PAPER COMPANIONS

     “You know how my first relationship ended? We went back to her place after dating for a few weeks, and while we were undressing each other on the couch, I randomly decided to ask if she’d thought we rushed things. You know what she did?”

     Bobby’s eyes remained loosely affixed to the half-finished drink before him. “What?”

     “She just said ‘yes’ and waited for me to leave.”

     “Jesus, man. That’s rough.” He knocked back the last of his drink in one quick gulp and waved over the bartender to ask “could I get another whiskey sour?” The bartender nodded and turned to pluck a bottle from the ceiling-high wall of exotic liquors marked with a photo of Johnny Cash flipping us off beside a green-and-yellow sign proclaiming “CASH BAR!”

     Bobby watched the bartender mix his drink before him and asked “that was Paige you were talking about, right?”

     I sank slightly into the leather stool and thought for a moment as a TV nailed to the wall at the end of the bar cycled through reruns of The Honeymooners that could barely be heard over the music. I finally took a drink from the beer I’d been nursing all afternoon and said “actually, never mind. I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

     “I feel that. It wasn’t always like that with Lexi, man. We used to do everything together, but some time last year, something just… changed.” A fresh drink landed in front of Bobby and he took a sip as the bartender disappeared with the empty glasses.

     “Was it at least a clean break-up?”

     He shook his head. “Dude, barely. She doesn’t really have anywhere to go, so I’m letting her have the apartment for a week to get her stuff out. I’ve just been staying with Cisco or going camping until she’s out, you know?”

     I shrugged. “May as well take the dog house on the road.”

     Bobby laughed. “Man, fuck you.” He took another pull from his drink. “Hey, did I tell you I was out in Taos a few nights ago?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Yeah. Man, I don’t know if it’s the sudden freedom, but I’ve got the sudden urge to move up there and just bum around the desert all day with a nylon guitar. There was this one chick I saw at an art gallery that kept looking at me, so maybe I’ll head up and get started on the rebound.”

     I chuckled. “You could start playing for tips while trying to swoon her.”

     He held up his drink and said “see, you get it.”

     I tapped my bottle against the rim of his glass and we both took a pull from our respective drink. The glasses landed with a thud on the counter as we listened to the music fight with the TV for dominance of the room until Bobby asked “hey, can I ask you a huge favor?”

     “It’s nothing illegal, is it?”

     “Oh, I was actually hoping you could rob Lexi’s place for me.”

     I shot him a glance to see if he was joking.

     “Nah, I’m kidding. I left my laptop in the apartment and need it for work tomorrow, but I don’t want to, like… make things weird for her if she’s still there, you know? Could you stop by sometime tonight and go grab it for me?” 

     I thought for a moment and watched the condensation roll along the lower half of the bottle. Finally, I said “sure. You want me to do it right now?”

     He nodded. “If that’s okay.”

     “All right.” I threw a crumpled five dollar bill onto the counter beside the bottle and explained to Bobby “in case he wants to cash me out before I get back.” He nodded and sank slightly into his stool as he stared into the wall of bottles while I rose from my seat and headed for the exit propped open with a tattered stool.

*****

     The summer sun was setting over the courtyard and bathed the property in a soft orange glow as a breeze rustled the ocotillos planted along the sidewalk connecting the buildings. I stood on the edge of the patio for Bobby and Lexi’s one-bedroom apartment tucked beneath the stairwell for an upper unit and rehearsed what I wanted to say while a flash of movement occasionally brushed past the cream-colored blinds in their living room window.

     Eventually, I worked up the nerve to knock on the white wooden door and promptly forgot the script I’d written in my head as one of the vanes rose slightly so a curious eye could glance through to see who it was.

     I called out “it’s just me.”

     The slat fell and the front door opened so Lexi could greet me in sweatpants, slippers, a band t-shirt, and her hair tied into a messy bun atop her head. She pushed up her glasses and said “sorry. You can’t be too careful.”

     “It’s fine. Sorry to just kind of drop by unannounced like this. Uh, Bobby wanted me to come get his laptop and figured he’d make it weird if he was the one who came by.”

