August/September '04

Matthew Simmons The Bottle
Tao Lin The Novelist
Samantha Enns A Sheltered Paradox
Brendan Kiley Three Versions of How I Found My Winter Coat

1.
They stumble-wove down the street, cobblestones hopping up to trip and scuff their black uniform shoes. It was probably very early in the morning and they were probably way past curfew. Two were from Virginia, one was from Oklahoma, the other was from California, and none of them had been to Barcelona before.

They all joined the Navy right out of high school, and while they complained steadily, each secretly suspected he was content without really knowing it.

The one from Oklahoma had never seen such ancient buildings and walked staring up between the pockmarked walls at a band of sky as blue-black as his peacoat. He imagined tiny men tightrope-walking the clothes lines strung from balcony to balcony.

Three women chatted on the corner, waving their hands and cigarettes in lazy ellipses. Another small group of men approached from the opposite direction. The one from California fingered coins in his pocket, watching with drunken detachment as the one from Oklahoma bumped into one of the others, who cursed at him in a Scottish accent. The one from Oklahoma cursed back. The Scotsman threw his coat on the cobbles and cursed some more. This surprised the one from Oklahoma, who had never seen a man take off his coat to fight, except in the movies. He took off his coat and threw it on the ground. The two began punching and their friends jumped into each other, legs and arms in all directions. One of the ones from Virginia saw two policemen running up an alley. He shouted a warning and everybody ran, steps echoing through the crumbling canyons.

The next day, I took the train into the city from Manresa, the withering textile town where I was living. I found the one from Oklahoma's coat in the gutter and was grateful - winter was coming and I had neither coat nor money to buy one.

2.
She kept telling him she was Basque. He wasn't sure what that had to do with anything but he didn't really care. She was beautiful and strange with black, crinkly hair and glowing light skin like well-creamed coffee. She had freckles and glassy green eyes. He was drunk and had just fallen in love with her.

"What's your name?" he asked after she handed him a bottle of white wine and tipsily told him to find a corkscrew.

"Teresa," she said. "I'm Basque. But I live in Paris. Have you ever been to Paris? I hate it. We Basques hate Paris. We come from sheep. We have many sheep. We are sheep people, and we love to fuck. Basque women love to make love and we're honest about that - not like other women. We love to fuck, even standing up - we are sheep people. I'm just saying that because I'm honest. I will always be honest with you, even if it's painful sometimes."

That presumptive "always" filled him with reckless joy. He asked if she wanted a drink. She nodded. They wound their way through the party to the kitchen to find some glasses. Three young student types argued loudly in Catalan, spilling wine on the sticky floor. He realized for the first time in his life that he could fall in love and spend his life with a woman who wasn't American. He was taken by a violent, almost nauseating passion for Teresa. He didn't want to have sex with her as much as he wanted to deny her his sex and deny himself - painfully, exquisitely - hers. He was transfixed.

"Where are you from?" she asked in a flat, narcotic sing-song.

"Alaska," he said.

"That's why I like you. We're both from someplace else. I hate Barcelona and I hate the Catalans. They are the assholes of Spain, bitches with blonde hair and big tits. I shit on them. I am Basque and they can tell by my eyes and freckles. And you want to know the worst thing? My mother is Jewish and Italian and I married a Berber. Not an Arab - a Berber. Do you smoke?" she asked, touching his cheek.

"Yes," he said, reaching for the pack in his left pocket.

"Have one." She gave him a long, brown cigarette. "Have two." She gave him another.

"Have one," she said to a passing man, handing him a cigarette. He smiled, winked, and tucked it into the pocket of his bright blue shirt.

"Let's go outside," she said and led him by the hand, weaving a luminous trail through the nest of murmuring bodies, babbling sweet hypnotic nonsense: snowfields, feather beds, gray skies, hay, farmhouse walls.

He sat on the stairs, watching her small white hands and wide green eyes. The man in the blue shirt came outside, lit his cigarette, and said something incomprehensible in her ear.

"Mmmm - goodnight," she said, blowing him a kiss as a blue arm encircled her waist, steering her firmly into the deep shadows of small streets.

He watched until she was gone and walked in the opposite direction, staring hard into the dark with stinging eyes. He clenched his teeth, released, and exhaled slowly. He shook off his coat and left it in the street. A few blocks later, he pulled off his shirt. Then his pants, then underwear, walking the final block naked but for the wallet and keys he held in front of his crotch.

3.
"Fuck you," she said.

"Fuck you," he said.

"No," she said. "Fuck you."

She marched across the room, grabbed his backpack, and hauled it onto the fourth floor balcony. He watched, sagging deeper in his chair, and raised a limp arm in protest as she dumped the lot - sunglasses clinking, books thudding, shirts billowing - onto the street.

He laughed a little, imagining himself a dissolute hero in some romance: two Americans meet on a train from Paris, fuck hot and hard, throw each other's things off the fourth floor of a pension run by a small, energetic old woman named Carmel. He wondered if it would be appropriate to slap her, but thought better of it. He stood, grabbed his empty bag, giggled, sighed, and shuffled out the door.

She stood on the balcony, watching him scour the sidewalk for overlooked knickknacks. She wondered if she should get a glass of water to pour on him, but decided not to. He was pathetic, so stupid, selfish, and beautiful. Of course it would never last.

He looked up at her though a nest of clotheslines, smiled, and walked through the front door.

"Motherfucker," she muttered, grabbed his coat from a nearby chair, and threw it off the balcony. It floated towards the cobblestones, passing its owner somewhere between the second and third floors.

He walked into the room, dropped his pack, and advanced to kiss her, aroused by her contempt and anger. They fell on the bed. By the time she thought to tell him about the coat, it was already gone.