the sun was mostly set and the sky was purple when julie was driving her car through the germantown neighborhood with her headlights on already. julie and rob were looking for somewhere to eat before they went to the arts company on fifth avenue where one of julie’s friends was premiering her work. rob did not know julie’s friend who was premiering her work, but her name was bethany.
“please don’t put your cheek on the window unless you want to clean it,” julie said to rob, who continued to put his cheek on the window. he looked at the street signs hanging sideways as the car passed more of them. rob was thinking about dante's inferno.
“i’m hungry,” rob said.
“where do you want to eat?” julie said.
“i want to eat at chauhan,” rob said. “in germantown.”
“chauhan is having a private party,” hulie said. “so where do you want to go.”
“i don’t care where we go.” rob became vaguely aware that he sounded like he didn’t mean it. “you pick where we go.” he said the second part so that he would sound like he meant the first part. rob didn’t mean the first part or the second part.
“how about we go to fido.”
“i don’t want to go to fido.”
“you told me to pick where i wanted to go, so i picked where i wanted to go,” julie said calmly. she sounded like she meant it.
“i don’t want to go to fido.”
“i don’t want to go to fido anymore either,” julie said, again sounding like she meant it, except this time rob knew that she didn’t mean it.
“okay,” rob said.
“do you want to eat at whole foods,” julie said. the two of them descended into a deep silence. it occurred to rob that the silence carried a gravity that only became significant if you thought about it. rob thought about his twitter account. he repeated the phrase “this user follows you” to himself six or seven times.
“do you remember the time we went to the kandinsky exhibit at the frist last year?” julie said to rob.
instantly, without even thinking about it, rob remembered that time.
“no,” he said. he leaned his cheek against the window even more.
“we went to husk before that,” julie said gently without taking her eyes off the road.
“stop,” rob said firmly.
“and then we went to see the exhibit after that,” julie said gently without taking her eyes off the road again.
“stop,” rob said more firmly than the first time.
“and then we went to your dorm because you had a bottle of wine you stole from blvd on sunday,” julie said less gently than the first time but more gently than the second. julie glanced at rob but looked back at the road.
“stop,” rob said more firmly than the first and second times.
“okay,” julie said and she stopped the car in the middle of the road.
“not like that,” rob said. "you know what i meant."
“i don’t know why you want things to be difficult,” julie said. she took her foot off of the brake pedal and began to roll forward and then she put her foot on the gas pedal and began to roll forward at a higher rate. “but i want to have a good time tonight. we're already dressed up, and i haven’t seen bethany since sophomore year, so i don’t want this to be difficult. now where do you want to eat?”
“i’m getting out of the car,” rob said. he peeled his cheek away from the window to look at his phone and it said 7:29.
julie sighed but did not call his bluff. julie had called his bluff another time and had felt ashamed of herself immediately afterward. julie stopped in the middle of the road again, this time to let rob out. rob walked calmly to the sidewalk where he began to walk down the sidewalk and think about becoming a vegan. julie drove away, at first by taking her foot off the brake, then by putting her foot on the gas, mostly even though she didn’t want to, but a little bit because she wanted to.
at 7:42 rob thought about the time that they had gone to the kandinsky exhibit.
“i like kandinsky,” julie had said.
“kandinsky is okay,” rob had said. rob had liked the way that the abstract shapes were always anchored to the painting by geometric shapes but he liked mondrian better.
“i like mondrian better,” rob had said at a volume he had initially thought wasn’t audible but that he had gradually grown aware was audible enough for julie, who had been next to him, to hear.
“rob,” julie had said, whispering, “it’s the frist.”
“i don’t like the frist,” rob had said. he had not cared whether or not he had sounded like he meant it.
“we’re lucky to have the frist in nashville,” julie had said. julie had been interning at the frist that semester. julie had been an art marketing major that semester, too. she still was an art marketing major, but she had been that semester, too.
“okay,” rob had said.
“you know what dostoevsky says.”
“who’s that?” julie had said.
“he says if it was raining he would sit in a henhouse but he would still wish he were in a mansion.”
“it’s nice in here,” julie had said.
afterward they had gone back to his dorm room to drink a bottle of wine that he had bought for half price from blvd on sunday and then they had also had sex.
as he walked along the sidewalk and the sky above him began to sprinkle onto him rob thought to himself that he and julie had been happy then, when they went to look at the paintings by kandinsky, but that he didn’t know what had happened. he wondered if it was because he hadn’t talked about dostoevsky in a long time. in his chest he felt a gentle protrusion but he didn’t know where it could have come from physically and decided that it was probably an abstraction he had derived from a sociology class he had gone to earlier in the day. he thought about how he studied financial economics and that his life didn’t matter. he decided that he would talk about dostoevsky next time he saw julie and also that in three minutes, at 7:48, he would text her.
