Bed

Love is the Indifferent God of the Religion in which Universe is Church

Sean had been spending his nights leisurely, with much intuition and very little actual engagement with the real world — the real world outside that was really happening. He was twenty-one. He lived with his older brother, Chris, in Manhattan, and dreamt mostly of love. These were terrible, cloying dreams. They involved prolonged moments of passion, vague and painted colors, and people sitting around in a sort of curtained and euphoric gloom, which was what love, in Sean’s dreams, seemed to be. He slept in the daytime, on the sofa, and would wake, sometimes, with such an awful, spongy feeling of love — the soggy cake of it pressed against his heart like another heart — that he would then move through the apartment, the one long room of it, like a hallway gone wrong, in an unenlightened sort of searching (where was the beloved?), not touching anything, but just moving, between things (piles of clothes, the TV, the low white raft of his brother’s bed), feeling husked and ancient and — sitting, then, back on the sofa — thankless, as what was there, in this cheap and witless world, to be thankful for? Not much, Sean knew. He didn’t like the world, and the world had perhaps grown weary of him.

The world was weary of him!

Though probably it was not even love that Sean dreamed of, but some sleight of love, some trick of crush or inwardly thwarted desire, like a chemical seed; or else some boldly fraudulent expectation — an expectation that leads a fantasy out into the real world, gets it an apartment and, illegally, a job — as Sean had probably never been in love. He’d once told a girlfriend that he loved her, but had then felt suddenly vanquished, as if in swift and arrow-y battle, on some nighttime field; as if the world, in that moment, had thought of him, and mastered him; memorized and set him aside, like a learned thing. The world was maybe finished with Sean. And yet — he remained. Alive, doing things (eating, writing a novel, moving to Manhattan), as there was still, and always, the feeling — the suspicion — that the world knew him, and loved him, that the world was trying hard to convey this, was forming itself a language, progressing gradually, thoughtwardly, and slowly, along. Which was, perhaps, the sensation of being alive — the reason why Sean existed, kept going — the waiting of that, the faith in it, that there was a big thing of love out there, a mansion of it, and that the world, however incompetent, was trying every day to get Sean there, was thinking of where he should go, and how.

Sean woke up to Annie talking. “I’ve been having the suicide-note dream,” Annie was saying. “I struggle with sentence structure, voice — is this me? is this my true voice? — I line edit, move the adverb around. I die finally of natural causes, which I deserve.” Annie was sitting on the bed, facing Sean, who lay on the sofa, under blankets. Chris lay beside Annie, on his back. He had the New Yorker, which he held above him in an excruciating way.

“Oh,” Annie said. “And sometimes I feel like my life’s out there, in outer space — a spacecraft or moon — and any moment it’s going to move down and smush me, all slow-motion-like.” Annie kept very still for a few seconds. She’s become jaded with herself, Sean thought tolerantly. “God,” she said, “my head aches. It aches with both a love and a longing for the present, changing moment. I can feel it changing.” She slapped a hand down behind her; it hit Chris’s thigh. Annie was Chris’s girlfriend.

“Massage me,” Chris said. He tossed the New Yorker onto a pile of clothes on the floor. He rolled onto his side, toward the window, which overlooked 29th street. There were faraway siren sounds, the rush and voice of city noise, much like a beach shore — a beach shore, though, with cabs instead of waves, buildings instead of gulls. It was late evening, and summertime.

Annie was chopping at Chris’s side. “Okay,” Chris said. “Stop.”

Sean closed his eyes to go back to sleep. He had been dreaming before, something watery and baffling. I want to learn, Sean thought. Swimming, he thought. Time swished and pocked inside of him, like a bowl of water with a fish in it that was also him. He wondered tentatively if he was asleep. He felt something on his legs. Annie had come over and sat on him. “I’ve got a sister,” she said. “Want to meet her?”

Something inside of Sean’s body, something small and squishy, shifted a little — a lymph node, perhaps.

“She’s Maryanne,” Annie said.

“Maryanne,” Sean said. He felt the long bones of Annie’s legs piling against his own.

