Kristen Stewart Is a Lime Tree

I used to believe one-night stands were like four-leaf clovers—easier for other people to find. To be promiscuous, I thought, entailed beauty. And I only had truth. Subjectivity, actually. Far be it for me to contradict Keats, but beauty is not truth.

It’s January. A slow time for the restaurant industry. Everyone feels the weight of both abandoned and current religions, pants barely fit, and minimum payments barely get made on credit card bills. The revelation that alcohol is poison for the body becomes momentarily relevant and sobrieties are taken up with varying levels of inauthentic enthusiasm. I steer clear of those people because the truth is, they’re right. I want to continue living my life wrong.

Now that we can stop pretending Christmas means something, we have to least dolefully consider joining a gym. Not to lose weight—how gauche—but to gain strength because your body loses muscle all the time. Your body is betraying you right now, and will continue to do so. There is a curd of optimism that you could be a marginally better person, and this same curd prevents you from spending money at a restaurant.

But I work at a vegan café renowned for convincing fake cheese and non-dairy pistachio gelato, and our revenue’s been up this January. I’m the only omnivore who works there. It’s not a secret, but it doesn’t get discussed, either. I wash lettuce like I’m practicing for the ballet. I upsell chocolate with pink Himalayan salt like it’s going to change your life. I pretend to be offended when I get slapped on the ass, but it is a form of attention that, on some level, predicates on a man finding me attractive enough to demean. That sort of thing still matters to me. On my days off, and sometimes after a shift, I usually go to the Sick Fox.

One of the bartenders at Sick Fox is a real Adonis. I first saw him in December and it was like getting personally slapped by the aurora borealis. I discovered the truth about beauty. Namely, that I would do all sorts of inadvisable things just to have a slightly longer gaze. Start a fire, go on a Ferris wheel, develop an eating disorder. Just name it. I am highly susceptible. I secretly believe being with someone beautiful will apportion some of that beauty to me. You can always tell who was ugly in high school.

I did finally learn the truth about one-night stands. They happen, or they don’t. They are not four-leaf clovers; those continue to elude me.

The Sick Fox has a lot of ornate mirrors. There’s even a chesterfield that makes me wonder about semen stains. Call me prurient, but I’m always wondering about semen stains. It’s a narrow bar. Bright enough so you can gauge whether your date is genuinely hot, but not so bright that you can see their pores. There are two chandeliers. There’s usually nineties hip hop playing and every once in a while, a DJ. The selection of gin is unparalleled; the clientele is diverse.

To glimpse the bartender’s beauty is a form of drunkenness. Fjords flow different; cheese melts perfect; crying babies shut the fuck up. He is so stunning that it’s almost offensive. His smile is an orthodontist’s wet dream. I believe his smile can end clinical depression. And a text being left on read can cause clinical depression. I assume, anyway. I have never paid attention to a man’s arms before but I’ve started. I feel a compulsion to take the bartender’s picture. Borrow his soul and show it to him until he becomes Narcissus, only skip the drowning; always try to skip the drowning. Does he even know how beautiful he is? He embodies the halo effect so fully. Where are the psychologists studying him? I could be a psychologist.

It’s Monday, which is my version of Saturday.

He hands me a beer and I write a poem. I haven’t written poetry in years. This is how you know things are dire. I would give him the poem if it was any good but it’s irredeemable, not the sort of thing to provoke love, nor its lesser cousin, erections. I want him but I suspect he looks at me like any other customer. Maybe Sick Fox is one of those places that call their customers guests. The chandeliers would suggest this is the case. But every time I look at him, I conjure highly specific scenarios with no basis in reality.

For instance: we’re sharing a key lime pie in a retro diner, one of the few around, and the bartender tells me he’s got family in Florida with lime trees. I have never seen a lime tree. The only thing I know about Florida is that there are a lot of old people. I notice that I am eating more of the pie than he is and consider accidentally on purpose getting whipped cream on my mouth and leaving it there for him to brush off. Excuses to touch. Plausible deniability. Underwear, getting damper all the time. While I’m thinking of unoriginal plots to conjure kissing scenarios, he decides to sit beside me instead of across from me. What is going on? My eyes are still open when he gently holds my face to kiss me. Who does that, actually holds the face of the person they’re kissing for the first time? I am more accustomed to pornography than romance. He tells me that I taste sweet and tart. I’m flustered. I say, well, it’s not me, it’s the pie. And he says, his voice like an undressing wink: oh, it’s not just the pie, mami. He speaks Spanish and my brain becomes gibberish goo. Give this man a fucking phone book to read already. Do they still make phone books? I think they do. The bartender goes back to sitting across from me and has the last bite of pie. The plate looks immaculate. Not a single crumb. It’s nice to be with someone without dietary restrictions. Instead of talking, we have a communal, post-kiss silence where neither of us doubt the other person’s attraction. It’s not a rare phenomenon, exactly, but it also doesn’t happen as often as you’d like. Low-key, it’s everything. Maybe it is rare.

