I was weird in all the wrong ways. Sometimes I’d find myself crying about it, clenching my fists and raging my tears at God. But it would pass mostly, and the feelings of hatred I had for myself would settle back down to the bottom of my being, and I could go about my normal day.

I had this job where I’d go into people’s houses and try to sell them windows. I was terrible at it. I’d been there a month and hadn’t sold anything. I’d give my pitch about the Vynogard, show them little channels in the window frame demo, walk them through the catalog, paint pictures of what that spot, say in the kitchen, would look like with a garden window — think of the herbs you could grow, oregano, parsley, basil. I knew nothing about herbs. I’d walk around their house taking measurements and write the numbers down on a special notepad, partitioned in sections: Window 1, Size, Location, Style and so forth. I’d get on the phone, see if I could still offer them the deal — the answer was always yes, and the homeowners always said no. Still, they kept letting me into their homes. Some of them really wanted new windows, but they wouldn’t buy them from me, some did it because they liked entertaining, some did it because they were lonely.

Once, I showed up to a house and a guy came out the door with a stack of gutter samples under his arm. He gave me a look like you’re wasting your time, and I could tell by the color in his face he’d expelled a lot of himself for these people. I could feel it in the air inside too, a sort of mushy atmosphere he had created from all that wasted breath. The couple was nice. They were older. The house was clean, and they had glass bowls with nuts and candies out on the dining room table. They had pictures on the wall, and I imagined their children were either dead or had long ago run away from them. I sat in the warm spot the man left behind on the couch and did my normal routine. When I was finished they asked me questions about my life I didn’t like answering, and then they made me measure all the existing windows, along with the spaces of wall where they thought they might like new ones. When I was finished the estimate was almost $90,000. I didn’t even bother calling in for the discount. I gave them the total and they walked me to the door. “We have your card,” they said. I had started with them in the late afternoon, but by the time I left it was dark. The street lamps were glowing orange like hot steel on the pavement in whatever crook of the world I would never come back to.

But the houses though. I loved that part of it. Getting to sit on all those different couches and see how these people lived. Some had new furniture and walking into their living room was like walking into one of the showrooms of a furniture store. Even the dish on the coffee table looked like it came with the set. I never understood these people, how they just had an empty space waiting to be filled by the furniture in a display room, like they hadn’t accumulated anything in their lives. Other places were beaten and worn to the point that it would be impossible to know what color or nap the carpet originally was. If I was lucky I’d have to move something out of the way for a measurement and beneath whatever I moved would be a pristine piece of floor, and I’d be able to imagine what the room looked like when it was new.

I had a friend at the time who was working in the restaurant of a nursing home on top of a hill not far from where I was living again in my mother’s basement. I’d go see him after I finished up with a sales call. It was seven, but the restaurant was empty by then, and we sat there eating bowls of leftover soup. He was unlike me in many ways: a bright energy sort of person. He wore sneakers while he shoveled out slop to old people with a smile on his face. “They’re all fucking each other,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He had all these fantasies about me meeting lonely housewives and sleeping with them. I told him he was crazy and asked if he’d swiped any good pills lately. Most of what he got was shit, high dose ibuprofens and whatnot, but occasionally he’d get those painkillers that make your skull tingle. I liked to take them with a beer, put an old movie on and fade into the black and white. But, like I said, most often he had nothing, and that night it was a mix of tiny blue- and cream-colored pills that looked like acid reducers. I said, “No, thank you.”

We went over to the bar just down the hill and stared up at the television for a while. Every now and then we’d fish parts of ourselves up to share. It was the time of evening when the old men were there. Killing time, like they were waiting for someone to come to them for help saving the world, but no one was coming. I could see my future in them, and it shook me.

+

I didn’t sell windows much longer, but it happened once, something like those fantasies my friend had. The salesmen had told me when I started there were many different types out there, lonely couples who wanted to talk, people who really wanted to buy windows, people so stupid they’d buy anything and men and women who invited people into their homes so they could try to fuck them.

Mine was a woman. Her house was tucked down one of those curling suburban roads where the addresses read like coordinates. She was already drunk when I got there, but I didn’t realize it right away. I never assume a person is drunk because being drunk is such an honest feeling. I always feel the whole world can see it on me like my skin is painted red. So if I can’t see it on someone else then why should I assume?

