I loved the anonymous chat app. I downloaded it on my computer. I downloaded it on my phone. I was lonely, and the anonymous chat app made me less lonely. I couldn’t sleep, and the anonymous chat app said, Who cares! When I felt helpless, when I despaired, when my breath caught horribly in my chest, the anonymous chat app told me: The whole world suffers. Everyone is unemployed. The whole world is sexless inside of its body. The whole world longs for sleep. When it sleeps, the whole world has terrible nightmares. And when it wakes, the whole world is so, so grateful for the opportunity to chat privately with strangers online.

The anonymous chat app sported a clean and gorgeous interface. Its colors were green and blue and white. The font, serif-less. Everything glowed, comforting and familiar, like a chain hotel. At the end of each session I watched the chat window melt away, pixels dissolving, irretrievable. I knew all the lingo. A/S/L. Bots telling me to add them on a different messenger app called Kik. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t use Kik. But I liked the bots anyway; it was cool that they were fake, and cool that I knew they were fake, and cool that whoever designed the bots probably knew that I would know they were fake and want to talk to them anyway.

The first time I chatted with a bot I just wanted to see what would happen.

Hello, I typed.

I love you, I typed.

Im gonna kill you, I typed.

And the bot said:

gtg, add me on kik ; )

gtg, add me on kik ; )

gtg, add me on kik ; )

 

Whenever I was connected to a real person we would exchange age and sex and location and then either I or the other person would say How are you and then one of us would say Are you horny. I lied about my age and I lied about my location and I lied about being horny. The only thing I didn’t lie about was my gender. I’m Henry, I said. I’m Geoff. I said that I was twenty-five. I said that I was forty-seven. I said that I lived in Detroit or Toronto or Berlin. I said that I was horny, really horny, extremely horny. Most of the time I didn’t masturbate. Anyone could be a fat old guy getting off on tricking me, and I worried about what it would mean to fondle myself while aware of this possibility.

Besides, I wasn’t horny. When I looked down at my body, I was often surprised to find that it was still there. All day long my body dragged me around. It sat me on the couch. It took me to the bathroom. In exchange I gave it food and water and rest. Sometimes I gave it drugs, and sometimes I made it lift heavy objects and set them down so that it could stay strong. But I continued to suspect that my body was angry with me. Nothing I did seemed good enough. I was angry with my body, too. It was holding me back.

Here was the truth: I was a thirty-four-year-old male. I lived in Brooklyn Heights. I was 6’1. I was a healthy weight. I had a nice-looking face. I had money. I wore brown loafers and chinos. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be a mind.

 

I was in the bathroom one evening, sitting on the toilet with my pants on and my laptop balanced on my thighs, waiting for the chat app to pair me with someone new. My wife was out on a run. Earlier I had considered taking the subway to a bar in Gowanus, but then I remembered the dirty drifts of last week’s snowfall piled at every intersection, and I thought about all of the strangers and all of the bots out there, all over the world, waiting to meet me. So instead I sat in the bathroom, sipping a canned margarita from the deli across the street, and took some selfies on my laptop camera.

Everything was fine. I had washed the sheets that morning. My wife and I had recently purchased an expensive toaster oven, known for its innovative crisping technology, and I had developed the habit of cutting frozen pizzas in half with scissors and broiling each segment separately. This technique was much faster than waiting for the real oven to preheat. A half-moon of pepperoni pizza rested on a paper towel in the bathroom sink, and once it cooled down it was going to taste delicious.

I should have prefaced this by saying that I loved my wife. She was beautiful. She was smart. She had a low, calm voice. We met at a Starbucks six years earlier and at our wedding reception we gave out personalized ceramic Starbucks travel tumblers. Aww, the guests had said, and they were right. The personalized ceramic Starbucks travel tumblers were adorable. My wife was Jewish and in law school, but she wasn’t argumentative, not really. She was small, with long dark hair that she parted in the middle to appear more authoritative. She wore these tight black skirt suits to work. At home she zoomed around the kitchen muttering to herself. Fuck, where did I put my keys, fuck fuck fuck god damn it has anyone seen my keys, did I forget to put on deodorant, shit shit I think I smell. I loved listening to her curse. The words sounded wrong coming out of her sweet, earnest mouth.

