When they met he was a star onstage. He knew some people. He knew everyone. He took her to silent midnight performances in decaying factories abandoned in Brooklyn. Actors danced on the sides of buildings, actors hung by ropes. Everyone gestured, signaled, even the audience. Deanna didn't know the language of mimes, but she understood the sound of Tim's motions.
For three days, a troupe of French modern dancers, of gymnasts, double back-tucked from one raft to another, floating along the Gowanus Canal. After the first hour, she began to fidget, turned her body toward his. His pointed chin rested on the heels of his hands, his elbows stayed balanced on the rail.
"I could watch this all day." He sighed, recycling his sound from that morning, when he was on top. Before he pulled out. She returned her hand next to his, found the pocket that held the reserve and summoned up the small white lie.
"Me too."
She clenched her full bladder and clamped the elongating cracks of hunger. Five hours later they paced off the Carroll Street Bridge.
He invited her to the Big Apple Circus, they wore VIP badges, and afterwards went backstage. She fed an elephant. Rode her palm quickly across torches. On the street, he bought three red delicious apples from a vendor and juggled for her under the Madison Square Garden marquee. People stopped to watch and she stepped proudly to the side, opening up the field of visibility. He saw the entire city, every single borough as a stage. Until the show closed, she went to theater row every night but Monday to see him perform.
She laughed at everything, was so happy, she accepted flyers from the hands of low paid street marketers, stopped and listened to sidewalk pitches from Greenpeace volunteers, put pennies for the homeless in the oversized jug. She wondered where he'd take her next, and felt lucky to have found an adult who could appreciate the world just like a child.
"There's not one crevice of this city we haven't explored," Deanna told Margaux and her girlfriend Sally at the hidden Slouvlaki place in Queens Tim had taken her.
"He's not even from here, he's from Nebraska, of all places, but he knows more about this city than anyone I've ever met."
"This is unbelievable food," Margaux said. Her mouth was rimmed with Tzatziki the thickness of Elmer's Glue.
"It has ostrich meat in it," Deanna volunteered, with the same authority Tim used when she took her first bite.
Margaux was learning to cook, but had yet to find her way with the oven.
"You could make this, Mar," Sally encouraged. Margaux weakened to her juvenile eye roll; a reflex to which Sally felt persecuted. And that one reflex set off an assembly line of movements. Sally's fingernails rose toward her teeth. Margaux blocked Sally mid-lift, lowering her hand to the table to capture it under her own. Sally slid her hand out from under Margaux's and sat on it. Margaux's fingers splayed on the tabletop, vulnerable as a crustacean's exoskeleton.
Deanna was not alive to their gestures, could not hear the sound of their signals, the pantomime of rejection and hurt.
"I'm telling you. He knows everything. He told me he loves me."
Margaux looked skeptical.
"But you've only been going out three weeks," Margaux said, concerned.
"We were only going out for two before I said it," Sally reminded her.
"Yeah, but we're gay. 'Too much too soon' is the first commandment of the lesbian constitution."
Sally put down her Slouvlaki. "What do you mean, too much too soon? You think we moved too fast?" Margaux's eyes rolled.
Deanna motioned for the food to be wrapped up. "He's the one. I'm telling you. I know it. I've never felt anything like this before," she said.
"Let's hope you get along with his mother," Sally said. Margaux's eyes widened, offended.
"Or at least be open to therapy." Margaux took a quick sidelong glance at Sally.
"You know what would be nice? If he was deep. If he understood your feelings."
Margaux faced Sally. "You know what would be even better? If he understood his own."
"Guys, I love that you're arguing over this," Deanna's voice raised, "but this guy is it. He's it!" She stood and slapped her hand down on the table as if laying down a hundred on an overly confident bet.
Nothing stood still. He took her everywhere. His friends became her friends; their life was a constant salon, a fluid stage of entertainment. He clapped his hands when he got excited and tried to whip up enthusiasm to buy a church upstate; convert it into a theater where they could all live. Everyone loved the idea, but no one did anything about it.
