An egregiously friendly sixteen-year-old host waved us inside. I returned her idiot smile, further animated by the idea that that could have once been Oola, and breathed in the odor of armpits and French fry grease, spicier than I remembered it.
“Sit us somewhere discreet,” Oola muttered. “We’re famous.”
We sat at a window table, which Oola abused. She stared at her reflection in the glass, watching herself swallow. Even in the dismal light, her dress looked expensive. I was reminded of something she’d said during one of our dinner discussions: in school, when bored, she’d excuse herself from class and go to the handicap bathroom to look in the mirror.
“All angles,” she’d said. “I’d lift my skirt, bend sideways, try to see my hair from behind. It was so beyond vanity; you should have seen the positions I managed! Gymnastic, I tell you. I went through various expressions, to see what they looked like. Sarcastic, worried, studious, coy. It brought me back to life. I felt solid.”
I poured her some water. She drank it, watching her throat constrict.
“Lookee here,” I said faintly.
“Wouldn’t make much of a difference, now, would it?” she replied, surprisingly icy, and began fixing her hair.
I regarded my baconless BLT in silence.
When I’d made tepees from the crusts and moved on to my curly fries, she finally faced me.
“Do you know anything about bees?”
“Not really,” I said. “I read an article about how they’re dying.”
She lightly tapped her spoon against the rim of her mug. This was just one of her many musical tics. “You know what I read? The queen bee isn’t a queen at all. She doesn’t have any authority over the other bees. Her only job is to get fucked.”
“And lay eggs,” I added. “Is she the best-looking bee?”
“I don’t know.” She kept tapping. “She just sits there all day and gets raped by the hive, including her children. She’s the colony pump.”
“Buzz buzz.”
She swapped her spoon for her fork but barely ate. She locked eyes with her reflection in a pool of syrup on her plate. I studied the crown of her head, tilted toward me. She was a spectrum of white, off-white, silver, see-through, ecru. I wished, not for the first time, that I was a phrenologist.
I nudged her plate with mine. “Honey?” I sang. “Honey pie?”
She didn’t think I was funny.
The waitress appeared, a godsend in butt-firming sneakers. In keeping with some deeply lodged nostalgia or else airborne irony, she wore rhinestone glasses on a chain and her bleached hair in a towering cone. Her name tag read CHERYL.
“Anything else I can get for you?” She gasped at my plate. “Why, you kids barely ate a thing.” She waggled a finger at me. “It wasn’t the food, was it?”
I laughed weakly. Her Southern accent struck me as fake. Oola crossed her arms, refused to look up.
“I’m just a slow eater,” I said.
“Well, take your time, dear,” the waitress said. She made to move away, but Oola grabbed the corner of her apron. The waitress turned, penciled eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Do you know anything about bees?” Oola asked.
“Oola…” I said softly. I tried to smile at the waitress with my eyes.
“I know they make honey,” the waitress said with a tight laugh. Her tone was not so lighthearted that her impatience didn’t creep through. She had Formica to wipe down, meringue pies to doctor. Oola might have been beautiful, but, believe it or not, Cheryl had once been a peach in her own right, back in the day, and she knew all the tricks in the bag. Don’t let these nylons fool you, I pictured her saying to some beefy truck driver. I went to prom all four years. She’d direct his thick fingers. Feel that? A terse nod. Good legs never go.
“Did you know that they bury their dead?” Oola asked, blinking like a straight-A student. “They have special bees who carry the bodies away.” She smiled. “Your hair just reminded me.”
A bit dazed, the waitress touched her hive of curls. “Oh, this old thing,” she said unconvincingly.
But Oola laughed brightly. “It’s classic. I love it!” Cheryl and I were inclined to believe her. “Could I order a cup of chamomile tea?” She leaned in slightly. “With honey, of course.”
Cheryl grinned: This script, she knew. “Coming right up, love,” she said, doodling cursorily on her pad. She turned to me, instantaneously united with Oola. They both surveyed my piled fries. “And, you, eat up. She’s buying you time.”
