Luke steps down off the van and gives Max a polite handshake. “Right, I’ll be off then,” he says, turning to me. “See you tomorrow, Cassie.”
I catch the glint in his eye. “You bet.” I watch him stroll back to the building site, a fuzzy glow in my chest.
Max puts his arm around my shoulder. “I must say, Cassie, I never knew you had such good business acumen.”
I smile back at him sweetly. Neither did I.
A few minutes later and I’m heading out of the parking lot in my little pink van, a huge smile on my face. If I’m not careful I’ll even be humming “Greensleeves.”
I WISH YOU WERE BRAILLE
Louise Lagris
This city is never small enough when you want it to be, but sometimes you circle the same people for years until your Venn diagrams bump into each other by accident. Later we tried to pinpoint how we’d managed to accidentally avoid each other so neatly but could never decide, chalking it up instead to a trickster god who gets his jollies from fucking with the good people of New York City.
But sometimes the planets configure themselves into origami shapes that bring me to my knees with joy at this city, and tonight was one of them. Because I dragged myself out to a bar to meet friends who brought friends, and somehow there was that fellow with the ink-picked heart on the side of his throat I’d been passing on the street for as long as I’d lived here. I never had a reason to say hi, no eye contact, just me looking at him with knives in my eyes, hoping he’d look back. But introductions were made and somehow my karma clicked into place for once, and Joe and I spent the evening slipping quarters into the jukebox, play-arguing over who has better taste in music, playing Echo and the Bunnymen, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, the bands on all the old T-shirts we had in our ancient collections.
Things were nice, warm, fuzzy. I felt like I was in a warm bath or soft pajamas, not a bar drowned in red lights with a movie screen playing Barbarella at our backs. We didn’t talk of anything important—our families, where we went to high school or college, what our ideal jobs were—we just played around and laughed and I really wanted to go home with him.
So tipsily, gigglingly, giddily, that’s what I did.
“I have to walk my dog,” he said. “Do you want to meet her? She’s sort of my litmus test, you see.”
“What will she do if she doesn’t approve?”
“Nothing, just ignore you. But being ignored by Miss Sugarpig is like being ignored by the Pope. It cuts deep.”
“I think I can handle it,” I said and finished my drink.
We weren’t drunk per se, but loosey-goosey as you are when you’ve drunk just enough to be silly, because you drink faster when you’re nervous than when you’re not. I tripped over invisible cracks in the sidewalk and girlishly clutched his arm. I could feel the wiry muscles underneath his leather coat and long-sleeve shirt, which only allowed the smallest peeks of his tattoos, which made them all the more titillating, like the glimpse of a Victorian ankle or petticoat. We sang Richard Hell songs as we walked through Tompkins Square Park, where homeless punks slept next to the cement chess stands and squirrels stared ludicrously from ancient tree branches that survived the squatter riots.
Joe lived on the fourth floor of a five-floor walkup on Avenue C. The stairs were narrow, and I got a splinter from the railing. He walked behind me, and I blushed with the feeling of his eyes on my ass but wiggled a little extra at the same time, flushed all over. I was already wet.
I flattened myself against the wall so he could unlock the door. We were both panting a little from the walk, but also from nervousness; at least I was. My teeth chattered and a few tremors went down my back as he opened the door and we went in.
Sugarpig was waiting at the door; she nosed his knee and, I swear, motioned her head toward the door like, “Come on, come on, get the leash and let’s go.” He nudged her back, gently, with his knee.
“Sorry, Shug, go lie down.”
“But, ah, I thought we were going to walk her?”
“Ah, well, see…that was kind of not true. I walked her before I left.” He was looking at the dog, who had settled herself on her dog bed in the corner. She huffed. She was shining white in the light from the windows, her pink nose moist and candylike, her eyes sizing me up. She was indeed a formidable presence, one that I would have to win over should this one night turn into more.
“You’re not mad, are you?”
“No, of course I’m not.”
“Echo, my cat, is hiding. She gets jealous.”
“Sorry, Echo-echo-echo…” His mouth stopped me from this goofiness. I laughed into it and felt his wide lips smile on mine. His mouth was a little chapped but gentle; when I responded to his kisses with a tiny, tiny bite on his lower lip, it unlocked something in him that he’d been holding back and he bit me back harder. His tongue went in my mouth deeper, and I turned my head so he could lick my neck and ear. He pulled on my earrings, and I giggled. He stuck his nose in my ear, and I pulled away, and he pulled me back. Tug of war, the kind you have on playgrounds.