Instant Love: Fiction

by Jami Attenberg

  And then, at the tiny mirror in the bathroom of her basement apartment, Sarah Lee had meticulously applied eyeliner, and admitted to herself that it might be time to get a new boyfriend. She didn’t know if her ex had tried to contact her, and she could finally admit she didn’t care. He was ruined now, soiled by the stain of getting caught, hustled in handcuffs, fingerprinted, fingers pointing, branded for life as a criminal. You can’t wash that off, no matter how hard you try.

  So she headed to a party with her coworker Melanie, as a replacement friend for Melanie’s best friend, Jemma, who had homework to do. Melanie’s new boyfriend, Doug, had invited them. The two had met a week before at the park by the reservoir, during a break between classes. Doug was playing Ultimate Frisbee, and Melanie was making a bag out of hemp (she was always making something out of hemp) that she planned to sell in the parking lot of a Phish show in Portland the following weekend. Doug had thrown a Frisbee into her head, apologized for throwing a Frisbee into her head, told her he liked her dread-locks, and then they had totally fallen in love.

  “He gives me hickeys on my tummy,” said Melanie, as they hovered behind the counter at the bakery, the sweet smell of fresh rhubarb pies swirling around them. “Look.” She had pulled up her T-shirt. They were plum-colored and surrounded her belly button, which had a silver bar through it. Sarah thought it looked like a tattoo. And if you were into that sort of thing, it was probably very pretty.

  She was trying not to judge. No one judged in Seattle. It wasn’t cool to judge. People would think less of you if you did, Melanie had told her this. The whole idea wrapped around in Sarah Lee’s head and met itself again at the beginning, this judging of judging. She didn’t want to disagree, but hadn’t figured out how to agree.

  Sarah Lee was just trying to sort out the Seattle bus system. That was for starters. The whole judging thing was way down on the list. Not that she had a list. Some people could think that way, in numbers or bullet points or alphabets, but not Sarah. She thought in circles.

  IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN. A car door slammed, and there was a shuffle of feet and then a knock at the front door, which echoed to the backyard through the quiet night air. Two voices, two more guys, Sarah thought. That makes fifteen men. Fifteen is either a lot, or not very many at all.

  She dug her thumbnail into the moist wood of the table, traced the shape of a heart. There were three other people seated at the picnic table, all guys. Maybe I should say something, she thought. What do I say? I should have something to say.

  Everyone else was inside except for Melanie and her boyfriend, who trampled through the grass, smelling the flowers in the dark. Sarah could hear Melanie laughing, a sweet tinkling laugh that usually made an appearance after she smoked pot.

  There was a lot of pot at the party. The interior of the house reeked of it, from the front foyer with the beat-up welcome mat where two long-haired software engineers leaned casually, smoking a joint and catching a breeze through the screen door, to the kitchen with the tile scuffed with mud from the paws of the three dogs who lived in the house. The kitchen was where six employees of two competing software companies sat, at an old oak table, passing around a champion-sized bong. They would smoke several hundred dollars’ worth of marijuana that night. Six months later their companies would merge. One company would claim it bought the other. Some people would get promoted while others would remain stagnant. Feelings would be hurt. Two college roommates would stop speaking for a decade until their wives forced them to reconnect at another friend’s wedding, and then it was as if they had never parted ways.

  Sarah turned to her tablemates and hefted herself upon them. She introduced herself. She got their names. She made eye contact. She pulled her hair out of her face and off her shoulders and pulled it up into a ponytail, and then swung it slightly.

  This was a bad move, but she didn’t know it. Her hair looked much better down, but no one had ever told her that, even when she had asked. She had dated her boyfriend throughout high school, and he loved her no matter how her hair looked, which is how he always responded to the question. Her girlfriends had always said, “Who cares? You have a boyfriend, so it doesn’t even matter.”

