The End of FUN (14 page)

“What? Clouds can be any size! What would you call it?”

“A puff.”

“
Puff?
That was more than a
puff
. Here. Watch.”

I put the cigarette to my lips, sucked in…sucked in more…sucked in some more…and then
blew
.

“There's your cloud,” I said—or started to say, but I only got out the first two words before I started coughing. And coughing some more. I was really having a fit, but that wasn't half as bad as the way the world was spinning and the pukey feeling in my esophagus like I was just gonna throw it all up on the concrete. I put my hands on my knees and waited for the feeling to pass.

“Arnold?” she said. “Are you OK?”

“Oh my God, you gotta stop smoking—those things can't be good for you!”

“Thanks. I'm aware of that.”

“So I solved them, right? Does that mean I get your number?”

“I thought you were only here for a couple days.”

“Not anymore. I've got business to take care of in town. Want to get a drink or something? Or better yet, you could teach me how to Hula-Hoop. I never learned how.”

“You never learned to Hula-Hoop?” she said. “It's easy.”

“So you say. The P.E. teacher thought I was goofing around, like making fun of it, but I was really just that bad.”

“Arnold—” Katie paused. It was like she was weighing some question. A couple dudes walked past in puffy jackets. She fiddled with her keys. “Look,” she said at last. “It's freezing. I'm too tired to go out for a drink. So if I invite you over to my place right now, it just means as friends, OK?”

Her apartment was the top floor of an old building not far from the college, and its low ceiling sloped in strange places so that I could stand upright only in an area in the middle. But it wasn't a bad place. In fact, it was pretty nice. The walls were blue and yellow, with twinkle lights strung around a built-in bookcase. The furnishings were kind of spare, though. A small puffy couch, a bookshelf, a floor lamp, a lime-green rug—and that was pretty much it.

“So tell me,” she said as she shrugged off her jacket and laid it over the back of the couch. “What's Pennsylvania like?”

The question caught me off guard. “Oh,
Pennsylvania
. Well…there are a lot of trees.”

“Trees?”

“Yeah…and no sagebrush, of course. And everyone talks with, like, a Pennsylvania accent. And, I don't know, it's pretty much like anywhere else, only it's
there
instead of here, if you know what I mean.”

“I'm not sure if I do.”

“Well—”

“Maybe I'm just envious,” she said. “I thought this was temporary.”

“Thought what was?”

“
This
. This apartment. This
town
. I should probably just give in and get more furniture. But of course the second I do, I'll probably have to move out. That seems to be how my life works….Would you like something to drink?”

“Sure. What do you have?”

“Sparkl*Juice
™
and gin.”

“Yay.”

“What?”

“Sounds great.”

“Oh, OK.”

While Katie was in the kitchen, I checked out her bookshelf. There was a dusty word-of-the-day calendar on top, several months behind the actual date. I've always liked those calendars, with their unspoken promise to endow the user with the ability to cow rivals through
obfuscation
, which is a word I learned from a calendar, though not Katie's. The word on her calendar was:

floccillation
(fläk-suh-lay-shun)
1. aimless plucking at the bedclothes as a result of delirium or fever. 2. a sign that a person is approaching death.

Below this, the shelves were about evenly divided between children's picture books and old pocket paperbacks, mostly what looked like science fiction, with yellowed pages and titles I didn't recognize.
Lunar Horizon
.
The Daughter Nebula
.
Omegathon
. I was flipping through
She Was a Space Amazon
when Katie returned from the kitchen.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

I gave it a taste. It was disgusting.

“Mm,” I said.

“You like it?”

“Oh yeah.”

God, she was beautiful. You know how some people are just beautiful right away and everyone can agree on it? Katie wasn't like that. She was not absolutely stunning at first, but then, the more you looked at her, the more you saw how beautiful she was. Those pure blue eyes. Which, BTW, were aimed right at me, like,
Why are you staring at me?

The problem is I was having a hard time finding anywhere else to put my eyes. There was this electricity between us, all in the eyes. I tried looking at the bookshelf, but it was so much less interesting than Katie. It was my turn to say something, but I could hardly get any words to come out.