“Would you like another beer?”

I can tell this is at least the second time the bartender’s addressed me.

“I’ve never seen a lime tree,” I blurt out. Which is, in my defense, at least better than saying I want you to be in love with me.

The bartender looks at me with polite confusion. “Is that a yes?”

I nod, feeling incapable of further speech. That pie was so real. That it was real in my imagination only—well, who determines reality, anyway? Let a person have a fake pie experience with the world’s sexiest bartender. There are worse fictions.

When the bartender hands me the beer, our fingers do not brush. I mourn the lost opportunity. I admire the condensation of the glass, all beautiful and cold and temporary.

Later, the bartender offers me a margarita made by mistake. I think: yeah, I could do a city hall wedding. The bartender has turned my mind into a cesspool of frighteningly heteronormative convention. This can’t go on. I decide to look at pictures of Kristen Stewart, which is what I do whenever I doubt my bisexuality. I am reassured.

It’s Tuesday. I debate the merits of going to Sick Fox two nights in a row, but playing hard-to-get with a person you only ever see at their workplace doesn’t make much sense. In any case, I’m not hard to get. The femme fatale thing is the provenance of beautiful women. I’m depending on the exposure effect and my capacity for philosophically stimulating conversation to win over the bartender. As I think about what I have to offer him, I laugh. Who am I kidding? He probably has a goddamn harem. I would, if I looked like him.

            When I meet Jolene, she is wearing a blazer over a flimsy lace bralette. The sleeves are rolled up and her hair has been severely bleached. It looks unhealthy and promising at the same time, like the ashes of a phoenix. I have no idea what color her eyes are, which means they’re probably green. She takes the seat beside mine, thrusts a meaningful look to the bartender. These two should definitely fuck.

“What’s an ex-girlfriend got to do to get a free drink?” she says to him. Her voice sounds like a cigarette that ends up being responsible for a burned forest in California. A voice that has seen some shit, played some records, and wants you to know. It’s the voice of Helen of Troy, basically.

He steps from behind the bar and hugs her. As far as hugs go, it’s short and not very sexy, but I’m still jealous. Of both of them. They both start speaking in rapid Spanish and I recognize these words: siete diablo cerebro. Seven devil brain. What is this, a metal band? Why am I half-assedly learning Swedish on Duolingo when I could be learning a romance language to decode the two hottest people I’ve ever seen? I’m trying to figure out whose Spanish is better, but all I know is that I am turned on. Seven devil brain.

“I’m being so rude,” the bartender says, smiling at me. “Charlotte, this is an old friend, Jolene. And Jolene, this is Charlotte. She’s a regular.”

I’d rather be introduced as something else—favorite person, pleasure servant, dancing monkey—but then he hugs me, which is new and weird and absolutely should be something he does again. My arms land around his waist, which is plausibly appropriate since he is significantly taller and my feet can barely reach the base of the bar stool. I lean my head against his chest a little too long. He smells like bergamot. He smells the way I wanted my ex-boyfriend to smell. I think he notices my poor hug etiquette—unsolicited lingering—but he just smiles at me.

Jolene has seen every bit of this milking-the-oxytocin hug and I can tell I cannot hide anything from this bitch. I get distinctly gluten-free vibes from her but I also suspect she is partial to malbecs from Argentina. I’m trying to decide whether she would be impressed that I make my own kombucha when I realize Jolene is speaking. To me.

“Charlotte, like Charlotte’s Web,” Jolene says, which is what everyone says.

“It’s true. I’m a spider who gets sentimental about pigs,” I humor her.

“Are you a vegan?” Jolene asks.

“Regretfully, no,” I say. I think about mentioning my job, but why bother? She can ask me if she cares.

