Single, Carefree, Mellow. Katherine Heiny

Boris says, drawing circles on the kitchen table with his pencil.

      “Sure,” you say. “Just pick up the phone.” In fact, you do pick up the phone. You call information and get Dahlia’s number. Say, “Want me to dial?”

      Boris shakes his head. “Let’s go get something to eat,” he says. He puts his arms around you and dances you away from the phone. You think that Dahlia Kosinski is probably too tall for Boris’s chin to rest on her head like this.

      You didn’t write Dahlia’s phone number down on the scratch pad by the phone when you called information, because you don’t need Boris looking at it and mulling it over when you’re not around. This whole procedure is nerve-racking, but not to worry—he’ll never ask her out, and it’s always, always better to know than to wonder.

      In Pigeon Lab, you name your pigeon after him because the two other women who work there name their pigeons after their husbands. You spend a lot of time making fun of Boris when these two women make fun of their husbands. This, as a matter of fact, is not hard to do.

      You tell them about how he keeps a flare gun in the trunk of his car. Ask them how many times they think his car is going to break down in the middle of the Mojave Desert or at sea.

      You tell them that he has this thing for notebooks. He keeps one in the glove compartment of his car and records all this information in it whenever he fills the gas tank. You say, “I mean, there can be four hundred cars behind us at the gas station, honking, and there’s Boris, frantically scribbling down the number of gallons and the price and everything.”

      They are so amused by this that you tell them he has another notebook where he records all the cash he spends. You say, “If he leaves a waitress two dollars, he runs home and writes it down.” You add, “I’m surprised he doesn’t also record the serial numbers.”

      Because this last part isn’t even about Boris, it’s about your father, you worry that you are becoming a pathological liar.

      You never act jealous in front of Linette, his best friend from undergrad. She spends the day at your apartment on her way to a game she’s going to be in. She plays basketball for some college in California.

      She is as tall and slender as you feared and not as coarse and brawny as you wanted. You had hoped she would lope around the apartment, pick you up, and chuck you to Boris, saying, Well, Bo, I guess we could toss a little thing like her right through the hoop.

      Actually, Boris and Linette do go play some basketball, and when they come back, you all sit on the couch and drink beer. Linette puts her hand on Boris’s thigh, which is lightly sweating, and you hope it’s just from basketball. You resist the urge to put your hand on his other thigh. You imagine yourself and Linette frantically claiming Boris’s body parts, slapping your hands on his legs, then his arms, then his chest. Only knowing how much pleasure he would get out of this keeps you from doing it.

      Instead, you finish your beer in one long swig, anxious to show that you can drink right along with any basketball player, and you rise. You say, “It’s been nice to meet you, Linette, but I have to go, I have a date.” You don’t have boyfriends anymore, just dates.

      “Yes,” you say again, “I have to go get ready.” You say this so Linette will believe that you are looking the way you normally look around the house, that you are actually about to go make yourself better-looking. She does not need to know that you’re already wearing a lot of makeup, that this is about as good as it gets.

      You pretend you don’t want to kiss him. He calls from a bar on Halloween, too drunk to drive, when you are home studying. You drive to pick him up, wearing sweats and your glasses. You wear your glasses only on nights when you don’t plan to see him.

      He sings on the ride home, pulling on your braid. Wonder why he’s in such a good mood. Was Dahlia Kosinski at this bar?

      In the kitchen, he drinks your orange juice out of the carton. You say, “Put that back.”

      Boris says, “Too late,” and holds the carton upside down to demonstrate. Three drops of orangey water fall on the floor.

      “Damn,” you say and throw the sponge on the floor. This is a good indication of how irritable you are, because the floor was already sticky enough to rip your socks off.

      “I’m sorry, Gwen,” Boris says. “I’ll go get more tomorrow, I promise.”

      “Forget it,” you say, rubbing the sponge around with your toe.

      “If you forgive me, I’ll kiss you,” Boris says.

      Now you don’t even have to pretend you don’t want to kiss him, because, you have to face it, that was pretty obnoxious.

      “Oh, spare me,” you say, and cross your arms over your chest. Boris leans over and kisses you on the eyebrow. Don’t in any way change your posture, but you can close your eyes.

      He touches your lips with his tongue. Wonder why you have to suffer this mutant behavior on top of everything else. He must look like someone trying to be the Human Mosquito. Does this even count as a kiss? This is a very good question, and you will spend no small amount of time pondering it.

      Boris cuts himself shaving and leaves big drops of blood on the sink. You approach cautiously; it looks as if a small animal had been murdered.

      You consider your options. You could point silently but dramatically at the sink when Boris returns. You could leave him an amused but firm note: “Dear Boris, I don’t even want to know what happened in here …” Or you can do nothing and assume that he’ll eventually do something about it. That is probably your best option. But what if he thinks you left it there? What if he thinks you shave your legs in the sink or something? Best to clean it up and not mention it.

      This you do, pushing a paper towel around the sink with a spoon.

      You take Boris home for Thanksgiving dinner. All goes smoothly except for your grandmother glaring at him after the turkey is carved and announcing, “The one thing I will not tolerate is this living together, and I say that aloud for all the young people to hear.”

      Boris looks up from his turkey drumstick like a startled wolf cub, a spot of grease smeared on his cheek.

      Later, when you are walking back toward the train station, he says, “What did your grandmother mean by that?”

      Hoot. You say, “I don’t know, but the way she said ‘all the young people’ made it sound like there were a whole group of young people, drinking beer or something.”

      Boris is not to be distracted. “The thing is,” he says, “we aren’t living together in that way.”

      You try not to wince. You do shiver. You take Boris’s hand as he bounds along on his long legs, your signal that he has to either slow down or pull you along. He tucks both your hand and his hand into the pocket of his jacket. You look up at his face out of the corner of your eye. In the cold, you watch him breathe perfect plumes of white that match the sheepskin lining of his jacket. You think how happy you would be if Boris thought you were half as beautiful as you think he is at this moment.

      You walk this way for a few minutes. Then he tells you that your hand is sweating, making a lake in his pocket, and gives you his gloves to wear.

      You take to going out with Boris for frozen yogurt almost every night at about midnight. You are always the last people in the yogurt place, and the guy who works there closes up around you. Tonight Boris says, “Gwen, you have hot fudge in the corner of your mouth,” and wipes it away, hard, with the ball of his thumb. Wonder if you feel too comfortable with him to truly be in love.

      But then he licks the fudge off his thumb and smiles at you, his hair still ruffled from the wind outside. He is the love of your life, no question about it.

      For Christmas, you buy Boris a key chain. This is what you had always imagined you would give a boyfriend someday, a key chain with a key to your apartment. Only it’s not exactly a parallel situation with Boris, of course,