by Iris Smyles
Wednesday, 7:45 PM
I got back to the city just in time for New Year’s Eve. It was “an auspicious beginning,” to quote Walt Frazier—I’d had to start drinking earlier than I wanted in order to quell my nerves after executing the mouse. Well, disposed of the body, really. I found him already dead, poisoned and motionless in one of my favorite shoes. Murder is a filthy business. I threw out the shoes, both of them, and had a beer.
The Bastard Felix came over, and I asked him to help me decide between two dresses: the beige or the black? Then I went into the bedroom to get dressed, but just lay for a while on my bed instead, rereading parts of the introduction to In Search of Lost Time, stopping now and then to stare at the wall and listen as the Bastard danced in the next room to Daft Punk’s “One More Time.” Whenever Felix comes over, he puts it on repeat, and if I ask him to play something else, he concedes, but then asks, “One more time?”
I decided on the black dress, which would later rip open in the brief slit at the back. It would rip with my first step out of my apartment, my steps too long, too “auspicious.”
Walt Frazier once got on the treadmill next to Martin—my ex-ex-boyfriend—at the gym, so Walt became one of our celebrities. We had celebrities the way other couples have songs and got sentimental whenever Walt commented on the game—according to him, many began “auspiciously.” We also saw Kirstie Alley at a restaurant in Positano once, which made us romantic whenever she appeared in Weight Watchers commercials screaming about fettucine.
The Bastard wore a brown suit and said between sips of his second tallboy, “I’m gonna pace myself tonight.”
“I wish I could do that,” I said. “Remind me, would you?”
Felix said he couldn’t do that, said he couldn’t accept that kind of responsibility. “Okay,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Whenever I’m told not to do something, I just end up plotting how to do it more. I cemented my smoking habit that way. Martin mentioned he hated smoking, and despite the fact that I hated smoking too, I felt after that a compulsion to smoke all the time.
“It’s the New Year and I’m single,” I told the Bastard. No Martin. No Philip. “I can do whatever I want!” I was tempted to do nothing.
We went out. I sipped my drinks, while posing ladylike in the costume jewelry my grandmother gave me and black fishnet wrist gloves. I sat up tall and stiff and looked at the cigarette decorating my hand.
I got drunk. I started talking to some guy, then another guy, then another until it was midnight and everyone began counting the wrong way. And then it was the New Year, and I was still talking to some guy. I am always talking to some guy it seems. Everyone around us kissed, so I put my hands on some guy’s face, pulled him in close, and laid one on him hard. Pulling back, his head between my hands, I said, “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”
Then I found Reggie at the drinks table and told him he had to choose between Philip and me. Then I said I was just kidding. Then I said I wasn’t kidding. Then I said I was. Then he said he and Felix and Philip had gone out together a few nights ago. They’d gone out for drinks, but he didn’t like it because Philip is so boring.
“That’s like saying you didn’t inhale,” I snapped.
I moved away and began dancing with some guy. Bumping into me, he spilled my drink. “Someone bumped me from behind,” he said instead of apologizing. Then he began spinning me.
We went to the kitchen after to refill our drinks. Felix went to the bathroom to vomit. “Should have paced myself,” he said, shaking his head on the way out.
I was sitting, balanced delicately on the arm of a long sofa. My dress was covered in crackers, and I had my arm dug deep into an open bag, as I complained how I couldn’t find a decent cracker, how all the crackers were “broken.” I removed a handful, showed them to everyone, and angrily shoved them in my mouth. “Whoops,” I said, almost losing my balance, before regaining it just in time. I sat completely still for a whole minute, then dropped onto the floor.
The Bastard pointed and laughed.
“The rotation of the earth,” I explained, looking up. I’d said this before, but I went on saying it again, as if I’d only just thought of it, as if the new year were any newer. “It caught me off-guard.” And then, feeling the world still moving beneath me, I laughed and tried to move with it.
Thursday, 2:31 AM
Rejection casts me in a fine light, as evidenced by my datebook, which has never been so full. The dark circles under my eyes from all the crying, the hair locked in knots from too much time in bed, the waist tiny from not eating; I’m irresistible. Wherever I go, men turn up with soft shoulders. Passing right over Janice—energized from spin class and screaming with confidence—they stand before me, offering tissues and eye contact.
“Since when is weeping a good pickup line?” Janice snapped.
“I’m not trying to pick anyone up,” I told her, sniffling, “though the attention is very good for my self-esteem.”
But with my self-esteem waxing, I worry about my sex appeal waning. My appetite has started to come back, though I try hard to suppress it. I’ve begun washing my hair again, though I finish by teasing it. And on Saturday nights, just before I go out, I look at myself in the mirror and say, “You, you’re nothing much.” And then, the way men do push-ups before heading out the door, I force myself to cry and rub my eyes till I look like a prize, elusive, lost, stuck at the bottom of a claw machine.
“You’re beautiful,” men say, surprised to find me alone, “Where’s your boyfriend?”
I blink pathetically, suppressing tears, as I tell them we broke up, tell them that I’m a mess, tell them to wait while I get out my datebook.
