Time Trade

by

Michelle Hulan

WE’RE AT A NEAR-EMPTY WINE BAR at Fifty-Second and Tenth. She takes off her hat when she sees me. Her hair’s gotten longer, and the static electricity makes her stray strands fly in wild directions. When I ask how she’s doing, she says, “Beware the Ides of March,” which comes across as rehearsed and very Alex. I’ve known her since college. We have gone months without talking. And when we do meet, we drink. Alcohol makes us palatable to one another. We comment on pop culture, make crass jokes about strangers, and romanticize the risky behaviour of our youth, but rarely do we explore the depths of our inner, hidden lives. We do not confide. We’ve grown apart, which is another way to say we are now too different to sustain empathy for one another. And it is this fact, this truth in which our relationship operates, that makes tonight all the stranger.

It doesn’t take long for her to tell me. It’s as though she’s practiced her lines the night before the show and has to say them quickly before she forgets. She tells me it started in January. Bryn, her husband, was vacuuming their living room rug when his eyes went wide. His knees buckled before he collapsed. Alex tried to help him up, but he pressed his arms against the floor as though holding it back, blinking at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” I interject. “But is he okay?” I brace myself for the worst case, which is not that he is dead, but that his body and mind have diverged – a man with his brains scooped out.

She doesn’t answer. She only keeps telling her story. “I dialed 911. It took eight minutes for the EMTs to get there. In Manhattan, they come quick.”

I suppress an eye roll. I live in Brooklyn, and Alex is a borough elitist. She rarely leaves Manhattan. It’s always me who needs to make up the distance between us.

“And you know Bryn’s shirt I hate? The black button-up with the white lining around the pockets?” She waits for me to remember, but I don’t. “Well, they cut it open to take his vitals,” she says, smiling. “It had snap buttons, too. I think it was the only good thing to come out of all this.”

“Jesus,” I say, locking eyes with the bartender to order another drink.

“So, they checked him over. Then they asked me for a moment in private. I told them we could talk in the bedroom, but they just stared at me, waiting. Turns out, they meant Bryn. Not me. What the fuck, right? So, I waited in the bedroom. I could hear Bryn whispering. It was like he didn’t want me to hear.” She swirls her wine.

I reach over to her to rub her back, and the gesture feels wrong, like touching the belly of a shark. I move in for a hug instead, and she puts her hand up.

“They said he fainted, maybe. From exhaustion. I mean, what does he even have to be exhausted from? I asked them, ‘What am I supposed to do? He’s still on the rug.’ But they just told me to talk to him. When the EMTs left, I managed to bring him to the bed. He passed out immediately. It happened so fast, I snapped to see if his eyes would open, and I shit you not, I could hear his eyes rolling under his lids.”

“Alex. I’m so sorry.” I ask if he’s okay again. The whole situation is strange. I am unprepared and concerned our relationship is no longer equipped for this amount of weight.

“It’s been six weeks.” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t talk to me. He’s usually sleeping, but then he’ll suddenly sit up like nothing happened. Sometimes I’ll find him in the shower or pouring himself a bowl of cereal. He can’t work. He’s home all the time. It’s like he’s in a trance that only breaks when I’m not there.”

“Did you take him to the doctor?”

“Yeah.” She looks down at her hands and spreads her fingers wide like her joints hurt. “She gave me a referral for a psychologist. The appointment’s scheduled for later this week.”

I tell her I’m sorry again. The whole situation is strange, and I ask if there’s anything I can do.

She tears her coaster into a pile of small, uneven pieces before she looks at me, focused. “What happened to us?”

I’m sure she means Bryn, but her voice has an accusatory sharpness.

“Maybe it’s just a lull. Relationships have lulls.” I put my hand on her shoulder. She tenses but doesn’t shrug me off. She asks for the check.

“I’ll keep you in the loop,” she says, paying the bill.

“Thanks,” I say, though it feels more like a knot.

