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  Someone grabbed her wrist, and she looked up. “Want to dance, Iris?” Jeremy said.

  She looked at him dimly. “I can’t dance.”

  “No matter,” Jeremy said, and he pulled her to the dance floor.

  They were playing rumba music. Jeremy knew the dance, and she tried to follow his steps. He spun her around, and she laughed. Her arms and legs were loose and formless, as if made of Je11-O. “You’re good at this!” she shouted over the music.

  “I love to dance,” he said, smiling. He moved his hips suggestively, and she laughed again.

  “You’ve really blossomed,” she told him. Once the words were out of her mouth, she realized she was drunk.

  “Blossomed?” he said to her.

  “I mean you’ve changed, you’ve found yourself.” She knew she sounded like an idiot. “You know what I mean. It’s a compliment.”

  He only smiled at her. The dance was over, and they walked back to Laura and Erik. Paul was there too, but she didn’t look at him.

  “You two looked good up there,” Paul said, taking a sip of his wine.

  She stared down at her feet. “I think I need to use the rest-room.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Laura said.

  They found the bathroom at the end of the hallway, but someone was already waiting by the door. Iris leaned against the wall, closing her eyes for a second only. When she opened them, she asked Laura what married life was like.

  “What do you mean?” Laura said.

  “I mean, do you feel like you’ve been transformed? That life is suddenly pulsing with meaning?”

  “It’s not that dramatic,” Laura said.

  Then what is it? she wanted to say. But she was silent. She hated how Laura didn’t tell her things anymore. Laura’s face had the bland smoothness of eggshells, perfectly sealed off. She had retreated behind a calmness that spoke of the great change in her life, a change that did not include Iris.

  “I can’t explain it,” Laura said, slowly turning the ring around her finger. “Things are more simple now.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s just a feeling I have.” Laura looked up, and Iris was struck by the plain color of her eyes. She no longer wore colored contacts, the ones that gave her eyes a gray-green translu-cence. It was an otherworldly hue, which Iris once resented and now oddly missed. “I used to feel outside of things,” Laura said. “As if I were waiting for something. But now I wake up in the mornings, and I’m just there, I’m happy. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’ve never felt like that before.”

  Iris didn’t know what to say. She imagined Laura and Erik shut up together in a little room, not wanting anyone else but each other, and the thought depressed her. In high school, she and Laura had retreated to each other’s bedrooms, locking the door against the mundane world of school and parents. Laura would light a few candles on her night table and dresser, and immediately it felt as if they had entered their own realm. They sat on her bed or sprawled along the floor, and they talked until morning. What did they talk about? Iris couldn’t remember exactly, but the room would be alive and glowing. There were the seashells that Laura had lined against the windowsill and the enameled teacups from which they drank. Laura’s bead necklaces coiled together in a shallow dish by her cloisonne turtles and tiny glass figurines. They stayed awake until dawn, waiting for the moment when the sky turns dark blue, as if lit from within, like stained glass. “The blue hour,” Laura said, looking outside the window. The sky whitened, the room laid bare by colorless light. Out of the silence, the hysterical twittering of birds. The room always seemed colder, emptier, when she blew out the candles.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Laura said.

  “What is?” she asked.

  “You and me. That we should be happier now. You have Paul, and I have Erik.”

  “I guess,” she said. She didn’t tell Laura that she didn’t feel she had anyone. They were silent for a while. There was a sound of flushing, and the door opened. A short man came out of the bathroom, and the woman in front of them went in.

  “But what will you do when he’s no longer there?” Iris said. Laura gazed at her, not understanding. “I mean, don’t you ever think about what will happen if he’s not there?”

  “Why should I think that?”

  “Isn’t it scary to depend entirely upon another person for your happiness?” Iris said. “What if he goes away?”

  “That won’t happen,” Laura said.

  “Well, what if something happens to him?”

  “What do you mean? Do you mean if he dies or something?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t mean to be morbid, but a person dies sometime or another.”

  Laura looked at her. “I don’t think about that.”

  Iris’s cheeks were flaming now. When she went into the bathroom, she saw that her face was red all over, as if she had a sunburn. It was worse on her body, splotches all over her arms and stomach, as if the ugliness inside of her had erupted onto her skin.

  Laura was waiting for her outside. They walked through the apartment until they found the men hanging out in the kitchen. The room was lit with candles, creating shadows as they poured themselves more wine from the bottles scattered over the table. There were a few other people sitting around, a couple nestled in the back and three women chatting on the stairs. Paul pulled a wooden chair out next to him. He patted the seat, telling her to sit down. She did, feeling very limp and tired. He smoothed her hair gently with his fingers, circling his hand around the back of her neck.

  “Do you want to try a pot brownie?” Paul asked her.

  “Sure,” she said numbly. “Where did you get them?”

  “Victor’s wife was going around with a plate full of them while you were in the bathroom.”

  He handed her a brownie, and she took a large bite.

  “This is my third one,” he said.

  “They taste awful.”

  “They’re not that bad.”

  “They’re bitter,” she said. “They taste just like grass.”

