I would do the opposite of everything I have done.

We left the concert hall around 11:30.  I picked up my toaster from the coat check and we left ahead of the crowd.

There was a bar next door to the concert hall that was already full.  The front was all French doors and they were open to the night air.  It was very crowded in the bar and the sidewalk was filling up with people coming out of the concert.

“Do you think we should get a drink?” I said, looking inside.  It was very crowded and people were talking.  The bar and the sidewalk were full of the sound of people talking.

I looked at J.  He said, “Let’s go.”  Or I said it.  One of us said it.

We walked through the streets.  I did not know where we were going.  We were walking through the streets after the concert.

“I bet that’s the first time anybody’s checked in a toaster at Irving Plaza,” I said.  Irving Plaza was the name of the concert hall.

We crossed Second Avenue and I asked J if he wanted to see if O was home.  O was a friend of mine who lived by Second Avenue.  J said all right.  I was not sure if he really wanted to do it, but I did not ask him again.  J was my boyfriend and we were walking together.

We started walking toward O’s apartment.  O’s apartment is on the second floor in the front, so you can see whether he is home by looking for lights in the windows.

“Where does O live?” asked J.

“Right off Second Avenue.”

“Aren’t you going to call him?” he said.  He meant was I going to call him on my cell phone.

“No.  I can see into his windows from the street.  I’m just going to look into his windows to see if he’s home.  If the lights are on I’ll ring the bell.”  I like to do things without cell phones.  It makes me feel like I’m in an old story in an old city.

“Why don’t you just call him?”

O’s house was very close and we got there quickly.  His lights were not on, so we kept walking.

“P lives around here.”  P was a friend of J’s who I had met.

“Do you want to call her?”

“No.  I’m just going to go look in her window.”  He smiled.  We never did try to see her; I don’t know why.  He might have called her; I don’t remember.  I wasn’t thinking about where we were going.

We walked past First Avenue to Avenue A and looked for a bar called the Blue Owl, which J had heard about, which was supposed to have no sign but a neon blue owl in the window.  We walked up and down the same block a couple of times before he saw it in a basement window.  It was a little neon blue owl.  We went down the stairs and went in.  I was still carrying the toaster.

I put the toaster down on a bench and we sat down at the bar.  There were only a few people in the bar.  One guy at the end of the bar furthest from the door was drinking alone and the bartender would stand near him when she was not working.  At the other end was a group of three people: a guy and two girls.  The bartender brought one of the girls a bowl of olives.  The girl said something to the bartender.

The bartender said, “They’re stuffed with blue cheese and garlic.”

The guy said, “You really do really rock” to the bartender.  The bartender didn’t say anything.  I turned to J and said, “That guy’s cheesy as hell.”

J and I were sitting next to each other at the middle of the bar.

The bartender came over to us and J asked what kinds of beer they had.  She said Heineken, Corona, Amstel, Stella.  I was not in the mood for beer in a bottle.  I asked her if it was in a bottle or on tap.  She said it was all in a bottle.  She looked up and down the bar to show me that there were no taps.  J ordered a Stella.  I told the bartender I needed time to think.

The bartender was an unsmiling young woman.  The bar was a nice copper bar, probably very expensive.  I had noticed it as soon as we sat down and had thought about saying something to the bartender about it.  The bartender brought J a beer and opened it for him.

There was a row of jars in front of us.  One of them had cut-up strawberries and another one had blackberries.  The strawberries looked good and red, and I wondered what kind of drink I could have with them.  I asked the bartender.  J said they would go with vodka.  The bartender said, “I could make you a fruit muddle.”

The bartender said something like that.  I said OK.

“Do you like this place?” J asked.

“Yeah, I like it.”

“It is a lot like Heathers, don’t you think?”

Heathers was the name of another bar we had found near his apartment that he liked to go to.  “It’s kind of like Heathers.  If you added a bunch of lesbians it would be.”

J laughed.  He was sitting to my left at the bar.  The bartender was making my drink.  She put strawberries and blackberries into a shaker, then mashed them up, then poured in vodka—it seemed like a good amount of vodka—then added another clear liquid that I guessed was syrup, then added something else, which I guessed was grenadine or some other liqueur.  Then she shook it up with crushed ice and poured it into a tumbler.  It was a good-looking drink.