The women laughed knowingly and Cheryl flounced away, patting her headstone of hair.
I looked at Oola. Her smile had faded. She swirled her little finger in syrup. I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t think of what. She sensed me looking and winked, but grimly. “What a dinosaur,” she said in an undertone. Her cruelty, however theatrical, rattled me. “It’s a wonder she doesn’t tip over.”
We both looked across the tiled floor to where Cheryl leaned against the counter, gabbing with the cook. Her rhinestone glasses dangled dangerously near the grill, and I couldn’t help but notice how her nylons bunched about the knees. My stomach lurched. It was the same gut drop I felt when I walked past an amputee in the street and glimpsed his offered nub. I couldn’t help the flash-point nausea. It hit me before logic or pity. Oola made a sizzling sound with her tongue against her teeth. There was a dollop of syrup on the edge of her dress. I didn’t mention it.
Upon finding the stain a few days later, when I had smoothed the fabric over my hips, I felt a tingle of remorse. In the gloam of the basement, the spot was barely visible. I cheered myself up by twirling, as Oola had done on the red-padded steps of the opera-house lobby. There was that heavenly nether breeze. My stockinged feet made no sound on the concrete. If I concentrated I could hear the operagoers’ cheers. Brava brava. A smattering of feeble but heartfelt applause; and underneath that, the washing machine’s steady throb.
* * *
I’D TOUCHED HER STALACTITES. Even in the glare of the sun, sunbathing in the garden or filling her tub from the hose, she could no longer look clean to me. This is not a value judgment: She was a messy girl, she left traces. She threw bones; I took notes. This was the essence of our give-and-take, our busy little jig.
We were still sitting on the porch, as it seemed we always had been and would be, dwarfed by the hills in our dingy still life. I’d run out of questions, and we occupied private interests in what felt like a peaceable silence. She was scratching the back of her knee with a chopstick. There was ash on her pant leg. The radio hummed from within. Theo had joined us, chewing on an infertile Chia Pet from occupants past. To distract myself I’d begun to fold laundry. I’d plucked the latest load of undies from the clothesline, still a bit stiff with that wonderful smell of air-dried cotton in autumn, and was rolling them into packets as my mother had done, stacking them like tamales in the big wicker basket between my spread legs.
I was jarred by what she said next.
“What you’re doing is a little bit weird, Leif. Admit it.”
“What?” I glanced up, briefs in hand. Instinctively I crossed my legs. “Was I sitting like a midwife? Sometimes I slip into it.”
She shook her head. “This tranny thing.” She pointed to the basket. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“Weird?” Blood rose to my face. “You don’t mind when I paint my nails.”
“That’s different.”
The intensity of my anger surprised me. I kicked away the basket. “Oh, is it? What the fuck, Oola? Aren’t we a twenty-first-century couple? Am I supposed to drink beer, call you my woman? You of all people would hate that. And tranny is a slur, FYI.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, relatively unruffled. “It’s … well, for fuck’s sake, it’s weird. It’s—unnatural.”
I laughed out loud, harshly, thinking of the waves of pollen that had gilded the sky. I thought of the caterpillars piling up on the porch. I gestured to the pulsa
ting hills. “So that’s natural?”
“Do you want to be a woman, Leif?” Her voice was suddenly lurid with tenderness. “Is that what this is? Tell me. It’s OK.” She stubbed out her cigarette and leaned toward me, hand out. “Just be honest.”
I was amazed by her stupidity. “No,” I said hotly, “I want to be you.”
Everything got still then, stiller than before. It was an artificial stillness, the difference between a still life and a posed photograph. A low breeze rattled the now-empty clothesline and the lawn’s shaggy grasses. All that could be heard were Theo’s low purrs. She stood up. “That’s pretty stupid,” she said softly. “I thought one was enough.” She dusted her hands off. “I’m having a bath.”
