He reminded them all of somebody.

To Terry he was just like her grubby little brother who’d gotten Chlamydia at fourteen and a decade later married a middle-aged Canadian woman he’d met on a cruise to Tahiti a week after he’d graduated from college. He and the Canadian divorced two years later, but her brother stayed in Ottawa and managed to go five years without ever getting a real job. When she called him for the first time in half a decade—two years ago, the morning when their father’s diagnosis became terminal—she immediately noticed that he’d picked up the characteristic “eh?” of the Canadian people and used it to end nearly every sentence. She hung up the phone, feeling hopelessly responsible for her family, life, death and everything in between. But she was wrong, thank God. Her brother flew into San Francisco the next day, dropped his stuff by Terry’s apartment and sat with their father in the hospital for every possible moment until the very, very end. He was even the one who covered their father’s eyes, taking the sheet out of his ten bent fingers to do it. At the funeral, he said that as death set in there was an obvious peace in their father’s eyes. It was a peace that opened a connection that was deeper and more real than anything he’d ever felt in his life. When he said that during his eulogy as tears splattered his cheeks, Terry loved him more than she’d ever loved any living human being, even though he’d said “eh?” nine or ten times in about four minutes.

He reminded Charles of Darryl—Little Darryl his best friend from two houses down while he was growing up. The day after Charles’ thirteenth birthday, Darryl moved away. They’d never written to each other, though they promised they would over and over after an awfully long hug (a hug that might’ve included Darryl kissing or licking his neck a couple of times). But Charles still thought of him occasionally when things like greed reminded him of the 1980s. Last year, fifteen years after he’d moved out of suburban Detroit, Darryl and his mother, who turned out to be what the media called a “lifelong Grifter,” were arrested for the murder of their millionaire landlord, a ninety-four-year-old woman who had written both of them into her will. As their trial started, Charles planned to write Darryl again. Instead, he’d gone to a few news sites and posted comments challenging the media to find the real story behind the crime. He wrote things like: I knew this guy; He wouldn’t even overfeed his goldfish. The body was never even found. Talk about habeas corpus! I’d bet a million dollars and a kidney he’s innocent. When Darryl was convicted and refused to appeal so he could get the death penalty sooner rather than later (He had been obsessed by death, even as a child.), Charles tried to forget about all that as much as he could.

And to Rene he didn’t look like anyone she’d ever met, but he had a vibe or an air or mannerisms that were suggestive of the first man she’d ever had sex with. She was sixteen, and he must’ve been twenty. He worked at the video store down the street from her mother’s apartment in Oxnard. Nearly every night, she stopped by the store to rent a video—usually some BBC production that had appeared in the UK on television. Rene loved the stories and the music but the accents just helped her mother, who had terrible insomnia, sleep. The video store guy spoke so quietly that for months she thought he was disabled, perhaps. But she learned to lean in as he ran her card and she found he spoke beautifully—spare like song lyrics and often in complete sentences with pauses that differed depending on whether he’d intended a period, a comma or a semicolon. After weeks of improving communication that bordered on conversation, one evening he’d closed the store early and invited her to the back. He wanted to show her a painting he was working on. He opened the door to a pitch-black space that smelled of ethyl alcohol and tobacco. As he turned on the lights, a record player began spinning as well. Jazz music—wild, inappropriate music that forced Rene to imagine a huge barbeque overrun by clowns. He shut them in, walked up to his canvas and as he began to speak, trumpets harmonized with the loud buzz of the air-conditioner and forced her ear closer to his lips than it ever been before. He softly explained the abstract, Mickey-Mouse-ear-shaped blotches on the canvas. He said something about colors being the way the unconscious expressed emotion, and she turned toward him, making steady eye contact with him for the very first time. He had huge blue eyes that were impossibly glossy and reflective and framed by dark, thick eyelashes that seemed trained to curl. Without thinking or considering or hesitating, Rene did what British people did when they made eye contact with a member of the opposite sex—she kissed him. The kiss lasted about ten seconds before he pulled away to begin undressing her. Soon even her socks sat in a little pile on top of a flattened cardboard display for the movie Mr. Mom. He laid her down on a grimy couch and licked every bend in her body, which took so long that the record finished and the air conditioner took a break, forcing her to fixate on the subtle slapping sound of his tongue. Then, finally, he placed himself inside her for about thirty seconds. It wasn’t as painful as she expected (Later she speculated that pain was lessened because he was uncircumcised and extremely small and not wearing a condom.). After that she could never go into his store, of course. Even the thought of renting a video made everything inside, including her brain, cramp. So she and her mother were forced to tune in commercial television. Rene obsessively tried to figure out how she would explain to her mother that she was pregnant with the video guy’s child. But thankfully, she pondered that question long enough. Her period arrived, exactly two weeks late. Stress can do that, she told herself, as she came out of the bathroom to watch the local news with her mother who had taken up whiskey as a sleep aid. Recently, as Rene got closer and closer to thirty, she often debated whether she should’ve pressed charges on that video guy or, maybe, she should’ve gone back there again and again until she was comfortable with sex, until he really learned what pleased her. She liked to imagine how much better her twenties would have been if she had gotten that out of the way when she was only sixteen.

