My father left the house before dawn on Saturday. I had woken early but idled in bed, sure that Mother would melt into a furious uproar the moment she laid eyes on me. But when I dared to enter the kitchen it was not agitation I witnessed. Instead, she was lost in thought as she stirred around the kitchen making tea. She picked up various objects and put them back down six inches to the left or right. The salt, the yellow and red box of Lipton, a stray spoon. She turned on the faucet. And turned it off again.
“Did you have a good night?” she asked, absently. “How was the party?”
Had she slept through it all? I decided to roll with my good fortune. She was so checked out of reality that my plan to go to West Beach with Rebecca actually had a chance of working. Mother put a hand to her forehead, sighed heavily and stared out the kitchen window.
“It was fine,” I said, discouraging further questioning. Mother’s gaze found no barrier at the glass, continuing out over the fog-hung hills to the west.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She hesitated. “What isn’t the matter?”
“Are you thinking of Ma?”
“I’m always thinking of Ma,” she said, “but your father….”
“What…”
“He’s just always leaving that’s all. And I wouldn’t mind having a little emotional support. You’re always… somewhere else. Ingrid is studying for the SAT. And Katrine… is just a lot of work and now he...” Her gaze fell on the counter where an open bottle of booze was telling tales. She closed it up and put it on the shelf.
“Are you hungover?” I asked.
“So what if I am?”
“I guess I would be drinking, too, if I lost you, Mother,” I said. It was true; I couldn’t imagine my life without her, even if she held the reins too tight.
“You could have fooled me,” she said, “You don’t even hug me anymore.”
I got up from the counter stool where I’d noncommittally perched, and went to her, bending slightly to put my arms around her five-foot frame. I let her hug me tight. She pressed me into her like a child, placing two fingers at the back of my neck as if supporting the weight of an infant’s head. Perhaps she was remembering. I stiffened with resentment and ended the hug, stepping back.
“Hannah and I are going to West Beach today,” I said.
“What for?”
“We just want to.”
“Take Katrine with you. I need to go to the store.”
“Mother, please, not this time. She’s such a pain. We just want to go to the record store. She’ll be bored.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, a couple hours?”
She sighed, looking like she might whither.
“All right.”
I wasted no time running to the bedroom phone to inform Hannah of her alibi status. I glanced down the hallway to make sure Mother hadn’t followed me and dialed the number I had memorized in the first grade. Hannah’s twelve-year-old brother answered the phone.
“Can I talk to Hannah?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “can you?” and then yelled as loud as he could, “HANNAH! ANNELIESE IS ON THE PHONE!” There was a pause and a shuffle.
“Hey, Liese! What happened last night?” Hannah’s bright voice was like a tonic.
“Jade is a bitch is what happened. And you shouldn’t have brought Chase because I got in trouble for it.”
“Why would you get in trouble because of Chase?”
“Search me. But she called my dad and told him to pick me up. Anyway, who cares. Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure. Sorry about last night.”
“I want to go to West Beach with Rebecca and help her with some stuff. I told my mom I’m going with you.”
“Why can’t you just tell her you’re going with Rebecca?”
“My mom doesn’t want me hanging around with her anymore. It’s a long story.”
“Oh… Ok, Sure. Are we having a sleepover, too?”
“What?”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
“No! We’re only going for a couple hours.” What did she mean by that? I puzzled a moment considering coming clean with everything.
“Call me when you get back so I know the coast is clear,” she said.
“I will.”
I hung up the phone and dialed Rebecca’s shop.
“Rebecca’s Dancewear,” she answered in her professional sing-song.
“I can go with you….” I offered. I imagined a smile blooming on her face.
“Meet me here,” she said.
I hung up, gulped tea, dressed and hurried to the car. Peering blankly at the empty driveway, I remembered the Honda still parked at the studio and ran back inside to call her again.
“Good Morning, this is Rebecca.” That voice, always just outside of exhausted, perhaps lazy, more breath than vibration…but I was impatient.
