Flatscreen Read online

  “Why not?”

  “Smoked too much weed … fucked up in high school.”

  “Your family pissed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what you doing now, working?”

  “No.”

  “So what the fuck you doing with yourself, kid?”

  “Nothing, really. TV, Internet…”

  “Must be sweet, man.”

  “It’s not that sweet. Actually, it’s pretty boring.”

  “I’ll take boring over working any day.”

  “I’m not really rich anymore. We moved over by the highway.”

  “Where at?”

  “Elm Condos.”

  “Elm Condos? Damn. Those shits ain’t bad. Compared to this neighborhood, anyway.”

  True. Our apartment was small, antiseptic, but double the price of a duplex like this one. I was still a bourgeois stoner with a rich daddy. No personal allowance, but he put food on the table, high thread-count sheets on my pillow-top Tempur-Pedic. A common and confusing situation for fuckups like me: cash poor, well insured, unmotivated.

  “What about you?”

  “Pepsi factory.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s a Pepsi factory.”

  “What do people do in Pepsi factories?”

  I’d seen TV docs about labor laws, sweatshops, the factory strike of 1909. Understood labor as concept, couldn’t picture the specifics. Was the Pepsi mixed in giant tubs by elves? Was there a guy whose only job was to add the sugar? I entertained a romantic notion that I too could bottle Pepsi. But it wasn’t feasible. Unlike Dad, I was all thumbs, no knack for mechanical contraptions outside the kitchen. Nothing manly about me.

  “We just bottle it. It’s pretty easy, actually. Boring, but easy. It’s union, though, so the money’s okay.”

  Felt like I was in a John Hughes movie, only I was playing the wrong role, not the trodden romantic lead but the rich asshole or the comic-relief stoner. Filled the guy’s beer in consolation for the fact that his life was probably shittier than mine.

  Dan was talking to Nikki, the Whole Foods cashier with green eyes, chemical-red hair. I’d brought Dan a beer, but he already had one. Chugged his beer, took the one I’d brought, chugged it too. Nikki looked on impressed, the way younger girls sometimes look at older guys who were cool in high school, regardless of their current status.

  “This is Nikki.”

  Never formally met, but I’d seen her name tag, watched her scan bell peppers with amorously unloving slacker imprecision.

  “You work at Whole Foods.”

  “I know where I work.”

  “I go there a lot.”

  “I know,” she said, raised an eyebrow. “A lot.”

  “I find it peaceful.”

  “I don’t. All those privileged assholes. You should hear how people talk to me. So what are you, a cook or something?”

  Nose ring exaggerated the movement of her nostrils. It sparkled, spelled trouble in a good way.

  “I just like cooking.”

  “Haven’t seen you in there in a while.”

  “Yeah. I moved. I don’t have a car, so I can’t really get there. And my new kitchen sucks.”

  “I hate cooking,” she said.

  “Me too,” Dan said.

  Smiled at each other. Apparently Dan liked girls. The most unlikely soul could find a counterpart. Who was mine? Across the room Beth Cahill pretended to fellate a beer bottle. She’d been anonymous in high school. Now she craved attention, no matter how she got it. Considered making a move, but it wasn’t a good match. I was a lethargic non-Lothario; she worked in the sex industry. Besides, I didn’t have weed or a basement. Only pickup line I’d ever successfully used: “Want to come back to my basement and smoke weed?”

  If I’d had any money, might have paid her to sit by my side, whisper vulgarities to distract me from the pain of losing the illusion of Jennifer.

  Instead went to the back porch. Empty. All the smokers were out front. Window in the adjacent house lit up blue with TV light. Could barely make out the people inside, but thought it was a young couple, radiant in the blue light, laughing together as another comedian fed them one-liners to soothe their frozen souls.

  Lit my cigarette. Screen door opened. Alison Ghee walked out, proving our lives weren’t perpendicular lines, but curved, crooked, moving jaggedly. Eyes bulged out of her face, blue like the TV light, endearingly dilated, incongruous with her pale cheeks, which hadn’t developed that healthy, rosy winter sheen.