His Pantomime troupe always rehearsed but never performed. "The Bips" pandered to Marcel Marceau. They wore striped pullovers and white clown make-up, styling themselves after Marceau's most famous character, the clown, Bip. Every Sunday night, "The Bips" gathered in an abandoned Church in Red Hook to practice silent exercises like The Cage, Walking Against the Wind and The Mask Maker. The other Bips were French, had studied at Jean le Coq, which made the whole endeavor foreign and exciting to her. Her life, her friends, her apartment, all felt mundane in comparison.
One day, three months in, he called her from Brooklyn.
"Meet me at this address," he said. She didn't know Brooklyn, was afraid of it actually, so took a cab and lied when Tim asked how she got there. It was an unfurnished apartment, seven large rooms and Tim leaned against a fireplace, smirking.
"It's not the country," he said, "but it's big." Brooklyn made her nervous. She didn't understand where the neighborhoods were in relation to one another, didn't own a bike, couldn't understand the bus system. Her life was built and lived on a numbered grid system. Brooklyn was quiet and tree-lined and felt impossibly far from home, but the apartment was huge. There was a garden. When she hedged, he asked what he could do to ease her fears.
He took her hands, clasped his fingers with hers. If they raised their arms they'd form a Huppah.
"Just say the word," He said. "I'll do anything." He lifted her hands, higher. Higher. She looked up at their stretched arms.
"A steeple," he said.
A Huppah.
Hers was the last affordable apartment in Manhattan but it was too small for two. Ten years was a lot to give up for someone she'd only known a few months.
She spoke to the Huppah. "I want two locks. A new one and one that bolts."
"That's all?" He asked the steeple, "Two locks?"
"A new one and one that bolts."
He repeated it, "A new one and one that bolts."
When she smiled now, it felt closer to her heart. He understood her needs, validated them by repeating her own words back to her. All she had to do was say the word. He'd do anything, he said. She couldn't think of one person who had made that promise before. Seven rooms and anything to make her feel at home. She carved her name in the molding of the Manhattan studio. Thought it was free money when they returned her five hundred dollar deposit.
Both names went on the lease.
His friends came over every night that first week, and on Saturday she took Sally and Margaux to the nearby South African restaurant. It was her first time out in the neighborhood without him. She buried her hands into her jeans pockets as she walked, afraid she'd get lost, afraid she'd get mugged. From a block away she saw them sitting on a bench and the pressure on her chest released. Margaux was holding a green flyer.
"Greenpeace?" Deanna called as she neared.
"No, some girl is trying to break up with her boyfriend," Sally said. Deanna cocked her head, confused.
"There's some couple handing out fliers on the corner down there," Margaux pointed down the street to the left. "They're trying to get rid of each other, but in like a semi-diplomatic way."
Deanna laughed. "That's brilliant."
"I think it's a total cop-out," Sally said.
"Well, what would you do if you couldn't leave someone?" Margaux asked Sally, but Deanna interrupted.
"Why wouldn't you be able to leave?"
Margaux gazed up at the cherry blossom tree. "Say you're stuck."
Deanna smiled, repeating Tim's words in her head. I'll do anything. It meant more to her than "I love you."
"I think it's a total cop-out," Sally repeated.
Deanna leaned over and looked down the street. She could make out vague notions of two figures. She laughed.
"It's genius."
After dinner they walked over to watch. The woman stood on the Northeast corner, the guy on the Southeast.
"It's not about the Lord," they called, one after another, trying to encourage occupied, dismissive hands to receive their colorful one-page pamphlets. Deanna saw everything as a performance now. The pedestrians were mimes, the flyer couple -- puppets. There was a cliffhanger urgency to all things, like waiting for Phillipe Petit to fall from the wire between the Twin Towers. Margaux had a wistful smile on her face; Sally folded her arms in defense.
Deanna looked at everyone wondering what was going to happen next. Their hands clutched the fliers, extended and fluttered out. Clutched, extended, fluttered. The repetition of mimes. There were so many ways to communicate, she thought. So many different ways to say the same thing.
