Kiss

by Francine Pascal

  Mary yawned again. She put her fingers into her fiery hair. "Because I can afford to."

  Gaia squinted at her. "What do you mean?"

  "I get a lot of love. From my folks, my brothers. I have extra."

  In the pale morning light, that seemed to Gaia both a totally unexpected and beautiful thing to say. She tried to imagine what kind of parents would love Mary so well and let her stay out all night, doing whatever she pleased. "Why not keep it for yourself?" Gaia heard herself asking. It was unusual for her brain to connect to her mouth so directly. "That's what most people would do."

  Mary considered this. "I have trouble holding on to it."

  Silence enveloped them again.

  After a long time Mary turned on her side and propped herself up on her elbow. "So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving dinner?"

  Gaia hesitated. She couldn't say she was doing nothing. It was too pathetic. It was begging for sympathy and an invitation. But she couldn't lie, either. She had a feeling Mary wouldn't buy a lie very easily. "Oh. Well. I was thinking I might --"

  "Wait a minute," Mary broke in. "Why am I asking? I know what you're doing."

  Gaia furrowed her brow. "You do?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. So?"

  "You're eating with my family."

  "I am?"

  "You are. You definitely are."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Completely, one hundred percent sure."

  Gaia couldn't help but let a smile out. "Great. I'll let myself know."

  A Crowded Thursday

  THE DOCTOR TIED THE BELT OF his nondescript and greatly despised tan trench coat. In recent years he'd become attached to very fine clothes. But this coat continued to be useful to him when he was conducting his "side business." It was not only too boring to warrant notice, but of such an inferior material that it was machine washable. That part was important.

  Pausing briefly at the corner of Fifty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, he studied the information stored in the tracking device. Now, this was a very busy girl. First the West Village, then Astor Place. Then the remote East Village, then West Seventy-seventh Street, Central Park, and what appeared to be a high floor of an apartment building on Central Park West and Sixty-fifth Street. Did teenagers no longer find sleep necessary at all?

  He would need to follow her carefully. He wanted this job done by midnight, and her current location -- no doubt in a private home -- was far less than ideal. That whorish woman -- what was her less than amusing alias? Travesura? -- had assured him this girl spent a lot of time on the streets and in public places. It had better be so.

  He touched his trusted knives, tied up in felt casing in his roomy pocket. This girl was reported to be quite beautiful and exceptionally strong. That was enticing to him. That's why he'd taken on the job.

  "Excuse me!" he snapped, nearly colliding with a shabby-looking woman pushing a stroller containing a shabby-looking infant.

  He tried to remember why there were so many people -- so many children -- milling around the streets of New York City on a Thursday morning at nine o'clock.

  E D

  For me, Thanksgiving is a mixed bag. On the one hand, there's turkey with stuffing and my grandfather s apple pie. I love that. On the other hand, there are turnips and pumpkin pie. I'd like to know: Who really likes pumpkin pie? Let's all be honest.

  On the one hand, there are people like me, hanging out with my grandparents. I love them. On the other hand, there are people like Gaia, who have nobody. That's heartbreaking.

  If you think about it, even the first Thanksgiving was in no way a cause for bilateral cheer. I mean, sure, the Native Americans had shown the Pilgrims how to farm the land, and they were psyched about their first harvest. But what did the Native Americans have to celebrate? Alcoholism, VD, and blankets infected with smallpox.

  too nice

  One arm. Two arms. The fabric settled with unexpected ease over her stomach and butt, the skirt grazing a few inches above her knees.

  The Red Dress

  "THIS IS TOO NICE." GAIA SAID it out loud to the Victorian-colored glass chandelier that hung over the vast, pillow-laden guest bed in Mary's family's apartment.

  Being friends with Mary was too nice. Mary's unbelievably huge and fantastic apartment on Central Park West was way too nice. The smell of roasting turkey and buttery stuffing was too nice. The thought of spending Thanksgiving with a real family for the first time in five years . . . too nice to think about.

  Gaia tried to remind herself to keep her suspicions close around her, but Mary, this place . . . it was dazzling. Can't you just enjoy something? she asked herself impatiently. Accept that some places, some people are purely nice?

  She didn't have time to answer herself. There was a knock on the door, and seconds later, Mary opened it partially and poked her head in. "Hi."

  "Hi."

  "Did you sleep?"

  "Like a vegetable."

  "Me too. Guess what time it is?"

  Gaia shrugged. She wasn't used to having someone talk to her while she was lying in bed. She wasn't a slumber-party kind of girl. She sat up and hugged a pillow on her lap.