  Alison wobbled toward me wearing ten-inch boots and the expression of no expression I’d seen on myself in Kahn’s mirror, numbed out on the feeling of no feeling. A good expression to have, a scary one to see on someone else. Smile looked pinned to her face: unintentional, uncomfortable. Her walk an inglorious attempt to glide, like a vintage Italian bicycle (Breaking Away, Twentieth Century Fox, 1979), grace of its thin frame betrayed by airless tires. Hips were there in theory—wide bony waist for one day when … —but not substantiated by meat-stuffed skin. Alison’s factory-faded jeans had nothing to cling to. They scrunched of their own accord, stayed put with the help of a white nylon belt.

  She sat by my side, pulled up her jacket in an attempt to protect her exposed neck from the wind. I offered a cigarette. She accepted. Clearly fucked up. I envied her position, wanted to join her internal city, walk its honey-sweet streets.

  “You got any more of whatever you got?”

  “Dude,” she said slowly, pouty “D,” enunciated “uuuude.”

  “Dude.”

  “Schwartzy. I been looking for you.”

  Inched her chair closer to mine, then back, as if she wanted to cozy up, let me warm her in the pudgy flab of my gut, but was suddenly overcome by a deep fear of physical intimacy. As if, upon closer inspection, she understood the neediness in my stare. Alison scooched back in the other direction, eyes now pointed at the stick of moon, a skinny slit among the atmosphere’s other objects of mocking magnificence.

  “I was going to call you.”

  “Call me?” she said, emphasis on the “?” “How could you call me?”

  “On the telephone.”

  Waited for her to tell me I was funny. Fucked-up people always thought I was funny.

  “I didn’t give you my number. So how could you have called me?”

  Good point. Chair seemed to be floating further away, like her hallucinatory imaginings were manifesting in the physical world. Wanted to tell Alison everything about my life: mother, brother, Kahn; about the dream I’d had a few nights ago where I was sitting in a velvet throne while Sheila Glent-Kahn poured olive oil on my back, rubbed it in as I watched Dad and Benjy wrestle in French-cut lingerie in a giant cage on my flatscreen. Wanted her to understand. I was ready to confess, purge, await comfort.

  “Kahn is living in my house.”

  Alison nodded. Cigarette was already lipstick-stained, sentimental red, reminiscent of perfume ads, the kind that lets you peel back, sniff, feel a phantom female presence.

  “I love my mother but I don’t know how to express it,” I said.

  More nodding.

  “My mother doesn’t know how to express it, either, or maybe she doesn’t love me,” I continued. “My father definitely doesn’t love me. My brother slipped away into the real world and I’m alone. I’ve got Kahn, but I’m afraid of Kahn. I’m afraid of becoming Kahn, but part of me knows I’m already Kahn, that he’s just the part of me I want to keep away from the world. I think Kahn might be in love with me.”

  “Kahn?” she said, laughing.

  The kind of laugh that goes with smudged lipstick: lungy, part-laugh, part-cough, part-face-first-flop-onto-cast-iron-deck-table. Looked like it hurt. She pulled herself up from the table, face now imprisoned by table-made crisscross pink marks. Alison tried to look at me with a straight face, then laughed again, holding the chair’s frozen arms for support.

  “In love with you? That’s silly. Kahn, in love with
… you?”

  “What’s so funny? You don’t even know who Kahn is.”

  “Kahn, of course. That guy who works at CVS. The guy who develops one-hour photo. With the funny mustache. He’s not in love with you.”

  The word “you” was accompanied by a patronizing poke to my nose.

  “Well, yeah, you’re right. That particular Kahn is not in love with me. I’m talking about a different Kahn. That’s Indian Kahn. One-Hour Photo Kahn. I’m talking about wheelchair actor Kahn. Jewish Kahn.”

  “You fucking Jews,” she said, in a way that was joking, but not really. Maybe her bone was on behalf of Jeremy, residual anger at the synagogue for housing his sadness.

  “Fucking Jews? We’re not so bad. Don’t say fucking Jews.”

  “You liked it when I fucked you.”

  Another nose poke.

  “That’s true. I did like it. There were a lot of things I liked about it. Some things I didn’t like. But I liked the idea of it. I certainly appreciated the gesture.”

  “Appreciated the gesture?” Alison contemplated that one by blowing smoke in my face.