Whenever I looked at my wife it was as if my intestines got caught in my throat. The previous year I had participated in several unsatisfying affairs when she was away visiting her dying mother upstate. I had still been sort of horny back then, but that wasn’t why I cheated. I did it because my wife was having a hard time. ‘I’m so sad. Fuck! I’m so fucking sad!’ she would say, and her eyes would be red and wet, and I would hear her gasping and crying all over the apartment. In these moments it was clear that she had made a terrible mistake in marrying me. I didn’t know how to make her feel better; I didn’t even want to try. I’m so horrible, I told myself. I’m a piece of shit. I’m the kind of piece of shit who would probably cheat on his wife while her mother was dying.

The first time she went upstate I headed to a bar and picked up a girl, and the next time she went upstate I did it again. I always went back to the girls’ places. I didn’t want my doorman to see that I was unfaithful. The girls lived in Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, in filthy walk-ups with four roommates, hordes of ugly potted plants lunging for sunlight in the common areas, empty cans of diet Red Bull repurposed as ashtrays on the windowsills. I was aware that when those girls fucked me it was sort of as a joke. They wanted to laugh with their friends about my pressed trousers, my polished shoes, my pomade. I didn’t care. I had a lot of affection for them. I was pathetic, but they were, too. One had a big fat roach living in her bathtub drain, and it would pop out whenever someone went to pee. She was too scared to kill it and had instead trained herself to think of it as a pet. She was nuts, but I liked her, and I felt guilty when her blow job didn’t make me come.

Then my wife’s mother died and I stopped going home with girls. My body screamed at me all the time. Stop! it screamed. Go! I became very depressed. For a while I had panic attacks at the office every time my computer froze. I would stare at the unmoving screen and think, Nothing ever works and everybody is going to die. Then my heart would start flapping around inside of me at an awful speed. I would plead with my body, Do not do this while I am at work! and my body would laugh in my face. Eventually my company put me on paid leave. My wife was kind and supportive. She reminded me to take my Ativan.

In the bathroom I sipped my margarita and stared at the blank chat window on my laptop. Whoever was on the other end wasn’t saying anything, so I typed, A/S/L??

The stranger took a moment to respond. I steadied my laptop with one hand and with the other reached into the sink for my pizza.

MY CAPS LOCK IS STUCK

I HAVE REMOVED THE KEY AND CLEANED IT AND RESTARTED MY COMPUTER BUT NOTHING IS WORKING

Sorry, I typed. I dont know how to help . . . a/s/l??

THATS OKAY I JUST DONT WANT YOU TO THINK I AM YELLING AT YOU

MY NAME IS DIANE I AM A FEMALE I AM 37 YEARS OLD AND I LIVE IN QUEENS

My fingers thrummed on the keyboard. This person had no idea how to use the internet. And even though she had explained about the caps lock, it still came across as yelling. Plus, I didn’t generally like to talk to anyone over thirty-five. Ever since my thirty-fourth birthday I had sensed myself on a slippery, frightening edge.

I was about to disconnect when she messaged me again.

PLEASE DONT LEAVE. I REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO. I AM GOING THROUGH A DIVORCE. MY HUSBAND LEFT ME FOR A YOUNGER AND MORE ATTRACTIVE WOMAN. I DONT KNOW WHAT I DID TO DESERVE THIS. I SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT I AM A DANGER TO MYSELF. IF ONE MORE PERSON LEAVES ME I WILL PROBABLY KILL MYSELF. I DO HAVE A BOTTLE OF SLEEPING PILLS. I AM SORRY FOR PUTTING YOU IN A DIFFICULT POSITION. DIANE

I set my pizza back down in the sink. This was not what the anonymous chat app was all about. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s suicide. Then again, she was likely lying about killing herself. Recently, I had also told my wife that I was going to buy a gun on the dark web and shoot myself in the throat so that I would no longer be a burden. I needed to make sure she was aware that she could lose me at any moment, that it was still her responsibility to love me, even though I had become a helpless and bitter person.

I got up off the toilet and lay down in the bathtub with the laptop on my stomach. The sensation of the cold ceramic against my neck made me feel miserable but alive.

HELLO??

