Always Happy Hour: Stories(58)

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

She liked zoos and I didn’t and we had a short but ugly conversation in which I told her about a couple of pandas I’d seen at the zoo in Atlanta, slumped over barrels and panting in the summer heat, how I’d wanted to shoot them in the head to put them out of their misery.

We stopped at CVS and she bought mini-Snickers and Doritos and Sprite Zero, two bags of gummy worms, three ashtrays and ten postcards and two T-shirts and three magazines and a four-pack of lip gloss in the cool family. She considered a bunch of other things and I stood there and looked at them with her. This was how she spent her days, going from one place to another to buy mass-produced items she didn’t need.

When we got back to the hotel, she went to her room and shut the door. I heard her on the phone with her boyfriend so I opened a bottle of white wine—it was so cute—and sat on the couch, waiting for her to come back out. I waited a long time, nursing the bottle.

“Want to go to the pool?” she said, emerging in a stars-and-stripes string bikini. It reminded me of the Coca-Cola one-piece I’d worn as a child.

“Sure. Everything okay?”

“He’s being a dick.” Usually I loved hearing the awful details of people’s relationships because they made me feel better about my own, but I felt sorry for Derek. “He hates it when I leave.”

“I know,” I said. “They can’t do anything by themselves.” My boyfriend was fine by himself. There he was on his couch, everything within reach.

Since she was originally from South Dakota, she didn’t mind that it was windy and 68 degrees, that we were the only ones in our swimsuits. The sun was shining and that was enough. There was a guy selling hamburgers and drinks at the poolside bar.

“Hello, ladies,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” I said, averting my gaze. I really had to go back on my meds. I vowed to do it as soon as I got home.

He said to let him know, that he was there for the duration. Shelly caught my eye and winked.

“Cute,” she said. “You should fuck him.”

I smiled as though it was a possibility. We situated our magazines and bottles of white wine and I thought about how I would associate them with this trip long after it was over because I never drank white wine at home, and certainly not in these little bottles. She hadn’t opened hers yet. I would just watch it perspire. On the last trip we’d taken, we’d ordered cheeseburgers and fries from room service one night and she’d removed her bun and eaten exactly half of the fries. And that was the real difference between us; she had a very complicated system she adhered to without fail no matter how she felt. She did, however, confess to crying a lot and I never cried. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. I didn’t understand criers or how I could be one of them and if the crying might substitute for some of the bad feelings and the bad things I felt compelled to do because of them.

The wind picked up and then the clouds covered the sun. I put my shirt back on. I looked over at her, still and thin in her American bikini, one arm above her head so her ribs were more prominent. In New York—our last trip—two of her other bitches were with us so it had been easier; I wished they were here now. There had also been museums and streets crowded with people, places to get lost. The clouds gathered and gathered and then it started to rain and there was nothing either of us could do about that.

Back in our room, I went out to the balcony and smoked her cigarettes and wondered why I didn’t have my own. Why I hadn’t pulled out more cash before getting on the plane. Why I got myself into situations I didn’t want to be in and then stayed in them for so much longer than was necessary. Did I just like to torture myself? And, if so, what could I do to change this? I checked my account balance on my phone and called the airline, but I’d done this numerous times before and already knew that the cost of the changed ticket would be comparable to the price of the original, which would be more than I could spend. I hung up before I connected with a human. I would have to wait this one out and remember this feeling when she asked me to go somewhere the next time, as she would, even though it seemed impossible, ridiculous. She didn’t like me and it was hard to like someone who didn’t like you. Or I didn’t like her. Or we were too similar or too dissimilar or it was just a bad match. It didn’t matter. I fingered the small diamond X around my neck, which I never wore at home, and tugged on the chain. Then I tugged a little bit harder. It didn’t break and I was glad of it. In movies people chucked their wedding rings into the ocean and their cell phones out of car windows, but I’d never heard of anyone doing this in real life; in real life you held onto things as hard as you could because you knew how difficult they were to replace.





CHARTS

“I’m going to marry him,” my sister says, standing in my kitchen. I don’t want her in my kitchen. I wonder if she can feel me not wanting her in my kitchen.

“Do you love him?” I ask.

“He’s wonderful. He loves me so much.”

“That’s not a reason to marry him.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not.” She takes the Lean Cuisine out of its box and tosses the frozen entrée onto the counter. “But that’s not the reason.”