Cannibals in Love (6 page)

And somewhere in the middle of this, Cokie just seemed to disappear. Worse, we couldn't even really find her. I hadn't heard one word from the girl in almost two weeks. And that's when Lauren decided that we finally had to tell her.

But Cokie just laughed at us. “Yeah, thanks, no shit,” she said. “I mean, did you really think I didn't know? Jesus! I just got sick of watching you drag it out.”

“What do you mean?” Lauren asked.

“I mean, stop being such babies and assholes, and just say that you're fucking! Who cares?
I
don't care. It's not really that interesting, you know? Fuck all you want, for all I care. But stop treating me like I'm stupid.”

Lauren didn't say anything.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry, Cokie.”

*   *   *

Sadly, everything changed after that. Everything that had been right the week before was now wrong. The sex got bad or boring, or at least less frequent. It was strained and fraught with too many strange concerns. Sex became a thing we did by rote, and then it just stopped altogether.

Lauren and I decided we should take some time apart. But the tension of this made me crazy, and I broke down after a day. Showing up at her house, where we fought and fucked, and kissed good night out on the sidewalk, as she sent me home again. I couldn't shake this new and terrible feeling that she was ignoring me. Lauren seemed to disappear for days at a time now. When we talked at all, it was in rambling ten-minute phone calls. These bursts where we would cover everything except the thing that had happened to us. Lauren wanted to talk about Cokie. She said she needed to repair the things that we'd undone. Lauren acted cavalier about this, saying it had all been childish in the end. We'd had our fun, and now it was over.
C'est la vie
.

But even as I agreed with her, I knew I didn't agree. I didn't want to stop. I felt like Cokie had given us permission to try and make it work, even. But Lauren was adamant that this was about
their
relationship—Lauren and Cokie.

Right, I said, of course. And then I had no choice but to back off.

The Tomboys retreated into their friends. A whole new cast of characters, it seemed to me. These superficial, asshole kids that I hated unreasonably. All boys, too, because Lauren and Cokie didn't seem to have any real girlfriends, outside of each other. They would invite me out, but I found it impossible to sit there listlessly, or join into their conversations about obscure bands and important DJ sets. These dudes who were always laughing but seemed to have no sense of humor at all.

Worse, Lauren was ignoring me again.

I followed her outside the bar one night, where she was smoking a cigarette alone.

“You're smoking now?” I asked her critically.

“Not really,” she said, blowing the smoke away from me.

“It's just sort of a disgusting habit, don't you think?”

“Is it?” she asked, looking away.

“I just think it's kind of sad, you know? It seems like you're turning into all of your elitist friends.”

“You don't even know them.”

“Yeah, I know, right. Thank god for that.”

She almost had to laugh then, putting up her hands like it was unbearable to even affect patience with me. “What do you want me to say? Does it even matter? You don't even listen to me.”

“I am listening,” I said. “And I'm disagreeing with you.”

“You're being insanely, abrasively arrogant. And I don't know how to deal with you this way.”

“Good,” I said. “If we're finally going to talk about real things, we can start with how condescending you've been acting toward me lately.”

Lauren sighed patiently. “Your attitude is the cause of my attitude.”

“No. That doesn't mean anything. You're not allowed to simply reverse the things that I say.”

“Please don't talk down to me.”

“I'm not!”

“I can't help the way I feel,” she said maddeningly.

This was not how I'd wanted it to go. I was losing ground and making things worse, and I desperately wanted to reset. “I just want us to be together,” I said earnestly.

“We tried that.”

“No. But we didn't, not really. Okay, because, see…” I stopped myself. “I think I might be in love with you. And I didn't think I could say that, but I've said it.”

It hung there uncertainly as Lauren's face softened in a way I couldn't read.

“I just think we should try to be friends right now,” she said.

“Why are you always trying to pick a fight with me!” I shouted.