Sorry, I was in the bathroom, I typed. You should call the suicide hotline.

I CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO CALL THEM BECAUSE I KNOW IT IS THEIR JOB TO TELL ME NOT TO KILL MYSELF

IT ALL STARTED WITH MY MOTHER WHO NEVER LOVED ME AND RESENTED ME UNTIL THE DAY SHE DIED. BECAUSE OF HER I HAVE DEVELOPED AN ANXIOUS-PREOCCUPIED ATTACHMENT STYLE. I DRIVE EVERYONE AWAY WITH MY INSECURITIES AND HYPER-DEPENDENCE

AT FIRST I THOUGHT MY HUSBAND WAS HAVING AN AFFAIR WHEN REALLY HE WASNT BUT I KEPT CONFRONTING HIM ABOUT IT UNTIL HE FINALLY HAD AN AFFAIR FOR REAL ISNT THAT CRAZY

Damn, I typed. Your husband sucks!!

She kept going. Her husband had left her four months ago and she sometimes got lonely at night but didn’t want to talk to people she knew, because she hated when they felt sorry for her. I felt really sorry for her. She was much crazier and sadder than I was, had a worse life, and kept apologizing, over and over again. It was nice talking to her.

I thought, Maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make this insane lady feel better. Maybe this is my job.

So I told her some lies about myself. I said I was an orphan. I said that dating was hard for me because I was ugly.

ALL THOSE GIRLS DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE MISSING, she said.

I thought, Good thing she doesn’t know I’m actually handsome.

I was about to reply when I heard a knock on the bathroom door.

‘Baby?’ my wife said. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m just chilling in here,’ I said loudly. ‘Might take a bath.’

‘Sounds good,’ she said, in a voice that meant: It doesn’t sound good, it sounds weird, there’s no water running, it kind of smells like pizza, but I’m patient, I’m nice, I love you, I’m your wife.

When I heard her footsteps recede, I returned to the screen. It was getting late. My back felt sore. My canned margarita was warm and my pizza was cold. But I didn’t want to stop talking to Diane. I was helping her. It was so good to be helpful. The more I helped her, the more I wanted her to help me, too. I wanted to tell her things, true things, about myself. And I did. I sat up in the bathtub and typed quickly, hunched over my laptop. I told Diane about how my company had recently made the move into a coworking space in the city, with ping-pong tables and a booth in the lobby where you could craft your own Christmas ornaments. There was a bar and lounge area, and a room where people danced to music wearing headphones. I had encouraged the move so as to increase staff wellness and productivity, but once we arrived I started having panic attacks after drinking one beer at the bar on my lunch break. I told her how the panic attacks continued even after I stopped drinking my lunchtime beer, and how one day I began shrieking in the lobby and then smashed my handmade ornament on the floor and that’s why I got put on leave. I didn’t tell her the leave was paid because I didn’t want to make her feel insecure about our class disparity.

I AM SORRY YOU ARE OUT OF WORK

IN MY STATE I FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD DOWN A JOB

That blows, I typed. You deserve so much better.

It was two in the morning when we both logged off. We exchanged emails, mine with a fake name that I had set up for such situations. My eyeballs felt stretched out from staring at my screen all night. Ow, my body said, and I said, Shut the fuck up. When I stood up from the bathtub my muscles were stiff and cramped. But there was something else, too – a slackness in the vicinity of my ribcage that I hadn’t experienced in months. A feeling like a fist opening.

Diane, I thought.

My wife lay sprawled on top of our white duvet. She was wearing two sweaters, fleece-lined sweatpants, and a pair of sparkly, fuzzy socks. I lay beside her, and she shifted to wrap her thin arms around my waist. Her breath was wet on my neck. It smelled like sour milk. Recently my wife had got into intermittent fasting and she only ever ate one meal a day, at 7 p.m., but every day at 7 p.m. she microwaved the greasiest foods she could find: mac and cheese, corn dogs, soggy hamburgers that steamed offensively in their cellophane packets. At 6.55 p.m. she would spread everything out on the kitchen table and look at it and nod and say, ‘Fuck yes. Hell fucking yes.’ And then I would watch her shovel down her burgers and corn dogs and laugh, and go, ‘Shit, I’m gonna get heartburn,’ and take three Tums and one Lactaid, and, later, massage her swollen stomach on the couch while concentrating on a Scandinavian crime drama, expressing shock at the appropriate moments, shaking her head, saying, ‘That is fucked up.’ When I watched her I could almost forget about my horrible body, the twisting, grasping panic inside of me, the Ativan, the other women, the strangers, the bots. I could almost forget about the gorgeous anonymous chat app, which was always within reach, always waiting for me, on my laptop, on my phone.