“Annie,” Chris said. He lay wrapped in his blanket on the floor, which was wood. Annie went to him. “Let’s go to my place,” she said. “To have incredible sex.” Chris unwrapped himself and stood. “There’s no such thing as incredible sex,” he said. Annie beamed at him. She laughed. They went to Annie’s place. Sean fell asleep. When he woke, he drank orange juice. He sat on the sofa in the dark. He was thinking about showering — the hard-tiled attack of it, the soap always slipping away like an unrequited, mocking love. The water would be never-ending. Unstoppable. To take a shower, it seemed a risky, harrowing thing. To build a fire, Sean thought. To build an enormous bonfire. Sean stood up. He lay on his brother’s bed. Love, he thought. Maryanne, he was thinking. He felt wild and agitated. He didn’t like this feeling — it was something of the past, twisting forward and back in knots — as he had recently, and for some time now, been a calmer person, someone with an unsentimental acceptance of things, a discerning and philosophic nature, no teenage angst, no vague desperation; because waking at night, Sean knew, was a changing thing. Each time, you craved less, you forgot a little of the shiny-loud world, the exploding appliance of faces in daytime — the dancing, thrashing equipment of things in the sun. You woke at night and something serene and foliaged gathered behind your eyes — a pale cache of forest — and, waking up, moving out from your mind, a part of you stayed there. In that dimmed place, some fragile, once-hurt part of you said, “What’s this. This is nice. Okay then. Stay here then.”

A few days later Chris came home early in the evening with Chinese food and woke up Sean, who had been dreaming of Maryanne.

“Broccoli and fried tofu,” Chris said. “Extra mayonnaise and lettuce. I know you like that.”

Sean went for the Chinese food. In his dream, he had been outside of himself. He was everything there was except for himself. He was all the pure and unpeopled love of the world. He was God, perhaps. He was also an eye. He saw himself and who he understood to be Maryanne, far below, lounging on a gaseous, Neptunish sort of field, lain rosy as shawls — shadowy and shifting as the insides of a thing.

“Let’s rent a movie tonight,” Chris said. “Mutant turtles. Your favorite. Splinter’s Big Revenge.”

Sean was eating the Chinese food. He was back in his dream, drifting through the outer-planet-y world of it, everything soft and purple and destroyed; unpulsing and beautiful as the bland, sweet skin of an eggplant. Was this love? Sean wondered. He put tofu in his mouth.

“I rented this already,” Chris said. “No turtles for you.” He was looking and grinning at Sean, who was staring down at the Chinese food. Chris tossed the movie on the sofa. Sean stared at the food, then moved — quite gracefully, he thought while doing it — to the movie and sat down beside it. “Can you put it in and rewind it?” Chris said. His voice could go high-pitched sometimes, a little beseeching, like a shy person’s in a moment of extroversion, and it did now. “Sean, fast forward the previews?” Sean put his food down, picked up the movie. He remembered a noisy something from childhood, something brotherly and laughing, and felt the tiniest of sadnesses — the sadness of an ant, a mite, and a mosquito — stamping lightly against his heart, like a little rain.

There was a full-length mirror against the TV, and Chris, as he was moving it, now, dropped it. Sean saw on the floor a patch of glass, dark and unsparkling as leaves. Chris did not move for a few seconds; his eyes, Sean saw, were unfocused; his mouth unmoving and wet, imbedded in his head like a flat and creamy stone.

“It’s just a mirror,” Sean said.

Chris got a broom and swept the glass into a pile of clothes. He carried the broken mirror to his bed, then to the front door. “Don’t worry so much,” Sean said. “It’s a mirror.” Though he often caught himself assuming — wishing, probably — that everyone was the same, Sean knew that he and his brother (and everyone else) were hopelessly, and mysteriously, he felt, different. Chris set the mirror against the TV, back in its original place. The top half of it was intact, in a blade, like a guillotine. Sean felt anxious.

Chris went to his bed and lay on it, facing the window.

“Do you want to watch the movie?” Sean said.

Chris made a noise and sustained it. The noise got louder, then stopped.

Sean put the movie in. My brother deserves to be happy, he thought. What can happen in this world? he wondered nauseously. Can anything ever really happen? He looked at the sofa. He lay on it. The movie was not rewound. Sean watched the end credits and fell asleep.

“Next time I’ll bring Maryanne here,” Annie said to Sean. “What do you think?”

“Okay,” Sean said. He lay under blankets on the sofa. Chris was in the shower; had been singing loudly, but had then stopped.

Annie was jumping, now, on the bed. “Sometimes I think I’m all these different people at once,” she said while jumping. “Like five people. And they all want to use this same brain. And this brain’s tired. This brain says, ‘Four of you need to go,’ and sometimes I start myself to go, because why should I get priority over these other four people?” Annie sat and smiled at Sean.

Sean tried to focus on his own life. “Have you seen Annie Hall?” he said. He had wanted to say something about his own life.

