Conduit

I come home to find Kyle face down in the hallway outside my apartment door. He has prostrated himself, arms spread like a medieval priest before a stone altar. It is past midnight—who knows how long he’s been here—and this cruciform display is, I assume, part of Kyle’s campaign to demonstrate how desperately he wants me back. Given his germophobia and allergies; given that the ugly paisley swirls on the carpet must be teeming with dust mites and mold spores; and given that with every breath he must be inhaling lungfuls of magenta nylon microfibers, lavender-scented vacuum-cleaning crystals, and ordinary dog-shit-laced street grime, this is an even greater show of devotion than last week, when he had six cartons of ice cream sandwiches delivered by a guy in a polar bear suit. “Kyle,” I say, “get up.”

“You’re home late,” he says into the carpet.

“We broke up,” I say, “remember?”

He rolls onto his back, arms still out, forehead puckered with carpet-pile skin dents, mouth slack in the grateful zombie look he always wore when we had sex and I was on top.

“Tell me it wasn’t the stockbroker.” He squeezes his eyes shut, as if expecting a blow. “Please, not that guy.”

“You need to go home,” I say.

The door across the hall opens and Mrs. Tanaka—Kyle’s biggest fan—joins us.

“I thought I heard a familiar voice.” She beams down at Kyle. “How nice to see you, Kyle!”

From the floor, Kyle gives a little salute. “And you, Mrs. T.”

Even at midnight Mrs. Tanaka’s hair, in its sleek silver bob, looks great. Her reading glasses are on a rhinestone chain around her neck, and she holds a slim glass of something green—probably crème de menthe, given her recent habit of bringing oddly shaped bottles of fruity liqueurs to my apartment to tell me that I made a mistake in leaving Kyle. He has a steady job, she always points out. The whole world needs electricians. Kyle once rewired her doorbell for free and she never got over it. She is wearing a sleek silver robe cinched at her tiny waist, and bunny-ear slippers on her tiny feet.

“Are you two getting back together?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“Maybe,” says Kyle.

I lean against the wall and let my shoulder bag slide to the floor. I’m tired. My contacts are glued to my corneas, and my sexiest underwire bra, which I wore in case the stockbroker wanted to come home with me and take my blouse off, is poking my ribcage in a sad reminder that he didn’t.

Kyle rolls onto one hip and pulls a folded piece of paper from a back pocket. “I brought a list,” he says. He is wearing newish Levi’s 501s, and I’ll admit he looks good. His butt looks good, and his hair looks good in a messed-up, bedhead kind of way.

“I love your lists,” Mrs. Tanaka says. She sits on the floor next to Kyle, draws her knees up under the robe and pokes the bunny ears companionably against his shoulder.

“Please don’t encourage him,” I say. Over two years of living together, I encountered many of Kyle’s lists, such as: Pros and Cons of Getting an Aquarium (#1: Easiest of the pet-care scenarios); Best-to-Worst French Toast (#1: Redwoods Inn after our first night together: Good finish, fluffy middle, excellent egg coherence); Favorite Brands Electrical Conduit (#1: Traco Spiral-reinforced PVC).

Kyle unfolds the sheet of wide-ruled paper with its ripped spiral edge. “Will you read it, Mrs. T.?” He sits up, hands her the paper, and offers to hold the crème de menthe.

“I’d be happy to.” She props the glasses on her nose and scans the list. She gazes lovingly at Kyle, as if he has brought home an A+ from Relationships 101. “It’s a list of promises,” she says, looking up at me. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

I glance at my watch. “I have to be at work in eight hours,” I say.

Mrs. Tanaka holds up an index finger. “Number one,” she reads, “I promise to be more ambitious.”

If Kyle’s promises were a deck of cards, this would be the Ace of Guilt. This was our core incompatibility. I was driven; Kyle was content. That’s the kind of contrast that lures couples into a giddy smashup of wild love until it turns inside out like a tube sock and drives them apart. Anything adorable at the start—He hums in his sleep! She cares about thread count!—becomes a reason to argue in the end.

I was on a five-year plan: career advancement, a master’s in communication, a condo in the sky. Kyle was content to pick up a paycheck, shop for tropical fish, have sex, and rate French toast. His whole happy-go-lucky, in-the-moment, let’s-buy-another-Platinum Hatchetfish existence made me feel guilty for wanting more—more money, more status, more upscale cookware to flaunt nonchalantly at our nonexistent dinner parties. Now, by pretending to cave to my materialistic desires, Kyle was layering on more guilt.

