“I like that,” Sean said.
“Annie. Listen to yourself,” Chris said. He stood up. “What are you doing right now?” He adjusted his pants and sat down. He had a look on his face, Sean saw, like he might scream in such a horrifyingly quiet, mutated, and frequencyless way that the rules of the universe would then have to be changed.
“You’re in a bad mood,” Annie said. She hugged Chris. She looked at him. “I love you,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” Chris said uncertainly. He looked away, loudly said, “I’m joking,” then looked back and began to talk about whether or not it was a crime against humanity to buy coffee from Starbucks. It was a public company, so was driven by profit, would create a greater divide between the rich and the poor. But people were maybe better able to fall in love inside of Starbucks, with those plush sofas. But were people supposed to love other people, themselves, the entire world, or love itself? Chris looked around. He said that he hadn’t been thinking about any of this until now; he’d been thinking about chess — how bizarre and depressing it was — and then was somehow all of a sudden talking about Starbucks. He said he felt a lot better now — maybe. He wasn’t sure. He spread his fingers on his head and began to massage it. Annie peeled Chris’s hands off, replaced those hands with her own, quoted Einstein (“Only a life lived for others is worthwhile”) and then said something about learning to love, how it was a kind of memorization, a set of facts to place in your mind, a kind of future memory — a framework — to move into. Sean was trying to listen, to figure that out, when he got up — unconsciously, he thought while doing it — to use the bathroom. He washed his hands. Maryanne, he thought. He made a smile at the mirror above the sink. He made an angry face, a neutral face. He moved his head very close to the glass — the tricky, world-in-world depth of it, like a wise and airy ice. He could fall in, he knew, into the higher intelligence of the mirror, the keen and confident indifference of it, how it continuously took you in and doubted you and reflected your doubted self back into the world. Sean stared at his face. Where did he come from? What must one believe in? Where did love come from? He felt that these were three very legitimate questions.
In the morning Annie came over with a little girl. Sean hadn’t slept yet and was about to. Chris was watching TV. “Is your crab-cake recipe better than love?” the TV was saying. “Better than, um, sex?”
“Hi, small girl,” Chris said.
“This is Maryanne,” Annie said. The girl looked about five or six. She held onto a corner of Annie’s dress, which was layered red and white — she had on two dresses.
“Who’s Maryanne?” the little girl whispered. Her hand was very tiny.
“You’re Michelle,” Annie said to the little girl. “Most of what I said was not true,” Annie said to Chris and Sean. “Of course the truth is like a box of 56 crayons.” She paused. “Goddamn,” she said in a kind tone. “It’s okay to say goddamn around Michelle.”
The little girl wandered over to Sean.
“Hi, Maryanne,” Sean said.
“Michelle,” said the little girl.
“I forgot,” Sean said.
“Hi,” Michelle whispered. She moved very close to Sean. “Do you have a pet?”
Sean scooted away from Michelle then back to where he just was. He shook his head. Something was scrolling across the cramped sky of his mind, a white and messageless banner, folding across itself.
Michelle took something out of her pocket. A lima bean. She held it close to her chest and petted it while looking at Sean. Her eyes seemed flawless in a cut and auctionable way — a bit outlandish, Sean thought critically. He stared at her.
“That’s her pet bean,” Annie said. “She says it’s a dog. Michelle, share what’s its name.”
Michelle put the bean in her pocket and stepped back, away from Annie. “Let me do it myself,” Michelle said. Her face turned red. She held Sean’s hand and glared at Annie.
Sean looked at Chris, who was staring at the TV, which became very loud suddenly—“For the last twenty years I loved someone who loved someone else, who was not a thing of the human species, but a major S&P 500 corporation. So I just collapsed and fell on the bed. The bed was not a waterbed. It was park bench.”
Sean made an effort to wish the world well, but then accidentally gave it — he felt this with clarity — a damning curse. He thought of maybe lying down. He was very sleepy. The little girl is holding my hand, he thought. He lost track of things for a moment, and then time seemed to pass blunderingly, suddenly, by, in a flapping bunch, like an unclogged flock of something. Sean was taken aback. Time had certain obligations, he knew.
“I’m hungry,” Chris said. He stood up. “I want the salad. The Japanese place. St. Marks.” They left for the restaurant, the same one as the night before. After eating, they stood outside. They looked at the sky. It was cloudy and a little pink. There was nothing to say about it. Annie bought ice cream. Sean wandered into a deli and came out with a coffee whose largeness seemed highly creative.
On Fifth Avenue, Annie ran ahead. She bent at her knees and jumped a little. Her ice cream cone floated up into the air, brushed against a closed second-floor window, fell on the sidewalk. Annie’s mouth moved in something like a laugh — Chris, Sean, and Michelle saw — and she ran into a store and came back out when everyone else had caught up.
“What is wrong with you,” Chris said. His voice was neutral and disconnected, more sound than language. Sean mimicked his brother aloud—“What is wrong with you”—and laughed. Chris looked at him.
“What is wrong with you,” Chris said again.
Sean laughed again.
“I’m helping you,” Annie was saying to Chris. “Doing strange things will help you. Didn’t you like that?” She hugged Chris. She looked at him.
“Sorry,” Chris said.
“You seem happy,” she said.
“No,” Chris said. “I mean — maybe.” He pointed weakly at something across the street. Sean thought of clams and laughed. Chris looked at him.
Back at the apartment, Michelle had been in the bathroom for a long time. Sean — on the sofa — finished his coffee, put the cup on the table, and felt a vague desire for the cup. I’m a red cup, said the cup. Sean picked it up, set it back. The cup was huge. Sean grinned. Annie and Chris were on the bed. “We’re sitting here waiting for Michelle,” Annie said. “We’re not doing nothing, we’re doing something.” They could hear Michelle in the bathroom, talking in hushed, secretive tones.
“What’s my job?” Chris said slowly. “I forgot how I make money. Oh. Never mind.”
Michelle came out and whispered something in Annie’s ear. Annie went to Chris’s desk and swept all the stuff there — all the useless crap, Sean thought instantaneously — to one side.
Michelle took her bean out of her pocket, and then a little bed, which was toilet paper inside of a sushi soy-sauce holder. She stole that from the Japanese restaurant, Sean thought enthusiastically. Michelle put the bed on the table, the bean on the bed. She covered exactly half the bean with toilet paper.
They were all watching her do this. “Stop it,” Michelle said. She moved her body so that it blocked what she was doing.
Chris turned on the TV — a dating show.
“The bean — the dog is treated so well,” Annie said. “That’s no good. Without pain, pleasure is an unsatisfying, irritating thing. With pain … it’s an urgent, leaving thing. Is that too pessimistic? Michelle?”