The Modern Woman

By Nicole Chang

In the morning, Oscar rises earlier than me and rustles around in my kitchen pantry to make us each a fried egg. I pretend to sleep so that I can lay in bed for a little longer, the heat of his body leaving a shadow of warmth that I savor in these unending winter months.

It’s fun to observe people when they don’t know they’re being watched. He’s just in his boxers, whistling faintly to himself. His torso is long and it vees in nicely at the waist; something about it is geographical, like when a lake narrows into a river. 

When he approaches me with a plate and fork, I pretend to open my eyes, smiling a lazy smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he replies, handing me my egg. I draw my knees to my chest and use it as a table for the plate. I can tell he’s watching me, so I make slow work of it.

The egg is good. Not runny at all, but a thin slab of crisp nothing.

He gives me a quick kiss after he finishes his plate and deposits it in the sink, then dresses and heads for the door. “Well, I have to go to work,” is all he says. And then he’s gone.

Like all other visitors, I found Oscar through a dating app. I keep a few different kinds on my phone, to cast my net as wide as I possibly can. I can’t bear the idea of someone good slipping away because I wasn’t looking in the right place. I suppose I have very little faith in fate.

Every time, we exchange a few niceties via the app’s chat feature, then go out for dinner and drinks. I suggest a restaurant that is just a few minutes’ walk from my apartment. It’s so adult of us, I think as I swirl my red wine in its glass and blink up at the dim gold light fixtures that wash both of our features in a flattering blur of warmth. I’m wearing a nice top that presses my breasts together, and my hair is back. If they don’t like how I look now, they never will. I pray they pay when the check comes.

And every time, I invite them back to mine. I’m not sure why I do it, what part of me is compelled by the forces of the modern dating scene. I also don’t know what I gain from it, but the exchange never feels complete without it. Maybe I want the moment to last, at least for a bit more. A little tipsy or excited or perhaps feeling up for a risk, they agree. 

My place is ideal. There are no roommates, no cat to trip over or watch you with impassive, unblinking eyes. There’s nothing other than us. Us, who act as grown-ups do, then fall asleep with arms piled atop one another. They then pull an Oscar, a polite and non-committal leave. The mornings sometimes feel so tender that I nurse the exit like a wound, one I lick at for the days following.

There are variations, of course. And people I remember so clearly. Mary, who stroked the crown of my head with her ring-clad fingers until I fell asleep, dreaming of the grooves she was gently molding into my head. Tyler, who looked unlike his pictures and whose dental structure reminded me so much of my cousin Edward when he smiled. I feigned food poisoning for the entire night, locked in the bathroom and retching now and then to keep him at bay. Maya, who I heard zipping up her jeans at 3:45 in the morning, anxious to peel herself off of me the second she thought I was asleep. Jessie, who left behind his newly purchased vintage CD. He never came back to claim it. I gave it a listen, and it was great. It was exactly what I imagined him to listen to, a guy who wore asymmetrical earrings and possessed a competitive pride in how many books by Russian thinkers he had read.

There was Lilly, with three Ls. Her bus had been delayed by the rain, so I canceled our reservation and invited her to mine right away. The landlord had to guide her to my door; she was so turned around in the maze of complexes.

She emerged at my doorway in soggy clothes slack to her skin, her forehead pearling with water. The landlord, a man who had to be at least two decades older than my grandfather, smiled at me with his gap-toothed grin of his, like he was in on the secret. Like maybe he knew something I didn’t.

I gave her a change of clothes. The t-shirt came to her thighs. We sat on my floor because the room was unfurnished, and talked over a can of beer. Passing it between the two of us was more intimate, in a way, than anything I had done with someone before. We could only look at each other briefly before we flicked our eyes to our laps. I’m not sure what it was, but it was something I can’t put into words.

Later, in bed, she clung to the back of my sticky neck. “I’m glad I met you.” She said it so sincerely.

I never saw her again. And I still wonder why.

I crawl out of bed after a while, then sip my coffee at the table. The heat fries my tastebuds numb, but the scalding trail from my throat down to my middle is welcome. I open up my camera app, and the face blinking back at me startles me, the frozen, startled eyes like a snared fish. I swipe away quickly.

I scroll through screenshots of my ex-connections’ profiles, dotted with bike rides and dogs and selfies of varying degrees of flatteringness. I know I can view them directly through the app, but I get paranoid that they will block me or deactivate or simply disappear into thin air. The pictures are my keepsakes. They are the only proof I have that they were once here.