*   *   *

That was the end. I felt trampled and manipulated, and I was done with the whole thing. I'd let Lauren turn me into a crushing bore, and I resented her for that. It was exhausting trying to stay so goddamn angry. All I wanted now was for things to stop changing.

I went back to my own friends, where I didn't have to try so hard. I could be sour and sarcastic and drunk, and they didn't even care. They hardly noticed if I was more depressed or belligerent than usual, and I loved them for that.

And then, one day, near the end of the summer, I ran into Cokie on the street. We got to laughing easily, and it struck me that Cokie had not done anything to me. She was not Lauren, and I seized on this impulse to invite her over to my house for dinner. Cokie seemed charmed by the idea that I might actually try to cook, and she accepted happily.

I started drinking the cheap wine I'd bought as soon as I got home from the grocery store. I felt excited: happy to make this one dinner, happy to save this one relationship. I wanted the gesture to be a kind of apology for myself and all my bad behavior. I wanted to be able to laugh about the summer and move on.

And it was like that, too. The wine had a way of making me come unbound. I knew that I was talking too much, but I didn't care. We sat on the couch listening to records, and I felt lucky just to talk to anyone again. Cokie said she wanted to get out of D.C., and I locked onto this idea with her. Maybe it was the city that had dragged me down, and not Lauren Pinkerton at all. I made some drunken generalizations about the kids here. Insulated. Overeducated. Underemployed. Cokie laughed, and I knew that I was rambling, but I was laughing, too.

There was a kindness in her laughter, I thought. Something loose and free from judgment. And, all at once, a spark flashed in my brain. It was
Cokie
I had been in love with all along, and not Lauren. I had simply picked the wrong girl!

Cokie was talking excitedly now, too, and feeling the wine. She was saying that she wanted to travel, and maybe we could travel together. Yes, I said, not really listening. She was saying that it should be somewhere big, somewhere we would never think to go. I was nodding along, thinking about kissing Cokie; thinking about hurting Lauren. Who could say that Cokie didn't secretly want to hurt her, too?

“The Middle East,” Cokie said, and I stopped.

“You want us to travel to the
Middle East
?
Now
?”

“Yeah, yeah, totally, listen…”

But I wasn't listening. Even as I saw that Cokie was serious. Talking about flights to Morocco and hitchhiking through Northern Africa. She said we could find jobs as journalists or bloggers, to subsidize the traveling. I was hearing her tell me all of this, and I was trying not to laugh. But this got Cokie laughing, too.

“This all sounds fucking terrifying, Cokie,” I said. “I have to tell you, I have no idea what you're talking about.” It was making me feel delirious.

“Wait, wait, but no … I've actually looked into this. It's not really that dangerous,” she said, going on about the Zagros Mountains, and an American professor in Tehran whom she'd been emailing. But none of this mattered anymore. I just wanted Cokie. I suddenly wanted her to stay and sleep with me, in my bed tonight. I couldn't even care that Lauren had told me, in the strictest confidence, that Patrick Serf might have given Cokie herpes that summer. I just needed to kiss her.

And when she stopped talking and turned to me expectantly, I leaned in, in a kind of slow motion. This, not unpredictably, was a spectacular failure. Cokie saw it coming and she dodged my kiss the way you might duck a punch. Moving in and away as she gave me her chin and cheek. She was really very sweet about it, too, almost acting as if it didn't happen. But it did happen, and I was left sitting there, stunned.

Cokie retreated into the kitchen to find her phone, still talking over her shoulder, sounding unfazed. “Patrick and his friends are at the Raven.”

She ducked her head back into the living room, where I was sitting motionlessly on the couch. “Do you wanna go with me? You should come.”

“Oh,” I said. “No. I don't think I'd be much fun tonight.”

Cokie smiled sadly and let it go.

We walked out through the front hallway, and I carried her bike down the steps. I could tell that Cokie wanted to give me some kind of parting embrace, but I was far too demoralized for that. I propped the bike between us instead, as we said our goodbyes on the sidewalk. And then I went back up the steps, where I watched Cokie ride out into the night without me. Back into the fun. Gone.

