We were sunbathing on Bradford Beach when Dee told me Frank had taken her on a date to a cemetery. Lake Michigan was still cold then, and entering the water was an icy shock to the system, but the sand was already summer-warm, and the sun was hot. Dee said his parents worked at a cemetery, so he’d grown up around it; he found those kinds of places peaceful.
“Come on,” I said, exasperated with her. “Talk about a red flag.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like a cemetery anymore,” she said. “There aren’t any grave markers, and it’s a bit elevated, so you can see Milwaukee and the lakefront below. It’s beautiful now. It’s one of his favorite spots.”
“I don’t know. He seems morbid.”
Dee sniffed. “You don’t know him.”
“I don’t know him, true. But I know that kind of guy.”
“Yeah, just like I know what kind of guy Leif is.”
“What kind of guy is that?” I asked her.
“He’s dark.” She paused. “And emotional.”
I sensed this was supposed to sting. “Well, that’s how I like my men,” I teased her.
“Why?”
“The sex is better that way,” I said. (Did I even believe this? I still wanted to say things to shock her, because she was so capable of shocking me.)
She rolled onto her back then, and I stared at the wide flare of her hip bones, the sharp projection of them through her swimsuit.
“Not me,” she said. “I like my men light and airy. Like they’re walking on clouds.”
That didn’t seem an apt description of Frank, but I didn’t say it. Even then I knew we saw our lovers through poorly adjusted lenses. Is it the responsibility of our loved ones to help us adjust that vision? What do we risk if we try? What do we risk if we don’t try?
Dee folded her hands behind her head. I wanted to keep asking her questions about what she liked and why, but she put her headphones in and threw her shirt over her eyes. It seemed important for us to figure this out together. I needed so badly to be able to relate to Dee, I was willing to lie to her about what I liked. I had a fear of us developing such different tastes that we’d be stranded worlds apart. Now I wonder if that’s a fear born only out of what happened, a fear I’ve mapped onto the past and onto our conversations about men and love and sex. Maybe I was listening for myself, and I never heard the important things Dee said to me about Frank.
Or maybe I never knew what the important things were. I read later about something called subjective validation, a psychological phenomenon that humans are prone to, wherein we believe a few unrelated or even random events must be related because a belief, expectation, or hypothesis demands a relationship. Is that what I’ve done here? Is that what I’ve built?
Later that same day, when Dee and I had begun to get sun-drunk and loopy, Erik stopped by. He brought a Styrofoam cooler full of Milwaukee’s Best. He was already loaded, and while what Dee and I really needed was water, we didn’t refuse the beers. We opened one after another after another. The edges of the day faded; the sun sank behind the bluff and cast a dark shadow over the lake. We paid no mind.
Erik had a jagged cut under one of his eyes. When he handed Dee another beer, she brushed the cut with the soft pad of her thumb. He pulled away.
“What’s this.” It wasn’t a question, which was maybe why Erik did not feel the need to say anything back. He took a pull from his beer and burped loudly. Dee laughed and tried to do the same, but her burp was pathetic in comparison. She kept trying.
“You guys are disgusting. And drunk,” I said. “We’ve got leftovers at my place. You guys hungry?”
“Frank doesn’t want Dee going over there anymore,” Erik said matter-of-factly.
I paused mid-sip and hiccupped. Heat rose to my cheeks. “What the hell does that mean?” I asked. Dee shot Erik daggers. The corners of her mouth went hard.
“Frank says it’s too ghetto. Where you live. It’s not safe,” Erik said stiffly, as if he were a TV reporter doing a segment on “crime in your neighborhood.” Though he was clearly poking fun at Frank’s assessment of Riverwest, I seemed to remember that Erik had said a similar thing about our neighborhood to Leif. People are always getting robbed.
“Will you shut up?” Dee said. “Just let it go.”
“What the fuck does Frank know, anyway,” I said. I felt a wave of anger.
“He doesn’t know shit,” Erik said. “He’s a bigot.” He burped again.
“Well, fuck you both,” Dee said. She tossed her beer away and it spilled into the sand. She threw her dress over her swimsuit and started running away. I got up to follow her, but Erik stopped me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s my fault. I’ll handle it.”
“Have you met him?” I shouted at Erik as he started after Dee. He nodded and puffed his chest out. But beneath his bravado, I could tell he was afraid.
I watched him jog after her. To an outsider, they might have been a young married couple having a fight. Dee had already made it a long way down the beach, so when he finally caught her, they were just two dark specks against the lake.