Private Citizens: A Novel

by Tony Tulathimutte

  What had she tried to say? If only she had the talent to remember.

  III. Not Sufficiently Dead

  . . . nothing.

  After the officer left, her resident informed her that they hadn’t been able to reach her mother. Which was fine, her mother couldn’t afford to help. Anyone else she’d like to call? She didn’t know any phone numbers offhand. “I need a computer,” she rasped.

  The male nurse held the loaner laptop in front of her as Linda pecked at it with her unslung arm and glared at it with her one lensed eye: hey buddy ive been hit by a car. spazzed out in traction at sf general. don’t be a stranger xx lt. She bcc’d six recipients and dismissed the nurse, flipping off his departing back.

  Hours crept by disguised as days. Whenever her breath slowed into sleep she sprang awake with detonations of rich coughs, making the pulleys of her traction squeak. When they brought her semisolid meals, she sneered at the oatmeals and milk cartons, the soggy cutlets of no animal in particular. She chewed with crooked deliberation in her cheek. Linda thundered at her nurse to turn the television off and the radio on, finding the airwaves occupied by the moneychangers of Mainstream.

  Time was losing its orderly candor, time was now officially weak—fitting that she should live out her bad writing. In her exhausted half-waking, Linda reviewed the canon of the car-struck: Camus, Sebald, Barthes, Italo Svevo, okay. Frank O’Hara and Randall Jarrell. Nathanael West, T-boned on his way to Fitzgerald’s funeral, ha. Margaret Mitchell, Stephen King—so there was money in it yet.

  Her thumb learned the rhythm of her glowing green morphine button, sending the drug discoursing through her bloodstream on the hour and making her head fill the moon, anchored only by the hyperdense dot of her aching body. Where was the nicotine button, the Bloody Mary button? Well, give her the morphine—and the fentanyl, the Mylar balloons, condolence cakes. If she was going to go broke for this, let them go for broke. The nasal tubes made her retch and drool, the IV made her piss, the bandages made her sweat, the suppositories made her shit, the breakthrough pain made her cry, and she wasn’t getting paid for it. Having a male nurse sponge her down was humiliating. There had to be all-female hospitals somewhere, only run by, only treating, and if those . . .

  She woke later to silence, to the shush of her bed and the ministrations of her pain. Will was reading his phone next to her. Hearing Linda inhale deeply, Will pocketed his phone and stood beside her at his concise five foot four, asked how she felt. She wheezed. He read the accident report aloud from his phone. It had happened three whole days earlier, suspect unknown, no witnesses.

  “So, uh. What’s it like being Jane Doe? Usually only corpses and amnesiacs get to know that.” She didn’t respond. “Well. At least the fucknuts who hit you probably read this article and is shitting hot water right now.”

  Trust in Will to draw solace in vengeance. She was grateful he wasn’t patronizing her with tenderness. It was a little sad that the only person to visit her was someone she’d seen only once in the past two years. She’d never spent much time with Will, and who knew if she’d see him again after today. He was that guy she’d always liked yet never really befriended because they had nothing in common but Henrik, and he’d occasionally pull some inferiority complex bullshit when he was drunk and say things like, Admit it, the only reason you’d ever talk to me is because you’re dating my friend, ADMIT IT. But he was here, and she doubted she would’ve visited him likewise. He’d come along since college: more self-aware, better clothes and hair. It was fun sharing the secret of having been dorky undergrad pariahs, though she felt fraudulent around him for that reason.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I hate hospitals. I wish they’d put me straight in the dirt.”

  Will was reading his phone again. “Do you have health insurance?”

  “Are you being funny?”

  “Then we should get you out of here soon as possible. They’re probably raping you with the bill. It’s so stupid to have drugged-up patients dealing with this bullshit.”

  Linda rolled her head on her pillow. Of its own accord her hand tensed around the morphine button, and her arm bloomed and warmed. “As soon as my piss goes back to a normal color I’m leaving. Through a window if I have to.”