“That looks really good,” said J.  He was looking at the drink.  “That’s like a twelve-dollar drink.”  I thought that he was probably right.  I hadn’t thought about it, but after that I was thinking about it.  I didn’t like to pay twelve dollars for a drink.  But it had taken the bartender a couple of minutes to make it, so I figured he was right.

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah.  It looks really good.”

I tried it.  It was good.  It was not as strong as I had thought it would be.  I sipped the drink out of the tumbler with my teeth almost closed and caught pieces of crushed strawberry and blackberry and ice with the front of my teeth.  Then I chewed them up and swallowed them.

“Do you want to try it?” I asked.  Or maybe he asked me if he could try it, but I think I asked him.

“Yes.”  He tried it.  “That’s really good.”

The three people at the end of the bar were talking about whether to stay or to go to another bar.  One of the girls said that she wanted to stay, but they left soon after.  At the other end of the bar, the one guy left and two younger guys came in and sat down where he had been.  The bartender poured a small amount of liquid from a decanter into a glass and sniffed it.  She poured the liquid down the drain and rinsed the glass.  Then she moved down the bar and poured a small amount of liquid from another decanter into the same glass and sniffed it.  I guessed that she was checking to see if something had gone bad.  I wondered if somebody had gotten a bad drink and had complained, or if she was just checking as part of a routine.

I noticed that J was looking at me.  He was sitting to my left and slightly further out from the bar.  I was pulled up close to the bar and leaning on it.  Once in a while I would run my hand along the top of the bar to feel the copper, which was smooth and dented.  When I turned my head to look down to the far end of the bar I could see that J was looking at me.

“Do you want to call M?” he asked.  M was a guy that we had met a few weeks earlier who owned a bakery in the neighborhood.  He had been calling J a lot to see if he or we wanted to meet up at one bar or another.  He was always hitting on one of us, or pretending to; I wasn’t sure.  I didn’t think I was in the mood to see him.

“The baker?”  I asked that because J had another friend M that we hung out with sometimes.  But I thought he meant the baker.

“Yeah.”

“I guess.  No.  Not really.”

I don’t think J called him, but he started writing a text message to somebody on his cell phone.

A woman came up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine.  The bartender started entering something into the cash register, which was controlled by a touch-activated computer screen.  Big numbers came up on the screen.  It seemed like a complicated process.  The cash-register drawer opened up several times and the bartender would push it shut.

I saw that J was looking at me.

“Are you tired?” he said.

“No.  Are you?”

“No.”

I was drinking my drink very fast.  I had thought that I would try to drink it slow, since it was probably expensive and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, but I usually drink fast and I was drinking fast anyway despite having decided to try not to.  J was drinking his beer slowly.  He held the bottle in his hand.

The bartender took the woman’s money and put it in the cash register.  Then she went over and said something to one of the guys who had come in.  The other guy had gone out, probably to have a cigarette.  The woman walked away from the bar.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“What?”

“Why are you looking at me?  You’ve been looking at me.  I feel like you’re waiting for me to do something.”

“What do you mean?  We’re sitting here not talking, and I can tell that you don’t want to talk, and I don’t know why.”  The pitch of his voice came up at the end of each phrase.  “And I can tell that you’re pissed off about something, and I don’t know why.”

He was looking at me.  The bartender was entering something else into the cash register.  “I’m not pissed off about anything,” I said.  “I guess I don’t really feel like talking.  I mean, I would talk, there’s just nothing that I really want to talk about.  If you have something you want to talk about then tell me and we can talk about it, but I can’t think of anything.  I don’t always need to be talking.”

“But when we’re at a bar and we’re hanging out together, after a concert, then we should be talking.”

“What do you mean?  I was just hanging out.  I’m fine.  There’s other things to do besides talk all the time.  There’s other stuff going on.”

He said something, I don’t remember exactly what.  I noticed that the beer he was holding was only about a quarter drunk.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” I said.  “There have been times when we’ve been out with your friends and I’ve just sat around and not talked, and that was fine.”  The pitch of my voice rose at the end of each sentence.

“That’s different.  If we’re out together then we should be talking.  Especially when we’re out by ourselves, and after we’ve gone to a concert together.  Why would you want to be out with me if you don’t want to talk?”

“I just can’t think of anything to talk about.  Can’t we just hang out and not talk for a while?”

“That’s fine if we’re at home.  If we’re just hanging around in bed or whatever.  But when we’re out we should be talking.”

