The Wangs vs. the World(85)

He laughed encouragingly, but she didn’t respond. Oh god, why had he said that? That was so stupid. What was snark, anyway?

And then, in a half second, no warning at all, she stuck her banana-glopped fingers in his mouth and flopped down on top of him, nestling her head in next to his ear.

“Do you like it?”

Well, he didn’t not like it. Andrew sucked dutifully, moving his tongue along the tips of her fingers. Dorrie wriggled on top of him, grinding her hips into his.

“Wait,” said Andrew, struggling to push her off. “You didn’t answer my question.”

She sat up again.

“Seriously, why?”

Andrew didn’t even know why he kept asking. He usually just let stuff like that go, but if she couldn’t tell him, well, if she couldn’t tell him, then she couldn’t possibly be in love with him, right?

“Dorrie?”

Nothing.

“Well?”

Nothing.

“This isn’t really good for my self-esteem here. Nothing?”

Nothing.

Until “Turn over and I’ll show you.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

She bared her teeth at him, and then, tender, soft, she reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, brushing his cheek with her knuckles as she drew her hand away.

“I don’t like this anymore.” He didn’t even know that those words were going to come out of him, but once he said them, they were truer than anything else he could have said.

“Aww, honey, what do you mean? We’re having fun here.”

“No.” Andrew shrugged her off. She was so light, actually. There was so little to her. “I’m not having fun. I thought you—”

“You thought I loved you?”

“Yes!” No. No, he hadn’t. He never thought it, but in trying to convince himself that it wasn’t necessary, he’d hoped it, and that was almost as true.

“Oh come on, you’re young, but you’re not a baby. You can’t possibly think that love works like that. You wanted to f*ck and I gave you an excuse.”

“No!” Andrew flung his legs off the bed and then stood up. “I didn’t! I mean, I did, but not like that! I explained it!”

He had to leave. What was he doing here with this stranger? He started picking up his clothes and shoving them back in his duffel.

“Andrew! You don’t have to go.”

“I’m not handcuffed anymore, so . . .”

There. He could be sarcastic, too. Or ironic. Or whatever.

He continued packing up, going to the bathroom to retrieve his toothbrush and moisturizer, unplugging the cord of his cell phone and winding it up carefully before he looked in her direction. Sitting there on the bed, eyes wide, skin luminescent, she was perfection. He could put down his bag and just stay. She’d love him eventually.

“You’re really leaving?”

“Unless . . .”

If she just said one nice thing, just made one gesture towards him, just showed him something, he would stay.

“No means no, Andrew.”



He and his giant duffel barely fit through the warren of narrow hallways in Dorrie’s house. Which entryway had she used? Each door he tried was nailed shut in order to keep tourists from stumbling into her quarters. Finally, one of them gave way and he shoved through it, falling into a quartet of ladies in red hats and crazy purple dresses huddled over one of the pamphlets that talked about Dorrie’s family and how they made their money and beautified the city.

“What! Who are you? What’s this?” said the smallest one.

“Sorry, sorry sorry.” He checked to make sure no one was injured and then took off down the hallway. He could still hear them as he ran. “We should make sure he’s not a thief! Oh dear, could he be a thief? Perhaps we ought to chase him! Chase him? Lilly wants to chase a boy! Or maybe someone’s chasing him! Oh, ladies, make sure you all have your purses.”

By the time he made his way down the circular staircase, they were all gathered at the top, peering down at him.

“I didn’t take anything!” he shouted back up. They looked so worried in their ridiculous hats that he laughed. “It’s okay! Have a good tour!”

The curved doors were propped open, and the Louisiana sky outside was a bright blue. Andrew started running down the long driveway of Dorrie’s estate, but halfway through, a little out of breath, he stopped. The ladies were wrong. He wasn’t running from anything. Dorrie wasn’t going to chase him. And he wasn’t running to anything either.

God, had she really said, “No means no?” Andrew wondered if she’d meant to make a joke. Maybe? It was too bad, really, that she’d never gotten to see him really deliver a set. They’d spent almost three days together without doing much of anything. He hadn’t even done any writing since Austin, and according to Jerry Seinfeld, you were supposed to write material every single day. Andrew tried to. Or, at least, he tried to try to. He’d heard somewhere that you needed to have half an hour of material before you could be considered a real comic. Right now he had the seven minutes he’d done at school, and the seven that didn’t go over so great in Austin, and another seven that he was ready to try out, and seven more that he should have been working on all along.