That Sunday, Deanna noticed the lock hadn't been changed; the bolt hadn't been installed. She felt a tug of dismay at the discovery, but smacked it away before she could feel its weight. He was on a ladder, rewiring the living room overhead when she mentioned it. "The Bips" were coming over in an hour and Tim was replacing the florescent with bulbs.
"You didn't even notice," he said.
"But I notice now," she said, leaning against the wall, her hands behind her back.
"If you felt safe without it, obviously you don't really need it." Her need wasn't about logic and therefore she didn't know how to argue for what she wanted. She became confused, muted.
"But I don't feel safe anymore."
"Don't you see how illogical your argument is? You wanted a lock in order to feel safe. Once I said I'd do it, you felt safe. It wasn't the lock you needed; it was the reassurance."
This first argument felt annihilating and she could not find her voice. Frustration tears kicked at her eye sockets. He had repeated her words. "Two locks. A new one and one that bolts," and that lead her to believe he heard her, but now she felt he didn't and she had no idea what to do.
"I don't understand," she said, her voice unstable, a kid slipping down rock face. She didn't know how to install a lock by herself; she needed him to do it. She didn't know Brooklyn or this neighborhood. He said he'd do anything to ease her fears, but instead he was raising them. What happened to anything?
"It's too expensive, Deanna. It's not worth the money."
"I'll give you the money for the lock."
But Tim had his head full of wires and a screwdriver in his mouth.
That week she began to feel an uncomfortable onset of doubt, but she scrambled to hedge out of its way. She thought she'd cleared it, but it returned briefly, one night during sex, when Tim cupped her.
"They're perfect," he said of her breasts, seemingly awed.
Deanna smiled with confidence.
"I just wish they would go together more," he added trying to squish them into one large boob. She rolled her body away into its nascent fetal shape and felt dragged faraway through wet, dulcet weeds. She had to lean her ear to a conch shell to hear him now. There was thickness in the grief, in the unfastening. His tone was innocent, but the sentiment was not. There was a bitter underside. She had no control over how small her breasts were and now, wished she did.
It took weeks for the stale aching to dissipate. She dodged all the messages her body sent. A connection was lost; things were disengaged like the wires still hanging from the living room ceiling. She said he was the one; wanted him to be the one. She would suffer through these uncomfortable feelings until the other feeling returned, the one from the beginning when she told Sally and Margaux that this guy was it. Until she felt it again.
One month into the shared lease Tim rose from between her legs.
"Do you get waxed?" He asked. The timing of the question was off, but she had always been proud of her dainty bush and imagined he felt lucky to have scored such a hairless wonder.
"No, I'm just naturally not that hairy," she said, congratulating him with her smile.
"That's too bad. I think a big, hairy bush is really sexy. Like when it's a jungle and your face can get lost in it."
Deanna closed her legs and rolled over.
That night the feelings returned, hardening her stomach into solids. There was nowhere for her to go if they broke up. Maybe the feelings were wrong. Maybe he was the one. What if she explained her hurt and he changed?
Never did it again? What if she woke up tomorrow and the locks were on the door? She gave him one more chance, but a gnawing gut response was cutting a groove in her lining. Stop it, she thought. This is not a big deal.
She watched from the couch that next Sunday as they moved onstage, improvising, rehearsing gestures and movements. Tim was the best of the lot. He was built like a mime: supple and elongated like a beautifully carved hunting spear. "The Bips" stayed well into the night, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, speaking in French and rolling their own cigarettes. Tim scrambled to follow their conversations. He would interrupt with laughter that was too hard; improperly pronounce a French word, fall back on his heels, arms crossed and hands tucked into his armpits as if he was about to tip out the back of an airplane. She saw his other angles now, was watching him from a different corner of her brain. Onstage "The Bips" were emboldened by his talent, challenged by his precise and august gestures, but out of the spotlight, they seemed to regard him with a sophisticated disdain. Offstage he was awkward, inelegant, trying to be a part of something that didn't need him. She hadn't seen this before and she was struck suddenly with the sense that she preferred him silent.