I could almost say, I love being a husband. I love my beautiful wife.

Beside me in bed, a loose strand of hair had caught in my wife’s mouth. She was kneading her lips, pushing at the hair with her tongue. I closed my eyes and the image of her face went black, like my phone’s screen when untouched. It was not a face I could bear to see.

Instead I thought, Diane.

 

The next morning I saw that my wife had left me a note on her pillowcase.

Hooray!!! it said. You slept!!

She had sketched a horizontal stick figure with little Zs floating above its head. I stared at it for a minute. It looked just like me. I pushed away the vision of my wife’s fingers grasping the fine-tipped pen, pressing delicately into the pad. In my dreams my phone had been buzzing interminably against my thigh. It had been bleating Diane’s name. I glanced around the room. My skin tingled where it sat on top of my muscles. My muscles throbbed where they sat on top of my bones. There was a spider in the corner of the ceiling, and I kept looking at it and crying. I had been listening to a lot of Steely Dan. I couldn’t understand why the spider hadn’t spun a web. It was in the corner with no web. I felt guilty about every affair I had ever had. I was letting down my wife and all of her friends. I didn’t have friends anymore, but if I did, I would have been letting them down, too. And not just the friends I might have had. I was letting down all the strangers and all the wonderful bots in the world. I was letting down my new confidante, Diane.

I lurched out of bed and took my Ativan and chugged half a bottle of cold brew, then stood in the middle of the kitchen and waited for the drug to hit, that first surge of relief like a wet rag being wrung out in my brain. I looked around at our apartment. My wife had decorated in various shades of gray: slate, charcoal, a luminescent pearl for the kitchen cabinets. In the living room were a handwoven viscose rug in a color called Fog and a low-slung linen couch with a burnt orange throw arranged artfully across one cushion. The throw was cashmere, and in the early hours I liked to swaddle myself in it front-to-back, like an armless Snuggie. Our kitchen table was Danish and modern. My wife had let me pick it out. ‘I have veto power,’ she had said, ‘in case you choose something ugly.’ But I didn’t choose something ugly, and when she saw the table she had looked shiny and proud, like a mother whose kid had received unexpectedly kind comments on his report card.

‘My sister’s going to shit herself when she sees how nice our place is,’ she had said.

I opened the fridge and found a Tupperware on the top shelf filled with hardboiled eggs. My wife had cracked the shells lightly beforehand, so all I had to do was peel. I pictured her running the eggs under cold water in the early morning, tapping them gently on the countertop until their exteriors fissured while I was asleep. My eyes welled up. I chipped away at the shell, then peeled the egg by its membrane and popped it whole into my mouth.

I lay on the couch with my head against the scratchy side of a throw pillow and opened my laptop. Outside it was below freezing, but we kept the heat at 75, even in midwinter. My wife was always cold and sometimes went to sleep wearing her knee-length down parka.

The laptop fan whirred frighteningly. The underside of the keyboard was warm on my bare legs. Too hot, my body said. I closed the laptop and opened it again, but the fan wouldn’t stop. I threw the computer down onto the cushion. The fan shut off. Gingerly I pried the laptop open and began to draft an email.

 

Dear Diane,

I forgot to tell you yesterday to try listening to some Steely Dan. I would recommend starting with the 1972 album Can’t Buy a Thrill. I have found it very comforting in my lowest moments.

It was really great talking to you last night. Lately I’ve been feeling very confused. I feel like I’m going crazy. I hope you are doing better this morning. I think that you should flush your sleeping pills. Do you ever feel sexually lonely now that your divorce is underway?

Please get back to me ASAP.

