Going in Circles (6 page)

“You don't have to go get it. He said he'd put it in the closet.”

“Oh, great. Off to the closet with memories of me!”

He leans over to steal one of my fries, and then steals five more while he's chewing the first one. “When was the last time you used that sewing machine?”

“That is not the point.”

“I'm done with this,” Jonathan says, turning back around to his desk.

My computer dings. More email. This time it's from Petra.

R U COMING 2 MY GIRLS NITE PARTY TOMOOROW NITE?—P.

Shit.

Besides being functionally illiterate, Petra is a friend and coworker. Well, she started as Matthew's best friend's girlfriend, which made her a forced friend (but one I genuinely
enjoyed) whom I helped get a job here. Then Petra and Pete got married and she got a promotion, and then Matthew and I separated, so these days she's Matthew's best friend's wife and my boss. Petra is my supervisor and awkwardly estranged friend. It's
great
.

Add to that the fact that once Petra got her promotion, she worried people would accuse her of giving me special treatment, so when we're at work she acts like she barely knows me. She's all business, not wanting to have personal conversations. Her emails to me, if they aren't about work, are extremely brief, almost in code:

TONIGHT: 8 PM. THE PLACE WHERE WE SAW CREEPY GUY. I'LL BUY.

I can't skip out on Petra's party, because then she'll tell Pete I wasn't there, and he'll tell Matthew I wasn't there, and then Matthew will think I'm either too sad to go to Petra's party or too busy having fun to go to Petra's party, and I don't know which is worse. I turn to ask Jonathan, but he's busy looking up lamps on the Internet. I've bothered him long enough.

I write back to both Matthew and Petra, telling each I'll be by tomorrow night. I'll stop by Matthew's for my sewing machine, and then I'll swing by the liquor store, and then I'll go to Petra's and get superdrunk.

And
that's
how this girl spends her Friday nights.

On my way to the break room to throw away my Happy Meal bag and get a cup of coffee, I run into Goth-Girl Francesca. I mean I actually bump right into her, turning a corner. Our heads come so close together, I almost accidentally kiss her. Her dark eyes widen as she laughs.

“Oh, sorry,” I say.

“It's fine,” she says. “Don't worry about it.” She wipes her bangs back with the palm of her hand. I see black scribbles across her skin, snaking up her forearms. Phone numbers written in pen. She points at my empty McDonald's bag. “Did you like your lunch?”

Is this small talk? “Um, I did. Yeah.”

“Cool,” she says, and walks away.

I take some comfort in knowing I'm not the weirdest one in this building.

I
blame Matthew,” Andy says, pushing my hair behind my ear to inspect my temple.

We are standing in the kitchen, getting ready to make the mouth guard I bought on my way home from work. I'm grateful Andy is here to keep me from wallowing in what could be a rather pathetic evening.

He briefly kisses the soft spot where my jaw meets my ear. “I blame Matthew for lots of things,” he continues. “Things that have nothing to do with you and your sadness. The other day someone knocked over the recycling trash can outside my place—broken glass everywhere—and I raised my fist to Heaven and shouted, ‘Dammit, Matthew!' ”

“I get it,” I say as I turn toward the stove, hiding my smile. I'd thank him again for being here, but I know he's having a fantastic time at the event he has crowned my “Dorkination.”

Andy and I became fast friends our freshman year of college, when we were stuck waiting in line for our IDs. It was aggressively hot that day, and we were on our second hour outside in the unwavering, unforgiving Los Angeles sunlight. Before we ever spoke a word to each other, a silent bond had already formed between us as our mood dipped from grumpy
to spiteful. I think he was the first to make fun of the girl a few feet ahead of us, the one who was losing a desperate battle to save her hair and makeup. I joined in, pointing out the ones who were obviously hungover. By the time we reached the end of that line, we were the proud owners of two horrible IDs and a friendship that would last forever. We never dated, but we kissed once. It was a New Year's kiss, it felt inexplicably incestuous, and we agreed never to do it again.