  Will gave a loud laugh, not because it was funny but because he hated the soft laughter that people offered the infirm. “You need me to bring you anything from your place? Where do you live?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “I said where do you live?”

  “I said nowhere.”

  “Are you being melodramatic or are you actually homeless or is it the morphine?”

  Linda gauged the length of a full explanation at about two pages and did not elaborate. Instead she coughed.

  “Okay. Interesting.” Will grasped his chin and mouth. “Vanya’s away. You could catsit for her. They’re toilet-trained.”

  Linda turned her head to face Will, putting her nasal tubes painfully aslant. Constructing sentences felt like trying to remember in utero existence. “Maybe,” she said.

  “Good. All right, I’m going now. Call me if you need something.”

  “No phone.”

  “Jesus, okay. Well, I’ve been meaning to upgrade anyway, so take this one. Can you set it up with your phone carrier?” They looked at each other desperately. “Fine, I’ll do that too. Now, who’s your emergency contact?”

  “My mom. But she doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Your dad?”

  “In Rome. And an asshole.”

  “Then put me down. It’ll help me get you out.”

  “Will, you don’t have to.”

  “It’s fine. Vanya’s away, so I’ve got time. If I jerk off any more I’ll crash the Internet.”

  “Okay.” Linda yawned. Morphine brimmed her head like a full soapy bath. “You’re being so nice.”

  Linda seemed only nominally aware that anybody was in the room with her at all. She babbled into her pillow, saying she was grateful, she loved him, she hurt so much. Will didn’t know what to do until she said, “Something smells good.”

  “Oh. It’s my lunch.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pastrami and corned beef on rye. Sauerkraut, brown mustard, Thousand Island.”

  “I want it.”

  “Uh, it’s my lunch.”

  “But I want it.”

  Will grunted and took half the sandwich from his bag. He unfolded its butcher paper and steered the more succulent corner into her mouth, and she bit with startling ardor, taking away a crescent of paper, bit again before swallowing her first crammed mouthful, drawing blood from his thumb, three more chomps, and it was gone. “Any booze?” Linda said. Bread lint and threads of sauerkraut stuck to the brown mustard at the corners of her mouth.

  “That would kill you right now.”

  “Give it to me or I kill you.”

  Will reached inside his jacket to unscrew the cap, then stood with his back to the door as he tipped and tipped the bubbling leather flask to her mouth and said, “Glenlivet, eighteen-year.” Actually it was twelve. Linda gulped it like apple juice, pushing the flask away with her tongue when it was empty. The last nip spread down her chin and darkly into her gown, and she swabbed her lips together. “Mm.”

  Will rescrewed the flask and wiped her chin. “Anything else?”

  “You’re going? Nooo.”

  “Yeah, you should rest.”

  “Please don’t go. Please. At least hug me.”

  A weird writhing embarrassment, like an eel in his ribs, made Will blush. He maneuvered unskillfully around her traction to press his ear against hers for ten seconds, squeezing her shoulders rather than reaching for a full embrace, and he felt her warm good arm around him. She sighed as he drew back. Her eyes were red and brimming. “Listen, I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.

  “Wait. Before you go. Tell me how you get your arms so hairless.”

  “Diet and prayer. Are we good?”


  “Yeah, um. Hang on. Can you tell me if I look okay?”

  “Sure. You’ll live.”

  “No, not okay as in healthy. I mean cute.”

  Will’s forehead wrinkled; he felt a shy curl of empathy. Linda was wearing the customary blue gown and a low-lidded expression. The teased snowbank of her hair still held flecks of dirt. Lake-shapes of dried drool on the collar of her gown, tubes in her nose and arm, a big square bandage on her right cheek, scabbed lips, a puke pot at arm’s reach. She seemed flattened and foreshortened, and without her front teeth she spoke with an arid draftiness. Some of her eyeliner and mascara was still on but faded, making her eyes beady and wide set. It felt uncanny to square this needy version of her with the intimidation he’d always associated with her, embodying as she did that unicorn species of hot girl who he’d been trained to assume looked down on him and thus deserved to be resented. It was hard to hold eye contact with her. Was that, in fact, the only reason he was here? Even though he had Vanya, that loserly imperative to get as near as possible to hot girls and stare at them and be useful to them and get their approval had never withered, like he’d hoped it would. Visiting Linda was probably charitable, though possibly he should’ve shunned her out of loyalty to Henrik.

