looking out at the world from a new and shared perspective. Paul began to feel, in a way he hadn’t before, like he comprehended double suicide—the free and mysterious activity of it, like a roller coaster descending only into darkness, but accessible from anywhere, on the theme park of Earth, always open.

He sensed his vicinity to a worldview—or a temporary configuration of preferences, two or three ideas introduced to a mood—in which double suicide would be as difficult, as illogical, to resist as a new sushi restaurant to a couple that likes sushi and trying new restaurants. He felt scared, and to distance himself from what he might accidentally engage in, or be absorbed by, in a moment of inattention or daydreaming, he opened his eyes and leveraged himself and looked over Erin’s shoulder with an extremely troubled expression. To his surprise—and self-consciously private confusion, relocated immediately away from the front of the face, to study later—she looked serene and was smiling a little, it seemed.

 • • •

Three weeks later they were seated in Sunshine Cinema—at a showing of
Somewhere
that would begin in five minutes—and had ingested Xanax, which hadn’t taken effect, when Paul, staring at the screen, said in a monotone that he wanted to talk about their relationship. Immediately, in a sort of rush, which indicated to Paul that she wished she had said it first, an otherwise unfazed Erin said she also wanted to talk about their relationship. Paul said he felt bad about it, but didn’t know what to do, or what else to say. Erin said she felt the same. They talked, staring at the screen, during previews—mostly reiterating that they felt bad, didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what else to say—and stopped, when the movie began, without resolution.