What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (10 page)

On the day of the funeral I brought tulips from the front garden to put on the grave, but by the time we got to the cemetery they had already wilted. Everyone was there: cousins, aunts, uncles. The usual people said the usual things. “She was so young,” they said.

Ramona stood next to me wearing sunglasses and a black dress. Her hair was pulled back, jet-black. She looked like a young wife at a Mafia funeral. My father flanked me on the other side. He kept his eyes closed the whole time. I thought: this is my family now, we are three now, we wear sunglasses, we close our eyes.

Father Larry spoke. He said she had a big soul; it was too big for her body, for this earth. When he said it I looked straight at the sun to see if it would make me blind.

Tell Me

P
eople from the halfway house come into the store. One guy in particular. I think his name is Richard. He never buys books.

“I came in with this,” he says, raises a paperback like Moses with the commandments.

Richard thinks he’s funny. He’s funnier than the other methadone addicts, who aren’t even a little funny. The house is truly halfway: five blocks east to landscaped lawns, five west to boarded-up brownstones. People say they like this city’s slippery thresholds, the way the neighborhoods bleed into one another. Those who say they like it live far from the bleeding.

I say, “You.”

“This guy,” he says.

“You,” I say.

“I never buy books. Don’t know why I’m always coming in here.”

“For the conversation?”

“What conversation?” he says, which makes me sad.

Molly and I are a thing again. That’s what my sister calls it. A thing. Sounds like some kind of swamp monster. All it means is I’m back to bringing Molly home for holidays.

Molly doesn’t like that I’m always almost asleep. I don’t like being woken.

“Are you . . . ?”

“I’ll keep watching.”

“I don’t want to watch if you’re asleep.”

How to explain the peace I get, TV on, this drift, curled into armpit?

“Don’t leave me alone,” she says.

There are other things Molly doesn’t like about me.

Her roommate, Chandra, goes by Chan, pronounced Sean. Sexy, considering Sean swigs bottled beer, belches, ashes into teacups. You aren’t supposed to smoke in the living room. I’m not supposed to smoke ever.

“Women,” Sean says.

“Bitches,” Sean says.

Richard’s indented the leather recliner. He’s in the indentation, eyes closed.

“I’m not asleep,” he says. “I hear every word you’re saying.”

“What am I saying?”

“I know even if you’re not saying it. You’re thinking it.”

One thing Molly doesn’t like is the six months we weren’t a thing. More specifically, she doesn’t like the other, almost-thing I was involved in. More specifically, she doesn’t like Janine.

I meet Sean at Boat, a bar decorated in boat corpse. Sean likes the word
pussy
. She talks about getting it, then describes some she’s seen. The ones she describes don’t sound like any I’ve encountered.

My cell’s upset with texts. My head’s on the table. Before I know it Sean’s pulling my bicep—sneaking a comparative assessment—directing me through traffic to Molly’s bed.

“What did I say?” I say.

When I wake Molly’s hooked in with headphones, watching murder on her laptop.

I write a note, forget the spelling of Chan. “SEAN—HAVE YOU SEEN MY WALLET?”

All these books are an avalanche in waiting. I want to pile them, climb, collapse, settle among the debris. Most of the time I want to sit down, which isn’t allowed. It’s not that the job makes me tired so much as it never forces me into full cognition. Richard thinks he’s psychic.

“I can tell what everyone’s thinking about me.”

“There’s some old umbrellas in back,” I say, because Richard’s shirt is soaked.

Saturated. My sweat smells like coffee. Molly says, “What kind of person names their kid Janine?”

Because Janine was in the bodega, bending for our benefit. But it’s more than that: Janine’s an easy name for an emptiness we can’t articulate.

“David Bowie fans?”

“I wasn’t asking,” she says. The awning isn’t enough. Rain falls on our outstretched feet.

“Break’s over,” I say, cheek-peck, stand, turn, barrel into halogen, situate. Molly walks away, wet. Janine had Molly in the ergonomics department but was mostly a mess. She said it felt metallic, like I was infusing her with lead.

My wallet appears in the lost and found, still empty of money. Note taped to it says, “Thanks for nothing.” When it feels like I’m about to fall over I pluck chest hairs. Customers can’t believe we don’t have what will fix their lives.

