I saw you there in black and white
I saw you spread your wings for flight
I saw you in the dead of night
I saw you kiss the knife so bright
I saw you slither in delight
I saw you slit your tongue
Ricky entered the tiny residence room. Sienna put down her pen and looked at her: the hacked red hair, purple now at the ends, with blonde-black roots, a very cute little diamond in her nose, the tiny gold ring on the edge of her lip. She was carrying groceries in a brown paper bag, had on her big green army jacket, thrown open, and sloppy black pants, a tight top that showed her belly-button, also ringed, and wore her black heavy boots.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen!” Ricky said, her face alight as soon as she saw Sienna. “Just back from New York – Ms. Sienna Chu!” She threw her grocery bag aside and launched herself at Sienna, who was sitting on her desk chair, swivelled around so that her legs were stretched out on her bed. She was wearing one of Ricky’s giant T-shirts with black fleece tights and no shoes or socks. Ricky landed somewhat roughly on Sienna’s lap and the chair rolled backward and bumped the desk so that they both bounced and laughed.
“Did you get the stuff?” Ricky asked, “Did you get it?”
They’d talked on the phone the night before. Sienna had told her everything, and she nodded now. “I got it,” she said. They were on Sienna’s side of the tiny room: books stacked on her desk shelf by height, clothes away, bed made, shoes and boots in the closet by the sink. Even her fashion magazines were arranged in an orderly way on her desk: a symmetrical, semicircular fan, Elle on top ahead of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, Paris Match and Vanity Fair, a cornucopia of pouty bee-stung lips, plunging necklines, thong panties, impossible eyes. Ricky’s side was a pandemonium of papers, textbooks, boots, shoes, bicycle parts, two computers on her desk, spent printer cartridges, boxes of diskettes, a CD burner, scanner, a nest of cables and all the boxes piled higgledy-piggledy, bits of foam and plastic packing peeking out.
“Let me see, let me see!” Ricky said, squirming with excitement, but Sienna refused. “Come on!” Ricky pleaded. She was short and solid, almost heavy, quite strong. She wouldn’t let Sienna look away.
“It’s for research,” Sienna said finally, so Ricky snatched the poem from the bed, said, “All right, then I’ll have to read this!”
“No! It’s not finished!” Sienna said, and though her arm was longer she couldn’t reach it, Ricky whizzed it around so quickly.
“Let me see the stuff!” Ricky insisted. Sienna bucked and twisted then, upended Ricky onto the bed, and though the paper tore a little when she took it away, the damage wasn’t serious, only part of an unmarked corner was ripped. She sat back again and Ricky grabbed her ankles, started whirling her on the wheeled chair. Sienna shrieked and laughed, and in no time they were on the floor in a heap together, Sienna on top, both of them breathless with hilarity, kissing but not being able to keep it up, having to gasp for air.
“You promised you’d show me,” Ricky said, and she tweaked Sienna’s right nipple till Sienna tweaked hers. Then Ricky lifted her booted left foot and lodged it against Sienna’s stomach, threatened to launch her if she didn’t show her everything she’d bought.
“It’s private. It’s for research,” Sienna said.
“Bullshit,” Ricky said. “I think you like this one.”
Sienna shifted her weight back stealthily, then suddenly cleared herself away from Ricky’s foot, which didn’t move. Ricky remained on her back on the thinly carpeted floor with her leg raised. Sienna wiped a bit of dirt from her front, stepped back, looked inside the big paper bag that Ricky had brought: saltines, cheese, some tired red grapes, a mickey of rum, a small packet wrapped in foil.
“I think you like him,” Ricky said, propped up on her elbows now. “I think he gets to you.”
“It’s research,” Sienna said. She took out the saltines and started to eat. She kept her eyes down, hated it when Ricky got like this, aggressive and jealous. Sienna held out three crackers but Ricky stayed where she was. Her legs were wide open and she had that teenaged-boy look in her eyes.
“What’s so different about this guy anyway? I don’t understand,” Ricky said. “You can tell me. That was part of the deal, anyway.”
“The deal was I’d share my findings,” Sienna said. “I’m not finished yet, so I can’t share them, can I? It would be premature.” And she slid her bare foot along Ricky’s leg, watched those eyes narrow, turn into glistening slits.
