Neon, Ketchup

Something about the hum of neon always quells my rapid heartbeat. My theory is the electromagnetic waves coursing through the blown glass match the vibrations of my anxious brain...or at least partially deafen them. I told Josh this once and he just chuckled like he always does when I say something slightly unhinged.

You’ll often find me squarely planted in the far left booth of a diner on the southwest corner of Washington Square Park. I’ll set up shop right next to the glowing “OPEN” sign on the opposite side of the window, especially if it’s exam season. I’ve developed a sort of bizarre ritual: I will, despite what I urge my students not to do, procrastinate—to the point where I have a mountain of papers to grade. The diner has terrible reception and no Wifi, forcing me into a caffeinated work sprint.

At 11pm on some weeknight, Josh and I will turn over and attempt to get some sleep. He’ll doze off immediately and I’ll stare at the rotating ceiling fan, which I’m always petrified will free itself from the wall and crush my skull in my sleep. Then, I’ll have a lucid dream about giving everybody A’s, getting fired for academic inflation, losing my faculty housing, and having to move back in with my parents.

I’ll jolt up, make sure Josh is still snoring, and sneak myself out of bed, don my biggest greyest hoodie, and leave a sticky note on my pillow: “Grading.”

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that you’re a 3am regular anywhere, but any trepidation always washes away the moment Yannis sees me coming in through the glass door. The manager, greeter, and partial owner, Yannis is a fellow night owl and, in my mind at least, the grandpa I never had. His geriatric energy never ceases to amaze me.

One particularly memorable grading night, it started to pour midway through my five minute walk to the diner, practically soaking me through my hoodie before I walked up to the door. I saw Yannis jog to the front as the bells chimed.

“Ya! Christina!” he shouted, smiling and repressing a chuckle. “You forget how the rain works?”

I peeled off the hoodie, moving to hang it on the empty coat rack, but Yannis yanked it from my hands.

“I’ll hang it in the basement, by the furnace,” he said.

“Oh, thanks. You really don’t have to—”

“Come, sit.” He led me to my table, not bothering with a menu, my sopping sweatshirt wrapped around his arm. “Breakfast or dinner?” He grinned. What he was really asking was: “Scrambled eggs with black coffee or sweet potato fries with black coffee?”

“Dinner, please,” I said. Yannis nodded and then disappeared behind the kitchen doors.

While my leather satchel hadn’t held up to the rain, the papers inside had—thank god—and I whipped out my pen to start grading the mid-semester interpretations of The Winter’s Tale. I placed my own worn-out copy to the side when Yannis returned in seemingly no time with my fries and ramekin of ketchup.

“What’s this one about?” he demanded to know, tapping the book’s cover with two fingers as I cleared some of the papers to make space for the food.

“Well, there’s Hermione and her husband, Leontes—”

“Leontes! Finally, a Greek!” Yannis slammed his fist triumphantly.

“No...he’s actually the king of Sicilia. Like in Italy…”

“Oh,” said Yannis, clearly disappointed.

“—and his friend, Polixenes, is visiting—”

“Surely, Polixenes, this man is Greek,” he replied, reanimated for a moment.

“No, no he’s from Bohemia. It’s in the Czech Republic, I think—”

“Shouldn’t you know, if you’re grading these?” he raised one eyebrow, then gave a wicked smile. I chose to chomp a ketchup-coated fry instead of answering.

After chewing a bit, I continued. “Anyway basically Hermione gets pregnant, and Leontes is convinced that she’s cheating on him with Polixenes, so he throws her in jail...you know actually two of the lords go to the Oracle of Delphi at one point, so technically they go to Greece.”

I realized I hadn’t swallowed the fry. Ew, who talks with their mouth full? But when I tried to swallow, I couldn’t. The little mashed sweet potato in my mouth tasted like soap.

“You’ve got…” Yannis said, gesturing to under his nose. I touched my left nostril...ketchup. In the course of eating one terrible fry, I’d managed to get ketchup on my face.

Yannis chuckled. “Looked like you had a bloody nose!”

The bells from the front door chimed as a young couple entered the diner. Yannis left to go greet them, seating them about as far as he could from me.

I looked back down at my plate of orange fries as I wiped my nose. They looked great—the big chunks of kosher salt and thin coating of oil made my mouth water. I went in for another fry, sinking it into the ketchup—my stomach churned. The smell of the greasy sweet potatoes was suddenly overwhelming. I looked at my abandoned fry sticking out of my ketchup ramekin. The ketchup looked a bit darker than usual. It really did look like blood, I thought. At least I didn’t spill it on my pants and...wait a minute.

I checked my phone for today’s date. My period was ten days late.

No no no, I thought to myself. How was this possible? Josh and I were ALWAYS careful...and we hadn’t...in weeks. I wanted to vomit. Psychosomatic reaction or a biological mechanism? I couldn’t say. My hands started to shake as I packed the papers back in my still-soaked leather bag.

“What? Done already?” Yannis asked.

“No I—I forgot to do something—” I sputtered.

“Nonsense, dear. You’ve hardly eaten!”

