Things to buy : "Balancing Equations" excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the short story “Balancing Equations,” available as a single booklet or in Bitter, Deceptive and Petty, a collection of four short stories.

One week into a new job at a new store I decided that Emily was the only employee there who I wanted to see naked. We worked in different departments and she only worked weekends, so I spent eight-hour shifts plotting out ways to talk to her and scripting our conversations in my head. I learned which bus route she took and tried to time the end of my shift so that we’d be on the same bus to the same subway station. One night it finally worked.

I followed her onto the bus. She went to the very back, sitting in a corner with three empty seats to her left. I sat beside her, leaving one seat between us. She recognized me and smiled when I turned to say hello. We exchanged phone numbers before reaching the subway station and taking trains in opposite directions.

I called her the next night. Two days later we arranged to meet at a different subway station after she finished school.

I went early to wait for her. I saw her before she saw me, and I stared until we made eye contact, until the escalator had carried her to within a few feet of me. We walked to my house, and I kissed her an hour later. She stayed the night.

The next morning I walked her to a subway station and said goodbye. I walked home trying to forget and wanting to hide, but the sun was too bright.

It wasn’t real. I’d never meant for my imagined conversations with Emily to be anything more than play-acting or for my convoluted schemes to deliver her to my bed before I learned her middle name. I wanted to pretend nothing had happened, but my roommate must have noticed her shoes the night before. He met me at the door with a predatory smile.

“How old is she?” Matt demanded.

“How old is who?”

“Fuck you. I saw her leave this morning. How old is she?”

I tried not to show regret.

“She’s ... she’s 17.”

“Uh oh. High school?”

I didn’t say anything. Matt’s smile widened. “I bet she’s one of the girls everyone goes to high school with who only dates older guys. There are dozens of boys her age in love with her, but she doesn’t see them. And you’re the guy who shows up in the parking lot to pick her up after school, after he’s finished his university classes for the day. And all the boys her age just glare.”

“Except I don’t drive or go to university.”

Matt laughed and continued, “You’ll be installing a spoiler on your parents’ car by the end of the week. And when she’s late meeting you after school, you’ll discuss chrome-plated rims and custom interiors with boys her age who don’t have girlfriends but who are getting hard-ons at the possibility of being able to change that by following in your footsteps after they graduate. You’ll be a beacon of hope lighting the way for sexually frustrated 17-year-old boys. You’ll guide them through seas of rejection and teenage acne, illuminating a path to the promised land of casual sex. You’ll be a flicker in the distance as their passing ships with cargoes of angst and—”

“I get it.”

Matt laughed. “No more beacons?”

“No more beacons.”

From then on Matt filled most gaps in conversation and rebutted all criticisms with glib remarks involving grad photos, prom dates, university applications or other fragments of high school. Despite this I tried to believe that Emily wasn’t very young in the scheme of things, and I told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. While Matt only meant to tease me, each reference to Emily’s age reminded me that I was probably taking advantage of her.

The guiltiest I remember feeling was on the night I met her 14-year-old sister. I shouldn’t have met her sister at all, but I couldn’t manage to tell Emily I didn’t want to see her anymore. And I guess I still wanted to have sex with her. I figured I deserved it after spending so much time convincing her I was interested in more than just sex.

It was a Friday night, the first night I’d slept at Emily’s house. Her parents were home, so I’d been assigned the upstairs bed and her the downstairs one. I was going downstairs to say good night when her sister returned home drunk with a friend. They cornered me in the kitchen.

“Oh. Hi! ... You must be the new boy! We were ... we were just talking about caulking!” one said.

My mouth opened, and I thought about saying something but didn’t manage. The girls giggled viciously. I thought about how much Emily looked like her sister.

Emily rescued me as I drifted towards Humbert Humbert territory. I was still thinking about her younger sister when she told me she loved me an hour later, after we had silent sex beneath the heating vent connected to her parents’ room.

After hearing Emily say she loved me, I felt obligated to feel something for her. I thought about all the marriages based on pregnancy instead of love, and I knew I was trying to love Emily because I didn’t feel I had a choice. My plotting and planning had worked her clothes onto my floor, and I’d had plenty of opportunity to sever ties instead of continuing to sleep with her a few times a week until she told me she loved me. If it really was love, I decided I should coerce myself into loving her back. I didn’t think it would work, but I wanted to be able to say I’d made an effort. I didn’t want to seem lazy.

Matt was watching TV the afternoon I thought all this through. I tried to ask him what he thought of Emily, but he began swearing because Star Trek: Voyager was the only thing on. Eventually he seemed to hear me.

“Teenage girls are like Star Trek spin-offs. They’re not so bad to look at for a little while, but when you start paying attention to them, they don’t have a whole lot of depth.”

“That’s your advice? To accept that Emily’s more like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than Star Trek: The Next Generation?”

“My advice is to get out now,” Matt told me. “But that, too.”

The rest of this short story is available as a single booklet or in Bitter, Deceptive and Petty, a collection of four short stories.