The Weirdness by Jeremy P. Bushnell Page A

made her carry a bag with the sheets and pillowcases.”
    A thin smile from Elisa.
    “And so we’re at the Laundromat, and it just seems like it’s taking
forever
, it’s like time has just slowed to a crawl. A fucking
crawl.
And then after we’ve spent like a
year
there we have to move everything over to the dryer.
Bam
, another year gone. We’re not even talking to one another we’re so tired. And so finally everything’s clean, and we go back to my place, and she immediately goes up to the loft and curls up on my bed. Just like direct on the mattress: the sheets are still all in the laundry bag. And I’m like
come on, come on, we need to make the bed
and she just, like, grunts. So, thinking I’m funny, I get the fitted sheet out and I just pull it over top of her and tuck it in on all four sides. She starts to giggle a little, so I figure it’s okay. So then I put the next sheet on over top of that, and then finally the comforter, and by this point I think she wants to get out, she starts kind of squirming but she’s really too tired to figure out how to make her way out of it, and then I start poking her. Like, index finger, right in the ribs. And she says
stop it
but she’s laughing at the same time, so I don’t stop right away, I poke her a couple more times, and she starts to shriek, cause it tickles her, right?, and finally she starts to thrash her way out of the sheets and she gets her head out at last, and I’m laughing, and even
she’s
laughing a little bit, but then it just
tips
somehow and she starts crying. These big, hot, frustrated, tired tears. And—that’s it.”
    Elisa watches him until finally he raises both palms, as if revealing the absence of more to tell.
    “What did it feel like?” she asks, softly.
    “It felt bad,” he says. “I don’t like making people cry.”
    “No, before that.”
    “Before what?”
    “Before she started to cry. When you had her under the sheet and were poking her. What did
that
feel like?”
    “I don’t know,” Billy says. “I thought I was being funny, I guess. I was just playing around.”
    “The woman in the story. Are you bigger than her?” Elisa asks.
    “Yes,” Billy says.
    “Are you stronger than her?”
    Billy doesn’t think of himself as
strong
, exactly, but is he stronger than Denver? “Yes.”
    “And what did
that
feel like?”
    “Being bigger and stronger, you mean?”
    “Being bigger and stronger. Exerting power. Using it to scare someone.”
    “I don’t think she was scared, exactly.”
    “Let me tell you something,” Elisa says. “If you say
stop it
to someone who is bigger than you? And stronger than you? And they don’t stop whatever it is that they’re doing? It’s scary. Trust me.”
    “Okay,” Billy says. “What are you trying to say here?”
    “What I’m trying to say, Billy, is that you seem like a gentle, peaceful guy, a real nice guy, and I think you’ve worked hard to come across that way, but I think there’s a part of you, and maybe it’s a part that you don’t look at all that closely, that wants to be powerful and that doesn’t give a good goddamn about anything else.”
    Something inside Billy twinges. A flinch moves through his face. Elisa’s eyes change character again, communicating some faint satisfaction, an approval, almost, at seeing Billy hit upon something inside himself that may be true.
    Billy turns his empty shot glass with his fingers, tries to reflect upon the part of him that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Elisa is right: that part is there. It moves inside him like an animal, cloaked by shadows. He can kind of glimpse its outlines but it moves away from his inspection, not wanting to be fully perceived.
    “Thoughts,” Elisa says.
    “None,” Billy says, and he expends some willpower to ensure that that’s true.
    “All right then.”
    The third round of shots lands on the table. They raise them.
    “To thoughtlessness,” Elisa says, and