“But Kyle, honey,” Mrs. Tanaka taps his elbow. “You work so hard. I think you are very ambitious.”

She would take his side. Her late husband had been a deadbeat. I never knew him, but she told me he couldn’t hold a job, got fat, and lived off her income. By comparison, Kyle—striding off to work at 6 a.m., crimping tools and wire cutters jangling off his toolbelt, pockets crammed with red and yellow cap connectors—must have seemed the model working man.

“You could have your own shop by now if you wanted to,” I say. It sounds hollow. I pushed this argument too many times in the past.

“But all that paperwork.” Kyle takes a swallow of the crème de menthe, as if to prove paperwork alone would drive him to drink. “I just love electricity.”

“I do too,” Mrs. Tanaka says in solidarity. “Where would we be without it—the essential force behind this modern life we enjoy.”

I was no match for the two of them, much less for the ubiquity of electricity, which Mrs. Tanaka always implied originated with Kyle and flowed from his capable hands to every outlet in Seattle.

“Forget ambition," I say. “What’s next?”

“Number two.” Mrs. Tanaka peers at the paper, glances at Kyle, takes a breath, and reads: “I promise not to stalk you on any more business trips, by which I mean I promise not to be jealous of your boss, no matter how creepy he is or what he did at the company picnic.”

Call this one the Two of Stupidity.

“What happened at the company picnic?” Mrs. Tanaka asks.

“Her boss,” Kyle says, “the one I call the Cephalopod, tried to take off her swimsuit.”

“Not true,” I say. But he’s right, the picnic was awful. A Hawaii-themed debacle around a country-club pool with everyone drunk on Passionfruit Hurricanes. The Cephalopod did pull open the tie at the back of my bikini top, but it was during a rum-fueled water volleyball game and was probably inadvertent.

“He’s only jealous because he loves you,” Mrs. Tanaka says. I suspect she would have appreciated more passion from her own husband, even in the form of jealousy. Even in the form of stalking.

“But if he loved me, he would trust me, wouldn’t he?” I slide my back down the wall until I’m sitting with them on the floor. “I can handle the Cephalopod.” I take the glass from Kyle’s hand and gulp some of the green liqueur. “And you almost got me fired when you followed me to San Francisco.”

Mrs. Tanaka tucks her chin into the collar of her shiny silk robe. “Kyle,” she says. It’s her have-you-been-naughty voice, but she is smiling and shaking her head. “What did you do?”

“Something bad,” Kyle says.

“He flew to San Francisco,” I say, “and accosted us in the dining room of the Fairmont Hotel during a dinner with clients.”

“It looked like a date,” Kyle mumbles.

“Either way, no reason to threaten the Cephalopod with a seafood fork.”

Mrs. Tanaka finds this hilarious. “Kyle, you didn’t!” she laughs.

“It wasn’t funny,” I say, getting furious all over again. “It ended with a cup of lobster bisque in the client’s lap and Kyle in handcuffs after security arrived.”

Mrs. Tanaka tries to sound serious. “Sweetie, you went too far,” and taps his elbow again for emphasis.

“I know,” Kyle says. “It was stupid. I was just sorry the soup didn’t end up on the Cephalopod.”

“We lost a gazillion-dollar client and I almost got fired and the Cephalopod threatened to press charges.”

“Did they put you in jail?” Mrs. Tanaka asks.

“No.” Kyle brightens. “That was the best part. We got to spend the night in her room at the Fairmont in a California king with a corner window and a view of Alcatraz.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Tanaka says wistfully. “Make-up sex.”

“Yes,” Kyle says dreamily. “The best.”

It had been a fun night. Some remnant of Tarzan/Jane-survival-DNA must’ve kicked in, because part of me loved having Kyle rush to my rescue, no matter how misguided he was. And it was better than make-up sex; it was teens-in-a-Honda-Civic sex, all weird positions and laughter and clothes half on/half off and doing things we’d never done before that left marks.

“Read one more,” I say, because now I’m intrigued. “And then I must go to bed.”

“Number three. I promise no more stunts to get you back, no more ice cream sandwiches, no more crucifixions, if you agree to a three-day, three-night trial reconciliation, starting tonight.”