  And now here she was, single, and completely ignorant of the fact that when her hair was up her ears stuck out in an awkward way, and while the rest of her was perfectly lovely, with her moon-shaped face and long, wavy blond hair and pink-blushed cheeks, at that exact moment, with the moonlight breaking through the clouds and outlining the halo of the hair on top of her head and the shape of her ears, she looked like she could have been a circus freak, the Amazing Elephant Girl, one tent over from the Bearded Lady, only one dollar, step right up.

  MELANIE DID a cartwheel and slipped in the wet grass. She shrieked. Doug laughed and extended his hand to help her stand. She pulled him down next to her. He yelled. A light went on in a house down the block.

  “We’re waking the whole neighborhood,” said Doug.

  “Everyone will know we’re having fun,” said Melanie.

  “Let them know,” said Doug.

  “I am having fun!” yelled Melanie.

  TWO OF THE three men ignored Sarah. It wasn’t because of her ears—although that didn’t help—but because they were caught up in planning what they saw as a small revolution, even if it could only be viewed on a computer screen. That left Danny West, a sturdy, dark-haired guy in a baseball cap, who figured: Sure, why not give the girl a little chat? The stutter’s kind of sexy, actually. She’s the only one around anyway, except for that drunk chick talking to Doug, and I think they’re together. Danny had nothing better to do, anyway. He had already contributed his part to the revolution and cashed out early.

  Danny West was twenty-four years old and a millionaire. Several times over, in fact, but who’s counting?

  He could not stop counting.

  He asked her if she liked it in Seattle, and she said, “It’s different than anywhere else I’ve lived. It makes me feel like I could be a better person,” and he liked that answer a lot. She was full of hope, it seemed. Everyone around him had hopes and dreams, and he had already sold his to a guy older than his father.

  He didn’t know what to do with himself now.

  “And what about you?” asked Sarah. “What do you do?”

  “Nothing,” Danny said. “I’m a lazy sack of shit is what I am.”

  The two men sitting next to them stopped talking, and one of them said, “Shut up, dude.” The guy laughed like he didn’t mean it, but he really fucking hated Danny West sometimes. Here the rest of the guys who went to school with West were working their tails off trying to come up with something genius that would change everything, make them rich, make them famous, and set them up for life in every way imaginable, and West had already done all that, made it look as easy as looking both ways and crossing a street. But then he’d just checked out, gone to Thailand and India and all the other places they could only dream of going if they could just get the time off, and then he came back sometimes and just hung around, showed up at parties and talked shit like that. He had simply ceased to be tolerable.

  “Well, I used to do something,” said Danny. “I invented some software, I started a company, I sold it, and now I’m rich and won’t have to work again for a long time. So I mostly travel now. I just got back from a month in India.”

  He took a sip from his plastic cup casually. It was a well-practiced sip. What do you say after that? You just sip instead.

  SARAH’S EYES widened, and she looked prettier. He was the kind of man who looked “good on paper” as her mother sometimes said. Sarah had always tossed that phrase around in her head when she heard it, let it travel like a curious bird. To be good on paper meant something entirely different to her. It meant a face that would be beautiful to draw, a face with character: deep lines on a forehead fresh from worry, a nose with a bump on it from a skateboarding accident, or ears, slivers like a partial moon or sturdy soup spoons like hers. Now here was someone
who had something different, a brilliant story to tell, and a fantastic life to be led.

  She took down her hair, played with her elastic. Now she was lovely, and excited by him. And she fell in love with him, or loved him a little bit just at that moment. It had never occurred to her that she might actually meet a rich man who could take care of her. She could suddenly see the future with him so clearly.

  There were trips to be taken (India! She hadn’t even considered India. It was enough that she had made it to Seattle), and she wouldn’t have to work those weekend shifts for extra cash; he could help with little things probably.