“You’re avoiding the question,” Ricky said after a while, but she didn’t turn away, didn’t stop Sienna’s foot. When Sienna reached the middle she turned her foot to the outside edge, eased it back and forth, then stirred the pot gently. Ricky put her hand on the foot then and began to guide it, increasing the pressure then decreasing, along the edges and down the middle and then pressing sweetly at the top until Ricky’s eye-slits were closed, her head thrown back, the small of her back arched in such a pretty way.
“I think you like old fat men who tell good stories,” Ricky then said bitterly, ruining it. This whole thing is getting dangerous, Sienna thought. “I think you like a big hunk of red meat every so often,” Ricky said.
Sienna withdrew her foot, wheeled her chair back to her desk and sat down again. She had another cracker, examined her feet, which were quite ugly, she thought, too long and thin, bony, and her ankles were lopsided and large.
“The inscrutable Sienna Chu,” Ricky said from the floor.
Sienna picked up her poem from where it had fallen, put it in the bottom drawer of her desk, then flipped open a textbook at random and peered at the page. “When the relation of aggregate consumption to national income is in a state of disequilibrium, payments to the factors of production can fluctuate unpredictably, depending on several variables. Consider figure 3.21, which charts the maximizing behaviour of individual economic agents.”
“She shuts you off whenever you try to get too close,” Ricky said. “We had an agreement, don’t you remember?”
“Don’t you have any assignments due?” Sienna asked.
“I’m supposed to be done tomorrow,” Ricky said. “But I don’t have all my data ready, do I?”
“I don’t know, do you?”
Ricky did a funny walk on her knees over to Sienna and turned her around in her chair. “I thought of a line for you,” she said. “For one of your poems.” She buried her face for a moment between Sienna’s legs, made a funny blowing noise. “ ‘More twisted and beautiful than rain.’ Do you like that?”
“It’s nice,” Sienna said and pushed Ricky’s head away, crossed her legs. “But it’s not for me.”
“No,” Ricky said after a time. She was looking too closely into Sienna’s eyes, it made Sienna uncomfortable. Ricky knew it too; she looked just long enough for Sienna to squirm, then she got up and walked over to her own desk, had to clear some books and papers just to get at her keyboard. “You know I hate this,” Ricky said in a little voice, almost as if she didn’t want Sienna to hear.
“Hate what?”
“This – thin ice,” Ricky said. She turned on both of her computers. The screens started to come to life.
“You know,” Ricky said, so sadly. She could go like that, be thirty feet down in half a conversation. Sienna wondered for a moment if she was on something. It was sometimes hard to tell.
“Do I?”
“Two months ago I didn’t even know you,” Ricky said. “Next month you’ll be on to somebody else. You can have anybody you want. And you know it, it shows.”
“I want you,” Sienna said, and walked over to Ricky’s chair. There was a sudden noise outside the door, it sounded like a gravel truck roaring down the hall, with yelling and screaming, pounding on doors. “Water fight! Water fight!” people shouted, and they could hear the sounds of spraying and laughter, girls screaming and cursing. Then a few seconds later the fire bell started.
And Sienna and Ricky started kissing. “Help! Help!” some boy yelled right outside their door. Sienna had a quick picture of him in her mind: two hundred and twenty pounds, on the football team, razor cut, thicker in the neck than the head, more alcohol than blood in the brain.
“Did you lock the door?” Sienna asked Ricky.
“You check,” Ricky said quickly, so Sienna walked to the door. As she pushed in the lock the door shook and the frame groaned. “Help! Help!” the football player yelled. “I’m being raped!”
When Sienna turned back Ricky had drawn the drapes, was standing naked on a pile of grubby clothes, her skin almost green in the glow of the monitors. Her pubic hair was still orange, her breasts were still small and mostly chocolate nipple, she was posing like a movie star turning her profile up for a big screen kiss.
“Your bed or mine, darling?” she asked.
“Mine, of course,” Sienna said, and rechecked the door.
“Would you put lipstick on?” Ricky asked, springing onto the bed in a sudden, comical charge under the covers. “I just love it when you wear lipstick.”