“hey,” he texted julie. he texted julie again. “i'm sorry about before,” he texted her.
julie took a minute to respond. “it’s ok,” she texted, followed by a smile symbol. “sorry i took long to respond a minute ago i was driving,” she texted.
“it’s fine,” rob texted back. “can i see you,” rob texted.
“yeah,” julie texted, “i’m walking into the arts company. take an uber.”
rob opened the uber app on his iphone and hailed a car that was driven by a man named dahir. “i want to go to the arts company on fifth avenue,” rob told dahir, who took him to the arts company and really did not care.
when rob walked into the arts company he looked around at some things that someone with their name on the wall had cut out of wood and then he took a plastic cup of boxed wine without putting a dollar in the tip jar. when he walked back to the display he saw that the artist was someone from denver whom he judged based on their typed biography.
“i don’t think i would like their ontological commitments,” rob said to himself, and someone who rob thought might have been the artist looked at him as they walked past. he wondered if he had said it loudly enough that the person who might have been the artist could have heard. he decided that he had. “shit,” he said to himself again and drank the rest of his boxed wine.
rob walked into the next room where there were five different sized paintings of a rocking chair that were mostly the same with varying typewritten text superimposed over them. he thought that this was not a good exhibit but the placard on the wall did not say bethany. he thought about a drinking game where he would get a new cup of boxed wine when he saw a bad display but he decided not to play it. he got a new plastic cup of boxed wine anyway and moved onto the next display where he ran into julie.
“hey,” rob said when he walked up behind julie. he touched her waist before he made a sound so that she grew nervous but when she turned around and saw rob she was not nervous anymore. when she turned around he was drinking his boxed wine but stopped drinking quickly to say something else. “sorry i told you to stop in the road.”
“it’s okay,” julie said and wrapped her left arm around his body. she leaned her head into his shoulder and looked at the edited photo that hanged on the wall in front of them. rob wrapped his right arm around her shoulders and drank his boxed wine. he also looked at the photo in front of them but not very closely. he thought about the wikipedia page for mixed media art. he thought that it was too bad he wasn’t playing the drinking game that he thought about before or else he would be drinking more now.
“do you want something to drink,” he said to julie, who was now beginning to smile (a smile that rob did not know if she meant, because, in rob’s defense, rob had seen her smile at several art galleries before, including the arts company, and he had known that she did not mean it some of those times).
“maybe,” she said to him.
“this is only my first cup of boxed wine,” rob said back.
“okay,” julie said, “i’ll have one.” rob decided that he didn’t want to leave until julie had had two cups of boxed wine so he brought one back for himself and one back for julie and put a dollar in the tip jar. he was already being affected by the alcohol because he had not eaten dinner, so he told the volunteers pouring the cups of boxed wine that he would be back but that he didn’t have any more money.
when rob found julie again she was talking to an attractive woman who was taller than both of them.
“this is rob,” julie told the girl as she took the cup of boxed wine from rob’s hand. the girl began to talk about getting a filling earlier that day but referred to things indirectly like she had been in the middle of a paragraph when rob had joined them. rob thought about the time that he had gotten his wisdom teeth removed and remembered the medication that he had been given which led to his short-term abuse of prescription oxycodone. directly after the prescription ran out he became indifferent about oxycodone. rob thought about paragraphs.
when the girl was finished speaking she introduced herself as bethany and said, “sorry,” and laughed. she did not specify why she was sorry but rob assumed it was because she had not introduced herself before she finished her story.
“are these your photos,” rob said. rob took a drink of the boxed wine and looked at julie.
“yes,” bethany replied. “this is the premiere of my work ‘a raisin in the rum.’”
“look at them all,” rob said.
“they’re so great,” julie said after she had taken a large drink of boxed wine. “the photos are eerie and the green shadows give them an old look.” rob was glad that julie expressed an opinion so that he didn’t have to. he finished his cup of boxed wine and looked at the photos. he did not think that they were chilling critiques of capitalism, which was what the placard on the wall said that they were.
“i’m going to get one more cup of boxed wine. do you want some?” rob asked, looking at julie. he realized that he had used the plural form of the word “you” but also realized that there was no reason for them to have known this. he decided that if bethany did not respond he would ask her individually.
“i could do another,” julie said.
rob paused for what he thought was an appropriate amount of time so bethany had a chance to answer but also so that it was not awkward. “what about you,” he said to bethany.
“sure,” bethany said. bethany smiled at rob and he walked away to get three cups of boxed wine.
“sorry, i told you i was going to come back for two more cups of boxed wine,” rob said to the volunteers who were pouring cups of boxed wine. “i am going to take three though.”
