Eventually the metal doors part and reveal the family from the third floor, a young couple with a two-year-old and an infant and a big Akita. I’m standing closer to the elevator doors than is customary, and I must look pretty bad. The mother flinches protectively toward the boy’s stroller.
“Papers,” I say, displaying them, and try to smile reassuringly.
When I get back to the apartment I drop the papers on the island and glance unstoppably at the laptop’s screen, where nothing has changed.
In the bathroom I clean up, gargle, assess the situation. Looking in the mirror is always disappointing — it’s strange that something can be always disappointing; you’d imagine that eventually you’d adjust your expectations downward to the point where they’re congruent with reality — but today it’s even more disappointing than usual. My skin is ghastly pale, and my hair has flattened and swollen in random whorls and eddies. The real problem, though, is not these contingent features but the face itself. When we say someone has a big nose, we’re usually talking about the third dimension, the degree to which the nose protrudes into the outside world. My nose, in contrast, is big in the first two dimensions, the x- and y-coordinates. (This corresponds to greater negative space in the nostril area as well.) But my nose is just the most dramatic symptom of a deeper problem: there isn’t enough room on my face. When I was a boy my features could coexist in peace, but as I emerged from puberty they began to manifest expansionist aims and struck out into the neutral territory between them. I am surveying the battlefield when a chime sounds in the other room, and hope spikes into my heart, and I defer the brushing of my teeth and exit the bathroom to check my email.
I haven’t spoken to my father since I left Denver more than three years ago, and I thought we were both committed to falling out of touch. But there it is: B_Muller@spencercollege.edu.
Eric, Im going to be in San Fran next month. Thought we might get together if your free. Got something BIG to spring on you. I’ll be the the 7 to the 16, hope that’s good for you. Barry (dad).
Sic passim. His signature takes up seven lines and lists his job title, employer, mailing address, and phone number, none of which has changed in a decade.
I spend most of the following weeks surfing the Internet to no purpose. I wake in the early afternoons with no memory of any dreams. I compose a brief reply to my father, suggesting that he call me when he arrives. The program coordinator for the Digital Future Conference emails again, and this time I accept the invitation. In the evenings I rotate my three most reliable culinary options: the hamburger place, the burrito place, and spaghetti. Christmas and New Year’s occur without me.
I’m not sure exactly how much time has passed since my last unwise attempt at social contact, but the number of days modulo three must equal two because I’m getting a burrito. The taqueria is painted in kindergarten shades of red and yellow, and the jukebox plays Mexican pop music at an excruciating volume, and the lighting makes everyone more animated than usual. I walk up the aisle toward the counter and there, at a table on the left, is Maya, and my heart is suddenly audible to the entire restaurant. She’s listening intently to a pale, pierced girl who is talking loudly and gesturing with her hands. Does Maya see me? I lock my eyes on the far wall and walk past her, trying to maintain a natural pace and gait. The possibilities start branching: Either she saw me or she didn’t. If she saw me, did she see me see her? If she saw me see her, does she think I didn’t recognize her? Is it possible she doesn’t recognize me? And this: What does she know about me?
The guy taking the orders calls me amigo, which he only started doing a month ago and which usually makes me feel good but not today.
I’ve never been able to figure out how much girls tell each other. I used to assume that information is a status symbol in GirlWorld, and so anything you tell a girl will be displayed like a piece of jewelry. But I’ve come to think it works more like money, something to be judiciously invested for maximum returns. If I’m right, Maya doesn’t necessarily know about my, what, my Oedipal thing. Let’s say she doesn’t. Let’s say she thinks I’m just some guy she met at a party, and I sit down and eat a burrito with her and her friend. The next time Maya sees Lauren she says, Guess who I ran into at El Submarino the other night? and when Lauren hears this she smiles cryptically and says, Oh, what was that like? in a funny tone of voice that prompts Maya to start saying What? What? until, after demurring for a suitable interval, Lauren tells Maya what I told her about ejaculating and the voice in my head and I love you, Mom, and first shock and disgust ensue, and then eventually hilarity, and by the end of the conversation I have become an anecdote to them, a strange, sad boy-man they once met who disguises his creepy little perversion behind reflexive flirting, and just imagining that makes me want to kill myself.
So while I wait for the line cook to assemble the burrito I stare fixedly at the refrigerators full of soda and beer. The sodas are imported from Mexico; they are made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup and bear stickers warning that they’re not to be sold in the U.S. Finally the cook calls out, “Forty-four, cuarenta y cuatro!” and I’m clutching my burrito and chips and heading for the door. And then there’s that business of pretending you haven’t seen the person without making it look like you’re ignoring her. It’s impossible to know how successful this deception ever is. You don’t know if she genuinely doesn’t know you’re there, or if she sees you but thinks you don’t see her and prefers not to announce herself, or if the two of you are collaborating on a little play in which you pretend not to notice each other. Accurate data is almost impossible to come by, and in its absence I have the feeling of flying blind into a whirlwind. Of course, I could just talk to her. Even if she knows. I could say hello and introduce myself to her friend and start talking to her and see what happens, and if she gives me a knowing look and says, I heard you and Lauren had quite a time the other week, I could smile and say, Yeah, we had a time. My eyes are fixed dead ahead and I’m standing too straight, in a way that feels unnatural and probably looks stupid. I could just sit down next to her. Instead I walk past her, through the door, out to the sidewalk, and think, I’ve made it.
2
If they’re so smart, why don’t they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?
NICKY BOONT AND I were making an adventure game: lines of text on the screen that said things like You are in a dungeon filled with skulls. There is a door to the north and one to the east. Together we made elaborate maps of underground architecture, wrote adjective-studded descriptions of caverns and weapons and monsters, cultivated the pseudomythological backstory. Every school day we met at lunch in the computer room, an L-shaped cubicle that had been freed up when the office supplies were moved to larger quarters. There we catalogued each object the player might find in the dungeon — weapons, keys, potions — and every action he might perform.
When I walked in, Nicky’s chair was turned away from the Commodore 128 toward the door, his legs crossed professorially. His pale hair was cut in a perfect bowl that made him look like a mushroom. “We need a hide command,” he said by way of a greeting. Theoretically we’d finished the actions two weeks earlier.