Chapter 6 #2
Sometimes I fantasized about what life would be like if I were James. James got things for free, even though he was a man. Once, someone stopped us in Battery Park to give James a joint. “You have a good vibe, man,” he said. “A good energy.”
I was surprised when James proposed smoking it later that night. “Don’t you think it could be laced?” I asked.
“He seemed like a good guy,” James said, shrugging, and then we got marvelously high.
James thought everybody was a good guy, that ordinary things could be extraordinary.
Later that night, while he was rewriting a pitch, we passed sticky notes like misbehaving students.
I’d drawn different versions of him at his computer: one where he was a dog and the computer a pixelated bone; one where I was trapped inside the screen, screaming to be let out; and one where he was a tiny bug stuck between the J and K letters on the keyboard.
The next day, he put them in a real wooden frame.
He called it a “triptych.” That made me feel bad about throwing his sticky notes away, but they were a joke, imitations of preteen messages like “want 2 hold hands?” I told him I put them in my folder of special things, which did not exist.
James didn’t lie. He trusted everyone. He could fall asleep on water.
I called out his name.
When James stood, his body looked taller, bigger than before. Water fell down his chest in bright sheets. I saw him as I did the night we met. Here was somebody who was meant to exist, whom nobody felt the need to save.
—
That evening, it rained again. James had reserved a spot for dinner, but I couldn’t bear the idea of accidentally running into Mrs. Hartley or deciphering another menu of fish. “Tough luck,” said James. “The place is literally called Chez Poisson.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It means the house of fish. Or, no, the fish’s house. Now that I’m saying it aloud, it’s kind of a silly name.”
“Can we eat at home?” I asked. “I barely have fifty dollars in my bank account.”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.” James only looked surprised for a second.
I understood his confusion; I didn’t usually bring up my finances, and I hadn’t paid for a thing since we started dating.
But he didn’t linger on the subject. “The stuff in the fridge is more for lunch, but if you’re okay with something basic, I can figure something out. Give me a sec.”
“I’m okay with basic.”
James rummaged through the freezer. “Perfect. Pizza.”
By the time the frozen pizza was ready, I was mildly drunk off a generous glass of red wine.
James cracked a window open in the kitchen.
A breeze ran down my shoulder. I felt small and slippery, like a hard-boiled egg.
Silver lapped at her food, salmon paté with real chunks of dark pink salmon.
There, it was still the house of fish somewhere.
James usually picked the movie, but I was tipsy and asked if we could see Mamma Mia!
—my favorite. I picked the pepperoni off my pizza and gave it all to James.
My mother and I used to order pepperoni pizza for our birthdays, though she always gave her pepperoni to me.
“This is a sign of love and generosity,” I said, tossing the meat like rose petals onto his plate.
I poured myself another glass of wine. I’d placed the bottle on the stovetop while the pizza was cooking, then forgotten about it so that the wine had warmed.
But with the breeze, the plunking of rain, and the cheesy grease on my lips, the warmth was nice, even perfect.
I was amazed that such perfection could arise from a mistake.
When the movie began, I felt a rush of joy so intense I had to bite my tongue to keep from smiling too big. I’d developed a habit of doing this since first encountering the expression in a picture book, before I knew what an expression was.
“This is fun,” James said. We were at the first musical number of the movie. “Camp.”
“Camp?” Mamma Mia! was sincere and tragic.
On certain rewatches, I had conflicting feelings about Sophie, the main character.
On the one hand, she stole her mother Donna’s diary and secretly invited all her exes to an island, just so she could uncover her father’s identity before her wedding.
But it was obvious that her true motivation was to get her mother to confront her past. There was something noble about righting her mother’s wrongs, like healing a generational wound.
I asked James how he felt.
“Amanda Seyfried’s so good,” he answered. “I mean, the story’s crazy and the character’s a bit thin, but she’s giving it everything, isn’t she?”
I didn’t understand. Saving your mother from her own choices wasn’t “thin.”
“She could just ask Meryl Streep who her father is, right?” James said. “But instead, she invites these horny old men to her wedding, and then she just hangs out with them instead of trying to figure it out.”
“But that’s the point,” I said. “It’s not about discovering who her father is. It’s about discovering who her mother is—Donna.” I emphasized Donna.
“I’m not saying it’s bad,” said James. “It’s very Shakespeare. You have a bunch of different suitors, totally avoidable misunderstandings, and, I’m assuming, a big, gay, chaotic wedding at the end.”
Was this obvious, or was James just overeducated?
He formed strong and instant opinions on everything, from movies to subway advertisements, often citing cultural trends or phenomena that I then had to pretend to know.
I bit my tongue again and decided that maybe James and I were meant to enjoy different things, or else view the same things differently.
The film’s first climax, the night of Sophie’s bachelorette party, approached. One of Donna’s suitors tells Sophie he must be her father.
“That can’t be the end of it,” James said. “Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth are going to jump in and tell her the same thing.”
He was right. “Sam and Harry. And you told me you’ve never seen this before.”
“I haven’t, but it’s obvious, right?”
He saw my dejection. “Sorry, sorry, let me turn that part of my brain off. I can see why you love this movie. It’s really playful, everything’s exaggerated.”
Was it? That was news to me.
“Definitely,” he said. “Less my style, though.”