“No. But one time I dreamed I was Woody Allen,” she said. “No one liked me anymore. People chased me in a hotel. Then I jumped out a window. I survived the fall, but there was a nail in my stomach. I walked a little and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll go make a movie now.’ ” Annie yawned very slowly and quietly. Her mouth opened wide. Sean looked at her teeth, the private collection of them, packed tightly inside of her small, elegant head, like a secret behind the face, a white and shocking hobby. It made Sean nervous. He felt perilous, then fleeting, and then a little excited.

“Woody Allen’s Annie Hall,” Annie said. “That’s so sad. I mean, I don’t know. Is it sad?”

Sean didn’t remember what that movie was about. He remembered something about tennis, the hardness and slowness of tennis, the incapacitation of it, unmasterable as a bad dream, how the tennis ball would always soar from the racket — like a surface-to-air missile — over fences and walls. “Woody Hall,” Sean said.

Annie laughed. “Annie Flame,” she said. “That should be my pen name. I’ve written a novel.” She stared at Sean. “Annie Flame would be my pen name and in interviews I’d take from a duffel bag a metal spike, one of those railroad ones. I’d say I was thinking of getting my forehead pierced. I’d hold the spike to my forehead, to demonstrate. I’d quote myself constantly. Myself and one other person. Einstein. That would be my career plan. In real life, I’d have this other persona — of sanity and love. It makes me sad, talking like this. I should stop.”

Sean smiled pleasantly, quite naturally, which surprised and pleased him. “What’s your novel called?”

“It’s, ‘Ten Digital Photographs of Eleven Tiny, Tortured Souls.’ ” Annie looked at Sean. “That’s not what it’s called,” she said.

Chris came out of the bathroom in an audible thrust of steam, like an occult appearance — fully dressed. His face was wet. “Annie,” he said. “I feel bad again today.” Annie went to him and hugged him and they went out somewhere.

Sean moved from the sofa to the bed. I maneuvered deviously from the sofa to the bed, he thought. He was just a child, he knew. A little boy. He had written a novel, though. He, too, had written a novel. There were clams in the novel. A pile of them, on some lost and lightless seafloor; trembling, making whizzing noises, like straws, and then shooting apart, finally — exploding — from the force of bemusement and lovelessness. The clams were symbolic somehow; they had to have been. Or had they? It was a desperate, unfun novel — very strange, told with an incomprehensible sort of irony. It had real people also, not just clams. Sean had spent a year on it — a year, he now realized, that he remembered nothing about. Try harder to remember your own life from now on, Sean thought, and then fell into a dreamless sleep. When he woke, he went immediately and took a shower. He walked out into the night, thinking languageless thoughts. He felt new and released — newly released, like some rare and squinting animal; a flying wombat or African wild ass. His eyes felt complex and weightless inside his head. He ran suddenly across a street. At night, he knew, there could be the belief that something never before felt might be felt, something new. You could allow yourself quite easily this view of the world — this thrilling, midnightly faith — of there being something out there that loved you, that, at night, worshipped and searched for you, like a past life seeking its next, wanting desperately the continuation of itself. And though it would probably never find you, it would also, you believed at night, never give up, and this was enough — that something was out there and desperate and on its way. This was less in the city, though. In the city, it was mostly just too loud. There were too many buses. Sean went to a sushi place on St. Marks. He had miso soup, and ice water. Maryanne, he thought. Who is Maryanne? He looked across the restaurant at his waitress — a dark and neighborly thing, sort of ominous — and thought, I am in love with that person; then went home and dreamt the discolored dream of being in love with someone who did not exist. He woke and did not stop himself (Maryanne, he thought, Maryanne, Maryanne) as there was a worldless sort of desire — a faithless, gaping, windstorm-y thing — that could swell in you as you had to end one day and move into the next; and to relieve this, the indestructible hole of it, you made severe and alarming promises of nothing and everything; you built elaborate thoughts, like houses — mansions, other worlds — and you moved, wrenchingly, stupidly, in; not knowing, feeling, or believing anything, except that you had arrived, made it to some sort of love, some vaporization of love, like a cream of water, perhaps, but a love nonetheless, in this vast and lacerated place inside your head, inside your thoughts, and so could, finally, then, sleep.

In the apartment Sean had music on very loud. This was despairing guitar music from the mid 90’s. Chris had gone somewhere with Annie for the week. It was 3 a.m., and Sean was cleaning — going around with a trash bag, stuffing things in; humming harmonies and sometimes singing.

In the morning, Sean went for Chinese takeout. Back home, he put on despairing acoustic music. He ate, poured juice. The music was very good. Sean stopped for a moment and held himself very still. This is good, he thought. I’m being serious, he thought. “I am extremely happy,” he said aloud. He put his food down. He jumped on his brother’s bed. He lay down. He wanted to laugh or something. Love, he thought. He got up, turned off the music. He watched TV. He went to sleep.