“It’s been out of print since ’86,” I say.

“But this is a bookstore.”

April ends at night. The barking dogs are beautiful again. Molly has her thumb and index around the base of my neck, stroking. I say, “Shit,” meaning, “I’m awake.”

Because: The frequency with which she reaches under my shirt, circles my nipples with the bitten ends of fingernails. The way she says the word
orange
like it’s two words, “or unge?” The way she slices them into slim eighths, sucks the skins. Looks like she’s wearing a mouth guard. The way she still blushes when I look at her breasts.

Rain returns, May begins, we’re running.

Collapse into shower, bumping bone, bruising, singing (sort of ). I want to rise out of my asshole self, become some sweet specter, line Molly’s insides. The closest we come to saying I love you is “Baby, that feels good.”

Another time, to test him, I say, “What am I thinking right now?”

“You’re thinking I wish this boobjob would get out of my store.”

“Boobjob?”

Richard’s head is sparsely populated with hair like fish skin, silverish. The way hair gets before it gets going. I’m noticing new features on him always. Maybe it’s the program working, buffing, bringing out his shine.

He says, “Used to be my job, anyway.”

Janine kept me awake by making me wonder where she was.

Sean’s girlfriend’s skin’s so pink I want to twist her wrist, hear her howl. The state of California’s inked into her arm. A reminder of home or the expression of a mind-set. Sean and I stop going to Boat Bar. Sean and Alice stand in the kitchen linked, ashing in the sink, elbowing each other in their taped-down tits, dimple-grinning, perched over our lifestyle, some advanced species of lover. Molly writes “Molly” on her carton of soy milk.

Other guys from the halfway house come in, women too. Haircuts from the wrong decade. Like one decade off from the one in fashion. They’re careful not to bend the pages. Everyone wants the same book about the 2012 apocalypse. That or chess strategy.

“Where’s Richard?” I ask. “Has anyone seen Richard?”

No one knows who I’m talking about.

“You and your Mayans,” I say to no one.

Molly still says it feels good, but spring is short and summer snakes up, sticks out its tongue, turns down our volume. We listen to Sean smacking Alice, saying, “Yeah,” saying, “You lying bitch,” saying, “Jesus, baby, Jesus.” Alice yells, “Tell me,” at what might be the moment of climax. When Alice’s head hits hardwood, Molly calls. Cops arrive, chub-cheeked, straight from a paperback. They pull everyone apart. I’m the only one not crying. I feel like the culprit. Two hours later it’s hard to tell who’s doing what to whom, or if it’s in the right spirit, until someone says, “I think I’m gonna.”

“How can you sleep?” Molly says, turns the TV up.

With us it’s different. We check e-mail immediately after.

Business is moderate, which seems like a miracle to everyone but the owners. A customer tells me coffee stops working after a while. Molly stops meeting me on my lunch breaks.

But one night: Me, Molly, Sean on the roof, hitting beer cans with a Wiffle bat. “Bottom of the ninth,” I say, meaning, “Sometimes we come so close.”

The problem is the space between what we want to feel and what we’ve come to expect from certain situations. Sometimes I think that space is what it means to be an adult.

Then, desperate to dry, Molly pulls on a Janine-dress found in my closet, beige cotton, floral print, scoop neck. “My sister must have left it,” I say. And try to smell something foreign as she climbs atop me.

Dress back up. For a moment it’s a lampshade; her head the hidden bulb, body a decorative base.

Meanwhile, Alice is out, Erica’s in, Sean has started a band, Clit Pincher. The logo is a lobster claw. Their only song: “Alice.”

Molly’s mom keeps asking Molly if she’s happy. Molly keeps asking me what she should tell her mom. I say, “Baby, I’m tired. Can we talk in the morning?”

Richard isn’t dead, but he has found Jesus. He’s hawking crosses by the corner of Court and Pacific.

“What you think is the bleak shit,” he tells me, “isn’t always the bleak shit.”

Eventually it’s cold again. Restraining orders expire. Alice returns, sings her usual. They start slow, so I imagine, work themselves over each other, into each other, up to speed.

“Tell me! Tell me, Sean!”

We all await a response.

