by Sarah Gerard
It throbs as I ask Seth to change my bandage. We sit on the edge of the bathtub, and I play the part of his patient, weeping as he ties his hair into a bun. He bows over the flesh, unbinding the gauze, and pauses when the thread catches on scab. “Sorry,” he says.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
He dabs it with ointment. He covers it and binds it with medical tape, sits very still when he’s finished, and looks me in the eye. I’m enjoying the prolonged revenge for what he’s done to me. I can tell that he’s scared of me. I wallow in the unnameable longing I feel in the throb. Self-destruction is my trump card. I blame him for it. In my heart, I know I’m a caring person, with a desire not to harm.
Eleven
By fall, I’ve fully entered the gig economy. I’m an art model, a freelance editor, a dog walker, a part-time assistant, a babysitter, and a movie extra. I find these jobs through friends of friends, on Craigslist, on Facebook, on flyers posted at public libraries and around Bed-Stuy. I wake at six each morning to find more of them. I feel as if I’m always gasping, always moving, never sleeping. I begin to feel a deep sense of hatred for the hustle; I see the hustle as a form of violence wielded against me by late-stage capitalism. I see it in the drawn face of every body surrounding me on the G train at seven in the morning. I have no free time and no job security, so when a West Village bookstore calls me for an interview, I’m gleeful.
The bookstore basement is papered in faux leather-bounds. The receiving desk is piled high with galleys. The owner sees me eyeing one by Jonathan Franzen and tries to give it to me. “Oh, no thank you,” I say.
The owner is a few years older than I am, tall and ethereal like Gwyneth Paltrow. Her name is also Nina, but she’s obviously a superior breed of Nina. She holds a copy of my résumé and asks me whom I’m studying with in my MFA program. I name my professors.
“Hm, I don’t know them,” she says, cocking her head.
She asks me what I like to read. I name a few contemporary authors I saw on Electric Literature this morning, and then one rather obscure name from the past. “I also read everything published by New Directions,” I say. In truth, I’m reading The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. On the cover, the O of “Work” is comprised of two shiny gold rings in a Venn diagram. I’ve encouraged Seth to read it, too, but thus far he’s shown no interest. I’m sure he feels the self-help genre is beneath him, or perhaps that I’m the problem with our relationship, not he. His mother has paid his last two months’ rent since Blick cut him out of the schedule entirely without technically firing him so he can’t collect unemployment. Seth’s mother has told him she won’t pay for another month. He thinks she’s bluffing. “What looks like idleness to her is integral to the creative process,” he tells me. He says he’s taking steps toward building himself a website. When he shows it to me, there is no contact information on it. “If they want to find me, they’ll know how,” he says.
“Are you available to start next week?” asks Nina, and I almost kiss her. She makes me a manager with three closing shifts, a lanyard, and a set of keys. She offers me fourteen dollars an hour with insurance, but I already have insurance through my school. “You can sign up when you graduate,” she says.
Though the thriller writer’s new book hit the bestseller list, I quickly learn that no one at the bookstore has ever heard of him, so I stop saying his name. I start saying the names of books that are coming out this week when I’m asked what I’m reading. I reorder the same titles each Sunday, based on my sections’ sales; if a book hasn’t sold in four weeks, I don’t restock it. I shelve the books that accumulate behind the registers, new shipments waiting to be shelved or customers’ leave-behinds. I start having dreams about running operations in the store’s DOS inventory system.
I rail against Amazon on the store’s Twitter and make signage for the rotating table displays with themes like the true history of Thanksgiving, philosophers and the poets they inspired, and new works in translation.
I let the other booksellers trade shifts with me to attend marches and die-ins and let anarchist book clubs host meetings in the Sociology & Politics section, where I shelve and listen in on their discussions of Hannah Arendt, and dialectics.
