Vincent and Alice and Alice

by Shane Jones

  “That’s why you eat half. Like yesterday, my husband made this egg and cheese sandwich with crispy bacon.”

  “Wish Todd did that.”

  “Is someone making popcorn before Chinese?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Chalupa?”

  “I only ate half because you have to consider calories. Like with this Chinese food, you don’t have to eat all of it. I save mine for dinner.”

  “I’ll be shocked if it takes ten minutes, absolutely shocked.”

  “Could be one raggin or twenty different things.”

  “Ten minute.”

  “Stop it, you’re terrible.”

  “But funny.”

  “You’re not at the Bragg street side are you? It’s a real pain to get, hahaha, okay, good. We’ll be right down. Hey Steve, you mind going down to get the food, my feet hurt.”

  “Your feet always hurt when you have to do something.”

  “Or when she’s hungover.”

  “Which is always.”

  I’m walking home with a headache. My personal record for this walk is thirty five minutes and I’m going to break it in twenty three, occasionally jogging, speed walking when I can’t jog. In my life I set records.

  At a stop light, the driver in a jeep, college aged in an orange tank top and desert storm shorts, who has hit every red light on my path so far, tells me to slow down. But I can’t slow down because I’ve completed my training, so I wave and say, “I can’t slow down!” then turn down my block and into the evening sunshine filtered through the trees.

  Everything is exactly the same – the squirrels darting across the street, the stench of heated garbage waiting to be picked up, those without AC sitting on their porches, joggers in yoga pants, dogs shitting, the flowers, the bikes, the cars. The only change is the disappearance of Elderly, who I fear the worst given his age, mental state, and lifestyle – living shirtless in a 1995 Pontiac Bonneville.

  I’m a dope, walking up the concrete steps to my apartment believing the program could really show me something else, but this is what the State does. They pay exorbitant fees to tech companies who dazzle with presentations given by men in skinny ties and degrees from Ivy league schools. By men named Dorian Blood, Fang Lu, and Billy Krol. The State has no idea what these companies actually do, but they’re seduced by the technology, the colored charts, the dimming lights in the conference room signaling a big budget presentation.

  The Leaders want nothing to do with technology themselves. When a firm in 2005 supplied iPhones and a new web system for each Leader none of them participated, because they had to physically do it. But when Cordo & Co. came in with monitoring devices because so many employees weren’t showing up to work, they were for it, they didn’t have to run the devices. Because they don’t care how diabolical or bizarre these programs are as long as money is saved, productivity goes up, and they don’t have to finger a screen.

  I drop my keys at the front door – on a mat supplied by my landlord that reads CHRIST IS THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE – and think how boring. My life. My life is boring. In the mailbox I have three pieces of mail from three different banks, a sushi coupon, and a flyer advertising Fourth of July fireworks.

  Someone inside my apartment is talking.

  I close the door, making sure not to make a sound.

  Now I don’t hear anything. I think about knocking on my own front door knowing it’s impossible that someone could be in there who isn’t me. When I place my keys back in my pocket I touch two pills. My landlord didn’t say anything about the plumber, or a worker stopping by, I don’t think. Through the past days of PER training, I can’t remember.

  I run from the porch and to the side of the house, bending down low between the side and bathroom windows.

  Crouching below my bedroom window, my heart is racing in that way where you think you’re going to have a heart attack, but you never actually have the heart attack. The human body is powerful when it comes to stress response. It can absorb great storms. I can’t hear anything inside my apartment, but my next door neighbor has purchased an acoustic guitar. He wants to play so his windows are open. I don’t know much about my neighbor besides his children are always shirtless.

  I get the courage to stand, peek into the window, and sitting on my bed is a woman with just her back visible, maybe Shawl Lady, I can’t tell.

  I should call the police. A stranger in my apartment is a crime. I could call my landlord, but he hates me because the sink broke and he said it was my fault for rinsing coffee grinds down the drain. He said the damage was identical to my security deposit. When it comes to money, humanity goes out the window.

