Dim Sims

It was 11:24 PM when we left the Chinese restaurant. I remember, because Eliza was upset that we were heading home so late – she had a morning shift. She would always tell me about how hard it was to wake up at 3am, how god awful the commute was, how dreadful the job was, how she was tired of everything.

She had also found the dim sims subpar.

I thought they were okay, but they had scalded my mouth, and I had spilt some of the juice on my shirt.

“This is going to stain,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, Brandon,” Eliza said. “It’s just a shirt.”

“I like this shirt.”

Eliza sighed. Her sighs were sharp and irritating, a habit of hers I had grown to forgive. But in that moment I found it difficult to ignore it. It buried into my head and echoed inside, mockingly.

It wasn’t just that. I was becoming increasingly aware of the sundry sounds of the night. The engine sputter and gentle hum. Latest pop from the radio. I searched the other frequencies for something less obtrusive. Only static.

I turned the radio off.

And so, silence. I was too tired to break it. The confrontation with the editor this morning had gone completely off what I had rehearsed. I didn’t want to start anything tonight.

Then, Eliza sighed again. I gripped the wheel tighter. In the end, confrontation was inevitable.

“What’s your problem?” I said.

“What’s my problem?!” Eliza said. “I’ve got a morning shift tomorrow and you insisted that we go to some Chinese restaurant half an hour away, in the middle of the night.”

“Well, you could have told me before we left.”

“I thought you had planned something nice.”

“Are you saying that it wasn’t nice?” I asked.

“No, I’m just saying... I don’t even like Chinese food!”

“I just thought we could try something different.”

“Different?!”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “I appreciate that, Brandon. But spending the whole night sulking about your shirt? What’s your problem? You always do this! You’re upset about something and you show it in the most stupid way and I don’t know what’s up!”

I couldn’t hear her. It was 11:30 PM and the fuel was low and the road didn’t have enough streetlights and I had left my glasses at home because Eliza had rushed me and the conversation from this morning was still swimming in my head and I had just wanted one goddamn peaceful night for once, but to hell with that.

I didn’t want to argue. I hated the jumble of words that our arguments always came down to. I had been rehearsing a line in my head so that there could be clear and simple understanding between us. I looked at her and realised that she had finished talking. I decided to say my line.

“Don’t you think that as my girlfriend you should be supporting my passion and dream instead of tearing it down?”

Eliza stared at me. Head tilted to one side, eyebrows furrowed and eyes wide, lips slightly parted. My indignation was fading, replaced by an emerging sense of dread at how the night would end. In a slow, awkward motion Eliza pointed backwards and said, “Are you talking about back in the restaurant?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been writing that script for six months, Brendan. And that’s six months you’ve been unemployed and expecting me to support the two of us.”

“I can’t write a script in a couple of weeks!”

Eliza raised her hand in exasperation, as if she were to hit something. But instead, she slammed it onto the door handle. With her other hand she pointed at me.

“Do you know?” she said. “When I come home after uni and a five-hour shift, and you’re sitting on the couch watching TV and you’ve written half a page during the entire day when just the night before you promised to me that you’d devote your life to your craft. Do you know how… how infuriating that is?”

Her voice was quivering. I felt pity for her, but my pride wouldn’t relent.

“Do you think I don’t want to write the script?” I said.

“Well you’re not writing it!”

           “That doesn’t mean you can just say that I’ll fail! Do you know how much it hurts when the person you love says that?”

 “It didn’t seem like you were upset! It didn’t seem like you cared! You seemed more upset about your goddamn shirt!”

           “Well maybe it’s harder to tell you that you hurt me than pretending to be upset at a dim sim stain!”

And with that, the tenuous gauze of pride and self-restraint that covered our unresolved wounds had ripped. I thought that Eliza would argue back, reply with something, anything, so that our argument could come to a climax and eventually fall into some kind of a resolution. But she was silent.

And she was silent the whole way back.

She was silent when she got changed and went to bed.

She was too tired.

           I slept in the guest room.

“So you guys haven’t talked since then?” Dan asked.

We were smoking in the balcony of my apartment. Dan was a buddy from high school. He had finished college and was completing his internship at a high-end accounting firm. I had not asked him for the money, but the envelope lay opened on the kitchen counter. A wet towel spun on the fan. Eliza would be home soon.

“No,” I said.

“Good riddance.” Dan threw his smoke over the ledge.

“It’s not my fault!”

Dan smiled. He never laughed, just smiled. He smiled tenderly, but seeing him smile was like seeing a portrait of a smiling person – the tenderness didn’t reach.

“It’s not her fault either, is it?” he said.

“Don’t tell me you’re taking her side.”

“It’s not about taking sides, man.”

“I guess,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

He punched me in the arm. “Grow up man. Just tell her you didn’t mean it. And tell her that you’ll finish the script by the end of the month.”

He turned his back on me to look out over the balcony. My apartment was on the 18^th floor, overlooking the suburb. It sprawled with identical red rooves and identical trees planted in regular intervals. The streets were full of cheap suits walking. It was a place for those ‘looking to get big in the business’.

“And actually do it,” he added.

“I can’t finish a script in a month,” I said.

“Why not?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but realised I didn’t know what to say. I thought to laugh off the question, but I felt a sudden drive to speak the truth. It was something I had not experienced in my fights with Eliza.

There was something special about that moment. I felt suspended in time, in the centre of a mise en scène, cigarette in hand and under the spotlight, the red rooves and trees my audience.

“It’s terrifying to dream,” I said. “You see so many people trying to do something and fail. So many people. And you’re not allowed to fail. When you’re a kid, you get to do whatever you want. Fail however many times. It doesn’t matter. But as soon as you become an adult, you’re thrown out there–”

I pointed out to the matrix of houses.

“You have to find something to keep your balance in the positives and feed yourself. If you chase something and fail, it’s over. Look at you. Degree. Internship. All set out for you. You’re so lucky. Knowing exactly what you want. Knowing exactly how you’re going to get it.”

I turned to Dan, who was still looking out into the distance.

“Do you think I can make it?” I asked.

Time unfroze and I was back on the balcony, hazy with cigarette smoke.

“Dan?”

Dan turned to me and smiled.

“Yeah,” he said.

Soon it was time for Dan to leave.

“And Brandon,” he said, putting on his shoes.

And I felt that same feeling again, of being frozen in time. I waited for Dan to speak, to say something that could neatly wrap everything up.

But then he said, “It’s nothing.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder and smiled.

“See ya,” he said.

“Yeah.”

One week later, I’m sitting in the living room folding clothes. Eliza is on the couch, watching TV. I find my shirt in the pile of crumpled clothes.

“The stain didn’t go away,” I say.

“What?”

“The stain’s still there.”

“Oh,” Eliza says, turning back to the TV. “Well, you can always get a new shirt.”