Other angles began to bear their fruit. His skin started to bother her. Not the color or texture, but how he wore it: draping and flaccid, like panties that lost their hold. It was his breath. It was the way stains found resting places, burrowed into his shirts, on his face, minutes after eating and then hours after eating. It was the way he spoke. The way he saw the world. The way he repeated questions by ignoring the person asking, only to pose the same question to himself.
"Are you hungry? she asked.
"Am I hungry?" he asked.
It was his attempt at pretension. The way he wore scarves, like he was European, but wasn't. That he recapped theories she had originated, presenting them to people as his own. Their neighbor, Lewis complimented him on a picture she had taken and Tim said, "Thank you." Every time Deanna saw Lewis in the stairwell she wanted to whisper, "I took it. That picture was mine." But a person can't win back credit for a compliment that's already been claimed.
It was how seriously he took himself, how interesting he found his personality, how funny and charming and handsome he thought, not just his reflection, but what lay under his skin. That awful skin. He was effeminate. His long, limp hands over-gestured, flopping over themselves like a stutter.
Tim pranced across their living room carpet. His arms stretched out on either side of him like a split. He put hand over hand, pulling an invisible string at the end of a helium balloon. The invisible balloon jerked the top part of his body, and he leaned, as if about to be blown away. His expressions fell with the ease of a deflating condom.
He said one thing and did another. He said he'd do anything and did nothing. It's not such a big deal, she'd tell herself. Maybe he would put the lock in. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was the one. She would think about it tomorrow. It was becoming unclear who disgusted her more.
Days later, on the street, he wanted to show her a new movement he was working on, but she didn't want to trigger the growing disdain. In an effort to dissuade him, she kept on walking.
"Show me later. Show me at home." But like an infant, he pressed and she feared he might fling himself down on the concrete and wail his lean legs against the cracks.
"I want to show you now. I made it just for you," he whined loudly, his eyes off her face, following the people passing. She gave in and he turned his body toward the pedestrians, away from her, making them his desired audience. He put his hands to the wind and palmed it like a wall he was stuck behind. The passersby laughed, laughed and passed by. Something in her breastbone uncurled, exposing itself like the underside of an insect.
He was a sell out. "That's not new," she told him.
"I know, I know," he responded, jumpy and awkward. Not wanting to admit having taken advantage of a free opportunity for attention. They passed the flyer couple on the street, monotoning together and then separately,
"It's not about the Lord."
Tim handed her the mesh bag of laundry and when the flyer couple turned toward him, he slowly took a step and dropped down one rung. Then he took another and another advancing until he was almost sitting on the sidewalk.
"It's like I'm walking down the stairs."
"Great," Deanna answered, mortified, turning away from him. It was embarrassing how many people slowed down, how many stood affixed, watching. The more people slowed, the more Tim performed. Deanna saw someone imitate him, lampooning his overwrought hokey gestures. He thought he was being emulated, Deanna thought he was being parodied. Deanna glanced at the flyer couple on opposite corners of one another, envious suddenly of their relationship; the distance between them. The couple paused their activity to watch Tim. The woman looked impressed and Deanna wanted to switch places with her. Now Tim walked up the ladder. She wanted to pantomime drop-kicking Tim down his pretend stairs.
People moved on. The flyer couple pressed forward.
"It's not about the Lord," the girl said as if convincing herself; practically forcing the flyer into people's full and passing hands. The sound of fluttering paper. The sound of walking through paper.
She felt latched into place, held hostage like a diamond in a bezel setting. She had anxiety attacks at the thought of leaving, not of being without him, but of being alone. She awoke in the middle of the night enclosed in dread. There was nowhere for her to go, but more pressing -- she could not abandon that apartment. Worse, she could not surrender it to Tim. There were shoddier reasons people stayed together, she reasoned. An apartment was not the worst. Even if it was a rental. Did he know how long it took lavender to grow? She wanted to see the first sprouts.