  All around me is the summer buzzing of bugs, kids screaming in pools, bass from cars, and my neighbor strumming his new guitar.

  I peer into the window again. This time I take a long look so what I’m seeing feels real. There’s definitely a person in there, but it’s not Shawl Lady, it’s Alice.

  Frantically trying to remember the rules of interacting with my gate I go dizzy. I crouch back down and take a few deep breaths. My neighbor stops playing guitar and from his window asks if everything is okay and I say everything is amazing.

  “Amazing?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Amazing.”

  I’m walking into my apartment. I can do this. My new mantra: I will live in my gate and be happy.

  But now there’s no voice coming from the bedroom, only water running in the kitchen. Dramatically, I toss my keys on the table with the TV, a move I never do, hoping the sound will alarm whoever (Alice, I love you) might still be here. I walk toward the kitchen, more thief than resident in my own home.

  The hallway takes forever to navigate. All the windows in my apartment are open except the forever-stuck front one, I can tell, because my neighbor is now playing Dave Matthews, I think, he can’t sing in the slightest, but the lyrics are familiar. In my final step before the kitchen I take one long and slow stride.

  I am terrified.

  Now I’m at the spot where the hardwood floor becomes these junky press-and-seal faux kitchen tiles the landlord hasn’t replaced since I moved in, most of them peeling at the corners. Alice is washing her hands in the sink. On the stove is a boiling pot of water. My face must look ridiculous in its total shock. I’m not breathing, I’m panting. Above the sink the lilac tree is swaying violently in the beginning winds of another storm.

  I don’t say a word and she doesn’t notice me.

  She’s wearing baggy black sweatpants with a long drawstring hanging between her legs and a black spaghetti string top with three tiny holes. Her rarely washed curly hair is in a rubber band ponytail. All very Alice. It smells like her, a mix of Nag Champa and sweat. Even her shoulder tattoo – a solid black circle with curved Arabic lettering outside of it – is here.

  I step forward and into my gate.

  I fake cough against my trembling fist.

  She turns and says, “Hey you, the cheese?”

  I’m stunned and sweating and Dave Matthews is playing. My first eye contact with Alice. She still has the same power over me, she consumes me, drains me. If that sounds odd, it’s not, every relationship has a stronger one. I would do anything for her and she knows it.

  I run my hands down my face and she’s still here. I gather myself and pull the professional me above and out my constricted throat, asking, “The cheese?”

  “For the pasta,” she says, dumbfounded. “I told you this morning before work? And texted you?”

  I pull my phone from my pocket and there it is, a one word text from a number I don’t recognize – CHEESE – followed by three thick red hearts.

  “Oh yeah,” I reply, “you did.”

  Every day since Alice left and the podium incident and working from home and PER training becomes compacted into a single moment, a thought cloud, poof.

  “See a doctor,” says Alice.

  I don’t question this version of Alice or attempt to touch her while entering my gat
e. There are more rules. I need to grab my list. Let the gate guide me is one, so go get the cheese, you jabroni. Still, I stand in the kitchen just staring. Everything else appears the same, my reality is still my reality. No beach front property or champagne colored Lexus or in-ground swimming pool or Tudor-style home with five bathrooms, only Alice. It’s perfect.

  I mumble the word cheese and smile.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah, nothing.”

  She slumps her shoulders and walks across the kitchen, away from the coming storm now slapping the lilac tree from side-to-side. Here comes Alice, across two hundred days until her body is pressed against mine.

  “Sorry for being mean,” she mumbles. “Just had a rough day. Love you.”

  “I love you too.” My brain is boiling and my legs are liquid. I put my arms around her and my hands don’t move through her.

  I walk in a near run to the grocery store. I pass RISSE, which is now being rebuilt with yellow and green signage. A landscaper waves hello with a leaf blower strapped to his back, a handful of grass blows into the sky. Everything is brighter now. Boys in black thobes and girls in pastel hijabs are playing soccer to the far side of the building as a teacher shouts for them to come inside.