  She found his plain looks problematic, though (He was to become handsome only as an older man: his soft jaw would harden significantly with determination, and the wisdom he was already striving to achieve would eventually imbue his eyes with an irresistibility), and envisioned how a decent haircut and a little bit of stubble could change everything about him. They could move in together, and she could get out of that basement and into his apartment, which she was certain was spacious and lovely. (In fact, she was wrong. He was a simple man who hated to be wasteful. He lived in a small studio with big windows and a lofted bed, downtown near the water. There wasn’t really room for another person. It was a deliberate move.) Sarah Lee was smitten.

  Melanie and Doug were slow-dancing on the grass. He was humming to her. He dipped her.

  Sarah thought: And she and Danny could dance, too. Did he like to go dancing? Did she like to dance? That’s what people in love do.

  DANNY SAW HER love, but he’d seen it all before, even though he hadn’t been a millionaire that long. At first he was coy about his success when meeting new people (“I’m taking time off from work right now,” he would say when they would ask him what he was doing. Or, wryly, “I’m unemployed.”), but the truth would eventually tumble out of his mouth as if he were a kid excitedly reporting an A on a spelling test over dinner—“I sold my company and now I’m free.” Sometimes it would spill out because he wanted to share his excitement, and other times he knew it was the only way a girl would pay him any attention.

  Either way he hated himself when he did it for attention, but he couldn’t help it. He had earned those bragging rights. He had given up most of his senior year of college (There was a girl, then, a nice one who was as smart as he was, but she didn’t have a killer idea like he did, so she couldn’t understand when he began to prioritize in a way she found unempowering to her and her needs. I’m never dating a psych major again, he had yelled at her, and then found out he had effectively terminated his one opportunity to get laid for the year) to start his company and had turned to speed the last six months before he sold the company, burning himself out, staying up late, all to finish one perfect software application. At the end he was cold, his emotions were like aluminum foil, jagged and shielding him from change, and on the night he met Sarah Lee, he was only starting to return to his former self. Only that self was gone; he would never be the same, now that he was a millionaire.

  So when he looked at Sarah Lee, all he saw was a girl with pretty hair and a nice rack, but she had those freakish ears and a sudden greed in her eyes, and that in turn made her seem very, very dull to Danny West. He kept scanning, categorizing, identifying. This is not the woman who is going to help me figure my shit out, he thought. She probably doesn’t even know who she is. And then: Maybe she’d be a good lay. His eyes dropped to her breasts again. Maybe. That kind of thinking never went anywhere for Danny, but it was part of the assessment. Everyone needed to be assessed.

  SARAH WAS TRYING to think of ways to make the millionaire love her. She could offer him comfort, stroke his arm, or let him put his head in her lap. Maybe she should ask him to dance. Maybe she should make him laugh.

  She should say the most ridiculous thing in the world that she could think of at that moment, like: “I want to make you pie.” Or: “I like cows better than any other animal because they always seem so happy to be exactly where they are.” Or: “I love you, my millionaire.”

  Oh my god, Mom, I married a millionaire. We went to Las Vegas this weekend and he bought me a big ring and we got married in one of those little chapels and then we slept in the fanciest room I’ve ever seen because he is a millionaire and can afford whatever he wants. He says I can be an illustrator if I want or not. I don’t need to do anything but be his wife. And guess where we’re going on our honeymoon? India!

  Am I going to need shots?

  What about sex? She was good at that. They were actually quite sexually compatible, Sarah and Danny, though she couldn’t know it just by looking at him. Things that girls he’d dated in the past had either been unwilling or not ready to do (certain positions, explicit language, and the occasional tryst in public places like coatrooms or bathrooms in fancy restaurants or late at night on a beach) Sarah had been doing since she was in high school. She and her ex-boyfriend started having sex almost immediately, when they were both fifteen, and their high energy and adventurous spirits, often fueled by a wide of array of illegal substances (mostly marijuana, but sometimes acid or mushrooms, hash if they were lucky, but never heroin or coke, that shit was scary), led them down adventurous paths rivaled only by the static-ridden porn Sarah watched late at night while she was babysitting her next-door neighbor’s twin daughters.

  She would have totally done him any way he liked.