Wednesday, 11:31 AM
Gregory asked how to dim the lamp.
“There’s a trick. It’s slightly broken,” I said. “Look, you hold it this way.”
Jeff asked how to get at the cold water.
“They’re mislabeled,” I said, turning the knob labeled “hot.”
Craig asked how to turn the lights on in the bathroom.
“No, not that one. It’s out. Try the one over the mirror.”
Clagmore apologized when the shower curtain fell down.
“It’s not your fault. The screws are loose. I used nails ’cause I didn’t have a drill. Angle it this way, until it’s wedged good into the walls.”
Jonathan asked about the overwhelming heat while trying to adjust the knobs on my radiator.
“Oh, no,” I laughed. “Nothing can be done about that. You can open this window, though, if you wish it to be cooler.”
Charles asked me about the draft, too.
“The windows are all cracked,” I said, closing a shattered pane. I shrugged. “That’s why I’m wearing my jacket.”
Lawrence asked about the broken record player.
“The speakers are a little off, but”—I fiddled with the balance—“you get used to the heavy bass after a while, and you can still hear the song if you stand close to the speakers.”
Nathan asked about the hole in the couch upholstery.
“Put a pillow over it. Yes, that one. That’s what it’s for.”
Reggie asked about the missing piece in the backgammon set.
“Soda cap,” I said, offering a replacement. I turned it over and read the inscription aloud. “‘Drink Coke, Play Again.’”
“And what about this?” B whispered, before laying a curious hand over my chest.
“Everything in my apartment is half-broken,” I confessed. I held my hand over his. “Turn the heart like this.”
Monday, 6:20 PM
I am dating a man named B. The other night he gave me his address and told me to meet him at his place.
“Apartment 1B,” he said, “as in B.”
The letter comes up in a variety of words, and I find myself often thinking of him. I called the super yesterday about a gas leak. “Where do you live?” he asked. “Which apartment?”
“3B,” he said, “as in Bog?”
“No, Dog. Dog,” I said.
I watched Wheel of Fortune with my mother last weekend. Among the many prizes was a brand new Saab. I bought no vowels, but one of the contestants requested a “B.” Vanna turned a single letter. There is only one B.
I gave B three belated Christmas gifts. Just some things I picked up at my brother’s Dollar store—a laser pointer, a bow and arrow with suction cups, and a T-shirt on which I’d ironed the letter “B.” I wrapped each gift separately and put the stickers on that come preset, saying “To:” and then “From:”
“To: B or not,” “To: B or not,” “To: B or not,” I wrote Shakespearean. “Read the cards!” I said excitedly.
When we stop seeing each other—if we start to more often and then stop—will all those B’s start to bother me? Will my Birthday hurt? Will I use the word “Yet”? Will I explain away our end by saying, “He liked me [yet] not enough.”
And when I visit home and watch Pat and Vanna, dressed up before the studio audience, will I be so distracted with grief that when it’s time to solve the puzzle, I’ll fail to venture a guess. Will I lose the Saab? Will my mother say insensitively, “Better luck next time?”
How much will I cry?
ReBound. ReBound. ReBound.
Begin again.
My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: “Back Esperanto loyally.”
—J.R.R. TOLKIEN
Philadelphia
HE WASN’T EXACTLY TOOTHLESS. He was only missing the one, but it was a good one, right in the front. He sucked at the gap then looked toward the street. “I astynomía, bah!” he said, referring to the cop who’d tried earlier to give him a speeding ticket.
Greeks regard the law as a style more than a rule. He had his own style and gave the cop what for, he explained to the gathered company, before sitting back in his chair. Then, lighting a cigarette and exhaling from his nostrils in two powerful streams, he turned his head and gave me a wink.
He did this often. He’d suck at the gap to accentuate a point, show he was serious, suggest that someone he was arguing with wasn’t, or indicate with a nod that the waiter bring round another beer. It was very sexy, as if in calling attention to that rotted empty space, he were calling attention to all that was lacking in the world. He’d throw a hand, make that sucking sound, then look up from under his heavily flexed brow, hinting at the kind of wisdom that can only be earned from loss. “The only teeth are teeth lost,” Proust would say.He chain-smoked and rode a motorcycle and had greasy hair like a teenage villain from out of a YA novel, though when we met, he was well into his twenties. He worked on cars at an auto shop in nearby Volos and at the end of the day, would take his motorcycle from the garage and drive down into the seaside villages nearby, happy to have a cold beer and a laugh. His hands were rough, his fingernails permanently blackened, and we started seeing each other one summer when I was nineteen or thirty.
We’d meet at this beachfront café, go for a walk, smoke some of the pot he’d brought down from the city, and look around skittishly. Unlike the other laws, those governing drugs were non-negotiable. Marijuana was whispered about in hushed tones. He’d never smoked with a girl before; good Greek girls didn’t smoke, he told me or tried to. “They think is bad,” he said, motioning to his head to suggest such girls had nothing in theirs, before returning his attention to the giant spliff he was preparing on his lap.