  Anyway: yes, he still would, he totally would. With that one leg elevated in traction, helpless . . . Jesus. Good thing he wasn’t in the habit of taking his thoughts seriously. “You look fine,” he said. “Except your teeth.”

  “Thank you.” Yawned tears ran down both sides of her nose. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Two thirty.”

  “Stay,” she said, and immediately fell asleep.

  Will closed the door behind him, holding the knob twisted so it didn’t click when it closed. In the hallway he contemplated all the good deeds he’d just been pressured into, and left with a qualm of guilt for feeling so pleased.

  Interlude: 2003

  They meet late in a year of record lows. The fifteen-degree summer. Invasion abroad, recall at home, Schwarzenegger by a landslide. A SARS quarantine on campus. Mars draws near to Earth.

  Henrik Fenn has just transferred to Stanford after a summer pumping gas at a New Haven Amoco, and on the way to the library he stops by the coffee cart and sees her. An elfy brunette in sunglasses and a teal hoodie. There’s no line, but he wishes there were one, so he’d have more time. He decides against a smoothie, or anything else with an emasculating straw, orders coffee and a banana instead. She doesn’t bother to set down her book to ring him up. In her bug-eye sunglasses he sees only two of himself.

  He sits at a table to eat his solitary banana, recalling that his psychiatrist warned him against caffeine. The daylight hides her in the cart’s shade, though he shouldn’t be ogling anyway.

  From deep behind her sunglasses, Linda Troland sees him too, and knows he’s lurking precisely to be seen. Courtship as sit-in protest. At first she’s just like, well hello, who’s this stuttering pork tenderloin? Relaxed-fit jeans, dangling canvas belt, Brewers ball cap, Patagonia microfleece, carabiner keychain. Just like his coffee: a tall plain drip.

  Out of boredom, however, she speculates. Remember, she’s seventeen: she listens to Nada Surf and Moby, wears a clear laminate retainer; at night her shins still pulse unaccountably with growing pains, and, having lost all faith and good standing in academia, she’s determined to fuck up, off, with, and around until purged of all purity and inhibition.

  She spends her shift drawing his butcher chart. During a lull, she walks over to his table, hands in hoodie pockets. “Yo, why are you staring at me?” she asks. “Do I fucking owe you money or something?”

  He doesn’t respond or look up to see her indulgent tilde of a smile, instead ignores her attentively, ears and scalp turning a meaty red through thin blond locks. If he were a lizard his tail would drop off. She softens her knife a little. “For real, though. Were you gonna say something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Coffee. Banana. What’s not to know?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I didn’t.”

  “But you wanted to talk to me.”

  He nods.

  “Maybe spit some game? Little bit?”

  Blank, oppressed silence.

  “But you decided against it. Indulge my curiosity here.”

  He looks off to the nearby red fountain, shaped like a costume halo, the falling water blurred by a crosswind and sending students racing to shield their books and papers. Something big is downloading. At last he says, “I came up with a bunch of reasonable noble-sounding excuses. Like, girls are constantly getting approached by pushy guys who think they’re owed attention, and I’d be no exception. It’s sleazy to hit on someone who’s trying to work, and hey, I’ll talk to her if I see her some other time when I’m wearing deodorant and have something to say. My nervousness is a sure sign of unhealthy expectations. And it feels so transparently shallow to flirt with someone when you both know physical attraction is all that’s driving it, reinforcing the idea that people are worth approaching insofar as they’re good-looking. Plus the likelihood of a scarring rejection outweighs the tiny chance of a satisfying exchange. I know strangers talk all the time without pretext, or can supply their own pretext, but I suck at it. The real reason I didn’t say anything to you is fear.”

