Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy

I sat at the bar. John danced around behind it, though there was no music playing, making a show of preparing the espresso. He flipped the small cup and caught it like a coin toss. “How about that? Pretty cool, huh?” He did the same thing with the tamper and tried to catch it behind his back. It clattered on the floor.

I laughed. He handed me my espresso. It burned my mouth. I coughed. “It’s hot,” he said helpfully. He sat down on the stool beside me with his cup, his elbows on the bar. I leaned away from him. He had a habit of getting too close.

“So,” he said. “Where do you go after work every day? Why are you always in such a hurry?”

“I don’t go anywhere,” I said, surprised.

“You run out of here like your house is on fire. Why don’t you stay and hang out?”

I felt like he was questioning some fundamental aspect of my person. Why are your eyes brown? Why do you like your steak rare? “I don’t know.”

“Stay today. I’ll buy you a shot.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He laughed and put his hands up in defense. “Okay, fine. Don’t stay, I don’t care.”

I nursed my espresso in my hands. John hopped off his stool and headed to the coatroom, still dancing to the music in his head. It took a moment before I felt bad. Yes, I could be friends with this simple-minded kid. I liked him. Everyone liked him. And he was right: with Bonnie gone, I had nowhere to go.

I went to the coatroom to apologize. I knocked and pushed the door open without waiting. “Hey, John…”

He was stepping out of his jeans, his gray boxer briefs wadded up against his sweaty skin, wedged into the crease where his thighs met his hips. His chef pants were on the floor. He reached for them. I had startled him, and he tried to dive into both legs at the same time. He finally yanked them up and turned his back to me. For a moment, I doubted what I’d seen. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking.

His voice stayed cheery. “What’s up, Peter?”

Did I burst in on him on purpose? Did I want it to be true? This door didn’t lock. People were constantly walking in on each other. With the wait staff, it had turned into a game. The waitresses went in two at a time and one of them held the door shut.

He turned around. Our eyes met. He was depending on me not noticing; it was such a subtle thing, an empty fold of fabric. I was frozen.

John was still smiling, though it had tightened. “Did you talk to Damian?”

“Who?” I took a step back.

“The waiter with the…” John held a hand over his eye in the shape of a ball. “With the eyes.”

“Yes.” I scanned John’s body: the stout muscle, the teenage facial hair, his natural voice. His flat, unmarked chest. “Is it true?” I asked. Before he could answer, I said, “It’s not true. I’ve changed in here with you before.”

“I keep my pants on.” John shrugged. “Look, it’s not a secret, exactly, but not everyone knows. I tell people only if it comes up and I feel like they can handle it.” I could see the horror in my expression reflected in John’s face. His smile dimmed.

“How?” I choked out.

“I don’t really want to—”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. I couldn’t stop myself. “ How? ”

John pushed me hard. I stumbled back and slammed into the wall, one of the coat hooks striking my spine, before I fell to the ground. I started crying. Loud, ugly weeping, heaving in staggers like a child astonished by his own tears.

“I’m sorry! It was a reflex. I thought you were going to hit me.” John knelt down. “Are you okay?”

“How?” I whispered.

John considered my pathetic form, slumped on the ground. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I waved my arm around his body viciously. “ This. How?”

He straightened up. “Look, I don’t know you that well, and it’s really none of your business. I’m a guy. That’s all you need to know.” He hovered over me, still more concerned than threatening. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s not fair. Give it to me.” Give me your girlhood, John, I thought nonsensically. You don’t want it? Give it to me. I want to be the woman you would’ve been: blond, simple, sunny.

“What’s not fair? What are you talking about?” John was too close again; we were almost nose to nose.

I lifted my head. John searched my face. His eyes widened. He sat down beside me and looked at his hands, his fingers thick and stout as the rest of him. A moment passed in silence. The hooks above our heads were crowded with left-behind clothes and junk. Toques and scarves, a T-shirt, a bow tie, a nude-colored bra.

Another of John’s smiles, this one small and solitary, for himself. “Did you think… you were the only one?” he said.

“No, I thought…” Yes, and I still did. John wasn’t like me. Whatever he was, whatever he called himself, he was something else entirely. He had to be.

“Are you a woman?”

He threw off this question readily, like it was nothing at all. My whole life summed up in a question I never got to ask. “I can’t do this,” I said.

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me what—”

“I can’t work today.” I stood up. “Tell them… something.” John followed me out of the coatroom. He followed me all the way to the door. I didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

I realized I had left my coat and bag with my transit pass inside of it. I walked for an hour to get home through the October slush, that first, strange snow that doesn’t quite take.

John called me that night. I asked him how he got my number. “From your resumé. I also have your bag, your wallet, and your coat.”

“Am I fired?”

“No. I told them you called in sick. No big deal.”

“Then I’ll get my stuff on Monday.”

“You’re going to go all weekend without your wallet?”

It was also my only warm coat. “Yes.”

“Where do you live? I’ll come drop it off.”

“That’s okay.”

“We’re having some people over for dinner tomorrow. You could come, and pick up your stuff then.”

John had a girlfriend, without the quotation marks around the term that came with a Margie or a Claire. I remembered their electric stares. “I’m busy.”

He exhaled. The mouthpiece crackled. “I want to help you. Tell me how to help you.”

I looked down into my lap. I picked at the skirt I was wearing: white denim, yellowed with age, ending several inches above my knees. Bonnie’s. My mouth was gluey with lip gloss. His questions bothered me a lot. What are your life goals? Why don’t you hang out with us? Tell me how to help you. As though all people understood themselves and had neat, one-word answers. “There’s a lot about you that I don’t understand.” I tried to be honest. “I’m not sure I want to understand.”

“We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. It’s just dinner.”

I rubbed my shin. The stubble prickled against my hand. Time to shave, I thought, not without pleasure. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, hot damn,” John said. I could picture his smile.

John’s girlfriend, Eileen, pointed to each dish spread out on the coffee table. “The chickpea salad has mayo in it. The green salad has soy sauce in it. The pasta has cheese and gluten in it. But the macaroons are gluten-free, and nothing has shellfish or meat.”

I’d been introduced to the five faces who were now nodding solemnly, but none of their names had stuck. They appeared to be memorizing this information. We sat on cushions on the floor. All of the furniture in the living room consisted of piles of cushions, aside from the coffee table and a wide, backless bookcase.