Sluts at Heart

T
he country was voting Young vs. Vegas Elvis for the national stamp. The West Coast was in flames over Rodney King. George Bush had ten points in the polls on Bill Clinton, with third-party lunatic Ross Perot loudly gaining steam. My friend Simit was dying.

I did what anyone would do; I bought a kitten. She was an ill-tempered, whimpering thing I called Lisa Marie. Lisa Marie proceeded to fight it out with human Lisa for my affection. During sex, Lisa Marie would attach herself to the fleshy part of Lisa’s calf and bite.

On the one hand you had Young Elvis, in a sport coat and a smile. He had cheekbones to die for, piercing baby blues. A single strand of hair dangled down his forehead like Superman’s coiffed
S
. The other option was Vegas, gold stars stitched to popped collar, brows low over eyes. Clinton had come out in support of Young. What I couldn’t figure was who was voting for Vegas. Showgirls? Seventies nostalgics? Doomers?

“I like Vegas Elvis,” Lisa said.

We were cooking for Maggie and Sam. Eggplant stew. Maggie and Sam were on the Himmler-Goebbels diet—no meat, nuts, or anything on the red-green color spectrum. They were the type of couple who tried new things: taking salsa dance classes, aging their own cheese. Lisa and I were the type of couple who made fun of couples who tried new things. Maybe we were envious.

“What do you mean you like Vegas Elvis?” I said.

“I don’t know. I just like him. He seems more human or something. Like, you know he’s gonna drop dead next time he sits on the toilet.”

“And that should be on a postage stamp?”

“I’m just saying,” she said.

“What are you just saying?”

“I’m just saying if there was a vote, I might choose Vegas Elvis, yes.”

“But there is a vote,” I said.

Lisa grabbed an orange from the counter, weighed it in her palm, threatened to throw it at me, put it down. The orange rolled to the floor. Lisa Marie lapped its skin.

“I’m not really much of a voter,” Lisa said.

The way she said it made me think of an article I’d read about our generation’s apathy.

Maggie and Sam brought wine—white wine with no nuts in it. I would have made a joke, but it was the year of people not making jokes. After half a decade taking ecstasy on roof decks and debating brands of cereal, our lives had taken a turn toward the serious. Everyone we knew was getting married, including Maggie and Sam. The true artists among us had either found success or accepted some level of prolonged poverty. The others were going corporate or applying to law school. My old pal from high school had terminal cancer, and I was too scared to discuss it. I felt angry and took my anger out on Lisa. She was the nearest one at hand.

The stew was limp and viscous, but with enough Tabasco you could make it taste like Tabasco. Sam went for seconds, then thirds. We were a couple bottles of deep when Lisa got the whiskey out of the cabinet. She poured it straight into our wineglasses. The talking got on to sexiness.

“What I find sexy,” I said, “are sluts.”

My girlfriend glared.

“Hear me out,” I said. There was something I was trying to get at. It had to do with Simit.

“I’m not talking about sluts in practice. I’m talking about sluts deep down. Sluts at heart.”

“How poetic,” Lisa said.

“Just listen for a second,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what came next. Maybe
sluts
was the wrong word. “What I mean is someone who lives without fear of the consequences of her actions.”

Maggie and Sam looked at each other.

“I don’t get it,” Maggie said.

Sam knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

“He has a thing for cutoff denim skirts,” Lisa said. “That’s all he means. He’s always trying to get me to wear them.”

“Unrelated,” I said. There was a clichéd image of rural America that invaded my fantasies: some farmer’s daughter, foreign to my New York life. I’d work in the fields, too worn out for anxiety.

“Can men be sluts at heart?” Maggie said.

“All men are sluts at heart,” Sam said.

Lisa lifted an eyebrow, raised her glass.

“That not what I mean,” I said. “Forget sluts for a minute. Tattoos are sexy. Can we agree on that?”

Lisa had a tattoo, so this was an okay thing to say. She was proud of the tattoo, wore halter tops to show it off.

“Definitely sexy,” Maggie said. She winked at Lisa.

“But why?” I said. “Why is it that we find tattoos sexy?”

“Enlighten us,” Lisa said, rolled her eyes.

“The bad boy thing,” Maggie said. “It’s that whole bad-boy thing. Tattoos, cigarettes, beer, and motorcycles. Like James Dean. That shit is sexy. Rock and fucking roll, you know?”

