"Or give him money," Eileen added.
These may not have been Paul's exact words, or even the correct sense or manner of his words, spoken as they were amid the ongoing conversation, even over top of it, like a disparate collection of conversation bits written by Can Xue, so that Winona had a hard time attending to them and comprehending them all while participating more or less in the general verbal melee. This is more her sense of it all, remembered, especially when awakening out of dreams of it, because she goes home and dreams about them all that night.
She hates it when she dreams about work, although sometimes she likes it when the dreams are about one of the cute guys, especially when she's making out with them, especially when it's with Karl. Usually, though, she likes to dream. She had a twin sister who died when she was very young and she's always dreamed a lot about her and awakens thinking she is her, as if she's looking into a mirror.
Looking into a mirror can tell you a lot about yourself, she thinks. But she doesn't know what it is that it tells her. But she knows that she learns, even though she doesn't know what.
It's like closing yourself off with headphones and becoming absorbed into the music, as if you are one of the musicians yourself. She likes to close herself off with headphones playing loud music. That way she can keep the world at a farther distance from her.
Obsessive-compulsive neurosis occurs in the manic phase of her bipolar disorder. Someone told her that. She can't remember who, but she imagines it was Karl, even though she knows she'd heard it before she knew him.
It was the kind of thing he'd say, like opposites attract. The farther away a thing is kept, the more potent is its potential for proximity.
These are not thoughts that she is capable of thinking, except deep in the recesses of her mind where she doesn't know she knows. These kinds of thoughts keep her mind at ease, because she knows them without knowing. Knowing without knowing is important. It keeps you free of stress.
Peace is not a place free of problems and stress.
Peace is a state of soul in the middle of difficulties.
And when you don't know what you know, you can be intelligent without becoming affected by it, like most people who are intelligent are.
Except for Karl. That's why she chose him to help to teach her, because lately she's been thinking that she has to learn what she doesn't know she knows, because people make fun of her being stupid, mostly behind her back, and Karl treats her like she's smart, because, she thinks, he sees and feels inside her and knows she knows things she doesn't know she knows.
At least, that's what she feels, she feels, like he's inside her. And she wishes that he really was. Because when he looks at her, she feels like he knows everything about her, because he makes her feel important, significant--and wet.
The day after she spoke to Karl in the parking lot, Paul asked her about it. He wanted to know what she said to him.
"It's none of your business," she told him.
"I'm sorry. But I worry about you. You always set yourself up to be hurt."
"Is your life so perfect that you gotta be worrying about mine?"
"No. But, well..."
"Don't you have problems of your own to worry about?"
"No."
"You don't have any problems at all?"
"All my problems are solutions."
She liked that. She liked Paul. But he is kind of strange.
Paul once asked her "Isn't anything sacred to you?"
"Actually, everything's sacred to me. It's people's trivialization of everyday phenomena that makes me cynical." She doesn't know where that came from. It was something like Karl would say. Maybe she was starting to channel him.
The following morning, Paul was sitting in his car in the parking lot before work getting high. Winona walked up from behind the car and tapped on the passenger side window and scared the shit out of him. She tried the door, but it was locked. She motioned for him to open it. As he reached across to unlock it, she flipped her cigarette out into the parking lot in front of the car like she'd seen John Travolta do in a movie. As she got into the car, Paul asked "When did you start smoking?"
"The other day."
She reached over and took the joint from his hand.
"Why?"
"Because it's cool."
"No it's not."
"You're smoking."
She hit the joint, once, quickly, hardly inhaling at all, and passed it back to him.
"Not tobacco."
"So? You just smoke this stuff to be cool."
"No I don't. I smoke it to be able to stand this job."
"I thought you liked your job."
"It's okay."
"Then why do you get high?"
"It's boring."
"Getting high's boring?" She giggled.
"The job's boring." He laughed.
"Well, that's why I smoke cigarettes."
"Because you hate your job?"
"Because I'm bored."
"You too, huh?"
"Huh?" They both laugh.
"What's wrong with smoking cigarettes, anyway?"
"You mean besides the fact that they kill you?"
"Yeah."
"You really wanna know?"
"Yeah."
"It's kind of insulting."
"So? Since when do you care about that?"
"You think I'm insulting?"
"Yeah. Sorta."
"Really! I'm sorry."
"It's no big deal. It's just the way you are."
"Well, then I better not tell you about smoking."
"No. It's okay. tell me."
"Okay, then, if you really wanna be insulted."
"Do it to me. I can take it."
"It's just that smoking tells me a lot about a girl."
"Like what?"
"Like, one, she's a dumb cunt."
"Yeah. What else?"
"Two. She has no concern for her health."
"Yeah. What else?"
"Three. She has psychological problems that an oral fixation may be compensation for."
"What does that mean?"
"Never mind. It's too complicated to explain right now. Maybe I'll explain it to you later. Besides, I don't wanna complain about that 'cause it could work in my favor."
