When It’s Over (No-Tears Shampoo)
I once loved a man who spoke only in product names.
We met at a bar in Koreatown, the kind with too-loud music and too-low lights and bottles of liquor—clear, brown, green, ocean blue—stacked on shelves, floor to ceiling, against a mirror wall.
The music was so loud I could barely hear. The lights were so low I could barely see. All I had were the bottles, reflecting against the mirror and one another, copies on and on forever, and the voice of the patron nearest me, yelling his order over the bar.
“Maker’s Mark!” Warm, familiar Boston accent. Made me think of my college days, ball games and crowded T rides, all those years later, all the way on the opposite coast.
We got to talking, that awful mouth-to-ear shout-talking where you’re mostly guessing what the other person is saying, but nodding emphatically the whole time like you know. I asked what brought him out west, and did he ever get lonely? Even if he got lonely, did he like it here?
He thought a minute and chuckled. Admitted, “Arrogant Bastard.” Then nodded slowly, told me, “Blue Moon. Absolut.”
I said I wished they would turn the music down. He agreed, but didn’t ask me if I wanted to go someplace quieter.
We played a game where we tried to find one another in the vast bar mirror, leaning this way and that until my earring or his eyes caught the light and suddenly our faces appeared between the bottles, floating over their broad shoulders, between their necks.
I didn’t notice it that night, the peculiar way he spoke. Just that he dropped his R’s and put them back in the places you’d least expect them. Just that he wasn’t very chatty, played things close to the vest. Fine, I knew people like that. Lots of people who didn’t jump right into their feelings, yanking you along with them. Nothing wrong with it.
* * *
I loved the way he said “down-alternative comforter.” Come-fuh-duh. Loved that he got one for the bed in his apartment as soon as I started spending nights there, so I wouldn’t wake up at 3am coughing, arms itching, nose stuffed up.
I loved the way he would pull it off me in the morning, face full of sleepy mischief.
The way he said “Carhartt” and wore his every day I knew him, thick duck canvas, even when I told him, babe, this is Los Angeles, winters rarely dip below 50, I have my short sundresses and my long sundresses, and every New Year’s Eve they do a naked bike ride from downtown to the shore.
He scrunched his nose. I could tell he thought us Angelenos impractical, showy, a bunch of self-absorbed hippies. He’d said it before: “Braided hemp flip-flops. Vegan, aluminum-free deodorant. Coconut tanning oil.” Still, I figured he’d be one of us soon enough.
He and I started bringing our things into one another’s spaces. First toothbrushes, then charging cables. My makeup remover, his beard trimmer. Sports bras, running shoes, noise-cancelling headphones, reading tablets, handheld game consoles, Sudoku puzzle books, learn-to-solder kits, protein powders, clog-free cleansers, detangling conditioners, half-finished bottles of wine, topical corn treatments, tattered stuffed animals, heat packs, panty liners, rapid-release Tylenol.
One night, I came to his place in a fury. Stormed in, threw myself down on the couch.
My boss had taken the credit for a project I’d been working on for months. Sitting right there across from me in the conference room, had delivered the preliminary results and let everyone applaud him. Had cocked his head at me until I had no choice but to start clapping too.
My lover sat down gently beside me. “Kleenex?” He knew about my boss, thought he was a total dick. “Squishy Relief stress ball?”
I shook my head. I was used to it by then, the ways he tried to help, my man of few words.
“Amy’s Organic No-Chicken Noodle Soup? The Complete Monty Python Box Set Blu-Ray Limited Edition?”
I shook my head again, but this time I cracked a slight smile.
It was all the encouragement he needed. He raised his fists to his chin and furrowed his brow, bounced his shoulders, pursed his lips, mimed left hook, right hook, left hook in increasingly exaggerated motions until I burst out laughing.
“All right, Boston, take it easy. You don’t have to go beating anyone up about it.”
He smirked and dropped his arms, pointed to his chest. “Number-one heavy-duty pest repellent.”
Over time, our apartments began to look alike. Reading tablets, running shoes, half-finished bottles of wine. Special anniversary lingerie. A moth-eaten T-shirt of a band I’d never heard of.