  She waits for him to punctuate. This is fun. “So he talks.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So it’s hard for you to flirt but easy to rip your guts open?”

  “It is easier to fail on purpose. Though I wouldn’t call it easy.”

  “Regardless, here we are. Try me.”

  He scratches behind his ear. “Okay, um, what do you study.”

  “Nope. If we’re doing small talk, I’m out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry. Be interesting.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sorry and okay, he says. You’re so nice. Don’t you hate stuff? That’s how I spend, like, two-thirds of my time. I eat popcorn and I judge. How can you not hate?”

  “I do hate.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “A lot. Like, a Walmart of hate.”

  “Name one thing.”

  Motionless pondering for twenty seconds. “Misogyny.”

  “How brave. Why not just say war? Or airplane food?”

  “I know, it makes me look pious and now I regret saying it. I guess I specifically mean male romantic entitlement, the thing that made it seem wrong to talk to you. And how it’s formed this sort of ecosystem of creep archetypes that feel almost like Darwinian adaptations to feminism.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well.” Seeing him muster his words is like watching a hydroelectric power plant. “First you have the sociopathic bros who see life as a nonstop pussy safari and devise entire social conventions around exploiting female fears. The Apex Creep—alpha-male and pickup-artist types. Just relentlessly catcalling and macking. Polishing an exoskeleton of confidence. They’re usually considered idiots but actually they’re as rational as mosquitoes. They play the numbers. Emotions are just levers on bipedal sex kiosks. Existence is reduced to sham evolutionary behavioralism. They muffle their consciences by insisting that women play the same game—gold diggers or skanks who want to be dominated, and any who deny it are ugly fat dyke feminists.

  “Then there’s the Rage Creeps, those wounded pressure cookers. If out of sheer resentment they don’t aspire to become Apex Creeps, then they’ll define themselves to the contrary, which convinces them they’re good guys. They think it’s romantic to aggressively offer themselves up for exploitation, be kind attentive friends for however long they think it’ll take for the girl to come around, but when this doesn’t pay off in sex, it putrefies into stalkery rage, so they get to play both victim and tragic hero. I’m sure this isn’t news to you so maybe we should talk about something else.”

  “No. Proceed,” she says, lighting a cigarette.

  “The Noble Creep. The high-minded ambiti
ous dude whose band or social cause or novel is so important it dwarfs any woman’s needs. If his girlfriend says he’s negligent or domineering, she’s being petty. Why’s she gotta be like that? Can’t she be supportive? Any philandering or abuse is justified, though if she tries to be equally aloof then sayonara. He might be self-aware enough to tell himself he’s not sexist since he treats everyone equally like garbage, though the practical truth is that women have to put up with a lot more of it. On the other hand there are Needy Creeps with disabling dysfunctions, addicted, lovelorn, mentally ill or whatever, who consciously or not use their brokenness to make women responsible for fixing them, especially those who can be convinced it’s a form of empowerment.

  “Women can and should hit back. But some end up calling their harassers fags or virgins or saying they have small dicks, which is more effective than calling them creeps, but it validates creeps’ cynical assumption that women are shallow bitches who only value masculinity.

  “This stuff bothers me because I’m implicated. Even while I’m tempted to flatter myself for my self-awareness, this one aspect of misogyny haunts me only because it affects me. Which makes me one of those Enlightened Creeps who’s read a few books and declares himself an ally, even delivers feminist sermons and beatdowns to the point where feminism becomes another arena for male competition. They’ll say mock-humble stuff like ‘I hope to empathize, but I’ll never truly understand the struggle of women,’ though they secretly think they deserve extra credit because, unlike women, they’re being altruistic.

  “All my self-flagellating right now is the worst kind of self-pity because it’s actually bragging; look how sensitive and self-aware I am. Even pointing out how I’m bragging makes me look knowing and forthright. And pointing out that I’m pointing it out makes me look complex and quirkily neurotic. It’s exhausting but I don’t know what else I can do except acknowledge it.