     “Did he say where it was?”

     I shrugged and muttered “nah.”

     “Wait here like one second.” She disappeared back inside with the door hung open behind her and I looked around mindlessly as I listened to her rummage around inside. Tucked into the corner of the patio were potted plants with their names written on the base in different colored oil paints beside a pair of folded-up lawn chairs.

     Lexi eventually poked her head back through the doorway and said “Hey, I can’t find it. Do you want to just come look?”

     “Uh, sure. If you don’t mind.”

     “Yeah, just leave your shoes by the door.” She slipped inside and I leaned against the doorframe to unlace my high tops as I looked around the apartment. The pristine white walls were marked with dust outlines where paintings used to be as piles of belongings sat scattered along the tile floor beside half-full cardboard boxes. In the dining room was a white wooden dining table with room for two and a half-eaten container of Pad Thai while a black leather couch sat in the living room adjacent to a fireplace and a TV mounted just above it.

     I threw one shoe onto the floor and as I knelt down to wrestle off the other, I commented “I didn’t know you guys had such a tidy place. Bobby always had me meet him somewhere or in the parking lot.”

     Lexi sat back on the couch and called back “thanks, I tried my best.”

     I chuckled. “Yeah, he never really seemed to me like he was much of a cleaning-type.”

     A frown flashed across her face that quickly receded as I rose up and shut the door behind me. “You can say whatever you were about to. I don’t really give a shit.”

     “It’s nothing. I just got tired of cleaning up after him, I guess.”

     My eyes ran along the perimeter of the room to choose a corner to start searching in and my gaze settled on a bookshelf beside the hallway. Lexi scrolled on her phone as I crossed the room past her to examine the spines on the shelves and see if maybe the laptop had somehow ended up wedged between them. I listened to her phone quietly chirp, chime, and simmer behind me as my finger ran along the rows of historical fiction and philosophy textbooks until something compelled me to ask “you a big reader?”

     She glanced back at me to see what I was talking about. “Oh, those are Bobby’s.”

     I brushed past a tattered copy of ‘Being and Nothingness’ and remarked “really? I didn’t know he was into this kind of stuff.”

     She gave a half-laugh and shook her head. “You’re lucky. I could never get him to shut up about it. I know everything about Descartes except who he is.”

     I chuckled and continued to examine the shelves until I ran out of rows and looked around the apartment again. Beside the couch was a milkcrate tipped onto its side with a row of records stashed inside with a Crosley turntable sitting on top. I pointed at it and asked “mind if I take a look?”

     She looked over at it and said “it’s probably not in there.”

     “Yeah, I’m just curious what Bobby listens to when we’re not driving somewhere.”

     Lexi gave an amused smile and simply said “fair” as I knelt beside it and examined the cardboard sleeves for The Weeknd, The Misfits, Sabrina Carpenter, and Hüsker Dü. “Now, which ones are your and which ones are his?”

     “Both of us.”

     I chuckled. “Lucky. Every time I got in the car with Paige, it was an argument of if we should listen to Frank Ocean or Megadeth.”

     “Paige?”

     “Oh, uh, we dated back in college.”

     She lit up slightly with recognition and a smile. “I remember that! You called Bobby in the middle of the night about the break up and it woke me up.”

     I laughed. “Sorry about that.”

     “If you don’t mind me asking, and it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, but what happened between you two?”

     I rose from beside the turntable and thought for a moment as I rocked softly on the balls of my feet. “Honestly, I think we just liked the idea of each other more than we liked each other. We were each other’s first relationship, so we kind of just… dove into it, you know?”

     Lexi thought for a moment. “Yeah…”

     “We met in a history class on my first day and we started talking and hanging out after a week. One day, we decided to go get lunch at Dion’s after class and I just kind of asked if she wanted to make it official. We dated for a few weeks, went back to her place after dinner, and while we were hanging out on the couch, I just randomly asked if she was worried we’d rushed things. She got really quiet for a bit, then she just said ‘yeah’ and I sort of let myself out. I drove around town until midnight and decided to call Bobby since he’s usually up late and I didn’t really know what else to do.” I gave a half-hearted laugh. “I remember the first thing I did when I finally got home was I logged into my student portal and dropped the class we were in to give her space. I didn’t see her for like a month and I thought I was doing a really good job of avoiding her before I found out she’d dropped out entirely to move to Albuquerque and start the nursing program at UNM.”