So, Joe reminded them all of someone. And he seemed to know it somehow and couldn’t stop smiling about it. Or maybe he was just happy about being so blandly handsome.

He smiled as he described his most previous living situation, his new obsession with knitting that he he’d learned from his grandfather, how cleaning refrigerators was his guilty pleasure. When he had nothing else to say, he kept smiling and nodding at each of them in a very familiar way.

The glow of his eyes said, “I dig. You’re quiet people. I can be quiet too.”

No one knew what to say. Charles and Rene were used to Terry running both of her hands through her chunky curls as she took over any group discussion, but now she seemed so taken by Joe’s smile or distracted by some conversation going on between her ears that she couldn’t invent the right words.

When it was quiet too long, Rene placed her long, stringy brown hair over her nearly pointy ears and asked when he was able to move in.

“Now, yesterday, tomorrow,” he said. “Or whatever works for you all. Sooner the better, my cousin’s couch misses its ‘me time.’”

Rene hated the personification of furniture and all inanimate objects as much as she hated anything on earth except the war. So, he was lucky, she thought, that he was the only decent response to their ad. If not, she was about to get up and go to the bathroom and not come back. That was her silent way of explaining to her roommates that she didn’t approve of something.

But it was December 30th. They’d let the whole month go without trying to replace Carol who’d already moved out on Christmas Day (Carol was a Jehovah’s Witness who hated traffic and was now driving to somewhere in Indiana where she had gotten a job as a teacher. Like that was the only place she could find a job as a teacher.). If they didn’t chose a new roommate within the next twenty-four hours, they were going to all have to split the extra $850 in rent that person should be paying plus other expenses. That was the kind of small financial disaster that, when it hits at the Holidays, forces a person to consider rash and hasty things.

For instance, though it was half a year away, Charles was forced to consider not going to the next Burning Man. And that was not a thought he enjoyed at all. It made him feel like a corporate slave with nothing to live for. The general consensus of people in San Francisco around this time, the beginning of the twenty-first century, was that if you were going to be a corporate slave, you needed something, like Burning Man, to live for.

Unexpectedly Joey cut through the ponderous silence and started asking questions. “Are you all day people or night people?” “Do you all have lots of guests over” “Do you all mind if I’m was Vegan because I don’t mind if you eat meat?”

Rene answered with either a quick yes and no that barely explained anything while still making her feel impossibly frustrated by being forced to answer. She especially resented being grouped with those two or anyone. It was a fact they lived together, but a fact of logistics. Like being in an elevator with someone. It didn’t imply any sort of consistency of thought.

As Joey’s questions became more and more specific until they justified affirmative or negative answers, Terry’s frustration with Rene’s terse, poky answers forced her out of her daze. She began to explain everything about everything: who woke up when, who was a night person, who cleaned the George Foreman Grill the best. Joey soaked in all the information as his smile curved to a nearly impossible angle.

Finally, Terry said, “Wow. Well, any more questions?” in a way that implied that he’d asked more than enough.

But Rene could tell that Terry liked him. She could read Terry as quickly as she read the forecast: It was sunny and 68.

“Well,” he said, “this is a tough situation for you. I really love the place; something about it makes me feel safe. But I don’t want to rush you at all, but I would like to know tonight. How about we all go get a drink on me? See if we get along in a social setting.”

Rene and Charles turned to Terry, who was staring straight at Joey saying, “Sure.”

**********
They each had a different favorite bar, so no one wanted to choose. They wandered a few blocks until Joey said, “There’s a liquor store. We should just get bottles in a bag and sit on the corner.”

“I’d love that,” Charles said. He had gone to USF and along with all the other undergraduates learned quickly that drinking in public was generally tolerated in the city unless you got too aggressive in your panhandling.

Rene didn’t even bother to acknowledge their exchange. “This Thai place up here has a bar,” she said. “I’ve never been there but it seems pretty normal.”

“Great,” Joey said.

Charles and Rene stopped walking to wait for Terry’s response. She looked both ways like she was about to cross the street, though the were in the middle of the sidewalk, and said, “Fine.”