  A man in a shirt, BEASTMODE, is vaping at the grocery store entrance, exhaling with his head tilted back. I pass through all clouds and into the store. My future is here and it’s Alice.

  In the dairy section a woman is holding thirty yogurts. She’s balancing them by leaning the containers against her leaning back body and walking backward. Surprisingly, it’s working, she only drops one from her right shoulder, which someone scoops up and places right back on her. I pull the folded paper of PER rules, taken from the bedroom before leaving, from my pocket:

  1. Do not confront the gate about its plausibility.

  2. Do not question humans inside the gate.

  3. Do not control the gate.

  4. Let the gate guide you.

  5. Do not attempt to escape the gate.

  6. Documenting the gate by video or photo is prohibited.

  But is Alice in my apartment an image of Alice or a clone or… Should have paid closer attention to the training video. I think this guy behind me is going to steal some frozen shrimp. What cheese do I buy so Alice doesn’t leave me again? My head is blurry. The arrival of Alice brings on a new level of anxiety, like everyone can see my thoughts. I want to talk to Elderly. One person leaves, another comes back. Can I kiss her? Can I bring her outside? Can others see her? Accept your life while standing in the dairy section of the grocery store. Guy behind me is loading up two reusable bags with frozen shrimp, good for him, he needs it more than anyone else in here. I grab the cheese.

  Back home, I’m so on edge I sit at the table with extreme uncomfortable posture. She asks if everything is okay, and I say yes, everything is fine, why, the cheese? It is definitely the wrong kind, but she’s being pleasant so she doesn’t say a word. I can’t stop staring. I want to touch her again even though I know it’s prohibited (let the gate guide you, right). I’m trying to act like all this is normal.

  “Okay, let’s start over. How was work?” she asks. “Francesca still pissed?”

  I struggle to speak, but what comes out is natural and resembles us from years ago. “Steve said he likes egg foo yung in a Chinese voice,” I say, relaxing a little.

  “Oh my God,” laughs Alice, sprinkling cheese onto her pasta, her favorite meal. She eats pasta constantly, making a large pot and stretching it out over the course of the week in multiple Tupperware dishes.

  “Then they ordered Chinese food,” I add.

  “I don’t know how you work there,” she says, shaking her head. “RISSE clients survived a civil war, and you have people there mocking foreign voices, people who sit in an office with no threats and a big retirement. It’s unbelievable.”

  “I did this online calculator thing,” I say spinning spaghetti on my fork, “where I can retire in twenty years. I’m close to ten. It doesn’t seem so bad, but just saying the date 2037 sounds fake.”

  “Most of your life,” she points out correctly. “What happens if you don’t make it to ten?”

  “I lose everything I put in.”

  “But you still get a small piece?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Michelle told us that a pig can have an orgasm for thirty minutes.”

  Again, I stare. She’s real.

  “Let’s do something tomorrow. It’s boring just sitting around the apartment all weekend. Maybe the castle? It’s been awhile. What do you think?”

  I feel both scared and excited. “Sure.”

  With her fork she acknowledges my plate. “Not eating?”

  “At work Sarah brought in bagels and I ate three.”

  Alice shrugs and I spend the rest of the meal watching her and feeling hungry.

  “This guy at the store was stealing bags of frozen shrimp,” I say.

  “That’s perfect,” says Alice. “He needs it more than us.”

  Alice walking to the bedroom (Please don’t disappear in there).

  Alice sitting on the couch reaching for the remote (I’ll watch something with you).

  Alice rubbing lotion on her legs (Want me to do it?).

  Alice sipping seltzer (Where does it go?).

  Alice breathing (Do you have the same heart?).

  I pretend I need to use the bathroom as she is leaving the bathroom. I slightly bump into her because I need to know she is authentic, which, shoulder-to-shoulder, she is. “Watch it,” she says.