Best,
Ken

 

I hit send and immediately started refreshing my empty inbox. I thought about the eggs. I thought about how so many people in the world were married and so many people in the world were not. I thought about the hundreds of thousands of users on the anonymous chat app, and how many of them were uglier than me, and how many were more handsome, and how many had more money, and how many had less, and how many were horny, and how many were frigid, and then my body said, You need to stop thinking about this or else you are going to have a panic attack.

I thought about Diane. I thought about what she might smell like. I imagined her apartment in Queens, probably un-renovated since the 1972 release of Can’t Buy a Thrill. I imagined yellowed bathroom tiles and wall-to-wall carpeting smudged with weird, unidentifiable stains, and an ugly black velour couch with potato chip crumbs lodged between the cushions. I imagined walking in and saying, Wow, it looks great in here, I love the decor, and how happy she would be to hear that. I thought about her puckered breasts hanging limpidly beneath a dirty tank top, my fingers tracing the flesh that protruded over her sweatpants, slipping under the band, grabbing a fistful of her pubic hair.

My cell phone buzzed. It was my boss. I sent him to voicemail, waited for the message to come through, and deleted it.

I called my wife, even though I knew she couldn’t pick up at work. I pressed the phone hard against my ear.

The phone said, ‘Please leave a message after the tone.’

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

I hung up. I called again. The ringing sounded like what I imagined those meditation singing bowls must sound like, not so much a noise as a dull, low throb at the back of the skull.

 

The next morning I woke up frenzied and strung out. In bed I checked my laptop; Diane had yet to respond. I had spent most of the previous night hiding out in the bathroom, connecting and reconnecting to strangers on the anonymous chat app, failing to find her, until I stumbled to bed around two.

My wife was awake in the kitchen, slathering a toasted bagel with low-fat cream cheese for me. I had forgotten that it was the weekend. She poured herself a mug of coffee and measured out a few drops of stevia, then sat across from me at the table, handing me my Ativan bottle. I heard the pills rattling around like seeds. I was getting low.

‘What were you dreaming about last night?’ my wife asked. She looked beautiful in her silk bathrobe. Her hair was frizzy and pulled up in a clip. Behind her reading glasses I could see bits of yellow crust fuzzing the corners of her eyes.

‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep.’

She took a sip of her coffee and sucked it through her teeth before swallowing. ‘Yes, you did. I woke up for a minute at four and you were sleeping.’

‘No, I was just pretending to sleep so you wouldn’t worry,’ I said.

‘You were twitching and screaming,’ my wife said.

‘I wish you wouldn’t confuse your dreams with reality,’ I said, and then I laughed to say, Ha ha, you always do this! You’re so crazy! My crazy wife!

Her mouth tightened. ‘Okay,’ she said. She finished her coffee and started toward the dishwasher, then turned back and pointed at my untouched bagel. ‘Are you going to eat that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I looked at the bagel. Something sour rose up in my throat.

‘If you don’t,’ she said, ‘if you change your mind, will you wrap it in aluminum and put it in the fridge? Instead of leaving it out or throwing it away? I’ll eat it for dinner.’

My body said, Don’t eat that bagel, it’s going to make you throw up. My wife looked at me like, I’m a good wife, I’m so patient, I’m so loving, even though my husband is a piece of shit. I picked up the bagel and tore off a hunk with my molars. The cream cheese spread like glue in my mouth. I forced myself to chew until it was soft enough to swallow. A wad of wet bread lodged in my throat. I went in for another bite.

‘Jack, what the fuck?’ my wife said.

‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ I said. I went to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, then knelt in front of the porcelain toilet bowl and stared into the still, clear water. You are a monk, I thought. You are meditating. My stomach roiled but I didn’t puke. When I rose I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was the face of a ghost. My eyes were bleary and red. My chin was bloated and there were gleaming pink pustules dotting my throat. I looked very bad. I looked insane.

I heard a soft knock at the bathroom door.

‘Are you okay?’ My wife asked. ‘Can I get you some water?’

‘I’m fine,’ I screamed.

When she spoke again her voice was shrill. ‘Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! Be fucking normal! What the fuck do you do in the bathroom all the time! Jesus fucking Christ! I am trying so fucking hard over here!’

