what do you mean, you forgot the ring?

“ I don’t have anything to give her, I forgot the ring.” Jeremy is standing next to the couch not sitting on it. He bends his knees like he is going to sit down then stops and stands up straight again and walks over to the shelf and takes out my five-hundred-capacity-book of CDs. He starts flipping through the pages, spending only a few seconds on each page.
“What do you mean, you forgot the ring?”
“I, like, can’t remember how it goes.”
“You should wait till you see her again then just call her and make her let you hear it.”
“Uh uh. She’ll know.”
“What, that you think her ring is stupid or that you think it’s hot? Who cares she’s a complete tard anyway. What were you even hanging out with her for?”
“She can dance.”
“You were dancing?”
He finishes looking at my CDs and puts the book back in the right spot but doesn’t zip it up. I want to tell him to zip it up but don’t. I count to ten from one then to one from ten then let out all the air in my lungs and breath in deeply until my breathing regulates itself.
“No, but the ring it was like this dance song. Real punchy intro, bahm bahm bahm. Then the bass hits and it’s like hot.”
Jeremy moves makes his hand into a fist and churns it through the air in rhythm to his beat. He walks over to the window and stares at the elementary school across the street. I can’t see out the window but her opens it and then I can hear a jumble of noise, children screaming and the background swift sound of traffic beyond the school. The air outside is moist and even though the breeze is warm it makes me twitch and shudder. I pull a beer out of the cooler I keep next to my chair and open it then offer one to Jeremy but he waves it away and looks back out the window. I chug half the can quickly then pour the rest of it into my glass and sip it slowly.

I take out my own phone and look at then scroll through several different functions for no reason. I do a math problem on the calculator just to check that it works. Then I scroll through all seventy-six entries in my phonebook. I can only put a face to sixteen of them.

“Do you know a Sophie?”
“No, yeah. Sophie Burns?”
“Sophie T.”
“No. T?”
“What kind of cell does she have?”
“I don’t know her.”
“What? Not Sophie, um… Jess.”
“Nokia, maybe. Who cares/”
“Is it a real song?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard it in the club before.”
Jeremy moves away from the window he was standing at and lies down on the couch. I watch him take of his shoes and socks and then roll up each sock and place it in the matching shoe. I wait for the room to start smelling but his feet don’t seem to have any effect. I scroll through my phonebook again. That Sophie name is still bugging me.
I wonder if she is hot, or if I was even sober when I met her. Probably not since I don’t remember her. Was she that hiker chick? No, that was Natalie, Natalia? Whatever the girl needed a bath. Maybe Sophie is one of the sorority girls I was talking to last week. Doesn’t really sound like that cool a name, Sophie. Sophie…Sophie…Sophie. Whatever, I need a phone with pictures next to the name. I can’t remember half the people in my book.
I delete her number then put my phone on the coffee table and light a cigarette.
“No on her phone, or is it like that sixteen-bit-ping-ping-tink crap?”

Jeremy closes his eyes and I can hear him humming what could be the Rolling Stones, or Cracker, or Outkast. I finish my beer and set my glass down loudly on the coffee table. Jeremy stops humming and I pull out another beer. This time I pour the whole thing in the glass. He sits up and takes a drink from my glass then hands it to me. I set it back down on the table without taking a drink. I pull out another beer and drink it straight from the can. He starts humming again then suddenly stops goes back to the window, taking the glass of beer with him.
“Yeah, it’s like the real thing.”
“Why do you need to find it?”
I get up and go into the bathroom before he can answer. In the bathroom I rinse my face twice. First vigorously with hot water which I towel-pat off before I rinse again with cold water that I leave on my face to air dry. I check my teeth for pieces of stuck food. I don’t find any and decide that right now brushing would be a waste of time. Instead I gargle with mouthwash, but only for a few seconds because it starts to sting my tongue. I take some hand lotion out of the cupboard and put on two thin layers and my hands and forearms. The label on the tube of lotion says non-greasy but it still feels like it is suffocating my skin so I wipe most of it off with my roommate’s towel. I go back into the living room and Jeremy is flipping through my CDs again. He pulls a Radiohead album out of the leaf and holds it up to me.
“Is this any good?”
“It’s scratched.”
He puts the CD back in its sleeve and then puts the book back again this time zipping up the zipper.
“I want to get her the album.”
“Kid A is better.”
“No, whatever that stupid ring tone is.”
“She probably has it.”
“The single at least, she doesn’t have it?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s not Basement Jaxx?”
“Naw, I know Basement Jaxx, it’s not that hard.”
“Well whatever. It’s probably Chemical Brothers.”
“Yeah, probably, I don’t really like them that much. She already has Basement Jaxx.”
“I’m sure she has the album already. At least the single.”
“Maybe, that ring is pretty hot though.”

Jeremy walks over to window to get his glass of beer and just holds it in his hand without drinking it. I lie down under the window and watch a solitary cloud slowly move across the frame of the window. The whole time I can see it I try seeing some familiar object but it never brings anything to mind. When it floats out of site I close my eyes and I can hear Jeremy walk across the room and unzip my CD book.