Shoes Off

It finally happened, Alex said over the phone.

Really. Anyone hurt?

I have no idea.

He sent me a picture of the car crash out his window. He’d been convinced it would happen, the way the signs were arranged, the hard right turn. We’d broken up but every now and then he’d call or send a picture of a stuffed animal I’d gifted him in an obscene pose. A butter-yellow rabbit with weirdly alive eyes. Now the smash of one car into the other, both Hondas.

One sec, I said. I cracked my bedroom door, listened to some murmuring. A pair of sneakers sat neatly under the sign that said shoes off, which Jack had drawn in Sharpie, with an angry face. He had a girl over. The sign had gone up yesterday—the least of many emboldened behaviors that month.

How’s the apartment? Alex said.

I don’t want to talk about it.

I don’t like that guy.

I know.

I never liked that guy.

Well, he’s my friend. And, you know. His mom.

Are you drunk?

I didn’t consider four glasses of wine drunk.

I’m not drunk, I said.

I’m not judging, I was just wondering. He paused. Good night, he said, and hung up.

Making some din later tonight! was hoping to share, Jack texted me and Anna later.

Carbonara.

Five minutes passed.

Or would really love to watch a movie or something

Feel like I haven’t seen you guys all week

Anna called me from her room across the hall. He’s losing it, she whispered, so close to the phone it crackled.

He needs a girlfriend, I said.

Maybe if he didn’t treat every girl like shit.

The next day, Jack found me in the kitchen. He wore no shirt and his pants were unzipped, though it seemed like an accident.

Can I ask you something? he said.

OK. I peeled the foil off my yogurt.

Anna hasn’t talked to me all week.

Really?

Yeah. He watched my hands like they might reveal something. I set the foil on the counter.

She’s not responding to my messages. He adjusted the waist, zipped.

I think she’s just been busy, I said.

He nodded, slowly. But I’m sure you’ve talked to her, right? he said. Have you guys hung out this week?

I saw no point in obscuring our feelings any longer. I think we’re both pretty thrown off by your moods, I said.

Moods?

We heard you yelling the other day, in your room. And throwing stuff at your wall, I said.

His face reddened. I didn’t know anyone noticed that.

I found that unbelievable. It felt like there was some accusation hidden in his behavior, that some of it was aimed at us. He’d stormed through the living room and made a passive but vaguely cruel criticism about Anna’s sweater.

Now he seemed embarrassed.

You can’t throw things in the apartment. It’s scary, I said.

I just feel crazy.

In what way?

I feel like everyone hates me. I feel like I can’t control how I feel. Which is paranoid and pissed off, most of the time. He sank. I know there’s something wrong.

There seemed to be no rhythm to Jack’s moods. Anna surmised undiagnosed personality disorder. He doesn’t know how to be alone. I had no diagnosis, I just knew that he latched onto people for fear they would leave, that how much he expected from others was unrealistic.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand. When I was thirteen I worked summers on the beach at the ice cream igloo, a big stucco dome with a service window. I scraped the strawberry off hard mounds in the freezer and directed people to the only nearby public restroom, a brick building with sand for floor and pouched yellow soap like IV bags. Clarissa was my best friend and my coworker; we watched competitive gymnastics and made crafts out of colorful duct tape. One day she asked me to meet her in the bathroom, to tell me a secret. I pushed inside, then heard footsteps behind. The door closed, locked with a click. I pounded, cried for help, then climbed onto the sink and peered through the square slats and saw her and some surfer guy seated in front of the tiny igloo TV, watching a Serbian girl backflip and land flat on her nose.

Like Jack, I was deeply suspicious of other people, but also of myself. I often did things I never thought I would. When you drink, you become someone else, Alex had said. You go on and on about things that happened in high school. You cry and say you hate yourself. You become extremely promiscuous with people who are not me.

I didn’t usually recall the episodes he referenced.

You like 98 percent of me and you wish the final 2 percent would change but it won’t, and this is your way out, I said.

It’s not that I don’t like the final 2 percent, he’d said. It’s that you keep the final 2 from me until you drink.

It’s not true what they say, that drinkers reveal some twisted part of themselves when they’re drunk. When I drank, I exaggerated, omitted crucial information. I inundated myself, like those toys you put in water that swell very big and soft and fall apart in your hands.

Nobody is leaving you, I said, now, to Jack. We’re your friends. We just want to make sure you’re OK.

He rubbed his face. His eyes were irritated, puffy. I’m really sorry.

You wanna get dinner?

He nodded.

We ordered Chinese food and ate at the coffee table, on our knees. He looked timid on his knees. We took turns dipping our chopsticks in duck sauce. He uncapped beer for each of us and we watched The Blood on Satan’s Claw. When I met him a year ago he’d started compiling a list of folk horror.

My mom used to buy this beer. It’s really good, he said, observing the label. It’s from Germany.