* * *
We went to visit his parents in the fall, right as the leaves in New England were turning and people were coming from the surrounding states to take what they called a “color tour.” Our flight was packed and he was nervous. At takeoff, he gripped my hand and kept muttering to himself, over and over, things that get and stay airborne.
“Box kites, box kites, box kites.” He kept his eyes shut tight. “RC model airplanes. Multi-rotor hobby drones.”
I was nervous too, didn’t know what to expect when it came to his parents. Meaning would they be like him, and would they like me, and would we even be able to hold a conversation? Or would the four of us around the dining table sound like a series of TV commercials and me unable to add anything of substance, just saying, yes, yes, it all sounds good, it all sounds wonderful, I simply cannot choose.
I shouldn’t have worried. His parents were lovely people. Their split-level in Tewksbury was filled with Bruins memorabilia and family photos, and they didn’t try to set us up in separate bedrooms. They said he’d told them so much about me. They made gluten-free pancakes for breakfast our first morning. He’d mentioned my feather allergy and they must’ve thought, well, sure, people from LA are allergic to everything.
His mother spoke only in warning labels, and his father spoke more or less like me.
She set the maple syrup in the center of the table and fussed with the place settings, spending extra time on her son’s, making sure the fork and knife were perfectly straight. “Moving parts,” she told him quietly, “can crush and cut. Keep guards in place.”
His father sighed. “Come on, Marty. No use in this now. He’s all set up over there. And happy, clearly. Look at these two. Isn’t that right, son?”
My lover wrapped his arm around his mother’s shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. He said something about lavender-scented detergent, extra-smooth peanut butter, the safety leashes on foam bodyboards.
His mother grinned sheepishly and relaxed in her seat. She piled a few pancakes onto a plate and passed it to me, and I held it midair as she spooned on blueberries from a small ceramic bowl. She met my gaze and said in a low, knowing voice, “To avoid danger of suffocation, keep items away from babies and children.”
My lover nearly choked on his coffee. His father shook his head and waved the comment away. “Oh, leave these kids alone, will you? Let them enjoy their breakfast. It’s too early for talk like that.” Then he winked at his wife, and she winked back.
The rest of the meal passed uneventfully. There was talk of the construction on 93, the freak storm that killed their gardenias, how the Bruins’ playoffs chances were looking that year. I caught myself beaming. Couldn’t believe the way his parents finished each other’s sentences.
A couple days later, they dropped us off at Boston Logan and there were hugs and souvenir key chains pressed into palms and promises to see about vacation time around Christmas.
“It was so nice to meet you both,” I said.
“Likewise,” his father replied. “We can see why he loves you.” Then, “We miss you, son. You know that. We’re here if you need us.”
His mother wiped her eyes, smoothed the hair off his forehead. Said, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
* * *
There was that Christmas, then another, then no more. I once loved a man who spoke only in product names, then I didn’t. Or maybe it was him who fell out of it first. He didn’t become the hippie I thought he would, never did grow to feel at home in LA. During our meanest fights, he said we were all plastic glow sticks, bejeweled compact mirrors, cheap disco balls from the party store. All these shiny, short-lived things. Not one of them necessary or made to last.
It wasn’t the way he talked. I couldn’t blame it on that. Because so what? So what if he spoke the language of drug stores and supermarkets, department stores and hardware stores, convenience stores and flea markets and thrift shops?
I myself speak too much in histories, dwelling on past lovers.
One time, toward the end, the two of us went back to the bar where we’d met. He ordered Maker’s Mark and I thought for the first time I detected his accent fading, but I couldn’t be sure over the blaring sounds of retro night. I tried to play the game with him where we looked for each other in the mirror, between the bottles—now clear, brown, green, Listerine blue. Each bottle part empty with a different label slapped on.
We could do it, I thought, find each other again. Only he kept staring into his drink. And I never could find his face. Could only find my own, and once I found it couldn’t stop looking, could do nothing to lose it, so I went on studying the shape of it, fixated on the shadows, the light.
Kristina Ten is a Russian-American writer with work in Lightspeed, Black Static, Weird Horror, Witness, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop and a current MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also teaches creative writing. You can find her at kristinaten.com and on Twitter as @kristina_ten.