It was dark out when Sean woke. He put on music, washed the dishes. He wiped the TV and the desk with wet paper towels, and the floor. He showered with the door open, the music loud. He went out for coffee. He stopped at a bookstore and got a job application. Outside, crossing Fifth Avenue, he looked up at the buildings and felt a kind of rapture, something of apology and thanks and intelligence — though maybe just a thing of coffee and wakefulness — forming, like a good idea (the world thinking hard, finally), here, in the little wind, the slightly infrared space between the buildings, the wet, shucked gemstars of the traffic lights, and all the glassy windows above, bright and comprehending as eyes, watchful as a world that wanted, truly, to know — and to love — all its lost and bewildered people.

Sean woke on his brother’s bed. “Sean,” Annie said. She and Chris were back. “Come with us to see a blockbuster Hollywood movie.” Her hair was dyed an inconsistent green, like a fern plant.

“Maryanne wants to meet you for a blind date,” Annie said in the movie theatre. She sat between Sean and Chris, leaned against Chris and looking at Sean. “Maryanne. Isn’t that a pretty name?”

“Maryanne, who is Maryanne,” Chris said.

“I like that name,” Sean said. He was thinking of a dream he had, a few days ago, in which love was a skeleton that hovered through the night; just one skeleton for all the world — a logistical mistake, Sean understood in his dream — gliding toe-swept over oceans, under bridges, through walls; the bones and ghost of it entering and leaving bedrooms at night, like a wantless thief; a clean, dead thing with the temperament of a cloud. The dream had gone on and on and was soothing in a chalky, religious way, like a sourceless and messageless yet somehow affecting prayer. Now, though, the whole thing seemed just irritating. The skeleton, Sean now felt, was not love, but some failed manifestation of love — high-flying and loud, jangling its bones, chomping its jaws in a false and godless laughter.

“Maryanne was dropped on her head as a small girl,” Annie was saying. “But instead of making her brain-damaged, it made her think beautifully and oddly. She was knocked sideways on the IQ scale, not downwards.”

“How come?” Sean said. He had spent the rest of last week renting low-budget, existential films, drinking beer and coffee, gazing somehow nostalgically from across the room at the bookstore job application — kind of depressed.

“How old is your sister?” Chris said.

Annie sat up very straight. “My sister,” she said. “She isn’t restrained by time or space. She’s not like that. I don’t know. She’s not a robot. This isn’t science fiction masterpiece theatre.” Annie paused. “I could say she’s ten or twenty but that wouldn’t be true. She’s just there. She’s not even a sister, really.” Annie laughed. She stood up. “Hey, wow,” she said. “There’s Maryanne.” She pointed at a girl sitting alone in the front row. “Sean, go sit by her. She’s lonely. Maybe a little hopeless, sitting in the front row. But look at her hair. She’s fixed it up, shampooed it.”

“I don’t know Maryanne,” Sean said.

“Where’s Maryanne?” Chris said without moving. “Thanks, Sean. For cleaning the apartment.”

“Maryanne,” Annie shouted. Some people, not the girl, turned around. “Go before the movie starts. Just point up here for confirmation, I’ll be waving.”

“No,” Sean said. Annie pulled him up. Sean looked around. The world seemed strange, but then it wasn’t strange anymore, it was just the world. “Okay,” he said. “But come with me.” He would go, he thought. He would get himself inescapably in love, like a good trouble; love would stare blankly at him, he would not flinch, and love, then, would murder him, drag him to a gray, underground place, freeze his corpse, and, over time, eat him. Annie pushed Sean into the aisle. She sat back down. Sean felt tall and dizzy. He went carefully down the steps. At the front row, he smiled at the girl, said something, and pointed back up at Annie, who was standing and waving. The girl stood up. Her face was startled and afraid. She was middle-aged. She touched her hair and sat down. Sean was looking, now, at the floor, and it seemed to Annie like he had fallen asleep, standing there. The lights went off.

Sean came back up and sat down. There was a small pounding at the back of his head, a tapping against the inside-back of his skull — the brain bored with itself; wanting out, perhaps, drilling slowly, wearily, at the bone.

“Don’t worry, Sean,” Annie whispered. She looked at him. She patted his thigh.

“Good one,” Sean whispered to her. It really was good, he thought.

Later, during the movie, Annie whispered in Sean’s ear, “That’s what you have to do. Pretend you know these people. Pretend they love you. They can love you. Think about it.” The movie was about James Bond, who had a speedboat that could, if the situation called for it, which it did — twice — fit in the palm of his hand. He was a very busy man, too busy for love — except for a terse, witty, hyper-sexy sort of love.

