Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

I’m still in touch with Bill, and Trevor, and Myra — who else? Nellie. That’s all. Ayala, too, though she’s in San Francisco. But the locals would love to see you. Or at least, Jesus, know that you exist . But enough on that sore subject. What the fuck are you doing these days?

I give her the briefest version of recent events I can, and as I’m doing so, I notice a silver band on her ring finger, engraved with a serpentine pattern.

That’s brutal, she says. I heard about it on the news, of course. And you want to know what my honest reaction was? I couldn’t believe BCC was still around. Even in high school it always sounded so ramshackle .

Rina, I say, you didn’t tell me you were married.

Oh — this? I’m not. I was. Lauren and I are separated. Married at Big Sur, before the ban, which means we’ll have to get a legal divorce. I think. Actually, it’s a little up in the air.

Rina came out as a lesbian in college, at Mills; I still remember the letter she sent me, with a picture of her girlfriend, who wore a flannel shirt and looked like Fred Savage. Then, the last I heard of her, she wrote me again, over email, in 1999 or 2000, saying she was dating a man, Kevin. This was in San Francisco; they were partners at a start-up, something to do with simplified credit card transactions. I’m done with labels , she said. I think that’s the way the world’s headed, anyway. Love who you love.

That must be hard, being in limbo that way.

It’s not as if we have actual assets to fight over. Or kids, thank god. Which reminds me. I heard, you know, about your wife and daughter. It filtered through the grapevine. But I didn’t know where to find you. I thought about calling your folks, but then I realized they’d left, too. I should have sleuthed around more. Nobody gets lost these days.

Well, I say, I didn’t open my mail for a month, nor look at my computer, so I wouldn’t have seen it, anyway. Though I know that’s not the point. You meant well.

It’s nice of you to say that.

Listen, I say, desperate to find another topic, Rina, have you heard anything about Martin?

Martin Lipkin? No. Other than that he’s gone.

What do you mean, gone ?

I mean he left the country. Disappeared, straight up. Someone really tried to find him — I think it was Trevor, out of curiosity, this was years ago — and the deal was that his father died when we were in college, of AIDS, as it turned out, and then sometime after that Martin left. The house was sold. He went someplace in Asia, too, I think. Singapore or Shanghai or something like that.

Really. I had no idea.

You were his friend, too. You haven’t heard from him in all this time, right? No Facebook, no nothing?

Not a word. Not since Alan’s funeral.

I think he took it really hard.

I guess.

Kelly, Rina says, reaching a coffee-spattered hand across the table and laying it across mine, it’s incredibly good to see you. It’s, like, life-affirming. I really thought you’d go down some kind of black hole after what happened with your family. You were never exactly Mr. Chipper.

I became resilient. It happens. Traveling helped. Losing Alan helped. Helped isn’t quite the right word, is it?

That sounds very wise.

She hasn’t lifted her hand; in fact, she moves her thumb slightly, almost imperceptibly, under my palm. Passing a pulse.

You know where I’m living now? Glamorous quarters. Over my mom’s garage. It’s a full-on apartment, at least. They renovated it when I went away. You should come over for dinner. I have a separate entrance; you wouldn’t have to see them.

I wouldn’t mind. It’s been years.

No, you would. Early Alzheimer’s is no joke. Mom can be nasty. Paranoid. And she throws things. We’ve had to clear out all the vases, all the tchotchkes. Everything she hasn’t already broken. And she’s stopped speaking English. It’s all Bulgarian now. Lots of complaining about Zhivkov and Brezhnev.

Which is why—

Yeah. Of course. Why would it be any other way? It wasn’t for the weather. I mean, the job’s great. McKinsey is great, when you’re doing contract work and not trying to climb the ladder. In San Francisco I’d still be busting my ass eighty hours a week. But fuck, I never thought I’d move back to the East Coast, let alone here .

I’m really sorry, I say. Jesus Christ, Rina. I mean, I had no idea.

It’s not the kind of thing you put in the class notes, is it?

I don’t read the class notes. Though Willow still finds me, everywhere I go. I don’t know how they do it. I’d have to change my name.

You’d have to do more than that. Go to ground, like Martin. Or have a sex change or something.

Yeah. Maybe that’s the answer.

Look, Kelly, she says, and squeezes my hand again. I’m a little out of practice with the games and all, and plus, I don’t really have time to do a whole dance, but I would really like you to come over. Soon.

How soon?

How about in three hours?

—

When the unavoidable time comes — after we’ve picked at our linguine long enough, and started a second bottle of Sangiovese, gulping at our glasses too eagerly, as if it were Kool-Aid; after she’s switched the music from Nina to Billie to Ella, and gone from room to room lighting candles (trust a lesbian, she says, candles are essential ) as night comes on; after she comes around the table and leads me to the bedroom, by one hand, undoing her blouse with the other — it happens so quickly, at least by comparison to the buildup, really in the length of one thought, one agonizingly guilty thought: how wonderful to feel a woman’s curves, to have a body spill out, present itself, the breasts penduluming into your face, the alert nipples demanding to be tongued, the satisfying handfuls of her hips, her ass, her unshy legs gripping me, her hand finding me and guiding me into her. My eyes are closed; I look up for a moment; her eyes are also closed. We are two bodies having sex with a multitude. We have abandoned the present. This is my first time since Wendy; I ought to be weeping, to be curled up in a fetal ball; but as it turns out, I’ve waited long enough, the body’s mourning period has passed, unnoticed, and now it cries out for something new, as bodies always will. We twist, and wrangle, on one side, then the other, winding up with me on top, her chin raised, her jaw working, as if readying to spit something out. Eyes closed again. Who do you want me to be? her body asks. I bend down and kiss her neck, work up to her ear, drop my hands under her back, coil my fingers around her shoulders. Robin’s shoulders. Whose else would they be? Robin’s breasts, rising up at me; I bury my face between them. With my eyes closed, I taste them; I pull out, move my face down, burrowing, moving my chin past her thatch of hair, inhaling Robin, tasting Robin, unembarrassed, undisgusted with myself, for the moment. What can I do? Someone once said — in high school, in college? I was drunk at the time, I was sprawled on a smoky carpet— the cock is its own compass. I’m with Robin, as long as my eyes are closed. I’m on the verge of saying it. Back on top of her, in the long arc of orgasm, when all our perversities are unleashed, I can taste her name. But I don’t say it. I collapse, like a corpse, and sleep it off, and it’s past midnight when Rina nudges me awake.

I’m going to take this as a compliment, she says.

Do you want me out of here? I should go.

Eventually. Before morning.

She’s propped on one elbow, in a T-shirt and boy shorts, looking amused. I’m not even going to ask, she says. I’ll take it that was a long time coming.

The first time, actually.