“Michael” by Isaac Black

“I don’t use maps when I travel. I love to just wander without knowing where I’m going. You get to experience all the things that locals become blind to, you know?”

Michael reached her long, white arms up to the back of her head and, without blinking, adjusted her ponytail. Deanna would later think of those arms as tentacles for how thin they were at the shoulder and almost as thick at the wrist, seemingly boneless when they were wrapped around her, but in that moment Deanna was thinking nothing, processing nothing, only feeling her face get hot. It had been quiet too long; Deanna had to think of something to say. 

The coffee shop where they sat across from each other served weak coffee, the little tabletop was tacky, and the egg salad sandwich they split was dry. It was a shithole, the only walkable place open at that hour, but to Deanna it could have been home. She wanted to pull her hood up, lay her head on her crossed arms and let Michael’s syllables pour over her until she fell asleep like she used to do as a kid in the automatic car wash. It was their first date, if it was a date. 

Three days before, Deanna was volunteering at the clinic and Michael walked in, looking calm and fresh like no one looks when going to give blood, tall and wearing a halter top that showed armpit hair if you were looking. They talked about a movie they both wanted to see and made plans to go together. 

The movie wasn’t showing anymore. They took an extended walk through the park, getting dew on their socks as the moon rose, until they ended up at a coffee shop cooled with just an open door. It was the sixth summer since Michael had moved to Salt Lake City from her tiny Nevada hometown, the one with the house of optical illusions off the interstate. (Her brother, whom she spoke to around Christmas every year, had once worked there for two weeks.) Michael skipped her high school graduation and stopped by her mother’s desert grave on her way out of town.

“Isn’t it scary to travel without a map?”

Michael’s reaction was hardly perceptible: half a missed beat in the slow tempo she was tapping on the table, what could have been a wince, a slight deflation of her chest. Deanna hadn’t meant it as a criticism.

“I mean,” Denna said. “I’m not very adventurous.”

“No, yeah,” Michael said, and trailed off. Their eyes met.

“I like your freckles,” Michael told her. Deanna blushed. 

Three weeks later Michael was stealing from her. She slept over as often as not, and in the morning Deanna would be missing a pair of shoes. Then it was money going missing. Was she just spending more? Pieces of jewelry followed, records, keepsakes. 

They woke up together on an unusually cool June Saturday. As they pulled together some breakfast Deanna got a text from her good friend Sheila. She needed a favor (and she knew she still owed her from last time). Sheila bought an antique chest of drawers at an estate sale, and Deanna’s cousin had a truck. It was only ten minutes away.

“Why can’t Sheila just go with your cousin?” Michael asked. “Why do you have to go?” 

“Sheila doesn’t know him,” Deanna explained, speaking softly to try to hide the resentment in her voice. She would stay, she would indulge her if she could persuade herself that Michael had a point. 

“I can’t go,” Michael said as if it was the hundredth time. “I told you when we woke up I’m not feeling well. I need Excedrin or something and you’re out of everything.” 

“I have some ibuprofen, I thought.” 

Michael didn’t answer. She pulled on her shoes and stood up and kissed Deanna. “Bye.” 

When Deanna got to her cousin’s apartment he disappeared into his room to get ready, asking three times where the place was and at one point sitting motionless, or at least not moving in any way that would create a sound. A minute later he snickered at something on his phone. When he finally emerged he poured himself an orange juice and sipped it while Deanna sank farther into the couch, updating Sheila again on their ETA and listening to the vertical blinds on the busted sliding door clatter in the breeze. 

While she waited she felt a sense of unease tugging at her. She thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that it was coming from somewhere outside herself. 

The two picked up Sheila, who was effusive in thanking them. Deanna’s cousin softened. When they rode back in the bed of the truck holding the chest of drawers upright (because the cousin had left his tie-downs in the apartment), they got a little chilly. The unease stayed with her, and she knew it was not her own.

“Where’s Michael?” Sheila finally asked at a red light. 

“She wasn’t feeling well.” 

Sheila didn’t ask any other questions. 

#

“I don’t know how you make such good coffee,” Deanna said while Michael served her granola and yogurt and french toast. 

“You burn yours.” Michael smiled and leaned across the table for a kiss. “How was the chest of drawers?” 

“It’s pretty nice. Solid chestnut, I think. I took a picture.” 

When Deanna showed Michael the picture, she recoiled. “That’s not an antique. My ex’s parents had that exact same one. It was from Pottery Barn or something.” 

“Really!”

Deanna got Sheila on speakerphone and, smiling, told her what Michael had said. 

“Yeah,” Michael confirmed gingerly, “It’s definitely not an antique.” 

Sheila shouted playfully, “They told me it was! They ripped me off.” 

“It’s not like it was hundreds of dollars,” Deanna said, smiling at Michael, who looked away. 

Sheila pretended to work herself up into an outrage. “But it’s not antique!” 

“Just pretend that you don’t know. It’s the exact same piece of furniture either way.” 

Sheila laughed. “Don’t play mind games with me, Deanna.” 

When the call ended Michael had a puzzled look on her face. “Do you really believe what you said to Sheila?” 

