Something Terrible

We were lying together when all of this happened. Our position was mostly out of necessity. The only furniture in her room was a dresser and a mattress on the floor. I’d never complain about the setup, but she kept apologizing for it. I did tease her, though. I told her it didn’t even look like someone lived there. I never told her that when she lit the candles late at night it felt like the only home I’d ever had. I’d never tell her something like that. She’d only laugh.

I stared at the shadows on the ceiling and the quivering circles of light cast by the candle on the dresser. She was turned away from me, lying on her side, maybe eighteen inches away. I tried not to think about anything.

“So,” she said after a while, and abruptly rolled onto her other side and looked at me.

I did not face her. “So what?”

“What are you thinking?” she whispered.

I glanced at her, then fixed my eyes to the ceiling.

“I’m thinking I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Hm,” she said, and looked up at the ceiling herself, as if trying to find what I saw up there more interesting than her. “So where are you supposed to be?”

“Nowhere. I just shouldn’t be here in particular.”

She stretched her arms toward the ceiling and yawned falsely. “Want some gum?” she asked, sitting up reaching for her purse on the floor.

“No.”

I could feel her freeze for the tiniest of moments. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“All right then.” She put down her purse without taking out the gum. Then she lied down and stared at the opposite wall. After a while she said, “Why shouldn’t you be here?”

I hesitated before answering. “I’m not allowed.”

“What does that mean?”

“She asked me not to see you.”

“When?”

“Last time we talked.”

“When was that?”

“A while ago.”

“What did you say?”

I was silent.

“Did you say you wouldn’t see me?”

“I didn’t say I would.”

“So you lied.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“She asked me not to see you and I just sort of said ‘Hm,’” I lied.

“That must have been a fun conversation.”

“It actually was.”

She stayed quiet for a minute. I could tell she was thinking things over, trying to put it all together. She’d never manage, I knew. Finally she admitted it.

“So if she asked you not to see me then why are you here?”

“She’s got no right to tell me what not to do anymore.”

“Oh.”

At last I rolled onto my side and looked at her. To my surprise I found her staring at me.

“Then you won’t tell her you saw me?”

“Sure I will.”

“What? Why?”

“I haven’t lied to her yet,” I lied, “And I don’t see why I should start now.”

“But it’s not lying if you just don’t tell her.”

“She’ll ask what I did this weekend. I’d be lying if I said I did anything other than this.” I looked back up at the ceiling.

She waited a minute before saying, “Maybe she won’t ask.”

“She’ll ask.”

“But why does she need to know?”

“It’s the truth.”

“But it’s just going to hurt her. She doesn’t need to know.”

“I don’t see why it should hurt her,” I lied. “She made the decision for both of us.”

“Still—”

“Right. Still.”

“I just mean it’s better to be on good terms with—”

“She and I are on good terms. We’re on great terms.”

“Oh.”

Then she fell totally silent and looked away from me. She disturbed the air of the room when she moved and I watched the lights on the ceiling flicker as the current swept over the flame. I could hear cars driving by the house occasionally, and more consistently and quietly on the nearby main road, following their speedy ways home through the night. I could not hear her breathe.

Somewhere else in the apartment, I knew, Sean was sitting alone. I wondered if he was reading a book he found, or eating something, or thinking of music, or maybe listening by an irresistible compulsion to this whispered conversation and wondering what the hell was wrong with his best friend that he should be in this girl’s room and accomplish nothing at all. Whether or not I was wasting my time, I realized, I certainly was wasting his. I thought of getting out of the bed, but the idea quickly faded.

I tried to listen to her breathe. All I could hear were the cars and above them a dull, constant ringing. I sighed and she heard me.

“What does that noise mean?” she said from her corner of the bed.

“Don’t worry about it.”

She rolled over and came closer to me. She rose up to her elbow and held her head aloft and seemed to brandish her chest so that her breasts fell against each other and the dark crevice on her fair skin suggested their full curve under her thin black shirt. I closed my eyes and tried to think about nothing.

“You’re so confusing,” she said.

“I know. Imagine if you had to deal with me every day.”

She laughed softly.

“Let me tell you. It’s not fun.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“See? Are you trying to frustrate me?”

“Look who’s talking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as she pulled her dark bangs across her forehead. Beneath I could see her long eyelashes in sharp relief against the pure brightness of her skin. I had long since given up on keeping my eyes closed.

“What the hell are we doing, anyway?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t answer.

“Well, I said two weeks ago I wanted to see how it went.”

“How what went? What’s going?”

She peered straight into my eyes with a new kind of intensity.

“Well?” I asked.

She said nothing.

“Exactly,” I said. “You haven’t got a damn clue.”

I rolled out of bed. Then I stood.

She sat up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m putting my shoes on.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“Away,” I said.

She moved as if to stand up, but did not. She sat on the bed looking up at me. The candlelight coming from the floor changed her face.

“Why?”

“Because we’re just wasting each other’s time.”

“What?” She contorted her face and shrunk her eyes to slits and in the strange light I could not work out what it meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.

“Two weeks ago wasn’t any different except that it was two weeks ago. And two weeks from now won’t be any different except we’ll be two weeks older.”

“I—,” she started, looking down. Then: “What do you want?”

I took a minute to respond. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I just want it now,” I said. “I don’t want to lie with you and just think about lying with you and what else I want. It’s awful. It’s the worst kind of nothing.” I was raising my voice now. Sean could probably hear.

“I don’t think it’s awful,” she said quietly.

“Then I guess that’s the problem. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t,” she said as I turned to the door.

“Yeah? Why the fuck not?”

She was silent. Everything was silent. No cars sped by in the distance. For a moment I would have believed that nothing at all moved or lived outside that room.

Over my shoulder I watched the candlelight play on the bare walls. I remembered the radiator in the corner and thought it was letting out an impossibly quiet buzz. And I considered the candle wicks and could almost sense the miniscule cracks and hiss of fire on wax. And I felt the wood-panel floor under my shoes and imagined the endless argument of groans and squeaks filling out this whole room under me.

But I heard none of those things. All I heard was the faint, rhythmic, nasal whir of her breathing. Then I heard her sniffle. It was the only answer she was going to give me.

I turned around to face her. My hand was on the doorknob.

“How is it possible,” I said softly, “that it feels wrong to stay and wrong to go?”

She shrugged.

“We’ve done something terrible, haven’t we?”

She nodded.

“And neither of us really knows what it is, do we?”

She shook her head.

“Do you still want me to stay?”

She did not look at me. “I want you to do what you want.” Her voice was flat.

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, then just…just pick something.”

My whole mind seemed to trip over itself. I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to make up an explanation. I wanted to throttle her. I wanted to sleep with her. I wanted to hold her and feel her breathe and try desperately to fall for her and make all the time before become a distant nightmare. I wanted to stay with her forever and ever and most of all I wanted to leave because that I could do by myself.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The air in the hall was colder, thinner.

I breathed deeply. “Goodbye, Eve,” I said. She did not look at me. I closed the door, found Sean sleeping on a couch in the living room, shook him awake, and the two of us walked out to my car in the dark.