The next night, outside Taco Chulo, a Mexican restaurant in Williamsburg, Laura apologized for being late and said she’d gotten lost on the walk from her apartment, eight blocks away. Paul asked if she wanted to eat at Lodge, which had “good chicken fingers,” or Taco Chulo, as they’d previously agreed, and she seemed confused. In Taco Chulo a waiter said to sit “anywhere.” Paul watched Laura move very slowly, in a kind of exploring, it seemed, as if through darkness, to arrive at a four-person table, where once seated, with a slightly desperate expression, not looking at Paul, she focused on signaling a waiter. Paul also focused on signaling a waiter. Laura ordered a margarita, then sometimes turned her head 90 degrees, to her right, to stare outside — at the sidewalk, or the quiet street — with a self-consciously worried expression, seeming disoriented and shy in a distinct, uncommon manner indicating to Paul an underlying sensation of “total yet failing” (as opposed to most people’s “partial and successful”) effort, in terms of the social interaction but, it would often affectingly seem, also generally, in terms of existing. Paul had gradually recognized this demeanor, the past few years, as characteristic, to some degree, of every person, maybe since middle school, with whom he’d been able to form a friendship or enter a relationship (or, it sometimes seemed, earnestly interact and not feel alienated or insane). After finishing a second margarita Laura became attentive and direct, like she’d been at the party, when she had been probably very drunk, Paul realized.
“You have a girlfriend?” said Laura, surprised.
“No,” said Paul, confused. “Why?”
“You said ‘my girlfriend.’ ”
Paul said he meant “ex-girlfriend.” Laura said she’d thought he was “a Gaylord,” because at the party he’d been surrounded by males, which someone had called his “fans.” Paul said the party was “like, seventy percent males” and that he had always thought the word “Gaylord” had been invented by someone in middle school for derogatory purposes by combining “gay” and “lord.” When he showed Laura prints of his art (which, according to StatCounter, she’d already seen on one of his websites), she seemed to reflexively feign seeing them for the first time: her eyes, upon sight, became and remained slightly unfocused and she made a noise indicating she was seeing something new, but when he asked if she’d seen them before she said “yeah,” but seemed to continue feigning “no.” Paul, endeared by her extreme and complicated helplessness, took back his art and focused conversation on other topics. They agreed to leave, but continued talking for around forty-five minutes, inviting each other to parties that weekend. Paul felt a kind of panic when they realized the parties were the same night and said “I don’t know what to do” and “maybe they aren’t on the same night.” Laura said they could go to both parties — which seemed immediately obvious — and asked if Paul wanted to go to K&M, where her friend was DJ-ing. Paul carefully said he did, then went to the bathroom, thinking that for matters involving social interaction he shouldn’t trust himself, at this time, after being mostly alone for around four months.
In K&M — empty except for the DJ, bartender, two other people — they each drank two shots of tequila and sat with glasses of beer in a booth, side by side, facing a giant screen showing Half Baked on mute with subtitles. Laura complimented Paul’s hair and level of “casualness” and, going partially under the table, held a candle toward Paul’s shoes — which from Paul’s above-table perspective felt stationary and storage-oriented as shoe boxes — asking what brand they were.
“iPath,” said Paul.
“I can’t see. What are these?”
“iPath. The brand is iPath.”
“I like them,” said Laura.
“iPath,” said Paul quietly.
Laura said her ex-boyfriend was in a band and used heroin and they already stopped seeing each other, but it was “ongoing,” for example he asked her to a movie last week and she went and it was awkward. “I just wish he would disappear,” she said in a sincere-seeming manner, staring at Half Baked, which Paul saw on her right eye as four to six pixels that sometimes changed colors. Laura said she didn’t want to talk about her ex-boyfriend. Paul asked if she’d tried heroin and she said no, but liked painkillers, then nuzzled his shoulder with her head. When he said he had a headache and drugs in his room and asked if she wanted to go there, she seemed instantly distracted (as a reflexive tactic, Paul felt, to not appear too eager) and expressed indecision a few minutes, then said she also had a headache, then directly stated, more than once — in an openly and uncaringly, Paul felt with amusement, confirmation-seeking manner indicating her previous indecision was at least partly feigned — that she wanted to go to Paul’s room to ingest his drugs.
Outside, after fifteen minutes of failing to get a taxi, they began walking purposelessly, both saying they didn’t know the correct direction to Paul’s apartment, maybe twenty blocks away. Paul’s arms felt more tired, from signaling taxis, than “in five years, maybe,” he estimated aloud. They got in a minivan taxi, which after a few minutes dropped them off near the center of a shadowy, tree-heavy intersection.
The address was correct, according to the street sign, but Paul didn’t recognize anything, even after turning two full circles while dimly aware, in a detached manner reminding him of his drunkenness, that his behavior’s dizzying effects might be counterproductive. He heard Laura, somewhat obligatorily, he thought, say she was scared, then said he was a little scared, then in a louder voice, as if correcting himself, said he was confused. His inability to recognize anything began to feel like a failure of imagination, an inability to process information creatively. His conscious, helpless, ongoing lack of recognition — his shrinking, increasingly vague context — seemed exactly and boringly like how it would feel to die, or to have died. He felt like he was disappearing. He was aware of having said “is there another Humboldt Street, or something,” when he realized he was — already, without a feeling or memory of recognition — looking at the bronze gate, thirty to forty feet away, of the walkway to the four-story house in which, in an apartment on the second floor, he shared a bathroom and kitchen with Caroline, an administrative assistant at the New School with an MFA in poetry.
• • •
In Paul’s room Laura tried to identify some of his fifteen to twenty pills and tablets, mostly from Charles, who had mailed them before leaving for Mexico, with her phone but the internet wasn’t working. Paul’s MacBook, which he’d spilled iced coffee on, was in Kansas being affordably repaired. Laura swallowed two of what Paul knew was Tylenol 3. Paul swallowed a Percocet and, somewhat arbitrarily, he felt, three Advil, then turned off the light, saying it was hurting his headache.
Paul was aware, as they lay kissing in the dark on his mattress, of Laura petting his upper arm in a manner that seemed independent of their kissing (but, he dimly intuited, because they were of the same source, must be discernibly related, on some level, if only as contributors to some larger system). Laura wanted to continue kissing but couldn’t breathe, she said, because her nose was stuffy. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be needy,” she said a few minutes later. “But I can’t sleep without noise, like a fan.” Paul turned on the bathroom vent. Caroline turned it off a few minutes later. Paul turned it on and texted Caroline his situation and that he would pay five dollars to keep it on tonight.