She went inside. I kept on folding, breathing hard. I looked to the hills; a light fog was rolling in. In the distance a coyote called. “Watch yourself,” I warned Theo. He blinked at me, still purring. I finished the load and ducked into the kitchen. It was empty. The radio was on, whining to no one. I snapped it off with undue force, then, upon reflection, I took out the batteries. The resulting silence was mist-thick. There was nothing but us now: no distractions, no other planets. All intelligent life would have to congregate here. I upended the radio and stuck it in a drawer. Warmed by this tiny revenge, I went about my evening as usual. O and I were in bed by eleven.
Perhaps things wouldn’t have fallen apart if she hadn’t gotten sick. Perhaps at least the dissolution would have taken longer, or a more conventional course. They might have fallen apart in the way of an apple, browned flesh slipping off, a neutral conclusion. One’s destiny: mush. But as she hadn’t been sleeping and was eating very little—preparing only rice on the nights when she cooked, which she slathered in mustard as though that made all the difference—and insisted on bathing outside in the October gloom, her sickness was as inevitable as our coming to blows in a particularly flammable fashion. My Oola—she could be flamboyant and moribund at the very same time, extending her arms opera-style.
The very next morning, she couldn’t get out of bed. It was a grim day with a chill breeze, the previous night’s fog still hanging around. I was wearing thick socks and ghosting over the hardwood. It was almost noon and she hadn’t stirred. I floated to her bedside.
“Are you OK?” I asked of the blanketed mound.
In her feverish state, she found this question hilarious. I too realized my foolishness. “Tell me what hurts,” I said. “Go slowly. Take your time.”
She moaned. “I just hurt, Leif. I can’t be specific. Close the blinds, will you?”
I did as she asked, then stood by the window, wringing my hands. She showed no visible outward signs of sickness. Her hair was matted; she wore an old Curtis T-shirt. I tried to suss out the hot spot, to find where it hurt, but the longer I stood still and watched her, the more aware I became of my own body and the farther away hers seemed, as though her suffering threw my health into relief. My heart beat bossily and my skin sizzled, a corporeal I told you so. I was horrified by this backward slide. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake a certain smugness, a lightness to the limbs that were definitively mine. Unable to stand still any longer, I fled to the kitchen and fixed her a magnificent breakfast. I arranged it on a tray and brought it to her in bed, along with a pile of magazines.
She hadn’t moved in the last hour. Only with the greatest effort did she lift her head to respond to my entrance.
I stood at the foot of her bed. “You should eat.”
“Oh,” she breathed, taking in the spread with glossy eyes. “That’s sweet of you. Maybe later.”
“Come on, Oola,” I coaxed. “You’ll like it.”
“I don’t want it,” she mumbled. “But thank you.” She rolled over, and I couldn’t help but feel affronted.
“Of course you do,” I said, thrusting the tray toward her. “It’s your favorite.”
I could detect her voice hardening from under the covers. “Leif, I feel queasy. Just give me a sec.”
I turned on the lamp and sat on the edge of the bed. “Oola, you need it. Just listen.” I described in loving detail the meal I’d prepared: one of her peanut butter pickle sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a cup of medium-hot coffee with enough soy milk to turn it light brown but not beige (like a nipple in the sun, she’d joked), a handful of dried apricots (she never ate more than six in one sitting), unbuttered but copiously salted microwave popcorn, Diet Mountain Dew (her mother preached its healing powers), and a bowl of chia chocolate mousse, the recipe for which she’d taped to the fridge door and nearly mastered. I’d put everything in the ceramic dishes she’d found on the side of the road in Salinas and brought out the bulk bottle of mustard.
“It’s exactly how you like it,” I promised, fighting the urge to add, I made it especially for you. I spooned up some mousse. “Here,” I said, bringing it down to her lips. “Just relax.”
When she didn’t react, I pried her mouth open with my index finger and wedged the spoon in. She opened her eyes and swatted my hand away with sudden force. The spoon went flying. “What the fuck are you doing?” she cried.
