Then Sean was yawning and blinking a very slow blink. He noticed that he was staring at something not Annie. His eyes weren’t focusing. Focus, Sean told his eyes. He exerted willpower at his eyes. There was a fork. I’m used for eating, said the fork. Throw it, Sean thought. He wanted to have fun. He touched his mouth and felt that he was still smiling. Good, he thought. He yawned and put some of his fingers in the hole of his mouth. He wouldn’t ever sleep again, he thought promisingly, never again. Clams, he thought. He saw that Chris was pointing his finger, ordering appetizers off the menu. All of them, Sean thought, give him all the appetizers. The waitress had her notepad. Sean couldn’t decipher her face. He felt that he knew her intimately. She had a pen and a notepad and then she was leaving. “Beer,” Chris shouted. “Saki.”
“Oh, wow,” Annie said. “Maryanne has the same consonant-vowel configuration as Michelle. I guess that isn’t very interesting.” Michelle stood and began to attack Annie. She kicked Annie. She hit Annie with a spoon. Annie had a worried look on her face. “Oh, Michelle,” she said. “Hit me, please. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. How do I help us? You and Chris. You and Sean and Chris.”
Sean looked at his brother, who seemed to be weeping, very quietly and strangely, his face down, almost touching his salad bowls. Sean wanted to spray him with the hose. He wanted badly to do that ten years ago. I’ll do it, Sean thought. The logic of this blanked his mind. Then Michelle was holding his hand, leading him someplace, and now they stood outside the restaurant, looking in through glass.
Annie was hugging Chris at the sushi bar. She turned and looked for Michelle and Sean and saw them standing outside, holding hands. The precocious child, her daughter — how she loved her little Michelle — was staring right at her, fiercely but sleepily; her eyes a bit unfocused. Sean, the young boy, was yawning. He had the admonished, ever-surrendering face — the wet eyes — of someone who would only ever love from a distance, in secret, a kind of nauseous, searching half-love, a love dizzied by its own halfness, made faithful by its own dizziness. He was yawning again. He hadn’t slept, Annie knew.
Michelle led Sean inside. She walked slowly around, holding Sean’s hand. Sean gazed at people with a keen and intensifying indifference. He experienced a distinct moment of nonexistence, and then became aware that he was staring at teriyaki. Who are you? Sean thought. The meat rolled over. It was chicken. It had a sad, slick sauce on it — a savvy dressing that it maybe, Sean thought cautiously, did not want. But it needed that sauce. It wanted to be eaten. Michelle was asking a stranger where the bathroom was. Then Sean opened the bathroom door and Michelle pushed him inside. She went inside. The bathroom was small and dark and Sean turned on the light. “No,” Michelle said. Sean turned off the light. He stared into the darkness. Love, he thought. He was yawning. People outside were laughing. The sound was distorted. “I left my salmon at your house,” someone said excitedly. Cold air was moving down from above and Michelle was talking loudly. “She threw sand at my pet dog. It was Bean. She says things on purpose because she’s an annoying mommy …” I do not know what she is talking about, Sean thought very slowly. Michelle was crying softly, then very loudly. Sean felt that he was somewhere else, a place where he was yet somewhere else. Thanks, Sean thought. Thank you, world. Something inside of him was grabbing at air. Something else was on its way, was moving, steady and brainward, like an inchoate thought, something forming and loving and true — but it was a tiny thing, a distant and tired thing, and it was slowing, giving up, maybe turning around. Michelle was crying and saying, “I don’t even love any real person …” and someone was knocking at the door, from below. It was Chris. “Sean,” he said. “Maryanne.” He kicked the door again, then had the sudden and engrossing thought that tomorrow, and every day after, he might wake up feeling exactly the same as he did right now, which made his body shake a little. No one noticed that, though. No one was looking at Chris. Everyone was looking at the green-haired, red-and-white dressed girl, who was standing next to Chris, and who was saying, “People are staring, Michelle, Sean, right at me, as I’m saying these words they’re staring at my mouth and inside of my mouth and now their faces are changing — as I’m talking, Chris, their faces are changing and changing …” Her voice was loud, but trembling, as if she were going to cry.
Cull the Steel Heart, Melt the Ice one, Love the Weak Thing; Say Nothing of Consolation, but Irrelevance, Disaster, and Nonexistence; Have no Hope or Hate — Nothing; Ruin Yourself Exclusively, Completely, and Whenever Possible
Snow was everywhere that Friday, in clumps and hills, glassy and metastasized as SUVs, and none of it white. The sky was a bright and affected gray — lit from some unseen light source, and not really that interesting. People went up and down Sixth Avenue with the word motherfucker in their heads. They felt no emotions, had no sensation of life, love, or the pursuit of happiness, but only the knowledge of being stuck between a Thursday and a Saturday, air and things, this thought and the next, philosophy and action; birth, death, God, the devil, heaven, and hell. There was no escape, ever, was what people felt.
Colin himself was dressed lightly, in dark and enveloping colors. He felt of the same endless machinery and danceless, starless trance of the city at night, if a bit cold. He stood on the perimeter of Washington Square Park, waiting for Dana. They were going to a Leftover Crack show. Leftover Crack was a ska-punk band fronted by a person named Stza; their recent CD was “Fuck World Trade,” Colin knew, as he owned that CD.
Dana crossed the street quickly, as if over water. She wore a yellow beanie, stood with Colin on the sidewalk. They smiled at each other and nothing else happened. The atmosphere was not conducive to talking. Visibility was low because of a fog. In the distance, vague things were falling or rising between the buildings. Bats, flying trash. Werewolves, throwing themselves off of roofs. Dana was holding herself with her own arms, Colin could see. They’d known each other almost four years, beginning with the first college-orientation thing before September 11th, but hadn’t really talked in more than three. A few days ago they’d met on the street and made plans. Tonight, Dana’s boyfriend was at a boxing seminar or something, was unavailable, so here she was with Colin.
In the street, a car idled by, a little off-kilter and without its lights on. An unmanned car, lost in the world. It spun slowly around and continued down the street, backwards and twisting.
It began to snow.
“Sure you want to do this?” Dana finally said.
Colin felt cold. He probably should’ve worn more clothing. The show was in Brooklyn, he knew, and they were in Manhattan. “Um,” he said.
“I want to do something with you still,” Dana said.
Colin looked at her. His eyes were very dry. He could feel his contact lenses there, little walls in front of his eyes. He yawned and Dana went out of focus, a bit wild and diagonal in the air, as if about to travel through time. There was snow on her beanie. Colin brushed at it. But it was just white dots — smiley faces.
“There was this beanie floating through the air the other day,” Dana said. “Minding its own business, and I reached over and plucked it out. Like a flower or something. Not this one I’m wearing now. A different one. This really shitty one.” She smiled, then laughed. “I never say ‘shitty.’ I’ve just been listening to this song. It goes, ‘the world’s a shitty place / I can’t wait to die,’ and at the end he goes, ‘just kidding world / you know I love you.’ ”