In the Laundromat, a couple folded clothes together, playfully snapping each other with their towels, getting closer with every smack to the others' genitals. Pathetic, Deanna thought, shamefully jealous. A woman, alone -- almost overweight, but not quite -- sat inches from her washer, relaxing to its tumble the way some people did to those audio tapes of bird calls and torrential Mexican rain storms. "Anna Karenina" lay on the woman's lap but she was diversion reading, her chin turned with every new patron that passed through the doorway, every new recruit, or potential companion. Deanna was grateful when the girl returned in earnest to Levin and Oblonsky, Anna and Kitty. Deanna had read until page 360 and put it down. She wanted the girl to tell her how it ended. Maybe she'd slip her phone number in the binding of the book with a note that read, "Tell me how it ends," and walk away as if she hadn't been there at all.
Deanna tossed the light-colored clothes into the Double Loader, the dark ones into the other. She separated the colors as she went through the bag, not before, at home, like people who had specific laundry days.
Tim lifted himself onto the folding table and pulled out of his pocket a wooden puzzle with a metal ring embedded in its center. The goal was to remove the ring without cutting or breaking it, and he had been playing this game for two months having made no advancements. His eyes were small; the whites around the iris were too exposed, almost to a laughable degree, he looked either manic or wildly enthusiastic. Above them, like two baby coffins lay sparse, cramped eyebrows.
Tim twisted the wooden puzzle into different configurations, through and around the metal ring. His facial expressions contorted in over-exaggerated responses to his efforts, a character actor in a slapstick comedy.
When she looked over, she saw him pie-faced with oily white makeup. He held it out for her to try. Deanna's arms were loaded down with clothes, but the puzzle lay outstretched in his hand, and his eyes waited, naively and dreamy as if she were a mommy who just couldn't wait to play a game with her child. Deanna ignored him and shoved the clothes in the machine. His jock strap fell out and she was tempted to leave it there until he called it by its proper name.
"It's a dance belt," he had insisted.
"Then why does it look like a jock strap?" she asked.
"I didn't design it. I just wear it. So when I move, when I pantomime, I'm kept in one place."
What you're telling me, Deanna thought to herself, is that you're a girl.
Tim fussed with the puzzle some more until he slid off the table, saying,
"Be right back." She watched as he purposefully exaggerated his run, performing for her and all those passing strangers. He lifted his knees high, moved his arms as if he were snowshoeing with poles that were too tall. He turned while running and waved a big clown wave, smiled a big circus smile, hamming himself around the corner.
Maybe he'll never return, she mused. Then this will all be settled and I can keep the apartment and the best of his things. Yes, maybe he won't come back. Then I wouldn't have to break up with him, fight for the apartment. If he never returned, it would all be settled through no fault of mine. Wouldn't that be nice?
She thought about the blue penguin hat. Would she want that or not? It seemed to have some sort of magical karma. Every time he lost it, it was returned. It was a baby's beanie, soft and the perfect shade of blue, not too smoky, not too dense. A white square patch was sewn onto the top. There was a picture of a penguin on it. And in the picture the penguin was wearing a hat. It was a meta-hat she used to say. But the fact that the penguin was wearing a hat on a hat didn't seem to interest Tim. He couldn't get behind the way she saw this. He couldn't get behind her vision.
She'd keep the hat. He didn't even deserve to be wearing the hat now. If he didn't understand the extraordinary meta-hatness of the hat, he was not deserving of the hat to start. Yes, that settled it. She would keep the meta-hat and give the rest to charity. Or to a consignment shop.
She tried not to show her disappointment when he returned. He plopped back down on the folding table, reading the infamous green flyer. When he was done, he put it down next to him and started kicking his legs.
"Wanna do something?" he sang, his voice half baby.
"Aren't we now?"
"But something fun. Let's do something fun." She cringed, but he continued, "I know, let's buy a house in the country and get married and have kids and animals and dogs and things."
"Okay, and then for dinner should we build a restaurant out of laundry?" She mocked.
"Sometimes, when you think you're funny, you're not," he said.
And sometimes when I dream you won't return, you come back.