After the movie, they went for sushi. “Still believe I have a sister named Maryanne?” Annie said. “Think I’m making that up?”

“Maybe,” Sean said.

“I do,” Annie said. “She has the cataractous gaze of a child prodigy entering into a scorched land. One time she tossed an ice cream cone underhand into a third-floor window. The cold thing went without a sound into that hard, brick building. It was like a little epiphany of the physical world.”

“I like that,” Sean said.

“Annie. Listen to yourself,” Chris said. He stood up. “What are you doing right now?” He adjusted his pants and sat down. He had a look on his face, Sean saw, like he might scream in such a horrifyingly quiet, mutated, and frequencyless way that the rules of the universe would then have to be changed.

“You’re in a bad mood,” Annie said. She hugged Chris. She looked at him. “I love you,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Chris said uncertainly. He looked away, loudly said, “I’m joking,” then looked back and began to talk about whether or not it was a crime against humanity to buy coffee from Starbucks. It was a public company, so was driven by profit, would create a greater divide between the rich and the poor. But people were maybe better able to fall in love inside of Starbucks, with those plush sofas. But were people supposed to love other people, themselves, the entire world, or love itself? Chris looked around. He said that he hadn’t been thinking about any of this until now; he’d been thinking about chess — how bizarre and depressing it was — and then was somehow all of a sudden talking about Starbucks. He said he felt a lot better now — maybe. He wasn’t sure. He spread his fingers on his head and began to massage it. Annie peeled Chris’s hands off, replaced those hands with her own, quoted Einstein (“Only a life lived for others is worthwhile”) and then said something about learning to love, how it was a kind of memorization, a set of facts to place in your mind, a kind of future memory — a framework — to move into. Sean was trying to listen, to figure that out, when he got up — unconsciously, he thought while doing it — to use the bathroom. He washed his hands. Maryanne, he thought. He made a smile at the mirror above the sink. He made an angry face, a neutral face. He moved his head very close to the glass — the tricky, world-in-world depth of it, like a wise and airy ice. He could fall in, he knew, into the higher intelligence of the mirror, the keen and confident indifference of it, how it continuously took you in and doubted you and reflected your doubted self back into the world. Sean stared at his face. Where did he come from? What must one believe in? Where did love come from? He felt that these were three very legitimate questions.

In the morning Annie came over with a little girl. Sean hadn’t slept yet and was about to. Chris was watching TV. “Is your crab-cake recipe better than love?” the TV was saying. “Better than, um, sex?”

“Hi, small girl,” Chris said.

“This is Maryanne,” Annie said. The girl looked about five or six. She held onto a corner of Annie’s dress, which was layered red and white — she had on two dresses.

“Who’s Maryanne?” the little girl whispered. Her hand was very tiny.

“You’re Michelle,” Annie said to the little girl. “Most of what I said was not true,” Annie said to Chris and Sean. “Of course the truth is like a box of 56 crayons.” She paused. “Goddamn,” she said in a kind tone. “It’s okay to say goddamn around Michelle.”

The little girl wandered over to Sean.

“Hi, Maryanne,” Sean said.

“Michelle,” said the little girl.

“I forgot,” Sean said.

“Hi,” Michelle whispered. She moved very close to Sean. “Do you have a pet?”

Sean scooted away from Michelle then back to where he just was. He shook his head. Something was scrolling across the cramped sky of his mind, a white and messageless banner, folding across itself.

Michelle took something out of her pocket. A lima bean. She held it close to her chest and petted it while looking at Sean. Her eyes seemed flawless in a cut and auctionable way — a bit outlandish, Sean thought critically. He stared at her.

“That’s her pet bean,” Annie said. “She says it’s a dog. Michelle, share what’s its name.”

Michelle put the bean in her pocket and stepped back, away from Annie. “Let me do it myself,” Michelle said. Her face turned red. She held Sean’s hand and glared at Annie.

Sean looked at Chris, who was staring at the TV, which became very loud suddenly—“For the last twenty years I loved someone who loved someone else, who was not a thing of the human species, but a major S&P 500 corporation. So I just collapsed and fell on the bed. The bed was not a waterbed. It was park bench.”

Sean made an effort to wish the world well, but then accidentally gave it — he felt this with clarity — a damning curse. He thought of maybe lying down. He was very sleepy. The little girl is holding my hand, he thought. He lost track of things for a moment, and then time seemed to pass blunderingly, suddenly, by, in a flapping bunch, like an unclogged flock of something. Sean was taken aback. Time had certain obligations, he knew.

