Iris Has Free Time (11 page)

I had sent the message with the vague idea that this would be the last word, a “joke” to cap the whole stupid non-affair. But in the silence that followed, none of it felt very funny. I didn’t really want a laugh, I realized. I wanted him to win me back.

An hour later my phone beeped, and I rushed from the kitchenette.

I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY.

 

Felix looked up from the computer. “What’d he say?”

“He didn’t get it,” I said and showed Felix the text.

“There are better guys for you, Iris,” he said and looked back at the computer.

I read the text over again, the words becoming blurry. I missed Martin.

“All I ever do is break up with people,” I said, laughing thinly. “Every time it ends faster and faster. Pretty soon I’ll be able to skip dating all together and just start right at the end. Why wait, when I know where it’s going? I could post an ad on Craigslist:

‘It’s Not You, It’s Me—W4M:

I flopped onto the couch and lit a cigarette. I thought of the time May and I decided it would be too hilarious for me to call this guy I’d been seeing and pretend to cry into his answering machine while recounting the plot of a particularly moving episode of
Alf.
It had been so funny when we smoked a joint and talked about it over Mac and Cheese. But then, when I was sniffling into his answering machine and there was no laugh track provided by May—she was standing beside me holding her breath in order not to corrupt the conditions of the experiment—all the humor dried up, and I knew I didn’t sound funny at all, just nuts.

I hung up and May burst into laughter. “How’d it go?” she asked.

“Yeah. So that’s over,” I said. I told May he wouldn’t be calling anymore and entered my prognosis into my chemistry ledger to make it official.

What did all my experiments prove?

“Is humor my tragic flaw?” I’d asked her later that afternoon, after closing the ledger and putting it aside. In addition to Physics and Quantum Philosophy, I was taking a class called Fate and Free Will in the Epic Tradition and had begun to project myself into the role of tragic hero. “Your comic flaw,” May replied, passing the joint back.

That afternoon, Felix continued to troll the Internet for girls while I retired to my bedroom. I turned on the TV and fiddled with the antenna, changing the channel before settling on the only one that came in with decent reception.

I watched
Oprah.
Tom Cruise was on, promoting his new movie
War of the Worlds
and talking about his burgeoning relationship with Katie Holmes. He jumped on the couch, threw his head back and bared his teeth. He was thrilled and smiling and took Oprah’s hands and shook her. He jumped on the couch, then to the ground again. “I love her,” he said, so sincerely it seemed he had to be kidding. And then it was time to bring out his new girlfriend.

The studio audience rose in a frenzy. “Ka-tie, Ka-tie,” they began chanting, as if preparing a virgin for ritual sacrifice. When the sacrifice wouldn’t come out, he had to go backstage and get her. The cameras followed as he found her, got hold of her arms, pulled them behind her back, and marched her onto the soundstage and up toward the mouth of the volcano. The gods were angry and required a gift. Everyone was screaming, Oprah leading them. I lowered the volume and turned over on my side.

A white cat sat in the windowsill across the street. I watched him for a while and tried to catch his eye; he wouldn’t look at me. I gave up and shut my eyes, pretending that the sound of the restaurant doors slamming downstairs was soporific, pretending that the sound of the Tenth Street bus screeching to a halt and growling as it pulled away was peaceful. I pretended that I was tired and numb and couldn’t feel anything anymore, and eventually I fell into a quasi-sleep.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, I thought about my future now that I’m single again. I thought about my almost-something with Jess, a bad movie with a script full of problems. Our romantic comedy would never get made, because nothing much happened, because we disagreed on the details, because we couldn’t agree on how to move the story forward. Scenes from our unmade movie passed before my closed eyes:

Our running into each other on East Tenth Street, how he saw me from behind a fence in Tompkins Square Park and called my name. How we passed the rest of the day together on a bench, how it got cold and he put his arm around me, how I told him not to kiss me and then he did, how I told him to call me later and then he didn’t. The way he called me last Sunday, depressed about his lack of career, asking if we could meet up for milkshakes. He was thinking about moving, maybe to L. A. “What do you think?” “I think you should go if you think you should,” I answered. “I could visit you if you want. Or not,” I added, when he looked away. Or when the three of us, Jess, Felix, and I, had been walking together on our way to Matt’s. Felix had found a large piece of wood left out on the curb among the trash. He was excited, he said; he could use it for a painting. He was excited because it had six sides and six was his lucky number. “My lucky pentagon!” he exclaimed.

