The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(21)

“I miss you,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I love you.” We kissed but I could tell he wanted to go downstairs.

“You were good tonight, you know that? That part with the father, your physicality was really spot-on.”

“Thanks.” We looked at each other. It was a genuine compliment moment and we were on the same team. “I mean, the play is shit, but thank you.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.” We looked at each other again and grinned at the same time. Danny rarely admitted this type of thing and I was overcome with affection. I wanted to crawl into something and lie with our faces touching for as long as it took to feel like I didn’t miss him anymore. I wanted to do this, to tell him this, to say I wanted to get out of the house and into the car and onto the freeway where we could zoom away from all the attractive people I didn’t know, but Danny was looking at me, almost studying me, and took my shoulders in his hands as if surprised.

“Argh, man,” he said. “I missed you. I really did miss you.” His eyes were sad and he kissed me on the nose. It was as if he’d just realized it. Just actualized the refrain of our phone calls.

“Good,” I said. Worried, rather than hurt, that I might have to pull him back in. That he was sad to be heading home to our TV shows and late-night snacks and unmade cave of a bed.

We were so compatible, really. Really just so compatible in a number of ways. We had the same favorite band, the same exact one, and I used to act too, in college. We bonded over this at the party where we first met—some mutual friend of a friend and I had walked into an unlocked bathroom to reveal him rinsing with the apartment owner’s Listerine. We’d found this remarkably hilarious and I liked the way he made fun of me while holding eye contact. When we walked back to his place, I told him I had quit theater because it was never my primary focus to begin with and, besides, I was never that good. He said I was probably being modest (Danny always flirted with flattery) and for the first and only time in my life, I made out a good deal on the subway.

“You know the Books are playing in Prospect Park next weekend,” I said, my hands still in his pockets. “We should go.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Go to that Vietnamese place before.”

“Yeah, totally.” We could hear the wind rattling the deck umbrella in its metal holder and I thought for a minute about the vast stretch of beach we couldn’t see in the dark—about how the tide could be dead low or dead high and we wouldn’t even know. But the thought of Brooklyn had popped the image of Rex’s Fix Ups back into my head and I almost said something but decided not to. The shop was on Dean Street. The shirt belonged to Danny.

I heard shouting from the kitchen and it sounded like Olivia was laughing at Eric for spilling some kind of drink.

“I’ll kill you!” she shouted. “Hom-o, hom-o!” Chairs seemed to be sliding and we heard something drop. “Hom-o, I’ll eat you!” Danny tried not to smile but his face broke and he stifled a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still grinning. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I’m sorry.” He couldn’t keep a straight face.

“It’s fine,” I said, smiling back at him. “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

I kissed him on the cheek and we turned to leave, the umbrella still rattling from outside the glass.

It wasn’t until we were walking back down the stairs toward the maze of antiques and squealing actors that I truly realized I despised Olivia and her flat-brimmed hat with an unbearable and irrational intensity.

The next day, I watched the play again. It was a matinee, so the cast scraped out of Ricky’s house at eleven o’clock with the pouty camaraderie of a communal hangover. Too tired and confused the night before, Danny and I had had sex that morning—emerging last into the kitchen, secretly superior. I ordered another to-go lobster on the way to the theater and it came with its claws flopping over the sides of a fast food container, which I liked. I sat in the back again but felt a strange sinking when the lights dimmed. Danny looked handsome in his costume: styled, slightly, and forced to wear jeans that fit him.

I don’t think I’d ever had a truly violent impulse before that afternoon, sitting in a velvet chair in a dark theater as old people laughed. I had a boyfriend in high school who got into a fight at a party in someone’s basement and I remember driving him home in silence, fully incapable of understanding why he felt compelled to punch Joey Carlton in the face for the shit he said about Mike and AJ. But I understood now. Danny and Olivia were just so charming! The part where they first kissed, his hand on the small of her back and her fingers running through his hair. The part where they giggled and eye-smiled and confessed things and fought and made up and cried and kissed again. I wanted to take Olivia’s face and hit it as hard as I could. Shove her to the ground and kick her in the side. Smash her against the wall, pull at her hair, punch her again right between the eyes. I imagined doing these things as the audience laughed. Imagined getting up on stage and beating her up. Just literally beating her up. Fuck you, I would say. Fuck you and your stupid clothing and your stupid attitude and the way you talk to everyone like they f*cking love you. Stay the f*ck away from Danny and if you ever f*cking talk to him again I will kill you, I would say. I will literally kill you.