Page 6 of What It's Like in Words
“I’m on late lunch. I texted you. Enola?”
A demonstrative exhale. I’m not sure whose benefit he thinks the sound is for.
“Yeah, okay, you’re not in.”
Making sure he is actually gone and not hiding somewhere, I wait for the ding of the lift, the clap of the doors, and the whirring in the walls before opening the door. There is a plastic bag on the welcome mat.
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics proposes that every time we have a choice to make with more than one possible outcome, all of the outcomes occur, splitting us into unlimited parallel timelines. So, in this second of staring at the plastic bag, I have both brought it inside and left it outside. Does that mean nothing matters or everything matters?
I bring it inside.
The strip light shudders on with a horror movie crackle, crudely illuminating my kitchen: forest-green walls, kettle on the stove, mugs hanging above the counter, small table, and on the window ledge, a row of recipe books. I lay the contents of the plastic bag onto the table: peanut butter, scented candle, bath oil, and a postcard with a picture of an otter in a bubble bath. In neat, rounded letters, the underside reads:
Just a few things to say that I miss you and that I’m still quietly confident…—Virinder
There is nothing quiet about Virinder’s confidence. I unscrew the lid and scoop some peanut butter out. As I turn my finger, the peanut butter sags but doesn’t fall. Like the transitory paste, I am stuckbetween where I am and where I want to be: back at the start, where a vase can be red, blue, and just a vase all at once.
RUTH ANDIWEREsat in an art gallery in Shoreditch. Oil paintings on the walls, cocktails by our feet, and a naked man with straight black pubic hair who was stretched over sheets in the center of the circle. He looked like he owned a whippet and was called Simon, or perhaps the whippet was. My drawing was terrible: half an arm, misshapen eyes, hands without fingers. Ruth had sketched the man without genitals, his penis, large and unattached, was floating above his head in a thought bubble.
I put down my pencil and picked up my cocktail.
Ruth was always thinking of fun activities: new brunch spots or pop-ups or crazes like morning raves or Drag Bingo. Tonight, it was figure drawing and cocktails.
Roo, do you think I’m boring? I lowered my voice because the man with the perm who ran the gallery was staring. Don’t be ridiculous, she said without looking up.
I watched the right side of her face, three piercings in her lobe, curls black and cascading, brown skin with a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose and up her cheekbones like she was a Disney cartoon. She would put her picture in the bin as soon as she got home but she was taking such care over it now.
Enola, stop staring. You’re making me self-conscious.
You don’t get self-conscious.
Self-aware, then.
I told her that the other day Amy asked if I was asexual because there were no sex scenes in my book. Ruth laughed, and the man with the perm looked over again. She nodded to the model, stretching his hamstrings, and said that not everyone was comfortable putting it out there. I said that the other side of the circle were getting more for their money.
I told her that he had asked me out for tomorrow. He wants to play Scrabble.
Your favorite!
And did I tell you that he writes full-time? I’m worried I’m still going to be working in the café when I’m thirty.
I hope I still am, Ruth said subversively.
Ruth lived as a property guardian in a warehouse in North London. She currently had pages folded in ten books and changed her hair more often than she changed her bedding. She interviewed for jobs she didn’t want but inevitably got, ending up back at the café two weeks later. Ruth found comfort in instability. For her, being still meant being trapped.
But you know what I mean, I said.
She turned to me. He’s really got under your skin, hasn’t he?
We picked up our drinks and leaned on our knees. Go on. What’s he like?
I told her that he was hard to describe. Tall. Brownish hair, green eyes. And funny. Really funny—in a crude, dry way. Unapologetic. Mega-confident. But I don’t feel relaxed around him.
You’ve only met him once?
Yes, at the writing thing. He came in with thisenergy. Put his feet up on the table. Didn’t say a word but then called Chris’s character a cunt.
He sounds like a twat, if I’m honest.