She introduced me to her coffee table by saying, “Coffee table meet sales guy. Sales guy, coffee table.” She went into the kitchen and I heard her clinking through bottles. She called to me, “Are you having what I’m having?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What are you having?”

“You’ll like it.”

Ice hit the bottom of a glass, then a can of something fizzed open, was poured and stirred. Her living room was clean, carpeted gray, she had a white cat with blue eyes whose shoulder bones I could feel through the fur. The air smelled sweet, but also like she or someone else smoked in the house. Besides the cat, there was no evidence of a life being lived there, no pictures or other souvenirs. I unpacked my samples and catalog. She came back from the kitchen, put a coaster and my drink in front of me.

“Wow me,” she said.

She came around and sat so close to me on the couch that our legs touched. It was just then, before I took a drink, that I could smell that she’d been drinking before I got there.

I didn’t think anything sexual about her. She reminded me of the old ladies at church growing up, like she was from an earlier era, and she had the look all over her body and in her hair. She didn’t realize I’d be a terrible salesman — most people knew as soon as I walked in the door. But once I took out the script the company’d given me — the one they told me to memorize when I first started — and read the introduction, once I looked up when I had finished, I could tell that then she knew I would be bad. I took a big drink of whatever she’d given me, cola mixed with something, and started to read again.

“Are you just going to read that?” she said.

“I haven’t memorized it yet.”

It was around then she must’ve realized how young I was, too. “Honey, put that away. Let’s go measure some windows. I’ll tell you what I want.”

+

She began seducing me right away by bumping her body against mine when I measured. At each window she’d get closer until we were in her bedroom and she pushed up hard against me. I didn’t really do anything back, so she put her hand on my crotch. I thought something was wrong with her. I was paranoid she was setting me up for something.

I’d like to give you some details about how things went next, but the truth is the whole thing seemed fake. She never took her shirt off, and I only saw a glimpse of her legs. She smelled like a spice in a potpourri mixture. She moaned and sucked my ear. I could hear her saliva worming around. I wondered if this was how things were in the time she grew up. If this was how she’d been fucking her whole life. I felt like a time traveler, like I’d snuck into history and was making love with someone who would someday be friends with my mother. I wasn’t very good, but the sounds she was making made it seem like what I was doing was incredible. I didn’t understand why she was doing any of it, putting on the show. Maybe she was pretending I was someone else. I can admit that I enjoyed it a small amount, but nothing about the encounter made me feel any better about myself.

When it was over I felt as if I had done something terrible to her. I didn’t know what to do, so I went back to the coffee table and started filling in prices for my estimate.

“I’m not buying any windows,” she said.

I put the notepad down. I didn’t tell her I needed to bring the estimates back to get my base training pay. I wanted to leave and figured I could finish filling them out in my car. She asked if I smoked.

“Yes.”

“Good, me too.”

She went to the kitchen for an ashtray. The cat trotted in there after her and meowed. She was saying all sorts of cutesy stuff to the cat, it was time for his dinner. An electric can opener whirred and she scraped the can into a bowl, and the cat released a frenzy of mews until I could tell it was eating and then it made muffled, satisfied growls. The woman sat back back down, put the ashtray between us, and we smoked.

“Can you blow rings?” she said. “I can. Watch.”

She tilted her head back, made her mouth the shape of an O and puffed smoke out in circles.

“You try.”

I did what she did, but the smoke still came out normal. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

“How many women have you been with?” she asked.

I had been with one, but always said three because there’d been two that almost happened.

“I could tell you didn’t have much experience. No offense.”

I pretended like I didn’t care. “How many men have you been with?” I said.

She laughed. “I stopped counting a long time ago.” Her lips made a satisfied curl, she stared at the wall like she was looking out a window, and I watched her remember the men.

+

I left after my cigarette was finished and found my friend at the nursing home. He had better pills this time, so we took them and went down to the bar where the old men were waiting.

One of the men had a birthday that night, and every now and then a shot glass would appear in front of me. I could feel myself becoming pure, like I had no secrets. I thought I’d tell my friend right away about the woman, but I didn’t. I didn’t say anything that night or for a long time after. I didn’t talk about what happened for a long time.

+++