“Those books are cool.”

“Really?” Katie brightened. “That one you have there—
She Was a Space Amazon
? I swear, it was a gift from the universe.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was the first day of spring and I had this
incredible
hangover. Around five in the afternoon I
dragged
myself out of the house, just so I wouldn't miss the entire day, and as I was walking down the street I saw some people cleaning up after a yard sale. Something told me I should stop to see what was left, and that's when I found the book.”

“Huh. What's it about?”

“Inevitability.”

“But I mean, what's the story?”

“Well, from the cover you're led to believe it's going to be all about kicking ass, but what it really turns out to be about is how incredibly harrowing this woman's life is. Every time she comes upon a new, mist-covered planet you're like,
No! Don't go down there!
And yet, that's what she does. That's what she was born to do. She's a Space Amazon.”

“What's that she's wearing on the cover?”

“I don't know. A bikinotard?”

“I bet she gets cold in space.”

“It's strange,” said Katie. “Reading that book made me think about my own life. I'm not a fatalist, but I
have
noticed certain patterns in my experiences. It's like, wherever I go, there I am. I can't seem to get away from myself. And no matter how careful I am, no matter how much I plan, I always seem to end up in these very, um,
complicated
situations.”

“Like what?”

Katie sipped her drink. “Like now.”

“What's complicated about now?”

Two blue eyes watching me over the rim of her glass.

“Not just
now-right-now
,” she said. “I mean the
bigger
now. Which also includes the
what-just-happened
and
what-might-happen-next
. Sometimes the last
what-just-happened
ends up, you know,
complicating
the options of the
now
-
right
-
now
—because of
what-might-happen-next
.”

“You're losing me a little.”

“There was a guy.”

“Oh. The bartender?”

“Yeah, him too,” she said. “And I didn't even like him—but it's
complicated
.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. But as our gazes lingered, a little bolt of electricity passed between us, and I could tell she felt it, too—I just could—because it was real. I mean
real
electricity. I hadn't felt something like that since Shannon Boyster gave me a chocolate bar at recess in first grade. But as soon as Katie saw that
I
saw, she sort of jumped back and clapped her hands.

“Time for Hula-Hooping.”

“What?”

“I'm going to teach you to Hula-Hoop. Remember?”

We cleared a little stage in the middle of her living room, and she handed me the hoop.

“Let's see what you got.”

“I got nothing.”

“So let's see it.”

I twisted my arms and gave the hoop a swing, which completed 1.5 rotations before falling to the floor.

“Well, you have to at least
try
.”

“I
am
trying. Look.”

My body would not cooperate. My torso went one way, my ass another, while my hips struggled to maintain some equilibrium between the two. I dry-humped the air frantically. The hoop rattled to the floor.

“Clearly this thing is defective.”

“You see?” said Katie. “
This
is what happens when you spend too much time having FUN
®
. You forget how your body works. Use your core. Imagine you're a salsa dancer.”

I tried again and failed again.

“Watch me. Maybe that will help.”

But no, that wasn't going to help. Katie was too good. It was like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle by watching a motocross race. I mean this woman was a
pro
. She barely moved at all, just this slight swaying of the hips. Then, with a subtle motion that tingled my groin, she sent the hoop orbiting up over her breasts, to her neck, then slipped her arm up under it and caught it in her hand.

“Here. Try again.”

Pretty much I'll try anything once, and probably twice, and probably a couple times after that—but inevitably there comes a point where it becomes pointless. When you have to admit that whatever it is might not be the thing for you. Katie was a good-enough teacher, but as a student I was hopelessly distracted by the method of instruction and general circumstances of the classroom, not to mention the glimpses of pale belly I was getting every time my instructor raised her arms. I mean I was absolutely
floccillated
.

I gave up on Hula-Hooping, and Katie gave up on trying to teach me. The heater was going now and her apartment was hot, and she set the hoop aside and took off her sweater, revealing a tight black T-shirt with the words
Dirty deeds done with sheep
.