  “Just eat, and don’t complain,” Paul said.

  She took a few more bites. “I want to gag.”

  “You’re such a brat,” he said.

  She finished the brownie, and she moved closer to him, laying her head upon his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and she closed her eyes.

  It was after four in the morning. She wanted nothing more than to be asleep in a warm bed. Yet they were outside, bracing themselves against the icy air, walking—endlessly walking—as coffee-colored houses rose into view, shaping themselves against the edges of her face. She felt like a mummy with her scarf wrapped up over her nose, her eyes tearing from the wind.

  She followed the others mindlessly, walking down the stairs to the subway station. Outside, there was inhuman cold that gleamed from the sky. Yet as soon as she descended, she was in an underworld of bodily odors, stinking breath and piss, the floor sticky under her feet.

  They waited on the platform under an electric glare, with no wind, though her breath came out like a plume of smoke that faded into the air. Paul was leaning against her, both hands in his pockets, staring at the tracks. He kept tightening and then relaxing his jaw, as if he were concentrating on something hard. She snapped her fingers once in front of his face. He blinked, shaking his head. “Sorry,” he muttered. His eyes were glazed.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Mmmmhhh,” he said, nodding.

  “What time is it?” she asked Laura.

  Laura looked at Erik. “A quarter to five,” he said. He stared straight ahead without consulting a watch.

  “How do you know?” Iris asked.

  “He can always tell what time it is,” Laura said. “Give or take fifteen minutes,” she added.

  “Really?”

  “He has an innate sense of time.”

  She wondered if Laura was pulling her leg. Everyone except her and Paul seemed remarkably sober
and awake. “I don’t believe you,” Iris said. She thought she saw a flicker of a smile pass over Erik’s face.

  “You’re very ironic,” she said to Erik. This seemed to startle him, and he gazed back at her. “You always seem to be laughing at other people.”

  “I don’t mean to be,” Erik answered.

  The train arrived, screeching by. It was half-full, and she and Paul sat down in the first seats they saw, though the others made their way to the back of the car. She felt instinctively that the others avoided them, though it was true there weren’t any empty seats close by. She didn’t care. She was receding further into a haze. She pressed her head against Paul’s shoulder.

  “This is the last time I’m doing this,” he muttered.

  She closed her eyes. Her mind floated in a sea of jelly. Words slipped away and were lost forever. “Why is that?” she heard herself say.

  “I don’t like how I feel,” he said.

  “But it’s good to feel something different.”

  “Not like this.”

  The train rattled underneath her. For a moment, she felt herself falling into empty space. She started, opening her eyes. Paul’s jacket was wet where her mouth had been. She was not sure how long she had been sleeping. “Did you say something?” she asked him.

  She looked up and saw that his eyes were closed. He looked like a child with his mouth hanging open. She put his hand in her lap, stroking his fingers. She smoothed out his palm and gazed at the surface of his skin. She followed a line, and it would split into other lines, his palm etched with infinite needles. Beneath the lines that crossed and curved along his skin was a fainter network that you could see only in the light, where it dissolved into a translucent terrain. His fingers caught her own, closing with silent life. When she looked at him again, his eyes were half open as though he were watching her. But she realized with shock that he was asleep. His eyes were glassy blue and strange. She had never seen him like this, staring at her from unconscious depths. She felt as if she were peering into something he wouldn’t want her to see. He will look like this when he is dead, she thought. Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  “We’re getting off here,” Laura said.

  Iris shook his shoulder. “Paul,” she whispered. He jerked his head, blinking. Then he followed her off the train.

  Outside, her head seemed to clear a bit. Yet she realized her thoughts were constantly slipping out from under her before she could fix them in place. The streets were empty, and the wind swept through them as if touching nothing. The houses stood frozen and distilled of color, cardboard shadows settling into the ground.

  He leaned against her, limping slightly. The others walked on ahead of them.

  “Goddamn these shoes,” he muttered.

  “Do they hurt?” she said.

  “I guess they’re not broken in. We walked so much today.”

  Iris felt slightly guilty. He had worn the shoes to please her. She had told him he looked like a teenager when he wore sneakers. “How much farther?” she yelled to Laura. The three of them were at least a block ahead.

  “Not too far,” Laura called back, her voice ringing clear. “About seven more blocks.”

  “Only seven,” Paul said, grimacing.

  “Your poor feet,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He grabbed her by the waist, though both of them were puffed out and shapeless in their winter coats. They staggered down the sidewalk together.

  “Did you have a nice birthday?” she asked. “Are you glad you came up here?”

  “Yes, I liked your friends.”

  “Did you?” She didn’t tell him that she was feeling left out of her own circle. She wondered why Jeremy chose to stick around Laura and Erik. The two of them had been drinking, yet they managed to stay clearheaded, while she and Paul hung over each other’s shoulders, tottering around like adolescents.

  “I don’t know if they liked me,” Paul said.

  She didn’t say anything, and they walked for another block without speaking.

  “I’m guessing by your silence that they didn’t.” There was a plaintive note in his voice which startled Iris, and she was at a loss as to what to say. There was such a distance between them. Neither of them seemed to understand the same things.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I can’t really tell what they think.”