“Or like Elvis,” I said.

“James Dean didn’t have a tattoo,” Sam said. He was a stickler for facts. “And neither, for that matter, did your man the King.”

“Whatever,” Maggie said. “He had all the other things.”

“But this is my point,” I said. “These things all have something in common: consequences. To do these things you must ignore consequences. A tattoo, for example. You can’t get a tattoo unless you ignore the fact that one day you’ll be old and it will be wrinkled on loose skin, and that you’ll be sick of your shamrock or mom heart or whatever you decided to get for eternity. And think of that word,
eternity
. Everyone knows tattoos are permanent, right? Bullshit. They’re not permanent. By pretending they’re permanent we’re pretending our bodies are permanent. That’s what’s sexy. It’s like driving a motorcycle—to ride one you have to convince yourself that you’re not gonna snap your head off.”

“Motorcycles aren’t sexy,” Lisa said.

“Bullshit, motorcycles aren’t sexy,” I said.

“They’re not,” Lisa said. “People who ride them are stupid. Everyone I’ve ever known who had one has been in an accident.”

By everyone, she meant her uncle Phil, a mustached Arizonan who’d lost what few brain cells he’d had doing daredevil shit.

“It’s retarded,” Lisa said.

“A retarded way to become retarded,” Sam said.

“That’s not nice,” Maggie said. She had a retarded cousin.

The rest of the night went badly. Maggie and Sam left. There was a discussion, which led to another discussion. Eventually it came out that Lisa had found naked pictures of my ex-girlfriend from college.

“Why didn’t you throw them out?”

“I’ll throw them out,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” Lisa said. “ I want you to want to throw them out.”

Sometimes, when Lisa and I had sex, we’d lock the cat in the bathroom. We could hear her clawing at the door. It added a measure of intensity to the act. After, as we lay entwined, Lisa Marie would lick the salt off my skin.

But I should tell about Simit. By the time they found the tumors they were everywhere: liver, lungs, pancreas. I hadn’t visited or even talked to him. It had been a few years.

One weekend I drove up to Boston with Ava, another old friend, to attend a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization Simit had started.

Simit was a good person. He could also be kind of a dick. Ava was named after the actress Ava Gardner, who, from what I’ve read, was a slut both in practice and at heart.

Lisa was not a fan of Ava. She was jealous, I think, of the fact that I’d known Ava longer. There were parts of my life that Ava had access to and Lisa did not. People often asked when Lisa and I were going to get engaged. We would look at each other as if the other might have the answer.

Marrying seemed like the right move—we’d lived together for four years already and loved each other—but something held us back. Maybe it was the finality of it, concession to a lifetime of low-pulse domesticity. Not that there was anything wrong with what we had. But we were foolish romantics holding out hope for soul mates—we’d watched too many rom-coms.

In the past, I had entertained the thought that Ava could be that soul mate. Lisa sensed this—another reason why they didn’t get along. Ava and I would have made a terrible couple, I’m sure. But the fact that we’d never attempted it charged our friendship with an unspoken air of possibility. I didn’t intend to act on those feelings, but there was that underlying want: to check another box, check into another body, fold yourselves into what might, this time, make a whole.

On the car ride, I told Ava things about my life that made me sound more bohemian than I actually was. I wrote radio ads for a car dealership. I pretended it was to support myself while I worked on my screenplay, but I just liked saying “my screenplay.” It made me sound like I had ambition, but also, in retrospect, like a douche bag.

We talked about Simit. We were both scared to see him. Ava was scared that she would cry. I was scared that I would remember that I would one day die, that Ava would, that Lisa would. Simit was always trying to get me to do something with my life. By something he meant a job where I wouldn’t make money but would feel better about myself as a person.

The fundraiser was at a warehouse in a suburb north of Boston. A company called Don’t Worry Be Hippy sold overstock at outlet prices. A percentage of the proceeds would go to Simit’s nonprofit, a group he’d founded that did outreach at local homeless shelters. Mostly it was T-shirts with peace signs on them. A fiver got you thirty bucks of retail. Bargain hunters were out in droves.

Don’t Worry Be Hippy had hired teenagers to wear jester outfits and spread cheer. They banged bongo drums. One of the T-shirts had a picture of a leaping dolphin. It said “The Best Ism is Optimism.”