  Together we open the windows because we want to feel the cool air following a storm, and someone from a passing car yells that they have “big booty bitches.” In a conference-call voice Alice replies, “Congratulations.”

  11:45 pm

  Alice is sleeping so I carefully slide in next to her. Something falls on my leg, I panic, it’s a phone, but no, it’s her hand. I move to the edge of the bed and her hand falls further, her fingers grazing my leg. I’m so excited I nearly laugh. In my delirium, I place my hand over my face like a spider and squeeze hard enough to distract myself from the fact that Alice is here.

  1:37 am

  She sweats like a child – droplets cover her nose – when she dreams.

  3:45 am

  I place one fingertip on her chest and remove it like touching a hot stove when her heart beats.

  5:47 am

  Her leg now over my body, mouth parted, the daylight opening the bedroom. I am so exhausted. I imagine Alice disintegrating in the sunshine soon-to-be at our ankles. Hope for clouds. What will happen to her when we’re at the castle?

  5:49 am

  The castle is a one hour train ride south located on a hill, miles of surrounding farmland with flower-bordered paths and radiant lakes, previously owned in the 1850s by Frederic Church. A tourist destination for those too afraid to go on a real vacation. People like it because it’s a castle. Young artists visit for inspiration because Church said the property was an attempt to create a holistic and heavenly environment for creativity. It’s like going back in time, nothing has changed from when Church lived there with his wife. You can even walk into the area of the house where the help lived, which is a half room with no electricity and dresser drawers for beds. I’m never sleeping.

  6:30 am

  Trying now, but at this point, it’s a nap. Where’s the cut-off? Alice sleeps through the garbage truck rumbling down the street, the plastic bins thrown across the sidewalk, the deaf person singing, my whistling nose, the world.

  THE WEEKEND

  I’m buying coffee and croissants, standing near the expanding line waiting to board the train. Once Alice is confronted with the cashier’s eye-contact she will vanish, portal-like, I am sure of it. But she just looks down when I’m handed my coffee and croissant. Alice says she isn’t hungry. The ideal ga
te is real, and Dorian’s philosophy of the fantasy acting as a transparent-covering on my reality holds true. What if we had a baby? The line is moving.

  We’re heading to the castle, the river passing by smooth as glass. The guy in front of us is playing a machine-gun video game with the sound loud because he thinks his headphones are plugged in. Doesn’t matter, all I can concentrate on is my leg touching Alice’s leg. It could be seconds or minutes, who knows, where I’m moving my thigh back-and-forth, not connecting with her, then connecting with her.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, moving her leg from mine. “Too much coffee?”

  “I’m good.”

  She shifts over in her seat. “When you drink too much coffee you’re weird.”

  “Not too much coffee,” I say holding a coffee, “just didn’t sleep much.”

  “So?” Her demeanor changes. “Does that give you the right to put your body on my body?”

  What year Alice is this? What I mean – is this her at the beginning of our relationship, how it felt last night when she appeared, or is this Alice toward the end, which, based on what she just said to me is here now. She puts her hand on my leg and turns to the side in her seat, facing me. Through the window a motorboat is spraying a wake and struggling to keep up with the train. It’s not a race but it feels like one. Boats aren’t faster than trains. The guy playing the video game is using a flamethrower now. “Don’t shut down, be present with me,” says Alice. “You need to be aware.”

  “You always say that. I know what you mean, but also, I don’t. How can I be talking to you right now and not be here?”

  “I know what you mean,” she mimics slack-jawed, “but also, I don’t.”

  Do not control the gate.

  Okay.

  Let the gate guide you.

  Yes.

  We’re walking the winding path toward the castle. Some people ride the shuttle because they like to sit as much as possible. The man playing the video game is still playing, headphones now plugged in. His body is small and kind of twisted up. He’s with his mother and they’re driven in a separate shuttle, a camouflage golf cart with chrome rims, careening up the hill.