“You must think I’m an idiot,” said Amanda.
Megan continued the look.
“Let me call your bluff and say this,” said Amanda. “There’s no one on this planet, not even my mother, who I like enough to stand around and soak up this selfish, whiny-baby bullshit from. A week? Ok, everyone has their weeks, but honestly I don’t even remember why we’re friends. This is miserable. I don’t know what I’m doing out here with you. There are people here who I don’t even know who I’d rather talk to than you right now. You seem to think you’re doing me a favor by hanging out with me. I find that laughable. I’d rather hang out with that guy,” she pointed to a white-faced slump-eyed guy in a beanie, “who looks like he might barf in my face, than hang out with you for another second. I don’t know how much more clear I can be. I was just trying to give you a pep talk and you started shitting all over me. You are unbelievably draining, you self-serving, shallow, talentless waste of time.”
Megan’s I Dare You face had become stuck, but not without absorbing some of the psychotic torture that was going on behind it. It was a damn silly position to be in, trying to hold the bluff when it had already been called.
“I’m going to go inside now,” said Amanda.
The potheads weren’t eavesdropping as covertly as they might have liked. Amanda left.
“I think I’m going to go into the yard,” said Megan, to no one. “Good evening,” she said to the pale-faced guy in the beanie.
Her legs felt crazy and her hands were clammy.
“This is awful,” she said. She said it in a kind of hollow, matter-of-fact way.
It was difficult to walk down the stairs. Her purse of beer was tipping her to the side.
“This is terrible.”
She crawled under the porch and sat by the air conditioner and looked out into the yard. She could hear the people on the porch talking, not about her, just talking about whatever they wanted to. They weren’t really that interested.
Spring nights were so fucking nice.
That elevated feeling she’d had earlier while she was shit talking all of human behavior came back, and as it came back she started laughing a horrified laugh, because that swelling feeling was exactly the same feeling she always had before she started sobbing. She hadn’t recognized it ten minutes ago, but that was why the feeling had been so familiar. Not because her consciousness was tapping into the ineffable, but because she was about to cry and had cried before. She sat there with her eyes wide and her mouth open, laughing noiselessly. Then she started crying, which only made her laugh more.
Her body felt like nothing, not dense like it usually did.
I could stay here like this forever, she thought. This is infinity’s moment.
“Hahaha, uugh.”
Infinity’s moment sounded like the jargon of a pedophile, and the phrase repulsed Megan, but she couldn’t stop thinking it. “Would you like to go to the Movie Star Room, Tracy?” Like “infinity’s moment” would be what the pedophile called his orgasm.
Several feet above and behind Megan, Amanda walked up to Randy.
“Can I talk to you?” she said.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“I’m really sorry, I feel like kind of an asshole.”
“What’s up?” said Randy.
“Megan and I got into a fight, and I think I might have really hurt her feelings. I feel like an asshole.”
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but I don’t really want to . . . I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t really think I can talk to her right now, but I think she might be under the porch crying. I’m sorry, I know this is shitty.”
“Uh, really, Amanda, this isn’t your fault. She’s been kind of nasty lately. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, she’s not your responsibility.”
Randy wince-smiled.
Back under the porch, Megan was grinning and crying. Oh my god, someone’s coming down here, she thought. But this is infinity’s moment, don’t they know that? Hahaha, go away, go away, go away. Don’t you know this is a special moment and that I can’t talk right now, not even to tell you to go away, so just go away, go away?
She looks scary, thought Randy. Why is she smiling like that?
If I don’t look at them? She stared ahead. Please go away, you know I don’t really like social situations, hahaha. You know I don’t do well in social situations, hahaha.
She’s just really drunk.
Oh, it’s Randy, my poor little Randy!
Randy scooted down next to her and said, “Hey, baby. Amanda told me you two got in a fight.”
“Uuuoooohhhhh,” said Megan. “Uuuuuhoohh.”
He covered her with his torso and put his arms around her.
“My poor mama hen, my poor Randy.”
“What?” said Randy. “I can’t hear you.”
“My poor mama hen.”
“I can’t—”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
God, what a relief to just be able to cry like a normal person, without smiling. What a fucking relief.
“Honey, what’s going on with you?”
Megan sobbed and said “sorry” while she thought thank you, thank you, oh, thank you.
He pulled away slightly and her arms tightened around him. She imagined being a python and coiling around him so she could kill him and eat him and keep him with her all the time.
“I’m going to go inside and get our stuff and say goodnight to some people, ok?”
Megan nodded. Randy left. Megan thought about Randy saying goodbye to some people while he gathered their stuff and she cringed.
“I have a few more minutes left,” she whispered. “A few more minutes in infinity’s moment, hahahaha. Oh fuck, I’m such an idiot, that’s so gross, I’m a disgusting piece of shit.”
He came back down the stairs and crawled down to meet her.
“Here you go, sweetie.” He handed her some tissues, which she used to blow her nose and wipe the gooey tear bullshit off her face.
“Drink this.”
She drank a sip of the glass of water.
“The whole thing, it’s good for you.”
She frowned at him, but then drank it.
“Where are you going to put it all?”
He took her tissues and put them in his pocket, then put the cup on the stairs.
THE NEXT DAY was a bad one.
The morning shower went something like this: Oh my god, I just don’t want to be wrong about everything I’ve ever thought or to feel like I’m in some kind of dysfunctional state because of my personality, because if my personality is toxic, what am I supposed to do? Hey, what am I supposed to do about anything? I don’t have anything at all in my life, I don’t have anything that’s only mine except this feeling, which isn’t even something that’s only mine or something to be proud of but, uuhhhhh, oh my god what am I doing, there’s nothing I can do I’m just going to keep working at worse and worse jobs and I’m going to get sicker and sicker, my hair is going to fall out and my skin is going to get shitty, why am I even thinking about that right now, but I have to because it’s just what I’m thinking, it’s not like I’m making myself think this it’s just what I’m thinking. Oh god, oh god, oh my god.
All this was thought while sobbing silently and not washing, except for a little bit every few minutes because she had to (she was showering, after all) and then feeling totally ridiculous sudsing her buttcrack with the teal plastic bath poof while crying and thinking about the future. The horrible, empty future.
When she wasn’t hiding around the apartment crying, she sat on the couch and felt physically hollow. Like she was resigned, but she didn’t know to what. Randy was being careful around her in a way that really stung, but maybe she was imagining it and he wasn’t acting differently. But, if he wasn’t acting differently after her display last night, wasn’t that bad, too? She got back into bed and he sat on his computer quietly.