We did get really drunk and go skinny-dipping once, the one time he'd gotten me to go camping. We were in some spot outside San Diego, a city where I would have been much happier in a hammock near a swim-up bar, but he wanted to show me how fun it could be to “sleep under the stars.” I know this because I remember asking him then, “Isn't that why people live in Hollywood?” and he has still not given me the proper amount of accolades I feel that joke deserved, considering my response time.

There were a lot of things I didn't like about not having shelter for an entire weekend. It's pointless to list them, as they were the things that any normal human being would crave during the course of a day. I don't really understand why people would willingly wander away from plumbing or pillows. But I did like the sense of discovery, imagining we were exploring a brand-new world. I think I only truly enjoyed it because I pretended Andy hadn't already been here before and didn't know every step of the trail we were hiking. It made me able to get into the spirit of things while still knowing in the back of my mind that absolutely nothing unpredictable was going to happen. Like bears or coyotes. Or bears
and
coyotes.

At one point Andy led us to a private swimming spot where we could splash and play in the dark. Whenever I was out of the water, I would shelter my body with my hands,
trying to be modest, until Andy said, “Don't worry. You do nothing for me.”

“Thanks.”

He was floating on his back, staring down at his tiny toes jutting out of the water. “It's not that you're not pretty,” he said. “But I think of you as my sister.”

I swam over to him, touched that he felt that close to me. As an only child, I'd always wanted a sibling, someone closer to me than anyone else who would be stuck with me forever. A twin would have been perfect.

“You really think so?”

Andy nodded. “Mostly because you look like my brother.”

I grabbed the top of his head with both hands, trying to push him under, but he was stronger and ducked out of my grip.

“You kind of even have the same mustache,” he continued, his laughter echoing off the cliffs, bouncing around us in the dark.

Andy dates lots of girls. They rotate in, they rotate out. The only thing I can find in common about them is that they all have voices like singing mice. I've made him promise not to introduce me to another one unless he's sure she's The One. Like, they must already have wedding invitations in the mail.

But who wouldn't fall for Andy? He's got that dark and broody look without the accompanying dark and broody personality. He's one of those freaks who actually likes working out. He also takes advantage of the parts of California one usually enjoys only in theory (hiking, surfing, tai chi in the park). Most people never actually do these things because it's hot and sunny and tai chi is boring. But Andy will throw himself into anything that might involve taking off some or all of his clothes, as he thinks a body as nice as his shouldn't
stay under wraps. It would be a crime to cover such hard-earned perfection, and quite frankly rather unfair to people who have working eyeballs. Being familiar with the mostly naked version of Andy, I have to say he's got a point.

I'm so glad I'll never be Andy's girlfriend, because if I gained even three extra pounds I'd feel like a monster next to him. It is hard for Andy to find women who don't feel at least slightly physically insecure next to him, so he tends to end up with the most vacuous pretty girls in this city. Although I might be giving him too much credit here. He could be dating the most vacuous pretty girls in this city because there's no shortage of vacuous pretty girls in this city. Girls you wish you could hold down with one hand while you slice open their foreheads and jam some brains in with the other.

So while Andy plays around with all those girls, for about the past decade or so the woman in his life has been me. Lucky me.

“You should try saying ‘Dammit, Matthew,' too,” Andy says to me now. “Say it. ‘Dammit, Matthew!' Just once. Please.”

“I would, but I'm very busy.” Using a pair of tongs, I dunk the mouth guard into a pot of boiling water, softening the plastic.

Andy frowns. “Blue? Why a blue mouth guard?”

“I thought it would be cuter,” I mumble.

Andy gives a quick whistle, placing his hand on my shoulder. “That is sad to me. You are breaking my heart. Truly.”

I know Matthew would have had a great time making fun of this, too, probably calling out football plays as I climbed into bed.
“Sleep-97! Dream-97 Hut hut hut!”
But now it's just going to be me, my pillow, and whatever book I'm trying
to read in order to blank out the fact that these days I sleep completely alone.

