Brick Wall
by Ella Grzeca
My glass bottle shatters against the building. The little explosion sends shards bouncing and flying away from the brick, and Remy cheers beside me. “That’s how it’s done,” he says. He claps me on the back, a rough hand slamming once and then again. I’ve known him for long enough that I’ve come to expect the force, but still I can’t help but stumble forward a step. He grins at me, all of his teeth visible. The street lamp sends soft ringlets of light into his curling black hair, sadly matching the soft yellowing of his teeth. I’ve seen people go crazy over that smile, the soft dimples that bloom like flowers across his cheeks.
Part of me wonders how we’ve ended up here, but then again I have a tendency to follow people, especially when that person is Remy. It was his idea, of course, to come out here with a 6-pack of empty Miller Lite bottles, to wander around for a while in the brisk night air, until we found a fairly well-lit alley. “It’s cathartic,” he told me, before he lobbed the first one at the wall. “We’re not hurting anyone.” Remy pulls me back with a strong hand, lazily slinging his arm across my shoulder. I’m always surprised by how gentle he can be, especially when I’m least expecting it. “Do you want the last one?” he asks me, nodding down at the case.
“You can have it. It was your idea after all. And you’re a better shot than me,” I say. Remy doesn’t argue, just gives me a devilish grin, and reaches down to grab the bottle. He’s never been one to push back against claims that are true, even if it’s to defend someone against their own self-criticism.
When his bottle goes spinning into the wall, I am simultaneously impressed and jealous. His form is impeccable, years of varsity baseball informing his wind-up and release. It feels like I spent four years of high school at his games, sitting completely entranced on grimy outdoor bleachers as I watched him make the same fluid movements over and over again. The snap of a ball against leather is almost like the sound glass makes when it shatters, and the high-pitched noise that cracks like a gun stays echoing in the cavern of my ears. The last bottle breaks against the wall, and goes tinkling down. It joins the other shards spread out in the same area, all collecting light to sparkle against the ground. Remy turns to me, and with a flourish, his knees glued together, he bows. He knows how impressive he is, and he’s always been surprisingly theatrical, which only adds to his charm.
Everything is a little warm, a little tinted around the edges. Something comes over me, a wave of unadulterated enthusiasm, and I clap and whoop and holler like we’re at one of his high school games again. I get louder and louder until he rises from his bow, motioning for me to quiet down. When I don’t, he steps in toward me laughing. “Alright, alright, I get it,” he says. I stop, and gaze at him under the light. We cast strange, long shadows that stretch out behind us like monsters. “It was that good huh?” he asks me. I shrug, crossing my arms together.
“Not bad. Maybe not as good as me, but pretty good considering,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” asks Remy, his lips coming together in a smirk. Suddenly he erupts into a God of Noise. His cheers bounce off the brick walls, rising up over us, and now I’m the one who has to quiet him down.
“Shut up, shut up,” I tell him, mostly joking, secretly loving it. He slings one of his arms around me, raises my fist into the air like I’ve just won a wrestling match.
“INTRODUCING THEO, KING OF THE ALLEY!” he screams.
I can feel sweat pooling under his arms, running into the coarse fabric of his shirt. It dampens the top of my shoulder, but I won’t say anything. Remy gets sensitive about this kind of thing.
I hear the creak of a porch door, as light flicks to life on a balcony across the alley from us. “Aw shit,” I say. I make out a shadowy figure emerging from the door attached to the balcony. Remy stops screaming to laugh, tilting his head back so his voice spills into the air. “Remy, shut up for real,” I hiss at him.
I see another smaller light flash into existence, imagine a thumb sliding on a phone flashlight to turn the brightness all the way up. “C'mon lets go,” I say, pulling him toward me, and away from our broken bottles.
Remy keeps on laughing, even as I drag him down the alley. He’s always laughing, finding ways to paint humor into deep crevices and dark conversations. His arm is heavy around my shoulders; I can feel the moisture growing as our steps warm us. When we arrive at the mouth of the alley, I feel cool delicious slivers of relief.