He’d never explained how his mom had died two years prior. Anna didn’t know either. I’d found the obituary online: “unexpected and tragic.” I pictured a car crash.

I revealed things about my family, hoping he’d do the same.

My grandma was an addict, I said.

My mom wasn’t really that, he said, and sipped.

In my head, I worried I’d end up like my grandma. After she’d been baptized and gotten clean, she died splayed out in bed in San Juan Capistrano with nothing but credit card debt and a small brown cat locked in a crate. Alone.

The cat was long gone too. She’d been my childhood pet, Patches, received when I was six, chestnut-colored all over. No spots, I just liked the name Patches. When she died, the vet gave us her sheared fur wrapped in airtight plastic. My mom would hold it in her lap sometimes, to feel better. I hated it. I didn’t like the idea of doting on pieces. When someone dies, they should stay whole.

I often tried to piece Jack’s mom together. I guessed at her hair color, then pictured my own mom’s hair, shampooed, how she’d come to me in bed as a kid and drag it, wet, across my face after a shower and make me laugh.

Could you see me dating Abigail? Jack said now. Can you really picture it?

I don’t know. Can you picture it? That’s all that matters, I said.

She’s very normal.

Normal as in bad? I said. What do you mean? Do you like spending time with her?

Not bad. I’m bored. He stuck his socked feet out and sighed. I guess I just don’t picture myself with her. She doesn’t have any problems. Nothing feels exciting. Or passionate.

I’d heard male friends express ambivalence or even apathy for girls they dated. Was loneliness really so dire?

It either works or it doesn’t, I said.

He stared at me. I sort of almost thought he might try to kiss me.

I’m gonna do a shot, I said. You want a shot?

I brought the whiskey out. We drank and it hit me hard, my thoughts slowed, some buckled altogether.

Do you think I’m bad to women? he said.

Yes.

I’m in therapy.

Are you being honest with your therapist?

He wasn’t honest with his therapist, I’d overheard them once on Zoom. He left the door ajar and it had crossed my mind that he was encouraging some weird voyeurism, or it was a ploy to elicit pity in us.

I talked to her today, he said. I told her about this dream I have, this recurring dream where I’m at the top of a huge flight of stairs. I see my childhood friend down there, at the bottom. He waves at me. We’re both our own ages now. Then I see myself again. A different version of myself walks up to him and shoves him, hard, to the floor. He hesitated. I’m afraid that I’m mean.

I nodded.

He stared at the TV, feeling vulnerable, maybe. The air between us was stale, bare of conversation. Roku City panned across the screen, an ad for an action movie, a girl in a catsuit.

She’s hot, I said, pointing, to cut through it.

Yeah, she is. He laughed.

Good actress.

He glanced down at my thigh and I knew it was a proposition, easily deniable if not indulged.

Anna wasn’t home. His lips parted, his face almost pleading, like he needed me, whatever he was seeing in the right light.

He lifted my shirt off and stared at my chest, drunkenness shrouding us. Then the reality of our bodies on the floor, his bony in places I hadn’t expected. It was more about the feeling of his hands on me. I’d watched him eat this specialty Italian sandwich he liked from the shop down the street, knowing when to slow down to enjoy, but methodical overall, stripping the paper back the same way each time.

He’s not a good person, I’m starting to think, Anna had said about Jack.

Clarissa once told me I was the most gullible person she ever met.

I lay in bed later, staring at the ceiling fan, air softly wafting at my face, thinking about him thinking about me, letting it run its course through my body, then slept.

I found out he came inside Jocelyn without asking, Anna said.

What?!

She glanced at the door. He just left, so I’m telling you now.

Ew. What’s wrong with him? I looked past her at the old ugly green rug in the living room, where we’d done it, liquor-splotched beneath the vacuum tracks.

She’s really upset. She shook her head. It’s not good. There’s other stuff.

A girl appeared in the kitchen now. She held her sandals by the straps.

Sorry, she said. Sorry, sorry, she kept saying. Sorry, she said, and put her hand up as if to say, I’m leaving now. Really sorry.

Oh that’s OK, I said, over and over again, as if to shore up a firm understanding between us. Oh that’s OK, I said again.

Alex texted. Another car crash. Nobody hurt but a lot of screaming, he said.

A few weeks later, some girls kicked Jack out of New York. Anna and I started anew, arranged flowers and cleaned crevices never cleaned, everything smelled like tea tree. We drove down to Coney Island to get away, stopped for wine at a stony grotto bar with an attached motel, walked outdoors after four glasses, slipped our shoes off, felt the tiny grains of sand rub into our skin.

I’m so glad we got rid of Jack, Anna said.

Ow.

Blood clouded the water; I’d cut myself on some glass. I felt the sting, waited for it to dull, for the water to lap it clean.

Me too, I said.