A Touch of Jen

by Beth Morgan

“A public school in Vermont is more luxe than most private schools.” “You’re talking out of your ass. You’ve never even been to Vermont.”

He looks at the people around them on the platform. He’d be ruder to Alicia, but he doesn’t want them to think he’s a bad boyfriend.

“You realize you’re already putting on your fake voice? Can you please not do that thing where you meet new people and agree with everything they say?” “This is my normal voice.” “Just don’t be like, ‘Yeah, I totally agree!’ to everything everybody says. I’ve never seen you be the same around other people as you are around me.”

“Sorry!” he says, with many apologetic gestures. The premise of this exchange is that he’s struggling with the bags, but it’s difficult to imagine him ever having struggled. His eyes are the mint color of Lady Liberty, and his expression is moneyed and free of pain, like a royal corpse. He sets down the bags. “Excuse me but I really have to shit,” he says, and pumps his arms on the way to the bathroom.

“I’m sort of joking. But you are a complete freak, Remy.” She tells Remy not to take her too seriously. “It’s just my opinion. Which is, you know, correct.”

“I think it’s a good thing that he’s someone who wants to bring out the best in me. And challenges me to be better.” “That sounds awful, actually.”

“I hope your final transformation isn’t a sadist who I can’t take anywhere.” “It’s just something working itself out. When people go on juice cleanses, their body rebels. You feel awful and you have crazy shits because your body is purging itself of the bad matter. And then you become clean.” “I just hope our relationship lasts through this purge.” He says this hoping that Alicia will recognize it as a veiled ultimatum. She doesn’t react. “Me too.”

“Just think about how much fun you’ll have telling your next girlfriend how nuts I was.”

“Maybe we do a trial period. We foster the parrot. We can all be foster parrots, haha. You know how it goes, though. Before you know it, you’ll fall in love.”

Outside a basement room that is definitely not room 426, he sees Alicia, abandoned on one of those gurneys just like the patients upstairs. He recognizes her, even though a sheet is pulled halfway over her face. Her eyes are open, in the innocent surprise of a cartoon character whacked on the head with a frying pan.

He looks at the baggy. It was this tiny package of material to which most of his text messages were addressed, to whom he complained about work, this package of material that used to wear all the makeup sitting at home in their apartment, who used to make him late to movies, who hogged the bathroom sink, who gave him blowjobs. He can’t believe it. Alicia, contained in the same sort of thick plastic bag that beads would come in if you ordered them online? No. He can believe in the moon landing, but not this.

When the server returns with the credit card and Alicia’s dad signs the slip, Remy lowers his eyes to see how much he tipped. It both horrifies and satisfies him to see that it’s only ten percent. No wonder Alicia was so fucked up.

It’s a relief to sit in the kitchen and listen to Carla’s boy problems. She tells him about a bartender she’s been harassing. “If he really wants to ghost me, fine, he should ghost me. I literally don’t care. But if I text you a bunch of times, then commit to ignoring me. Don’t respond the sixteenth time. That’s just teaching me to be persistent.”

“So you live with Jake? What do you do?” “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t totally want to do the whole What do you do? conversation.” “Oh my God! I know what you mean. I’m just, like, a robot. Wow, sorry!” The girl makes a face that Remy can’t interpret and tells him what she does.

“You have to talk to someone,” says Jen. “Shit, Remy. Otherwise you’re going to get really twisted. I can already see what kind of alcoholic you’re going to become.” Remy looks up. Jen is smiling. “Jesus,” he says. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” she says, in her podcaster’s drawl.

“She was always pointing out things I never would have noticed otherwise. And now, there will be this whole aspect of the world that is forever invisible to me.”

“Sometimes the only way we can feel close to someone we’ve lost is by taking on blame for their passing.”

Andrea finishes her beer and tells him that it seems like he has a lot of defense mechanisms in place. “I look forward to the day when those emotional walls come down.” She leaves shortly after, saying that she hopes to see him in the next course. He lies and says that she definitely will. He doesn’t understand why she, like Jen, seems to believe that whatever is behind Remy’s “walls” is anything good.

One of her roommates has a pet rabbit that roams the living room and sits in Carla’s lap like a cat. Carla, unnervingly, doesn’t use a baby voice when talking to the rabbit. “Do you want another blueberry?” she says to the rabbit, sounding pissed off.

There’s no response, not even from the parrot. As Remy is thinking of something for Jake to say, something infuriating like I don’t know dude as long as it’s a fun ride does it really matter? he’s struck by the sadness of having this imaginary dialogue.

When she turns her head, she occasionally catches an angle much covered on her Instagram, animating those holy photos that have become part of Remy’s private experience. It feels indecent to look at Jen in this bar, in front of everyone, when he’s used to looking at her in private.

Jen doesn’t say anything. Remy asks her if that’s weird. He’s so overwhelmed by the sensation of disclosing something true that he forgets that what he’s saying is a distortion of the truth.

She says that she was “deep in her id,” and admits fault at the same time that she belittles him: I think I was probably using you to work through some personal shit that doesn’t involve you. I’d say we should be friends?? But right now is probably the time to set boundaries for myself. She implies that she only slept with him out of low self-esteem, and then disguises this insult by claiming that her momentary slip-up wasn’t “fair” to him. The text is smoothly offhand, and yet, to Remy’s practiced eye, masterfully dishonest.

There are pimples on her shoulder blades, and her face is the same as it always is: snub-nosed, bossy, unremarkable. What must it be like to be one of Jen’s closest friends, calibrating yourself to be appealing in every way and yet never succeeding as much as Jen does without even trying? To have to stand next to her and resign yourself to paling in comparison? Or does she not even notice?

“Would you do me a favor? Just tell me about your day. How you went to the farmer’s market. How you waxed your board. How you got a wax.” It’s not funny, but Remy laughs. “There’s no farmer’s market today, you dumb, sad idiot.” Her voice has more pity in it than he’s used to.

But when she was finished, there was a beatific feeling in the room, and the snow brightened the light coming in through the window. Not only did they have nowhere to go, but even if they wanted to, the snow would have made it impossible. Unlike all the other limits on their lives, this one had been comforting.

She touches his hand. The slimy sensation of her fingers against his skin is as intimate as the taste of his own saliva. He closes his eyes again, the better to see everything perfectly.