back in the city

by Brian Washines

prelude

The cold arm shrouded that world and the world subsided and a completion came about with time.

She took her shirt off and stood in the way of the ventilation.

You alone addicted to cold recirculated air.

I met you in the city.

Personally, I’d reassure you there’s an alien account available to us minus the properties of neither resignation nor shame. It’s that peripheral thing she had about her.

Not feeling particularly welcome.

*****

I never understood why people called our reservation “the country”. Indian country. So wide and desolate and stony and flat, where a thin skin of November morning frost painted everything the color of faded blue cotton.

When she first moved to the city—when she thought everyone was made of plaster, and cracked easily or shed their pale dust upon closer inspection:

She moved back into the country with me for six weeks before telling me that she missed it. Saying she was wrong about the people there.

She stood in the mirror and waved. It was like there was a delay in the transmission of that particular image, and I was momentarily certain there were two people standing there.

The refrigerator kept making noises in the middle of the night; we had only six hours left before we had to get up, get ready for work. Know what that sounds like, know those old AOL dial-up modems we hooked to phone outlets, and the signal came through screeching—?—yeah, that’s how our fridge sounded.

When we were about to close the door on our relationship, again, for the tenth time, she came up with another obscure reason to fasten it all back together again.

Hey, she said, let’s move back to the city.

Act 1: Static Abattoir

She took her shirt off and huffed, blew hair out of her eyes. The canvas stood blank for days, and it was fated to remain blank for a good week before she took up a layer of carnation and battered it over the left side center of the canvas and said, “Perspiration.”

It was like she made it happen without her knowing and she turned to me and asked if the coffee was ready.

“It’s eight,” I said. “At night.”

She took off her pants and kicked them up and away, unsure as to where it was going to land.

We got invited to parties with a strange consistency considering we shared social media accounts and knew the same people. It was like she was in the process of cellular division. And I wasn’t.

I put my hand under the back of her shirt and rubbed up against her spine and she sat straighter.

“It’s not like we’re friends with anyone,” she said.

I kissed her shoulder and waited for her to turn to me. Finally, she turned to me.

“Swiss Alps,” she said.

It was then she got up and went to her dresser and started tossing out halter tops and bras and panties and bales of socks. She dug her nails into her scalp even though it was a nervous tic she was trying to break, especially when she knew she was going to shower later, and the water would sting her scalp where she dug her nails.

*****

The invitation to one party had only two names on it, one of them mine, written in italics—Bren Stoik—whereas the other was in standard type—and all it said was & one other.

I used the invitation to fan my face, feeling the dots of moisture cool against my forehead and the bridge of my nose. She was unsure, having put on a grey bra I’d never seen her wear out before. I’d seen her wear it in but never out.

“The fuck’s that about. One other. Instead of plus one.”

She shrugged as if she were answering herself.

“It’s probably a company thing.”

“What company, it’s you and Doug,” she said.

She held up a purple halter and a white tube top.

“We’re expected to call it the company. That one.”

She tossed the white tube top aside even though I pointed at it.

“It’s not like you’re prime investors, it’s just you and whatsisname.”

“Doug.”

“Okay,” she said. She adjusted her lowcut jeans before changing her mind. She was going to her pinstripe dress, the one that didn’t have a slice in it. One solid skirt. “You and Doug. Surrounded by eighty-five people.”

“Who’s counting?”

“I get so bored at these things it’s like I shouldn’t bother.”

“We won’t then. Popcorn, Netflix, I just bought some new covers, you see em?”

“Covers, no. We watched everything.”

“You watched everything,” I said.

“I never watch anything without you, you know that.” She shimmied into her skirt. “Even if I did, I hid it better so you won’t tell.”

“You’re getting better at that.”

“I want,” she started. She inhaled, deep. “I want to chew into a strawberry Pop Tart somewhere in the Swiss Alps. As I’m sure that isn’t something anyone’s done well—not recently and not often—not enough.”

The party started at nine. I saw Huberm there. In all the places I bumped into him, he was always in the process of downing a sixpack of Heineken.

“Ju get that drum machine out of hock,” he called out.

“What’s my motherfucking name?”

