Christopher Linforth
Annina: I realize I should have taken your doubts more seriously, and even though we were engaged, we should have talked more on that drive back from Lola’s. “I still get a lot from past relationships,” you said. “They were good times. I don’t regret them.” I thought you were building us up, making us out to be different from you and Sam, you and Noah, you and Ethan. We were collaborators, a writer and a painter. You captured us in a hyperrealist portrait: a couple in matching silver tracksuits and ribbed gold sweatbands. I held a giant inflatable fountain pen, while you stared at me through cat-eye glasses. Your barn studio loomed in the background. A postmodern American Gothic, you called it, laughing. That image dominated the landing page of our wedding website. Visitors clicked through to our shared history.
How ironic that we met at one of Lola’s shows. Was it at CLEARING or Minus Space? I remember overhearing a critic describe Lola’s abstract landscapes as derivative. “Dreary blocks of nothing,” the man spat. Lola heard, I am sure. Later she blamed me for getting drunk and telling that same critic about better work. I had viewed your paintings many times over at Signal, intrigued by this artist who had spent so long portraying old men and women abandoned in a state nursing home. So I was elated when we bumped into each other at the gallery’s makeshift bar. We both detested the zinfandel (from an urban winery in Jersey City!), and I suggested we head across the street for a real drink. And we jawed for hours about Rothko and Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, then your work, your education at RISD and Parsons. Then my writing, two novels, quiet and literary, that dwelt in the lowest percentile of BookScan’s sales stats. I stared at the colorful row of liquor bottles on the backbar. “Who wants to read about sad men wandering around lonely cities?” I said. You interlaced your fingers with mine. “I do,” you said. We fled the bar for dollar slices and ubered to your apartment in Williamsburg and drank some more. Paintings from your garish State series hung on every wall—elderly men and women, forgotten, almost dead. We collapsed on the bed, hemmed in by those sightless faces, and you passed out, immune to the forlorn vestiges of past lives. It took me a long time to fall asleep and when I woke up you were riding me. “I’ll never be like these people,” you said, gesturing to your paintings. I laughed, and you slipped off, unsatisfied, and went for a shower. Before I left, I scrawled my number on the front of your sketchbook. You didn’t call me. I friended you on Facebook and messaged your painter page. I tried to find you on X.
And then finally I came across your Instagram and hearted your artistic process, your barn studio upstate, where you were at that moment. Perhaps you had no internet, I thought, but later discovered you did and were just taking a break from the city, from whatever we had going on. You got my number from Lola, you said, and texted me a scattered apology about not being able to read my handwriting.
I’m a writer, remember?
Oh?
Never mind.
Yeah, yeah, I remember.
Do you?
You said something about wishing your name was Jonathan.
One of my jokes.
I don’t recall laughing.
You did.
Sure.
So drinks? Coffee? I love cold brew. A walk? How about the High Line or Sunset? Citi Bike around Brooklyn? Or more drinks? I know what you like.
TY but I’m not a tourist.
A painter. The hottest.
You don’t know how to talk to women.
I’m better in person.
Sure.
It’s how we got together.
Yeah, we should discuss that.
Sounds good.
Listen, I can’t talk now. I’ll text in a couple days.
My schedule is pretty open.
No job?
Freelance.
Yeah, ok, we’ll see.
We met at Pokito. The streaks of gray in my hair charmed you. “I didn’t notice before,” you said. “I was going through a lot that night.” I could tell it involved an ex, Ethan, whom you brought up more than the others. He worked on Wall Street in crypto, though I had him pegged as a con artist. What else to make of a man who worshiped Elon Musk and spoke constantly of stablecoins and blockchains and democratizing finance? You fell for Ethan—whose wealth, in your family’s eyes, measured up—once upon a time. What a letdown it must have been when you started going out with me and said yes to my marriage proposal after only a few months. “I’m happy,” you said. “I feel centered for the first time in my life.”
Perhaps you picked up on the hours I sat writing at my desk, knowing I wouldn’t be agentless forever and I could sell the novel. Or perhaps your sense of stability was tethered to your abuse of Lamotrigine and Oxcarbazepine. Either way, you planned the ceremony and reception together with your family. Your father said not to worry about the budget and an old college friend of his wrote for the Times. “We’ll get you in the wedding announcements,” he said. An itinerary appeared on the website. Events were laid out, one photo opportunity after another. Champagne reception. Cocktails by the lake. Apéritifs in the marquee. I didn’t know where my friends or I fit in. I couldn’t say anything and you wouldn’t have liked my thoughts. The registry had image upon image of housewares and furniture hyperlinked to Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus and ABC Home. I kept thinking about where we would store all these things. We never decided where we were going to live. You wanted to remain in the city, and I wanted to relocate to the house upstate, where I would finish my novel and you would paint, but you refused to talk about it. And then, a few days later, shortly after the drive back from Lola’s, you disappeared, this time for good. You ghosted all my texts and calls. The website went down, a 404 error, and I heard from Lola you were seeing Ethan again, you were planning a new life in the Caribbean somewhere. I envisioned you and Ethan snug in a cabana. Arctic daiquiris and sunset fucks. Annina, I have never visited Martinique or St. Barts or Curaçao. I am from a small coal-mining town in Appalachia. New York saved me. Then my books. Then, if you can believe it, you. But now I might have to go back to Ohio. Or pick up adjunct work in the city. Finish my novel some other time. I cannot write anymore. So what else is there for me to do but refresh our website, hope the painting of us comes back online, that silvery flash, a vision of our future together.
Christopher Linforth is the author of four story collections, Very Short Lives (2027), The Distortions (2022), Directory (Reissue 2026; Italian 2024; 2020), and When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (2014). Christopher’s stories have been published in more than one hundred literary magazines. Recent fiction appears in the Barcelona Review, Oxford Review of Books, Nature, Notre Dame Review, Banshee, Books Ireland, Witness, The Arkansas International, Fiction International, Southern Humanities Review, Monkeybicycle, Hobart, Hotel Amerika, BULL, New World Writing, Popshot, Prism International, Consequence, Epiphany, and Best Microfiction.