“Let's go somewhere,” Remy says, his voice brimming with possibility.
“That person could have called the cops, you know,” I tell him. I feel a rush of stupidity. The two of us smashing bottles against brick walls in the middle of the night. Remy ignores me.
“There’s gotta be something close. We just have to walk a little bit.” He is still pushing his weight onto both of my shoulders. “We need new bottles anyways.”
“Hah.” I consider going home, but even as the thought crosses my mind, I know that I won’t do it. I want to be here with him. Still, I entertain the thought, the idea of shoving Remy away from me, letting his sweaty arm drop heavily at his side. The look he would give me. The way he would probably follow me home.
We pass through nice neighborhoods with spacious houses and cramped two way streets. Our bodies pool together as Remy and I walk with our arms slung around each other. He talks about some random shit the whole time, and I barely listen, watching the cracks in the pavement as they blur together. It doesn’t seem to bother him that I don’t have anything to say in the little spaces he leaves for me in between his thoughts.
“Everything is totally fucked. The world is garbage and most people are garbage, which is why it surprises me sometimes when I realize that people can also be okay. I think I’m mostly okay because I wake up every morning and decide that I want to put in the work to be as okay as I can be. I don’t think people realize how much effort you have to put in to be a semi-decent person. It’s like constantly checking yourself and making sure you’re monitoring the way you think about everything so that you don’t say things that will fuck people up. Or yourself. But mostly other people.” He pauses here, takes a big gaping breath like a runner after a race.
“I think it’s just that I get so fucking pissed off sometimes, you know? Like, why do I have to work so hard to be so good when most people don’t even care enough to try?” He grips the top of my shoulder harder, and I pat his hand. Leaves tumble over each other, moving with the wind. A soft waning moon peeks out behind low lazy clouds. Sometimes when Remy gets all amped up like this, it’s good to let him spill everything out. Other times, it’s like he’s some sort of faucet that will just go and go and go until someone turns the handle the other way.
We find a busy street a couple of blocks away from the alley, neon lights shocking away the dark. “Do you know what I mean?” Remy asks me.
“Mhm,” I say. At this point, I’ve heard him give this spiel at least ten times over, and I’ve already given him everything I think on the matter.
We turn right onto the bright street, one reality shifting into another. I’m hit with the smell of cigarettes and beer, smoke already seeping into my sweater. It’s like an explosion of activity all of a sudden. People and restaurants and activity have somehow cloned into existence. I look around, trying to gauge if there’s anyone here who might let me bum a smoke. People are like kids when they’re drunk, they’re usually nicer, and more willing to make new friends. “Where do you wanna go?” I ask Remy. He turns his head to look at me, his eyebrows threading together.
“Wherever you want,” he says. He seems to have calmed down a little. That, or he’s just decided to move on to other things.
“Really? No preference?” I ask. Remy’s usually the one who chooses where we go, and he’s more particular than I am, so it doesn’t really bother me. When he shakes his head, I pick the first place I see, steer him toward the bar with the most people clustered outside an open black door. There are huge open windows with tables nestled next to them inside. It’s probably getting too cold for them to leave the windows open much longer, but then again the bodies inside are kindling so much heat.
We push our way past the people by the door, Remy stepping in front of me to lead us once we enter. There are more tables, and a couple of TV screens playing sports games that I don’t bother looking at. Conversations weave and blend and rise together, and I know I won’t be able to find one pocket of silence if I try. There is a crowd around the bar, but Remy somehow manages to thread his way through everyone and make it to the front. He pulls me behind him, and I try my best to avoid eye contact with the people I’m sure are giving me annoyed looks as we force our way past them.
It only takes Remy a minute to call over a bartender. He orders in a couple of sentences, doesn’t stop to ask me what I want because he already knows what I’m drinking.