Ah. The Three of Bribery.

“By the way,” Mrs. Tanaka says, “those ice cream sandwiches were lovely.” She ate half of them, and she still weighs ninety pounds.

“He’s bribing me, as usual,” I say.

There was a story behind the ice cream sandwiches. It was how we met, two years ago, at a food vendor’s truck downtown. We both wanted to buy the guy’s last ice cream sandwich, and it became a mock battle that we deliberately prolonged because of the immediate wave of attraction between us, so strong it was almost visible, like a heat mirage on hot tarmac. Technically, Kyle got there first. He was wearing an orange vest and white hard hat, all covered in a fine layer of construction dust. I grabbed the ice cream sandwich from his hand, claiming I hadn’t eaten all day. He grabbed it back, claiming that physical labor produced a superior type of hunger. I said it was on him if I fainted. He looked me over, my teal blazer and cork-wedge sandals and in all seriousness said, “You can’t look that good and be starving.” I tried for a comeback, but the clunky white knee-protectors he wore over his jeans were so endearing, I gave up. “Take it,” I said, arms up in surrender.

“No, wait.” He offered it back. “You can have it if I can put my number in your phone.”

I called him that afternoon. We met at a sushi place, ate dragon rolls, and got a little drunk on sake. Being already fed up with dating, I came in wary, like a deer in a clearing. But Kyle was different. Later I realized that he probably had a List of First-Date Questions prepared, but he asked about me, watched me with a big panda gaze, and listened. He pretended my job as a copywriter, my hours of hot yoga, and my Mazda check-engine light were all fascinating. When I asked him what it was like to be an electrician, I expected some handyman response like Well, the pay’s good, but he surprised me.

“It makes me happy,” he said.

“What does?”

“Electricity,” he said. “When I run wire in a new house, I love the way it feels.”

“You love the way wire feels?” I sounded worried, and he laughed.

“Well, no,” he said, “but the whole process. Setting the outlets, knowing the voltages, running wire through conduit and conduit through studs. Hooking everything up at the breaker panel. It’s really beautiful.” He poured some sake and looked embarrassed. “I know,” he said, “I’m crazy.”

Maybe. But he sat through my details about product research and media buys, so I wanted to hear him out.

“We all take electricity for granted, don’t we?” I said. “We just flip a switch.”

He gave me a melting look of gratitude, as if I had just said Let’s take our clothes off.

“So true,” he said. “Nobody even knows where electricity comes from.”

I knew he wanted me to ask. “Where does it come from?”

My heart sank when he started drawing on a napkin, but he was so excited. He sketched quickly, with running commentary: River (wavy lines), dam (vertical lines), generating station (big box), transformers (small boxes), high-speed-transmission lines (steel towers, fat cables), substations (medium boxes), distribution lines (mostly underground), and then a house (child’s drawing, complete with pitched roof, chimney, chimney smoke, front door, and picture window).

The server came over and said she was closing. We finished the sake, and I gathered up my purse and jacket. But Kyle wasn’t finished.

“You see,” he said, and he etched in the final feed between the distribution line and the house, running the pen back and forth for emphasis. “Here’s the panel,” he said, adding tick marks to the side of the house. “Now it can come alive.” He drew little starburst lines around the house, as if it were shimmering with anticipation. Gazing at his artwork, he sat back, and, with no embarrassment at all, he said, “Makes me wish I could be the house.”

While Kyle paid the check, I sat there, debating. I liked him, but who bares their soul over . . . wires? Still, I knew I’d never plug in my hair dryer again without thinking Now it can come alive.

The memory is almost enough to make me agree to Kyle’s three-day reconciliation, but I hold back. I sneak a look at Kyle. His eyes are on soft-focus. His lips are parted—that grateful-zombie look again—and his chest is rising and falling.

I ask Mrs. Tanaka, “Are there any more?”

She checks the list. “One more,” she says. “Shall I read it?”

No one says anything. She waits. She looks from me to Kyle and back to the paper.

“Number four,” she says. “I promise to be the house.”

I drop my forehead onto Kyle’s shoulder and smell lavender carpet crystals on his shirt.

Mrs. Tanaka lowers her reading glasses and looks puzzled. “Kyle, do you mean buy the house?”

“No,” I say, and I feel Kyle’s kiss on the top of my head. “He means be.”