I noticed that I was sitting on the floor. This is where I want to be, said my body. My chest clenched. My hands vibrated. My body said, She’ll be sorry she yelled at you, she’ll feel terrible, and then it said, How about some more Ativan?

Okay, I thought. It’s time for me to say some crazy shit.

I said, ‘I want you to leave this house. I need you to walk out the door and stay away for at least three nights. I need to be alone so that I can breathe. I’m getting tired of your delusions. I don’t know how to help you.’

I was glad there was a closed door between us. I didn’t want to watch her eyes grow wet, the little pink shock of her mouth opening. I didn’t want to think about her doing nice things for me, like toasting my bagel. I didn’t want to remember how we had once talked about having two kids, but would end up having zero kids, because nothing in the world would leave me alone. My body wouldn’t leave me alone and my brain wouldn’t leave me alone. My job wouldn’t leave me alone. The spider on the bedroom ceiling wouldn’t leave me alone.

My wife said, ‘Fuck you.’

I waited until I heard her leave the apartment. I splashed cold water on my face and opened my email.

 

Dear Diane, I wrote.

I don’t want to accuse you of anything but I am feeling a little used. If you are alive please respond to me. I miss you.

Best wishes,
Ken

 

I dragged a flattering photo of myself from my photo library into the message body. In the background you could make out some of the colorful, modern canvases my wife had hung without frames on the living room walls. Diane would see that I was attractive with a well-decorated apartment.

I refreshed my email, then closed my laptop and took an Ativan. I was excruciatingly bored and, at the same time, restless and agitated, as if my blood was pumping too quickly through the canals of my veins. I thought, I am capable of having fun. I am a handsome young man. I’m single! I went to the kitchen and swallowed a second Ativan. I could feel my insides sloshing around, wetly and warmly. I looked down at my hands and thought, Incredible! Skin! There was skin all over me, holding me together inside of the atmosphere. As long as I had skin, everything would stay in place. My guts would not fall out into a slimy red pile on the floor. I was overcome with gratitude and feelings of celestial wellbeing. I checked on the spider in the bedroom. He was doing well. He looked really happy.

I connected my phone to the speaker my wife had bought for my thirty-first birthday, put on Can’t Buy a Thrill, and turned the volume up to seventeen.

I was singing along and feeling great. I even jumped up and down a few times. I hoped that my neighbors would hear and sing along and feel good, too. I just wanted to make other people happy. That was all I had ever wanted. That was all I had ever tried to do for Diane.

I swayed my hips and poked at my phone. One new text from my wife. She was sorry she had snapped at me. I swiped. I scrolled. Maybe some space would be good, she said. I blocked her number. I imagined her standing next to me in the kitchen, putting her hair up and then taking it down. I imagined myself screaming, How could you do it? How could you abandon me? How could you leave me alone with my body? You’ll never get the apartment!

And I imagined her crying, saying, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry I treated you like that when you’re clearly going through a difficult period! I love you so much! Nothing you could ever do would make me mad at you! Even if you cheated on me more than three times! Please forgive me!

I sank onto the couch. Where could she be going? Maybe her sister’s house in Jersey. I smiled thinking about my wife alone in a guest bedroom, bickering with her sister’s husband about the heat, secretly cranking up the thermostat at night, commuting into the city each morning on NJ transit, changing into her heels in a sticky Penn station bathroom. She was getting older every day. The lack of vitamins was starting to show in the whites of her eyes. I laughed and got off the couch and grabbed a broom. I went into my bedroom and tried to smash the spider with the broom handle, but it escaped me, scurrying crazily across the ceiling. I threw the broom to the floor. I thought about my life. My life went something like this:

I love you!

Don’t leave me!

Get out!

Gtg!

Add me on Kik!

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. The mattress supported my body. My skin remained in its place. I stayed like that for a few minutes. I was ready, but I wanted to hold on, if only for another moment.

When I opened my eyes I felt perfectly calm. I went into the bathroom and shook my final Ativan into my hand. I had forgotten to pick up my refill, but I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. I was getting well. I washed my face with my wife’s jelly cleanser and ran a comb through my hair and tended to my beard with an electric trimmer. I clipped my nails into the toilet and flushed. I patted rosehip toner onto my cheeks and forehead. I checked the mirror. I was looking solid and handsome, en route to extreme health. My chin already appeared less bloated. I returned to the bedroom and rifled through the closet. I put on clean chinos and a hunter green Oxford button-down. I opened my laptop’s lid.