Conversation swells up on all sides of me, and I feel awkward standing here behind him with no one to talk to. The buzz from before is fading, reality crashing back into focus. When Remy hands me back two drinks, both whiskey sours, I gulp one right away and savor the sharp bitter taste on my tongue. He’s holding two mojitos, already draining one. I lead us back through the crowd, taking more time than before because I don’t know how to weave in and out like Remy does. To be fair, I’m also carrying drinks now, and I concentrate on making sure I don’t splash anyone. I briefly think about how I need to feel like a different person to enjoy this kind of atmosphere. The crowd, the conversation, the personalities Remy will slip in and out of like some kind of TV actor.
“HOW IS IT?” he yells over the heads and conversations of everyone else when we’ve successfully made it away from the bar. I think about it, take another sip.
“Decent,” I tell him. I don’t bother to raise my voice. Remy is good at reading lips, especially good at reading mine.
“IT'S AN OPEN TAB,” he tells me. I nod, but he doesn’t see me. I watch him survey the crowd, already searching for new friends, a new adventure. He spots people he likes, and nods his head over at them with one sharp movement. He turns, and I follow.
They are standing close together. The tallest one is a woman with piercing brown eyes and a jawline that could probably cut a piece of paper in half. She looks like she can part a crowd in the same way a ship slices through waves on a choppy ocean. The man standing next to her is laughing about something, perfect springing curls popping out from under a baseball cap. Fuzz brushes up his jawline and right under his chin, but it looks like it’s the kind that doesn’t scratch when you kiss. He is shorter, broader. They’re both beautiful. They are close to each other, but I can’t tell if this means anything.
I can tell that they are secure in their personhood by the way they are standing in this busy room, making space in a place that has so little to give. In the brief moments I watch them together, they seem so effortless. They move and talk and laugh and exist like they’ve never had to think about the way they walk through the world. Sometimes the people that look like they don’t have to try are the ones that spend their whole lives fighting to take up space. They’re the most interesting people by far, which makes sense, because Remy always finds people that look like they have something to say.
We approach them, and ice cubes clink against my glasses. Little drops of moisture bead and roll down to chill my palms and the soft pads of my fingers. “HEY!” Remy shouts. I cringe a little, even though I know it’s the only way to be heard. They turn, collectively confused, collectively intrigued. Remy offers them his award-winning smile, dimples etching into his face, eyes crinkling.
“SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. I SAW YOU GUYS ACROSS THE ROOM, AND I WAS WONDERING IF YOU HAVE ROOM FOR ME AND MY FRIEND TO JOIN IN ON YOUR CONVERSATION?” He talks through a smile the whole time.
They exchange a glance. The tall beautiful woman shrugs. They make space for us, and all of a sudden we’ve formed a small circle.
It has to be the way he says things with so much fucking sincerity. Remy is like a little kid at a park making a new friend. He is always excited to meet new people, even more excited to get to know them. He makes people feel special because he believes that everyone is special. He tries to get people to feel good about themselves, and most of the time he succeeds. It seeps out of him, his love for the people who build up the world. You can see it in his eyes, his teeth, his body. It paints the tone of his voice.
“I'M REMY, AND THIS IS THEO,” Remy yells. I offer a little wave, and take another sip of my drink. We all go around the group, and I listen hard for their names. I repeat them in my head a couple of times. I have a special way of memorizing names, one I came up with when I was still in elementary school. I imagine them sketched across people’s foreheads in blue marker, and for some reason that always does the trick. I was a fucking god at those horrible ice breaker games they make you play on the first day of classes. I was always the first one to raise my hand and volunteer to go around the circle to prove I’d actually memorized everyone’s names.
The man with the soft-looking stubble tells us his name is Ruben, and I think it is the most fitting thing he could have said. I roll it around my brain, delighted in the way it feels settling into my memory, marking out a space for him. “How did you get your name?” I ask him, a little drunk now. One whiskey sour disappears, so I start on the other one.
