Elías emerged from the kitchen and handed her a glass of white wine. Amelia continued staring out the tall windows.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
‘That billboard,’ she said. The glow of the sign was mesmerizing.
‘Mars. It’s always Mars,’ he said, raising his own glass of wine to his lips.
‘You used to be interested in it.’
‘I still am. But things are different now. I just… I thought you’d changed your mind.’
He had definitely changed his mind. There were no photos in the apartment. His old place was small. Photos on the walls, antique cameras on the shelves, hand-painted stars on the ceiling (those had been her notion). An attempt at bohemian living. It had all been scrubbed clean, just like his face, the whole look of him.
‘Never.’
‘New Panyu, is that still the idea?’ he asked.
Amelia nodded. They had weighed all three options. New Panyu seemed the best bet, the largest settlement. They’d quizzed each other in Mandarin. Yī shēng yī shì, whispered against the curve of her neck. Funny how ‘I love you’ never sounded the same in different languages. It lost or gained power. In English, it sounded so plain. In Spanish, it became a promise.
‘It mustn’t be easy,’ he said. He looked like he was sorry for her. It irritated Amelia.
‘Haven’t you heard? The problem with our generation is we don’t have enough life goals,’ Amelia replied tersely. ‘No real challenges.’
‘My assistant said they are capping Class B applications.’
‘Is she a virtual assistant? I say “she” because it turns out men like to interact with female avatars,’ Amelia told him. She thought about the French maid hologram bending over to show her underwear, but surely he could afford real people. He was on Friendrr. Maybe in the mornings, a chick came to play dictation with him, wearing glasses and holding a clipboard.
‘No.’
‘Do you want me to keep talking to you, or do you want me to be quiet? You need to give me parameters of interaction,’ she said.
‘Please don’t talk like that.’
‘You clicked on an app and ordered me like you order Chinese takeout, so don’t be offended if I ask if you’d like chopsticks.’
He stared at her and she gave him a faint smile, but it wasn’t real. It was the cheap, placid imitation she ironed and took out for clients.
‘I’m fine with silence. I just want to have a few drinks. I don’t like drinking alone,’ he said coolly.
She finished her wine. He refilled the glass. They moved away from the window, sat on different ends of the couch. They drank and she watched him, Elías in profile. She might have taken out her cell phone and played a game, but she wanted him to be uncomfortable, to ask her to look away. He did not and eventually, Amelia relaxed her body and took off her shoes, staring at the ceiling instead. The wine had a hint of citrus. It went to her head quickly. She did not drink too often these days, not when she was paying, and when she did, it was the cheap, watered stuff.
She enjoyed the feeling that came with the alcohol, the indifference as she lay on his couch and threw her head back. She thought of Mars, the Mars in Lucía’s movie, tinted in black-and-white, and she shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. She drank more. Time had slowed down in the silence of the room.
Finally, the cell phone beeped and she rose, pressing the heel of her hand against her forehead.
‘Well,’ she said, standing in front of him and showing him the phone, ‘it’s over.’
‘I can add an extra hour,’ he said. ‘Let me find my phone.’
He looked panicked as he patted his shirt. He accidentally knocked over the glass of wine, which had been resting on the arm of the couch. The wine splattered over the expensive rug. Amelia chuckled, his distress delighting her. But then he looked hurt and she felt somewhat bad, for a heartbeat.
Amelia sat on his lap, straddling him, her hands resting on his shoulders.
‘What’s so terrible about being alone?’ she asked.
She was being deliberately cruel, teasing him. She disliked it when she sank to such depths, but Amelia was angry, with a quiet sort of anger. She might hurt him now and it would please her.
Elías did not move. He had flailed like a fish out of water a few seconds before as he attempted to find his phone, but now he was perfectly still, staring at her.
‘I hate it and you know it.’
‘Can’t you hire someone to scare the monster who lives under the bed?’
‘Amelia,’ he said sadly.
She chuckled. ‘Aren’t we pathetic?’ she whispered.
When he tried to kiss her, she wouldn’t let him. An arbitrary line but one she had to trace. Fucking was fine. Amelia hadn’t fucked in forever. She couldn’t bring people to her shared room and the guys she stumbled into were in as much of a fix as she was. She didn’t want anyone anyway. It was a struggle to exchange semi-polite words, to pretend she was interested in what came out of a stranger’s mouth. Oh, yes, that’s great how you’re going to take a coding boot camp and you’ll have a job in six weeks or less, except no one is hiring, you idiot. Or, That’s interesting that you are working as a pimp on the side, but no thanks, buddy, I’m not joining your troupe or whatever the hell it’s called these days.
Who cared what she said to Elías? What she did with him? Who cared at this point? She drew her line and he drew his, which seemed to be the ridiculous notion that they should fuck on the bed. Perhaps he objected to the soiling of the couch.
By the time Amelia zipped up her jeans and started pulling on her shoes, it was too late to