“My car is still down there…”
“I’ll come get you. Meet me around the corner.”
I waited twenty minutes before slipping out the front door again, relying on my mother’s preoccupation. She hadn’t noticed the car missing, and Ingrid, studying, had no plans to leave the house. I turned right at the bottom of our street, hidden now from our windows, and waited on the corner. Soon, her small beige car pulled up to the curb. I hurried like a fugitive and dove in beside her. A cloud of clove smoke enveloped me. She smiled broadly and leaned in to kiss me. Waves of heat flooded my veins. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, anxious to leave my neighborhood. She hit the gas hard and I slunk down low into the seat, thrilled by the ease with which we carried out our conspiracy.
The cold December fog clung to everything in the beach town. The boardwalk, the streetlights, the dense sand, the seagulls, all exuded a heavy wetness. I breathed deeply, exhilarated by the chill and my freedom. We followed the boardwalk along Main Beach with its deserted basketball hoops and sentinel white lifeguard tower.
“You cold?” she asked and put her arm around me as we walked.
“Not anymore,” I said.
The boardwalk ended at a cluster of rocks that hid tide pools full of starfish and sea urchins. We climbed sharp black, volcanic spires, avoiding barnacles and abalone clinging under slippery sea moss. Towering sandstone boulders separated a small cove from downtown. The usually bustling strand was deserted for the season except for birds and an occasional jogger who wouldn’t bother to venture here. On the cliff, thirty feet above our heads, the Boom Trim Bar piped Christmas music and cars rolled by on Highway One. But in this space, Rebecca and I were alone. We sat on a flat, wave-smoothed rock, leaning our backs against the cliff. Briny sea spray blew in on the wind, dampening our hair and our faces. I could not stop smiling. I was in my element. Rather, I was part of the elements: ocean, cold-hard stone, wintertime, passion overflowing. The fog was turning into light rain.
“Kiss me,” I said.
Rebecca trailed her fingers down my cheek before lacing them through my hair to pull me in close to meet her. That kiss was not like before. Not simply the press of lips on lips. Not the duty-bound mechanics of Merrick or the quick stolen moments of contact laced with fear. This kiss was in no hurry. It tempted, surrendered, bloomed and serenaded. It promised and hoped and languished.
“I need you,” she said.
“Don’t you get it?” I said, “I have always been yours.” I felt like a child poised at the top of a very tall playground slide. I was about to sail over the edge when she pulled back.
“I still wish you had a man first,” she whispered. My moment of victory was at hand.
“About that...” I said, barely moving from her.
“About that…?”
I could have strung it out, made a game of it, but considering the way time had treated us I decided to be blunt.
“I did what you and Christopher told me to do.” She pulled back, frowned. “I’m not a virgin anymore,” I said, a hint of triumph in my voice. “And I’ve decided. I want you.”
Rebecca was quiet. She slid rain-wet trails of hair from my face with the tips of her long fingernails and looked at me squarely. “When?”
“When I was away.” She didn’t believe me.
“Who was he?”
“No one you know. I know him from school. Just a willing participant.” She looked down at our hands, then out to the ocean. Had I called her bluff?
“Liese, even if you did, you can’t… don’t …love me.”
I struggled over her words, my carefully crafted world unraveling. “How can I not love you?”
“What we’re doing… it’s just pleasure… it’s not… forever.”
“It is whatever it is.” I cast my eyes to the water to keep from crying. If I looked at her, all composure would be gone.
“Are you sure you want this even if I can’t be everything you want me to be?”
“I want whatever you’re willing to give me.” Now I met her gaze.
“Okay, then.” She simply put her arms around me. In that embrace there was something of sorrow. Or possibly pity. Just for a moment the last three months avalanched down my ribcage and a tremor played an arpeggio down my spine. “It’s cold isn’t it?” she said. But I wasn’t cold. Breathing replaced words. Waves anticipated. Crashed.
