Sometimes All the Time

Jonah’s
throat was sore, lately. It hadn’t bothered him in the last couple
days, but Jonah still waited for the pain to resurface, so that whenever
he swallowed it would feel like swallowing sand, like it had for the
past month or so. This waiting made him impatient, but the painkillers
he took somewhat tempered his anxiety. Right now he had a eucalyptus
lozenge in his mouth, and he bit down on it – not all the way through,
just so his molars sunk in halfway.

There
were eleven tables, and he placed the salt-and-pepper shakers and the
miniature Tabasco bottles from each on his cocktail tray. Becky followed
behind him, blowing out the tea lights (too hard: wax fanned out against
the sides of the candleholders) and wiping the tables with a bleach-soaked
rag. In the office – a desk and laptop behind a velveteen curtain
– their manager settled the credit cards and listened to vintage rock
radio, the songs muffled and heartfelt through the drape, and Jonah
and Becky knew that really they were actually alone.

"I’m
coming over later, still," Becky said.

"Yeah
that’s cool," said Jonah. "If you want." He paused at a four-top
by the front windows, and looked up and out over Lake Calhoun, trying
to find one of the half dozen or so constellations he could recognize,
but it was too cloudy, or maybe the lights from the bars and condominiums
in Uptown Minneapolis were too bright and distracting, or the Percocets
he’d taken dampened the stars like they did his feelings (physical,
emotional, and otherwise), or maybe the stars tonight were dimmer than
usual, farther away and burning out. He scribbled something on a guest
check that later, when he tries to re-write it into his astronomy journal,
he will be unable to read.

"I
want," Becky said. She slid into a booth and began to polish silverware.

She
had two blond streaks in her hair, interwoven with the black. Nights
they spent together, Jonah guessed what her original color had been,
but Becky wouldn’t tell him. Also – and this was maybe more important,
at least to Jonah – she couldn’t come during sex, or at least not
with him, or at least not yet; he asked her why she wanted to sleep
with him so often, why she was so insistent, but she wouldn’t tell
him that, either.

"Okay,
then," Jonah said. "I’ll call you after Jenna’s gone, I guess."

He
sat down next to her, making sure the outsides of their legs touched
under the table, but Becky scooted away.

Jenna,
his friend, ex-girlfriend, possibly hopefully girlfriend-soon-to-be,
was coming tonight to pick up their dog because Jonah worked longer
hours on weekends. He did not like this arrangement: the time he spent
away from Rabbit was confusing and remarkably un-linear. Tomorrow, Friday,
Jonah will wake up the same time as usual, but realizing his dog is
not there needing to be let out, he will fall back asleep, and in the
two days after, his sleep will drift later and later into the morning,
and the events of his day will be without the regular, nearly grammatical
punctuation of walking Rabbit. Which is why tonight he was thinking
about trying to convince Jenna to move back in with him.

"What
time will that be?" Becky asked. She wiped a pair of wet spoons with
a black napkin.

"The
usual time. I don’t know. I just thought I should tell you, is all."

"You
shouldn’t have," Becky said.

She
was wearing a pair of his soccer socks – they came up to the middle
of her thighs, the Puma logo stretched around her kneecaps – and Jonah
thought it was strange how easily and comfortably she’d been able
to insinuate herself into his life. That was, actually, the most fascinating
aspect of their now-month-long relationship: its normalcy. After only
a couple nights together, symbiotic sleeping positions and synchronized
wakings had been established. Jonah was impressed with himself for this
because he considered Becky to be a little too good for him. Not because
she was too pretty, though maybe also for that reason, but because she
seemed so sad, and wise in her sadness, (and pretty in her sadness),
and for him melancholy trumped beauty: it was a sort of barometer for
how human one was. And Becky couldn’t even say why she was on the
anti-depressants she was on – she’d tried explaining several times
and just given up – and this intrigued Jonah and turned him on a little.

Right
now, he loved the way she stopped rolling silverware, and brushed crumbs
from the booth to the floor, hair hanging forward in a way that exposed
the sparrow she had tattooed below her left ear.

"What’s
wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"What’s
nothing?"

"Nothing’s
this big void in the universe. Scientists aren’t sure if it actually
exists or not, but it does. I feel it a lot."

Jonah
coughed, and then spit into a beverage napkin – candy lozenge shards,
mostly – which he folded and put in his apron.

"Is
your throat okay?" Becky moved closer to him. "I hope it’s not
strep. I don’t have the energy to get sick right now."

"I’m
fine, I think," he said, taking a pill from his pocket.

"I
can get you more, if you want," she said. "It might be generic this
time, but basically the same. I’ll ask my guy. Then I’ll bring it
over tonight, if you’ll let me over. Whatever. I’m hot. You’re
dumb."

Later,
after the chairs are all flipped over onto the tables and the lights
turned out, after the manager unlocks the restaurant doors so they can
leave, and Jenna come and Jenna gone and Becky and Jonah in bed together,
the night crew will come to sweep and mop and bleach the floors.