Story: Tell Me Anything

He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.

As his practiced fingers danced on the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.

As ivory confetti fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.

He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then wrapped around his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.

She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled herself back to an upright position. And then she took a swig from the bottle of Baileys.

He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.

She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters. Cream. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.

She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; within seconds there was a solid, blocky smile on her face.

He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.

He stood up, the back of his knees scraping the chair away. He looked at all the books on the shelves of his desk, and it suddenly seemed wrong that the books were stolidly in their places. He could still sense her looking; at that moment he wanted nothing more than for her to leave him alone. He looked at the books, and nursed the feeling until it grew steadily in his sternum. As it spread through his ribcage. As it leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.

Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and then she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.

He looked out into the careless flashing light of Shenton Way.

She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but that was stupid and she was not stupid. He was not a Stilton man; never had been, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.

He turned away from the window. She swallowed and took another handful.

The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer out again. The letter was still in the drawer.

The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly wondered if that was too much. She felt like a fraud for acting out.

He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 am”, except he’d asked her once whether the entire department was sloppy. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She told him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.

As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but it could be brought forward. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But like an uninvited guest a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.

He stared at the cursive handwriting until the letters unlinked. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.

She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. After a moment, she kept the door open with one foot, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. She held the bowl by its rim as she slid it into the refrigerator. When she was done, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.

She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and suddenly felt tired and in need of food.

She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.

He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of Stilton cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan.

She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.

He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching the picture.

He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left to think about. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.

She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.

She did it, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.

They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?

They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. What did you want me to do?

Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.

Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.

Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.

Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.

Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.

What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?

You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?

I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?

Fuck you.

Fuck. You.


And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:

I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.

You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?


And yet later:

I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.

She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.


The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later. Two days of silence later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning weightlessly across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.

And then it was over. I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.

Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the slightly inadequate feeling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.

He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. The television. He needed noise.

The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.

The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute pass by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.

“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.

The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.

She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.

He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.

Her eyes closed.

His mind wandered.


And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.



(Revision)



He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.

As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.

As pale white shreds fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.

He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.

She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.

He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.

She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters, cream on red. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.

She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.

He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.

He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.

Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.

He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.

She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.

He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.

The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.

The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.

He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as a playful challenge. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.

As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.

He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.

She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused, aware of the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.

She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.

She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.

He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. He scuffed his foot against the floor, getting rid of something sticky.

She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.

He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching his smile.

He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.

She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.

She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.

They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?

They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?

Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.

Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.

Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.

Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.

Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.

What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?

You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?

I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?

Fuck you.

Fuck. You.


And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:

I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.

You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?


And yet later:

I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.

She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.


The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.

He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.

And then it was over.

I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.

Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pulling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.

He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he’d felt when her father had cried. The television. He needed noise.

The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.

The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute slide by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.

“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.

The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.

She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.

He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.

Her eyes closed.

His mind wandered.

And in their dreams they heard each other again.



(Revision)



He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.

As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.

As pale white shreds drifted into the bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.

He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then with a grunt he pulled the lid of his laptop down.

She thought she heard a noise, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.

He could sense her gaze again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.

She grated her cheese, back, and forth, back, and forth, back, and forth.

It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady cream letters. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.

She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.

He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked. She sat, staring.

He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.

Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.

He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.

She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.

He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.

The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.

The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.

He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he turned the envelope over and teased out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as challenge spiked with playfulness. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.

As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She knew she could, even if the fine print said otherwise. She wanted to see her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.

He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.

She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. The glass rim curved against the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed to kiss the bottle again.

She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.

She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. At some point she became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.

He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. Then he scuffed his sole against the refrigerator, getting rid of something sticky.

She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.

He sat on the chair in the kitchen, rubbing the soles of his feet together. She thought about punching his smile.

He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.

She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the bare room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.

She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.

They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d brushed his fingers against hers while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?

They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?

Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.

Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.

Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.

Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.

Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.

What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?

You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?

I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?

Fuck you.

Fuck. You.


And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:

I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.

You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?


And yet later:

I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.

She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.


The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.

He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car, and the silence in the two days prior. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.

And then it was over.

I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.

Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. She felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pull of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.

He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go, and the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he had felt when her father had hugged him. The television. He needed noise.

The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.

The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute drift by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. The picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.

“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger in her absence. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.

The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.

She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. She was tired, and sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.

He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him in restful waves. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.

Her eyes closed.

His mind wandered.


And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.