"Whattaya mean?"
"Never Mind. Four. The most important one. She's a weak-willed person. If she's thinking about trying to quit and can't, the conclusion is obvious, but even if she isn't, the act of smoking itself betrays a weak will. When you depend on a drug, after having become addicted in the first place, it's an indication of a weak will, apart from a sign of ignorance, which, if she isn't trying to quit, is even more entrenched."
"I don't understand."
"That's cause I'm too high to explain. I'll explain it better later."
"Okay. But what about guys?"
"Huh?
"You said that those were things that smoking told you about girls. What about guys?"
"I don't care about guys. Let them be addicts or kill themselves if they want."
"But you care about girls."
"Yeah. Sure."
"Why?"
"Cause that's the way I am."
"What way?"
"Heterosexual."
"Oh. I thought you meant something else."
"What?"
"Huh?"
"What else did you think I meant?"
"Huh? I don't know. I forget."
After that morning, Winona never smoked again. She never really understood what Paul had said. She never really even thought about it again. But she decided after all that it wasn't cool to smoke. And this was when she began taking an interest in Paul. Before this time, she thought he was just another crazy head. But something about this morning sitting in the car with him changed her opinion about him.
Later that day, after she'd thought for a while about him, she decided that she liked him a lot and that he liked her too. She never saw it before, that he liked her. She caught him after work as he was leaving the building and, awkwardly, she asked him about it.
"Of course I like you," he answered.
"Then why don't you ask me out.
He said "Whether you are the game running or the hunter chasing, you are the sport in any case. Evading and pursuing are the same activity."
She didn't know what he meant, but for some reason she was afraid to ask him. She had never been afraid before to ask anyone anything, but now she was wary of what she said. Did he mean that he didn't want to be caught up in a game where he might want to kill her? He couldn't mean that. She concluded that he was a safe person, kind of what she already knew, and so, since he obviously was avoiding the issue, she asked him out. And he accepted.
When Paul picked Winona up that evening, she said:
"Well. What do you want to do?"
"Let's go out to the caves and stab bats."
"What!?"
He laughed, almost maniacally.
"What are you talking about?"
"It's a palindrome."
"What's a palindrome?"
A word or phrase that's the same whether you read it backwards or forward."
She thinks about it. "Oh. Stab bats."
"You got it."
"You are so strange."
§
Winona remembers her past like it all had happened to someone else. She wonders whatever happened to Paul, if he still works at that same place. She wonders about Karl and Joan, if they ever stayed together. But she doesn't wonder long. These are only passing flashes of memory, usually occurring in bed in the morning as she lies with her thoughts, preparing to get up. She gets up early in the morning and runs, hardly awake, relying on brisk morning air and the physical exertion to wake her up. As she runs, her hair, now short, remains firmly in place close to her head. When she returns home and jumps into the shower, she wets her hair immediately, shampoos it quickly, and rinses it out. The rest of the shower is like a brief breeze that passes through the bathroom. Then she is off to work after a quick breakfast of toast and a cup of instant coffee. She gets another cup, brewed, from the vendor at her building. The rest of the day is all downhill.
Winona remembers the day she found out that Karl was a friend of the owner and had willingly volunteered to be laid off to help the company out and collect unemployment while he helped to install the new system, but they couldn't tell anyone this because the owner didn't want the employees to "get any ideas." Paul told her that. Paul knew a lot of things about the company and she was sorry that she never paid much attention to him, even though she did sleep with him that one time when they had that date. But he wasn't very caring, so she ignored him after that, even though he tried to remain close to her. She liked him, but she didn't feel about him the way she felt about Karl. When she thinks about Karl, even now, she feels lost.
The Purpose of Life
"Do you know where you belong?" Winona had asked.
"Yes," Karl said.
"Where?"
"Wherever I am."
"I guess it's not important where you are as who you're with."
"You think?"
"Don't you?"
"No. Who you're with is who you're with."
"You don't think there are people who belong together?"
"Oh, sure."
"The problem is, finding them."
"No it isn't. People who are already together belong together."
"That's sad."
"Maybe. It can be, I guess."
"But some people are together that don't belong together."
"No they're not."
"What about a guy who's always beating his wife."
"Why does she stay?"
"Because she doesn't have a choice."
"Sure she does."
"Oh, yeah, that's easy to say. But when you're in a situation that you feel trapped in, when you don't have anywhere else to go..."
"When you're too scared to go out on your own, when you think you can't survive anywhere else..."
"Yeah."
"Then you belong where you are."
"Just because you can't go anywhere doesn't mean you belong where you are."
"Yes it does. That's exactly what it means. You belong wherever you choose to stay. It's a basic law of nature."
"There's always someplace where you'll be better off."
"Probably, but you have to be willing to go out and find it."
"Some people are afraid."
"Most people are."
"But if you keep looking, eventually you'll find that perfect place or that perfect person."
"No you won't. There's no such thing. There are only unrealistic perceptions and compromises."