5, 99, 101

There are differences, and then there are differences: Either you like beer and he likes wine, or you drink St. Pauli Girl because he drinks Beck's. And when you fuck him is it because you ran out of things to say? Because you're spending the weekend at your mother's? Because by the time you get back he will have moved away? Or because (and I hope so) that at the right angle, in the right light, he looks like Marlon Brando. At 23. But better.

   Walking down the street with him and Alvin, looking for the car. Wonder about people who don't recognize their own cars. You're talking about older men and younger women (because they are two of one, and you are one of the other); you protest you're twenty-six and Alvin starts in about Lolita and two girls in bed playing horsey, and you say that's Anaïs Nin and he says no, Lolita's Nabokov and you say I know, I mean the two girls, and then Jack says Delta of Venus and you say Yeah, that one at the beginning—"The Hungarian Adventurer," and he says it barely tripping after you and you both grin and he takes your hand.
   You drive Alvin home and he chastises you like schoolkids for giggling in the hall (Jack is convinced that everyone in the building is crazy). And there's a peculiar phone call, and the ordnance display, and the most beautiful four-poster canopy bed draped with muslin, and Alvin sees you looking at it and says You're welcome back any time and adds, taking your arm (Without Jack), but luckily Jack's half-deaf sometimes and doesn't catch it but says later, He liked you, I think. And you want food, and drinks, and to go somewhere and talk where no one else will be, but all three are hard to come by at one o'clock on a Wednesday morning in Portland, Oregon.

   You finally go to the one remaining 24-hour Safeway (it takes 20 minutes to remember between the two of you which one it is) and you laugh and tease him about being a cheapskate for complaining about 45-cent rolls. You get bagels and beer and cream cheese and drive to the top of a large windy hill and sit by the radio tower and wait for UFOs, and he tells you about several crazy girlfriends of different stripes and you say, And you were scared of me?! I'm white bread compared to that, because he was, but now finally maybe not so scared, because he kisses you and rubs his face in your (he says) Jewish hair, and there's a shooting star, low, due west that burns out quickly, and green, in a widening, somehow tear-shaped explosion and you both see it and after that you walk back to the car, because the wind is somehow colder, and he goes to take a piss and when he comes back you say, You looked so serious; like a surveyor.

   Your best friend from college is staying at your apartment. It's 3 a.m. and you don't want to wake her up in that rude, embarrassing way adults sometimes have when sharing living spaces, so you say goodbye in the car. He has never kissed you good-bye; just hugged you quickly and backed down the hall mumbling, See you—but this time there is a kiss that is so long, so non-urgent, non-hungry, but not-wanting-it-to-end that when it is done, you are both speechless, but no longer in a way that makes either of you uncomfortable.
   It figures. He's moving in a week. Two weeks after that, you're moving. In the opposite direction. But for now you wonder if all that talk on the hill about knowing when there's the possibility of falling in love and knowing when there isn't, and about tough girls always having the toughest time finding men who're man enough for them—just might mean something more—something better—than it did the last time, or the time before that; or the time before that.

   All night long you stare at your fingernails, which suddenly seem to you like the perfect shells one finds on Carolina beaches: tiny and round; fragile and sharp. You left your pocketknife stuck in the cream cheese, pull it out the next morning from the bag in the refrigerator, and laugh.
   And he calls you at work and says there's a party, says to invite everyone you know, says, Oh yeah, if you want to go you can. You repeat what he said back to him, not to make him feel bad; just so he could hear it, and embarrassed, but quiet, and laughing, he says, See? I never was good at asking people out. He will pick you up at seven. And you think right then—for the third time in the past twelve hours—that you could love him, but: that it would be hard, but: that it always is.

from Hand Over Fist