“Whatever happens,” she said, taking my hands, aqua stare melting into my brain, “I’ll never have another woman to replace you.”
On a cold, salty rock that became my altar, she took me to places I had never been before. And perhaps, never would again.
* * *
Of course, I should have been more careful. In whom I trusted, in the volume of my voice. I should have looked to see who might be just out of sight, not lurking, but simply existing within earshot of secrets girls will tell when they’re drunk on love.
“So how was Saturday?” Hannah asked me. We had just come from Dudley’s class. Happy and spent, we sat in the dressing room and peeled off our pointe shoes. The skin of our toes still stuck to the inside of the canvas lining. We traded sharp gasps, accepting the sting, blotting the blood. Hannah called this the agony of de feet.
“Saturday was… interesting.” I couldn’t help the smile that accompanied the anticipation of divulgence.
“You never called to tell me you were home.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I guess I forgot. I was pretty distracted.”
“What’s with your mom and Rebecca anyway?”
I wanted to jump onto the dressing-room bench and declare my love for Rebecca to the whole studio. To dare anyone to stand in my way. It wouldn’t wait any longer. Hannah was my best friend. If I couldn’t tell everyone, at least I could tell her.
“One day, a long time ago...,” I started, then changed tactics. “Remember when we were freshmen and I liked that guy, Troy Mack? When we had just started high school and I was upset because he didn’t ask me to the Winter Formal?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, that night at the studio I had told Rebecca about it, and she said we should all become a big pack of lesbians and leave the men out of it.”
“What? Seriously?” Hannah was laughing. This was a preposterous notion.
“I said the same thing,” I laughed along, “and then Rebecca said, ‘well maybe not all the men, but when it comes to love, why leave out 50 percent of the population?’” By now Hannah was dissolving into peals of laughter. I waited for her to calm down to a chuckle.
“I decided she’s right, Han.”
Hannah stopped laughing. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I love Rebecca.”
She looked at the floor. “You love her… like that?”
“Like that.” In that moment I knew I was risking my oldest friendship. A friendship with history full of campouts and milestones and birthday parties and school drama. More than that… I was risking the person who had accepted me and had my back no matter what. I was risking someone whose ability to make me laugh had left me gasping for breath on many occasions. She had been as necessary to my life as Ingrid.
“God, that’s a relief,” Hannah said at last.
“How is it a relief?”
“When you told me you weren’t a virgin last year, and you wouldn’t tell me who you were with, I thought you were seeing Chase behind my back.”
“Oh god, no!”
“I did. And I thought back then, that even if it was true, it wouldn’t stop me from being your best friend. I’ll always be your best friend, Liese.”
“Even now?”
“Yeah. That’s nothing. But do you think you’re actually gay then?”
“No, I just think I fall in love with people. Not bodies. I don’t need anyone’s label.”
“That makes sense. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
She gathered her things and went out leaving me to realize I had been the one whose mind had been closed. Dancers flowed around me like a river as I sat in the middle of the floor, unmoving. Liberated of my secret. A thing of energy. And love like magic.
* * *
What no one knew was that Rebecca was different when we were alone. I watched the smoke curl from the dwindling end of her cigarette in the living room of her rented condo. Hannah had been happily conspiratorial when I’d mapped out my deception and so far, all had gone as planned.
Rebecca got up from the torn leather chair where she had slumped before the old pine table. The table was a record of sorts and had been in her house for as long as she’d been on her own. Soft, unfinished wood had yielded to the pressure of ballpoint pens, random pencils, in the hands of visitors who left their mark in its surface. In the center of the table was a drawing in black ink of a gnarled oak tree, its branches reaching and twisting across the wood grain. Under the illustration, in perfect block letters, were the words Rebecca’s Tree with a date next to it. I quickly calculated 6 years gone by.
“Who drew that tree?” I asked.
“My ex-husband,” she told me. I thought of her married, briefly domesticated, clawing at the bars of a cage she entered in a moment of romantic naïveté. “It didn’t last long,” she said, “but he loved me.”