IT TAKES ME OVER AN HOUR TO GET HOME. The subway is under construction, and I’m on the shuttle bus, wedged between a pair of teenagers and a middle-aged man reading on his phone. There isn’t enough room to take off my coat, and I want to shoulder them off me. If I push against the wide berth of the man’s back, it will undoubtedly begin a chain reaction of bodies shouldering the next out of necessity. So, rather than begin human dominos, I focus on the strange dissonance between Alex and me. I used to know the right things to say, but now, who knows what makes her feel good?

Then there is the question of Bryn and his strange illness. I knew he was struggling with feeling stuck. So was I and everyone else I knew. The last time we spoke was at their annual Christmas party. Bryn and I found ourselves talking. Though he and Alex had been married for four years, that night was the most we’d ever spoken. We were never friends. It’s not that I didn’t like him. I just never thought about him. He, for better or worse, is like my beige living room walls. I could paint them, make them more interesting if I make the effort, but I’d rather not.

He told me how he hated his job. He worked in advertising and said he was getting too old to work so many hours without good pay. “Without Alex’s income, I can’t even afford to live here.”

“Who can?” I said. I asked him what was so bad about his life. From my perspective, he had his mostly figured out.

He leaned in. “The time trade.” He sipped his coquito, and a small foamy line stayed on his lip. “Time takes everything away.” He flitted his hand in the air.

I handed him a napkin as he told me how he measured the value of his job, relationship, and hobbies by whether he was willing to sacrifice time for them.

“Everything we do is in exchange for time, and I don’t think I’m making a good trade right now.”

I nodded politely. I knew what he meant, but I have worked hard at building a boundary between work and life. I don’t expect my days to be one homogenous good-feeling wave I ride to shore. No, I suffer through my weekdays, so that the rest can be easy. I am successful at this only because my boundaries remain resolute. So much so, in fact, I will not mention my job. I didn’t like it then, and I still don’t. The time trade, or at least his idea that every moment has to be worth the time you sacrifice for it seemed too easy to me.

I told Bryn he didn’t have such a bad trade, and he leaned back in his Eames chair, looking away and across the room, probably for someone else to talk to. I am not philosophical. What’s the point?

TWO WEEKS PASS WITHOUT HEARING FROM ALEX, and I don’t reach out. I’m getting ready for bed and am in the middle of my new seven-step skincare routine when she calls.

She jumps right in. Doesn’t ask how I am. “It’s not physical. It’s mental. I don’t know what to do. I asked the psychologist what he thought, and he said we ‘have irreconcilable differences.’ Felt very divorce-coded. Should I file for divorce?” she asks.

The question catches me off guard. I tell her she shouldn’t make any major decisions when emotions are high. This too shall pass. My advice comes out generic and vague, and hearing myself, I am self-conscious that I am a generic and vague friend. I should have called her sooner, so I say, hoping to make up for it: “I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Can I come over?”

Alex is quiet like she has to check her calendar. “Yeah. Okay.”

I take the elevator up to their apartment. She lives on the fourteenth floor and every damn time, I hold my breath during the ride. I hate elevators, and hers has had padded blankets against the walls for the last three years. If they can’t fix walls on time, how am I supposed to believe the servicing is up to date? I imagine the wire holding me up snapping, though I know that’s not how elevators work. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not like my limbic system can read technical specs. It can only read the room.

When Alex opens the door, she looks like she hasn’t slept. The bags under her eyes are swollen and dark. Inside, bread crumbs and several empty bottles of wine litter the counter. The stove has charred bits of food between the burners.

“Can you do me a favour?” She’s holding a trash bag out. “Can you take this to the shoot at the end of the hallway?” She points to the left.

Of course, I take it. I am grateful for any guided, tangible task. Explicitness is my love language, and I’m always walking around New York waiting for strangers to ask for help. I’m like the most available tour guide, too eager to be accurate. In my excitement, I have sent many people in the wrong direction.

At the end of the hallway, I lift the lid, then push it in, listening to it slide down fourteen stories of sheet metal.

By the time I get back inside, Alex is on the couch, rubbing her feet against the rug. There is a small white pile of fibre forming around them.

