Agents of the Internet Apocalypse (14 page)

“Ooh, tacos,” she said.

I wondered if that would have been a better call than Subway, but I had to stop doubting myself.

“Stop!” Romaya pointed. I hit the brakes way too hard, but she'd found a spot. “That old lady's pulling out from in front of the grocery store.”

*   *   *

We parked and walked toward Hollywood Forever. I wasn't completely sure where I was going, but I wanted to lead Romaya anyway, and as we got closer, I saw a “No Parking” sign on a metal pole about fifteen yards away. I started timing my strides. Romaya was to my right, and I was closer to the street, and without her noticing, I lined myself up with the pole as I turned my head to her, oblivious to everything in front of me. It should have been clear to her what I was doing, but it wasn't. That's how long it had been.

“So tell me,” I said about two-and-half steps from the sign, “where else are you thinking of applying?”

“Well,” she said, and I turned to the sign the second before impact, dramatically throwing my head back at the exact moment I kicked the base of the pole. The whole sign vibrated and shook with a perfect
dwang
as I staggered backwards and grabbed my skull to save my smacked head from crumbling to pieces. It was an old vaudeville trick, but still convincing if done right.

Romaya gasped in surprise before she remembered to laugh. A car slowed down to see if I were really injured and Romaya attended to me, excited to do another little improv. She placed one hand over her mouth and placed the other on my neck. The motorist's car window lowered, and I broke character to wave off his concern.

“You should have went with it,” Romaya said.

“Why? I got what I wanted.”

“Fooling him for just a second?”

“No, making you laugh.”

*   *   *

Tobey hadn't misled me. There was a line, and Romaya and I walked along it until we found the person who we felt would most appreciate Jameson. Some twenty-something with an honest-to-goodness soul patch and sunglasses even though the sun had almost set. But just before I went in for the kill, it occurred to me that getting this guy's consent was not the same as getting the consent of everyone behind him. True, only the people directly behind this dude could see they were being cut, but still, I had no right. I wasn't sure why that hadn't occurred to me until now, and the last-minute realization wasn't enough for me to change course. The only thing I thought to do was perpetrate a further fraud. To cut the line in such a way that even the people behind my fuzzy, shaded friend wouldn't realize they'd been cut.

“Phillip?!” I said, knowing that no one present was old enough to appreciate the
Beverly Hills Cop
reference. “Phillip? Is that you?”

But before he could let the world know we weren't friends by speaking, I moved in close enough to whisper.

“I'd like to give you this bottle of Jameson if you let me stand here with you.”

The dude, let's call him Phillip because I never learned his name, looked down at the Jameson and back up to me.

“Danny!” he said, and I passed him the bottle, patting him on the arm like an old friend.

“Sally,” I said, turning to Romaya, “you know Phillip.”

“Sure do!” she replied. “I never would have made it through calculus without him!”

And that's how we ended up securing maybe the most perfect spot to watch the movie. A perfectly executed deceit getting us something we didn't deserve. Better yet, the only people aware of our unfair placement were those responsible for giving it to us. Maybe I was just running a scam, but I remembered Hamilton Burke and thought he'd be proud of me for such tightly effectuated self-interest. Romaya loved it too.

We lay in the grass and ate our sandwiches. She knocked the vodka back straight from the bottle, and got a tipsy buzz within moments. She could do that. Get happy drunk almost instantly, and then drink more with no further effect. I could never keep up with her, but knowing I had to drive, I didn't have to.

Some people brought pizzas. Other couples came with lawn chairs and legit china in strong wicker baskets. Some had blankets. Some just sat in the grass like Romaya and me. We listened to the music and waited for the world to get dark enough to showcase the images revealed by light. Everyone was different and no one fought. And in this feeling of community, my act of cutting not only became more shameful, but more absurd. Almost unnecessary. “Oh, you got here late, dude? Sure, just step in. I think you need this more than I do.”

Romaya kept changing position trying to get comfortable, and I was brave.

“Here,” I said, and lay down behind her, placing my side against the small of her back. I patted my stomach while she contemplated the dangers of using her ex-husband as a pillow.

“Come on,” I said. “I've been softening it up for you the last couple of years.”

She laughed and settled into me, seeming comfortable for maybe the first time the entire night. I stroked her hair gently, at first. Really as more of a service to get it out of her face so she could see the movie. But as the first images flickered, I left my hand at the back of her head, holding the tiny curve of her skull, and I kept it there for all of Charlie Chaplin's
The Great Dictator.
My fingertips extending to her graceful dancer's neck while my thumb absentmindedly stroked her hair until she was sleeping. I wanted to wake her for Chaplin's speech, but she seemed content, and I wondered what she was dreaming as he said:

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

She rolled over, still in a dream. Maybe a dream that took her back five years and asked, “Did you say something, babe?”

“No, nothing. Go back to sleep.”

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men—cries out for universal brotherhood—for the unity of us all.

*   *   *

The movie ended and for a few moments, I lay there, pretending I was trying to wake Romaya, but really I was just stroking the darkness into her hair and remembering what it felt like not to be alone.

“Oh my God. Did I sleep through the whole thing?”

“Nearly. Let's get you home.”

*   *   *

Romaya fell asleep again as we hit the road, or maybe just pretended to. I thought she might have been trying to perpetuate the moment safely. To exist further in the dream and that was all right with me. I pulled up to her place and she groaned as if waking up were too much to ask.

“Sleepy baby,” I said and walked around to her side, opening her door.

She floated her hands out limply to me with half-closed eyes, like some kind of adorable zombie, and I planted myself firmly, taking her by the wrists to pull her from her seat with no sudden yank. She popped up, falling into me and running her hands down my back before settling on my waist. And when she opened her eyes she looked almost scared by arousal. The moon lit her in blue, and I remembered her on my law school dorm rooftop the night we picked that locked window and stared down at the luxury apartments across the way. We were still new. Just children spying on others' adult lives, oblivious to the hurt that would come.