“Actually, a pentagon has five sides,” I interrupted. “A hexagon has six. Ask me anything!” I joked, before Jess, a step or two behind me, asked, “What about your heart? How many sides does that have?”

A thin sleep, punctuated by the Bacchanalian screams issuing out from the
Oprah
program. I imagined Jess and me running into each other months from now. I wouldn’t expect to see him. He’d be the furthest thing from my mind. But then there he’d be on the sidewalk and, naturally, we’d stop to talk. I’d be beautiful and stoic, and with a look we’d say everything and nothing; we wouldn’t laugh at all.

I emerged from my bedroom at 6:00 PM and found The Bastard watching the baseball game on the small kitchen TV with the foil crunched around its antenna. He was eating spaghettied lettuce with jam instead of sauce. He had cut the lettuce into long thin strands and then boiled it.

He said he’d heard about an office party of a friend of a friend’s and we could head over to midtown at around 8:00 PM. I went to the fridge and retrieved a couple beers from what was left of an eighteen pack. I handed one to The Bastard.

“Wanna play backgammon?” he said, turning the sound off on the TV and heading over to the stereo to put on his favorite CD,
Felix’s Cool Hits Volume IV
. He’d made it upstate at his mom’s and brought it with him. It included Daft Punk’s “One More Time.”

“Sure,” I said, cracking a beer. “But then I need to figure out what to wear. You have to help me.” Back in college, I tested my outfits on May. Now I have The Bastard.

We played a round of backgammon and then Felix watched baseball and danced, while I tried on dresses and asked his opinion. Then we danced together, and after that we were ready to go. We played one more round of backgammon for the road and chugged our beers. I lit a cigarette and regretted it while smoking it. “I like everything about smoking except for the actual smoking,” I said, puzzled, putting it out halfway through.

We took the subway uptown and played a word game. I said, “Sh,” and Felix said, “ishkebob.” I said, “Sh,” and Felix said, “atner comma William.”

We made it to Thirty-third Street and walked down the wrong side of the block three times before we found the address and walked in behind some girls. “Well, what do we have here?” The Bastard cooed when we got on the elevator. The girls giggled.

The elevator doors opened and a rush of music flooded in. We stepped out into a large wood-lined loft with great windows framing the night on all sides. We followed the music past a maze of cubicles before arriving in an open space—a makeshift dance floor lined with clusters of office personel, a DJ booth, a bar, and a young man tinkering with a multi-colored light fixture as a woman looked on, holding his drink.

I went to the bar and got a beer but couldn’t finish it. I took a seat on the side somewhere and stared wearily out at the party, at the men and women gyrating jerkily, caught in a limbo state between drunk enough to dance but not drunk enough to dance well. Others stood on the side, laughing at their “crazy” co-workers. A woman cut in on a group of guys by grabbing one of their behinds before breaking away in blushing laughter. Three women in identical pencil skirts and a variety of bangs scowled in the corner with crossed arms. One removed a compact from her purse and reapplied her lipstick.

Normally I am very active at parties—dancing, telling jokes, meeting people, inventing games—but I felt so tired right then. I thought about the night before, about Felix turning green on the sofa after we smoked that blunt, about my wet oxford shirt, about the faces of Jess and the girl becoming larger and smaller after I’d gone on stupidly, “These are the rules to Awakenings. . . .”

