You

14

YOU haven’t been able to wipe the shit-eating grin off your face since you put your hand on mine to insist on paying for the IKEA ferry tickets. You look prissy in white jeans I’ve never seen before, jeans that tell me you’re not breaking a sweat today. You’re in flip-flops and your toenails sparkle and your hair is in a bun and you don’t have any hickeys, so there’s that. You are “thrilled” that I am “up for a jaunt” and you promise to make it fun and you better try your damnedest because the whole time you’re talking to me, I’m just seeing your mouth as an orifice for Benji’s cock and I’m thinking of the way you joked with your friends in your e-mail:

You: Joe is a go. Slave for a day. Score one for Beck!

Chana: LOL you know you have to blow him or give him a handy.

You: No no he’s not assembling, just going with.

Lynn: Do you think if you asked him he would install my AC unit?

Chana: Lynn, are you offering to blow Joe?

Lynn: You’re disgusting.

You: Nobody is blowing anybody. Trust me.

WE meet at the docks and kiss hello like platonic European friends or some shit. At least once we get on the boat and sit down we are close. You wrap your arm through mine. I can’t tell if you’re cold or hot and you smile.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to IKEA,” you say.

“And I can’t believe you have.”

“Oh, I love it there,” you say and you’re leaning into me more. “Wait until you see it, all these little staged rooms. You just walk from one living room to another living room and you can’t leave without going through the entire store. There’s something magical about it. Do I sound crazy?”

“No,” I say and you don’t. “I’m the same way about the bookshop. You know, I walk around and I feel like the whole world is in there, the most important stories of all time. And then downstairs, in the cage.”

“Excuse me. Did you say, the cage?”

“Rare books, Beck. Gotta keep ’em safe.”

“I guess I hear cage and I think animal.”

Benji’s probably awake by now and the air feels good out here. “Nah, it’s like a casino. They keep the money in a cage.”

“What is it about stores?”

“Huh.”

“You like selling stuff and I am full on addicted to buying stuff in the most stereotypically girly way. I love to shop. I mean I can be in the worst mood and I go to IKEA and come out of there with . . .” You pause and is this it? Red ladle red ladle red ladle. “I come out of there with a couple of place mats, and I feel renewed.”

Fuck. “That’s good, that’s a good way to feel.”

Maybe if I share an object with you, maybe then you’ll share the ladle with me. I take the AC remote out of my pocket and I remember fantasizing about this moment before I had you. You look at it and you don’t touch it and I tell you that you can touch it and you take it out of my hand. You smile. “This is high-tech.”

“It’s the most important thing I have. It controls the humidifiers and the AC units in the cage,” I say. “If I were to jack up the heat and let those books get moist, they’d be gone, forever. Gertrude Stein is dead and she’s not coming back to life to sign books.”

“I just got the chills,” you say and you smile. Ladle? “You would be a good writer, Joe.”

“How do you know that I’m not?” I say and you like it and I try again: “Your folks must be proud of you, getting your MFA.”

You’re entertained and you look out at the water and I follow your eyes and you’re still touching me and I wish I could kiss you to get Benji’s cock out of your mouth and you play with your hair instead of holding my hand.

“I don’t have folks,” you say. “I have my mom but she’s alone.”

I glance around at the other IKEA ferry riders. None of them are like us. They’re all talking about end tables and Swedish foods. We are special. We are falling in love.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.

“My dad died,” you say.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.

“I don’t know,” you say and your eyes are wet but it could be the wind and you know so many guys you could have asked, guys in class, guys online. You asked me. “I guess sometimes I cry for no reason. Death is just so final, you know? He’s gone. There’s no coming back. He’s gone.”

You wipe your eyes and I won’t let you laugh your way out of this one. “When did he pass?”

“Almost a year ago.”

“Beck.”

You look at me and I nod and you crumble in my arms, and it looks like we’re hugging, another young couple off to IKEA to get feathers for the nest and eat hyped-up meatballs, and nobody can hear you crying except for me. You try to wiggle away but I hold you, and your big Portman eyes are glossy and your cheeks are red and there’s an old couple across the way and the dude nods at me like I’m Captain America and we’re almost there and you’re wiping your eyes.

I want more. I try: “So, what was he like, your dad?”

You shrug and I wish there were a way for me to ask about a red ladle but it’s not a normal question and you sigh. “He loved to cook. That was one good thing.”

“I like to cook too,” I say and I will learn how to cook. Red ladle red ladle red ladle.

“Good to know,” you say and you cross your legs. “My shrink would say that I’m not respecting boundaries.”

“You see a shrink?”

“Dr. Nicky,” you say and I nod.

“Omigod, Joe. Why am I telling you this? What’s wrong with me?”

“Don’t you think that’s a question for Dr. Nicky?” I say. You smile. I am funny.

Now I understand the meaning of Angevine on Tuesdays at three marked in the calendar in your phone. Dr. Nicky Angevine. Bing! And I mean it when I tell you not to be embarrassed. “Seriously, Beck,” I say, all comforting. “I think shrinks are great.”

“Most guys don’t wanna know stuff,” you say. “Most guys would freak out at me right now. The crying and the shrinking and the shopping.”