I sat on an old orange couch, something from Goodwill perhaps or a hand-me-down from a distant relative and watched her crush the cigarette in a brass tray. I pulled a woven sepia shawl, made last summer by a creative Irish aunt, around my shoulders and scrunched my knees to my chest, still dressed in studio garb. It was cold, but my shivering wasn’t only about temperature.
“I’m sorry, darlin’,” she said to me. “I thought we would have the whole evening.”
“It’s okay.” I looked away.
I had planned this night meticulously. My alibis in place, my stories straight. My lies formalized. Memorized. Patiently woven around half-truths.
“I understand,” I said, when she didn’t respond. “You need the money. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“You’ll wait for me?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll wait all night and more.” I felt the heat of tears building up behind my eyes which I willed myself not to spill.
“Oh, Liese,” she said, leaning down to kiss the top of my head. I could smell the lingering sweet clove of her extinguished cigarette. “I might be a while.”
I tipped my head back from where I sat so I could look into her face. She studied me for a moment without speaking. Her lips always looked like she’d been crying. I fixed my eyes on them. Knew how they felt. Wished I could curl into her arms and sleep.
“I’ll try to be back by midnight,” she said and grabbed her keys from the table. When the studio was between performances and didn’t need costumes, she drove a limousine to make rent. But tonight? I was still reeling from her casual announcement. As if it had been any other night. When the front door closed, her black Labrador Retriever padded over to me, sniffed my ankles, and hauled himself onto the couch, placing his chin on a paw.
“She’ll be back,” I told him and draped my arm across his bony spine. We sat just like that, for a long time, staring together at the front door.
It could have been anyone, but I knew it was Rebecca when the yellow phone on the kitchen wall startled me. I got up from the couch and answered it. Food-caked dishes toppled in the sink. Red wine circles made a kaleidoscope on the vinyl countertop. Something on the old linoleum floor stuck to the bottom of my feet.
“Rebecca’s phone,” I said into the receiver, and wasn’t surprised to hear her voice, gone not 20 minutes from the house.
“Listen, Liese, I forgot to tell you…”
“Where are you?” I interrupted.
“I’m calling from a payphone at the gas station. I had to fill the limo.”
I waited. “So, I forgot to tell you,” she said, “my friend Lenny is dropping by tonight.”
“While I’m here?” I asked. “Who is he?”
“He left something at my house.”
“You want me to let him in?”
“Yeah, he’s a good guy.”
“What did he leave?”
“Don’t worry about it, just let him in. He’ll grab his things and leave.”
“Okay. The dog misses you.”
“Give him a kiss for me.”
I hung up and stared at the door some more. She didn’t say exactly when Lenny was planning to come, whoever he was. I went back to my spot on the living room couch. For all my nerve-wracking manipulation of events, all I had to show for this moment was an empty room, a sad dog, and a pending stranger.
I wandered down the short hall into her bedroom. A low queen-sized waterbed was draped in a crocheted afghan, the kind with multicolored squares made by patient, sedentary grandmothers. This one was black with gold and orange patterns in the center of each square. I knew she had a grandma, once, who always mistook her for her sister.
I sat on the frame of the waterbed avoiding the inevitable sinking, sloshing sensation. Against the wood-veneered wall was a row of books on a black lacquer shelf, dust accumulated in front of their spines. I pulled one from its place, looking for clues. I wanted to know who she was outside of the studio. What kind of a child was she? How did she become the woman she is now? I wanted to know the parts she kept hidden behind her boisterous, carefree laughter, cocaine, and cannabis. I wanted to understand why she was hiding. To bring her out. To fix her.