I straighten the sideline items and direct people to the bathroom. I advise them what to buy for their frenemy’s birthday or their kid’s preschool graduation or their honeymoon in Laos. I count the tills when we close. Behind the registers and bookshelves, on the shared computers in the basement, on bathroom and cigarette and free-coffee breaks, any spare moment that I can find, all day, I am talking to Aaron.
AARON AND I have continued sleeping together whenever we’re alone. This happens more frequently now as he’s currently production-assisting for a movie directed by Greta Gerwig, shooting near the bookstore. I steal postcards from the impulse rack, doodle on them, then mail them to Aaron’s parents’ house on Staten Island. I point him out to my coworkers, joking, “If I weren’t with Seth, I’d fuck him.” He browses the Used shelf and waits for my shifts to finish. He’s outside the store when I’m locking up. Christmas season has brought the first snow, coating the cobblestones, and Aaron hands me a plastic shopping bag. It’s from the bookstore. “I got this for you,” he says.
The book is wrapped in brown butcher paper, tied with a black ribbon. It’s a worn green hardcover with The Hollow Earth printed in gold on its spine. The author’s name has rubbed off, so I flip to the title page: Dr. Raymond Bernard, A.B., M.A., Ph.D. for Bell Publishing Company of New York. 1979. The Greatest Geological Discovery in History. Made by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Mysterious Land Beyond the Poles. The True Origin of the Flying Saucers.
“There’s an official history, and then there’s the true story,” he says. “The seen and the unseen.”
“This is amazing.”
I flip through the pages. They’re cream and brittle. I hadn’t known it would snow, and I’m shivering in ballet flats and a light jacket with no gloves. We move beneath the awning, and I read by the window light. I’m aware of how the setting lends our rendezvous a cinematic quality. February, 1947: “I’d like to see that land beyond the Pole. That area beyond the Pole is the center of the Great Unknown.”
“Can I drive you home?” he says.
HE HOLDS MY hand in the car as we cross the Brooklyn Bridge and weave silently through empty streets to Bed-Stuy. At the top of my block, we find the street cordoned off with yellow police tape and matching evidence tags mapping out a path to a smashed-up police cruiser on the opposite side of the street, its window shattered across the asphalt. An officer waves us through to the next block, and we creep around, craning our necks in the rearview mirrors to see a cluster of other uniforms bending over the mess, going all the way up to the subway entrance. Neighbors are leaning out of their windows above store awnings. “I wonder what happened,” I say as I lower my head to take Aaron in my mouth. I feel the windows looking down on me as he keeps his hand on my hair. He cums in my throat, and I kiss him and continue swallowing the rest of the way to my door. He follows me in his car. Police lights cycle faintly on the face of my building. Our bedroom window is dark, so Seth is asleep.
I stop on the landing to remember Aaron’s hands, his mouth, his hair, his spit, the yeast of his crotch. I rub my lip and my thoughts quickly turn to panic. I slip to the bathroom and sit on the edge of the tub, rummaging through my backpack as the room fills with steam. I strip off my clothes. My toes burn lowering into the water. Why have the Poles never been reached? I read, smoking. No Poles exist in the sense usually understood.
I place the book facedown on the bath mat. The water drains, and I stare at a fresh Lady Bic on the windowsill. Why does the sun not appear for so long a time in winter near the supposed Poles? I break it open to remove the razor and guide it into my hip. I wipe the blood on my fingertip and taste it. I stand in a towel, gazing into the condensation of the mirror.
As one passes over the rim of the polar opening and approaches t
he earth’s interior, one sinks inward into the hollow. I slide the book under our bed, then fish my phone out of my bag and text Aaron, I appreciate you. I lie down beside Seth. His hair is wet and smells of tea tree. I can tell by the tension in his body that he’s awake but doesn’t want to talk to me. “I love you,” I say. He doesn’t answer.
The next morning, I Google the news in Bed-Stuy and learn that two on-duty police officers were shot at point-blank range on the next block. The shooter was seeking revenge for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. He hadn’t targeted them specifically. Any two officers would do.
