This new flippancy, though, was not strictly joke-y and fun. There was something, Aaron felt, murderous to it. In each moment of laughter or play there was a small probability of manslaughter, a percentage chance of violence and jail-time. Alicia sometimes went too far, Aaron felt. She cut him once with a fork. Another time, Aaron daydreamed for a very long time about setting a death-trap for Alicia; a spiked pit, perhaps, in some parking lot — a death pit!
In this way, then — unable to assimilate these feelings of assassination, farce, song, and play — they became a bit reckless. They grew daring and confused. Though their fights increased noticeably in frequency and lies when they spent more than one consecutive night together, and though, Aaron knew, they did not really love each other, not anymore, maybe not ever (they had become like siblings now, except that they lacked the responsibility of family, that kind of forced love, and so were less siblings than just sort of moody, interdepartmental co-workers) — though, in other words, they really should not have been getting an apartment together, they went ahead and got an apartment together, signed a two-year lease, as, in addition to their new brazenness, they were not — and had never been — energetic people, but were, to be honest, needy people; prone to disillusionment, lazy about new things, and very much fearful of loneliness, desperation, meaninglessness, and dating. They needed each other, they knew, needed the vague momentum of two, the mild tyranny and oppression of it — that second brain like an orbital satellite and remote control to the first brain — to let them know what, at any given moment, was the point in life; and also to argue with and complain to.
Their new apartment was sunny and spacey in an atomic-bombed way. It had wood floors. It was on the edge of a massive, abandoned, wasp-infested shopping center plaza, a few miles from the university. It was a dry place, with no cockroaches or mildew, but many spiders and moths and silverfish — bugs that were better than other people’s bugs, Aaron liked to say, were wittier and more role-playing; sometimes, on the weekends, two large spiders would walk out into the center of the bedroom and stay there for hours, like henchmen; then when no one was looking, usually during the night, they would hurry away, like lovers.
In bed, they watched a moth walk experimentally across the floor, taking small, tottering steps.
“How funny,” Alicia said. “So funny.”
“It’s like a little … brown bear,” Aaron said. “A tiny one, because of the fuzziness.”
“I can see that,” Alicia said. “That’s kind of scary. I imagine it turning into a bear.”
The moth walked slowly out of view, behind a desk, then — back in view, going faster now — into the bathroom, where it lifted and flew noisily around, steady and aimed, and fulfilled, Aaron thought distractedly, as a miniature blow-dryer. They were talking now about spring break. Someone had brought up what to do over spring break. Who, though? This seemed to matter. Aaron had a feeling that, depending on who had brought it up, he should be either apprehensive or relieved.
“Maybe we should go to London,” Alicia said.
“London has no literary value,” Aaron said. Though his face was turned away, he sort of forced a grin anyway. He hated it when people got so inured that they went around being sarcastic without ever changing their facial expression. It was inhuman. It was so cheaply disenchanted. There was no compassion to going around meanly making jokes in people’s faces. Though, Aaron didn’t like it when comedians laughed at their own jokes. It was too … human, or something.
“They have Stonehedge. Stone … thing,” Alicia was saying. “Stonehenge. I have this fantasy … of living inside of Stonehenge. I know it’s not a house.” They didn’t say anything for a while. “You have no literary value,” Alicia then said.
“You have no face value,” Aaron said. He laughed. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Why did I say that?”
“Face value,” Alicia said.
“Because your face is ugly. That’s why I said it.” Aaron rolled over, grinning, and looked at Alicia. “Really, though. It’s because of the idiom or whatever. What’s the face value of this rare coin I found in my backyard? See.” He looked at her a moment more — looked at her face; her two eyes, black and incremental as a Japanese animation, her nose and mouth like well-made trinkets; how could anything true and complex ever be expressed? — and then rolled her carefully over and held her, loosely, like a thing that needed comfort, but also needed air. Alicia didn’t say anything. It was only October, Aaron knew. They probably shouldn’t have been talking about spring break. It was elliptic, foreboding talk. It assumed certain things about winter break.
“Who started talking about spring break first?” Aaron said. “A minute ago.”
“What,” Alicia said. She had a habit of automatically saying ‘what.’ Sometimes she’d say ‘what’ and then respond immediately after — cynically, without any visible shame. But it was a good way to buy time, Aaron had to admit, a cautious, maybe even considerate, thing to do. Probably it started that way, as a conversational strategy, but now just continued as a thing of her identity — a crucial part of her identity! Aaron felt some contempt for her. He felt bigoted and tired. He wasn’t going to repeat his question.
“What,” Alicia said again, after a while.
“ ‘What’ what,” Aaron said.
They didn’t talk for a long time, did not move, just lay in bed. Eventually, then, they made it somehow into the kitchen, and from there, affected no doubt by sunlight, they became a bit zealous and drove to a movie theatre and watched two movies, then ate dinner, slowly and dully, without drinking any water — feeling sort of shadowy and eradicated after the movies — and were now back in bed. Neither of them had spoken for a long time. Aaron was feeling very complacent, falling asleep a little. There were times when he stopped thinking — his cares and concerns left him, in a faraway smoke; a smoke he could see, in the distance — and everything around him stayed the same, so that he then just sort of passed, one-dimensionally — time-wise — through it all, feeling honest and fine and worriless.
“Do you want to know what I’m thinking about?” Alicia said. But Aaron had fallen asleep. Alicia waited a minute, then woke Aaron and repeated herself.
“What are you thinking about?” Aaron really wanted to know. Sleep had made him curious about Alicia. He had forgotten her, and would now relearn her. He felt grateful and intimate.
“I’ve been worried,” Alicia said. “Can’t you tell?”
Aaron now wondered why she hadn’t asked what he was thinking about. It seemed maybe hypocritical, what was happening right now, seemed almost — somehow — adulterous. “My sister hates me,” Alicia said; she and her sister had been close until Alicia left for college; now Alicia was worried; she felt guilty, and urgent, as time was running out, she felt, for reconciliation — and then there were some intricacies that Aaron had never fully understood. He had heard this talk before. He began to wonder if they ever resolved that thing with the face value; and there was something about spring break. What was that? Aaron realized that he wasn’t listening to Alicia at all, was not even trying. He could hear her voice, but was somehow able to process it not as language but as sound. He laughed. “Wait,” he said, interrupting her, “what are you saying right now? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.” He laughed again. “Can you start over, please?”