Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

The bones in her face loosen. She hears a whining in her right ear.

“Come on — don’t give me that stupid look. You know it already. Don’t act astonished. You’re so pretty you’re practically a different freaking species. And yeah, how exactly did you accomplish that? Well, fuck you — you didn’t. You were l-u-c-k-y. Your daddy fucked your mommy and your genes lined up in a nice pattern. Well, hooray for you. I’m rich, sort of, and you’re stupid-gorgeous, and Sonny over there? He is insanely smart and honest, and in every way known to man, he is so much better than you or me. He beats his ass working. He is gonna go everywhere. I know. He started from absolute nothing — less than nothing — no parents, no money, begging for freaking food out on the street, okay? And here’s my point—” Derek slides forward, his stomach folding and his elbows digging into his knees. “It’s fine if you want to screw around with him and torture him out of his mind. Dump him. All the usual girl bullshit. But I want to emphasize that you gotta stay the fuck out of his way. Right? Because he does not need some scrawny bitch dragging him around to hell and back, messing up his training, fucking up his plans. Okay? Capisce? ”

Felice releases her breath in a thin stream, almost a laugh.

“We cool?”

“Jesus — get the fuck away from me.”

“What? We can be friends — you don’t have to get messed up about it.”

Emerson emerges from his shower, a bath towel wrapped around his waist, and says to Derek, “Hey man, let me borrow some clothes?”

“What’s wrong with your own crappy clothes, asshole?” Derek stands and kicks the sweaty pile of shorts and T.

Emerson darts a glance at Felice. “I’m not going back to the Green House anymore.”

“Oh, right, the big plan,” Derek drawls. Still, he comes back with some clothes and Emerson turns away modestly, pulling shorts on under his towel. He drags over another Adirondack chair and sits across from Felice, their knees almost touching, his borrowed T-shirt draped over one shoulder like a waiter’s towel. Felice is angry, but now she has to stay, to stake her claim on Emerson. She felt a burst of competitive adrenaline after Derek’s dumb little speech, recognizing some element of truth in it. Emerson sits back, showing off his sloping chest and arms, gleaming with drops of shower spray. He smiles at Felice, one arm resting along the back of his seat, a cavelike space between his forearm and chest. She notes the even lift of his smile; a note of lilac soap drifts from his skin. She moves to perch on the flat arm of Emerson’s chair and places her hand experimentally over his: a kind of startle runs through his body. He lifts one thumb, claiming her fingers.

The sky grows overcast with mounting summer thunderheads but there’s no rain, just a dense, hot curtain of air. The afternoon is pure languor. Derek lights a crackling joint, which Emerson waves away — Felice leans toward the joint, then smiles coolly at Derek. “Better not.”

“So your brother owns Freshly Grown?” Derek says, as if none of the earlier conversation happened, his expression once again meditative. “He actually owns it.”

Felice looks away.

“I wonder if he’d like to expand his operations, carry some, like, new product…”

“Jesus.”

“That store has got major clientele. Man — all those old hippies, fuck.”

“Forget it,” Felice snaps.

Emerson’s gaze turns from Derek to Felice. Derek gives Emerson a lift of the brow, then disappears into the house to make his calls to “associates.” “So what’s all that?” Emerson asks. “What’s Freshly Grown?”

Felice crosses her arms in a scissor over her chest. “Why do you even hang out with that guy? Such an asshole.”

“What?” Emerson turns toward the house. “Derek? Nah. He’s just, like, a businessman.” He explains that Derek sells drugs to other people who sell drugs — all kinds, amphetamines, cocaine, pot, but mostly he specializes in MDMA, “otherwise known as Ecstasy,” because, Emerson continues gravely, “he believes in it.”

Felice shakes her head, studying the bouncing, calligraphic flight of a black wasp. “Whatever.”

“That’s not even to mention,” Emerson goes on, “how he’s kept me alive on a number of occasions.”

Felice stares at the wasp, refusing to say anything more about Derek. There’s something drugged about the stillness of the air: she can’t hear any road noise at all, just a white insect whir, a slush of fronds in the breeze. She unfolds, takes his hand, and leads him deeper into the palms, to the rope hammock. She’s so narrow she’s able to slip, eel-like, under his arm, and they swing, cradled in the braided rope, so quiet Felice can almost imagine it’s just the current of their breathing that’s moving them. She closes one hand around the curve of his wrist. For a while, neither of them speaks. She’s wet with sweat, glued to Emerson’s side. Overhead, a shelf of clouds has started to cover the sun.

“You feel like maple syrup,” he says.

Felice hoists herself up in the braid, slips a leg over Emerson’s, her hand swims over his chest. She kisses his shoulder, then his neck, and watches the blood rise beneath the surface of the skin. She kisses the outer rim of his jaw, the edge of his smile. She kisses his mouth, which is wonderfully soft, and her hand travels over the towel before he catches her hand. “Wait, Felice.”

She nuzzles the warm space behind his ear. “Wait for what?”

He puts her hand on his chest; it slides back down to his hip where he stops it. “You don’t have to do this.”

“As if.” She pulls in her chin. “You’re such a freak. Do you think I ever do anything I don’t want to?”

“Still.” He’s so serious it’s annoying.

She kisses him again. She feels his body warming with response. She finds that she’s giving herself over as well — just a bit, but more than ever happened before: in the clubs, on the dance floor, kissing whoever swirled an arm around her neck, and, often, moving into the plush, blurry hours that followed: feeling nothing. Now, hanging in the swing among tendrils of purple orchids, dots of moisture in the air like a sparse, suspended rain, it’s an infinity away from the rest of the world. Her hand roves over the cotton covering Emerson’s thigh and again he stops her. “It’s just sort of soon. Like, I don’t want to wreck it.”

“You’re so stupid. What a stupid movie thing to say.” Something about him is making her chest flutter with suppressed laughter. “You’re such a big fat baby.”

He holds her wrist, captured, up by his shoulder. “How many men have you been with?”

“Since when do you get to ask me that?”

He puts his hands up, lowers his head. “Sorry.”

“And ‘been with’? Been with? What are you now, Mr. Talking Bible?”

“No.”

There’s a low, thin grumbling in the eastern sky and a mass of clouds flash. Something hums past Felice’s ear. It occurs to her that her face is all sweaty. She hasn’t eaten enough and her breath must be tart: maybe she shouldn’t assume that Emerson finds her alluring. She twists away from him grumpily, onto her back, rocking the hammock.

“What? Where you going now?” he asks.

She closes her eyes, mentally toting: Frank, Ronald, Jorge, Raffy… who else? Anyone? Oh, what was his name? Wayne? Oh and that yucky Doyle. “Six,” she says grimly. “How about you, Mr. Bible? How many girls have you had fornication with?”

“Two.”

“Two? Jeez.” She fans at a mosquito. “That’s lame.”

“Not to me it wasn’t.”

“What, were you all in love or something?” She drags out the words, then looks over her shoulder at him.