“What do you mean?  What are these rules?  Just because we’re out at a bar doesn’t mean that we have to be talking all the time.  You have these ideas of how things should be, but that’s not the way things are.”

“All my social experience with my friends and when I’m out with people is that when you’re out, you talk.  I’ve never gone out with people and not talked to them.”

“But I’m not like that.  This is like what I was telling you before about R.”  R was one of my roommates.  “About how he’s always talking.  He comes into the room and he always starts talking.  And sometimes I just don’t want to talk.”

“If you don’t want to talk then we shouldn’t be out.”

“What are these rules?  Where are you getting this from?”

I had continued to drink my drink.  I finished it and used a straw to push the rest of the crushed-up fruit into my mouth.  Then I chewed it up and swallowed it.

“Is someone coming to meet us?” I said.

“No.”

“Who were you texting before?”

“What?”

“Who were you texting before?”

“Nobody.”

“What do you mean?  I saw you texting somebody.  Who was it?  What did they say?”

J didn’t say anything.  I had turned toward him.  He was looking slightly down and to his right.

“Why aren’t you telling me.”

J didn’t say anything.

“Why aren’t you telling me who you were texting.  Is it some sort of secret.  I thought you wanted to talk.  Maybe it’s something we can talk about.  Are you going to tell me.”

“No,” he said.

“I think that’s incredibly rude,” I said.

“No,” he said.  He shook his head.  He was looking slightly down and to his right.

We sat there for a while.  I don’t know what was happening while we were sitting there.

“Do you want to leave,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.  I was surprised how quickly I said it.

The bartender came over and J asked how much the drinks were.  She pointed to his bottle and said five and to my glass and said twelve.  J gave her a five-dollar bill and she went over to the cash register.  Then J put a dollar down on the bar.

We sat next to each other at the bar.  By the door of the bar was a small table with a lamp.  I had seen some cards for the bar on the table when we had come in.  There was another small section of the bar with couches off to the side.  Outside you could see the feet of people passing by on the sidewalk.  I had a twenty-dollar bill in my hand.  The bartender passed near us a couple times but did not look at us and I did not say anything.

“Could you pay, please?” J said.

The bartender passed near us but did not look at us.  I did not say anything.

“Could you just pay for it,” J said.

The bartender turned in our direction and I held the twenty-dollar bill out and she took it.  She took the bill over to the cash register and entered something into the cash-register screen.  She went through several different sets of buttons.  I assumed that she was inputting the kind of drink that she was charging for, so the bar could keep track of how much of each type of alcohol they were selling.  She put the bill into the drawer and made change.  She gave me the change and I left a dollar on the bar.

We turned out of our stools and walked to the door.  As we were walking I picked up the toaster from where I had put it on the bench by the bar.

We walked down Avenue A.  We were walking in the direction of J’s apartment.  I could feel my face getting hot and my head started to feel light.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me who you were texting,” I said.  “You say that you want to talk and then when I ask you a question it’s like it’s not what you want to talk about and you won’t answer me.  It’s just really frustrating.”

“It was K.”  K was one of his friends, one who I may or may not have met; I’m not sure.  “I was seeing if we were still having dinner on Friday, but you don’t have to worry about it because we’re not.”

“Well, I don’t know why you just couldn’t have told me that.  What’s the big deal.”

“Remember what we said we were going to do?  Remember that we were going to take five minutes to calm down?”

I remembered that we had said this, that when we started to get angry we should take five minutes to calm down.  I had said that we should also lie down on the ground if this should ever happen.  I had said this because it had seemed like it would be a good way to defuse the moment.  I had thought it would be funny.  I remembered that I had said that and why I had said it.  I thought then about lying down on the sidewalk in front of Tompkins Square Park, but the thought was very brief.  “Yes, I remember.  I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me.”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

“What do you mean, it’s none of my business.  If we’re together and we’re out then it is my business.  I was trying to communicate.  I thought you wanted to talk, so I thought maybe that was something we could talk about.  It’s just really frustrating.”

“You didn’t really want to talk about that, C.”  My name is C.

“No.  You’re right.  Once I found out what it was.  I don’t really want to talk about you canceling your plans for dinner, but I didn’t know that until you told me.  I thought maybe it would be something we could talk about, because I couldn’t think of anything.”

“You were sitting around like you were pissed off, and then you asked me why I was looking at you.  I felt like I was being attacked.  I’m out at a bar and not talking.  Then my boyfriend asks me why I’m looking at him.  I felt like I was being attacked.”