A blue vinyl cover with gold emboss was a classic or some other relic with literary intention. Next to it, a cartoonish book called Baby Devine obscured the edge of a photograph, breaking the pattern of book spines. Maybe I shouldn’t, I thought. Maybe she put it there to forget it. But just as easily, she left it there to preserve it, or to remove a crease with the weight of books pressed against it. I slid it out with a tinge of anticipation then immediately froze, entranced by her ice blue gaze staring out. I wondered who was holding the camera. Who seduced that stare from her and made her feel the way she looked in the photograph, with the sun catching the top of her hair, a blue plaid button-down cotton shirt, her mouth forming a word, her eyes, like a challenge, her hands, long nails, silver-bangled wrist, elegantly resting on her knee. In this photograph, she was not rushing out the door or embroiled in a project or bemoaning a million stresses. In this picture, she was content, and I realized I had never seen her this way.
There was a knock and a double doorbell. I jumped, dropped the photograph on the bed, and ran down the hall. Bruno had beaten me to the door. He barked and growled low. Through the peephole, I could see a man with curly brown hair, a prominent nose, and black glasses. He looked like an artist. Or maybe an actor. Unafraid, I twisted the bolt lock and opened the door. He was surprised, then confused. “Lenny,” I said.
“Yes… hello… is Rebecca home?”
“She’s not. She told me you’d be coming by,” I said, and stepped aside. He accepted the gesture, walking by me and into the room.
“You left something?” I asked.
He was confused again, thought for a moment. “Oh, yes, my… my pipe,” he said. He headed down the hall to an empty-ish room and I followed. I hadn’t thought to explore it before. It was sparsely furnished inside—a mattress on the floor, some loose junk mail, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a single spindle chair. Dark red curtains covered the window and cast a strange glow. Bruno was at Lenny’s heels sniffing behind him.
“Stop, Bruno,” I said, embarrassed for the man.
“He knows me,” said Lenny. “He’s just saying hi.”
Lenny fished a glass pipe from between the mattress and the wall—the kind with a shallow bowl where you tamp marijuana leaves, then pitch a flint, lighting while you suck the flame through the leaves. I knew this because I’d watched Rebecca do it: hold her breath, offer it to me. Exhale in a blast.
Lenny planted his rear-end on the mattress and extracted a Bic from his pocket, then a plastic zip-lock from under the mattress like these gestures had been repeated hundreds of times. I sat on the spindle chair, ready for him to cue the next scene.
“Are you Rebecca’s new roommate?” he asked. “I guess I didn’t leave the place too tidy. Sorry ‘bout that.”
Rebecca never mentioned a roommate. “No,” I said, “I’m a dancer where she works.”
“I should have guessed,” he said, surveying me while he lit his pipe again. “Will she be back tonight?”
“Much later,” I said. “She’s driving.”
He nodded and handed me the smoldering pipe. I shook my head. The light was all but gone from the sky, the strange glow replaced by almost darkness.
“So, you just hangin’ out then?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. He nodded, studying the remains in the glass bowl.
“Been dancing long?” he asked.
“My whole life, just about,” I said. “What about you?”
“I’m no dancer,” he laughed, “but no stranger to the theater either.”
“No?”
“I’m directing a production at the college. Working with the acting class there.”
I understood now. He was tall, gangly, pale. Dark brown hair and black glasses that contrasted with his skin that never saw the light of day. Holes in the knees of his 501’s. Like a million directors.
“I like your shawl,” he said, and reached for the intentionally frayed edge. “So interesting. I’ve never seen one like it.”
“You won’t, either. My aunt copied it from a tv show.”
“Ah, a costume designer, is she?”
“Sort of,” I said.
He moved closer to me and placed his hand on my shoulder as if to appreciate the weave.
“Are you and Rebecca … friends?” he asked.
“For years,” I said.
“Close friends,” he declared, rather than asked. He lets his fingers brush through the length of my hair as if I were a fond niece. Familiar. Affectionate.
“You could say we are close,” I said and met his eyes. I was not afraid of this man. He was in his early thirties. Natural in front of a crowd. Confident in his ability to control an audience. But I was not one of his fans. Not one of his students. I recognized his desire before he did. Or before he wanted me to.