I pour us each an overfilled glass of wine and hand one to her.

“Thank you,” she says, an echo of her former self. “You know, it all started because of this rug. This stupid fucking rug.”

“Sorry?”

“Before he fell. We were arguing about this stupid fucking rug.” She says it like Stupid Fucking Rug is the brand name for some alternative décor service.

Turns out, the rug has been a sticking point in their relationship. Bryn bought it on a whim after waiting weeks for Alex to pick out a rug she liked. The blocks in their parquet flooring kept popping up, and he was tired of stubbing his toes on the raised edges.

“First of all, it’s ugly. Second, it sheds. These little cheap white fibres get everywhere.” Alex works as a labour lawyer and tells me her clients sometimes pull clumps from her shoulders. “They ask what kind of dog I have. Sometimes I just tell them I have a Great Pyrenees.”

Personally, I like the rug. It’s soft and white, and sure, it’s shedding but only because Alex is grating her feet against it like they’re parmesan. It is, again, very Alex to go out of her way to prove a point in such an unnatural way.

“Anyway, I told him to get rid of it, and he lost it. He called me bougie and started vacuuming. It got ugly, and he collapsed.”

She keeps rubbing her feet, and I can’t help but interpret every brush against the Stupid Fucking Rug as a moment in which I am expected to say something helpful.

“Is he here?” I ask.

She points to the bedroom. “Sure fucking is.”

Sure Fucking Is. Stupid Fucking Rug. “Do you want me to clean up the kitchen?”

“What? No.” She starts to say something else but stops.

“What is it?”

“Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t need you to clean. If I needed a maid, I would have called one.”

“I just want to help.” I want to do anything other than sit in silence. I bring up a story I think will cheer her up. “Hey, remember that time we took our Spanish professor out for drinks? She gave us both A’s and told us we didn’t have to take the final.”

“She was probably afraid she’d lose her job.”

“Ha, because we caught her dry-humping the bartender in the bathroom,” I say, smiling and hoping Alex smiles, too, but she doesn’t. She’s looking at her feet.

“Before you go,” she says, which is how I know she wants me to go. “Can you help me get rid of this thing?”

Together we push the marble coffee table to the side of the room. Then we roll the rug up and drag it to the front door. Alex has this shit-eating, uneasy grin.

I ask her if there’s anything else I can do, and she shakes her head. “But you can take that down with you, right?” she says, pointing to the rug.

Of course, I can. I tell her I’d do anything for her. I go in for a hug, but she doesn’t reciprocate. Her body is tense, like hugging a telephone pole. I try and fail to put the rug over my shoulder, so I walk backward, dragging it through the door. As I do, I tell her about a new Peruvian restaurant near my apartment. “When Bryn snaps out of it, we’ll all go. We’ll eat good food and drink wine,” I say, knowing she’ll never make it to Brooklyn.

As I drag the rug down the hallway, I hear her say, “Thank, God,” before the door slams.

I’M WATCHING MOONSTRUCK WHEN ALEX CALLS. Nicolas Cage is baking in the basement. It’s my favourite part, and I let the phone ring as Cage says:

“What is life? They say bread is life. And bake bread, bread, bread. And I sweat and shovel the stinking dough in and out of this hot hole in the wall, and I should be happy?”

By the time I answer, I might as well be shoveling the stinking dough because I am filled with fervor, angst, and Nicolas Cage.

“I did it. I served divorce papers,” she says.

I’m not surprised to hear this development, but only because I know most marriages end.

She takes a deep breath. “Things are complicated. Get this.” Papers shuffle in the background. “‘In the event that either party becomes unable to engage in gainful employment due to a documented and severe medical condition, and as a result, experiences a substantial decrease in income, the other party agrees to provide financial support in the form of alimony.’” Her voice gets loud. “Documented. Due to a documented medical condition. Doctors, therapists, ayurvedic fucking massage. I fucked myself.”

“But what’s the condition?”

“The condition? I don’t know. Being an asshole? It doesn’t matter.” Alex’s voice lowers. “He’s faking it.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t want to sound generic and reach for some version of the truth.