He had a crooked smile, like one of those cinematic bank robbers, the one who always shoots the security guard for the hell of it, to see what it’s like, to realize he’s living some far less immaculate dream.

“Bren.”

No matter the situation, Huberm never strayed from his usual ensemble: a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt and black wool trousers.

He was the only one out of all of us who still had a chain wallet.

“Ju get it out of hock then?”

“Bought a new one, is that a new shirt, Huberm?”

“It’s my mom’s. Another drum machine?”

“It’s a hostile world. But that’s not why. I always wanted a new one.”

“Not when there’s nothing wrong with the old one—Algren.”

I turned around and saw Algren stepping towards us with her arms crossed. I could hear her heels clacking against the hardwood, her arms crossed, and her lips pressed together in a way that squared her jaw. It seemed like Algren always walked like this; even now, in her single black cocktail dress that exposed her trapezoidal shoulders.

Huberm couldn’t bring himself to say hi. Instead: “Ju say hi to Bren?”

“Zat all you bring?” She nodded down at the Heineken. It wasn’t even beaded with condensation anymore. “You just bring it from your fridge at home or what?”

“Algren.”

He touched the bottles, each one, wondering if he should find a bucket of ice for them.

“Bren,” she said. “You bring your gee-eff?”

“Her name’s An, and yes, I did.”

“Her name’s An?” Her arms stayed crossed. I nodded.

She did this thing where she looked around; I wasn’t sure I introduced them yet.

“She here?”

“Right over there, the halter. For fuck’s sake she’s the only other double-ex in here besides you, go.”

She gave me a stern look. Those lips pressed together, her jaw shaped like a brick. When she walked off I turned back to Huberm. But he’d also walked off. And the Heineken was gone from the table.

People started showing up around ten, or closer to eleven. Someone turned the TV on. It was Algren’s place, and Algren turned the TV back off, and the stereo up. She was still into K-pop, and it drove everybody nuts.

It was Becca who suggested we put on some deathcore.

Huberm came out of nowhere and wrapped a marzipan arm around my neck. I couldn’t hear him over the music and someone turned the TV back on. I heard him talk about Algren, about me needing an agent.

“We went to school together.”

“So,” he laughed.

“It’s like ink. Where’s Doug?”

“Doug cancelled, whaju mean ink, dafuq you talking bout?”

“School. Man, school.”

It appeared the only people who were showing up were people Algren knew.

When it appeared as if Doug wasn’t going to show up, she stayed close to me.

She never left my side.

Becca walked up, wearing a blue bathrobe over a dingy wifebeater that hung loose over her wiry frame.

“Huberm says yer an artist,” I said. “What’s that like?”

I nudged Becca’s shoulder with the same hand I used to hold my drink.

“Lucrative,” she said. Becca smirked and stepped out of reach.

“I used to make dolls, these special dolls,” Becca said.

“Bren told me.”

“Bren told you, he tell you I made them out of a special urethane, forget what. My dad had a factory and it closed down and he had all these barrels of things and I stole some.”

“I think I remember,” she said.

“Course you do, it was all over the news. Why my dad’s factory shut down, that stuff was toxic, bought it out of Malaysia, wholesale cheaper than the competition.”

“Uh huh. Hm.”

“I mean, buncha kids got sick, so fuck me, right.”

Becca let us alone for quite a bit but when she came back she had a Heineken in one hand, an unlit cigar in the other, and continued her rant as if we put her on pause.

“So, like, my dad,” Becca said. “Filed, he foreclosed, jumped ship with, uh, fucking hundreds of thousands, still owed on the house, still owed on a land enterprise deal from way back in the 1980s.”

“Becca,” I said. “Dear.”

She smirked. “The dolls are rare collector’s items. I keep em behind alloy-laminated glass cubes that cost me a fortune to make. My dealer won’t let me sell any for another year, though.”

“Why?”

“Uh, the fuck knows, uh. Something bout comparative numbers, demand projections, all that shit, she says another year, that’s all.”

“Huh,” I said. “So. What do you do then?”

“Yeah,” she said, “where do you work?”

“J. Crew.”

“Graphics? Communications? Marketing?”