“it’s okay,” the volunteers said indifferently.
rob felt that whether or not he took two or three cups of boxed wine didn’t matter because the marginal cost was more or less the same but that having taken any to begin with was the significant offense. he noticed for a few seconds that he felt ashamed of himself as he figured out how to hold the three cups of wine. “i don’t have any more money though,” rob said to the volunteers.
when he returned to see julie, bethany was gone. rob put the third cup of boxed wine on a chair and gave the second cup to julie.
“She said to tell you sorry but she got invited to dinner with the curator,” Julie explained after a drink of boxed wine. “She said to tell you it was nice to meet you though.”
“Nice,” Rob said only half sarcastically. He took another drink of his boxed wine. “I don’t like Bethany’s photos.”
“They’re nice,” Julie said. She finished her second cup with a gulp. “I think they’re nice. She’s a good person.”
Rob decided that he would not become a vegan, which had been a subtle narrative underscoring the entire evening for him since he had gotten out of the car to walk on the sidewalk earlier. Then he thought about the photos. He had not listened to what Julie had said.
“You know what Dostoevsky says,” Rob said.
“Stop,” Julie said at a whisper which told Rob that she was not angry but that she was unhappy. He thought about the connotations of the word unhappy and decided that they were both unhappy, in different and similar ways. He knew that Julie didn’t care about Dostoevsky but he continued anyway.
“He says if it was raining—”
“I said stop,” Julie said at a whisper that was only slightly more audible than before but loud enough to have a markedly different effect on him. Rob finished his cup of boxed wine.
“Are you hungry,” Rob said really loudly as if he hadn’t heard Julie reprimand him.
“Not really, Rob,” Julie said.
“Do you like the Fruit Bats,” Rob said. He remembered that he saw on Facebook that they were coming to the Hi Watt in September.
"No," Julie said. Then she said, "I don't even know who they are."
"Okay," Rob said. He wondered why he was in a committed relationship with someone he had so little in common with. He decided that he was probably just in the relationship because he already was. He said to Julie, "I probably don't love you."
Julie didn't say anything but took the cup of boxed wine that Rob had brought for Bethany from the chair. She began to drink it while still looking at Bethany's photos, and then she put the cup with boxed wine still in it into the empty cup that she had already finished to be efficient.
Rob realized that he didn’t want to be in the room with Julie anymore and so he walked out of The Arts Company onto Fifth Avenue, generally unimpressed with the displays he had seen. When he had taken the three cups of boxed wine he had wondered how long would have been appropriate to stay after drinking so much wine for one dollar, but he was glad that the argument provided an excuse for him to leave sooner rather than later.
As he jaywalked across the street in front of an approaching car Rob thought to himself that he was hungry. He took out his iPhone to find a place to eat, but first he saw that it was 8:19. He remembered a joke he meant to text to his friend Pablo from Vanderbilt earlier and he texted it to him. Pablo didn't text back in two minutes so Rob put the phone in his pocket. He realized that he was thinking to himself how nice Julie looked tonight and that it was too bad she was unhappy. Simultaneously, like an undercurrent, he felt a rumble in his stomach, and his thoughts gradually left Julie and returned to looking up a place to eat on his iPhone. He thought about dialectics while he opened the Yelp app and searched for House of Kabob to see if it was still open and then opened the Uber app to hail an Uber.
"I hope Dahir isn't my driver again," Rob thought. On the screen of his iPhone some text said that a man named Ralph would be his driver. The picture beside the word Ralph showed an Asian man which surprised Rob and then he realized that he had wrongly tied the name Ralph to a racial profile.
When the Uber arrived Rob told Ralph that he would like to go to House of Kabob. Ralph smiled insincerely over his shoulder. Rob imagined the sound of himself chuckling twice during the ride when he said the words "Rob" and "Kabob" together in his head. He looked out the window almost the whole trip. "What does it feel like to drive for Uber?" Rob had said unsarcastically at one point in the ride, not looking away from the window and too drunk to care whether or not it sounded like he meant it. Ralph did not respond so Rob did not leave him a tip. He wished that Dahir had been his driver again.
At House of Kabob Rob decided to order a falafel because he was still thinking about becoming a vegan and some tzatziki sauce because he wasn't. While he was in line his friend Pablo texted him that he did not get the joke. Rob did not text Pablo back.
"Hey Alex," Rob said to the girl who took his order when he read her name tag. He wondered if he would do that if he were not intoxicated, but he quickly concluded that he probably wouldn’t. He didn’t say her name again so that he could still be perceived as acting naturally. "I just want a falafel sandwich," he said to her, "and I also want rice and a Greek salad."
"Falafel with rice and a salad," the girl named Alex said as if she were making the information as concise as possible so that she could tuck it away for herself as well as for Rob.
