Fake House by Linh Dinh

in the flush of youth, but to love someone is to envision cradling aninvalid, or even a corpse, in your arms. It’s the very emblem of love, cradling a corpse in your arms. The physical degradation of your lover is the first and last allegory. The body is merely a semaphoric armature to telegraph the soul’s intentions.
    He did not call me for three days after that kiss and I was relieved to be left alone. I needed time to think things over. I was scared of, yet eager for, what seemed inevitable. Finally the well-advertised, dreaded event. What are the means by which two clothed, talking people are transformed into sexual partners?
    It was ten o’clock and I was in bed. I thought,
If he doesn’t call me tomorrow, I will call him
. Then the phone rang. He said, “Susan, I’m across the street.” His voice was fragile, cowed.
    “What are you doing across the street?”
    “I have a six-pack. We must talk.”
    “But I’m in bed.”
    “We must talk.”
    I opened the door to let him in. His meekness on the phone had emboldened me. He was a reduced person, discounted, remaindered. He was remaindered of the day. He even appeared shorter. Gone was the authority who could thunder, “El Greco sucks!” He had difficulties composing his face. I said, “Come, we can sit and talk on the bed.”
    He had only glimpsed my bedroom from the hallway while walking from the living room to the bathroom. He sat at the edge of the bed and observed his novel surroundings: a poster of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting; chrysanthemums in a carafe on my desk; well-stocked bookshelves. I was sitting on the bed with my legs crossed. He took out two bottles of Sam Adams from a paper bag and gave me one: “You have a bottle opening?”
    “A bottle opener?”
    “Oh, yes, ha! ha!”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “I’ll open it with a key.” He took out a set of keys and started to fumble with his own bottle, then he opened mine.
    “Why are we drinking good beer? Any special reason?”
    “No, no special occasion.” He grinned. He had been studying my bookshelves as we were talking. “Robert Walser! When did you get that book?” He glided his hand over my knee, barely touching it.
    “I bought it at Hibberd’s a month ago for five bucks.”
    “Who told you about Walser?”
    “No one.”
    He got up to pull the book from the shelf, then sat down again, but a little closer to me, a nearly imperceptible distance closer. He opened to a page: “Listen to this:
Perhaps because of a certain general weariness, I thought of a beautiful girl, and of how alone I was in the wide world, and that this could not be quite right
. Isn’t that nice, the ‘quite right’? He didn’t say it was wrong; he said it ‘could not be quite right’ that he was alone.
Self-reproof touched me from behind my back and stood before me in my way, and I had to struggle hard
. Ha! ha!”
    “Why is that funny?”
    He did not answer but swigged his beer, then inched yet closer to me, a bald gesture, unprefaced by any statement. He sat perfectly still. We both sat perfectly still for a minute. He stood up unsteadily, in slow motion: “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”
    It’s gluey, I’d been told, lots of glue. It’s sticky like glue and even dries like glue. Elmer’s Glue. When he came back, he had a panicky, sorrowful face and did not sit down: “Maybe I should go.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    You coward
. “Then go.”
    “But I don’t want to.”
    “Then sit down!”
    He resumed his old spot, sitting sideways, bookward, with his face turned away from me. We both kept still for another minute. Then he turned to me and said, lugubriously, his eyes downcast, “It’s great to see you.”
    I put my finger to his lips to spare him any more inanities. I turned the light off on the night table and pulled him closer to me. I whispered, “I want you.”
    I kissed him boldly, nibbling the corners of his mouth and his lower lip. I thrust my tongue inside.