“You know too many guys,” I say and you smile and you know you need me and you nod like you agree, like you’re agreeing to us, seeing the light, and the captain blows the horn. You kiss me.

IN the movie 500 Days of Summer, IKEA is the most romantic place on earth. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the girl start out in one kitchen and she’s sweet on him and pretending to feed him dinner and when the faucet doesn’t work—the joke being that all the appliances are props—Joseph jumps out of his chair and walks through a doorway into another kitchen and she is in awe of him and he says, “That’s why we bought a home with two kitchens.” I watched the clip right after you tweeted about going to IKEA and it’s not like I’m some moron who expects life to be like the movies, but it has to be said.

Life at IKEA is not like life at IKEA in the movies.

In real life, I am not Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I have to push a giant metal shopping cart, weaving through the masses while you point out sofas you don’t need, wall units you don’t have room for, and ovens that are made of cardboard. There are a million people crowding this gargantuan converted warehouse. It’s a dystopian nightmare come true where all furniture is cut from the same hunk of cheap-ass wood, where all rooms were furnished with items that came out of the exact same factory at the exact same time. It smells like body odor and Febreze and baby shit and farts and meatballs and nail polish and more baby shit—doesn’t anyone get a babysitter anymore?—and it is loud, Beck, and I miss half the things you say because I can’t hear you over the other humans. And all the while, I am consciously not thinking about where the red ladles might be in this hellacious sprawl of new shit.

In 500 Days of Summer, the chick challenges Joseph to a race from the kitchen to the bedroom and the camera follows them as they run through an aisle. The chick flies onto the mattress and Joseph comes next, at a slow crawl. He mounts her and she wants him, you can see it. He whispers, “Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s a Chinese family in our bedroom.”

In real life, there is also a Chinese family in IKEA with us, but they are nothing like the quiet family in the movie. There is a small boy who screams and a small girl who poops in a diaper and drools. It feels like they’re following us, Beck, and I’m going to lose it if they don’t stop fighting. They’re so fucking loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying. You pick up a yellow, fringed pillow and I am sick of missing out on your words. What if you said something important? What if you revealed something to me and I missed it?

You excuse yourself as you squeeze by the Chinese woman, who has stopped abruptly to examine an unremarkable round table. She could get out of the way but she doesn’t. You practically have to boost yourself onto the back side of the hunk of junk they call a sofa in order to get closer to me. That woman has nerve and I want to tell her but you hold my hand and maybe it’s not so bad after all.

“Feel this,” you say. You push the pillow into my hand. I look down and I can see your black panties just below the belt of your white jeans. They’ve stretched out from all your monkeying around and you’re holding my hand and breathing and you don’t smell like IKEA and just like that, I’m hard.

“It’s soft, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. The Chinese dad slams his fist on the table. Bam! We’re both startled and the moment ends as you drop the pillow. If this were 500 Days of Summer, we wouldn’t be able to hear him over the Hall & Oates that would be playing just for us. You pick up another pillow, pink. You press it into my palm.

“Well, what about this one?”

I’m your putty and you’ve got your hair in a bun and you’re not looking at me even though you know I’m looking at you and you smile and keep your eyes on my hand on the pillow and you whisper, “I think this is good.”

“Me too,” I murmur. I’ve barely been able to hear you speaking for the past couple of hours and your voice is heaven. I missed it.

You look up at me with sweet eyes. “It just feels good, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say and it does.

“You can tell when something is right because most things are just plain wrong.”

“Yeah,” I say and you have to be talking about us, not some twelve-dollar piece of Swedish chazerai, but you won’t look at me, you won’t let me all the way in yet. So fuck it. This is all too good and I’m gonna break in.

“Hey, Beck,” I say.

“Yeah?” you say but your eyes are on the pillow, not me.

“I like you.”

You smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say and I put my other hand on your shoulder and now you’re looking at me. We’re so close that I can see the pores you’re always trying to shrink and I can see the eyebrows you didn’t pluck this morning, because this morning you didn’t know you were gonna want me. This morning I watched you get ready in five minutes flat.

“So we’ll get the pillow?” you say.

“Yeah,” I say and it won’t be long until I’m inside of you. We’ve just made a pact and we know it and I don’t know who grabs whose hand. I just know that we’re holding hands and you’re holding the pillow and we’re weaving in and out of bedrooms and now you’re helping me, you’ve got a hand on the front of the cart. We are in this together, side by side, navigating like an old couple, like a new couple, and you know what, Beck?

It turns out IKEA is pretty fucking awesome.

You grab onto the base of something called the HEMNES bed and you look up at me. “Does this work?”

“Yep,” I say and you nod. You want me to like your bed. You know it’s gonna be our bed and you take the little pencil out of your back pocket and scribble down the numbers and letters.

You hand me the slip and smile. “Sold!”