But now maybe time had not only healed the wounds, but made us smart enough not to pick at scabs. I held Romaya under the same moon, but on a new coast, and she let me. More than that, she was holding me back. I wanted to say, “I still love you,” but I didn't. I just kissed her, and she pulled me into her before standing up straight and backing me into the open passenger-side door. I placed a ghost of a left hand over the side of her right breast, before running it behind her back. I got scared when she moved, but she didn't pull away. She was getting her keys.

“Let's get you inside,” she said,

I was thirty-seven years old and already getting hard just at the thought of having sex with my ex-wife. She opened her door and led me to her unmade bed, the mess exposed by the moonlight creeping through blinds. She turned before we reached the mattress, and I kissed her like before. Then I picked her up and threw her back onto the bed. She landed with a bounce and laughed, taking off her T-shirt and undoing her jeans. I pulled down from the ankles and she did that always-graceful two-second butt jump, allowing me to yank them off while she was in midair. I dropped my pants like a clumsy college kid and she lay back, waiting for me, half naked in broken light. And then it was just me and Romaya.

I climbed on top, straddling her waist and throwing off my jacket. Then my shirt. She started grinding from below, getting frustrated, and I liked that. I lowered myself close to her face and held her down by the wrists as I slid myself between her legs, teasing and working my body into hers. She wrapped her legs and we tormented each other with friction until she said something very dirty for Romaya: “Fuck me.” And suddenly I thought of Oz and all the sex I thought I had and never did. I grabbed Romaya tighter, making sure she was real, making sure I was here. I kissed her too hard. I held her too tight. I leaned in further and she rubbed back at me.

“What did you say?” I asked, deep and warm in her ear, my scruff scratching at her neck.

“I said fuck me,” she groaned, crushing me with her legs in frustration.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked and slapped her face quick and firm, the way I slapped Oz. I wanted to make her gasp twice—once from surprise and again when I was inside, but it didn't work out that way. She stopped on a dime, dropping her legs to the bed.

“What the
fuck
was that?” she asked.

I let go of her wrists and sat up. I didn't know what to say. Everything was broken.

“Is that how you've been fucking?” she asked, assuming, I guess, that only whores like to be slapped and only assholes slap them.

“I'm sorry. I got carried away,” I said.

She considered me, watching me above her, deciding if everything had been ruined or if there were any way back.

“Come here,” she whispered and I leaned in. Then she slapped me hard across the face. A good one. Much harder than the one I'd just given her, and I fell down laughing, holding my hand to my face, warm and throbbing. A ringing in my ears. She flipped me over on my back and got on top of me.

“Holy shit,” I said still laughing. “Do you know how hard you just smacked me?”

“Oooh, yeah. Whips and chains, baby,” she said bouncing on me playfully. “Soooo hot.”

I let Romaya take control and watched the parallel lines of moonlight rise up and down her body, but this wasn't the reunion I wanted. She was too far away. I sat up, wrapping my arms around her, but that wasn't right either. Even with my face in her breast, it didn't feel like home.

“Lay back,” I said, and supported her as she lowered back to the bed and I followed with her, but it still wasn't right. Even when I ran my arms under her back and wrapped my fingers up and around her shoulders. Even when she hooked her feet behind my knees, and I kissed her and kissed her. Even when the tension built until the release of love and pain. She tried to catch her breath and I fell to her side, my heart pounding. But even when I threw my arm over her like she was something I could never lose again, I knew I'd only had sex with Romaya instead of making love to my wife.

*   *   *

Tobey and I arrived at The Hash Tag at seven, greeted by a crowd that exceeded my expectations. Despite our meeting, the typical Hash Tag festivities had not been canceled, and that helped fill seats. Not everyone was here for me, but there were definitely some journals in the audience. Some in blue. Others in their original dog-eared white. And even better, there was cosplay happening. A handful of people were dressed as Internet Apocalypse “characters.”

“Wow,” I said. “It's you, me, and Oz!”

“Yeah,” Tobey replied. “I bet you want to fuck two thirds of this audience.”

I laughed, but Tobey had reminded me of the morning after with Romaya. I'd been holding it out of my line of sight for the last few days. Or, maybe more accurately, in my jacket pocket. Romaya woke before I did, just like she used to, but she didn't kiss my cheek or whisper in my ear. There was no attempt to wake her early morning playmate. She just got dressed, quietly, while I kept sleeping the way you do when you think you're being watched in safety. I had no idea I was dreaming alone while Romaya was changing into yoga pants and neon wristbands. It was the zip of her gym bag that woke me.

“Wow,” I said. “And you give me shit for how I dress.”

“It's for dance class,” she said. “And I'm late. You can sleep, but please just lock the door behind you.”

“You should have woken me,” I said.

“You looked like you needed the rest.”

“Yeah, but when are you coming back?”

She looked nervous, like my childhood memories of adults.

“I have to do a bunch of stuff. I'm going to get a new tire after the gym. I'm driving there on a donut.”

I sat up in bed, and she put her gym bag on her shoulder.

“I put your clothes on the foot of the bed,” she said, pointing to a neat little pile.

“One sec, I'll walk out with you,” I said, grabbing my T-shirt.

“It's okay. Sleep.”

I hopped into my jeans. “That's stupid. I don't want to be here without you.”

She moved to the doorway, but waited for me, realizing she couldn't leave when I was seconds away from getting dressed. I put on my
Miami Vice
jacket, and something about that made her uncomfortable. She headed to the door of her apartment and I followed, stepping into my sandals along the way. She turned back to look at me before leaving.