The Animators(83)

“When it’s ready, you’ll be the first to see it,” she says. “Now you guys gotta leave, cause I’m gonna wank.” She puts a cigarette between her lips. “So git.”

Teddy smiles until he shuts the door and we step outside. “Mel’s funny,” he says without conviction.

“She is.” When I see him frown, I lean in and give him a tickle around the ribs, swooping in for contact. I’m feeling good after seeing the clip—good and a little itchy. I find myself wishing I could have stayed longer, to see it one more time. Maybe make some editorial notes.

“I’m sorry about what she said,” I say. “She is the way she is. She’s not going to change any more than she already has.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I totally get it. I do.” He leans back and looks at me for a moment, the expression on his face unreadable. “Anyone ever tell you you get the sex flush on your face when you’ve been working?”

—

Teddy throws a Christmas party at Weirdo Video and introduces me as his girlfriend. Mel and Ryan attempt to make wassail, ruin it, and spike it with enough rum that no one notices. As per usual, Mel is the hit of the party, a thousand new friends in a single night. She wears a Santa hat and lights firecrackers off a Bardstown Road side street. I’m so happy to be there that I actually help her, setting them up so she can light them and run to the sidewalk in time for the boom. We yell while smokeballs and jumping jacks spin and pop. “Oh hoooly night,” she bellows, kicking burnt pieces to the curb. We’re drunk and cold and we clutch and push at each other with our hands, our matching red claws ink-stained and knobby at the knuckles.

Teddy pulls me aside. “I think we should get Mel home,” he says.

“What’s the problem?”

His eyebrows fold into a concerned point. He has grown a soft, short beard. I feel it most keenly when he presses his face into my neck as I come, like he’s listening for something inside. I reach for the beard, tune out. “Honey,” he says.

“Hmmm?”

“She’s setting off fireworks in the middle of a historic district. These people are touchy. She’s going to get us picked up.”

“It’s fine.” I twiddle my fingers in the swirl connecting sideburn with cheek stubble. From the corner of my eye, Victoria from the bookstore watches, her mouth a straight line, glass of fucked-over wassail in her hand.

“Will you please say something?” He puts his hands in my hair. Says into my ear, “Say something and I’ll let you ride me in the stockroom.”

Mel ducks through the kitchen to grab her duffel bag, which has inexplicably been filled, at some point in our travels, with fireworks. “Mel,” I say, then louder, “Hey. Mel. Stop.” I reach out, grab her by the belt loops.

“Woo,” she hoots, wiggling her eyebrows at Ryan nearby. “Look who’s getting saucy.”

“Can I talk to you?”

Mel groans. “Go blow it out your peehole with that schoolmarm voice.” She grabs me by the belt loops, jerking back and forth. “This is a party. Wow, your pants are super-loose. You need to eat more.”

I guide her over by the stockroom. “Maybe give it a rest with the firecrackers.”

“Aw, come on.”

“You’re going to get us all picked up. It’s too much noise.”

“What. Did Teddy offer you sexual favors in exchange for controlling me? He did, didn’t he?”

My face flames. “No one wants to control you. We just want to keep everyone out of jail. Teddy’s the one who lives here.”

“He controls you,” Mel whispers. “This is where it starts. You’ll become his meat puppet.”

“What?”

“He wants me to leave, man. That’s what he wants. It irks the shit out of him when he sees you with me. He doesn’t want you to have any kind of life that doesn’t include him.”

We’re both swaying on our feet. Shitfaced is no way to have an argument. “That’s not it,” I tell her, “that’s not it. All I did was ask you to stop lighting fireworks, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s it, dude. Don’t make this a thing.”

We let it peter out, engage in some bro-grabs. Mel burps and moans, “That wassail was seven glasses of mistake.”

Teddy watches us from the corner, that weird, inscrutable expression on his face. Someone says something to him and he turns his head to reply, eyes still trained on us.

It doesn’t occur to me until later that night in bed, Teddy snoring beside me, that maybe Teddy doesn’t like Mel. And maybe the feeling is mutual.

I become convinced the closer we get to Christmas. It’s not something I noticed at first, this strange tenor in the air between them; they do a nice job of putting up a veneer of friendliness, of cordiality. If there’s something they both do well, it’s people—getting a read on a room as soon as they walk in, putting forward just the right, subtle impression of peace and self-comfort, whether or not it is genuine. They find the same things funny. They both have an intolerance for lazy thinking. In any sane world, they would be friends. But they are not.

I try to tell myself, after every encounter, that the mood was lighter than it had seemed, that Mel and Teddy really do like each other. They’re fine. They’re the two halves of my life, stitching together. Any suspicion the result of my broken, neurotic brain.