Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy

But even that story, the hanging, is not strictly true. I got a book from the library on knots. It turned out to be extremely difficult to tie a hangman’s knot in a wide, knit scarf, but I managed. I tied the other end to some exposed piping near the ceiling of my apartment. I put the loop around my neck. I stood on a chair.

If I had jumped, one of two things would have happened: the scarf would have torn, or I would have ripped the water pipe out of the wall and sprayed sewage all over my ascetically white furniture. I didn’t jump. I kept my hands inside the loose loop of the noose, between my neck and the rope. I leaned forward until I felt pressure, strain in the rope, the scarf straightening sharply, like a schoolboy who’s been cracked with a ruler.

I realized that no one was going to stop me. No one would even know. Servers and cooks at both restaurants regularly just stopped showing up for work and were promptly replaced. The kind thing, I thought, would be to do it near the end of the month, so that the landlord would come for the rent soon after and find me before the smell became a problem.

Considerate and well-behaved to the end. I got down off the chair. I left the scarf there, swinging from the momentum.

There was a deep-down, physical ache. The opposite of a phantom limb: pain because that thing, that thing I loathed, was always there. I had to use it and look at it every day. But more than that, pain because I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be noticed, in a way that both men and cooks were not. The hostesses at the Japanese restaurant wore makeup that made their eyes cartoonishly large and dresses in oriental prints that were slit to the upper thigh. They were required to wear their hair in high, old-fashioned buns. They were art. They were there to be looked at and admired and worshipped. I was there to serve a purpose, to make things. A workhorse. A man.

One year, and then Bonnie came.

Bonnie stood in my doorway with a freshly razed head and a duffle bag slung across her body. The front door of my building was propped open for the summer and coated in flies. She held her arms out for a hug. I stared at her. She dropped her arms and pushed past me, into my apartment, her chandelier earrings and the coin tassels of her skirt jingling.

She threw down her bag and went straight to the fridge, bent her knees to rummage. “You have any beer?”

I closed the door and leaned back against it. There wasn’t anywhere else for me to stand. The apartment felt even smaller with someone else there. “No.”

She found a takeout box, opened it, and sniffed at it. “Oh, this is good. Where’s it from?”

“The shish taouk around the corner.” Her skirt went down to her ankles, several layers of fabric in hot colors, red over orange over yellow. She wore a white wifebeater with no bra, the material so thin that even the areolae of her dark nipples were visible. Lines of red and gold glitter were streaked across her chest and cheeks. “What are you doing here, Bonnie? Does Helen know you’re here?”

Bonnie started shoveling the rice and kebab into her mouth with her bare hands. “Oh yeah, sure. She thought it was a great idea. She helped me pack and find an apartment and everything.”

I crossed my arms across my chest. “So you’re not living with me.” I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed.

“Nah. I think I’ve learned not to shack up with family.” She politely made no mention of the fact that two people could barely stand in my apartment, let alone sleep. Closing the empty takeout box and tossing it on top of the fridge, she added, “Aren’t you going to ask where I got the money?”

“Should I?”

“Helen would. She asked me all the time. God forbid I try to pull my own weight.” Bonnie put one hand on her hip, dropping all her weight onto one side in exaggerated exasperation. The muscles in her face tightened and hardened as she scowled. It was startling; she really did look like Helen. She made her voice hoarse and judgmental. “‘Where did you get that? Have you been stealing? Selling drugs? Turning tricks?’”

“Were you?”

“Yes.” She didn’t specify which; maybe all of the above. She relaxed into herself again. Her cheeks were plump and flush. Her shoulders and arms were more muscular than I remembered.

“You look happy,” I said. I meant to say healthy.

“As a horse,” she said, as though she’d heard healthy. Her imitation of Helen had made me feel slightly giddy and superior, like we were speaking in a secret language in a crowd. “LA agreed with me.”

“I hope Montreal does too.”

Bonnie laughed and took a step toward me. We were almost nose to nose. “That’s what I love about you, Peter. No questions, no complaints. Everything is just fine by you.” She put her hand against my forehead, as though checking for a fever. Her skin was cool.

“That’s not true,” I murmured, pressing into her touch like a cat.

Bonnie had a housewarming party a week later. I brought a six-pack of fancy beer as a gift, chosen because the girl in the label art reminded me of Bonnie. It was a raspberry beer in opaque glass bottles, the last of the summer stock. The girl had flowers for hair, the flowers’ vines creeping down her neck.

Bonnie lived in a shared eight-bedroom apartment in the lower Plateau — essentially a house built atop a coffee shop. As I came up the outside steps, the front door was thrown open by a man in a tie, sweatpants, and no shirt.

“Hey!” he cried, as though I were a long-lost friend. “Here for the party?”

I stopped walking, though I was still a few steps down. I had to look up at him. “Yes. I’m Bonnie’s brother.” I held the beer up over my head like an offering.

“Cool. Get in here.”

Inside, I went up a second staircase, lined by one brick wall. Photos of people I didn’t recognize were mounted onto the brick, in mismatching frames that climbed with the stairs. Near the top was a decorative white frame that I had seen sold in dollar stores around Mother’s Day. You were supposed to put a picture of your mother inside; there was raised black lettering underneath that read MOTHER * HERO * FRIEND. Instead of a photo of Mother, there was a picture of Helen, Adele, and me, lined up left to right, taken when Helen and Adele were teenagers and I was an alarmed-looking child clutching Adele’s hand. I couldn’t believe Bonnie would put up something so personal so quickly.

I found Bonnie right away. She wore a black lace full-length bodysuit that went from ankle to wrist to a turtleneck collar, the lace only slightly thicker over her breasts and crotch. She hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. “Peter! I’m so glad you’re here. Isn’t this a great space?”

In addition to the one brick wall, there were ceilings that were cavernously high and floors made of scratched, stained hardwood. The living room was huge, crammed with people of a wide range of ages. A toddler sat on her father’s shoulders, higher than the crowd, staring with naked curiosity.

“It is.” I meant it. “I brought beer.”

“Great! Put it in the kitchen!” She returned to the conversation she’d been having and then, noticing that I hadn’t moved, added, “It’s over there.”

The kitchen was relatively empty, only one woman inside, her back to the archway that I walked through. The noise seemed to fall away into a flat hum. Her hands were busy; I assumed she was making a drink. In the narrow passageway, I couldn’t get past her to the fridge. “Pardon me. Can I just — get in here…”

She didn’t move.

I flattened myself against the cabinets and slid by. The acidic smell of rotten garlic — in my line of work, I could identify the scents of specific foods rotting — emerged as I opened the fridge door and put the beer inside. I glanced over. The woman was peeling apples. “Oh,” I said, with relief, “you’re cooking.”