Occasionally he’d pause between his perusal of the street and his perusal of his work, in order to peruse me; he’d flash his special smile. Then we’d get high and kiss in the dark on the beach. I barely spoke Greek and he, almost no English, which made our conversations that much more interesting. If we had nothing particular to say, we had at least a very particular way to say it. We’d make our faces telling, our hands expressive, perforating the language barrier with excited jabs. Sometimes we’d bring a still-tangled string of words back to the café, where, over a lavish ice cream sundae, we’d ask our waiter friend to translate.
I was most likely nineteen, according to my work with a calculator just now. I was nineteen when my waiter friend asked about our unlikely romance. “How do you talk to each other?”
“We speak the language of love.” I explained, “It’s a lot like Esperanto.”
He translated his name for me. The first time we met, in a thick accent he said, “I am Bob.”
“Bob,” I repeated slowly, wondering at the oddity of his stilted American name.
The waiter hit him on the shoulder. “His name is Vagelis,” he intervened. “He thought you wouldn’t understand.”
The practice of name translation has always struck me as odd. The notion that they need translating, I mean. As if Bob were a universal concept applicable in every language. As if we all have tables, and we all have Bobs. Tables have four legs and a flat surface; Bob has two and is down one tooth.
“Bobocles,” I christened him. “It’s your ancient Greek name,” I said, laughing and poking him in the chest, as we stood facing each other under the dock. He laughed in kind, not having a clue what I was saying, before applying his sloppy kiss.
Bobocles’ best friend was also missing a tooth. The same tooth, so they called each other twins. They were like blood brothers but with teeth, tooth brothers or rotted gap brothers—it was sort of black where the tooth was supposed to be, from plaque and cigarette tar, I guess.
“Philadelphia,” Bobocles said, pointing back and forth between himself and his toothless twin. They were good friends, he was trying to tell me by way of introduction, “Philadelphia” stemming from the Greek phrase meaning “brotherly love.”
Every night, we’d have beers at our standby café, and Bobocles and his twin would reprise their long-running joke: They’d take their cigarettes and wedge them into the gaps where their teeth weren’t. Then they’d bring the plastic ashtrays close to their faces and point to the gap in the ashtray lip where you rest a cigarette when you’re not smoking it, before pointing back to their respective smiles, with the cigarette stuck in usefully.
I didn’t smoke myself at that time, but I admired Bobocles’ ingenuity and how like Shakespeare’s hunchbacked Richard the Third, he’d turned “disadvantage into commodity.” Smitten, I got on the back of his motorcycle, and he drove slowly through the mountains.
Eventually, he took me to meet his parents. His extended family was camping on a nearby beach for the summer and that night were having a party. He made sure I had a clean aluminum cup to drink from and then sat opposite me between his mother and father, glowing drunk in the firelight.
His parents tried their best at English, and I worked my best Greek, offering English words with Greek roots, the way Bobocles had offered “Philadelphia.” But it wasn’t too hard to understand them anyway, for they said essentially the same things Bobocles said—how pretty I was (his mother pointed at me, then motioned to her face and hair), what a good girl I seemed to be (his father pointed to me and then to his heart). . . . They suggested their son was a good boy, too, before his uncle messed up his hair good-naturedly and helped himself to more retsina.
Looking shyly over the kerosene lamps, at the faces of his parents and then at mine, Bobocles blushed. It was extremely unattractive. So much better when his hand was up my shirt at the bottom of the dock, so much better when he was groping me crazily without feeling. I was bringing out his good side. A calamity, for I wanted to be bad.
After that night, my attention drifted, and when he asked me to go for walks with him under the dock, I only agreed if he had weed and then, spurning his kisses, attempted to improve my Greek, not bothering anymore to speak the language of love, understanding instinctively why Esperanto never caught on.
When I returned the next summer, I saw Bobocles again. I was exiting the market across the street from our old café, when our waiter
friend caught my arm. “Vagelis wants to see you,” he said with some urgency. “Come tomorrow night.”
When the sun fell, I went as planned, ordered a beer with my waiter friend, and chatted with him at a table in the back.
Bobocles turned up on his motorcycle some minutes later, slowing to a stop on the street before the café. He parked and hopped off, swaggered over with nervous confidence. Then, kissing me on both cheeks, he stepped back and smiled broadly. I was happy to see him, but whatever it was I’d loved had somehow gone out of it. Or into it. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into next summer,” Fitzgerald would say. “You got a tooth!” I exclaimed.
He looked at me quizzically, asked our friend to translate. “It’s okay,” I interrupted, and pointed back and forth between my tooth and his new one—perfect, white, gleaming porcelain. He grinned, proud, lacking nothing. I noticed, too, his hair was neatly combed, still wet, his shirt buttoned to the top; he had dressed for me. At the table we looked at each other, then with little left to say, looked around.
He bought me a beer and drank his own with great solemnity before motioning to offer me another. “No.” I waved my hand, wanting to end the awkwardness even more than I wanted a refill. He finished his quickly and quietly and then, as before, asked me to go for a walk. I said I had to get going, had to meet my cousin at the other end of town. Then, with darting eyes, he drew his hand to his lips, showing he meant to smoke. I considered the detour, but at last declined and left.