 

Dear Diane, I wrote,

It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you. I was wondering if you believe that digital mediation has gone too far. Do you have faith in the possibility of seeing and being seen? I forgot to mention that I am going through a devastating and messy divorce from my beautiful Jewish wife.

It would be nice if you came and stayed here for a while. Do you like smoothies? I just ordered a very powerful new blender. I would be happy to pay for your movers, a cab, anything you need.

Looking forward to seeing you tonight!

All the best,
Ken

 

I added a postscript with my address and apartment number. I called down to the doorman to tell him that a woman would be arriving soon with luggage and to send her right up.

I shut down my computer and turned off my phone. I sat at the kitchen table and waited. The sun cast slats of shimmering light across the granite countertop.

I thought, That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

 

I woke up with my right cheek pressed against the table and that side of my face covered in drool. It was dark, and I couldn’t remember what day it was. I turned on the overhead light and checked the time. Only six in the evening. I splashed some water on my face. More Ativan, my body screamed. I wanted to explain that I couldn’t, that there was no more, but my body didn’t understand reason or logic. My body offered no sympathy. It did not pity the circumstances of my existence. Ativan, it screamed. I pressed a hand over each ear. My brain was pudding in my skull. Slowly I inched my way over to the couch. I checked my email. Nothing from Diane.

I flipped on the TV and landed on one of the crime shows my wife liked. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. There was a large boat. There was a vicious sex-trafficker. There were vast expanses of gray water. I lay on the couch and wrapped myself in the blanket, dozing. I thought, Diane, you bitch.

Around eight I was jolted awake by a series of loud knocks at the front door. My head throbbed. I straightened my shirt and stumbled over.

In the hallway stood a girl, 18 or 19, wearing platform boots and knee-length denim shorts over a pair of ripped fishnet tights. She was skinny except for a slight thickness around the thighs, dimples at the sides of her hips. Her hair appeared to have been cheaply bleached, dark and oily at the roots, and she had arched, drawn-in eyebrows, a scary amount of purple eyeshadow smeared out and around her lower lid. She looked Greek, maybe, or Armenian, and would have been pretty if she scraped off her makeup. She was sucking on some kind of pungently fruity hard candy. Her eyes were a warm shade of brown. They frightened me.

‘Nice place,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ I said. I peeked around her to see that she hadn’t brought any luggage. She sidled past me, not noticing or caring when her small breasts brushed my torso, and tossed a worn-out tote bag onto the kitchen table. She scanned the room, made a satisfied clicking sound with her tongue, and dropped onto the couch. With both hands she unzipped her boots, then placed them neatly on the floor, kicking her legs up and onto the ottoman. Her tights cut off at the ankles. She had small, dainty feet.

I was so thirsty. I wanted to vomit. My face felt like it was not my face. My face felt like it was maybe an old mound of Play-Doh.

My eyes landed on the girl’s toenails, which were painted black, with a glittery green star pasted on each big toe.

One part of me thought, Get this person the fuck out of your house. Call your wife. Say sorry. Tell her you’re sick. Tell her you’re crazy. Tell her you will finally complete that self-help workbook on black-and-white thinking. Fall onto your knees, you stupid motherfucker. Find God.

But another part of me thought, Ha ha! Fuck you! Maybe later!

I walked toward the girl. With every step I thought, My legs are like big sloppy tree trunks. I must have had a weird expression on my face because she started giggling. I could smell the laugh leaking out of her mouth, extending itself towards me.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I look young for my age.’ She stored the candy in one side of her mouth while she spoke. It pressed against the inside of her cheek, a tumor that shifted from side to side when she parted her lips.

‘Do you want something to drink?’ I asked stupidly. My legs continued to carry me in her direction. The more I looked at her the more her face seemed to swim away from me. I searched her eyes for a hint of Diane.

‘Can I have a tissue?’

