“It’s where I write my to-do list,” he said last June on our first date, as we sat spinning right-to-left-and-back on barstools at the Dovre Club. Then he took out a pen and scrawled my name on all three lines, then again and again, all the way down his arm—CLAIRE CLAIRE CLAIRE CLAIRE—before dropping the biro on the floor and reaching for me. His teeth pressed against my lower lip drew blood, and when I climbed onto his lap and wrapped my legs around him, the bartender told us we had to leave. He rode with me on the handlebars of his fixed-gear to his apartment on Harrison, and I forgot we weren’t using anything until he pulled out of me, wrapped a fist around himself, and came into his hand.
“Hey, thanks for not knocking me up,” I said, reaching across the floor for my cigarettes.
“Of course,” he said, wiping his palm on the sheet, on the part of the bed closest to the wall. “I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”
Today, in here, the sight of him, both put-together and disheveled, and the smell, that deep, sweet, caramel scent of roasting coffee that sticks to his clothes, his skin, his hair—that scent that is so strongly linked to him in my mind that some mornings just walking past a Starbucks on my way to class and inhaling is enough to get me wet inside my underwear—it all almost makes me forget the fifth, sixth, and seventh months of our relationship. For a moment I want to turn and lock the door, and walk the few steps it would take for my hip bones to be pressed against his jeans. I want to stand on my tiptoes till my face can reach his face. And as if he’s thinking the same thing, he clears his throat and says, “What are you wearing under that blazer?”
“Nothing.”
“No skirt?”
“Nup.”
“What about under the tights?” he asks.
I smile up at him.
Then he says, “Why are you dressed so sexy? Do you have a date? Are you seeing someone else already? Do I mean so little to you?” And I remember the fifth, sixth, and seventh months of our relationship. So I leave the door unlocked and try to breathe through my mouth. I stare at the floor, scattered with unroasted beans, and I tell him, “I’m pregnant.”
The first thing he does is slap a palm to his forehead in a cartoonish gesture of shock that almost makes me laugh. His fingers are brown with coffee stains. “Is it mine?” he asks.
“What kind of a—” I try to look hurt and insulted like women do in the movies when men ask them this, but I can’t maintain it for long. “Yes,” I say. “You’re the only person I’ve slept with since we broke up.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Katie pokes her head in. “Luke—oh hey, Claire—are you almost done in here? There’s a line out the door and Jackie’s pulling horrible shots. I want to put her back on the register.”
“I’ll be right out,” he says. When she’s gone, he turns to me and takes my hand. “Hey. When can we talk about this?”
“I’ve already decided. I’m not having it.”
“Huh.” He looks at the wall, pasted with flyers about workplace safety and the minimum wage in California. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You can pay for half the procedure.”
“How much is that gonna be?”
“I think it costs two hundred and fifty dollars,” I say. “But I might just be getting that from Dirty Dancing.”
—
It’s almost four o’clock and outside it’s getting windy. The fog is rolling in to the north and the south, sparing our little bowl of a neighborhood, where it is always sunny. A block away from where I live on Shotwell Street, I run into Sean. He’s got his laptop bag over his shoulder and he’s wearing a fedora.
“Hey,” he says. “I put you in my new book. You’re the Scottish girl in the pop band. Chapter six.”
“I’m English,” I say. “Let’s go. Rematch.” I put out my hand and we grip each other’s fingers and start moving our thumbs from side to side.
“One two three four,” we say in unison. “I declare a thumb war.”
“Okay, kiss,” I say, pushing my thumb against his for a second. “Now, bow.” We both bend our thumbs at the knuckle. “Into your corners, come out fighting.” It doesn’t take long for him to pin me, his thumb covering mine completely, and he takes his time counting up to knockout.
After he’s won three rounds, he asks me, “When are we gonna go on a date?”
“I told you,” I tell him. “I’m not attracted to you.”
“Shut up,” he says. “Seriously, when can we go out?”
“I don’t see you in that way,” I say. “All I can offer you is friendship.”
“You’re not scaring me,” he says. “How about Wednesday?”
“I don’t date writers,” I say. “I really can’t stand writers.”
“Maybe Thursday’s better?”
“Don’t you people realize that nobody reads books anymore?”
“I want to go on a date with you. To SFMOMA. Next week.”
“I can’t next week,” I say. “I’m having an abortion next week.”
“Shut up,” he says. “You look hot today. Meet me right here on Thursday at five.”
“I won’t be here,” I say as he walks away.
“It’s a date!”
—
My roommates are giggling in the living room when I get home. “Claire,” Sophie calls out. “Can you come film us? We’re trying to make a video response for YouTube.”
She has her hair pulled back and is wearing a white onesie. She’s sitting on Andrew’s lap. I take the camera from her and stand across from them. When I press RECORD, Sophie starts gaga-ing like a baby. Andrew holds out his index finger and Sophie bites it.
“Ow, Charlie bit me,” Andrew says in an attempt at an English accent. Sophie clamps down again. “Ouch ouch ouch. That really hurt, Charlie, and it’s still hurting.”