“I need to go to the pharmacy. I forgot something!” I said with more desperation than intended. I was too busy thinking about all of the times Josh and I had explicitly told each other we never wanted children.

“Okay, okay. You go to the pharmacy, leave this—” he gestured to the remaining papers. “I watch it, then you come back and finish your dinner.”

I breathed, “Thank you.”

The hum of fluorescent lighting is very different from that of neon, I thought, as I waited in line at the pharmacy counter, clutching three different brands of pee sticks. The harsh white lights above me made me feel like a lab rat: under surveillance. The frequency pierced my ears and sent wrinkles through my forehead. I almost didn’t hear the pharmacist call me up to the counter.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“Um, yeah. I’d like to buy these,” I said, spilling the boxes on the counter, “and um...Plan B, if you have it.”

The pharmacist eyed me, then the three pregnancy tests. “You know...if you’re already pregnant, Plan B isn’t going to work.”

Oh my god, I’m such an idiot, I thought, but probably said it with my face.

“...So just these then?” she asked. I nodded.

Ten minutes later I sat in the single bathroom at the back of the diner. In the world’s most stressful unboxing, I tore open my three little fate predictors one by one. One came in a nice plastic case inside of the box that broke in two. I used the bottom half as a...ahem, urine collection device.

There’s something funny about dipping a bunch of little test strips into a makeshift cup of your own pee. What’s less funny is the five minutes of agonizing waiting. I set a timer on my phone and looked in the spotted mirror, my little cup and three wands taunting me from where it rested atop the closed toilet. I wanted to cry but somehow couldn’t. How could I have let this happen? I did something close to praying. Please, I begged the universe, my own body. I’m not ready. Not now.

Not now.

The sound of my phone vibrating nearly sent me—and the pee cup—flying. I pulled one of the sticks out with my eyes slammed shut, then inhaled deeply as I opened them.

One red line.

Wait, what did that mean? I hadn’t thought to read the instruction packets in my five-minute-hell-spiral. The second test also showed just one line, but blue.

Finally, the third and final test spoke in words: “Not Pregnant.”

I sighed with relief, manically giggling as I poured my pee down the toilet, thanking it for its service after confirming that one line did, in fact, mean negative. I wondered what to do with my three tests...should I save them? Then, I thought I shouldn’t carry my own urine around with my students’ papers, so I wrapped them up like tampons in toilet paper and chucked them into the trash.

As my pregnancy-test-toilet-tissue-wad landed in the garbage, I felt a pang in my chest. A pang of what? I was relieved, wasn’t I? Josh and I didn’t want children. Ever. Right?

The unsettled feeling brought on by my slight—disappointment?—clung to me like a backpack full of bricks as I made my way back to my booth. My fries, perhaps magically, were still warm, and I devoured them voraciously. I pulled out my papers to finally resume grading, finding myself a bit more lenient in general. One student wrote a particularly compelling thesis, suggesting “Shakespeare hoped to symbolically eviscerate the idea of an absent father through Leontes.” I sighed, thinking of how Josh might have reacted had I actually been pregnant. I realized I had no idea.

“You look exhausted,” Josh said when I walked in the door later that morning.

“Thanks,” I said, walking over to the percolator. When I removed the cover, my heart sank. “How many times do I have to ask you to not leave the grounds in overnight?”

“Relax, babe, it’s coffee. Not milk,” he said, not looking up from his phone.

“It grows mold. I don’t want to drink moldy coffee,” I said.

“Oh-kay, Jeez. Long night?”

I sighed and looked at Josh, relaxed, lounging on the slate-colored sheets I’d bought to replace the original pink ones when he moved in. His usual playful antagonism had begun to rub me the wrong way. I knew once I asked, there was no going back.

“What would you do if I told you I was pregnant?”

I heard his phone immediately lock, and he sat straight up. He spoke a mile a minute. “But you’re not though, right? Like this is purely hypothetical?”

“Well, not purely.”

“What do you mean, not purely?” he asked, almost accusatory.

“Well, last night, I had a bit of a scare. I realized I was late—”

“Oh my god—how late?” he stood straight up, running his hands through his hair.

“Ten days, but—”

“Oh my god. Ten days? That’s a lot right?! Oh my god.” He actually began to pace.

“Jesus Josh let me finish—and then I took three tests and they all came back negative.”

He crumpled back on to the bed. “Oh thank god.” Then, after a moment, he half-yelled, “Christ, Chris, why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Well I would’ve gotten to it sooner if you didn’t interrupt me with your histrionics,” I snapped, failing to contain a massive eye-roll.

“Hey, hey there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, attempting to soothe. “We’re both really careful...maybe it was just stress. That’s a thing, right—why you could’ve been late?”

“Yeah, stress. Sure.” I gave up and crawled on the opposite side of the bed, curling up into a ball. Josh put an arm over me, pulling me closer. I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck.

“Not now,” I said. “I need to sleep before my class.”

“Please?” he asked.

I turned myself over again so that his arm no longer squished me. I noticed the ceiling fan was, thankfully, off. I removed my hoodie—still warm from the diner furnace—and placed it over my eyes.

“No, not now.”