“I’m trying to take care of you.”
She hid her face in the blanket.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, wiping chocolate goo off my sleeve. “The least you could do is try it.”
She slowly pulled the blanket down and stared at me. “The least you could do is interest me.”
From where I sat, her face looked puffy. Her eyes were flat and gray. With the flip of a switch, I’d lost her again. I set the tray carefully on the floor. “Have it your way.” In flash moments like this, she was slippery, prismatic, refracting light straight in my eyes. It wasn’t only at chance angles that she evaded me; in the past weeks her body had been changing too, hardening, dwindling, as she ate less and smoked more. I found new scabs every night, presumably from her scratching.
“Open the window,” she called from under twenty pounds of pillow. She lifted her head a bit. “Please.”
I looked at the plump purple pouches under her eyes, and something welled up in me. I thought again of the warm winters, the mustard-yellow skies. I thought of the caterpillars’ whispery husks. When once tomatoes in December inspired me, as if a breakdown between seasons meant that even nature was questioning and that the walls had finally softened between other duos (male/female, you/me), this atmospheric tizzy now incensed me. I opened the window and looked down at the lawn, studded with premature flowers (or perhaps they were late), and pined with sudden sharpness for a recognizable god, a deep dude in Deep Freeze, instead of all the little poets we had to make do with. “I hate modernity!” I hissed. It sounded even stupider when I said it aloud; I tore off my sweatshirt and upset the apricots on Oola’s tray.
“Fluid modernity,” she corrected without raising her head. “Post-postmodern.” She raised one limp hand and pointed out the window toward the mailbox. “Post office.” She changed the finger’s direction. “Bedpost.”
I wanted to grab her by the heels, turn her upside down, and shake her until one solid self, like a penny, dropped out.
Instead, I took off my shoes and got in bed beside her.
“What are you doing?” she muttered.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and buried my face in her hair. It was lank, unwashed, and smelled like a garden—more dirt than roses. Her neck pulsed with fever.
“What do you think?” I asked her clavicles.
“Stop.” She was either too tired or too resigned to wriggle away. Instead, she just plucked at my fingers, like a kid playing Chopsticks. “You’ll get sick,” she crooned.
“Bingo.”
She sighed, and I sensed her body turning, planet-like, toward sleep. Infinite tiny muscles slackened. I felt her fade out, as if blanched by my attention. I was a summer, sometimes oppressive, and she an old pair of Levi’s, frayed by my gaze. I slid my hands under the waistband of her panties and kneaded the fabric instead of the flesh.
“What are you wearin
g?” she managed.
I kept rubbing and considered. “Nothing of yours.” To myself, I thought, Rayon. Possibly a blend. I scrounged for the tag, pulled away for a moment, confirmed my hypothesis. With a heave of satisfaction, I resettled against her. This was a new technique for me, tactile rather than transvestite; the more I touched the fabric, the more cohesively a memory formed, and the closer I came to a sort of full-body déjà vu. The tableau that took shape was from the early days, of our circling each other in London, when we were still awkward with choice parts of our bodies and had to be hammered when talking. We were outside a club; she was smoking. I’d asked to walk her back to the flat she was renting. She’d demurred, flapping her hands. “I’m sorry,” she’d finally spluttered. “You can’t come in. It’s stupid, but…” She looked away. “I’m wearing baggy underwear.”
I laughed so hard the other smokers started. “You found me out,” I said. “I want to put them on my head.” I begged for a peek, which she delivered right there on the street.
Since that night they’d only gotten droopier. The elastic had lost nearly all of its snap; the texture was nubby and thin. The fabric was printed with once-rosy apples that also seemed to have aged, gotten smaller and darkened. For one dizzying moment I confused the heat of her fever, present tense, with the heat of her blush on that evening in London. She was saying my name, she was begging. It took me a moment to orient her words, to line up the corners of our bodies with the bed in which we lay.
“You’ll catch them,” she fumbled, on the far edge of consciousness. “They burrow in cotton.”
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