“Are you an alcoholic?” Jolene continues. Why are we still talking? I want to look at her without her looking at me but she seems determined to have an aggressive conversation. The bartender’s gone back behind the bar. I glance at him for help but he’s being suave to another regular. I notice Jolene still hasn’t been given a drink. Is she being snubbed? I think about the way her pendant, a silver key, is lodged in her upright cleavage like a promise.

 “Ask me after you’ve bought me a couple drinks,” I say.

“My money doesn’t mean anything here,” Jolene says, which I assume means: I never pay for drinks when my ex-boyfriend mans the bar.

We both get two tequila shots. Gratis.

My face is getting red.

“I want to see your pendant.”

“Just my pendant?”

The bartender looks over at us with mild curiosity. Have I become more intriguing, better-looking since talking to her?

“Listen,” I say. “I have no clue how to finger a woman that isn’t me. Honestly, I don’t even know how to finger myself. I have a dildo from Switzerland that does that stuff for me. I mean, I took piano lessons but I don’t think that’s necessarily a transferable skill, so if we’re flirting for real, I’m probably going to have a panic attack and performance anxiety but otherwise, I’ll be totally fine.”

Jolene stares at me. I’ve been too candid. I’ve had entirely too much to drink. I need to try and date my own attractiveness level but I’m spoiled by optimism. If you screw one hot person, you can’t go back to trying to love personalities or potential.

Then she smiles. “I can teach you.”

“One other thing,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never seen a lime tree.”

“I definitely needed to know that.”

Jolene unbuttons her blazer. It’s a single button. We are still sitting at the bar. I can see her navel now. And sweat. Her bralette is incredibly flimsy, absent of underwire and absent of coverage. It’s more a theory of fabric than actual fabric. Everyone can see. Including the bartender.

The same night Jolene teaches me how to finger her to orgasm in the bathroom of the Sick Fox, is the same night I give the bartender my phone number. I don’t see a conflict of interest. When you are single, you don’t owe anyone genital exclusivity. I wonder if Jolene will tell the bartender. Would the bartender not take it seriously, since no penises are involved? Would Jolene’s beauty partially transfer to me? Or would he think of me as Jolene’s sloppy seconds? Could I explain that on some level, when I fingered Jolene, I was also fingering him? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, so I look at pictures of Kristen Stewart again.

Jolene doesn’t pay for her drinks and when I’m about to pull out a twenty-dollar bill, she grabs it. “It’s covered,” she says dismissively. If beauty means free drinks, then, it makes sense I want to be in this club. I look at the bartender and he just nods at me. Is this acknowledgement, or confirmation of Jolene’s assumption? I take the twenty back and slide it underneath an empty glass. I’ve heard my mother say there’s no such thing as free lunch too many times.

The Uber ride is uneventful. Everyone gets five stars for what is ultimately a neutral experience. A transaction. Which might be what I am to Jolene.

Jolene’s apartment is clean and tasteful, which doesn’t surprise me but I was hoping for an embarrassing movie poster or a sink full of dirty dishes, something that would tell me it was okay for me to exist, in all my inadequacy, in her hemisphere.

Jolene is a project manager at a company that sells dermal fillers. In other words, I have no idea what she does. But it seems to involve a lot of e-mails and sighing. She still has not asked me what I do for a living, which I was initially pleased about but now, mildly insulted.

I ask how she met the bartender.

“At the bar, obviously,” she says.

I realize I was hoping she would have a different story. Either something reassuringly banal, like online dating, or something zany, like the funeral of someone they both secretly hated. Are all the bartender’s girlfriends from the bar? Well, there’s something to be said for the path of the least resistance. Jolene is tapping out an e-mail on her phone with an irritated expression on her face, which probably has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the person who will receive an email that ends with Thank you for your patience, which is code for Eat shit and die.

“Who initiated?” I say.

“I don’t remember,” she says.

I look at her. Don’t all couples have their origin story in microscopic, fanciful detail?

She adds: “I’m not very sentimental. That’s probably why we’re not together anymore.”

I’ve never heard anything like this, but she doesn’t seem to want to elaborate, nor is she in the mood for further prying.

“Go down on me,” she says. She’s still looking at her phone. I hesitate. If this were a man, I would laugh, if I thought it were safe enough. But Jolene is unprecedented. Jolene is Jolene. Jolene is the bartender’s ridiculously gorgeous ex-girlfriend. I have never gone down on a woman. I have never seen a lime tree.