     “Oh my God, I’m so sorry…”

     I shrugged. “It’s whatever. That was years ago, but I DID have to ask Bobby if I was really that ugly.”

     We both laughed and Lexi gently shook her head. “I don’t think Bobby and I really rushed things. He just stopped really being here, if that makes sense. He started spending a lot of time with Cisco, and he just came home really drunk last week and I just started yelling at him--” She sat up straight as a jolt of realization hit her and she frantically said “sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about him like this.”

     “It’s fine. I don’t really give a shit. He’s kind of just someone I hang out with, you know?”

     “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if that’s who he is for everyone.”

     A silence settled between us with the chirp of cicadas just outside the window as the orange sunset began to lose itself to the bleed of night creeping in. A softer jolt of realization struck Lexi and she asked “sorry, did you find the laptop?”

     “Nah, not yet. You don’t think you packed it by mistake?”

     She laughed. “No, I don’t want it.”

     I looked around and noticed the bedroom door at the end of the hall had been left open by a crack. “You mind if I check the bedroom? I don’t know where else it might be.”

     She sank slightly into the couch and said “yeah, that’s fine” as she receded into her phone again.

     I pushed past the couch down the hall and gently nudged the door open. The room was barely lit by long streaks of fading sunlight that broke into long strips across the carpet by the crooked slats in the blinds. Rows of half-empty boxes sat pressed against the walls up to the closet that had been left open with a mound of clothes sitting on the floor with empty hangers dangling from the wardrobe rail.

     A queen-sized bed with a twisted red comforter sat beneath the window and on either side were matching self-assembled dark grey nightstands. I recognized which one belonged to Bobby by one of his watches sitting atop it and I gently pulled open the drawer to find the silver laptop sitting atop a pile of random belongings. I pulled out the laptop with its frayed charging cable and noticed hidden beneath it were empty medication bottles, tattered paperbacks, and a polaroid of Bobby and Lexi holding each other on the outskirts of Taos Pueblo. 

     I tucked the laptop under my arm and slid the drawer shut as I pushed back into the living room. Lexi heard me approach and asked “you find it?”

     “Yeah, it was in his nightstand.”

     Lexi gave a half-hearted laugh. “Of course…” She rose from the couch and met me at the end of the hall. “You leaving?”

     “Yeah, I should probably go make sure Bobby doesn’t run off to Taos and get himself killed.”

     She chimed a broken giggle and walked with me to the front door where I laced up my shoes. I opened the front door and said “see you round?”

     “Yeah, see you round.”

     The door shut gently behind me and I followed the moon-lit sidewalk through the courtyard to my car parked just on the other side of the pool.

*****

     A row of piss-yellow street lamps led me along Galisteo St. to the entrance of the subterranean bar at the bottom of a stairwell marked with a painting of what I assumed was a goddess lit by blue-and-purple flood lights. The bouncer recognized me and waved me through into the bar that was now packed wall-to-wall with people. 

     I scanned the room from the fridges past the dartboard to a small alcove with Naugahyde seats lit by red Christmas lights and found Bobby leaned back on a bench laughing with a passing patron. I pushed through the crowd to the bar and by the time I received a fresh bottle of beer, Bobby had finished his conversation and I sat down beside him.

     He leaned into my ear so I could hear him over the commotion. “YOU GET IT?”

     “YEAH, IT’S IN THE CAR. FIGURED YOU’D WANT IT WHEN WE’RE DONE HERE.”

     He grabbed me on the shoulder. “GOOD MAN! NEXT ONE’S ON ME.”

     “THANKS!”

     We tapped our drinks against each other and took a celebratory pull. The murmur of the crowd swelled over us and filled the room until Bobby leaned over and asked “HEY, DID I TELL YOU I WAS THINKING OF GOING BACK UP TO TAOS THIS WEEKEND?”