“I felt on the spot, like I was making you feel bad because I wasn’t talking.  You know I don’t always talk.  I wanted to know what you wanted me to do.”  We were walking very fast.  We passed many people.  The street was full of people.

We were coming up to Sixth Street, which is the street where he lives.  “Well, right now, I’m going back to my apartment by myself.”

I thought that was a stupid thing for him to say.  I was already past the corner and did not look back.  “OK, bye,” I said.

“Bye,” he said.

I kept walking.  I walked down past Houston and over on Rivington.  They had been tearing down a synagogue on Rivington and the back wall with the altar and the stained-glass window had been left standing for weeks, but now it was all gone.  I kept walking.  I walked over past Bowery and down Elizabeth.  On Elizabeth I got out my cell phone and called J.

He picked up.  I think we must have said hello.

“What are you doing,” I said.

“I’m just going into my apartment.  What are you doing.”

“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me.  I don’t like power struggles, J.  I don’t think there was any reason for you not to tell me.  It makes me really frustrated.”

“Well, I’m sorry if you’re frustrated, but you can’t always have everything you want.  I asked you why you wanted to be out with me if you didn’t want to talk to me, and you didn’t answer that.”

“What do you mean, why do I want to be out with you.  Because I just wanted to be with you.  I don’t think that being out equals having to talk.  I think that we can be out just to hang out together at a bar.  There was no reason why I didn’t want to talk, I just didn’t have anything to say.  Whenever you ask me a question, I answer it.  If I can answer your questions, I do.  I never just won’t answer a question.”

“I see couples out and they’re not talking and I think that I never want to get like that.  I never want to run out of things to say to my boyfriend.”

“We don’t have to be talking all the time.”

There was a silence.  Or maybe there was no silence.

“I really can’t take this any more, J,” I said.  “I just feel like we don’t understand each other.”

“No.  I don’t think we do.”

“I’m just tired of fighting.  We’re always fighting.  I think that each of us wants the other to change but it’s not going to happen.”

“No.”

“I understand that you want to talk all the time.  But I can’t do that.  I’m not going to do it.  I just don’t think that’s going to change.”

“So what do you want to do.  Do you want to break up?”

“I always kind of want to break up, J.”

There was no pause.  “So we’re breaking up?”

“Yes.”  It’s possible that I wanted to say, “Yes, if I can’t come see you right now,” but I can’t be sure.  Anyway, I didn’t say it.

“OK.”  It was very sudden.

“OK.  Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“OK.”

“OK.  Well, I hope you had a good time tonight.”  He was talking about the concert.  He had taken me to see the concert.  He had asked me a few weeks earlier if I had wanted to see a concert and I had said yes, and he had bought the tickets.  I had forgotten that he had asked me to see a concert, so when he had said that we had plans for that night I did not know for what, so it was a surprise.

“I hope you had a good time tonight.”

“I did.”  I choked a little on that.

“OK.  Bye.”

“Bye.”  I flipped the phone shut quickly.

I walked down Elizabeth past Kenmare.  I opened my phone and called A, who was a friend of mine from before.  A answered and I asked him what he was doing.  I told him that I had broken up with J and asked him if he was going out anywhere.  He said that he had to work the next day, so he was not.  He said he was sorry, and I said it was OK.  I said I was sorry.

I turned onto Broome from Elizabeth.  I unlocked the front door to my apartment building.  There were two piles of telephone books that had been there for a few days, but that nobody had taken.  I guessed that a lot of people just called information or else looked up numbers online.  Anyway, no one had taken the telephone books.

I did not have a key to the mailbox, so I did not check it.

I walked up the stairs and unlocked the door to my apartment.  I was still carrying the toaster, which I had found on the curb when I was going to meet J for dinner before the concert.  I had picked it up because S, my other roommate, was moving, and I thought he was taking the toaster.  There had also been an electric coffee pot on the curb, and I knew that S was also taking the electric coffee pot, but I had taken the toaster because I thought it was more important.  I found out the next day that the toaster was actually R’s.  I put the toaster on the counter next to the old one.  I would do the opposite of everything I have done.

I went into my bedroom and closed the door.  I drew the shades and got into bed with my clothes on.

I lay awake thinking about what I would tell people about why we broke up.  I thought about a lot of things, but I kept coming back to the idea that I would say that we had run out of things to talk about.

I was lying in bed with the lights on.  I was on the fast outside track to true love.