  “Oh, I see,” she said, laughing again, the way movie gangsters laugh before brass knuckles to your dome. “I see. You want me to fuck you again? You want me to slide my wet pussy over your Jew cock? Would that make you feel better, make your sadness go away? Is that it? Mommy doesn’t love you so little old Alison comes to the rescue? Hahaha. Eli Schwartz. Hahahaha.”

  Heaved an ankle onto my thigh, licked her lips, puckered.

  “C’mon, big boy,” she said. “Show me what you got.”

  “Jesus,” I said, cried.

  Hadn’t cried since childhood. I’d been trying to cry for years, force it out by leaning over raw onion, eating extra wasabi. I wanted catharsis. Now the tears came: unmitigated, embarrassingly.

  Alison removed her leg. Unpuckered, unstiffened, un-slutted.

  “I’m such a pussy,” I said. Sounded like “Fufufufu pussy.”

  “I’m being mean,” Alison said. “I don’t mean to be mean. Not to Eli Schwartz. I don’t want to be mean.”

  “Such a fucking pussy.”

  “A pussy in a good way,” she said, which didn’t help.

  Blubbering now, wiping my face on the arm of Alison’s jacket. Wiping off her jacket with my hand. Wiping off my hand on my own jacket.

  “Eliii. You’re a nice guy. You’re too nice. I’m not nice. I’m not a happy person for you. I’m not the girl who’s the girl you like.”

  “What girl?”

  “Schwartz, you’re so sad. I’m just feeling good tonight, you know? Feeling good, feeling tall. You’re a sad fucking dude. Sometimes I’m a sad fucking chick. But tonight I’m flying. I don’t need all this, you know, crying and shit.”

  This made me cry more.

  “It’s not your fault,” Alison said.

  “I thought I was funny?” I said, still snotting, still wiping, still spilling salty tears.

  “We’re not what we need,” she said, like it made perfect sense. Then gave me a look that maybe said, “It’s possible I don’t actually believe what I just said, but I’m being strong and cruel because it’s easier than facing up to the more complicated feelings buried deep beneath my veneer of fucked-up-ness.”

  Seen that look in movies. The part of the movie when everything gets bad. Wanted that part of the movie to be over. Trying to write my own movie: unclichéd, less sad, more surprising. The other actors weren’t reciting the right lines.

  Watched her walk away. Same hunched walk. Same pigeon-toed stuttering steps, slow, barely balanced, trying not to slip on the iced-over stoop. Where was the soundtrack? Some old-school American standard, singer’s musty, smoke-muted refrain calling Alison back into my arms, back into the pathetic cradle of my confusion.

  Couldn’t find Dan. Must have gone with Nikki, off to an upstairs room to unzip winter wear, search drawers for a condom, give up, Dan promising to pull out, secretly excited to explode on her stomach.

  Jennifer and Stef stood in a circle of people laughing, smiling, drinking, Jennifer blushing. Guests revolved around her at an incalculably slow pace; they were her moons.

  “Ben,” I said into the phone. Never called him Ben. Hoped it would make me sound serious, situation appropriately dire.

  “I thought you had a date.”

  “Didn’t go so well.”

  “Have you been crying?”

  “I’m not a pussy. Just sensitive. I’m a sensitive man, okay?”

  “I’m coming,” he said, because he was a martyr.

  Benjy drove, Erin rode shotgun. I hopped in back, slouched, stretched.

  “What were you doing out here?” Benjy said, like his spine was crawling with ghetto-lice.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looking for something, I guess.”

  “A mugging?”

  Erin hit him on the arm, said, “Apologize.” Something of her mother in her: she wanted to take care of people.

  “Sorry,” Benjy said, which surprised me. He rarely conceded. Drove with both hands on the wheel, radio off. Sensed that I’d intruded on a non-me-related tension, given the duo excuse to focus on a problem not their own.

  “Was it a good party?” Erin said.

  “Not really.”

  “How’d you get here?” Benjy said. Unclear whether he was asking about the party or my state of existence.

  “Dan,” I said. An accurate, if incomprehensive answer to both questions.

  “We’re going to get ice cream,” Erin said. Benjy’s silence made it clear this unnecessary endeavor was neither his idea nor a good one. “Do you want to come?”