“Well, why wait for her though,” said Lenny, “when I am right here?”
He lifted the shawl from my shoulders, dropped it on the back of the chair.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“We could chat,” he said, amused.
“Might as well,” I said. “Bruno is depressed for one thing. He doesn’t feel like talking.”
He chuckled, patted Bruno’s head. Lenny was not unattractive. If I’d not been in love I might have seen him differently. And besides, I was angry with Rebecca. Of all nights, she had to work this one? I was not important enough to turn it down just once? I was pouting to myself when he stood and scooped me off the chair like a child, sliding one hand under my thighs, the other behind my back, and levitated me to the mattress.
“We’re going to talk in bed?” I said flatly.
“You look tired,” he said.
Actually, I was tired. And cold. And fairly hungry. I lay back on the mattress trying not to think about the age of the sheets, the state of the pillowcase, and closed my eyes. I didn’t open them when I felt his breath on my face. Or when he grazed my bare shoulder with his fingertips.
“You want to sleep?” he asked.
I nodded my head on the pillow, eyes closed tight, like a child shutting out monsters. He sucked the pipe and I waited for the heavy exhale. The room filled with the sweet scent and I breathed it in. I was vaguely aware when he settled his weight next to me. His arm reached around and he fit his body along mine, then stopped moving. I waited, aware of every inch of him. When nothing more happened, I relaxed.
* * *
When Bruno barked me awake, I was alone. I sat up, disoriented, hearing keys in the front door. It took a moment before I could locate myself, on a smoky mattress, in a room belonging to a stranger. Rebecca’s stranger.
I flew from the mattress, guilty for what I might have done, and relocated to Rebecca’s room. On the bed, the photograph I’d plucked from between books still stared, accusing. I whisked it back to its shelf and rolled onto the waterbed, careful to still the sloshing.
She didn’t come in right away. I wondered if Lenny was still in the living room or if he’d snuck out while I slept. The digital clock on the bedside table said 2:00 a.m. Still cold, still hungry, I pulled the black grandma-afghan over myself and tried to quiet my breathing. Such an odd thing, to hide from her, when all I ever wanted was for her to see me.
Her footsteps advanced down the hall, clove smoke drifting in before her. She came to the bed, leaned down to see if I was sleeping.
“Liese?” she said. I opened my eyes, legitimately bleary.
“What time is it?” I asked so that she had to tell me.
She didn’t. “I’m sorry it’s so late,” she said.
“Bruno’s glad you’re here,” I told her.
“And you?” she asked.
“I could take it or leave it,” I said, then rolled onto my back and saw what the photograph saw. She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the bookshelf. I wondered if her eyes picked out the small edge of emulsion sticking out from between the books.
“I was hanging out at the Hollywood sign tonight when the ride was over,” she said, “smoking with another driver.”
“Yeah?” I said. But I wondered how she could just sit and smoke with strangers while I waited for her all night.
“Yeah,” she said. “And I told him my lover was waiting at home for me.”
I rolled towards her, covered her hand with mine, relishing the title bestowed upon me. The colors of our nail polish made weird pop art where our fingers entwined, my pink over her red. I imagined sketching our hands, together, just like that.
“You know what he said?” she asked. I shook my head. “He said, ‘Keep it under 100.’” She laughed.
I smiled but my heart wasn’t in it. “You know what I said to him?” she asked. Head shake. “I said, ‘Not a chance.’” I took this as an apology but was not convinced.
She joined me on the bed and covered my body with hers so that I melted into the waves of the waterbed, heat rising between us, spreading to the ends of my toes, the tips of my fingers, the back of my neck. She wore a man’s black suit, a white button-down shirt, a black bow tie. She hadn’t worn these things when she’d left. She’d had on blue jeans and a red tee shirt with a wide neck that slid from one pale shoulder. She’d worn rubber flipflops that slapped lazily against the floor when she walked. Somewhere between here and Hollywood she’d morphed into a limo driver. I imagined her chatting up her passengers as they guzzled booze in the back seat. Before the end of the drive, they would be her best friends.