“He wasn’t happy when I talked to him last.”

“What?”

“He was talking about how he didn’t think he had a good trade or something.”

“Ugh, the ‘Time Trades.’ That Jeffrey Lewis song he was obsessed with. He’s such an idiot. He kept talking about it all winter, but life can’t be good all the time. Sometimes you have to do shitty things and work on shitty relationships, so you have the long-term benefit of companionship. He never understood the song. Put in the time, so you can reap the rewards. But he’s not a reaper. Actually, he’s not a sower either. He just wants to sit in someone else’s garden.”

As I listen, I, Nicolas Cage, consider whether the bread bread bread (my acts of service i.e., rug removal services and listening to her problems all these years) I put into the hot hole in the wall (our friendship) is just a shitty relationship we are maintaining unnecessarily. I find myself suddenly empathetic to Bryn for valuing his time over a broken marriage. Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe it was time to take our relationship out of the oven, too. “Why would he or anyone want to be in a shitty relationship?” I say. I’m surprised I have the gall to say it. I usually keep a much more reasonable distance between myself and conflict.

“Sorry,” she says sarcastically, “I can’t really think about why my marriage failed. I just need to figure out what to do next.”

“I mean, have you thought about what he’s been going through? Maybe it’s not physical, but emotional health is just as real.”

“I know what he’s been going through. A lifetime supply of children’s cereal.”

I keep going, pushing. “Maybe it’s a midlife crisis. Not for nothing, but you asked for the divorce, not Bryn.”

“He’s not having a midlife crisis.”

“I mean you.”

She sighs an exaggerated sigh into the receiver.

“Imagine if the roles were reversed, Alex. What if he left you?”

“Oh, Lin,” she says. “He did leave me. Go fuck yourself.” She hangs up.

IT’S AUGUST NOW, and like the rug fibres, our friendship has unraveled. We haven’t spoken. Whatever threads were holding us together floated off to the Great Pyrenees in the sky. I am walking near StuyTown, up First Ave, when suddenly there he is, walking through heat waves as though emerging from a mirage. He’s got new glasses. His calves are exposed and glistening. He’s carrying several grocery bags over his shoulders. We lock eyes.

“Oh, hi.” He leans in to kiss each side of my cheek like he’s just come back from France. He smells like lavender. “How’s the time trade?”

Whatever trade he made, it seems to have involved going back in time. He’s beaming. Healthier than he’s ever been. His skin is dewy but not damp, his cheeks ruddy. “Bryn, you look great” is all I manage to say.

“Oh, thank you. I seem to have recovered. If I continue to take it easy, that is.” He pauses a moment to smile, and something about the way he does it confirms what I probably knew all along. Alex was right, of course. He was faking it for alimony.

“I got a new number. Here, give me your phone,” he says, dropping his bags on the sidewalk. “Please, call,” he says. “I’d love to see you soon. There’s a new exhibit at the New Museum I think you would like.”

And that’s that. He hands me my phone and walks away, humming a familiar, upbeat song.

ON THE TRAIN HOME, as my sweat evaporates in the air conditioning, I delete Bryn’s number. The lights flash as I descend under the East River. I close my eyes. I’m sure this is the end; the new construction is likely already crumbling. But I make it to Bedford. I open my eyes and catch my reflection in the subway window. My hair is thinning. My skin is thinning. It has become somehow waxier since I turned forty. I pull my skin taut, then slowly loosen my hold, watching the years compress and age me. Early jowls form. The bags under my eyes are now full-time residents. I close my eyes and consider texting Alex. I’d say she’s right; I’m wrong. Then we’d meet up at a bar in Manhattan, her choice, and I’d tell her I’m sorry – my instinct for catastrophe colours all my relationships! I’m too ready for the end of everything, I’d say. She’d forgive me, of course, in part out of pity, the rest out of history. Then I’d say, breaking the tension, I think Bryn’s condition was contagious, and we’d laugh and laugh all haughty and light and drunk like no time passed at all.