Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

Elizabeth was embarrassed at how well she remembered it — Zoe probably had forgotten it by the time she went to sleep that night. She and Elizabeth were lying on the couch in Zoe’s apartment, watching a movie— Bonnie and Clyde , with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Zoe was waxing rhapsodic about Faye’s clothes. They were head to foot, overlapping at their stomachs, but then, near the middle of the movie, Zoe said she was getting tired and did a half somersault, half flop, so that she was lying right behind Elizabeth, both of them facing the small television. Zoe looped her arms around Elizabeth’s middle and snuggled up against her back.

“I’m going to sleep,” she said. “Wake me up if Bonnie’s going to die.”

But she didn’t go to sleep — at least Elizabeth didn’t think so.

On-screen, Faye Dunaway was leaning against a car, smoking. Zoe’s nose rubbed against Elizabeth’s spine. The sky was vast and cloudy, flat and endless. The room glowed green. Zoe’s hand moved flat against Elizabeth’s stomach.

Despite her open mind and abstract curiosity, Elizabeth still hadn’t found a girl to kiss. She thought it would just happen eventually, the way it happened with boys, that someone would flirt with her at a party and then they’d find themselves tumbling against a wall and maybe going back to one dorm room or the other, hands over the clothes, hands under the clothes, mouths on skin. But it hadn’t. There were a few other boys, and then there was Andrew, but that was it.

Elizabeth didn’t think she was a lesbian. She just thought that it was a possibility, like a groundhog seeing its shadow. Despite the fact that she’d slept with several guys, Zoe said that she’d always known, since she was a child. She said it was like knowing whether you were right- or left-handed. Obviously you didn’t get to choose — Elizabeth knew that much — but she wasn’t sure about anything, not even what she wanted to have for lunch, so how could she be so sure about this?

Zoe’s right hand, the hand that was slung over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Zoe’s mouth, now on the back of her neck. Elizabeth didn’t move — if she moved, Zoe might stop. If she moved, she might wake Zoe up. Zoe was probably dreaming about someone else, one of the girls from the co-op down the block, the ones with nose rings and sourdough starters and special woven baggies for their Ecstasy that they wore around their necks. The room was getting warmer. Downstairs, the movie theater was showing The Bodyguard , and there were probably beer bottles rolling down the sloped floor under everyone’s feet. She and Zoe had gone to see it the night before, everyone laughing at Whitney Houston until she opened her mouth and sang, and then they all got quiet and just listened. That’s what Elizabeth wanted to do now, to lie still and listen. If she tried hard enough, she thought she could hear the squirrels in the park across the street, or the airplanes flying overhead. It was kissing, what was happening to her neck. Zoe was kissing her, and Elizabeth felt it all over her body, like a hundred electrical sockets all licked at once.

Someone knocked at the door — this happened a lot when you lived across the street from the only bar in an otherwise dry town. Zoe stopped what she was doing, and they both waited for a moment. Whoever it was knocked again, more insistently.

“Hmm,” Zoe said.

Elizabeth sat up and turned her face away from the door. “I should go home anyway,” she said.

“Just let me see who it is,” Zoe said. She crawled over the edge of the couch to the door and reached for the knob. Elizabeth pulled on her shoes.

“Zoeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, open the door!” The door swung wide, knocking Zoe over. It was Zoe’s friend TJ, a girl with enormous tattoos up and down both arms. She was a senior, older than both of them, and rough in a way that Elizabeth didn’t like. Zoe crawled clear of the door, and TJ stepped over her. “Do you have any cigarettes? Gibson’s is closed.”

“I’m going to go,” Elizabeth said. She couldn’t look Zoe in the face, and so instead she inspected the filthy carpet, which had probably never been cleaned, ever.

“Are you sure?” Zoe said, her voice soft. She stood up slowly. Elizabeth squeezed by her and into the hall, being careful not to touch. She heard TJ turn off Bonnie and Clyde and put on music instead.

“I’m sure,” Elizabeth said, even though she wasn’t. She got all the way to the top of the stairs and then down the first few before she looked behind her. Zoe was still standing there, waiting, her head poking out. It would have been so easy to run back up those steps. Elizabeth’s whole body was pumping with blood. She felt like she was in the middle of a relay race, running between places she’d never been. Zoe must have felt it, the elastic cord between their chests. Before the pull got too strong, Elizabeth hurried down the rest of the stairs and out the door, into the clear night.

There were no two ways about it — Andrew refused to compromise. Harry was not allowed to see Ruby other than in their SAT class. After the tiniest flicker of pride that his son had made his (likely) sexual debut in a public place, with a (face it) really beautiful girl, Andrew had swiftly moved on to more practical parental feelings. As far as Harry was concerned, Ruby Kahn-Bennett was his invisible neighbor, a ghost girl, a memory. If her parents had been good at any part of their jobs as mothers, Ruby would have been leaving the nest soon, flying off to some second- or third-rate college, where she could terrorize all the local ruffians with her winning combination of insouciance and innate grace. But Ruby was probably going to live at home forever, working at her parents’ restaurant. Andrew didn’t care. Ruby wasn’t his problem — that was what Zoe and Jane got for being distracted and loose. Ruby had slept in their bed, in between them, until she was three. That’s what you got. So many people were wishy-washy with their kids, softer than butter, and all it did was ensure that you were going to have bigger problems down the road.

It was easier to focus on positive things. He and Dave were going over the plans for the boat. Ideas, really. The garage at EVOLVEment had turned into more of a coffee klatch than a workshop, but Andrew didn’t mind. He didn’t know how to build a boat big enough for people to live on. At first, Andrew thought Dave might be annoyed, but he wasn’t — Dave was remarkably cool about the whole thing. It was actually better this way — the kid with the tools had taken over the shelf project, and instead, Dave and Andrew spent afternoons talking and meditating. One afternoon, after a quick juice, Dave asked Andrew to go with him down to the Rockaways. There were some herbalists with a little shop right off the beach, and he needed some supplies. Andrew thought it sounded like he was talking about weed, but he didn’t want to be rude and ask. There was a lot about EVOLVEment that he didn’t understand, and that was okay. Sometimes the whole top floor of the house stank like bong water, but that didn’t mean it was Dave’s finger on the carb. Even if it was, what did it matter?

The communal EVOLVEment car was a truck with paneled wood sides. The air-conditioning was broken, but it didn’t matter, because it was cool enough with the windows rolled down. Andrew tapped the base of the window as they drove down Bedford Avenue toward the water.

“So you and your family have lived in Ditmas a long time, huh,” Dave said. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, a shiny contrast to his dense, dark beard.

“A really long time. Maybe even too long?” Andrew didn’t mean anything by it.

“You thinking about moving?” Dave asked. “We just got here, man.” He smiled.