He reached outside his blanket and pulled his MacBook “darkly,” he felt, toward himself, like an octopus might. It was 12:52 a.m., almost three hours since leaving Angelica Kitchen. Laura, to Paul’s surprise, had emailed twice — a few sentence fragments apologizing for her awkwardness at 11:43 p.m., a paragraph of elaboration at 12:05 a.m. Paul emailed that he understood and liked her and thought she was “cool.” She responded, a few minutes later, seeming cheerful. After a few more emails she seemed almost “giddy.” They committed — earnestly and enthusiastically, Paul felt — to get tattoos together tomorrow.
• • •
Laura arrived around 4:30 p.m., seeming tired and distracted, with cheese and a bottle of wine and knitting materials in a plastic bag. Paul said they should go to Manhattan before night and Laura asked why and Paul said for tattoos. Laura said she wanted to stay inside to work on her set of a dozen “monster masks,” which she wanted to use in a music video for one of her songs (and which, based on photos Paul had seen on the internet, she seemed to have been knitting for more than a year). They shared a Klonopin, and when it began to get dark outside Paul suggested a restaurant two blocks away, but Laura didn’t want to go outside, so they ordered Chinese food — minnow-size pieces of slippery chicken in a shiny garlic sauce, six fortune cookies — and ate only a little, then shared an Ambien and sat, at a distance from each other, on Paul’s mattress.
Paul patted the area beside him and Laura said “stop trying to make sexy time” in an earnest, slightly annoyed voice. Paul grinned and honestly said he wasn’t and felt confused. Laura, who had finished most of the bottle of wine herself, lay curled in a corner of the mattress and was soon asleep. Paul absently looked at the internet a little, then woke, three hours later, around midnight, to Laura putting her things into her plastic bag. She was going home, she said, because she had to feed Jeffrey and had work in the morning.
The next night Paul was with Mitch and Matt — another classmate from Florida, one year ahead of Mitch and Paul, currently “on vacation” alone — at Barcade, a bar with dozens of arcade machines. After one beer Paul texted Laura “hi, how’s it going” and interpreted her almost instantaneous response of “super” as her wanting to finish an undesirable task as quick as possible. Paul texted he was at Barcade with “high school friends” and if Laura wanted to come. Laura texted “I’m all out of quarters” after five minutes. Paul texted “I have some quarters for you” with a neutral expression and a cringing sensation, then showed Mitch and Matt the texts, saying he felt depressed. Matt’s friend Lindsay (whom he was staying with while on vacation) arrived and everyone walked six blocks to a bar with outdoor Ping-Pong tables. Daniel arrived with his friend Fran, 22, whose intriguing gaze, Paul noticed with interest, seemed both disbelieving and transfixed in discernment, as if meticulously studying what she knew she was hallucinating. Paul looked at his phone — it had been more than an hour since he texted Laura that he had quarters and, as expected, she hadn’t responded — and heard Daniel say “a Mexican place” and something about “six tacos” to Mitch.
“Eight tacos,” said Paul absently.
“I said six tacos,” said Daniel.
“Six tacos,” said Paul. “Was it, like. . a taco platter?”
“No. This place has small tacos.”
“It wasn’t a taco platter?”
“It wasn’t a taco platter,” said Daniel.
“I don’t get it,” said Paul without thinking.
“Bro,” said Daniel grinning.
Paul asked Fran what she had eaten.
“Enchiladas,” said Fran.
“I can never remember what those are,” said Paul, and went to the bathroom. When he returned Lindsay invited everyone to her Cinco de Mayo party — in five days, at her apartment — then everyone, except Fran, who Daniel said was an undergrad at Columbia and had left to do homework, walked eight blocks to a bar called Harefield Road to meet a group of people Paul knew as acquaintances from his involvement in poetry. Seconds after sitting in the outdoor area Paul openly said “I want to comfort myself with food” without looking at anyone, in a relatively loud voice, with a bleak sensation of unsatisfying catharsis from having accurately, he felt, expressed himself. “I’m just going to eat whatever tonight,” he said, and stood, asking if anyone knew about food options at this bar. Two acquaintances said there were, at this time, around 2:30 a.m., only paninis. One of Daniel’s two suitemates, who said she’d written an article about Paul and reviewed books anonymously for Kirkus, went with him to order a panini. Paul asked if she liked a baseball book, which she mentioned having reviewed, and she talked without pause for what seemed like ten minutes, during which Paul, staring at her calmly, thought “she’s definitely drunk” and “normally I would be interested in her, to some degree, but currently I’m obsessed with Laura” and “she seems maybe focused on not appearing drunk, which is maybe affecting her perception of time, of how long and off-topic and incomprehensible her answer has become.” Paul carried his panini outside and “openly exchanged witty banter while feeling severely depressed,” he thought while speaking to various acquaintances. One said she’d met Paul, when he lived with Shawn Olive, at least three times. Paul said he didn’t recognize her, but also had forgotten that he’d once lived with Shawn Olive. He ate half his panini and said it was unsatisfying and left the bar and returned with Tate’s cookies and Fig Newmans, which he offered to each person. He asked Lindsay what her roommate, whom she’d been talking about, was doing. Lindsay said “sleeping, watching TV, or smoking weed” and Paul said “we should go to your apartment,” aware he was somewhat desperately, if maybe sarcastically, trying to direct his interest away from Laura, toward any girl he had not yet, but still could, meet tonight.
“This bar’s special feature: ‘paninis until really late,’ ” said Paul to a drunk-looking acquaintance on the way out.
• • •
In Lindsay’s apartment’s common room Paul sat eating Fig Newmans on one side of a five-seat sofa with Mitch and Daniel on the other side. Lindsay’s roommate was sleeping. Paul was vaguely aware, as he reread texts from Laura, of people pressuring Matt to smoke marijuana. Matt was standing alone in a corner of the room — seeming in Paul’s peripheral vision like a figure in a horror movie — saying things, as explanation for his choice not to smoke marijuana, about his grandfather’s alcoholism. Paul half-unconsciously mumbled something — to himself, he felt — about feeling thirsty and within a few seconds Matt was standing above him asking if he wanted water. After bringing him a glass of water Matt asked if Paul wanted to use his MacBook to look at the internet. Paul felt endeared to a degree that — in combination with his distraught emotional state, and as he dwelled a few seconds on how Matt’s behavior was like the opposite of pressuring someone to smoke marijuana — he felt like crying. Matt returned with a large MacBook from the room he was sleeping in while on vacation.