Marian Palaia - Given World

“Pretty day,” Christopher says. “Do you have to work?”

“Not until tonight.” I stretch my arms up over my head. “I’m so happy. Seems like forever since we’ve seen any real blue sky.”

The words come out in the right order, in the right language, and I am sure they make sense. Christopher does not seem aware that this is a rather huge accomplishment, and I consider that an achievement in itself. When he asks if I want to go for a walk with him and Annabelle, I do not make up some lame excuse. I go put my sneakers on. Christopher attaches a red-rhinestoned leash to the cat’s collar, and we set off up the hill.

“Nice leash,” I say.

Christopher smiles. “Max. If I had picked it out, it would have been far less glamorous. Khaki or something. A bit of twine.”

“But with a bell.”

Christopher says, “Maybe a small one.”

• • •

I realize that any lingering sense of dislocation may be because of a change in the city itself; it is not all me. It started before I left but is now kicking in with a vengeance. People carry pagers around and talk loudly on the pay phone about very important things like stock options and public offerings. I do not understand the concepts, and something about “public offerings” makes me thing of human sacrifices. From there the tangential connections can prove quite remarkable. I am reminded by those tangents of the mescaline and acid I took in high school, the pot I smoked, and all the other substances that in combination probably rewired my synapses pretty thoroughly. But San Francisco was the perfect place for someone like me to land, and I often feel as if I am watching the city I still love grow distant in the rearview mirror.

The interlopers begin to infiltrate the bar, demanding high-end tequilas and asking questions like “What sorts of Chardonnays do you have?”

“The kind in the box,” I say, and usually, or hopefully, whatever decked-out lawyer or stockbroker will turn on his or her pointy toe and depart in a sulk, but something is definitely wrong.

I try to talk with Eddie about it. “Who are these people? What do they want?” He is oblivious. To him, it’s just a whole new set of cute boys to ogle at the gym.

One Saturday we go down to Whole Earth Access so I can buy some new socks and a colander, maybe a cordless drill so I can hang bookshelves. It is a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing on a perfectly ordinary day. Then Eddie heads for the electronics counter and starts playing with the mobile phones. I start to get twitchy but try not to show it. “What are you doing?”

“Just looking.” He is playing with the buttons on one, holding it out in front of him like Snow White’s mirror. It’s the size of a brick.

“You are thinking about buying that thing, aren’t you?”

“I think I am.”

“Oh Jesus. What on earth for?”

“Talking.”

We leave with a new phone for Eddie. No socks, no colander, no drill. All of a sudden the things in my basket looked like debris from a UFO incident: unrecognizable as useful objects. Eddie drops me off at the bar, where I drink beers and play pool with a cute Irish boy until dark. At midnight I leave his place, my shoes in my hand, and hail a cab on Mission Street. Christopher is still up when I get home.

“You okay?” He peers up at me from the couch. His eyes are sleepy, and Annabelle has her head tucked behind him, the rest of her looking for all the world like a decapitated walrus.

I lean down and kiss Christopher on the cheek. “Where did you come from?”

“Oxford, Mississippi,” he says. “Proud home of the Rebels.” As if he gives a damn about football, or basketball, or bowling, or whoever the Rebels are. He makes me drink water and take aspirin before I go to bed, and in the morning makes me come out of my room and go to breakfast with him and Max. We walk arm in arm to the Castro, with me in the middle. I can picture the three of us clearly from behind: Max aglow with neon highlights, Christopher a lovely pastel, and in between a chalk-drawn outline with a perfect round hole about chest level where the bullet or the spear or the missile has gone clear through but left me otherwise intact. How utterly miraculous that is.

When we get home, Max styles my hair, cajoling it into submission with a round brush, patiently rolling it up in sections and holding the blow-dryer to it as he pulls the brush out. He works in some heavenly smelling waxy substance and then arranges it all piece by piece, just so, around my face and over my shoulders. When he is satisfied with my hair, he applies liner and shadow to my eyes, and lip gloss to my mouth. I am afraid to look, afraid of seeing a kid — someone definitely not me — who’s gotten into Mom’s makeup bag and gone to town.

Max holds up two mirrors — one in front and one in back — and circles me like a merry-go-round pony. He makes me look, and despite the time he’s spent, the effect is subtle but still startling. Each time my face reflects back at me, it seems as though I am looking at someone in an old family photograph, or someone I have not seen in a very long time and never knew very well to begin with, or a person from a movie — maybe Thelma or Louise.

“You are a magician,” I say.

“And you, darling, are stunning.”

“Or you could be hallucinating. Maybe I’ll go up to the bar and see if anyone recognizes me.”

Christopher says, “Or asks for your autograph.”

“Quit,” I tell them, “before I put a hat on and wash my face.”

Max pinches my cheeks, sort of hard. “You love it.”

“No. I love you.”

The next weekend, from the bus, I spot Max and Christopher walking back from the grocery store. Their groceries are in a two-wheeled wire cart, and Max is pulling it behind him with one hand; the other is tucked into the back pocket of Christopher’s jeans. Christopher wears a gray cardigan against the afternoon wind, and a long electric-blue scarf, set off against his black leather jacket, drapes elegantly around Max’s neck. They look like an old married couple who have already raised the kids, let them go out into the world, and then settled in to ride out the rest of their years tranquilly, as a set. I press my face to the bus window and watch them until they are out of sight.

I fall, fitfully but progressively, into a rhythm: work, pool, outings with the boys and dates with the Boy — the Irish one, who does not seem to mind being referred to as “the Boy”; does not seem to mind much at all, for that matter. He does have a name, which is Dillon, and he tells me it means “flash of lightning.” We are not in love, and not likely ever to be, but the feeling I came home with, the need to be suffocated, is all but gone, and closeness and kisses are starting to feel like enough. I feel like I am in the world, and not just trying to bring it into focus from another galaxy.

Some days, walking down Valencia Street, holding hands and looking in shop windows, turns me absolutely inside out. It’s good. And it’s spring, meaning it is warm, and the summer fog banks have not yet begun to slink in every afternoon to remind us what it costs, to live in such a beautiful place.

• • •

One night in early June, after a day shift and a few games of pool, I come home to find Christopher and Max, as usual, in the living room in front of the TV. It isn’t on, though, and they are sitting too far apart. Feet apart, rather than inches; too many to reach across. I have an almost overwhelming urge to move them closer together, place a flat palm on each of their backs and bring my hands together, like a person might do with a found accordion, simultaneously pressing buttons and keys in the hope of a not-too-discordant noise. Annabelle sits on the back of a chair by the window, looking out or at her reflection, and her tail hangs straight down, motionless.