When they finish, I stop filming and they collapse with laughter.
“Let’s do another take,” says Sophie.
“Let’s watch it first,” says Andrew.
“Yeah yeah,” says Sophie. “Claire, you wanna see the original?”
“No thanks.” I hand her the camera. “I don’t think babies are funny.”
In my room, I find my phone card on the desk and follow the automated prompts until I’m talking to my mother in London. It’s nighttime there.
“Hiya,” I say.
“Hiya,” she says.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
“Hold on, how do I get this thing on speakerphone? Meredith, can you do it? I can’t find the button. I don’t have my glasses. Can you see it?”
“Hi, Claire,” says my brother Paul, when they’ve got it worked out.
“Hiya,” says my sister Meredith.
“Hi, Claire Bear,” says my father.
“Hi, Claire,” says my ex-boyfriend Alistair.
“Hey,” says my sister-in-law Wendy.
“Hello, sweetheart,” says my grandmother.
“Hi, everyone,” I say. “Wait, what’s Alistair doing there?”
There’s a long silence and I picture everyone sitting at the kitchen table, nervously eyeing one another, and rolling crumbs over the tablecloth with their fingers.
“Mum was supposed to tell you,” says Meredith. “Al and I are together now.”
“What?”
“I was planning to tell her in December when she comes to visit,” my mother says.
“Oh my God,” I say.
“Charlie!” I hear my roommates yelling in the other room. “Charlie, that really hurts!”
“What’s the big deal?” my brother says. “I thought you were the one who broke it off.”
“She was,” Alistair says.
“Because I moved to America,” I say.
“You said you were glad to be leaving him,” Meredith says.
“Cheers for keeping the family secrets,” I tell her.
“Why don’t you meet a nice American boy?” my grandmother asks.
“I’m
sorry,” Meredith says. “I know it’s really weird.”
“It’s worse than that,” I say.
“But sometimes good people just find each other,” she says.
“Let’s talk about this when you come to visit,” my father says. “They might not even be together by then.”
“Dad!” says Meredith. “We will be. We definitely will be.”
“I’m gonna go now,” I say. “Bye, everyone. Bye, Nanna.”
“Bye, sweetheart,” my grandmother says. I hang up before anyone else can speak.
—
On Saturday morning I take BART under the Bay to visit James and Amanda in Berkeley. They’ve moved into a new house, wooden and cozy, with a deck overlooking a backyard full of trees. Amanda is pulling a frittata out of the oven when I arrive, and James is in the living room, mixing up mimosas. When I tell them about the baby, they exchange a glance.
“Well, if it was a boy, it’d be tall like Luke,” Amanda says.
“And clingy and obsessive,” James says.
“Just what the world needs,” I say.
“How did this happen?” Amanda asks.
“I’m an idiot.” Neither of them responds to this. I wonder what they’ll say about it later, after I’m gone.
The three of us eat out on the deck and talk about our dissertations—a conversation that inevitably devolves into complaints about our meager stipends, the user-unfriendliness of EndNote, and the unavailability of our supervisors.
“Do you ever think that our relationships with our supervisors are like parent–child relationships?” Amanda says, shaking hot sauce onto her eggs. “We start out feeling completely dependent on them. We don’t do anything without getting their opinion or permission.”
“Then they let us down,” James says.
“Then we realize they’re not perfect.” Amanda puts her bare foot on James’s lap and he covers it with his hand. “And that they have other children to deal with, too. So we resent them, and decide we don’t need them, and we strike out on our own.”
“Yeah, but I made out with mine,” I say. “So how does that fit into the analogy?”
“Jesus,” James says. “Professor Fursten? Really?”
“Is that bad?”
“When do you find time to work, with all this stuff going on?”
“On the holidays. Everyone goes home to their families. I stay in the city and work my ass off.”
“That’s probably ten days a year,” James says.
“When do you two work?”
“Monday to Friday,” says Amanda. “Nine to five.”
“Wow, you guys are such grown-ups,” I say. “Do you want a baby?”
“I don’t think so.” She shakes her head. “At least not one of our own.”
“Maybe we’ll adopt one day,” says James.
“No, I mean, do you want this baby? I can have it and then hand it over.”
They laugh. “I definitely don’t want a kid right now,” Amanda says.
“Neither do I,” James says.
“Me neither,” I say. “First I need a calmer life. Maybe get married like you guys.”
“You think marriage is a calmer way of life?” James asks.
“It’s when the terrifying shit really begins,” Amanda says.
“What you need is a quieter life,” James says. “So you can process all the craziness.”
“Maybe you should move to Berkeley,” Amanda says. “Come be our neighbor.”
“I’d love to,” I say. “But there’s a whole city to conquer over there. San Francisco is trying to kick my ass, and I can’t let it get the better of me.”
