What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (16 page)

I don’t care what he thinks. Maybe he thinks Andy’s better off dead.

14. ALL YOU CAN EAT

Sasha sits on Andy’s bed with her legs tucked and a lit cigarette in her mouth. She ashes into her palm.

Dennis looks at her, then looks at me. We used to be friends, used to eat all-you-can-eat Chin Ming Palace every Tuesday.

“How are you?” Dennis says in a voice that is meant to be compassionate, the way someone on TV might say it while staring at the ocean.

“Chillin’,” I say.

“I’m gonna put on some music,” Sasha says, but doesn’t stand. Alex comes back into the room. He looks around.

“Pretty much it,” Alex says.

“True,” Dennis says.

“Den,” I say, because that’s what Andy used to call him.

“Peace,” Dennis says.

15. DINNER

We don’t do dinner. I sit at the table smoking cigarettes and Sasha watches TV in bed, something with a laugh track. I shouldn’t have left Andy alone with all those milligrams, a scale of measurement that seems so small.

The thing is, I don’t remember Andy’s face, just his body, his legs hanging over the couch. He was wearing one shoe. On his other foot was a fresh white sock. He wanted to feel clean.

When the EMT came, he just said, “Shit.” He was my age.

Sasha comes in during the commercial and stands in front of me in her bathrobe, one knee on the kitchen chair.

“Is there any food in the house?” she says.

“You talk to J. Smooth?”

“Yeah,” she says. “No.”

I don’t know if she means yes or no.

“I’m starving,” she says.

“There’s cereal.”

“Milk?”

“No milk.”

We eat Apple Jacks and orange juice. It’s not terrible.

“Do you love me?” Sasha says. What she’s really asking is “Would you let me die?”

I nod.

Sasha digs her nails into my back and I want her to crack skin and draw blood. It’s not that I want into her body so much as I want out of mine. I haven’t come in weeks. Even with her teeth on my nipple it’s hard to stay in the moment. I don’t think about Andy, but I think about not thinking about Andy. I lose my hard-on and she goes to take a shower.

Andy, Papi, and Ralph are in heaven together. Andy rubs Ralph on some girl’s clit, Erica Tanner’s maybe. Erica had leukemia—the first from our class to be dead. She never liked Andy in life, but that was life.

Sasha comes out wearing a towel.

“We’re out,” I say. I think she stole Andy’s iPod, sold it, got 160 milligrams, and put them up her nose when I wasn’t around.

“Those guys who were here,” she starts to say, but then looks at me, touches my arm, and says, “You should call J. Smooth.”

I think,
Are you fucking J. Smooth?

“Tell me about Andy,” she says, and I say, “He was.”

16. THE FUTURE

I call J. Smooth and leave a message. “Jason,” I say. “Jason.” From now on I want us to have real names. I want to vote on Election Day. I want fresh milk in the fridge.

“Call me,” I say.

17. HIGH SCHOOL

Jason Streich was the quarterback, and people liked him. Girls, I mean. People liked Andy and me, but it was different, a different kind of like. The point is, you can’t blame high school, but you can’t go back there either.

18. YOGA

We lie on the bed with the TV on, but I’m not watching and neither is Sasha. She’s doing yoga, what she calls bed yoga, which isn’t really yoga, just stretching in bed. I know her body well enough to know it isn’t mine.

“Andy’s iPod,” I say.

She doesn’t say, “What iPod?”

Who gives a shit about the iPod? It’s probably in a drawer.

19. ANDY’S ROOM

“Sometimes I go in Andy’s room,” Sasha says.

20. THE WEATHER

The doorbell rings. Jason, wet from rain.

“It’s raining,” Sasha says.

21. FEET

On the couch, Sasha in the middle. Jason takes off his shoes. His feet are bare; his shoes are slippers. There’s black hair on his toes. Sasha rubs his feet.

We play music that we know is right. We’ve seen it in movies, seen the strobe-light stutter and time lapse. Sasha leans her head into Jason’s lap.

I think: three bodies are not two. I think: three bodies are all ones. I think: she’ll fuck J. Smooth as soon as I pass out. Sasha lays her legs across my thighs. Her toenails are overgrown. They are dead skin. How can something grow if it is dead?

Acknowledgments

I
’d like to thank the many editors who massaged these stories over the years, some gently, others less so: Kevin Allardice, Peyton Burgess, Jackie Corley, Laura Isaacman, Sativa January, Kevin O’Cuinn, Minna Proctor, Derek Rubin, Randy Rosenthal, Rob Spillman, Lorin Stein, Sadie Stein, and Zack Zook.

I would also like to the members of my entourage: my agent, Erin Hosier, and my editor, Michael Signorelli. I always wanted an entourage.

These stories were written over a ten-year period, and it would be impossible to individually thank all the friends and colleagues whose input helped shape then, but a few stand out. One is my father, Jonathan Wilson, who never went easy on me. Nor was he prudish at the R-rated stuff, though he did once comment, “Dude, you are one weird dude.” These stories would not exist without the many long phone calls during which we discussed them.

Another is my mother, Sharon Kaitz, whose clear-eyed, full-hearted worldview has indelibly colored my own, and who always knew when a story should end, usually about a paragraph earlier than I’d initially thought.

Sam Lipsyte taught me, by both example and encouragement, to embrace the darkness. Justin Taylor has been a superlative reader, amigo, and drinking companion. Paul Rome was forced, on many occasions, to listen as I recited nascent versions of these stories in my kitchen. He never once complained.

I’d also like to thank my grandmother, Charlotte Kaitz, for allowing me to use her house in the Berkshires as a private writer’s retreat. Many of these stories were written there.

Finally, I would like to thank Sarah Rapp, who not only provided invaluable insights into each and every one of these stories, but who also made sure I got out of bed every morning and left the apartment on occasion. Sarah never let me succumb to debilitating defeatism. Instead she made me laugh and smile. Without her there would be no book.

About the Author

ADAM WILSON
is the author of the novel
Flatscreen
, a National Jewish Book Award fnalist. His stories have appeared in
The Paris Review, Tin House
, and
The Best American Short Stories
, among many other publications. In 2012 he received the Terry Southern Prize, which recognizes “wit, panache, and sprezzatura” in work published by
The Paris Review
. He teaches creative writing at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Also by Adam Wilson

Flatscreen

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Copyright

Cover design and illustration by Jarrod Taylor

These stories previously appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: “Things I Had” in
Meridian
, “December Boys Got It Bad” in
Tin House
, “We Close Our Eyes” in
Washington Square Review
, “Tell Me” in
The Literary Review
, “Sluts at Heart” in
The Coffin Factory
(as “That Underlying Want”), “America Is Me and Andy” in
Word Riot
, “What’s Important Is Feeling” in
The Paris Review
and
The Best American Short Stories 2012
, “The Porchies” in
Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging
, and “Milligrams” in
Cousin Corinne’s Reminder
.

WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS FEELING.
Copyright © 2014 by Adam Wilson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-228478-5

EPUB Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN 9780062284778

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