“Is she sweating,” said Sam.
“I think they oiled her down,” said Luis.
“That’s funny, I think,” said Sam.
“We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do,” said Luis.
“I’m going to masturbate then do some other shit then try to sleep for like 20 hours,” said Sam. “Have a good night.”
“Have a good night, I’m laughing,” said Luis.
About four months later Sam was living with Sheila in a suburban area of Pennsylvania. He was alone in Sheila’s mother’s house drinking iced coffee and looking at his poetry on the computer screen. The room was sunny and Sam felt warm. He looked out the window at a compost pile and an aboveground swimming pool.
A few days later he and Sheila were on a train to New York City. They drank from a large plastic bottle containing organic soymilk, energy drink, and green tea extract and wrote sex stories to sell to nerve.com for $500. Sheila’s sex story had chainsaws and Sam’s sex story had Ha Jin doing things in a bathroom at Emory University. Sheila said she felt excited to be in New York City soon. They talked about making their own energy drink company. They got off the train and stood waiting for another train. They climbed a wall and sat in sunlight facing the train tracks.
“I feel really happy right now,” said Sheila looking ahead.
Sam looked at the side of Sheila’s face.
“You didn’t feel happy before?” he said.
“I mean I just feel really good right now,” said Sheila. “Don’t you?”
“You don’t feel good at other times?” said Sam staring at his new shoes. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. That was stupid of me.”
“It’s okay,” said Sheila.
It was around 11 a.m. It was March.
Sam felt himself about to say something.
“Do you not feel good anymore?” he said.
Sheila had a bored facial expression.
“Something is wrong with me,” said Sam.
They got off the wall and stood hugging each other. The train came and they got on and found a New York Times Magazine “Style Issue” and stood in an enclosed area between train cars with some other people. They pointed at things on each page and said “Which would you rather have?” or “Which would you rather be?” They pointed at a vacuum cleaner and a tree, a suitcase and a bottle of champagne, a small child and an old man. They chose the same thing each time. Sunlight came through trees passing by outside into the area where they stood. Sam noticed someone smiling at them and realized that for an amount of time he had not been aware of anything but what he and Sheila were doing.
Four months later Sam was living in his brother’s studio apartment in Manhattan, sleeping on a mattress pad. He had not seen Sheila who now lived in Brooklyn in about two months. They emailed each other and then met one night at the Film Forum to see a documentary. In the lobby they didn’t talk and Sam felt worried. He saw that Sheila had dressed nicely. In the movie a man said he was going to commit suicide but decided to walk instead and had now been walking for ten years. After the movie Sam said the man was probably walking to the gas station because his car broke. Sheila grinned and said “probably.” They talked about a different movie and Sheila asked Sam if he wanted to see it together when it came out. Sam said he did. “What is that, look,” he said about people standing on trash bags looking at each other.
“Freegans,” said Sheila.
“There’s so many,” said Sam. “Why are there so many?”
“That’s what they do,” said Sheila.
“They look funny,” said Sam. “They seem bored.”
“I think one of them was Adam,” said Sheila in a café. “He is like a famous freegan.”
“I think I recognized Adam,” said Sam. “Yeah, I saw him on The View, on YouTube. The people on The View made fun of him for being serious. It was funny. When they made fun of him for being serious he was still serious.”
“He is very serious,” said Sheila.
They stood talking near the front doors while looking at each other’s shoes and other things. They left the café and went somewhere else then sat in front of New York University’s business school. It was around 10 p.m. They ate most of a giant salad of hijiki, lettuce, spinach, sprouts, and tofu. Sam turned the aluminum container upside-down over a large plant. “High-quality fertilizer,” he said.
“Good,” said Sheila from where she sat. “Good job.”
They talked about the salad’s size and organic ingredients.
“We can eat it together in the future sometimes,” said Sam.
“That would be good,” said Sheila. “I would like that.”
Sam pointed at a building across the street and said he used to live there. He remembered standing at a railing in a stairwell inside the building three or four years ago, in college on a Friday night, listening to a self-help tape while thinking about killing himself. He remembered holding the tape player in his hand and looking at the earphone cord coming out of the tape player. The cord had seemed very strange.
“Are you going to the library now?” said Sheila.
“Yes,” said Sam holding an iced coffee.
“Okay,” said Sheila. “Thank you for the salad. Thank you for watching the movie with me.”
“I am home and my internet is fixed,” said Sheila in an email about an hour later. “I saw the freegans again. The Adam guy was eating a cupcake or something and he ate it really sloppy and walked around looking proud. I wanted to lecture him. I hope that you had a good night. Maybe we can hang out tomorrow.” Sam emailed that he was going to a party with his publisher’s intern tomorrow but that they could hang out a different day. After a few more emails Sam said he was going to work on things now. “Did you have a good night?” said Sheila. “You don’t seem to respond a lot to my emails. I guess that’s my fault but I’m just saying. Maybe you are emailing me more later.” Sam emailed that he had a good night and felt bad about making Sheila feel bad. He asked if Sheila could go on Gmail chat.
“Hi,” said Sheila on Gmail chat.
“Hi,” said Sam. “I respond to other people’s emails really short.”
“Not everyone,” said Sheila.
“Some people,” said Sam.
“I’m trying to get myself to accept that you don’t like me as much anymore and aren’t interested in ever being with me again,” said Sheila. “I feel really frustrated with myself.”
“Were you angry I didn’t write a long email back,” said Sam.
“I wasn’t angry just sad. I shouldn’t be sad. I wish I wasn’t sad.”
“If we can just be nice with each other, and accepting, we can be friends.”
“I know,” said Sheila. “I feel so fucked.”
“What if your friend kept telling you they felt fucked, and it was because you didn’t like them as much as they liked you. That would make it so you would need to force yourself to like them more than you really do, just to get them to feel less fucked and happier. You would then want to get out of that situation. Because it’s like being forced to do something you don’t want to do.”
“I know,” said Sheila. “I’m sorry. I thought I could change that. You always told me I could change that. Now I don’t understand. I feel a lot of sympathy for everyone. Out-of-control sympathy. An out-of-control amount of sympathy for everything.”
“If you do that’s good,” said Sam with a worried facial expression.
“I will just do things until I am ready to accept that we will never get back together,” said Sheila. “And when I have accepted that I will talk to you again.”