“I kind of see his reasoning,” I say to Seth as he makes us eggs-in-a-basket. “It’s random and unfair.”
“And he’s clearly crazy,” he says.
“Is he?”
“Isn’t he?”
“But do you see what I’m saying? It’s bound to happen.”
He ran into the subway and killed himself. He would have died anyway—they would have shot him if he hadn’t.
THERE’S ICE ON the ground when Brian comes to visit his mother in Bay Ridge. I agree to meet him at a coffee shop on the corner where the cops were shot. I suggest the location expecting him not to agree to it since it’s over an hour away, but he does. A few months have passed since my conversation with Erin, and I haven’t asked Brian about the video. We don’t talk anymore. It’s been easier to pretend that I don’t know what I know, to place that night in a black hole in my memory. Brian’s seeming contentedness on Instagram, his clubbing, his hiking, his soccer tournaments, allow me to believe that Erin’s story may have come from a place of malice. I have no way to confirm. I’m distantly relieved to see that he’s extricated himself from that toxic situation. I tell myself that I’m happy we’re able to catch up like old friends. He stands from the table and hugs me when I arrive. He tells me about his forays on Tinder. We laugh. I tell him Seth and I have been happier lately, since I sent him some Psychology Today articles on nonviolent communication.
“I had a feeling it was rough between you,” he says. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
“I didn’t want to burden you,” I say.
“You wouldn’t have.” He smiles sadly. “You helped me so much through my breakup with Erin. We don’t talk anymore, by the way.”
“I figured.”
“She and Jasper got handfasted.”
I already know. Claudette went to the ceremony. She posted the pictures on Facebook. Erin looked pregnant, but I decide against aiming the conversation in this direction. “How’s your mom?” I say.
“Good,” he says. “She’s good.”
“Have you thought any more about the test?”
“The test?”
“The test,” I say, but there’s no recognition. I look at my phone and make like I have to leave suddenly. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t go,” he says. He touches my knee. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I decided to get the test after our conversation,” he says. “Then, when we stopped talking, I realized I couldn’t. The doctors wouldn’t let me anymore because I didn’t have someone to stay with me. I need someone to do this with me. I knew you would see me today because you care about me, Nina. I know you do. I know you’ll always be there for me. Do you mind if we go back to your apartment and talk in private?”
“I don’t think we should do that.”
“It’s not like that,” he says. “I just need to take a shower. Please. I’m so filthy from the subway. I swear I just want to shower.”
I TELL BRIAN he has half an hour. He comes into our apartment and walks coolly to the shower. I sit on a wooden barstool next to the plywood table and am moved by the obviousness of his display. I stare at the white of the back of the bathroom door. Hear the sigh of the shower opening. Seth is out with Paolo, and I fantasize about him barging in at this very moment, what he would think of my explanation that Brian is only here to bathe himself. Whether this scene, of my declining to join him in that activity, would exonerate me of my sins.
We walk to the subway together afterward, and Brian’s clean hand reaches for mine. I let him take it. I tell myself that this is what friends do: friends hold hands. He stands with me at the turnstile, vulnerable, disbelieving. I realize he is lonely. His loneliness soothes me. We hug and there is hesitation in his embrace. I press into him. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not that, though.”
I search his face. I have a sudden urge to flee and an opposing urge to cling. The train is coming and I glance at the tracks, signaling to him that I have to go. He leans in to kiss me on the corner of my mouth, and I let him, and the train is screaming as I swipe myself through. I check my phone when I sit. He’s already texted me.
Thank you.
For what?
For being my support. You’re right. It’s better to know.
THE MEMORY OF Brian’s skin smelling of soap lives everywhere in my body as I close the bookstore. His dark, wet hair and the bathroom steam spilling into the common area. Brian naked on the wooden stool before me, asking me with his eyes to touch him. My resistance. His flight takes off in three hours, and it’s an hour to JFK. I have sixty dollars in my bank account, and there’s a Rolling Stone photography book I decide I need to give him for Christmas. I text Seth to say that I’m going out with a coworker. I text Brian to say I’ll be at the airport. You’re the last woman I made love to, he responds. I want you to be the next.
