Better Halves
We were polyamorous people with a modish apartment in the city. Breakfast was catered by the company of a lover. Pancakes, muffins, bagels, you name it. Each morning the line to use the bathroom grew longer; we were considering switching to a ticket system. At the back, or at the front, if we were lucky, we met somebody we didn’t know. “I’m Doug,” the new swain might say, in his shower cap, his robe. And to think, it was once just me and Kate, the two of us. Well, almost three. A small body we watched blossom between us and then it was gone, leaving a gulf neither of us could reach across. The bed felt emptier, the rooms quieter. Kate brought home a girl from work, a shy file clerk with light blonde hair and a lingering nose. We found others. In restaurants and in bars, waiting for trains and walking their dogs. The kitchen crowded. The closet filled with unfamiliar clothes; as many as five shirts were assigned to a single hanger. The bed we slept in together sloped inward. Television channels were flipped too liberally to piece together any semblance of plot. We circulated our love like a game of Telephone. It was better this way, we agreed – cozier, safer. And still there were nights when I couldn’t sleep, when I woke up cold and shaking. “Kate. Kate? Are you there?” I said, but I couldn’t find her. “Kate?” I crawled over Dan and Sadie and Neil and Esther and Robin and Dennis and Tabby and Pavel and Jennifers One and Two; they grunted or moaned but didn’t wake. I climbed northward, elbowing Mark in the ear and kneeing Lana in the ribs. The low drone of snoring was disorienting, a seismic episode on the smallest of scales: bureau drawers shuddered open and fan blades trembled like dry, brittle leaves. I reached Doug at the top of the pile, his lookout, curled fetal-like and spooned inside Sammy. “Have you seen Kate?” I asked him. “I think I saw her by the southeast bedpost with Henrik and Ginger,” he mumbled, his fist in his mouth. I worked my way down, over Simon and Oscar and Bridget and Rita and Dominique and Selma and Clover and Priya and Winston and Connie. There was Kate, splayed out, an arm over Henrik, a leg over Ginger. I moved close. I said to her, “We could do a lottery. You know, with wire cages and numbered ping-pong balls.” “We could. But I’m not sure bathroom privileges should be left to games of chance,” she said. “What should we leave it to then?” I said. “Something that’s fair to everyone,” she said. “A system where we all get what we want.” I nodded. She rolled over and we lay facing each other. I kissed the dark circles under her eyes. The springs shifted below us, bearing our weight but just barely.
Ravi Mangla is the author of the novel Understudies (Outpost 19). His stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Collagist, Los Angeles Review, Wigleaf, and Barrelhouse. He keeps a blog at .
