“Nothing,” Frank said. “I couldn’t get out of the trough.”
“Not you,” said Zoe.
“I could do nothing either!” said Anders. “I waited, hoping to regain movement soon, and eventually the elevator was called to another floor. The doors open, and a young family is standing in their apartment looking at me. I forgot to mention I am wearing only my tennis shorts, no shirt, no shoes, and cannot even open my mouth to beg an apology.”
“Hot,” said Zoe.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Frank.
“I’m standing there staring like a big slobbering Viking as they hide in the corner of the elevator,” said Anders. “They are terrified of me!”
Frank laughed and reached behind Cleo to grab one of the profiteroles Santiago was parading around the room while singing “That’s Amore.”
“Eventually I make it back to the roof, and everyone is asking where I’ve been,” Anders continued. “I explain the situation to them, how at last I crawled on my belly from the elevator to the bathroom, propped myself up on the towel rack to pee, which, as you can imagine, was not so successful. And do you know what they say? ‘Hey man, that sounds amazing! Do you have more?’ I’m telling you, in this moment I realize I will never understand Americans.”
Zoe, tired of standing, or perhaps of not being the center of attention, squeezed beside Anders on the narrow set of apple boxes he was perched on, an act that would have been difficult had Zoe not been slight as a fawn. Anders smiled, revealing a mouth of gappy, uneven teeth, and the perfect symmetry of his face was momentarily shattered.
“Ah yes, Americans are all addicted to pills,” said Frank. “I’ve heard this one before.”
Zoe ruffled Anders’s blond hair. Cleo wondered if they were going to sleep together, or possibly already had. This wasn’t hard to imagine, since Anders had slept with everyone—including Cleo.
“I am not saying they are all drug addicts,” Anders said. “I am merely pointing out that there is a cultural difference in terms of attitudes toward self-medication. Back me up here, Cleo.”
It happened right after she met Frank, when she still thought she’d be leaving the country in a few months, following a party with an open, and subsequently lethal, bar. After a brief, unsatisfying fuck on his Chesterfield sofa, Anders had casually dismissed her. I’m sure you’d rather go sleep in your own bed?
“Anders thinks everyone in America is taking something,” said Frank.
“The booming pharmaceutical industry here speaks for itself,” said Anders.
Everything Cleo needed to know about lust and its humiliation, she learned in the moment she found herself lurching home from Anders’s apartment with his semen still coating her stomach. Neither of them had ever told Frank.
“Okay, okay, let’s keep the cultural criticism to a minimum,” said Frank. “Since Cleo is just about to become one of us.”
“What?” Cleo snapped back to the conversation at the sound of her name.
“You’re becoming an American,” said Zoe pointedly. “Right? That’s what all this is for?”
She twirled her long finger around the room.
“Yes. I mean, no—，” stumbled Cleo.
“You have to apply to be a permanent resident first,” jumped in Anders. “Is what she means.” He gave her a reassuring look.
“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a green card application and a shitload of paperwork,” Frank sang.
The hem of Cleo’s dress had flipped over her knee. She glanced down to smooth it and noticed, for the first time, a tiny silken tag on the inseam. Written in feminine cursive was one word: “Intimates.” So it was a nightgown. She had worn a nightgown to her wedding. Slowly, Cleo bowed her head.
“Just never lose your accent,” Zoe said, wrapping her arm around Anders’s waist to further secure her seat. “British accents are so hard to get right. My voice coach says I sound cockney.”
“I never lost mine,” said Anders. “Unfortunately.”
“Yeah, you still sound like the Terminator.” Frank laughed.
“He was Austrian, you idiot,” Anders said.
Cleo looked up at the sound of her name being called from across the room. She twisted around to see Audrey’s face peeking from the bathroom door, mouthing Help. Cleo got up to excuse herself and gave Frank a peck on the lips. Another whiff of wine.
“Don’t forget to drink water,” she said.