Some girls would take all day and go back and forth but you are gloriously decisive and I am crazy about you. You peck me on the cheek and tell me to have a seat “on my new bed” and you skip off to the ladies’ room and maybe you pee and maybe you don’t. But you do send an e-mail to the guy you hired off Craigslist to assemble your new shit:

Hey Brian, this is Beck from the ad. I’m so sorry but I have to cancel today. My boyfriend got the day off so he can do it. Sorry! Beck

Boyfriend. When you come out of the bathroom, your eyelids are a little red from the quick job you just did on your brows and your lips are glossed and your tits are a little higher and you’re smiling and I almost think you rubbed one out in there and you take a deep breath and clap your hands.

“So can I buy you some meatballs?”

“No,” I say. “But I can buy you some meatballs.”

You smile because I’m your boyfriend. You just said so, Beck. You did. We park the shopping cart outside of the café area and the noise level in here is too much and there’s a line but you say it’s worth the wait. You are prattling on about meatballs and that damn Chinese family is in front of us and how did they get here first? They are taking forever and they are ahead of us, in line and in life—married, with kids. The clouds are forming in my head because you didn’t say boyfriend to a friend, just to some dude on Craigslist. What if you don’t mean it? What if you were quick to pick out a bed because you looked at beds online? What if you don’t care what I think? What if you’re not thinking it would be nice to go to bed with me, to make a family with me? The Chinese dad is taking too long and I can’t take it anymore and I reach over his arm and grab the other meatball ladle. Ladle. He shoots me a dirty look and you apologize to him, as if I’m the bad guy in the buffet line, in the world, and you still haven’t told me about the red ladle. You look at me. “Is something wrong, Joe?”

“They were rude.”

“It’s just crowded,” you say and you think I’m harsh and I am.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Your jaw drops and your mouth opens and then it closes and your eyes are wide and you are dazzled. You purr. “He says he’s sorry when he’s wrong and he lets me spend two hours looking at couches I don’t need? Joe, are you for real?”

I beam. I am. When the Chinese mother shoves my hand out of the way to reach a napkin, I don’t even react. I don’t have to withhold my anger because I’m not angry. You pick out the meatballs and I pay (I’m your boyfriend!) and you choose a table and I follow you. We sit, at last.

“You know, Joe, I am totally going to help you put the bed together.”

“You bet you are, missy.”

You split a meatball down the middle and pop half into your mouth and you chomp, mmmmm. Now it’s my turn and you pick up the other half and I open my mouth. I’m your seal, open, and you pop the half ball into my mouth and I chomp, mmm. The Chinese family interrupts, again, when the boy rams a spatula into the white table, which reminds me that you still haven’t told me about the red ladle and suddenly these meatballs taste like shit. You told Benji about that ladle. Why not me?

“Are you okay, Joe?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Just realized I gotta take care of some online orders at the shop.”

“Well, that’s actually good,” you say. “I can shower and clean up and you can come over when you’re done.”

Everything about what you just said is ideal but you still haven’t mentioned the red ladle and for all I know you never will. I take charge.

“I just gotta pick up something.”

“Really?” you say like it’s so hard to believe. “What do you need?”

I can’t say ladle. “A spatula.”

“A spatula for Joe,” you say. “Sounds like a kids’ book or something.”

The Chinese family sails past us, hightailing it to their next destination in this plastic zoo. You look longingly at them and their full cart and we’re on the move again. I search the signs for COOKING UTENSILS and you sigh. “I’m beat.”

“Just gotta get the spatula and then we’re out of here.”

You’re done, lazy. “I can stay here with the cart.”

“Do you mind coming?” I say. “The last one I got was a piece of shit.”

You follow me into COOKING UTENSILS and I walk slowly and hope that the spatulas will be right next to the ladles. I see red ladles and my heart leaps. You don’t react to them. You need a push. I pick one up. “Maybe I’ll get all red things,” I say. “Is that lame?”

You look at the red ladle. “This is really weird.”

“What?”

And now, at last, you pet the red ladle in my hand and tell me the story of your red ladle. You were a little girl in a little bed, and the smell of pancakes woke you up on Sunday mornings. Your dad used a special red ladle on Sundays, just Sundays. He would sing along to the top-forty countdown, screw up the lyrics, and make you and your brother and your sister laugh, winter, spring, summer, fall and you couldn’t fall asleep Saturday nights, you were so excited for Sunday mornings. And then, he started hitting the bottle. And the Sundays went away and the red ladle stayed in a drawer and your mother’s pancakes were greasy and burnt or wet and undercooked and your father was gone but the ladle was still there and bad pancakes smell like good pancakes and he’s dead now so there will never be pancakes again. There’s nothing dirty about your sweet, sad story and fuck Benji for making you feel bad.

“That ladle is still in our house to this day, as if he’s coming,” you say. “Life is mean.”

I put my hands on your shoulders and you look at me, expectant.

I speak, “I’m getting this for you.”

“Joe.”

“No ifs, ands, or buts.”

The world stops and your eyes gloss over. The Benjis of the world don’t understand what you want, someone to make you pancakes. You don’t care about money. You don’t want to be spanked. You want love. Your father had a red ladle and now I have a red ladle and I will make you the pancakes you want so badly, the pancakes you haven’t tasted since he died. Your mouth waters and you submit, softly. “Okay, Joe.”

You pick up a silver ladle. “Fresh start,” you say and you are right.

I am your boyfriend.