1.
Bass & Co’s Pale Ale, with the red triangle that is England’s First Regd. Trademark. Janine’s put an open one into his hand; he draws from it: delicious. He missed Survivor last week because they’d moved it to Wednesday and he’d had to work. —Alicia got it last week, Janine says. She perches on the edge of the sofa, leans forward to grab the remote, then settles in next to him. —Alicia? Really? The TV winks open: basketball. —Yeah, Janine says, —they’re just picking off those Kuchas one by one. She focuses in on the basketball. —What the fuck’s this, she says.
They both watch it for a minute. People run one way and then the other. That’s about as well as Thomas understands it. A klaxon goes off and Janine hits Mute. —Fuck, she says. —I forgot. The NCAA shit has screwed everything up. Thomas watches her concentrate on the players maneuvering through their silenced world. A petite tonguetip appears at the corner of her mouth. She reveals a certain casual grace in her every unconscious gesture: the way she rubs her eye or scratches at her clavicle. Thomas has noted her beauty many times; he notes it again now, almost absently. There are books stacked on the table by the sofa. After a few seconds he turns his attention to them. Cyborgs, Simians, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. He picks it up and flips it over. Janine, still staring at the TV: —No, wait, what am I doing?
:: :: ::
2.
—So, she says. —How are things with the e-mail crush?
—Good, Thomas says. —We actually have some plans to try and get together. There’s this thing coming up next weekend, a LAMPO thing, at 6Odum; they’re bringing in this band Mirror, they’re going to do some kind of quadraphonic drone performance—
He notices Janine smiling wryly. —Yeah, well, for some of us, it would make an ideal date, he says.
—Ha! Janine says. —No, really, I’m sure it will. I’m not trying to make fun. She grins impishly. Thomas raises his eyebrows to indicate his skepticism and takes another draw from the Bass. He told Janine the truth, mostly: things with unseen_girl are going well, e-mails have gone back and forth fairly regularly over the last few weeks. There are a few things that seem weird to him, like the fact that he doesn’t know her real name yet — after all, she knows his; it’s on his website. He guesses it makes sense, though: if he were a woman he’s not sure he’d feel quite so comfortable giving out his name to people who are more or less strangers. Although she doesn’t quite feel like a stranger to him. He’s been surprised, in fact, at the depth of feeling he has been able to manifest towards her. He has discovered a reservoir of emotion that he had apparently reserved for a woman interested in the same music as him. He was unaware that that secret reserve existed, but now that unseen_girl has triggered his awareness of it, he feels like inviting her to enjoy as much of it as she would like. But first he wants to know what she looks like. Unseen. After she agreed to meet him at the show, he’d sent her an e-mail — how will I know you? She hasn’t responded yet. He’s sort of — well, he doesn’t want to find her physically unattractive, he is, yes, afraid of the prospect that he might. He doesn’t know how his feelings towards her will change if that happens; if it does happen and his feelings do change, then the genuineness of his feelings— feelings which feel quite real to him now —will be called into question. And he’s grown tired of self-questioning. He craves a certain self-stability, a reliable quiet core; he wants certain things about himself to just be. He doesn’t want to go out on a date and come home with his sense of integrity usurped.
Janine watches him; he’s staring down at his bottle of beer, clearly turning something over in his mind. She likes Thomas, she has ever since they were working together at the hotel restaurant, but she’s always wanted to draw him out of his shell, to get him to stop withdrawing into the safety of his own head and start engaging with the people around him. She sees it as a project or game. She teases him, torments him, flirts with him, creates situations that he must respond to, but it’s been two years now and sometimes he still draws away in this style.
If she could break him of that habit, she’d consider getting involved with him. He’s a little strange-looking, but that’s not a point against him. And he has a faintly androgynous gentleness about him that she finds very appealing.
He looks up at her, smiles. —So, yeah, he says, —everything’s going fine with that.
:: :: ::
3.
He goes into the bathroom. While he’s peeing he looks at a postcard taped up over the toilet, which depicts the hand of a woman splayed across her pubic mound. Red latex wraps this tableau, intimately limning every contour of the depicted body. Every time Thomas uses Janine’s bathroom — often, since every week she offers him beer — he looks at this postcard, wonders what it means to her, why she chose to hang it, why here. Wonders what sex means to her. He knows that she was working on a Women’s Studies degree for a while, and he’s always generally thought of her as a feminist, but he’d always thought that feminists didn’t go for these kinds of pictures of the body. There are nuances that he does not follow, that he recognizes he does not follow. He wants to talk to her about it but he doesn’t even really know where to begin.
:: :: ::
4.
—Why do you even still work there? she asks him. —I mean, you never really struck me as the waiter type.
—I can do it, Thomas says. — It’s easy. "Hi, my name is Thomas, and I’ll be your server this evening. Perhaps some drinks to get you started?" He shrugs. —Most people are pretty used to thinking of Asians in roles of servitude, so, I don’t know, I guess I fit the image OK.
—Yeah, but, Janine says. —I don’t know. How long have you been there now?
—Four years.
—I mean, there are other jobs out there that you’re qualified for, better jobs. I’ve read some of those reviews on your website, they’re good. I mean, really thoughtful. There’s lots of places that need writing right now...
—I don’t know, Thomas says. —I’ve just gotten used to the idea that my job doesn’t have anything to do with my life. You were the only person there who I ever hung out with outside of work. So I go, I switch on to autopilot, I do my thing, then I go home and my life turns on again. The job pays the bills and I don’t need to think about it when I’m not there, so... why switch? I mean, I guess it’s kind of weird to have this kind of "two life" thing going on...
—Yeah, says Janine. —But the idea of the unitary self is a fiction anyway.
—Yeah, says Thomas. He half-believes her. He knows that we are made up of fragments. But he believes that they are all contained in a single thing. He believes that we are bowls full of stones. What he wants in his own life is to be aware of the form of the bowl—