“I’m hungry,” Chris said. He stood up. “I want the salad. The Japanese place. St. Marks.” They left for the restaurant, the same one as the night before. After eating, they stood outside. They looked at the sky. It was cloudy and a little pink. There was nothing to say about it. Annie bought ice cream. Sean wandered into a deli and came out with a coffee whose largeness seemed highly creative.

On Fifth Avenue, Annie ran ahead. She bent at her knees and jumped a little. Her ice cream cone floated up into the air, brushed against a closed second-floor window, fell on the sidewalk. Annie’s mouth moved in something like a laugh — Chris, Sean, and Michelle saw — and she ran into a store and came back out when everyone else had caught up.

“What is wrong with you,” Chris said. His voice was neutral and disconnected, more sound than language. Sean mimicked his brother aloud—“What is wrong with you”—and laughed. Chris looked at him.

“What is wrong with you,” Chris said again.

Sean laughed again.

“I’m helping you,” Annie was saying to Chris. “Doing strange things will help you. Didn’t you like that?” She hugged Chris. She looked at him.

“Sorry,” Chris said.

“You seem happy,” she said.

“No,” Chris said. “I mean — maybe.” He pointed weakly at something across the street. Sean thought of clams and laughed. Chris looked at him.

Back at the apartment, Michelle had been in the bathroom for a long time. Sean — on the sofa — finished his coffee, put the cup on the table, and felt a vague desire for the cup. I’m a red cup, said the cup. Sean picked it up, set it back. The cup was huge. Sean grinned. Annie and Chris were on the bed. “We’re sitting here waiting for Michelle,” Annie said. “We’re not doing nothing, we’re doing something.” They could hear Michelle in the bathroom, talking in hushed, secretive tones.

“What’s my job?” Chris said slowly. “I forgot how I make money. Oh. Never mind.”

Michelle came out and whispered something in Annie’s ear. Annie went to Chris’s desk and swept all the stuff there — all the useless crap, Sean thought instantaneously — to one side.

Michelle took her bean out of her pocket, and then a little bed, which was toilet paper inside of a sushi soy-sauce holder. She stole that from the Japanese restaurant, Sean thought enthusiastically. Michelle put the bed on the table, the bean on the bed. She covered exactly half the bean with toilet paper.

They were all watching her do this. “Stop it,” Michelle said. She moved her body so that it blocked what she was doing.

Chris turned on the TV — a dating show.

“The bean — the dog is treated so well,” Annie said. “That’s no good. Without pain, pleasure is an unsatisfying, irritating thing. With pain … it’s an urgent, leaving thing. Is that too pessimistic? Michelle?”

Michelle ignored Annie in a way that was visible on her face. She crawled to the middle of the bed and curled atop a blanket, which Sean had earlier folded very neatly into a square. On the sofa, Sean felt that his posture was very straight. “I feel good,” he said aloud. He felt very awake.

Annie picked up Michelle by picking up the blanket she lay on. Michelle’s face turned red and she scrunched her eyes very tight. Annie set Michelle and the blanket on a corner of the bed and then lay down. “Christopher,” she said. Chris turned off the TV. They went to sleep. It had gotten dark outside. Sean stood at a distance and looked at Chris, Annie, and Michelle. They all lay very still. They seemed to be pretending somehow. We’re not a part of your reality, they said. Look at how good I am, said the bed. Useful. Yeah, Sean thought. He looked at them for a very long time and went into an exquisite sort of daze. He felt enlightened and spearminty as gum. He went outside, walked around, bought coffee, came back, sat on the sofa. He felt like he’d hopped out and instantly hopped back in, with coffee. He watched TV on mute. He drank coffee. The TV was showing a movie and Sean found it extremely amusing and impressive. The second the movie ended, Chris woke up and said in an annoyed tone of voice that he wanted to go to the same Japanese place again. It was after midnight. Michelle took the bean out of its bed and went into the bathroom. “Be careful,” she said from inside. Her voice was sleepy and loud. “Please. Good. I love you. That’s love.” Michelle came out. She stood by the door, and began to blush.

“The bean uses the bathroom,” Annie said.

“No, stop, you don’t even know,” Michelle screamed. She faced away from Annie. She went back in the bathroom, came out, punched Annie’s thigh. They all left for the restaurant.

By Union Square, a strange man asked Annie to take his picture.

The man was strange, Sean knew, because he had on a shirt that said, “Love, Italian Style.”

Annie took the man’s camera and gave it to Michelle. The man looked worried. “Hold it,” he said. He had another camera in hand, a larger one. “Thanks so much,” he said, and moved forward, grinning. Michelle snapped a picture with flash. There was a second man, now, who was squinting at Sean from a very close distance. Sean noticed that he was staring straight through this man.