“I showered twice today,” she adds.

If I go down on Jolene, she probably won’t come and the bartender might never send me racy texts in Spanish. Is this a good opportunity cost?

“This isn’t brain surgery,” Jolene says, perhaps sensing the arithmetic going on in my head. “It’ll be over before you know it. I come very easily. I just imagine someone else is doing it to me.”

Her candor renders me speechless. I give her what she wants. She is true to her word. When she comes, her phone is still in her hands. She does not go down on me and I realize that I don’t want her to, that I feel used but also like I have done something exciting, and I’m not sure if being used cancels out the excitement.

The last thing I say to Jolene: “Do you like Kristen Stewart?”

“Do I have two eyes and a heart?”

I want to say Do you? but I am relieved. Jolene can’t be so bad if she likes Kristen Stewart. When I leave, she is still sending emails, or doing a good job of pretending to do so.

I don’t believe in miracles. Until the bartender sends me a text. Did he think it was a hot person’s number? No, he used my name and everything. I’m so inspired that I take a cold shower and then remember why I never do that. I suggest, feeling ballsy, that I take his picture. He agrees and I wonder if life has always been this easy. I look at a journal entry from two years ago and a journal entry from yesterday and conclude: no, definitely not.

No one ever warns you how strange it is to get what you want, when you want it, how it starts to feel dangerous, like maybe you should deprive yourself of your desire so you can be more comfortably miserable with a rotund burrito in front of a laugh track sitcom that hasn’t aged well, receding into a night of not unpleasant farting, the kind that reminds you that you are alive in the world. I fart; therefore I am.

The bartender agrees to have his picture taken. We meet an hour before sunset in the parking lot of a Chinese grocery store, which is close to the only architecturally worthwhile building in this city: the downtown library.

The Chinese grocery store has chocolate oranges, which don’t appear to have any chocolate. There are whole-grain KitKats, which look like a sad attempt at health. There are rows and rows of soy sauces, including one from Taiwan with a rather biblical-sounding ingredient: Job’s tear. We both find Job’s tear disproportionately funny, the way two people who have never spent time together might latch onto the first potential inside joke. There is no tamari, but there’s ponzu and shoyu, so if there is anti-Japan sentiment, it’s wildly inconsistent.

“What’s your favorite vegetable?” the bartender asks me.

“Arugula.”

“Is there a vegetable you dislike?”

“Cucumbers.” I wait for the inevitable freak-out, where the other person goes But you can’t even taste it, it tastes just like water and it’s so refreshing. Cucumbers have amazingly belligerent lawyers, but the bartender isn’t one of them. I explain that cucumbers smell like death in a swimming pool with the backwash of slime.

When I explain how people usually react to my declaration of hatred, he says, “Cucumbers are not neutral.” He admits, though, that he does like them. I can live with this.

He doesn’t stop asking me questions. I hardly have time to reciprocate the questions. It’s as though he wants to get to know me, which doesn’t make any sense.

I’m not a real photographer, but I am addicted to beauty. I am using a disposable film camera with automatic flash because I think there is romance in surprises and tangibility. Most people, when you take their picture, either give you a canned smile that feels inauthentic, or they immediately start touching their hair, looking self-conscious, and saying, “I don’t know what to do with my hands.” The bartender does none of these things.

When we are in one of many aisles of condiments, he declares, “I love mayonnaise.”I become envious of that gloppy white sandwich spread that can transform into aioli. But I also love mayonnaise and tell him so. He’s familiar with Kewpie mayonnaise and I realize I was using that as a sort of litmus test.

When I ask him to lean against the freezer door, all nonchalant and oozing sex, I am impressed with the ice cream for not melting. I take his picture underneath a large sign that says MEAT. “Now I know where to get bougie toothpaste,” he says at the unexpected sight of fancy Italian toothpaste in aluminum tubes.

Sometimes we get in the way of people reaching for watercress or Okinawan sweet potatoes. I find myself apologizing and then laughing. Nobody kicks us out.