“Well my parents were between Axel and Ruben, and they didn’t name me for a week after I was born. The hospital kept calling and calling until they made up their minds,” he says. His voice is deep and rich. Little goosebumps thread along my forearms.
“What made them choose Ruben, then?” I ask. I need to hear his voice again.
“I wish I knew there was a moment that sold them, but my mom’s pretty anxious most of the time. Eventually she couldn’t deal with the calls, so she ended up folding one day. She picked up the phone and told them I was Ruben, and my dad was so fucking pissed that she decided without him.” He laughs a little then, and it’s even better than I imagined. I notice that a small crease has started forming from the left side of his nose to the corner of his mouth, and I wonder if he ever stands in front of the mirror and traces it when he smiles. Anya, the woman with piercing eyes, slings an arm around his shoulder.
“Ruben fits you,” she says. “I can’t imagine you as an Axel. You’d have to be a different kind of person.” I nod at this, agreeing with her even as I admit to myself that I don’t know anything about this man. Names are strange in that way though. Most of the time they ring true even as you’re figuring out why they make sense for someone you don’t understand yet.
“I like to think so too,” Ruben laughs. “It took my dad a while to accept it, so I guess my mom kind of fought for it in a way.” Anya stirs her crimson drink delicately with a tiny straw, brings it up so Ruben can taste it. He is so gentle, so intentional in the way he leans toward her to take a sip. There is care in the way he calls attention to this small act, and I watch mesmerized.
“Do you guys have any stories?” Ruben asks. Anya turns toward me, and I realize that a fluffy winding piece of fabric I thought was a scarf is actually part of the dress she is wearing. “About your names, I mean.”
“Or otherwise,” Anya interjects, smiling. Remy takes a little step toward me, and I am suddenly aware of his silence, and the way I am sandwiched between him and Ruben. Remy presses into me, but Ruben keeps a bit of distance. I wonder if Ruben is sweating like Remy, if his sweat is salty. “How did you get your name?” asks Remy so gently, and this feels rare, the space he is giving me.
I can feel all of their eyes. There are so many of us in this cramped busy room, but it’s like it’s just the four of us isolated somehow. A pocket of silence siphoned off from the chaos. I think hard for a second. Why can I claim my name, how can I trust it to guide me through the world? I want to give them an answer that deserves attention. I concentrate on their silence, one that cuts through a space swarming with noise.
“I guess… It was the only one that felt like it could hold me,” I say. I can’t think of anything else. Remy squeezes me, I think Ruben moves closer to me, and I can’t help but look away from Anya because her eyes are oceans and I don’t know how to swim. I clear my throat, feeling small now. The swarming energy running through the room seems to twist around us, swimming between the spaces in our group. Remy presses more, asks me questions with his body. “Why is that?” asks Anya, but I don’t know.
“You have a good story,” I tell Remy, in an attempt to change the subject. He launches into it right away, a runner waiting for the pistol shot I send off into the air. I’ve heard the story of his name before, the twists and turns that wind a little sharper every time. I sip my way through my second drink as he tells it. I laugh in all the right places, but then I start thinking about how I want a cigarette, and once the craving starts it just grows and unravels like a ball of yarn rolling across the floor. It starts making me feel antsy, my insatiable need mixed in with the never ending quality of Remy’s story. Stale air makes its way in and out of my lungs. Inflating and deflating, listening and wondering. I lean toward Ruben, sneak a glimpse of his face that I’m sure has been carved from a slab of marble.
By the time Remy ends his story, I’d almost forgotten he was telling us anything at all. Anya commends him on the winding narrative, and I pretend that I was listening the whole time. He pulls me into him, and I accept his sweat and his name and the weight he rests on my shoulders. I subtly ask if anyone has a smoke except it’s not so subtle because I am all warm and a little bit disoriented.