“Cashier.”

She opened her bottle of Heineken and took a sip. Then she drank half the bottle. And then she walked away.

*****

Very few people bothered us, and when it appeared no more would, we left.

In the car, she reminded me of when we first met, at school. She looked in my fridge because she knew it told more about me than anything my bathroom medicine cabinet ever could.

She remembered seeing a takeout box from three different restaurant chains, a bottle of cheap white wine, and, for some reason, a pack of Newports.

I never could explain the cigarettes. I did smoke but I always left them in the pockets of a coat or pair of jeans I wore the night before. It was probably from when the guys in my class visited more often, guys who needed a place to crash between relationships.

She also reminded me of when we got lost in the city sometimes, or when we wound up in what appeared to be the more impoverished part of town, when I needed to get out of the car to check under the hood. I remembered seeing a group of people under a lamppost down the street, all wearing dark clothes, all wearing hoods over their heads, so I wasn’t sure if they were all male. I just knew they were all younger than me.

For a moment, I was sure they were paying attention to what I was doing, but after a few minutes of me diving under the hood of my car, they turned back to shouting and laughing at one another. They lit cigarettes, passed brownbagged tallcans of alcoholic beverages to one another, ignoring us.

When we got going again, she started talking about her anxiety about this part of the city. It was the earliest moment I can recall where she brought up the fact that I wasn’t white, where me being non-white might have brought about a different outcome in various situations. Parking too long in a red zone. Sneaking one another into a movie theater. Having a loud argument outdoors. Or having car trouble in a neighborhood that consisted primarily of low-income black and brown people.

But we rarely got lost in the city anymore. I always told her we got lost here so many times it was like we ought to move here. Even that changed.

Act Two: False Vestibules

She was unsure about everything.

Certain about that.

It wasn’t like we were oblivious to what we once were.

She disclosed things in pieces, and I expected her to.

On the other hand, she wanted me in a single deluge, if I could manage it.

Everything spilled out on a table, having called me on her two bits of information.

As a result, I ran out of stories long before she did.

How long before we no longer shared friends?

I got out of the elevator and saw Huberm standing in our hallway. It looked like he’d been wearing the same clothes for eight days.

“The hell, Huberm.”

“Ju get any mail?”

“It’s the 21st century, dog.”

I opened the apartment. All the lights were off. She wasn’t home.

“The hell can I do you for?”

“It’s not what you can do, it’s how you can do it.”

“Huberm, man. I just…”

“She’s out of town?”

“That’s not it. She might be back any minute so make it quick.”

“How come Doug never showed up?”

“What, the party?”

“The party.”

“It’s no biggie, man, see. We’re not glued at the fucking pelvis.”

“Diseases share a genetic blueprint that we can trace back to the earliest version of it in the history of its 20,000-year existence.”

“Okay, what the hell’s that mean?”

“You started a company together. You’re solidly welded at the crotch.”

I tossed aside my backpack and it fell into the couch. My back did things when I went into repose that surprised me at times.

“Doug comes and goes. Her and Doug got into it.”

“Over what? You?”

“It’s not like we graduated together,” I said.

“Out of what. Forty?”

“A graduating class…of forty?”

“You guys’s was the largest graduating class in fifty years there.”

“Well. That says something about him. He graduated high?”

“He graduated hungover.”

“No, what he—was he in the top fifteen of his class, is what I’m asking.”

“He graduated number thirty.”

I took off my shoes. Usually it took me hours, or until she got home, for me to get my shoes off. I noticed this right away.

“She won’t want you here either. When she gets back.”

“Fine, but before I go.”

“Go for broke.”

“What her and Doug get into it about?”

“I think they were together at one point.”

When she got home, her shoes flew eighty feet in the air and came back down in a shallow arc and touched my shoulder.

“What’s for dinner?”

She located me and kissed me where the shoe hit me. I could smell the faintness of both her perfume and the perfume of others.

“You’re a hugger,” I said.

“Dafuq’s that supposed to mean? I said what’s for dinner?”

“Where’d the other shoe go?”

She grew irritable. Whether or not that was my fault or whether or not it was up to me from the beginning, well, I just sat back and let her be.