“Let her,” Annie told the man. But he had taken back the camera and entered a store. He and the second man stood inside, behind glass. One of them was pointing at Michelle. There seemed to be four of them now — four men, each one strange in his own unique way. Sean did not understand. He laughed suddenly. The novel had clams, he thought. He laughed again.

“Do you want a camera for Christmas?” Annie asked Michelle. “Photographers are well-respected and artfully political. Artfully political,” she said carefully.

“I want a horse-drawn carriage for Christmas,” Chris said. “To run myself over with. Just kidding.”

“I want us all to live together in a house somewhere, not doing anything.” Annie said. She looked at Michelle. “A ginger-bread house. What do you want Sean?”

I want to be in love and out of this place, Sean thought immediately, and then felt the nausea of that thought, the massive, animal flu of it. He didn’t want anything, ever, he thought extravagantly. Actually, he knew exactly what he wanted. He had thought about this before — last week when he was kind of depressed. He wanted to enter into himself, sit inside his own body, and look out from there, to see what he would do. He wanted to continue doing things, but wanted just to watch that happening, and not actually do anything. “I want—” Sean said.

“He took my picture!” Michelle screamed. She began to climb Sean, who watched her noncommittally, then picked her up, cradling her legs and upper back.

“Michelle’s the smartest in her class,” Annie said. “Her teachers are all useless. All teachers are all useless. Where’s Chris?”

Chris was walking toward the restaurant. Annie ran to him. Sean, carrying Michelle, stared at Annie running, then began to jog in her direction.

“You’re bumpy,” Michelle said. Sean looked down and saw that Michelle’s eyes were wide-open and calm, which made him feel happy. “You’re not good at being smooth,” Michelle said. Chris was ahead, going very fast, and Sean began to run, to keep up. He concentrated on rolling his feet, letting the heel land first. He felt that he might fall and dent his forehead; or else very quickly descend into the concrete, like stairs.

At the restaurant they sat at the sushi bar. They sat Chris, Sean, Michelle, Annie. Chris ordered three house salads, which were rushed out immediately in a sort of prolonged tic on the part of the waitress. “Sorry,” said the waitress. She smiled directly at Sean. How many times had Sean been here in this one very long day? He counted in his head. One, two, three. Sean smiled back at the waitress. Little did she know, Sean thought, the life he lived — it was less a life than a museum and a church of life. A repository of things clubbed-on-the-head, stuffed, put on display, worshipped from behind glass. This was a place impossible for romance, a place where tea was brewed, earnestly, from paint chips, glass shards, and small change. In this world, Sean knew, one could put faith in a toe bone, a blood bone, a cartilage of eye — all the unloved contributors of one’s own body-world. Though, what was a blood bone? Were there, perhaps, bones in the blood? Tiny ones that swam? Skeletons of some lost and wayless plasma-people? What about clams? None of this, Sean thought very carefully and slowly, was true, of course. He made an effort to concentrate on the real world — the actual place outside where real things happened every day, supposedly.

Annie was hugging Chris and asking about his salads and Chris was unresponsive.

Then Annie was back in her seat saying to Michelle, “Your eyebrows are going to grow muscles if you keep looking that way. Do you want big eyebrow muscles on your face? It’s okay if you do. You can do anything you want.” Annie took something from her pocket and put it in her mouth. She did that twice. “You’re a very privileged young girl,” she said. “Would you like horse-riding lessons? Would you like to eat exuberant salads, with variegated wild nuts? That can be arranged.” Annie was looking at her hands, which were clasped in front of her. “Your life is ahead of you and it’s crazy. A jumping, darting thing. A winged-frog thing, being dart-gunned. Do you want to be a quiet girl or a loud girl? Happily sad or sadly happy? Who will you love? For what reasons? Would you like piano lessons or violin?” Annie turned slowly, at the neck, toward Michelle. “It’s not too late to be a concert pianist. It’s not too late to believe in a loving God.”

“Stop,” Michelle whispered. “Stop doing that,” she shouted.

“You didn’t mean to whisper,” Annie said. “So cute.”

Michelle pushed Annie, who leaned into the push, canceling it.

“Just, stop, please,” Chris murmured. “Bad …”

“I don’t love you,” Michelle said to Annie.