  Right now he just wanted to be held.

  SHE WOULD HAVE appreciated him, and not just for his money, although it’s true that’s what drew her to him initially. Even though she wasn’t a good student, she always admired people who were. He had drive, and she craved that in her own life. Sarah Lee had the habit of mirroring people around her, and had Danny West been in her life in the past, she would have worked hard in school, she would have made it to the top of her class. (Two years later, though, in the throes of art school, she will at last recognize her own drive. She never needed anyone to inspire her to draw. She was going to do that forever.)

  Danny needed to be needed. More than anything he wanted to feel like a man in the most traditional sense of the word, although he would never have uttered those words out loud to anyone, except in some veiled manner in bed. He wasn’t sure why he was ashamed of this fact, but he thought a lot of men around him felt the same way. They’re all just waiting for some girl who will never arrive, a pretty one with a tinkling laugh, who will cling to their shoulder as if she could not stand without its support. But Danny felt he should have something different, and he spends the rest of his life looking for it. Were it, in fact, a different era entirely, perhaps fifty years previous, when people would marry—and stay married—for relatively small reasons, Sarah Lee could have made him happy for the rest of his life.

  In any case he had no use for her today.

  Instead, after she said, “Wow, India! That sounds so exciting. You sure do lead an interesting life,” he pursed his lips to the left, so that his cheek puffed up slightly, and then sighed. He slapped his hands down on the table, looked to his buddies, nodded at them, and then said, “Right. I’m heading out. Later, guys.” He turned his head to her, “Sarah, a pleasure. Sorry we can’t chat but…”

  He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. His head was already somewhere else. He got up from the table, thought he heard the word “pie” from behind him—pie, that sounded good—and kept on walking in a straight line.

  OVER ON THE GRASS, Melanie and Douglas rolled around on top of each other, wrestling as play.

  “You’re the funniest girl I’ve ever met,” he said.

  “No, you’re funny,” she said.

  Eventually they stopped and stretched out on their backs, looking up at the collection of stars in the sky.

  “Also, I think you are beautiful,” said Douglas.

  Melanie reached out and held his hand, and they stayed like that until someone called their names. They both sighed. They were happier than everyone else at the party, and they knew they were inspiring jealou
sy. All those lonely men, and Sarah Lee, who just got blown off by a millionaire.

  HE DIDN’T EVEN hear me. I should run after him. Throw him to the ground. Put my hand down his pants. Bite his ear. Give him honey kisses. Tickle his belly. Feed him pie.

  Maggie and Robert were drinking gin and tonics at the patio bar of the most popular restaurant in town. It was their fourth date, and it wasn’t going anywhere, at least as far as Maggie was concerned, but she couldn’t seem to say no when he called. Robert thought they were taking it nice and slow. Maggie had started drinking more on their dates to make them more interesting, or at least to create a tolerable haze, and Robert kept up with her like a puppy running after its new owner. So while she usually had only two drinks in an evening, Maggie was now on her fourth. Robert had gotten there early to secure a good seat before it got too crowded (This really was the place in town, he told her. She was new. She needed his help), so he was on his fifth. And now they were both drunk, she more than he.

  “I want to tell you about my day,” said Robert. He stopped short of saying, “I want to tell you everything about me.”

  “So tell me about your day,” said Maggie. “That’s what I’m here for, to listen. To you. And your day.” She ducked her head down. Her auburn hair—thick and soft to the touch—dangled over her shoulders, which were covered, like her cheeks, with freckles. Then she raised her eyes up, opened and closed them slowly, then brushed her cheek against her bare shoulder, like a cat cleaning itself. It was a move that had brought down many men, a move that said nothing at all, yet had the portent of sexuality. She didn’t know where she had learned it, only that she had been doing it forever. It had started out maybe as a way to hide, eyes downcast. But then she realized people didn’t want her to hide, so she added the upturned eye. I’m still here. I’m in my space, but I’m looking at yours.