A suited man a few feet in front of me began twirling his dance partner really fast. She spun and spun and almost fell before he caught her by the waist; they both laughed. The music was loud and the floor was loud, too. When people danced by, it groaned as if it were tired from holding everyone up. I started groaning with it, the way you do when you’re home alone sick and you know no one can hear you. I watched everyone and felt almost good that I was feeling bad, that I was allowed as a result to sit out this round. I took out my phone to see if Jess had texted.

A man with blonde hair came over and insisted I dance with him. He had an accent. “I am from Sweden,” he explained. He was very handsome: chiseled jaw, blue eyes, possessed of that rare yet conventional beauty that requires no special beholder. I refused him three or four times. I never say no to dancing but I was feeling so bad. He confused my saying no with my playing hard to get, and so he came on stronger. Finally I agreed just to get him off my back.

He held me in his arms and told me all sorts of things about his career and life, most of which I don’t remember. I found him boring and my head felt so hot. He complimented me on my rosy cheeks.

We danced and danced. He threw me back and forth and I grew irritated because I thought he was breathing more than necessary; I didn’t care for the sound. He said I was very beautiful, which made me feel sad instead of happy. I tried to right myself and store his compliment in the appropriate part of my brain, but couldn’t. I felt so odd. Like all my emotions were outside of me, clustered in different parts of the room. And as he threw me this way and that—now I was dancing in happiness, now melancholy, now dread—none of it felt at all real, because I knew we were only going to move again. What would any of it matter after we left that part of the room, after we left that part of the night? The Swedish man came on stronger. He begged to know what I was thinking.

Finally, I told him: “Look, I like you. I’m just not in the mood, okay?”

He told me he wanted to take me ice-skating tomorrow in Central Park. He told me he wanted to take me to the Museum of Natural History. He laid out all the dates you plan when you’re about to start a big romance, a new relationship in the beginning of winter or the end of fall depending on how you see things. He described the things you do with another person when you are less sure of your feelings than of your desire to feel them. He suggested dates that are so romantic in themselves that you don’t even have to be. Perfect moments in which you might feel nothing, but it doesn’t matter, because at a well-lit restaurant you can order a fish, because he can just dance you over to the part of the room where love is, and there, together, you can sway for a while and at the end of it, go home.

I said goodbye, and he grabbed me around the waist. He said, “Don’t leave like this. I want to see you again.” He looked into my eyes, and I nearly laughed—who was he looking at?

 

The Bastard crashed on my couch again that night. The dry spell had followed him to the party and he’d left empty-handed. He found me waiting for him in the hallway, my face burning, my throat scratchy. “I think I’m getting sick,” I said.

On the subway, Felix didn’t say much. I went quiet as well. I thought about the shape of my heart and pondered its many unseen sides. I thought about it like an old carousel, like the one in Bryant Park already closed for winter, with people all the time getting on and off. All these people whom you expect will always be in your life—Martin, May—go away, while some guy you met in the bathroom of a dorm party, some guy who made a joint disappear into thin air, turns up years later and takes up residence on your couch. He’s the one you talk to.

I felt like my heart was spinning in my chest, like it was going so fast that there was no time for anyone to get on or off anymore, like all I could do was hold on tight so I didn’t fly off, too. “I don’t want a relationship either,” I’d told Jess as we slow danced. “I was with someone for a very long time and now I just want to have fun. This, this is just fun.”

At home, I went to my bedroom and shut the door leaving Felix alone in the living room at the computer. I changed into my pajamas and lay in bed with the phone on the pillow next to me. I thought of Martin, about our movie. Perhaps it would end with us meeting as friends, me looking at him over a cup of coffee, saying how it was hard at first, the first few months after our breakup, how for a long time, I wasn’t ready, but now I am. “I’m ready to get back out there, I think, ready to try dating again. You know anyone who might be right for me?”

And then, as if it were the furthest thing from our minds, I’d notice him and he’d notice me. We’d look at each other with surprise and delight, with the expression one wears while tripping on destiny in a romantic comedy. We’d look at each other as if we were the freshest idea and simultaneously the obvious answer, as if audiences everywhere had never stopped rooting for us.