Paul couldn’t find Michelle in the hallway, then turned a corner and saw her crouched on the floor, sixty to eighty feet away, discrepant and vulnerable, in the bright off-white corridor, as a rarely seen animal. Paul, walking self-consciously toward her, vaguely remembered a night, early in their relationship, when he somehow hadn’t expected her to enlarge in his vision as he approached where she’d stood (looking down at a flyer, one leg slightly bent) in Think Coffee. The comical, bewildering fear — equally calming and surprising, amusing and foreboding — he’d felt as she rapidly and sort of ominously increased in size had characterized their first two months together. It had seemed like they would never fight, and the nothingness of the future had gained a framework-y somethingness that felt privately exciting, like entering a different family’s house as a small child, or the beginning elaborations of a science-fiction conceit. Then, one night, in late April, after cooking and eating pasta together, Paul had complained — meekly, without looking at her face — that Michelle never helped wash dishes. Michelle stared at him silently a few seconds before her eyes became suddenly watery, the extra layer of translucence materializing like a shedding of something delicate. Paul stared back, weirdly entranced — he’d never seen her cry — before crawling across his wood floor, over his yoga mat, dizzy with emotion, to hug her and apologize. In May he began complaining once or twice a week (that certain things Michelle did were inconsiderate, that he felt neglected) and, by July, most days, was either visibly irritated or mutely, inscrutably despondent — as if he alone had a vast knowledge of horrible truths, which, he knew, he didn’t — but could still feel good, to some degree, after coffee or alcohol or, when easily attainable, prescription drugs, most recently methadone, supplied by Michelle’s friend who had fallen down stairs, which they’d ingested once every four to six days for five weeks, ending three weeks ago. One night, since then, Michelle had told Paul it seemed like he “hated” her and Paul, after around ten seconds, had cited a day they’d had fun together, then had grinned and said “no” illogically when Michelle correctly said they’d been on methadone that day.
“Why are you sitting so far away?”
“I’m waiting for you. You said you wanted to leave an hour ago.”
Outside, on the sidewalk, Michelle walked quickly ahead with her hands in her jacket pockets, as if to better escape Paul with a more streamlined form, though also it was still raining. Paul asked what she wanted to do. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
They crossed 10th Avenue in a diagonal, not at an intersection, through headlights of a stopped taxi — two or three people were closing their umbrellas, getting in — onto the opposite sidewalk and continued downtown, bodies bent against the wind.
“Wait,” said Paul. “Can we stop walking for a minute?”
They stopped, facing the same direction, on the sidewalk.
“What’s wrong?” said Paul after a few seconds, slightly accusatorily.
“You’ve been ignoring me all night,” said Michelle.
“I moved close to you and hugged you, when we were sitting.”
“Once we got inside you walked away and started talking to other people.”
“You walked away from me,” said Paul. “I felt confused.”
A deli worker standing under an awning was looking into some unspecific distance, honestly uninterested. “I’ve never felt you act this way before,” said Michelle unsteadily, looking down, suddenly tired and scared, the protest of her having dispersed to something negotiable. For a few days, two or three months ago, she had considered studying abroad in Barcelona next spring, which would’ve meant four months apart. Paul thought of how they’d kept delaying buying plane tickets to visit his parents in Taiwan — in December, which was next month, he knew — as if in tacit understanding that their relationship wouldn’t last that long. Paul felt himself trying to interpret the situation, as if there was a problem to be solved, but there didn’t seem to be anything, or maybe there was, but he was three or four skill sets away from comprehension, like an amoeba trying to create a personal web-page using CSS.
“I’m just naturally losing interest,” he finally said, a little improvisationally, and Michelle began quietly crying. “I didn’t expect this at all,” she said. “I’ve felt good about us the past two weeks. I thought we’ve been closer than we’ve ever been.”
“I think I was affected by the study-abroad thing,” said Paul nearly inaudibly, confused how she’d thought they’d been close the past two weeks.
“Go back to the party. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Wait. I don’t think we should leave each other now.”
“Have a good time with your friends,” said Michelle sincerely.
“Wait. What friends?”
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” said Michelle.
“If we leave each other now it’s over.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“I only go to things to find a girlfriend,” said Paul paraphrasing himself, and they stood not looking at each other, for one or two minutes, as rain from faraway places disappeared into their clothing and hair. Paul felt surprised by the friendly tone of his voice as he asked if Michelle wanted to eat dinner with him, in a restaurant.
“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” said Michelle.
“I don’t want to be in a relationship where it’s like this.”
“I don’t either,” said Michelle.
“I’m going back if you don’t want to do something.”
“I want to go home. Good night.”
“Okay,” said Paul, and turned around, aware they hadn’t parted like this before. He crossed 22nd Street and turned to cross 10th Avenue and saw Michelle disjunctively running and walking toward him, stopping at a red light with the posture of a depressed teenager. Paul thought of how she liked Nirvana a lot, and she crossed the street, slowing as she neared and stopping within arm’s reach. “Paul,” she said after a few seconds, and touched his upper arm, as if to offer a way back, through her, to some prior intimacy, from where they could tunnel carefully elsewhere, or to the same place, but with a kind of skill this time, having practiced once. Paul remained still, unsure what to say or think. Michelle lowered her hand to her side. “What are you doing?” she said, somewhat defensively.
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t you going back to the party?”
“Yeah. I said I was.”
“Fine,” said Michelle.
Paul felt passively committed to not moving.
“Why are you standing here?”
“You came back,” said Paul feebly, and four to six people approached from the direction of the party. Michelle stepped into a soil-y area, lower and darker than the sidewalk, and leaned between spires on a metal fence, with her left profile — obscured by her long, dark hair — toward Paul, who stared dumbly at the gently convex curve of her back, thinking with theoretical detachment that he should console her and that maybe the discomfort of her forearms against the thin metal of the fence had created a location, accessible only to herself, toward which she could relocate, away from what she felt, in a kind of shrinking. “Do you—” said Paul, and coughed twice with his mouth closed. “Do you want to eat dinner with me somewhere?” Michelle turned toward him a little, moving her head to see through her hair. “What are you doing?” she said in a tired, distracted voice, and leaned back on the fence without waiting for an answer. After a vague amount of time Paul heard himself asking again if she wanted to eat dinner with him, at the Green Table, one of the few restaurants they wanted to but hadn’t tried, then she was walking away, her long legs scissor-like in their little, orderly movements. It would take her thousands of steps to get anywhere, but she would get there easily, and when she arrived, in the present, it would seem like it had been a single movement that brought her there. Did existence ever seem worked for? One seemed simply to be here, less an accumulation of moments than a single arrangement continuously gifted from some inaccessible future.