We found Simit handshaking in a corner. When his mom saw us she cried. We’d hung around their house a lot when we were younger. It must have felt like “Kavya Bose, this is your life!” Simit ignored his mother.

“Whatup?” he said.

Simit looked sick. More so, he looked homeless. He’d always carried an air of homelessness—wispy goatee, Chia-hair, a preference for thrift-shop men’s formal wear—but it was offset by broad shoulders and a sated, healthy gut. Now he looked like he could be selling incense on a street corner.

In place of hair stood an L.A. Raiders cap, worn in solidarity with the Rodney King rioters. When I hugged him he said, “Look at you, all big and shit.”

Simit had slept with Ava once, in her anorexic years, a long span. Ava often alluded to this period of her life, but it was not openly discussed. I’d always hoped she would confide in me. I wanted to be someone people came to with their problems. Lisa bottled hers up, spilled only to her shrink. I was the same.

“Ave,” Simit said. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“Your breasts,” he said. “Bigger?”

This was the wrong thing to say, what with his mom standing right there and it being the year of people not making jokes.

“I don’t think so,” Ava said.

“Birth control?” Simit said.

He reminded me of Simit, the one I’d known in seventh grade, before he became a good person, when we used to watch porn in his basement.

Ava said his penis was huge. It was huge. I’d seen it once, accidentally, after swimming. When he saw me looking he said, “Yours will get bigger too one day.” We were twenty-five at the time.

Simit had people to talk to: cousins who’d driven from the Cape, some guy in a leather jacket. I thought the guy might be his father, who I hadn’t seen since fourth grade, but who I’d heard was back.

Ava and I walked around. We drank the complimentary coffee. I bought a T-shirt for my mom. The shirt said “Earth Mother.” She would never wear it. Ava bought twelve T-shirts, fleece slippers, and a tote bag. Her parents had given her the money.

Before leaving, Simit patted Ava’s butt. I think he was hoping for a pity fuck. Maybe just a pity blow job. Later, he told me he’d have settled for a pity hand job. I guess that’s a more common thing.

I thought that when he was dead I’d remember this and say, “He was horny right to the end. As his body failed, his inner life was strong and pervy.” Whoever I was with would say, “I’m so sorry.”

We went to Simit’s mom’s apartment, where he’d been living since the diagnosis. The leather jacket guy came too. He was actually an uncle. The real father was back, but only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

We sat around a giant TV Simit had bought when he found out he was dying. “I got a gift certificate,” he said.

Baseball was on. The Red Sox were losing. Simit fell asleep. His mom brought out tea. There was a kid imitating batting stances, a cousin. He was pretty good: Greenwell, Boggs.

I wanted us to be cheerful. I wanted Simit to be cheered. We watched TV with the volume down.

“C’mere baby,” Ava said to the dog.

I helped Kavya with the dishes. There was a piece of tomato that wouldn’t come off the plate. I picked with my fingernail, but Kavya grabbed my wrist. I dropped the plate and it broke in the sink.

“Leave it,” she said.

I opened the fridge for no reason and then closed it. We brought out dessert.

Simit woke up. Chocolate was one of the few things he could digest. First he smoked a joint.

“This is good, mom,” he said.

“Delicious,” Ava said.

Simit was eyeing her. “So what’s the deal? It’s been a while. New York, right?”

“I got a cat,” I said. “And a girlfriend.”

He was still the guy who wanted me to do something with my life, the one who held his sexual experiences over my head.

“Lisa,” I said. “They’re both named Lisa. The lovely Lisas.”

“All grown up now,” Simit said. “You want a prize?”

“You fucker,” I said.

The uncle gave me a look. The kid was playing Game Boy. He hadn’t heard the swear.

“How’s that screenplay?” Simit said in a tone suggesting—rightly—that no such screenplay existed.

“Actually, it’s going well.”

“Oh, really?” Ava said.

“What’s it about, then?” Simit said.

“Yeah, tell us,” Ava said.

“It’s about this guy, a young guy. He’s a college graduate, but he’s broke, so he starts begging for change. But he has to put mud on his face and stuff. To look homeless. But then he meets this girl . . .”