  Too cold for ice cream. Store empty; counter kid flipped through Cliff’s Notes for Othello. Steel soft-serve machines mumbled their own mourner’s Kaddish. We ate with hands tucked into sleeves, plastic spoons poking out like cheap prostheses.

  Benjy drove the back route, off the highway, on the road with the speed bumps. Hopped speed bumps like hurdles.

  Erin said, “Slow down.”

  Benjy eased off the gas.

  “That’s the house I grew up in,” she said, pointing.

  “But you didn’t go to our high school.”

  “Private school. Country Day. I was one of those horse-riding girls.”

  Erin was still looking out the window even though we’d passed the house.

  “She has different parents than I had.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “My sister. They split when she was six. They were together my whole childhood. We went to Nantucket in the summer.”

  “Mary seems nice, though.”

  “She is,” Erin said. “But it’s different. It’s different now. Maybe it’s better. It’s probably better. I’m sure my mother’s happier. He drove her nuts. But she still takes care of him; he still drives her nuts. I know she tries. She tries too hard. He doesn’t try at all.”

  “He does,” I said.

  “What the fuck do you know?” Benjy said.

  “It’s just different now,” Erin said.

  I wanted to say, “He loves you,” but wasn’t the type of guy who said things like that, and wasn’t even sure it was true. Lit a cigarette.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Benjy said.

  Threw it out the window. Dropped Erin at our old house, watched the automatic security light go on, hold her like a spotlight as she punched the garage code. Garage opened, swallowed Erin. Still looked like our house.

  Mom asleep in front of the TV. Empty wine bottle on the floor, Argentine, average-priced. White noise of an infomercial. Mom’s shallow breath. Lifted her gently—he at the feet, me at the head—carried her to bed. She woke for a moment.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Bedtime, Mom,” Benjy said. “You stole my bed.”

  When we came out of Mom’s room, Benjy put clean sheets on the couch, then lay down in all his clothes, including shoes, stared up at the ceiling.

  five
r />   Wounded Women:

  • TV too has wounded women. They wear leather, wear their anger on their full-sleeve tattoos. Angry at fathers, other abusing menemies: mustached uncle, sado/slutty ex, handsy priest. This anger is transferred to all men, even the plaid-shirted, soft-eyed virgin who wants to hold her tenderly, whisper sweet street-vernacular into her sleeping ear. She pushes plaid-shirt away, afraid of letting herself love, letting herself be vulnerable again. Episode continues after a short commercial break. Somehow plaid-shirt proves himself. He is there for her. Breaks down her barrier. She opens herself. Fucking ensues, etc. Maybe they cry in front of each other. Maybe they learn to see the world as something less than aggressive.

  • TV never told me how to break down the barrier, and the truth is TV doesn’t know. Truth is those barriers stand. Barriers like grief, which sticks to Mom, sticks to Alison, sticks to them like gum in hair. Only option is to cut until you’re ugly, keep cutting, feel the ridges of your skull-scars as physical incarnations of your loss. Those barriers stand, and maybe they age. Age and become nostalgia. Age and become their own separate deaths: death of the sadness, death of the original feeling.

  • Wanted to bring Alison to the birth of new feeling. Sad too. Birth of new feeling meant the death of old feeling. Alison already thought everything was dead.

  six

  Couldn’t sleep. Condo heat nonadjustable, no settings but on and off. It was on. Radiator rattling, ready to burst from the wall with the force of a freewheeling subway car, nuts and bolts airborne, machinery burning. I smacked it a couple times to no avail. Contemplated finding a hammer, fucking shit up, dueling to death. Smelled like death: sautéed mouse corpse. Plus the heat. Not even an all-encompassing heat that kills chill. This heat was menopausal: hot flashes upsetting my delicate balance. Hot air aimed straight at me in intermittent bursts. Then the quick return of cold. Sweating and shivering, I was up. Nothing to be done.

  Wrapped myself in a flannel robe. Worn, holey. Soft, semi-holy. My housecoat. My smoking jacket. My uniform. Tiptoed toward the kitchenette. Benjy deep in unconscious unrest on the foldout. No relief from dreams. Face down, legs spread, biting hard into pillow. One shoe still on. Other sideways on the floor.