THE TILT by Natalie Dunn

It was four o’clock: Vivien would take the bus into the city. The sky was bright, the insincere blue of a Powerade, and she was going alone to the bar downtown to read. It had become a routine. Vivien preferred to be among strangers when the alternative was lying in bed and watching YouTube videos on how to cook a chicken twenty different ways. Drinking every night was making her vaguely pudgy, she knew that. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored shelf above the lettuce in the market or the black reflection of her phone she could see her face looked swollen, convex. You little cherub, she would say to herself.

The bus was pulling up. In her right hand she had exact change, $2.08. When Vivien entered the coins into the slot exactly she felt she should win a prize. There was a seat in the back by the window and she took it. She didn’t like the idea of others being behind her, looking at the back of her head. Out the window, piles of brown slush lined the street. She put her finger up to the glass and it fogged up. 

In the seat in front of her was a boy she’d seen riding the 6 bus before. His hair looked like the soft part of bird feathers. He was texting someone, his thumbs moving with speed. Vivien got the urge to check her own phone. You’re all caught up, the apps lied to her, not loading. The selfie her sister Freddie had posted earlier today appeared at the top of her feed, a photo taken from a low angle which made her look cool or bored. The photo made Vivien feel distant from Freddie, as if she didn’t know what Freddie was like when she wasn’t with her. She swiped the app away.  

Vivien tapped on the Photos icon. Every so often her phone did things out of her control; cruel things, like remind her of where she was exactly a year ago, which usually meant with her ex. The photos were always the same: the two of them smiling dumbly, their faces taking up the entire frame. She clicked through to an album titled wants in which she compiled screenshots of skincare products she would never buy: a facial mist with real gold flecks, snail mucin serum, a red light LED mask. The bus screeched and halted which made Vivien angle forward, her face grazing the boy’s hair as he stood up. Sorry, she said, getting a whiff of him: an artificial forest. 

Vivien was beginning to rethink her plan to go to the bar. Maybe it was the piney scent of the boy’s head which had jolted her awake and made her question what she wanted. She could go to Freddie’s apartment instead, she thought, who had been a little shaken up ever since the incident. 

Last week, when Freddie was walking in the park by her house, a turkey had actually attacked her. Freddie was fine; a little scratched up. After the attack Freddie had called Vivien in a panic, her voice wobbly and high-pitched. Freddie told Vivien that she’d fought off the bird with a large stick. Vivien had rushed to Freddie’s apartment with a kind of urgency that made her feel useful. 

There, Freddie sat on the kitchen counter and pointed to the scratches that decorated her arm. Vivien squinted to see them. Here, Vivien said, Put them under the faucet. She held Freddie’s forearm under the sink and let the water run. Afterward, she made popcorn dusted with salt and yeast and they ate it at opposite ends of the couch. When Vivien looked directly at Freddie, it was hard to imagine her face in the moment of the attack, contorted or scared.

Freddie had begun to have moments after the incident—moments she referred to as The Feeling.  When The Feeling came, Freddie said she dissociated from her body and had trouble knowing what was real. Once in the car on the way to the beach she said sharply, Pull over. It’s happening. Vivien had driven onto the shoulder and led Freddie in a breathing exercise. She’d described a pastoral scene in detail: allergenic grass, black and white blotched cows. Freddie had said she found this helpful. You girls ok? A man in full neon on a bike had asked. We’re fine! Vivien had said.

The incident, Vivien had been starting to think, could serve as a reminder. Of what exactly she did not know. She did know that ever since, she had felt a tilt: anything could happen. Her reality, she now recognized, could be rearranged as easily as plates on a table. Vivien had begun keeping a journal. She had begun keeping a list. In one column she wrote “Real” in another, “Not Real.” Throughout the day she would categorize things as such. The bus was real; her feelings on the bus were not; so on. 

Vivien decided she wouldn’t go to Freddie’s unannounced. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where they just showed up at each other’s places. Vivien didn’t want to seem dramatic. She would stick to her plan. She would go to the bar and read the book she only half liked. Maybe some wine would make her like it more. Vivien stood up and pressed the yellow button to get off at 17th street.  She nodded to the bus driver, who nodded back. 

The corner table Viven liked was open. The man sitting at the next table was alone. She could read that way, not get distracted by anyone’s conversation. The man appeared nervous, moving a small vase from one side of his drink to the other and bouncing his legs, shaking Vivien’s table. Once she finished her first glass of wine, Vivien felt good. A disco ball threw squares of light across the walls. A bartender brought a tea candle to her table and she thanked him. A warm glow spilled over her book. 

After a few minutes of staring at the same page, Vivien looked up. She hadn’t been paying attention to what she’d been reading. Across the street, a mattress wet with snowmelt slanted against the building opposite. Its shadow was like the silhouette of a man or a strange animal. Vivien was a little bit drunk.  She reached for her notebook, angling her head to look under the table at her feet, which she had forgotten about entirely. Was this The Feeling Freddie described? A woman with a long coat entered the bar, holding the door open for someone behind her. The weather came into the room all at once. 

Natalie Dunn’s fiction, poetry, and criticism have or will appear in The Believer, Triangle House, The Adroit Journal, Conduit, and the Kenyon Review Online. She is a current fiction candidate at NYU, where she is at work on a novel.