“Only if you smoke Capri’s,” Anya says. She pulls a pack out of a small white handbag to show me, and I look for a second.
“I’m not picky,” I tell her. Which is true. When I’m drunk, I’ll smoke anything. As long as I can feel the tight satisfying burn that prickles the back of my throat, the one that feels a little bit like a squeeze, I’m happy.
“You don’t seem the type,” she tells me with a small smile. I wonder if she’s been holding the handbag this whole time, almost convinced it’s appeared out of nowhere.
“No really, Capri’s are great!” I say.
“I mean picky. You don’t seem like a picky person,” she says. I accept this with a nod, and when I shrug, Remy takes his arm away from me.
“Do you want to come outside?” I ask him and Ruben. They’ve started talking animatedly about some TV show Remy is trying to get me to watch with him.
I lead our group through the throng of people. The crowd seems more malleable now, less concrete. They bend and break around us as we make our way outside. I’m more confident leading us because I don’t care as much about what everyone will think. I shove our way through all of the bodies packed inside.
Remy puts his hand on my shoulder, and his fingers curl and tighten. I can feel his nails---too long---grazing the top of my shirt. When we near the door, a breath of fresh air hits me, and I inhale like I’ve just woken up from a nightmare and am finally being pulled back into reality.
We all spill outside, one after another. The crowd is still large and full, but maybe a little less impressive now than it was when Remy and I first walked in. I fall back to step in stride with Anya, who hands me her pack of Capri's.
“When did you start smoking?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“I guess I always have. Although it’s never been a really horrible habit. I don’t smoke during the day, and I rarely do when I go out. Mostly I keep them to attract people.”
She holds out a black lighter, encrusted with sparkling purple gems. They’re just like the ones I used to love when I was a kid. They’d come all laid out next to each other on these huge plastic sheets that you could buy for cheap. I used to plaster them on every surface I could, leaving trails of color bursting around our house. “I like the lighter,” I tell her, and Anya thanks me.
“All the ones I own are bedazzled. I think it helps me feel a little better about smoking in the first place,” she says.
Ruben and Remy stand across from us, engaged in their own conversation now. I take in the two of them. Ruben with his baby fuzz, laugh lines, and deep voice. Remy with his kind eyes, and insatiable lust for life. It’s weird to see them next to each other, all of this perfection cast out into the world so casually.
Anya cups her hands into a makeshift bridge for me after I can’t manage to keep a flame long enough to catch the cigarette on fire. The filter is all wet by the time it actually catches. I tell her this, trying not to sound ashamed, when she asks for a drag.
“I only want one or two anyways,” she tells me. Then when she’s handing it back, “It’s not too bad.” I don’t know if I believe her, but then again Anya doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would lie to placate someone else's humiliation.
The smoke swirls around, dissipates from clouds to tendrils to nothing at all. Remy glances at me a couple of times. He hates that I smoke, even though he refuses to actually tell me.
The relief from the buzz, or maybe just the relief from stepping outside again crashes over me. I tilt my head back, blow smoke up toward the sky, imagine I am a dragon from one of those creation myths. A dragon that paints the color of the sky with fire that fades into breath that fades back to fire.
“So… what's your deal with Remy?” Anya asks me quietly. I come back down to earth, and try to savor the last half of the cigarette.
“I was wondering the same about you and Ruben,” I tell her. She smiles, and I recognize her smile in the faces of other people I’ve known. The emotions that build behind her eyes, the way her whole face gives over to it.
“I asked first,” she says. I crack the knuckles on my left hand, thinking about how I should answer.
“We’re a lot of things to each other. Not everything. But a lot.” I glance over at Ruben and Remy to make sure they’re not listening to us, and they’re not. They’re both laughing at something, their laughter sweeping over our conversation.
“So it’s complicated?” Anya asks. I try to think through the light haze that has settled on my head and my shoulders.