  “You know,” he said. “You just don’t want to tell me.”

  They walked on. She bit her lip, staring at the ground rising in waves beneath her feet.

  “So you’re just going to continue being silent?” he burst out.

  She looked at him helplessly. “What can I say?” She didn’t want to admit it, but she was vaguely ashamed of him. She felt sorry for him in the same way that she felt sorry for herself.

  The others stood in front of the apartment building, waiting for them to catch up. Laura let them inside, and Iris followed her up three flights of stairs and down a narrow corridor with uneven brown tiles. All the while, she could hear Paul talking to Jeremy. “I don’t understand her,” he was saying. “Do you understand her?” Iris flushed, moving more quickly ahead.

  The place was unbelievably ugly to her, senseless in its design. The walls were made of dreary cinder blocks and petrified layers of paint. At what seemed to be a dead end, they found a door and climbed another flight of stairs. A couple of trash bags were wilting in the hallway. “The neighbors always do that,” Laura said as she got out her key.

  Inside the apartment, several blankets were spread out on the floor. “You and Paul can sleep there,” Laura said. The foam mattress in the corner, which she told them she and Erik had purchased that same morning, was for Jeremy. Iris looked around the empty room. There was a brand-new map of the world taped to the wall above a desk and a chair. Beside the desk, a small bookcase. That was all.

  “What happened to all your things?” Iris asked.

  “They’re at my parents’ house,” Laura said.

  “Why didn’t you bring them up here?”

  Laura shrugged. “It didn’t seem necessary.”

  “Can I see your bedroom?”

  “Sure, but there’s not much to see.”

  Iris peeked in and saw a mattress on the floor and a television propped on a crate. There were some clothes scattered on the bed and carpet. It was odd that Laura had gotten rid of most of her stuff. She had always been an aesthete, arranging her objects with care, each element positioned perfectly as in a still life. But it didn’t seem to matter to her any longer. The room was anonymous and could have belonged to anyone.

  Laura handed them towels, pointing to the bathroom. “Good night,” she said, giving Iris a little wave as she shut the bedroom door.

  In the bathroom, Iris flicked on the light, and it hummed as she stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin dull and blotchy with violet shadows. She washed her face in warm water, ran the toothbrush against her teeth in a perfunctory way. The toilet was an institutional kind with a metal lever. She stepped on it with her shoe, and the toilet flushed violently, shreds of paper spewing back to the surface.

  When she came out, she saw Paul lying on top of the blankets. He gazed at her, looking disoriented, but he slowly got to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom. She slipped in under two of the blankets, leaving one comforter to lie on top of. The floor was hard under her back, but she felt blissfully warm as she stretched out her legs.

  “Jeremy,” she said.

  “Uh-huh?” he said.

  “Are you going to brush your teeth?”

  “I should.”

  “Why don’t you get it over with?”

  “Paul’s in the bathroom, isn’t he?”

  “Use the kitchen sink.”

  “That would be rude.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Iris.”

  “What do you think of Laura’s apartment?”

  He was silent for a moment. “It’s bare and functional.”
>
  “Don’t you think it’s strange?”

  “It’s very empty,” he said.

  “It makes you wonder how much she’s changed,” Iris said.

  “She no longer needs the same things.”

  “I miss her candles and books,” she sighed. “The poems that she hung along the wall.”

  “Yes,” he said. He didn’t say anything more, and she let him drift off to sleep. She lay quietly on the floor, looking at the darkened window. In another hour, the sky would lighten, turn incandescent blue, but she did not have the heart to wait for it.

  She heard Paul open the bathroom door, flick off the light. He got underneath the blankets and sighed, murmuring her name. He reached out for her in the dark. His breath was in her neck and in her hair, and her hips cracked when he lay on top of her. He kissed her gently on the tip of her nose three times. She smiled. It was sweet. His desire moved her in ways she couldn’t understand. She felt it there, below her stomach. But when he pressed against her, his hands beneath her shirt, she didn’t move. She wanted to, but she was afraid Jeremy was awake, listening. Paul’s lips were against her own, and she felt as if they were floating, their mouths touching like fishes’ mouths, cold and wet, as they breathed into each other. But she lay very still, pretending to be asleep. He stopped, touching her face once with the tips of his fingers before moving away to the other side. In silence, she waited until she could hear the sound of his breathing, low and steady in the darkness.

  TRANSPARENCY

  Henry Liu lost his voice halfway through the trip, coughing so violently that he thought he pulled a muscle on his left side. Whenever he felt pain, he put his hand across his chest to reassure himself that his heart was still beating. He looked at the view as his wife drove, at the broken edges of mountains covered in snow and the turquoise lake where not a single fish lived because of its cold waters. The mountains held a stillness that silenced him. It moved him to think how many thousands of years they had stood, worn silently away by wind and ice, and he felt regret as the lake slipped past his window. When it disappeared from view, Henry felt as if he had been given a last glimpse of the world. He knew that he would be dead before the trip was over.