When we exit the store and back into the parking lot, the sun has set and will rapidly become blue, then black. I ask him to jump in a grocery cart and he does so without hesitation. There are masses of identical green grocery carts behind him, but they are not identical because they don’t have him. He is an individual. He is doing this grocery cart a serious favor. He leans back in the cart like he is on a chaise lounge, switching from neutral, moody, to smiling. He stands in the cart, imperious and silly at the same time. Now I feel as though I know what he looked like as a kid, which doesn’t make sense, or maybe makes a lot of sense.

I’m grateful for the viewfinder of this disposable camera because looking at him directly may scorch me asunder.

I only have five exposures left and tell him so.“Thank you for your time,” I say formally, as though this were a job interview.

“Do you want to get a drink?” he says.

I have never, in my life, ever said no to this question.

He pauses before replying. “Do you … drink on the street?” His hesitance is endearing. He doesn’t know me well enough to know that I am not remotely classy. He also doesn’t know that I would say yes to anything he proposed. Could be marriage, could be murder. Better he doesn’t know.

We go to a private liquor store and become a dyad of brown bag holders, drinking on the street. He is drinking Gordon’s London Dry gin and I have a Colt 45, which is so disgusting as to be sublime. Every once in a while, I tip my head back so he can pour a precisely calibrated amount of gin in my mouth. I would never do this alone. Right now, I am not alone. Happiness is taking pictures of a willing, beautiful man who seems, perhaps unfairly, to have an equally wonderful personality. They say you can’t have it all, but they haven’t met the bartender.

The library is not far and has a vague resemblance to the Parthenon. I take his picture while he sits on the stairs looking wistful.

“A student submitted the winning design for this building,” the bartender tells me.

“Young people occasionally have good ideas.”

“More than occasionally,” he says with a conviction that catches me pleasantly off-guard.

It’s dark. We are now in front of an apartment building in Chinatown with a perforated green fence. The bartender asks to take my picture. There is only one exposure left now.

“What the hell for?”

“To preserve the moment,” he says. “I want you to see what I see.”

I feel awkward but he tells me to stay just as I am, as though that’s desirable. I think about mentioning the Heisenberg effect but I don’t. I stay just as I am.

“I’m really excited about this picture,” he says. “You have to show me these when you develop them.” He sounds like he means it.

The night continues asserting its dominance. Artificial light prevails. The bartender walks me to the subway station that will take me home. By now, the subway is only coming in fifteen-minute intervals but I let two of them go by.

We aren’t talking quite as much. I realize neither of us has mentioned Jolene a single time. Enthusiastic chatter drifts to quiet companionship. My head is on his shoulder. It’s the best shoulder. A young woman wearing dinosaur sunglasses sends me a pointed glare and I think it is because she senses, correctly, that the bartender is slumming it up with me. I’m tempted to say I promise I’m funny but I could be imagining things. It’s a fine line between accurate observations and pathological projection. Where did she get those dinosaur sunglasses, anyway? The young woman gets on the next subway without giving me a second look.

“One more for the road?” the bartender says, indicating the gin.

It’s warm and strong, pleasantly repugnant. Liquid courage is a real thing and I am here for it. I kiss him on the cheek and he looks at me as though to say, I think you wanted to do something else. A whole lot of something elses.

“I should go home,” I say apologetically, for about the millionth time, when the subway comes.

“See you soon,” he says. I can’t help but think it is a promise.

When I get the roll of film developed, the pictures are out of order. The first one is the one of me. The light is scattered through the perforated fence and falls on my face in such a way that my face is patterned like a cheese grater. It’s mesmerizing. And a little off-putting. But also beautiful. I remember him saying: I want you to see what I see.

A couple of weeks pass. The bartender sounds enthused to make plans, but cancels the day of twice in a row. His reasons sound realistic but also vague. I don’t harangue him. I do what I always do, which is assume I’m unattractive. There is comfort in habitual self-loathing.

The pictures, in their physicality, taunt me with their record of a good time, never to be repeated. The internet tells me things like If he really wants to see you, he will find a way. I learn what breadcrumbing is and find that I don’t much care for it. The internet is a dismal place, but I think the internet might also be right. I buy a new conditioner and it does not change anything.

I’ve stopped coming to Sick Fox because I’m afraid of running into Jolene. I’m afraid the bartender will greet me with generic friendliness that does not remotely evince the fact that we were on something resembling a date. I think fondly of the time when the bartender seemed an impenetrable fantasy, an isthmus I couldn’t cross.