A screen door slams in a neighboring yard and a woman calls to someone to bring her a sweater. Amanda starts humming what sounds like an M. Ward song. James pats her foot in three–four time. I look out at the fig tree, heavy with fruit, and I try to imagine a life in which monogamy didn’t feel like a locked cell in which I always start wishing my cell mate would get released early for good behavior.
“You guys are so lucky,” I say. “You have each other and you want each other.”
“It’s true,” Amanda says. “We’re lucky, but you know it’s not perfect. We’re both in the same department. We’re competing for funding, and we’re always busy and stressed out at the same time.”
“Yeah, but at least you understand each other’s work. You can read each other’s papers.”
“Uh-huh,” James says. “Try sleeping next to the person who just correctly informed you that your entire thesis topic is flawed and untenable and you’ve just wasted two whole years of research.”
“So what you’re saying is, I should give Professor Fursten a call?” I stand up and start clearing dishes.
“Don’t do that,” James tells me. “We’ll do it. You’re in a delicate condition.”
“Oh don’t, that’s awful,” Amanda says, smiling at me apologetically.
When it’s time to leave, they stand on the front porch and wave goodbye.
“There she goes,” Amanda says. “See you soon.”
“Come back bearing stories,” James calls after me.
—
Back in the city, I stop in at the Common Room. Luke is roasting, pouring beans from a bucket into the hopper of the Probat.
“What’s cooking?” I ask him.
“Fucking decaf,” he says. “I’m glad you stopped by. I wanted to tell you: I think this baby is the best thing that could have happened to us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it,” he says. “I pulled out hundreds of times when we were together, and it worked fine. Then the one time we have sex after the breakup, and bam”—he slams his fist into his palm—“we make a kid.”
“All that means,” I say, “is that we’re both fertile.”
“No, no.” He turns back to the roaster, pulls out the trier, holds it under his nose, and smells the beans. They’re the color of wet sand. He puts it back. “This baby means more than that. It’s a sign that we’re supposed to be together.”
“But I’m not keeping it,” I say.
“That’s even more reason to be together. An abortion is a big deal. I want to be there for you, in whatever way I can.”
“Well, right now I’d love a Gibraltar.”
He turns down the gas on the roaster and goes behind the bar. I take a seat at a nearby table. All around me, people are sitting with coffee cups, staring into laptop screens. The girl at the table in front of me has a sticker of a peach stuck over her Apple logo. The guy to my left is working on a Word file titled Start-Up: A Memoir.
“Do I know you?” he says when he sees me looking. He has black curly hair and straight white American teeth.
“No,” I say, “I just thought I’d save you some time by telling you not to bother writing that memoir. Nobody reads books anymore.”
“This isn’t a book,” he says. “It’s my senior thesis.” He leans back in his chair. “So what’s that accent? New Zealand?”
When Luke comes back, he puts the drink on the table and walks away. I take it and follow him over to the roaster. He checks on the beans again, then pushes a lever. The beans shower out of the drum and into the cooling tray.
“Thanks for the drink,” I say, sipping it. He doesn’t answer me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Who’s that guy?”
“Some kid. College kid.”
“And you feel perfectly okay about flirting with him while I’m over there making you a beverage?”
“I would feel okay about that, if that’s what I was doing.”
“There are plenty of other coffee shops in San Francisco you can go to.”
“Why don’t you work in one of them, then?”
“Are you kidding? This is my workplace. And you’re ruining it for me, emotionally. Would you mind leaving now? I have stuff to do.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine.”
�
��
Halfway down the block, I run into Andrew. He’s got his skateboard under his arm and he’s talking on his phone. “Wait one second,” he says to the person he’s speaking to. He holds his phone facedown on his chest and asks me, “So when are we gonna go on a date?”
“We’re not,” I tell him. “You’re my roommate.”
“Does that mean Sophie’s off-limits, too?”
When I get to Amnesia, Lars is sitting on the edge of the stage, bent over with his face in his hands. “Dude,” I say, sitting next to him. “What a shitty week.” It’s only then that I notice his ear is all scraped up and bloody. When he looks at me, I see he has a black eye, and a big gash at his hairline. There’s a hole in his T-shirt the size of a pancake.
“Bike accident,” he says.
“Whoa,” I say.
“Beer,” he says.
“Got it.”
The bartender is a tall redhead guy with a face that’s more sideburns than skin, and a mustache that would make Dalí swoon. He nods when I order, and pulls me a pint.
“Seven bucks,” he says, placing it in front of me.
“I’m in the band,” I say.
“I know. Seven bucks.”
“Don’t we get drink tickets?”
“Last time you were in here, you made out with my girlfriend. That’ll be seven bucks.”
“Fine.” I get out the money and put it on the bar. “I’m not tipping, though.” He shrugs and takes the bills. I pick up the drink and say, “Why are you being so weird about it? It’s girl-on-girl. Aren’t guys supposed to be into that?”
“This isn’t fucking Los Angeles,” he says.
I go back to the stage and give the glass to Lars, who takes a couple of sips and then chugs the rest down. He leans his head on my shoulder. “I was turning left, man, and this guy in a taxi slammed straight into me.”
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