Deanna walked over to the community board and scanned the announcements. On an early date, they woke up at three in the morning to slick posters and tack postcards for his play to every flat surface in town. They streaked the city with the glossy cards -- TONY-nominated comedy extended by two weeks! There was a stack of one thousand un-hung cards in the back of their closet.
One in particular caught her eye. It was a black and white headshot of a woman pouting at the camera in an effort to look sexy, which in turn made her look old, wretched and unspeakably alone. Below her picture it read: KUNDALINI YOGA! Om Shanit. Deanna smiled. A photo of the teacher in order to sell yoga was bad enough, but to misspell the language you're purporting to know? Om Shanit? Please. She should be shot, right in the karma. But when Deanna went to take the flyer down, to keep it, to show to Sally and Margaux, she stopped short. Om Shanti was spelled correctly. The inversion had been Deanna's mistake. She turned back to Tim who was eating a candy bar and reading the back of the Village Voice.
"Wanna do a threesome?" he asked, waving the paper enthusiastically.
She lifted herself up on the folding table next to him and looked at the green flyer.
"Why'd you get this?"
"Why'd I get this?"
"Yes. That is the question I asked. Why did you get this? Now what happens is you respond by giving me an answer." He was turning her bitter.
He looked over his newspaper at her.
"What's your problem?"
"I just want an answer to a question. Your answers are questions, they are never answers."
He put the newspaper on his lap and snidely, with great contempt, slowly answered her question,
"I...got...the...flyer...so...I...could...read...what...it...says."
She stared at him. She wished he would die. Then she took the wish back. She didn't wish him dead in the physical sense, she wished him dead, metaphorically. Erased out of the picture dead. But she also took the wish back because wishing he were dead made her inexplicably believe in karma.
"Was that answer to your satisfaction?" he asked.
Deanna didn't respond. Instead, she picked up the flyer. All the words were in italics. Some things were bolded, others underlined. She remembered when she got her first computer. Every new document she created became a flyer of some sort; every new feature found its way onto the page.
Some things to know about Mark before getting involved: (THE FAILINGS) he falls asleep when things get heavy (so he's depthless), he uses party as a verb (so he's young), he is from Maryland but says he's from DC (so he is a liar), he thinks he can sing (he cannot), he thinks he is funny (so he's delusional), he doesn't like to be the center of attention, he DEMANDS to be the center of attention, like at other people's weddings or your nephew's bar mitzvah (as a for instance), when he showers he
The washing machine beeped mid-sentence and Deanna jumped down off the table, opened the washer, and transported the heavy wet whites into the dryer. The colors soon followed. An old James Brown song came on the Laundromat radio and Deanna looked over to bond with Tim. This was one thing at least they still had in common.
Tim had heard it too and without attempting to connect with her, he closed his eyes, smiled and swayed as if he was practicing Kundalini with Om Shanit. Deanna closed her eyes too, closed them in order not to see him.
His cell phone rang and he flipped it open on the half ring.
"Ça va, ça va," he said, a little bit louder. His accent was without soul or root. He spoke the way tourists wore sandals with socks: displaced, a mockery. He had not earned the right to speak another language publicly. A woman rolled her eyes as she unloaded her machine and Deanna moved away lest his posturing reflect unkindly on her.
Last night, Margaux said matter-of-factly, "Break up with him. If I could do it, so can you. It was the best thing I did, breaking up with Sally." Margaux seemed like a new person, lighter, free from contempt.
"And you know what did it? - " Margaux continued.
"Those flyers. Those ugly green flyers. I could see myself doing that, too. You know? That's what scared me. I could actually picture myself handing out flyers on the street trying to get rid of Sally."
"I can't break up with him," Deanna said, irritably, as if Margaux weren't listening.
Margaux tilted her head to the side, turned her eyebrows down toward her nose.
"I can't lose that apartment. It's got pocket doors! A garden! If I have to live somewhere else, I'll die."
"You're already dead," she said.
"Whatever."
"So you're staying with him for the apartment."
"Exactly."
"Well that's dumb."
"Oh really? Why'd you stay with Miranda?"
"Sleeping next to her cured my insomnia."
"But she made you cut off your friends."