Slowly I made my way to the kitchen. I grabbed a paper towel and handed it to her. She spat out a tiny, translucent candy shard, then gave the crumpled towel back to me. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I shoved it in my chinos pocket. I wished that I could sit down next to her and lay my head in her lap, but my body couldn’t remember how to do anything except stand there, staring.

‘I don’t think you’re Diane,’ I said finally. Then I said, ‘Do you happen to have any Ativan?’

She looked at me sadly. ‘No, I don’t.’ She got up off the couch and walked toward me, then stopped when our faces were six inches apart. Her skin smelled like cigarettes and lemon-scented cleaning supplies. I wanted to reach out and peel the cracking foundation off her face in strips.

‘You’re too young. You’re too young and I don’t think you’re going through a divorce,’ I said.

She crossed her arms over her small chest. ‘If you don’t believe me, then I’ll just leave.’ She reached for her boots.

‘No!’ I said. ‘No, don’t go. I believe you.’

She shook her head. ‘Ken,’ she said, ‘this is never going to work if you don’t trust me. We have to trust each other. Trust is the foundation of love. Are you listening?’

I studied her face. I looked around my clean, well-decorated apartment. I thought, There is no way she is Diane.

Then my body said, Maybe she will give you a massage, though. Maybe she really likes you.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’m here to help you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘First, we have to get you cleaned up. Where’s your bathroom?’

‘It’s right around the corner,’ I said.

I watched the net of her tights digging into her calves as she went off in search of the room. When she found it, she smiled at me and closed the door behind her. I heard the brief rush of her piss, then the toilet flush and the bathwater running. After a while, she came back out and beckoned me towards her.

I followed her into the bathroom. It was humid and foggy with steam. The scent of lavender and lemongrass hung heavy over the tub, cut through by the faint grassy odor of urine. I glanced at the trash and saw that she had used up my wife’s bath salts.

‘Take off your clothes,’ she said, still smiling. I hesitated, then peeled off my chinos and my boxer briefs. I tried not to look at my penis hanging limp between my thighs. She helped me unbutton my shirt and lifted it over my head.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now get in.’

I stepped into the tub and stood submerged up to my calves, waiting for my body to adjust to the heat. The water felt slippery around my legs. I lowered myself slowly, crouching at first like a dog taking a shit, then letting myself lie down fully. The bathwater came up to my chin.

Diane nodded at me from above. ‘You stay here as long as it takes.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and I moved my face into what I hoped could realistically be called a smile. I watched Diane kneel to gather my discarded clothes. I knew everything that was going to happen the moment before it happened. How she would leverage her weight against one hand, pushing herself from the tiles, reaching for the doorknob, my dirty underwear tucked under her armpit. And how I would raise myself onto my knees, my torso leaning out over the tub, my hand following her, straining, extending, dripping, the fingers wrapping around her left ankle and holding tight.

Diane’s mouth made the smallest sound I had ever heard. There was water on the floor. I felt her ankle churn in my fist. I looked at the hairs on the back of my arm, which were so beautiful, so silky and dark. Was Diane crying? No. No one here was crying. I had already let go. The door had already clicked shut.

I closed my eyes and sank back into the tub, loosening my jaw and parting my lips, letting the bathwater slide into my mouth. I heard a faint series of rustles and thumps from the kitchen, the opening and closing of drawers and cabinets, things banging into other things, things being moved, footsteps padding from room to room, things being thrown onto the floor, things being retrieved, unzipped, re-zipped. I made a mental inventory of all the objects around the apartment: my laptop, my wallet, my phone. It wasn’t true that trust was the foundation of love. Love had no foundation. It soared above me, untethered, an awful blimp. I heard paper rubbing against itself, Diane’s human exhale, Diane’s human voice saying shit, Diane’s human laugh, the front door opening, the front door closing. I could feel my pores widening, the dirt of my life washing out of me, rising with the steam and filtering through the ceiling vent. I reached above me for a bar of soap but it slipped from my wet hand. I watched it sink to the bottom of the tub before dipping my arm down to pick it up. I started to wash myself. The soap slid out of my hand once more.

Oh well, I thought.

I plunged my hand back into the water. I groped around.

I can’t find it, I thought. It’s gone.

But then I found it. I lifted it out of the water. I held on tight. I didn’t drop it again.

 

Image © Michael Cordebba