Chapter 46a

“You’re right. You’re totally right.”

Kat stood up, repositioned her bra cups over her potentially-but-not-necessarily fake breasts, reached behind her back to latch it shut.  All business, like getting ready for work in the morning.  Slinked the dress back up to her shoulders, zipped it.  He wasn’t sure what he was right about, but he must have been pretty convincing.

“I always do that.” She kicked at one of the pointy shoes until it stood upright, stepped her foot into it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

“Do what?”  

“You know.  That. Try to fuck people.  Try to fuck people who I shouldn’t fuck.”

“Oh, okay.”  His voice wavered, hurt, even though there was no reason to be.  Something about being called a person I shouldn’t fuck, even by a woman you had just rejected, seemed depressing.  Plus the word fuck over and over like that was kind of jarring.

“No, I mean, I try to fuck them when that’s not what I actually wanted.”  She was in both shoes now, a half-foot taller than before.  “All I really wanted was find out more about you.”

Find out more about him? What was there to know? Gavin Cheng-Johnson, half Chinese and half Midwestern, from a boring strip-mall computer-town, sole occupant of a one-bedroom apartment in Fancy, Kansas. Thirty-two years old but starting to look middle-aged.  An expert in the dramatic works of Liam Stump.

 “What did you want to find out?” he asked.

“Well, it’s just that I get kind of fascinated with people sometimes, like intrigued, with people who are—” 

She paused, looked into the window like it was a mirror.  Combed her hair out with her fingers, tied it back up into a messier version of the twist from before. Puckered her lips, studied one side of her face and the other like women used to do in old movies.

“People who are living out their dream.  Fulfilling their destiny. I mean, I’m never going to do it, I’m resigned to that now, and I just really want to know: what’s it like?”  

Was she making fun of him?

She had turned from the window to look straight at him.  No hint of sarcasm. Eagerness, open interest. She actually wanted him to tell her about his dream life, the unimaginable fabulousness of being a professor in Kansas.  Maybe it would be nice to talk, to tell her everything: the loneliness, the daily routine sustaining him like a scaffold on a rotting house, the desperate treadmill scramble to finish, to get on to the next place. The horrifying suspicion that the next place wasn’t going to be any better.

But there was a shadow falling over her face. He felt pretty sure it was getting darker, that the sun was lowering in the sky. Even though the office didn’t get any outside light, something in his body felt like dusk.  Urgency came back on him, like if he didn’t leave now, he might get stuck in here forever.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I really need to go.”

“Right, you said that.” She smiled an apology, but kind of bitter.  “I’ve been keeping you.”

“No, it’s just.” What was it?  

“It’s too sad for you here.”  She turned to look at the office.  Everything in it was colorless and unloved.  “So fucking sad, you’d rather be back in Kansas.”

“I’m not going to Kansas.”

A strange thing to say, and it surprised him probably more than her. He was a reliable kind of guy, a good worker. Disciplined, his tenure report had called him.  But as soon as the words were out where he could hear them, he knew for certain: he was going to get in his car and drive somewhere, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Kansas. 

“Of course you’re not.” She was glib now, like reciting lines from a movie. Maybe she was. “You don’t even know where you’re going.  Anywhere but here, right?”

 “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, right.”

It was true, but it didn’t sound like an answer, just an awkward prelude to an even more awkward silence.

“Okay, well.” She checked her reflection one last time, pinched her cheeks and smoothed her hair.  “I guess I’ll head back upstairs then.”  

She opened the door, held it for him. Just like that, he was supposed to turn and walk out.  Forever.  Something about it seemed more momentous than the last time he had left New Buffalo, in a haze of packing and taping and lifting and cleaning and vacuuming and printing out multiple copies of his finalized dissertation to file at this office and that office and attending various nights of goodbye drinks.  He’d barely given it a thought then, but now he felt it in his stomach, hard: you will never return.

Part of him wanted a moment alone with the office.  But really it was better not to. He gave it one final look, quick, his eyes drawn mostly to the medieval lesbian article spread open on the front desk by the computer keyboard, mouthed the word goodbye. Then he walked past Kat into the hall, holding his breath so he could hear the door click shut behind them.

<Chapter 45a

Chapter 47a>