Excerpted from:
NO EXIT
by Ryan Lewis Merritt
I was dealing with things the best way I knew how – that is, not at all – when a small army of shrimp came pinwheeling at my head.
I tried to duck, but my movements were slow and blurred, and I took several shrimp off my forehead and shoulders. I remember being surprised – and even a little turned on – by Tara’s marksmanship, since she was in the kitchen, a good fifteen feet from me and my place on our white leather sofa. I heard, with delayed effect, the soft, spongy patter of the rest of the shrimp – the errant ones – on the wall, the chairs, and the floor.
“You missed,” I said, smirking.
She hated, above all, to be challenged, and I saw her reach for a fresh handful.
“Okay!” I said, raising my arms in a crooked X in front of my face. I fought against the heavy fatigue of intoxication to keep them suspended.
“What do you mean she’s ‘nice?’ Nicer than me?” Tara shrieked, her arm and shoulder cocked for launch. She looked like some odd serpent mistress of the sea with her long, sparkling turquoise dress and raised fistful of crustacea.
“I mean, should I answer that now?”
“Yes!”
“How about putting down the shrimp.”
“No!”
“Are we going to eat them off the floor? That seems like it’s a few ticks below your parents’ socio status.”
“Shut up about my parents!”
I lunged from the sofa, staying low to avoid the spinning pink missiles, but my elbow created a domino crash of flutes and open champagne bottles off the coffee table. Rich, expensive foam bubbled up beneath the scattered graveyard of broken glass on the white rug. There was blood, also, although from where I couldn’t tell.
Silence, a few stuttering heartbeats, then Tara’s voice, searing in on exactly the same pitch as the shattering glass.
“Now you’ve done it!” she screamed.
“Meeeee?!” Pain pricked at my hands and knees.
After a pause, she raised her arm, finger extended, toward the front windows, mouth frozen in a tight pout.
“Out!”
“Out?”
“Yes, out! Oh-you-tee!”
“Where?”
“Out!”
“Out where?”
“Of this apartment!”
“What?”
“Out!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“I live here!”
“You stay here!”
I placed my hands on my hips. She, ridiculously, did the same.
“Oh, really,” I said.
“Yeah!”
“Is that the arrangement?”
“Yes! This place is mine, you know!” she said.
“Interesting!”
“Yes. And I say out!” She pointed to the windows again.
I glanced out the large, open twin windows, seeing the privileged view of Ninth Avenue and its quaint streams of traffic. The soft, gold-diamond glow of the building lights in the near and far distance. I thought for a moment of never seeing this particular view again, but that moment quickly dissolved to a horror film trailer of the past six months in the apartment – the fights, the silences, the sleepless nights and mornings on the sofa and the floor, hearing the noise of the street down below like my former life, always below, always a reminder of past and present.
I saw the slow-motion flow of the people down on the street. I thought I could hear their laughter, and I imagined the smiles I couldn’t see at the extreme distance. They seemed to call to me. I stepped toward the window.
“What are you doing?” Tara asked behind me. Her voice was calm again, like always.
I pushed up the screen and stuck my leg out, feeling for the iron-slatted floor of the fire escape.
“You’re drunk!” Tara yelled, her voice fading as I dipped my head under the window and felt the night’s chill land suddenly on my face. I waited for my head to settle, closing my eyes. My nose was filled with a rich bouquet of garbage, from the dumpster below me, and the sea, from my shrimp-pelted shirt. I could hear Tara’s shrill voice, distant, as if from a passing car. I reached out for the railing and steadied myself, seeing only the network of black iron beneath my feet, a chasm of shifting colors an indeterminate distance below. As I reached the next landing, Tara’s voice suddenly became louder, and I looked up to find her leaning out the window, yelling.
“Andrew! Andrew, what the hell are you doing, Andrew?”
I looked into the window in front of me and saw two middle-aged men, naked, seated cross-legged on couches across the room from each other. They seemed to be doing nothing but staring at one another, taking occasional sips from their rocks glasses. Another man, also nude except for a scarlet dickie, came in carrying a silver tray and set it down on the table between them, kneeling on the carpet. The two seated men leaned forward toward the table.
“Andrew!” Tara shouted above.
The naked men looked toward the window and saw me staring at them. They stared back. I decided to continue on down the fire escape to the next level, sliding myself along the railing because it seemed easier than stumbling.
“Andrew, you’re going to fall! You’re going to kill yourself!”
“Oh, God,” I muttered.
I wanted to stop hearing her voice. I thought about trying to shush her, then looked into the window in front of me, which happened to be open. A long suede couch sat in semi-shadow in the center of the darkened room. I crawled inside the apartment and shut the window on Tara’s voice and the circus of noises from the street.