“I’m a take a shower.”

She turned around at the door to our bedroom.

“When I get out, the food better be at the door or I’m moving in with my mom.”

*****

I usually went downstairs to the Walgreens around the corner if we needed more wine. We had more wine than we were sure what to do with; people kept coming over last month, and they always brought a black bottle of red. Stuff from Washington, nothing from California.

The Korean place delivered but they charged three extra dollars, and this didn’t include the tip. They were two blocks down. But she loved their bulgogi.

She got out of the shower minutes after the food came. She was wearing clean socks.

“He was here,” she said.

“Who?”

“Am I living with an owl? I said he was here.”

“Huberm.”

“He was here.” The predominant emotion in her voice was Sour, as if this concern was too trivial to bring up but too late to retract. She bothered and now she regretted it.

“The point of him being here is.”

“This is good.” She poked at her rice. “This is good.”

“We know the same people. Huberm and others, we graduated together and.”

“Is that all?”

“He brought up Doug.”

“And?”

“And.”

She blew on her food even though the cartons have been sitting on our table a good twenty minutes before we started digging into them.

“It seems harder to tell people what I do.”

“You’re a musician,” she said.

“I’m a composer.”

“Forgot the difference.”

“Because I told you to forget it the first time I had to explain it.”

“And it’s getting harder to explain it to other people, what?”

“I’m talking about my family. They think I’m a street performer.”

“We hang out with street performers though.”

“Outsider artists.”

“It’s not like they’re fun. They’re necessary. For the mosaic.”

“The mosaic?”

“Yeah, it’s like, too much beige in one area, not enough burgundy in another area.”

“So when people talk about local color—”

She held up a hand, “Okay, see, this is why our food gets cold, no. It’s a mosaic, I said that.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t compare it to some other thang. No.”

“Okay.”

I saw her fold her feet one over the other. Her feet itched, she used the other food to tend to it. She was slowly peeling off the fresh socks she’d put on to attend tonight’s inhouse meal.

“You started talking about talking to people about being a composer. Which you are.”

“It’s what I went to school for.”

“Okay.”

I could’ve ordered anything from the restaurant. The Korean place made steamed white rice bowls topped with spice and imitation crab meat. They also sold gyoza for some reason. But I ordered a pork sandwich and French fries, from their American menu.

“My family are mostly traditional.”

“Hm.”

“It’s the families who work for the gaming commission and families who work for the lumber industry. There’s a family who harvests the cherries every year, sixty cents a pound. You know, those guys can tell people what they do. It’s hard for me to say exactly what I do.”

“But you always have something to show for it, and that helps.”

She was shoveling another mountain of steamed rice into her mouth.

“Did you and Doug sleep together?”

The linoleum floor was a nice touch when we first started looking at it.

She didn’t like paying $1,140 a month only to look down and see the dining area matted with linoleum.

I noticed how wide her eyes grew, even before that glitch—that pause—as her mouth puffed out, full of warm, moist rice. She spat some out though, getting up.

The chair growled underneath her as she pushed it back, getting up.

Rice went everywhere, dotting the air; then it speckled the linoleum floor.

“I’m not saying recently—”

“Ju shut the fuck up shut up.”

I stood up then. My feet were bare and they stuck to the linoleum.

“I fucking hate when you do that.”

“Not on purpose,” I said.

“Yes yes yes on purpose—cold calculated premeditated—fuck,” she said. “You always lull me into these fucking situations with…you and your thing about my past — ”

“To be fair — ”

“This better be good.”

“Okay. To be fair.”

“You see you see?”

“No, to be fair…” I even held up a finger as if it was doing me any good. “To be fair, there’s a lot more of your history than mine between us here. So.”

“Oh go get fucked.”

“Please?”

“You are so up there, right up there, you might as well be gone, man.” She was reaching around her now, found a towel, and wiped her mouth. “And of all the people…”

“It was going to come up.”

“What? Fucking Huberm? Your friend, oh hell no.”

“Not like that, dude. No. I brought it up. I know that’s…”

I wanted to say anything to make it dumber and lamer than it already was, except every time I tried to, I made things worse. I kept mistaking gasoline for water.