 

MEN WITH PLAIN NAMES

By October, there was a killer on the loose. Five dead the first day. Several more each day after that. And no one was surprised, either. This was the new normal in late capitalist, pre-revolutionary America.

I was working for a man named Mike, helping him paint a one-story apartment building orange. Working outside on ladders, standing in the open, we were easy targets for a man with a gun. I could've been back in school, but Mike really had to be here. It was his truck, and his paint, and his job. Mike had a girlfriend at home who was pregnant with a baby boy they were thinking of calling Michael. Just like his name. Just like my name. I tried to talk him out of this, of course, but it was no use.

As we worked we listened to the classic rock station where they almost never talked about anything real, and certainly not the Beltway Sniper. These were the radio voices in your nightmares. Upbeat. Impersonal. Commercialized. They were not being maudlin or ironic when they played “(Don't Fear) The Reaper” for the third time in a day. This was just part of another all-new, nonstop, workday rock-block.

We knew that our faithful disc jockeys would not condescend to listing off the totals of the dead or mentioning the manhunt. They didn't pander by offering us any updates or breaking news. They didn't tell us when the Terror Alert level was raised from yellow to orange to red. They just kept their heads down and played the hits: schlocky, feel-good rock and roll.

*   *   *

Things were looking up for me, though. I'd actually inherited my father's car that morning. A blue Toyota Camry. It was just sitting there in front of my house when I came down the steps with my bicycle. I knew the car was my father's because I could see my brother sitting in the front seat.

“Hello, young man,” I said cheerfully, as he got out, wearing a necktie. “Are you here to tell me about the Bible?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Let me inside the house.”

But I was already out in the street, pacing around the Camry. This car was a beautiful thing to me. It never even occurred to me to ask my parents to bring it down.

“Have you had this here the whole time?”

I knew my brother was around, of course. Right there at the end of the Green Line. My parents had driven him down to the University of Maryland at the end of August. The three of them spent the weekend in a hotel, getting him settled. They drove into the city, where I met them for dinner, twice. And that was the last that I saw of my baby brother.

“I meant to come and visit you,” I said. “I've just been busy.”

He nodded cautiously.

“This is good, though. You've done the right thing bringing this to me.” I slapped my palm down on the top of the car. My brother didn't say a word.

“What is all this shit anyway?” I was cupping my hands and peering through the back windows. The seats were filled with boxes and bags. I could see a matte-black stereo and a nineteen-inch television set.

“I got kicked out of the dorms. I need to stay with you.”

“You got kicked out of
school
?”

“No. Just the dorms.”

“In five weeks? That must be some kind of record.”

“I seriously doubt that,” he said blankly.

I straightened myself up again to stare at him in judgment. Glaring at his stupid necktie. “What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything.”

“Why are you wearing that tie, then?”

“Because I want to. Jesus Christ. Are you gonna let me inside the house or not?” I could hear the strain in his voice now. “Three more people were killed last night. Did you even know that?”

“Yeah, sure … I know,” I said absently. I was still marveling at the car. “You've really had this here the whole time?”

My brother frowned. Crossing and uncrossing his arms. He was glancing out toward the intersection warily.

“I almost died in this car, you know? I was driving drunk on my birthday and I spun the fucking thing around backward like—”

“Can we please just get off the street,” he asked me for the third time. “Please!”

“Sure,” I said, passing him my bicycle. “Bring this into the house. I'm taking the car.”

“Taking it where?”

“To work,” I said. “Where do you think?”

“Don't you have school?”

“Don't you?”

My brother sighed and handed me the car keys.

*   *   *

There was a killer on the loose. These are the plots of horror films. Or crime thrillers. Or just some bad buddy-cop movie. We didn't know what was going on, which is different than being surprised by it. We had grown accustomed to a world of sudden, randomized death. Literally anything might happen next.