Taking his picture, I think, created a false sense of closeness and vulnerability. We drank on the street together like youthful rapscallions and took pictures. So what? I can see how these activities don’t inevitably equal a future. And when I say future I mean second date.

I see a meme that says: “If you smile when they text you, delete their number” and I cringe. I do not delete his number, though.

But then the bartender invites me to accompany him to the laundromat. I just got home from work, a long day of counting cashews and saying “Is there anything else I can help you with?” with decreasing sincerity. I want nothing more than to lie down but this text jolts me like espresso on crack on acid.

The laundry machine in his building is broken. I feel grateful for the breakdown of modern appliances, bringing us together. It took two buses for me to get here but I don’t care, nor do I tell him that. By the time I arrive, his clothes are in the dryer already. I watch his clothes, all black, rotate like windmills. It must be nice, being thrown around so predictably for a finite period of time and that snug warm aftermath.

Neither of us acknowledge the previous fumbles at making plans. He hugs me and this time my lingering is entirely sober, completely intentional, and the opposite of subtle. I consider kissing him on the mouth like some empowered woman, like Jolene would, but I fear his recoil.

“Your eyes are like this table I saw on Craigslist,” I say to the bartender.

“From what, IKEA?”

I am surprised that someone who looks the way he does is capable of self-deprecation. I need new ideas about old concepts.

“No, it was some freshly varnished fancy vintage thing from Lithuania,” I say.

“Nothing is from Lithuania,” the bartender says.

“I made that part up. But it was a very expensive table, I’ll have you know.”

“Well, thank you,” the bartender says. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

“I’m sorry if this is tedious, but what is it like, looking the way you do?” I ask him.

“Everyone is beautiful,” the bartender says.

I have never disagreed with a sentiment more.

“There are more important things. I mean, I used to be a drug dealer sleeping on people’s couches and then I was a model for Calvin Klein eating caviar out of a Playboy Bunny’s hand. And you know what? I was the same person the whole time.”

He makes this admission casually. I don’t even know where to start.

“That sounds like something only an extremely, extremely hot person who smokes marijuana regularly would say.”

He laughs. “Well,” he says, which is not a rebuttal but a reluctant acquiescence of sorts, or he just wants the subject to change, now that he’s realized what a vain person I am.

I know that beautiful people would rather be complimented on their intellect or something, but I also think I’ve learned how to blink expeditiously faster since entering the laundromat. I don’t want to miss anything his face does. I have become a creepy forensic scientist for every eyebrow raise and half-smile.

“I had sex with your ex-girlfriend,” I say. This may well be the worst non sequitur I’ve ever made, which is saying something.

He narrows his vintage Lithuanian table eyes. He doesn’t say anything.

“I think we were both imagining it was you.”

Between saying the messed up awkward thing and saying nothing, I don’t always make the right choice.

“Jolene already told me,” he says. Then: “Not the part about imagining it was me.” He looks embarrassed but sounds calm.

The dryer makes a loud noise like it’s coming. I open the door, consider he might enjoy opening doors, and then close the door I just opened. I see that he has noticed this whole door opening, door closing nonsense. Does he understand my illogical reasoning?

“I thought maybe you really cherish opening doors and I didn’t want to deprive you of the experience. But I can open the door again, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s just laundry,” the bartender says. He doesn’t open the door to his own laundry, so I do and this time I let it stay open.

“Am I allowed to hand you your clothes?”

“They’re my clothes. Just sit down.”

I realize we have been standing the whole time. Why? There are seats; we are the only ones here. I sit down while he starts folding his laundry with remarkable speed. His folds are crisp.

“I don’t know what I’m doing in life,” I confess. “I’m the only omnivore working at a vegan café. I make the best fake anchovies. But my job was supposed to be temporary and now I realize that everything I thought was temporary is just my life. I’m sexually attracted to two people who just so happen to be each other’s exes. I can’t stop saying the wrong, overly expository thing all the goddamn time. I’m not much to look at and it’s only going to get worse from here. I don’t know if what I need is a haircut or a PhD. The only thing I know is that I really, really want some of the unwholesome things I’ve been imagining to happen, with you.”

“You have nice hair,” the bartender tells me. “Don’t cut it.” His elbows are propped against a washing machine. He looks at me with a slightly tilted head. I am reminded of a dog and feel less intimidated by his beauty because he has chosen to aim it at me. His eyes seem an entreaty to accept the compliment like a person with healthy self-esteem.