“Always?” she said. Her voice was smaller now. “Always? Like, since forever, since the start?”

“I knew enough. We knew the same people, it was bound to…”

“What, come up? No. We are way past that now. At that point, it dies. Digging it up is absolutely…perverse, what you did was dig up something dead, started humping it, and said what? Not on purpose?”

I thought about holding my hands behind my back, but I kept them where they were.

“Don’t. Even think about it,” she said. Her voice growing deep only meant one thing.

She was half-serious. “Don’t you dare ask him. Don’t. Don’t.”

Her shoes were by the door.

I kept mine by the couch. Two pairs. That’s all I had.

She had six pairs. She threw on her tennis shoes, leaving the other five pairs behind.

Her mom’s phone number was still written on the front door, in red permanent marker.

Still there from the second time she was mad enough to walk out on me.

Act Three: Vocations

There was a package resting against our front door, from Becca.

I opened it and it was one of Becca’s weird dolls, in a glass casing.

I still went to work. Except it appeared as if I were avoiding Doug.

When you sign a joint lease on a studio downtown, people tend to notice you coming and going in those patterns.

It was like, “The hell, man.”

No one was around to answer our phones.

“Who dis?”

“The other half.”

“When you coming in. Doug.”

“The hell you say. Three pee-em on the dot every day, always.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just hung up on him.

Algren showed up. She didn’t look happy but, then again, has she ever?

“You’re never early.”

“Thanks, Algren.”

“I hate change.”

“But do you make it, that’s the question.”

“Don’t be cute. Doug’s calling me.”

“Okay.”

“Not texting, calling.”

“He have any questions of his own?”

“You’re the one with all the answers. Man.”

“Okay. If he calls here, I’ll pick up where you left off.”

“He said you cut him off, what gives?”

“What his voice sound like?”

“If you wanted to know that you should’ve kept talking to him.”

“That being said.”

Algren turned like a spike in the ground that came loose, a spike that found its way out the door.

*****

I hadn’t been able to get any work done. We had one client who hadn’t called back since we met that October deadline. Then one client left saying he didn’t need a finished product another thirty days, another thirty days. We kept seeing his commercials, new ones, online, interrupting our You Tube videos. What gives.

I dreaded every ringtone. If it was Doug, fine, I’m ready to cross that bridge if it sprouts legs and beats traffic.

With her, it’s another matter.

Noon came around, I hadn’t left the office, and Doug comes in.

He was a blur, really, shooting into his private office. Between us, he got the private office, which used to be a kitchen before it got refurbished. He shut the door behind him.

Doug came out fifteen minutes later staring into his phone.

“Hm.”

I stopped whatever I was doing.

“Guess who’s drunk-posting on Instagram.”

“It’s Wednesday,” I said. “And somebody’s already Inebrigramming?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Doug walked over to the window and stared down at the road. He was acting like he was being followed. I swore he lost weight.

“You find it funny we keep running into the same people,” I said.

“No I don’t.”

“I’m asking, do you find it funny?”

“Sounded rhetorical but okay. No.”

“The same four or five people.”

“I understand you and An are having trouble.”

“You talk to her.”

“I talked to her. Past tense.”

“Third-person omniscient?”

“No. Man.”

I got up out of my chair and stood in front of his office door.

“It wasn’t a fight. A misunderstanding.”

“Which always leads to a fight,” he said. “From experience, take my word.”

“It was Becca.”

“Becca.”

“The one who’s drunk-posting.”

“Right, because it’s about Becca.”

“You speak to my girlfriend.”

“I spoke to An.”

“Past tense.”

Seeing there was nowhere else for him to go, he shrugged his shoulders and made his way to the front door. But he stopped. Turned.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m ready—”

“All of it is the past, all of it, man.”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s just a formality,” I said.

“If it’s not important I can leave.”

Someone knocked at the front door though. We both jumped.

“Bren.”

Oh shit, look at this…

“What’s she doing here?” Doug said.

Since we started our company, even when we had the office warming party, she never once breached our borders. Except here she was, standing outside my door, with my name in her hand.

