Listening for the Click

This is the third story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here.

In Carl’s apartment, on Linnaeusgatan, near the university, black mold is growing behind the fridge. It’s the first time I’ve heard the term. Black mold is worse than other mold, it seems. I know about green mold, but I’ve always just called it mold. For asthmatics, like Carl, black mold can be plain dangerous. Carl decontaminates the fridge. He holds his breath and sprays. I’m on the toilet, door open. That’s how well we know each other.

Carl shares the apartment with a friend. Martin is hard to read. Smart, a slacker with tunnel vision. He wears a thick ring, inlaid with a ruby. The ruby looks like a blood blister. He doesn’t talk to me. Sometimes he grunts. I’m not sure if the sounds he makes have their own meaning, or if they are uttered out of pure necessity. Martin eats baby food out of glass jars. I hear the click when he opens a jar, a guarantee that its vacuum seal is intact. The baby food is the opposite of the black mold. Martin eats the baby food in bed and watches porn while wrapped in a blanket with a Betty Boop print. This is what he is: grunt, click, baby food, click, porn, click. With a future as a banker and a high-income individual, click. I can’t imagine him being able to get hard, jerk off, come. It’s as if growing or shrinking didn’t exist for him.

When Martin drags himself to lectures, I borrow his porn mags, which he keeps in a rattan magazine stand that may once have held yarn or knitting patterns. A small boatneck sailor shirt for a grandchild. A beanie with a pompom on it. I think Martin harbors a lot of tenderness.

One centerfold shows a woman on all fours, with a machine gun hanging at a diagonal between her legs, against a backdrop of camouflage netting. She’s wearing a military cap and feminine boots. Her lower back arches under the weight of her own willingness, and the cartridge belt burns into her skin like the lick of a whip. Or does it offer relief, like a doctor’s cool fingertips searching for an inflamed tendon? Her buttocks are shiny. All of her is shiny, rubbed with oil. You can glide right into any of her orifices.

Carl has a water bed. He never changes the sheets. It doesn’t matter. He smells good. When I stay with Carl I sleep in Carl’s bed. Sometimes we fuck. It’s nice, and it feels like the beginning or the end of a love story. Always either the beginning or the end.

Carl has a friend called Lizzy. She braids her hair and makes side buns. She wears dresses with puffed sleeves and lacing at the waist. Is this a form of irony? When I comment on the cross-stitching with a polite enthusiasm, she points out that it references a type of folklore. The dress was sewn and embroidered by a Polish Jewish aunt on her mother’s side. She talks endlessly about her family. It turns out that she and Carl are related somehow. Lizzy is the chairperson of a comedic am-dram society. I can just picture her with a wine-red costume, a tall hat, drumsticks, maybe a drum, too. When she does let her hair down, it’s as if she were naked, horny, drunk, limitless. It’s as if she’d become the pornographic centerfold. Carl has sex with her without telling me. I find out from Martin. So Martin does, in fact, talk to me. Just that once. He punctuates his sentence with a “moop, moop.”

Lizzy is both clean and fuckable. Strict, consistent, selfish in an honest way. I’m more . . . It’s twofold. I try to figure out how I’m supposed to fit into this. I often think of the word “division.”

When I meet Johan, the situation changes. I fall in love with Johan, and Johan thinks he has fallen in love with me. And, when this happens, I suspect that Carl is in love with me, too. That’s why I lie to Carl about Johan. Johan and I meet in secret. I want to be like Johan. When I’m alone, all I am is him. Johan says this: “The smell between the teeth, the one that comes out when you floss, is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.” And I know I’ll never forget the way he says “disgusting.” The word is divorced from everything that has to do with Johan’s sense of humor, that has to do with us. Disgusting. It’s a word that’s fixed to Johan’s world view. When Johan takes a trip, I borrow his clothes and practice his gestures. Thinking of myself and of existence as “disgusting” helps with my longing. The disgust doesn’t plug the hole, but it does decontaminate it.

I have clean, white teeth. Under Johan’s bed, I find two used condoms. I don’t let on about the condoms. They’re something else: dry petals, a thumb brace, masking tape. Picking them up and putting them in the trash is no skin off my back. I feel the same silent satisfaction that applies to all forms of cleaning.

Carl finds out that Johan and I are together. He says that he doesn’t want to see me. That I should make myself scarce. I remind him that he and I aren’t together and never have been. He says that it doesn’t matter what we are or have been. What’s interesting is that I’ve been lying. I remind him that he’s been lying, too. If he was in love with me and didn’t say anything, wasn’t that a form of lying? Carl says that what I need is a foundation course in philosophy. He says that I should ask for forgiveness, but, when I reply that first I’d need to know what I’m asking forgiveness for, he says that this is exactly the problem.

Our student union hosts a costume party. The theme is comic-book and cartoon characters. The girls are Minnie Mouse, Wonder Woman, Daisy Duck, Betty Boop. I’m the Hulk. I smear myself with green paint. Rub olive oil and dry shampoo into my hair. I tear up a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt. The only person who’d like me like this is Johan. But Johan is at a toga party across town.

Carl is dressed as the Practical Pig. Overalls, pig mask. I don’t know who the Practical Pig is. He looks like a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The American South. Mangrove swamps. Banjo on the porch. Root beer. Cornbread. Violence. The heart is a lonely hunter. Carl is the opposite of all that. Except when it comes to the heart. He has a hunting license. When he sees me he delivers a slap that knocks me off my feet. He asks how dare I be here. Another Practical Pig, identically dressed but fat and maskless, comes charging. He pushes Carl and grabs me by the shoulders, gets covered in green paint. I cry a little. Not because this hurts. But because everything hurts. He takes me to his dorm, opens a can of mussels, fries rice. Hands me shower gel, two in one. When I am nice and clean I am given food and a robe. He plays Miles Davis on the grand piano in the living room. It’s morning, and the smell of cardamom drifts over from the bakery opposite. The students in the building make coffee and go to their lectures. I almost doze off on the sofa, and Practical gives me a kiss on the forehead. I embrace him. He is moist and engorged.