I still reach for Matthew. I wake up sometimes with a pillow between my legs and one over my head, like I've been trying to swim through the bed in my sleep to find him. Actually, first I'd want to swim to the past, find
that
Matthew, put us both into a coma, and stay there.

The next step in my Dorkination must go quickly, or I'll have to start over. I pull the mouth guard from the water and cool it briefly in a nearby bowl of lukewarm water. Then I pop it into my mouth, jamming it against my upper palate with my tongue, trying to form a mold.

“Push! Push!”

It's Lamaze class for my face as Andy reads from the instructions in his hand. I stare at the little white flakes of skin that arc his thumbnails. Once he's eaten his nails to bloody chips, Andy moves on to his fingers, ripping the flesh away with his front teeth. He's embarrassed by this habit, so he hides the skin he pulls away in his front pockets. I am pretty sure he doesn't think anybody knows he does this, including me.

“Howph dah?”
I try to ask, but my mouth is filled with the unfamiliar.

“Hot,” he says.

I try to smile, but I start to cry.
“I'm hideoth!”

“No. Come on. Divorce looks awesome on you.”

I yank out the mouth guard as I take a step back. “Don't say that word.”

“I
am
going to say it,” he says, rubbing his chin with his hand, running his fingers over his lower lip in frustration. “And I'm going to keep saying it until you get used to it. He sucks, and you are getting a divorce.”

“He doesn't suck.”

Andy takes the mouth guard from my hand and places it gently in my mouth. “He kind of does. But mostly he sucks for you. Look what he's done to you.”

He's not just referring to my mouth guard. I used to be considered rather slender, but I've become gaunt and bony. It's not from dieting, or doing one of those I'll Show Him ridiculous crash-exercise routines designed to make you look as fantastic as possible. I'm not doing anything; I'm simply falling apart. My stomach won't hold on to anything for long before it churns and rips with anxiety, making my appetite disappear entirely. My complexion used to elicit compliments from even passing strangers. I was so proud of my skin, pink and glowy and rarely in need of any makeup. But these days it is blotchy and angry, cracked and chafed from crying fits. I look like I've been lost in the Alps for weeks—raw and jagged, inflamed and weak. It's only getting worse: lately the bathtub has become clogged with clumps of my hair. As I dislodge the globs of wet, brown twists from the drain I can't help but think, “Good. There's less of me.”

I'm watching Andy watch me and I realize how small and helpless I must look. Self-conscious, I tug a brittle strand of my hair behind my ear, hiding it.

“You don't know—,” I croak, before the mouth guard halts my speech. The muffled oddity of my voice is pathetic, and I am stuck between a laugh and a sob as Andy pulls me hard into his arms. He smells like coffee and spearmint gum. I clasp my fingers together behind his back and hang on, leaning into him, my face smashed against his perfect chest. The mouth guard is pinching my gums, a thick hunk of plastic at the back of my tongue. I have to concentrate if I want to be able to breathe.

I'm outside of myself, like I'm standing in the corner, watching this beautiful olive-skinned man hold the bony, weary brokenheart in her tiny, white, understocked kitchen. The superhero embracing the damsel in distress.

I want to thank Andy for being here, to let him know how much it means to me that he's been beside me even as I've fallen apart in front of him like a paper doll in a rainstorm. So I finally say something he will appreciate, or at least I try to say it. The words Andy wants to hear tumble out of me, smothered and strained, almost a whisper.

“Namiht, Madtew.”

C
ontinuing his dominance in the category of Super Best Friend, Andy has brought me a present. Actually, he has brought a present for my mouth guard. He pulls a tiny pink box from the pocket of his jacket. It's a mouth guard holder, complete with a sticker of a unicorn.

“I want you to always feel pretty,” he says.

I thank him by opening a bottle of wine, from which I pour a hefty glass.

After giving my mouth guard box a home on my nightstand, I find Andy wandering around my apartment, glass in hand. “What I like about your place,” he says, “is that you didn't wait to make it look like you live here. You aren't living in a pile of not-yet-unpacked boxes.”

“Thanks. And just so you keep feeling that way, don't go in the closet.”