“Are you OK?” you say.
I see you have figured it out, that my tricks have failed me at last. I want to tell you how I hear your words, and then everything transforms into something new, the sound of the letters separately and together, the intended and unintended meaning of the words, the sound of your voice, the tone of it, the expression on your face. Then there is the surrounding noise, overheard snippets of conversation, the clink the glasses make as the bartender stacks them on the drying rack, the country music playing on the jukebox, a sneeze, a cough, a door slamming. I have to process all of this before I can even utter one word in response. But I will save that for later. We have time.
Instead I say, “Yes, I’m fine. I just take a long time to respond sometimes. I promise you, when you get to know me, I won’t take this long.”
You say, “Oh, you’re a thinker. Well, that’s nice. I like it when people think before they speak. It means they’re listening to you. And you know, there’s something to be said for silence.”
I take a deep breath, I nod my head over and over. I turn on my stool and face the bar, and you do the same. There’s a mirror behind the bar, one below the shelves of bottles, another between the cash register and the wall, and we smile at each other’s reflection. It’s a punch in the stomach, love, but I’d take a hit for you.
The young stockbrokers across the hall are at it again, making sure everyone knows they’re there. But, oh, how can we miss you? Every Friday night, every Saturday night, after the bars close, they’re drunk and yelling, slamming doors, slamming them so hard the walls shake and it wakes me, every time, jolts me like an electrical shock right out of whatever dream I was enjoying. Or not enjoying. Sometimes I’m awake, up with whomever I’ve invited over for that particular night, and he’ll say something like, “This is a real party building, huh? But I guess it makes sense, you’re a real party girl.” And he’ll squeeze my nipple or palm my ass. Then depending on where we are in the night, we’ll either do it once, hard and fast, or he’ll walk out my front door, into the late, dark night, never to be seen again.
But right now I am alone, because there is no one new on any of the five Internet dating sites I frequent, looking for late-night play. It’s just the same old desperados, dire men in their forties who wear ill-fitting oxford shirts and send decade-old pictures of themselves in a windbreaker on a coast, or from the waist down, cock erect; and then a handful of younger guys, stoners in shell necklaces who are just looking to smoke pot with a lady, and then either give or receive some form of oral sex. They know who I am and I know who they are. We’re not interested.
And I am awake. I can hear the Wall Streeters laughing their bawdy, wild laughs. They say “dude” a lot; they use the word as a punctuation mark. At some point in the night someone will make a barking sound. If I were the kind of woman who made wagers, I’d lay a twenty-dollar bill on it. There is always a bark. Then there will be a fight. Sometimes they take it outside. Not outside the building. That would be too much effort. No, they just take it outside their front door. Next to my door. It’s almost enough to make me want to find a new apartment. I’m simply not getting enough sleep.
They moved in six months ago, greased the building superintendent’s palms with thick stacks of twenties, or maybe fifties, and nabbed that highly coveted three-bedroom apartment with the deck and the view (I’ve only heard, never seen). It seems like there are more than three people who live there, though, at least four, maybe five. They are all varying degrees of a youthful prototype that rejected me years ago in college—handsome in a way that comes from a balance of good genes, preferably of the Connecticut variety; smart, smart enough to get them through the day, to make their day better than that of most people on the planet; determined because they have been told to be so; entitled and confident; and just so fucking perfect. Now as a more mature and confident version of myself I can stick up my nose at them. I have slept with a few people like them since my college days, and their fetishes are boring. (Oh, you want to take me from behind and pound me like a racehorse? And call me a slut? How creative.) All the mystery is gone.