"But I was so well-rested."
"You see?" Deanna said, "Why can't we sleep through a breakup? It'd be so much easier. You'd wake up and there'd be no pain."
"I don't know, I guess people want to be awake for their lives."
She began harboring dreams of living alone in the house. She chose paint colors, entire color schemes. With Tim's stuff gone, she would finally want to paint the walls and hang her pictures. She would actually settle in and make a home.
In the beginning, he bounded to greet her when she came home, but now that he was a mime, he slithered, appearing before her, slowly and soundlessly. At home he wore white face paint and spoke slowly, as if English was his second language.
Deanna stuck her hand in the dryer and felt a few things. Then she stuck her face in and picked out the small stuff: her bras, underwear, his dance-belts, and closed the door on the towels and clothes. The lid smacked closed behind her and she attempted to fold the small things, although she'd heard that small things did not need folding. As she folded the small things, she glanced again at the green flyer.
Some things to know about Mark before getting involved: (THE ACHIEVEMENTS) he clips his fingernails religiously (so he is hygienic), he rinses the little beard hairs from the rim of the sink (so he's considerate), he reads more than one newspaper (so he is informed), he chews with his mouth closed (so he's of good stock) he talks to his mother a few times a month (so he likes women), he doesn't judge people who have been to therapy although he claims he would never go (so he is almost open-minded).
Deanna took the flyer and tacked it onto the Laundromat board covering the Yoga flyer. She studied it, with a marketer's eye. On the way home, Tim wanted to cross the street and take a flyer from the guy. He wanted to see what his said about the girl.
"It's not about the Lord," the woman on the corner called out to passers-by, "It's not about the Lord."
Tim ran across the street, but caught himself mid-jog, slowing in order to walk, or "float" as he called it. He took a flyer from the guy. They appeared to hit it off and Deanna stood next to the flyer girl and set the laundry bag down to wait. Finally, it was too awkward to share a street corner together without conversing, like two socially inept mimes.
"What are you doing?" Deanna finally asked.
"I'm warning the world about him."
"What'd he do?"
"He dated me. And he failed at it."
"And what's he doing?"
"Same thing, but for me."
The girl handed Deanna a flyer.
"No thanks."
"Please, just take it. He won't let me break up with him until he has a replacement."
"Well, I don't want him."
"You might."
"Why didn't you want him?"
The arm holding the flyer deflated.
"I didn't see this coming, but everyone is asking me that. Why should they want someone that I don't even want? I thought this was a good idea, but nobody will take him. I can't live like this anymore." The woman dropped to the ground, sitting like those Chinese kids Deanna had seen on TV. She just dropped from standing into squatting, her body like a stretched out paper accordion over her feet.
"Do me a favor, just take the flyer," the girl's outstretched hand was shaking. Deanna took the flyer and crossed the street to get Tim. As she neared, the guy nudged Tim and the two of them abruptly stopped speaking. The guy looked at the flyer in Deanna's hand and jokingly said,
"No offense, but you're not really my type."
"It's not for me, asshole," Deanna said as she handed the flyer to Tim and walked away. Tim took his time to catch up with her. Deanna was fuming, not so much that the guy had made fun of her but that her retort was so lame.
She could have said, "You're not mine either," or "You couldn't afford me," or "Jesus thinks I'm too pretty for you," but she didn't believe in Jesus and her two other retorts were duds. And then she was irritated that Tim hadn't said anything, hadn't taken offense.
As he approached, Tim said,
"They're cool. We should be friends with them."
"They're breaking up."
"Yeah, but maybe they'll stay friends. He said he was into Marcel Marceau also, so maybe he can watch our troupe, give us feedback."
Deanna rolled her eyes, but Tim was behind her and couldn't see. They were not interested in the same things. But mainly Deanna was not interested in Tim. He tried to dress the way the troupe dressed. He tried to look like a European artist but he failed at it, instead he looked like a poorly dressed Seventh Grade boy. French men could wear their pants that high, they could even pull off light summer scarves, but American men could not. He was vocal about his stance against phoniness, which, if you took a look at his studied outfits and constructed efforts in appearance, his lame clipped attempts at ça va and bonjour, was the phoniest thing about him.