The train is empty all the way to the airport. Brian’s Uber is stuck in traffic. I wait near the bathrooms at the Delta check-in, bathed in fluorescence and sanitized bacteria. He arrives and proceeds directly to the kiosk. I come up behind him. “There’s a problem with my reservation,” he says, and he tells me to get in line. The line is out the door. He isn’t sure what to do with me now that I’m here; he won’t look at me. I hand him the bag with the book in it. I touch his waist.
“You want me to open this now?” he says.
“I’m just giving it to you.”
He sets it on the ground by his suitcase.
“You’re welcome,” I say. We kiss. “I love you, you know.”
I’m pulled by the inertia of the weight of my confession: I know it’s true because I hadn’t planned to say it. My heart begins racing and I repeat it with more conviction.
His eyes are dark and nervous. “I know you do.”
I TELL SETH I don’t know myself sexually. I say I need to explore. He’s framed by the camouflage net curtains he’s hung over the two windows, on either side of our bed. He stares at a place above my eyes, and it’s as if a movie is being projected onto my forehead in which I am sucking Brian’s dick in the men’s disabled stall at the Delta terminal. I’m on my knees where strange men shit, toilets flushing around me, and until that moment, I’ve been in a fugue state, thinking I’m in love with him. I awake from it in medias res, aware I am being used. I have the distinct sense of starring in shame porn. “Choke on it,” Brian is saying. “Take it all the way into your throat.”
Seth ashes his cigarette out the window. It blows back inside. “Be honest with me,” he says. “Is it that I have a lower sex drive than you?”
“No,” I say. I try to sound certain. I lick the sticky film of Brian’s cum, lingering in my mouth. “I just want to try different things with you.”
“I know Jared holds certain beliefs about love and fidelity,” he says. “I don’t subscribe to them.”
“I don’t want to be polyamorous,” I say.
“Then what is it?”
“I guess I want you to be more aggressive.”
He finishes the cigarette. I watch him, considering the possibility that this is not a problem with the relationship, that therefore I cannot fix it from within. I immerse myself in the fear of losing him. Of him hating me. Of living on the streets, friendless an
d dirty. He drags the cigarette back and forth across the windowsill. He throws the butt outside.
“You’re a very sexual person, Nina. I sometimes wonder what you would be able to do with your energy if you weren’t so focused on your sexual preoccupations.”
“I just think there should be variety in what we do together. This can only help us in the long term,” I say.
“What kind of variety? Specifically what do you want me to do?”
“You could tie me up, maybe.”
He stares into the bookshelf.
“Would you want to do that?” I say.
“Is that what you want me to do?” he says. He rises from the bed.
“What do you want?”
“What I want, Nina . . .” He paces. “What I want doesn’t matter, because you’ll find a way to satisfy yourself with or without me.”
“Take that back,” I say.
“You’re not a bad person. This is just who you are.”
“Who am I?” I say, growing agitated. I pray that he says something generous.
“I think you’re afraid to answer that truthfully.”
I hurl a book at the window. I want it to shatter, but it doesn’t; the book thuds stupidly. I walk to the closet, step inside it, and slam the door. I remember that Rafael is at a show tonight and open the door and slam it two more times.
“Nina, what are you doing?”
I tell him to kill himself. Something breaks, and I know it’s Paolo’s vase, and I feel elated. I sit in the laundry basket, keeping my hands on the knob. Seth’s footsteps grow closer. I hear him gathering the pieces. He puts his hand on the other side. I fight him against it. I tell him he’s crazy. “I’ll tell everyone you hit me,” I say.
“Come out,” he says.
“Get away from me,” I say. I open the door and punch myself in the face. “Am I selfish?” I say. “Am I?”
“Stop it.” He reaches for my fist.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