“Not really,” I tell her. Which is true. She nods to this, sways back and forth a little as she swaps her weight from her toes to her heels.
“Do you think you could ever be more?” she asks, and I am surprised that this woman I’ve just met feels comfortable being so direct. “I guess it’s a hard question.” She pulls out another cigarette, lights it easily. Even the smoke she exhales seems to roll away with grace.
“I think so,” I say, equally surprised with my honesty. “But that’s just not really the relationship we have with each other. There’s not enough space for anything else. Even if there was, I don’t think anything would change. We’re used to each other, the way we operate together.” It’s weird, I don’t think I’ve ever voiced this reality to anyone other than myself.
“That makes sense,” says Anya. “You’re comfortable with the way things are.”
“Most of the time. We just are who we are to each other, and it works.” I stub out my cigarette, lean down to pick up the butt. “How about you and Ruben?”
She doesn’t even have to think about it. Not in the way I did at least. “We’re mostly the same, I guess. Old friends, you know? He’s known every part of me at different times.”
I do know. There’s only ice left in my second drink, but I tilt it back anyways to suck down the last remnants of bitter watered-down liquid.
Even without knowing Anya, I can understand her. It’s one of those rare moments where you find someone that just makes sense without having to puzzle them together. I think if we spent some time digging around, we would find all kinds of similarities. For some reason this realization hits me with unexpected force.
I hold up the cigarette butt pinched between my thumb and my index finger. “I’m gonna throw this away,” I tell her.
“You’re better than most of us,” she says, leaning forward to pick up her own. “Can you take this one too?” I accept it, cupping the stubs together in one hand. The crowd has started to thin, so my path is pretty straightforward. There is more empty space, less conversation. I toss the cigarette butts into a trashcan by the door, and when I rejoin our little group, Remy pulls me into his side.
He tries to whisper something into my ear, but he’s always been pretty bad at whispering, so I can’t actually make out whatever he’s trying to tell me. All I can feel is his warm wet breath heating up the side of my face.
Ruben checks his wrist, and I wonder what the hell he’s doing until I realize he’s wearing an Apple watch. Anya glances over at him, and they exchange some kind of unspoken agreement. “I hate to be those people, but we’ve both gotta get up early tomorrow,” Ruben says. I feel a brief spot of disappointment flare up in my stomach.
We all exchange numbers, promising we’ll meet up again. Remy thanks them for the conversation, and I thank Anya for the cigarette.
“Anytime,” she tells me, smiling. Ruben and I shake hands, and I try to paste his smile into my memory.
They walk away, arms linked, streetlights flushing them in gold. “What did you think?” Remy asks me as we watch them get smaller. “
They were nice,” I say.
We make our way back inside the bar. Remy leans into me once, his nose about to brush the tip of my own, but he pushes his lips together when he gets close. “You smell like smoke,” he says. I shrug, and take his hand to lead him up to the counter. I order us two beers, IPA’s, and Remy closes out his tab.
There’s a spot at a table now. Remy and I take it, sit across from each other nursing our beers. “What did you and Ruben talk about?” I ask him.
“Swimming. He used to swim in college, and I was asking him more since I’ve been thinking about training for a triathlon.” I reach across the table, and push my fingers into his, noting how soft his skin is.
“What did he tell you?”
“That swimming is really fucking hard.” Ruben laughs. “But also really relaxing sometimes, once you get used to it. Maybe I’ll ask him to help me make a training plan.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say. “Me and Anya talked about you two.”
“Oh?” says Remy. He takes my hand fully, grasps it across the table. “What did you say?”
I shrug. “Not much.” Remy waits for me to tell him more, but I won’t. Our silence stretches and stretches until a bartender walks over, and tells us that they're closing soon. Remy picks up both of our chairs easily, slots them upside down so they both hang off the table, legs sticking straight up, backs dangling down.
He almost throws his empty beer bottle away on the way out, but I stop him before he drops it. “Save it for next time,” I tell him.