"Can I get that as take-away," Rob said.
"Carry-out," Alex iterated the same concept with different words as if to make it easier for herself to remember. Then she said, "Every order is carry-out past ten minutes from closing." This part of what Alex said told Rob that she had only said the different words to express disapproval at Rob’s choice of phrasing. Rob and Alex looked at each other and Rob pulled out his phone so that Alex would go away but also because he had gotten a text. It was from Julie.
"I'm too drunk to drive," Julie had texted him.
"Me to," Rob texted back. "Too," he texted.
"Where are you, can we talk please," Julie said.
"Okay," Rob texted and waited a minute before typing more for effect. Finally he texted, "I want to talk too. Take an Uber to House of Kabob. They're closed though."
In nineteen minutes Julie's Uber came to the curb in front of House of Kabob where Rob was sitting on the pavement with a Styrofoam box in his lap. Rob was leaning on his arms which were outstretched behind him. Julie got out of the Uber and handed two dollars to the driver who waved at Rob. Rob didn’t wave back because it was inconvenient since he was leaning on his arms, but he wondered if the driver was Dahir.
"Did you have dinner yet," Rob said to Julie as she stood on the curb and looked down at him.
"No," Julie said. "I'm hungry."
"There's probably enough food for both of us. I didn't eat any so that we could both decide how much we wanted to eat based on how hungry we each are," Rob said. "I got falafel because you're a vegan."
Julie sat down next to Rob and put her head on his shoulder. Rob leaned forwards off of his hands and brought his right arm around her. With his left hand he picked the styrofoam box up from off his lap and he turned his body slightly toward her so that their inside legs touched.
"I'm sorry I'm drunk," Julie said.
"It's okay," Rob said. "I told you that that one cup of boxed wine was my first but it was my second."
"I know, the manager told me," Julie said. "After you left I had more boxed wine because the manager was going to throw it away."
"Why are we in a committed relationship," Rob said to Julie. Julie thought about it for a little while in silence and realized that she didn't know. She had been thinking all night that she was unhappy most of the time when she was with Rob.
"I don't know," she finally said.
The two of them descended into another deep silence. It occurred to Rob that this silence carried a gravity that was significant whether or not you thought about it. He thought about his Twitter account again. He wondered whether Twitter would tell Julie when he re-followed her since he’d unfollowed her earlier in the night after leaving The Arts Company. He decided that it probably would and so he would tell her that he was sorry for unfollowing her but that he was going to follow her back before he did it. Rob didn't know what to do. He wished he hadn't unfollowed her now and now he also realized that he had felt the gravity of the silence for the whole time he was thinking about his Twitter account.
"Sorry I said I probably don't love you," Rob said. He was silent for another minute. Then he said, "But I probably don't."
Julie didn't move and brought her right arm around Rob, gripping her left hand hanging over Rob’s far shoulder. They hugged on the pavement with Rob's left hand on top of the unopened Styrofoam box sitting on his lap. Rob was afraid she was going to cry because she was unhappy.
"Let's eat before the food gets cold," Rob said quickly. He tore the folding lid from the styrofoam box and laid it on the ground. He started to ration half of the falafel and rice and salad into it. Then he took the lid and the dirty fork and started eating his half of the food. Julie took the box and the clean fork and started eating the other half.
"It has tzatziki sauce, sorry," Rob said between bites. "I was drunk so I forgot it wasn't vegan."
"It's okay," Julie said after swallowing her food.
They sat on the sidewalk in silence and looked at the stars which they both noticed were more visible outside the city proper than they had been downtown. Neither of them expressed this thought.
When they were done eating and mostly done being in a committed relationship Rob took their trash to a chain-link garbage can near a streetlight and threw it away. He took out his phone with his left hand and saw that it was 10:02. He came back to Julie and extended his right hand to her while still looking at his phone. Julie took hold of it and used it to pull herself up. When she rose he did not let go of her hand, but just let it stay in his while he hailed an Uber back to his dorm. There was some text on the screen that said Dahir would be his driver. He wondered again if it had been Dahir who had waved to him in the Uber that had dropped Julie off. He did not have any evidence to support an intuitive guess either way.
"We can take an Uber to your car tomorrow," Rob said to Julie. "I just hailed one to take us home." Rob and Julie stood under the streetlight so that Dahir could see them but also so that they could see each other.
When they were riding to his dorm, Rob, who thought his buzz was mostly wearing off, put his cheek against the window, and Julie, who was still tipsy, leaned with her head against Rob's shoulder. Rob held his right arm around her because he wanted her to fall asleep if that was what she wanted.
"I'm sorry I didn't answer you when you asked if I wanted to eat at Whole Foods," Rob whispered to Julie. But Julie didn't answer, because she had wanted to fall asleep.