Mandy Chen The pillow had a snake-like quality. After a night’s ruffling it seemed justified to wind itself around my neck, and I screamed a bit. It loosened and I left the bed. I owned two pairs of pajamas. The one with grey stripes that I had on for the night I hated. I slipped out of the stripes feeling trapped, feeling like a stripping snake trapped in bars. Now the bars shredded and the full-length mirror stuck to the back of my door grew full of nakedness. I didn’t bother slipping into new skin. Mom could be out. If not I didn’t mind her looking. The living room would have minded, but it too reeked of infertility. Emptiness was a smell and I heard its deep invisible vibration turn over the kitchen. I broke in, wrecking emptiness. Mom forbade me to drink refrigerated milk. I took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator. The liquid gushed, splitting my guts. Needling sourly tentacles drilled holes in my tongue, rendering the ring in my ears needling and surreal. I gulped. The sound — a hoot — now retreated to a distance. In search of its origin I traced my way back to the bed. The pillow had given up on being snake-like and lay seemingly innocent; only the steadfast vibration betrayed hoarding and in a swoop I swept it clean of its captive. A lit screen: FRIEND 001. “Hello.” “They’re playing ‘Midnight in Paris’ at LT. You have 20 minutes.” A pause. “Sure,” I said. Friend 001 was Abigail. Abigail hung up. Now the room was quiet and I could hear the telly a bass radiance evacuating the living room. Fifty-six killed in Paris, protests taking over the city. I walked in, gathering my skins. Cushions scattered about the wooden floor. Beyond me voices chimed. I pressed the remote control. The sofa felt as shriveled as it looked. It took but five minutes to get to Loser’s Theater. I noticed a stain on the side of the sofa, where I propped up my feet. It was still wet. What mom used to say, nothing gold could stay but it was different with wine. But so could time. And so I would lay dead on my couch and count un deux trois quatre cinq, fifty-eight ninety-five sixty, then one again, counting death until the bell. And it occurred to me. I walked back and forth out on the couch, into my room where I would find my stock of white T-shirts. Skins, plain ones, arrayed in parcels but I took them out and apart and took a sharpie. Across one of them I scribbled, HARVARD BOY. Then I threw it on with my jeans. Then I left, slamming the door behind me like mom would, leaping down 15 flights of stairs in one breath. I left a Harvard boy without a baggage. I was starting to run. Only a troop of ants around the corner of the apartment building got in my way. I stopped, stooping. Tiny many-legged particles piled up into a sea of red sand. |