Sean had been thinking about one time, a long time ago in Florida, when Chris had chased him down and tied his arms behind his back with a belt, his legs together with shoelaces, and then sprayed him with the water hose. Sean couldn’t stop laughing, even while being sprayed in the face; it was in the front yard, on the grass, and Sean had later pulled the hose, taut, into the living room and sprayed his brother, Chris, who had been eating a plate of microwaved nuggets. Actually, Sean hadn’t done that, but he was imagining it now — skylight, sliding glass door, chicken nuggets — without taking into consideration if it had really happened.

He was imagining this and smiling and staring at Annie, and then Annie was smiling back at him and they smiled at each other for a very long time, nothing else happening in the world.

Then Sean was yawning and blinking a very slow blink. He noticed that he was staring at something not Annie. His eyes weren’t focusing. Focus, Sean told his eyes. He exerted willpower at his eyes. There was a fork. I’m used for eating, said the fork. Throw it, Sean thought. He wanted to have fun. He touched his mouth and felt that he was still smiling. Good, he thought. He yawned and put some of his fingers in the hole of his mouth. He wouldn’t ever sleep again, he thought promisingly, never again. Clams, he thought. He saw that Chris was pointing his finger, ordering appetizers off the menu. All of them, Sean thought, give him all the appetizers. The waitress had her notepad. Sean couldn’t decipher her face. He felt that he knew her intimately. She had a pen and a notepad and then she was leaving. “Beer,” Chris shouted. “Saki.”

“Oh, wow,” Annie said. “Maryanne has the same consonant-vowel configuration as Michelle. I guess that isn’t very interesting.” Michelle stood and began to attack Annie. She kicked Annie. She hit Annie with a spoon. Annie had a worried look on her face. “Oh, Michelle,” she said. “Hit me, please. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. How do I help us? You and Chris. You and Sean and Chris.”

Sean looked at his brother, who seemed to be weeping, very quietly and strangely, his face down, almost touching his salad bowls. Sean wanted to spray him with the hose. He wanted badly to do that ten years ago. I’ll do it, Sean thought. The logic of this blanked his mind. Then Michelle was holding his hand, leading him someplace, and now they stood outside the restaurant, looking in through glass.

Annie was hugging Chris at the sushi bar. She turned and looked for Michelle and Sean and saw them standing outside, holding hands. The precocious child, her daughter — how she loved her little Michelle — was staring right at her, fiercely but sleepily; her eyes a bit unfocused. Sean, the young boy, was yawning. He had the admonished, ever-surrendering face — the wet eyes — of someone who would only ever love from a distance, in secret, a kind of nauseous, searching half-love, a love dizzied by its own halfness, made faithful by its own dizziness. He was yawning again. He hadn’t slept, Annie knew.

Michelle led Sean inside. She walked slowly around, holding Sean’s hand. Sean gazed at people with a keen and intensifying indifference. He experienced a distinct moment of nonexistence, and then became aware that he was staring at teriyaki. Who are you? Sean thought. The meat rolled over. It was chicken. It had a sad, slick sauce on it — a savvy dressing that it maybe, Sean thought cautiously, did not want. But it needed that sauce. It wanted to be eaten. Michelle was asking a stranger where the bathroom was. Then Sean opened the bathroom door and Michelle pushed him inside. She went inside. The bathroom was small and dark and Sean turned on the light. “No,” Michelle said. Sean turned off the light. He stared into the darkness. Love, he thought. He was yawning. People outside were laughing. The sound was distorted. “I left my salmon at your house,” someone said excitedly. Cold air was moving down from above and Michelle was talking loudly. “She threw sand at my pet dog. It was Bean. She says things on purpose because she’s an annoying mommy …” I do not know what she is talking about, Sean thought very slowly. Michelle was crying softly, then very loudly. Sean felt that he was somewhere else, a place where he was yet somewhere else. Thanks, Sean thought. Thank you, world. Something inside of him was grabbing at air. Something else was on its way, was moving, steady and brainward, like an inchoate thought, something forming and loving and true — but it was a tiny thing, a distant and tired thing, and it was slowing, giving up, maybe turning around. Michelle was crying and saying, “I don’t even love any real person …” and someone was knocking at the door, from below. It was Chris. “Sean,” he said. “Maryanne.” He kicked the door again, then had the sudden and engrossing thought that tomorrow, and every day after, he might wake up feeling exactly the same as he did right now, which made his body shake a little. No one noticed that, though. No one was looking at Chris. Everyone was looking at the green-haired, red-and-white dressed girl, who was standing next to Chris, and who was saying, “People are staring, Michelle, Sean, right at me, as I’m saying these words they’re staring at my mouth and inside of my mouth and now their faces are changing — as I’m talking, Chris, their faces are changing and changing …” Her voice was loud, but trembling, as if she were going to cry.