“Bren.”

“The door’s open.”

“I just need you to open it.”

“Dude,” Doug said. “Man.”

“She’s…it’s just her thing, like a vampire.”

“I resent that,” she said.

“You know, folklore-wise, no offense.”

“Taken.”

Doug was walking back and forth now. His shadow flickered across the opposite wall, and it made me nervous. Like he were looking down the barrel of twenty imaginary assault rifles.

“Doug, man, calm the fuck down.”

“Just tell her to leave.”

“What the fuck?”

“Dude.”

She knocked and said, “He’s in there.”

“Who else?” I said to her.

I opened the door and all hell broke loose.

She shoved past me.

Doug backed into a corner behind my desk, nearly knocking over my Mac, where I had over eight months of work stored, much of which wasn’t backed up.

He flinched back as she fired off a couple haymakers, landing a closed fist on his shoulder and neck.

I took her wrist and pulled her back but it was awkward because I was still thinking about my computer.

We were still blocking Doug in, which was key considering I was still talking to him. I knew if he ran now he’d stay gone forever, if he chose to. He had zero obligation to stay.

Not to the company, not to our friendship, zero obligation. We both knew it, we didn’t really share any friends and the people we both knew were people who were used to speaking of him in a peripheral manner. They loved talking about seeing him around, or hearing other people say they had seen him around, without actually having him around in the first place.

“I need an answer,” I said.

“No,” she said. She twisted away from me. “You don’t.”

“When will I get it?”

“It’s not up to you.”

Doug inched toward the front door and I stood in his way.

“Dude,” he said.

“This is just a formality.”

“For fuck’s sake,” she said. Her words came out coated with molecular acid.

“I’m going out that door.”

I reached out for the cube that Becca sent us. I lifted it up and I smashed it into the desk. The glass spiderwebbed with cracks and folded apart. I unleashed a homunculus glob with arms and legs, chalk white, with yellow eyes and red mouths. Becca didn’t dress the dolls but thankfully she also didn’t mold them with anatomically-rendered intricacies.

I used a thick bundle of paper napkins to grasp the toxic doll and held it toward him.

“Know what this is,” I said. “Read in the papers. A small rash broke out on some of the kids’ hands and arms and chest. For some it went away, but others developed what looked like pox sores, blemishes that oozed pus.”

“Not cool.”

I inched the doll closer to him.

“Becca’s dad’s company had to recall their whole line, it sunk the company. Now it’s illegal in the forty countries who give a damn.”

I inched the doll even closer to him and he winced.

“Dude, not cool.”

“You might just get a rash,” I said. “You might get coin-sized blisters, who knows?”

“We’re together,” she said.

I lowered the doll.

“You mean you were together,” I said.

I dropped the doll.

“Past tense,” I said.

“No,” she said.

Envoi

I turned the radio on.

A lot of reverberating noises were coming from the vents.

The nights got colder. I owned maybe four blankets.

It was strange to still own a radio, an actual AM/FM radio.

There’s a shell about it that protects it, that entire world of feeling.

Her mother came and got her stuff. We’d only met twice. Still, I noticed how her mother’s hair changed. It’s shorter now.

I took the radio out onto the balcony and tossed it. When it hit the parking lot it went into what appeared to be three separate pieces. Someone in one of the other apartments across the street laughed.

*****

I don’t remember seeing anybody by that description, are you sure you just dinnent dream the fucking thing. It’s been known to happen, specially to people who are all tryin to move on.

The nights were getting icier. I kept seeing my breath interrupting my line of vision, in the form of badly-drawn thought bubbles.

I wanted snow to happen. There’d be red, blue and silver lights everywhere, and there’d be snow.

She left a balled up sock behind the hamper in the bathroom that I haven’t touched. And when I moved out six months later, back to wide, desolate country, I still hadn’t touched it. I left it there.

Photo of Brian Washines

BIO: Brian Washines lived on the Yakama Reservation the first thirty years of his life before earning an associate's and moving to the Seattle area to earn a degree in Digital Media Production. He worked on several independent productions as a co-screenwriter. His work has appeared in Stoneboat, Half and One, and Rowayat.