Now her hands were shaking. She touched the back of her sweaty neck and wondered if a person could seep out of you like a toxin. If she treated Tim like a toxin, perhaps she could be strategic about shedding him.
They went their separate ways inside the apartment. She went into her office and he went into the living room.
She sat at her desk, staring straight out the window. She could hear them from all the way down the block.
"It's not about the Lord."
"It's not about the Lord."
She opened her laptop.
Some things to know about TIM before getting involved: (His Failings): He has never been in therapy (so he's unevolved), he calls insulting you being honest (so he's heartless), he doesn't do what he says he will (so he's a liar), everything he does is a performance (so he's egotistical), he lives in his dreams but not in reality (so he's unconscious).
Deanna re-read. This wasn't the direction she wanted to go in. She didn't want to give anyone the option of not taking Tim. That's why the other couple was having such a hard time: they were honor selling. Deanna didn't want to be honest; she wanted to lie. She wanted someone to take Tim from underneath her, someone who would applaud him onstage and off. She began again:
UP FOR GRABS: One Used Boyfriend in excellent shape. Tim has no noticeable bruises, scars or injuries incurred by current girlfriend. He is a lovely man, a fine mate, but his time here has run out. I am hoping to find Tim a new home. He is 6'2, very handy (he can re-wire bulbs and change door locks), he loves to cook, knows his wine and will make a fabulous date. He is anxious to marry and start a family.
Deanna knew this last line was the winner. The sentence that would send Tim flying off the shelves. She smiled and then closed out of the program. She felt a bit better. She stood and looked out the window, but she was not better. He was always walking up and down pantomime stairs. They didn't see things from the same height anymore. The lock was unchanged, the wires still hung loose, and "The Bips" would never perform. Nothing would change unless she changed it. She'd say it was a joke. Sell it as performance. She'd say it was the flyer couple, she'd say it was "The Bips" who inspired. He'd be impressed that she uncovered a new genre. Flyer mime.
She chose her font, printed, and called down the hall to Tim that she'd be right back. Down the block she chose the blue paper and handed her flyer to the woman at the copy shop. She sat outside drinking an iced coffee, her eye on locations, and waited for her 100 copies.
After careful consideration, she took a spot a block away from the green flyers. The sensation was odd. She wasn't a performer and in order to follow through with this gesture, she had to play a part. She pretended she was selling the paper, the newspaper.
"Boyfriend for sale, Boyfriend for sale," she called, at first awkwardly, unsure. She wasn't actually selling him, but it was catchier than,
"Used boyfriend," or "Free boyfriend" which could easily have been mistaken for a political cry. In the first half hour only one woman took a flyer, but then she gained her strength and more came, some men also. People were laughing, soon some milled around waiting to see if the boyfriend would emerge. In the distance, Deanna could see the green flyer couple catching on. Their heads craning and cocking down the street. They kept their distance.
Deanna was down to about fifty flyers when she realized the woman with the green flyer was standing right next to her.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, like she was the proprietor of the flyer domain. Sinking low, she thought.
"Giving away my boyfriend," Deanna said, not meeting her eye.
"But, that's what I'm doing."
"No, you're not. You're selling him, on both negative and positive points. I'm just giving mine away."
The girl took a sign out of Deanna's hand.
"Maybe I should change the color of my flyer to blue," the girl said.
"Maybe," Deanna added, confident in her flyer right down to the font.
Tim came out of the apartment and spotting the small crowd, smiled eagerly and bounded to its center. He said hi to the green flyer girl and hi to Deanna. More people stopped at this point just to see why the other people had stopped. The flyers, being the only source of explanation, were leaving her hands without her having to offer.
Tim looked at Deanna, oblivious somehow to the flyers, aware only of the small lingering audience.
"Wanna see the new gestures I'm working on?" he asked her, projecting his voice, eyes on the crowd.
"Yeah, show them to me," Deanna encouraged. "Show them to us all."
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