Terry got wine. Charles got a beer. Rene got a 7 and 7. And Joey got a Thai Iced Tea.

“Wow. You don’t drink?” Terry asked, and Rene realized that Terry had a crush.

They were crowded around a tall table built for three. To compensate everyone had their elbows back, out of the way, and just snuck their hands toward the table to negotiate a sip.

“Well, I’m an honest guy, so I’ll just say I’m on medication.” The all sipped and stared at him intently as he became a real person for the first time. “I’m on Prozac. Generic Prozac, I forget what it’s called.”

Rene and Terry both eyed Charles who’d turned his gaze to the floor. Charles was on all kinds of medication. He kept them in a little plastic case and downed them all in a row every morning with a glass of orange juice. But he’d never explained what they were, and he still drank alcohol.

Rene was so sick of Charles and his orange juice and his inability to clean a glass without creating water spots that only made sense if the object had been found in Pompeii or Atlantis that she almost asked Charles if he took Prozac too. But she knew it wasn’t just that. He probably was on whatever was the weirdest medication someone could be on.

Plus she knew Terry didn’t approve of that kind of talk. To Terry, there were three things that social acquaintances shouldn’t talk about no matter how liberal they were: STDs, God and Medication. And even though they’d all lived together for a year, shared the same air, shed skin cells on the same furniture and sat on the same toilet every single day, they were just social acquaintances. And the attraction she felt for Joe and his big toothy grin wasn’t very compatible with that kind of relationship.

“I guess I shouldn’t have said that,” Joe said. “It’s not for depression. I have OCD, used to wash my hands not less than 100 times a day, and Ritalin didn’t help. But the Zac works. I tried to come off it last spring and everything was like WAHWAHWAH.” He acted out groping the air in very slow motion.

Terry smiled. She couldn’t help it. But Rene just stared at Charles who was now staring at his cell phone like it was about to tell him something important. Slowly she’d realized that next to Joe and his masculine prettiness, Charles looked offensive. His bland features all shrunk to his large nose, which curled like the end of a banister. And Charles seemed to know that. And that almost made Rene sad.

“Anything else embarrassing you want to tell us?” Rene asked suddenly, as if she were defending Charles from some sort of oppressive bullying.

Terry grunted air, signifying disapproval.

But Joe just laughed, “Let’s see. I think I have HPV, you know warts. Never had any bad breakout or anything but like 90% of America does. So I probably do. My parents are divorced. I think my dad is gay. He’s been living with our cousin Bob for years and all I knew about Bob before he moved in was that he was a swinger. What else? I’m dyslexic, which isn’t a problem unless I’m trying to 69 you.”

Terry was watching Charles and Rene stare at Joe with an absolute shock that opened Charles mouth and made Rene clench hers. Joe seemed to confess forever and even when he was down the awkwardness of his honesty kept them both still.

“Wow,” Terry said. “You didn’t have to tell us all that.”

“I’m kidding,” Joe said and smiled like he was everyone’s best pal. “I even drink, I’m just doing a yoga class later. Really, I’m just completely fucking around. It’s my weird sense of humor, and I like to get it out there, so I don’t shock people too much later.”

“That’s smart,” Terry said and nodded at him, her pale skin brightened by Joe’s white white smile.

“I’ve gotta pee,” Joe said. “BRB.”

As soon as he was out of spitting distance, Rene asked Charles, “What do you think?”

As he raised his shoulders, Charles looked like he might cry.

“Well, I like him. He’s a bit sick, but he’s funny,” Terry said.

“Me too. He’s real cute, adorable,” Rene said.

“Wow. You think so?” Terry asked, sitting up in her seat a bit more, claiming some space.

“I’d do him,” Charles said.

Terry and Rene laughed because they supposed Charles was gay but really, really didn’t want to know.

“Me too,” Rene said.

“Wow, you would?” Terry said. “Even if he moved in?”

“I can’t promise anything.”

Terry nodded in a slow steady arc, really considering things for the first time.

“I’m going to get a job on the weekends,” Charles said. “I can afford the extra this month, maybe a few months.”

“Me too,” Rene said.

Terry eyed the bathroom door. He wasn’t coming out yet. He’d said terrible things. He’d been way too familiar and the wine was terrible. “Let’s go,” she said.

Charles and Rene downed their drinks and didn’t look back.

The whole walk home Charles imitated Joey’s smile till the point it made his eyes water. And Terry couldn’t stop grinning, really grinning, which reminded everyone of somebody.

This story was inspired by Jeff Hurlow’s Myspace Portrait Project.

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