Her lips pressed soft into mine in the dark, her blonde curls falling over my cheekbones. I wrapped my arms around her back and rolled to the side so we faced each other.
“I missed you tonight,” I said.
“Did you meet Lenny?” she asked.
“He came and went,” I said.
“He’s a good guy,” she said. “Lived here for a couple months when he was down on his luck.”
“He said as much,” I said, a shadow passing between us.
“I need a shower,” she said. She crossed the room to the small, adjacent bathroom. Her man’s suit fell to the floor and she beckoned me from the bed. I rose and went to stand beside her, watching our reflection in the bathroom mirror.
We were the same size. The same height. “Get undressed,” she said. The same pink.
Hot water steamed the small room, and the mirror. Our bodies became bare shrouds in the glass. She stepped into the shower stall, graceful, soft. Not edgy, like me. She poured liquid amber soap into her hands, hydroplaning over my bones and muscles in the rush of water.
Still wet, she crossed the room to the bookcase, letting her towel fall to the floor. Her body glowed like a Maxfield Parrish painting in the light that spilled from the bathroom while steam whorled into the cold bedroom. She pulled the Baby Devine book from the shelf. The photograph stayed put between the blue book with gold leafing and a thick black leather-bound something. A Bible, maybe. She didn’t notice the photograph.
“I want to read this with you,” she said, and turned on the bedside lamp.
The book was a rhyming poem with childish illustrations about a baby who is born for show business. I hated it right away. The distorted images and ghoulish nursery rhyme pretended to be something they were not. Like clowns.
“You read this side of the page and I’ll read this side,” she commanded.
“Out loud?” I said. It was awkward and silly. The fat, distorted baby wore lipstick and pink high heels.
Rebecca read the first page in singsong rhyme. I choked out the next to appease her. She closed the book without turning the page. “I thought you’d like it,” she said. “I thought you’d think it was funny.” Her disappointment felt strange. Something microscopic shifted in my unconditional admiration.
“It’s just weird,” I told her.
She leaned back on the bed, pulling me with her. “Thanks for waiting for me,” she said. But there was a strange pall between us now.
She traced the edge of my hip bone with a long fingernail.
“What am I gonna do with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I find that very hard to believe,” she whispered into my ear, her fingers trailing down my stomach.
I caught my breath and she knew, then, she was still mistress of me. And I was mistress of the place where photographs stare into book covers and old roommates appear to smoke in the dark.
* * *
A day passed. I’d gone home early from “Hannah’s house” and slept for almost a whole day. When I returned to the studio, to her shop, she was sitting at the long white desk and I struggled to read her expression. I recognized a sort of challenge, like the one in the photograph I took from between her books. That stare had something to say and it might be full of rocks or butterflies—you’d never know which—but you were soon to be pummeled by it.
I thought for a moment that she knew the picture was missing. Before I’d left that morning, just 36 hours ago, I had reached for it, just to see it again, while she’d brewed coffee in the kitchen. But she’d started down the hall and I’d shoved it into my dance bag, which hung from my shoulder as I prepared to leave. It’s the only thing in my life I’ve ever stolen. And even then, I might have put it back if I’d had the chance.
From behind her desk she said, “How do you like my shawl?”
At first, I didn’t understand what she meant. I was still thinking about the photograph, now tucked between books on my own shelf. In my own room. She extended the sepia material away from her shoulders like bat wings and only then did I recognize it. “I found this in Lenny’s room,” she said. “Any idea how it got there?”
The night, its cold and hungry elements, stirred up a dust devil and I was instantly numb: the sound of her house with no one in it, the waiting game, the lonely dog, the stoned stranger. Dirty sheets and red curtains. A hard chair with a spindle back. A mattress on the floor. The click of black and white minutes passing on the flip clock. The long-awaited keys in the lock.
“None,” I said.