In 500 Days of Summer, the chick challenges Joseph to a race from the kitchen to the bedroom and the camera follows them as they run through an aisle. The chick flies onto the mattress and Joseph comes next, at a slow crawl. He mounts her and she wants him, you can see it. He whispers, “Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s a Chinese family in our bedroom.”
In real life, there is also a Chinese family in IKEA with us, but they are nothing like the quiet family in the movie. There is a small boy who screams and a small girl who poops in a diaper and drools. It feels like they’re following us, Beck, and I’m going to lose it if they don’t stop fighting. They’re so fucking loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying. You pick up a yellow, fringed pillow and I am sick of missing out on your words. What if you said something important? What if you revealed something to me and I missed it?
You excuse yourself as you squeeze by the Chinese woman, who has stopped abruptly to examine an unremarkable round table. She could get out of the way but she doesn’t. You practically have to boost yourself onto the back side of the hunk of junk they call a sofa in order to get closer to me. That woman has nerve and I want to tell her but you hold my hand and maybe it’s not so bad after all.
“Feel this,” you say. You push the pillow into my hand. I look down and I can see your black panties just below the belt of your white jeans. They’ve stretched out from all your monkeying around and you’re holding my hand and breathing and you don’t smell like IKEA and just like that, I’m hard.
“It’s soft, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. The Chinese dad slams his fist on the table. Bam! We’re both startled and the moment ends as you drop the pillow. If this were 500 Days of Summer, we wouldn’t be able to hear him over the Hall & Oates that would be playing just for us. You pick up another pillow, pink. You press it into my palm.
“Well, what about this one?”
I’m your putty and you’ve got your hair in a bun and you’re not looking at me even though you know I’m looking at you and you smile and keep your eyes on my hand on the pillow and you whisper, “I think this is good.”
“Me too,” I murmur. I’ve barely been able to hear you speaking for the past couple of hours and your voice is heaven. I missed it.
You look up at me with sweet eyes. “It just feels good, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say and it does.
“You can tell when something is right because most things are just plain wrong.”
“Yeah,” I say and you have to be talking about us, not some twelve-dollar piece of Swedish chazerai, but you won’t look at me, you won’t let me all the way in yet. So fuck it. This is all too good and I’m gonna break in.
“Hey, Beck,” I say.
“Yeah?” you say but your eyes are on the pillow, not me.
“I like you.”
You smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say and I put my other hand on your shoulder and now you’re looking at me. We’re so close that I can see the pores you’re always trying to shrink and I can see the eyebrows you didn’t pluck this morning, because this morning you didn’t know you were gonna want me. This morning I watched you get ready in five minutes flat.
“So we’ll get the pillow?” you say.
“Yeah,” I say and it won’t be long until I’m inside of you. We’ve just made a pact and we know it and I don’t know who grabs whose hand. I just know that we’re holding hands and you’re holding the pillow and we’re weaving in and out of bedrooms and now you’re helping me, you’ve got a hand on the front of the cart. We are in this together, side by side, navigating like an old couple, like a new couple, and you know what, Beck?
It turns out IKEA is pretty fucking awesome.
You grab onto the base of something called the HEMNES bed and you look up at me. “Does this work?”
“Yep,” I say and you nod. You want me to like your bed. You know it’s gonna be our bed and you take the little pencil out of your back pocket and scribble down the numbers and letters.
You hand me the slip and smile. “Sold!”
Some girls would take all day and go back and forth but you are gloriously decisive and I am crazy about you. You peck me on the cheek and tell me to have a seat “on my new bed” and you skip off to the ladies’ room and maybe you pee and maybe you don’t. But you do send an e-mail to the guy you hired off Craigslist to assemble your new shit: Hey Brian, this is Beck from the ad. I’m so sorry but I have to cancel today. My boyfriend got the day off so he can do it. Sorry! Beck Boyfriend. When you come out of the bathroom, your eyelids are a little red from the quick job you just did on your brows and your lips are glossed and your tits are a little higher and you’re smiling and I almost think you rubbed one out in there and you take a deep breath and clap your hands.
“So can I buy you some meatballs?”
“No,” I say. “But I can buy you some meatballs.”
You smile because I’m your boyfriend. You just said so, Beck. You did. We park the shopping cart outside of the café area and the noise level in here is too much and there’s a line but you say it’s worth the wait. You are prattling on about meatballs and that damn Chinese family is in front of us and how did they get here first? They are taking forever and they are ahead of us, in line and in life—married, with kids. The clouds are forming in my head because you didn’t say boyfriend to a friend, just to some dude on Craigslist. What if you don’t mean it? What if you were quick to pick out a bed because you looked at beds online? What if you don’t care what I think? What if you’re not thinking it would be nice to go to bed with me, to make a family with me? The Chinese dad is taking too long and I can’t take it anymore and I reach over his arm and grab the other meatball ladle. Ladle. He shoots me a dirty look and you apologize to him, as if I’m the bad guy in the buffet line, in the world, and you still haven’t told me about the red ladle. You look at me. “Is something wrong, Joe?”
“They were rude.”
“It’s just crowded,” you say and you think I’m harsh and I am.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Your jaw drops and your mouth opens and then it closes and your eyes are wide and you are dazzled. You purr. “He says he’s sorry when he’s wrong and he lets me spend two hours looking at couches I don’t need? Joe, are you for real?”
I beam. I am. When the Chinese mother shoves my hand out of the way to reach a napkin, I don’t even react. I don’t have to withhold my anger because I’m not angry. You pick out the meatballs and I pay (I’m your boyfriend!) and you choose a table and I follow you. We sit, at last.
“You know, Joe, I am totally going to help you put the bed together.”
“You bet you are, missy.”
You split a meatball down the middle and pop half into your mouth and you chomp, mmmmm. Now it’s my turn and you pick up the other half and I open my mouth. I’m your seal, open, and you pop the half ball into my mouth and I chomp, mmm. The Chinese family interrupts, again, when the boy rams a spatula into the white table, which reminds me that you still haven’t told me about the red ladle and suddenly these meatballs taste like shit. You told Benji about that ladle. Why not me?
“Are you okay, Joe?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just realized I gotta take care of some online orders at the shop.”
“Well, that’s actually good,” you say. “I can shower and clean up and you can come over when you’re done.”
Everything about what you just said is ideal but you still haven’t mentioned the red ladle and for all I know you never will. I take charge.
“I just gotta pick up something.”
“Really?” you say like it’s so hard to believe. “What do you need?”
I can’t say ladle. “A spatula.”
“A spatula for Joe,” you say. “Sounds like a kids’ book or something.”
The Chinese family sails past us, hightailing it to their next destination in this plastic zoo. You look longingly at them and their full cart and we’re on the move again. I search the signs for COOKING UTENSILS and you sigh. “I’m beat.”
“Just gotta get the spatula and then we’re out of here.”
You’re done, lazy. “I can stay here with the cart.”