The bartender said I had nice hair. I can’t quite believe it. Does this mean the conditioner effected change? He’s never said anything to me in the imperative tense. Is it bad that I’m turned on? It’s probably bad. And why hasn’t he run away yet?

“Okay, so a PhD, then,” I say, as though I didn’t just imagine him picking me up and fucking me while he remains standing.

He doesn’t respond and I don’t know if this is a comfortable silence or not.

“When I’m nervous, I become increasingly socially unacceptable,” I say.

He still doesn’t say anything. He’s done folding the laundry. Maybe I can fix my word vomit with a topic change.

“Why don’t we pretend I didn’t say what I said?” I suggest. I don’t wait for him to agree. I say, “The weather is awfully unremarkable right now.”

We both look out the window and true to my word, it’s a cool evening lacking in extremities. The street lamps are a mix of old-timey orange and contemporary white bulbs. Remarkable because unremarkable. There is traffic and chaos and we are not part of it, but in our own microcosm of denouements and detergent.

“I want to tell you something,” the bartender says.

“About the weather?”

At this, the bartender laughs and I wonder if I have salvaged my own sabotage. The bartender’s laugh is a lion’s head dipped in manuka honey. Which would make total sense if you heard it. I would have a mortgage with his laugh if I could.

The bartender sits across from me, drags his chair so that our knees are touching, and says with exaggerated slowness, “Everyone has boogers.”

It’s my turn to laugh now. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to have a mortgage with my laugh, which is loud, used to embarrass the hell out of my ex, and inexplicably reminds you that hysteria means uterus. When I stop laughing, I take a studied glance up his nostrils, which he lets me do without the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

“I picked my nose before you got here,” he says.

I can’t tell if he’s serious or not. What I do know, though, is that I can’t see any boogers. I do not permit him to return my invasive nostril inspection, though he tries.

“You know, I was going to have this Shakespeare moment,” I say. “I was going to say something like, I’m glad I met you, but I’ll never come to the Sick Fox again. I’ll stop drinking entirely and become one of those people that meditates in the wilderness and never shuts up about it. You won’t recognize the wellness queen I’ll become. I’ll never see Jolene again. I’ll lose your number. I won’t stalk you on the internet. I’ll forget about Job’s tear. I’ll forget your bone structure. And then you would feign being crestfallen and say We’ll always have Job’s tears but we would both know that we would exit each other’s lives for good.”

“We’ll always have Job’s tears,” the bartender repeats.

“Can I be honest?”

“Aren’t you always?”

“You don’t know what mendacity I’m capable of,” I say.

“What were you going to say?”

“The second I saw you,” I say, “I knew I was in trouble.”

“Is this flattery?” the bartender asks.

“Only if it gets me everywhere.”

“You and I are going to kiss,” he says. “Like really soon.”

The bartender’s prediction comes true. His kiss is like light rain but then becomes an insistent ocean. The ocean is played out, but whatever. Let me have an ocean. A cliché can be tremendously beautiful. He does hold my face in his hands. My imagination, it seems, was not baseless. I have never seen a lime tree. I remind myself to compliment his personality. The bartender thinks everyone is beautiful. When he kisses me, I agree with his generosity. The smell of laundry detergent, his arms around me, the fact that his lap has become my chair—this can’t last.

Statistically, I will ruin this by being who I am. I will say something that reveals how deep pettiness runs in my blood, he will learn that I don’t donate much money to charities, and that I have an outrageous number of leather jackets. He will hear me mangle Spanish and think of Jolene’s superior, perfect accent. The longer he is with me, the harder it will be for him to maintain the belief that everyone is beautiful. I will change his life beliefs in the most negative of ways.

Or maybe I’ll see him drink bottled water more than once and judge him. Maybe he wears white socks and snores too much. He gets road rage, says something sexist, forgets my birthday. I will notice that he doesn’t read for pleasure but likes video games and I will pretend not to judge. But then I look at him and I know, without a doubt, that I would forgive the bartender for white socks. White socks would probably become beautiful, if he wore them. White socks would become unthinkably chic. He has this power. He is still kissing me.

I repeat: he’s still kissing me. I start to think of other, better things—I will see a lime tree one day; we will kiss again; and maybe, just maybe, Keats had a point.