In the apartment Sean had music on very loud. This was despairing guitar music from the mid 90’s. Chris had gone somewhere with Annie for the week. It was 3 a.m., and Sean was cleaning — going around with a trash bag, stuffing things in; humming harmonies and sometimes singing.
In the morning, Sean went for Chinese takeout. Back home, he put on despairing acoustic music. He ate, poured juice. The music was very good. Sean stopped for a moment and held himself very still. This is good, he thought. I’m being serious, he thought. “I am extremely happy,” he said aloud. He put his food down. He jumped on his brother’s bed. He lay down. He wanted to laugh or something. Love, he thought. He got up, turned off the music. He watched TV. He went to sleep.
It was dark out when Sean woke. He put on music, washed the dishes. He wiped the TV and the desk with wet paper towels, and the floor. He showered with the door open, the music loud. He went out for coffee. He stopped at a bookstore and got a job application. Outside, crossing Fifth Avenue, he looked up at the buildings and felt a kind of rapture, something of apology and thanks and intelligence — though maybe just a thing of coffee and wakefulness — forming, like a good idea (the world thinking hard, finally), here, in the little wind, the slightly infrared space between the buildings, the wet, shucked gemstars of the traffic lights, and all the glassy windows above, bright and comprehending as eyes, watchful as a world that wanted, truly, to know — and to love — all its lost and bewildered people.
Sean woke on his brother’s bed. “Sean,” Annie said. She and Chris were back. “Come with us to see a blockbuster Hollywood movie.” Her hair was dyed an inconsistent green, like a fern plant.
“Maryanne wants to meet you for a blind date,” Annie said in the movie theatre. She sat between Sean and Chris, leaned against Chris and looking at Sean. “Maryanne. Isn’t that a pretty name?”
“Maryanne, who is Maryanne,” Chris said.
“I like that name,” Sean said. He was thinking of a dream he had, a few days ago, in which love was a skeleton that hovered through the night; just one skeleton for all the world — a logistical mistake, Sean understood in his dream — gliding toe-swept over oceans, under bridges, through walls; the bones and ghost of it entering and leaving bedrooms at night, like a wantless thief; a clean, dead thing with the temperament of a cloud. The dream had gone on and on and was soothing in a chalky, religious way, like a sourceless and messageless yet somehow affecting prayer. Now, though, the whole thing seemed just irritating. The skeleton, Sean now felt, was not love, but some failed manifestation of love — high-flying and loud, jangling its bones, chomping its jaws in a false and godless laughter.
“Maryanne was dropped on her head as a small girl,” Annie was saying. “But instead of making her brain-damaged, it made her think beautifully and oddly. She was knocked sideways on the IQ scale, not downwards.”
“How come?” Sean said. He had spent the rest of last week renting low-budget, existential films, drinking beer and coffee, gazing somehow nostalgically from across the room at the bookstore job application — kind of depressed.
“How old is your sister?” Chris said.
Annie sat up very straight. “My sister,” she said. “She isn’t restrained by time or space. She’s not like that. I don’t know. She’s not a robot. This isn’t science fiction masterpiece theatre.” Annie paused. “I could say she’s ten or twenty but that wouldn’t be true. She’s just there. She’s not even a sister, really.” Annie laughed. She stood up. “Hey, wow,” she said. “There’s Maryanne.” She pointed at a girl sitting alone in the front row. “Sean, go sit by her. She’s lonely. Maybe a little hopeless, sitting in the front row. But look at her hair. She’s fixed it up, shampooed it.”
“I don’t know Maryanne,” Sean said.
“Where’s Maryanne?” Chris said without moving. “Thanks, Sean. For cleaning the apartment.”
“Maryanne,” Annie shouted. Some people, not the girl, turned around. “Go before the movie starts. Just point up here for confirmation, I’ll be waving.”
“No,” Sean said. Annie pulled him up. Sean looked around. The world seemed strange, but then it wasn’t strange anymore, it was just the world. “Okay,” he said. “But come with me.” He would go, he thought. He would get himself inescapably in love, like a good trouble; love would stare blankly at him, he would not flinch, and love, then, would murder him, drag him to a gray, underground place, freeze his corpse, and, over time, eat him. Annie pushed Sean into the aisle. She sat back down. Sean felt tall and dizzy. He went carefully down the steps. At the front row, he smiled at the girl, said something, and pointed back up at Annie, who was standing and waving. The girl stood up. Her face was startled and afraid. She was middle-aged. She touched her hair and sat down. Sean was looking, now, at the floor, and it seemed to Annie like he had fallen asleep, standing there. The lights went off.
Sean came back up and sat down. There was a small pounding at the back of his head, a tapping against the inside-back of his skull — the brain bored with itself; wanting out, perhaps, drilling slowly, wearily, at the bone.
“Don’t worry, Sean,” Annie whispered. She looked at him. She patted his thigh.
“Good one,” Sean whispered to her. It really was good, he thought.
Later, during the movie, Annie whispered in Sean’s ear, “That’s what you have to do. Pretend you know these people. Pretend they love you. They can love you. Think about it.” The movie was about James Bond, who had a speedboat that could, if the situation called for it, which it did — twice — fit in the palm of his hand. He was a very busy man, too busy for love — except for a terse, witty, hyper-sexy sort of love.
After the movie, they went for sushi. “Still believe I have a sister named Maryanne?” Annie said. “Think I’m making that up?”
“Maybe,” Sean said.
“I do,” Annie said. “She has the cataractous gaze of a child prodigy entering into a scorched land. One time she tossed an ice cream cone underhand into a third-floor window. The cold thing went without a sound into that hard, brick building. It was like a little epiphany of the physical world.”