“Sure,” Deanna said. “I don’t know. What’s the difference.” 

“It’s the difference between an antique and not an antique,” Michael said, stressing the point with quick nods. “It’s the difference between one thing and another. Sheila was lied to.” 

“She’s just as happy with it, whatever it is.”

“Are you being serious right now?” Michael asked, as if Deanna had personally hurt her. 

Softly, bewildered, Deanna asked, “Are you?” 

“I need to go for a walk. I feel like I’m in crazy land.” 

Deanna’s throat tightened—what did Michael mean by that? As she steeled herself to bring up the thefts, an emotion threw her off balance, coming from the same place as the unease. Michael left. 

This new feeling was stronger than the last and loud enough to crowd out her own thoughts. It was like the trance that comes with saying a word so many times that it loses meaning. She knew it was coming from Michael.

She spent a long night trying and failing to distract herself with a book. By the time she fell asleep she was familiar with the feeling’s texture—little blips of black humor on the surface. It had a soundless depth, and as the night went on into early morning all nuance slid into its dark gravity. Despite this immaculate bond, Deanna did not know what Michael was thinking. 

Late in the morning she woke up to a text. It was an apology. Deanna lay on her back and felt for the gloom that had kept her up last night. Now guilt snaked through it. She texted back and said that it was alright, and the despair lightened and receded out of the weird portal.

They reconciled for a week or so. Deanna did not confront Michael about the stealing. She hadn’t felt the feelings during that time, and she was afraid to risk sending Michael back into the suffocating blackness. Or that was the reason she gave herself.

They spent almost every night together. Things were good. One morning Deanna got ready for work while Michael reclined on the bed. Deanna thought of the night before, spent talking and cuddling and playing, and glanced at Michael’s face every other minute because of how it was glowing. Things were good, maybe good enough now that Deanna could talk to Michael—gently, empathetically—about her stealing.

A new feeling trickled in, and Deanna focused on it. It was an unfixable wrongness, a repulsion like walking through old, gritty snow littered with dog shit and debris. Its putrid odor stuck to Deanna, like Michael’s psyche was decomposing her to make room for whatever would come next. Deanna looked at Michael, trying to hide the hurt. Maybe it wasn’t really coming from her. And, at first glance, Michael’s serene expression seemed to suggest Deanna was mistaken. But something was off. Michael looked like a doll, her eyelids hanging half shut, unblinking; her mouth was frozen in a practiced smile. 

Deanna was too uncomfortable to be around Michael—even brushing her teeth within earshot was too nerve-racking. She left for work early. Later that night, Michael stopped by and, with a kiss, curled up in the still-unmade bed. They chatted, but it was superficial and stilted. Michael, on the bed, propped herself up unnaturally on her elbow. She said she was antsy. 

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. 

“Ok,” Deanna said with her back turned. 

Michael never came back. 

When Deanna was getting ready for bed she noticed that her phone charger, which she always kept plugged into the same socket, was missing. In an act of idiocy that she couldn’t have predicted or justified, she texted Michael: “Come back.” Michael never replied. It was hours after dark, and Deanna realized she hadn’t eaten any dinner. She put her phone just barely out of reach and stood at the kitchen counter eating crackers. After half a sleeve her stomach felt emptier and her phone hadn’t buzzed. It would still be several silent hours before she slept. 

In the following days she told herself that everything was okay and that Michael had simply forgotten to reply. When she could no longer sustain that lie, she chafed that Michael would steal from her and then refuse to get in touch. She tried to access Michael’s feelings again, hoping to gain some clue of how to handle what was happening. As time dragged on, she began to wish for the feelings just so she could get closure. And because it was uncomfortable to care when caring was unwelcome. 

Left to her own conclusions, she tangled them up in a knot: Deanna should have been the one to break things off, if anything—did Michael live with that feeling of despair day to day?—there must have been something more that Deanna could have done for her—how pathetic to not confront someone who stole from her. Gradually, new and mundane concerns took Deanna’s attention away, and her memories of Michael, unresolved though they were, became less insistent. Deanna left them alone, the happy times included, in some dusty corner of her mind. 

#

“I don’t use maps when I travel.” 

Michael was talking to a man in a speakeasy, trying not to ruin her inflection in talking over the crowd. His drunken face sagged as he smiled at her. He put his hand, the one not holding a cigarette, on her knee. 

The feeling welled up in Deanna’s center, not beaming in from the side as it had done before, so potent that she had to crawl over her friends’ legs out of the theater because she had no idea how she would react. The feeling was so proximate to her own that the pair—rich and vivid—orbited each other and battered Deanna’s insides to the point that she thought she might vomit. She was hurt and horrified, and, because she knew firsthand what Michael was feeling, she felt selfish. Michael was feeling what she hadn’t since that first night with Deanna. Joy.

Featured art: “Better Off” by Mallika Hegde

Isaac Black is a historian and writer living in Salt Lake City. His short fiction has appeared in apt, Protean, Foliate Oak, and The MacGuffin. He spends as much time as possible outside with his dog. You can find him on twitter @_isaacblack.

Mallika Hegde is a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.