  "One o'clock. P.M. Big meal is in one hour."

  Gaia cleared her throat. What exactly had she'd gotten herself into here? "Is it a dressed-up sort of thing?" Her voice came out squeaky. She didn't want to bring up the fact that she had no home, no possessions, and certainly no Central Park West party clothes at the moment.

  Mary had a knack for coming to Gaia's rescue without Gaia even having to ask. "Just a little. I've been laying out stuff in my room. I have the most fabulous dress for you. Come on."

  Gaia sat on the edge of the bed. She was wearing a big gray T-shirt she'd worn under her flannel shirt last night. Her legs were bare, her feet covered by white cotton socks. "Like this?" she asked.

  "Sure," Mary said. "It's just down the hall. No brothers in sight. I mean, in case you care."

  Mary was under the mistaken impression that Gaia was a normal human being who did things like this. The easiest thing would be to play along, to pretend she had comfy pals whose clothes she borrowed, in whose homes she felt perfectly fine wandering around in a T-shirt and socks.

  Gaia was a terrible actress. She skulked down the hall and darted into Mary's room like an escapee from Attica.

  Once the door was shut, she made herself relax. Mary wasn't kidding about laying out clothes. If there was a carpet in the spacious room, it would have taken an archaeologist to find it. Only the rough shapes of the various pieces of furniture were apparent under thick piles of clothes.

  Mary was unapologetic about her colossal slobbiness. Gaia liked that in a person.

  "Okay, you ready for the perfect dress?" Mary asked.

  Gaia nodded.

  "Tra la." Mary held up a tiny, red, crushed velvet dress with a plunging neckline.

  Gaia stared. "Are you kidding? I couldn't fit my left foot into that dress."

  Mary frowned. "Have you tried it? No. Shut up until you try it."

  Gaia held out her hand for it. It weighed about three ounces. "Yes, ma'am. I've never been dressed by a fascist before." Feeling large and self-conscious, Gaia pulled the T-shirt over her head and quickly yanked the dress over her head and shoulders. One arm. Two arms. The fabric settled with unexpected ease over her stomach and butt, the skirt grazing a few inches above her knees.

  Mary was surveying the progress with her hands on her hips. When Gaia turned around, her frown blossomed into a smile. "Wow! See?" She took Gaia's hand and pulled her in front of the full-length mirror on the back of her closet.

  Gaia gazed at herself in genuine surprise. The dress actually fit. Granted, it was made of stretchy stuff. And it did cling to her gigantic muscles in an unforgiving manner.

  "I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dress," Gaia mumbled.

  "What?" Mary demanded. "I'm going to smack you, girl. You look incredible."

  Gaia turned around to examine
her backside. "I have incredibly huge muscles."

  Mary blew out her breath in frustration. "Guyaaaaa," she scolded. "You have the body every woman would die to have. You have the long, defined muscles that keep the rest of us slogging it out in overpriced gyms around the country. You have to see that."

  "I see Mr. Universe."

  "Shut up!" Mary roared. Now she was mad. She held out her hand. "So give it back. Seriously. I mean it. If you can't appreciate that it looks beautiful, you don't deserve to borrow my goddamned dress."

  Gaia cast her a pleading gaze. "Look, I'm trying. I really am." She studied herself in the mirror for another minute, trying to see herself through other eyes.

  The dress really was extraordinary. Gaia loved the too long sleeves and the way they flared at the wrist. "Please let me borrow it?" Gaia asked, weirded out by hearing those words in her voice. "I'll say anything, true or untrue. I am Kate Moss. I am a waif. I can't do a single push-up."

  Mary laughed. "Fine. It's yours. In fact, you can have it for keeps. After seeing you in it, I won't be able to stand the sight of me."

  Now it was Gaia's turn to glare. "Hang on. You're allowed the exaggeratedly negative body image, but not me? Who made these rules?"

  Mary waved a hand in the air. "Point taken. Never mind. But keep the stupid dress." She gestured at the snowstorm of clothes. "I have others, as you may have noticed." She rooted around the bottom of her closet and threw Gaia a pair of black cotton tights.

  "Thanks," Gaia said.

  "Oh, and here."

  "Ouch." A dark red, forties-style pump flew out of the closet and hit Gaia on the shin. Thankfully, she dodged its mate.

  "Sorry," Mary murmured. Now she was gathering jewelry for Gaia.

  "What size are your feet?" Gaia asked, staring suspiciously at the shoe.

  "Eight."

  "I wear eight and a half," Gaia said.

  Mary was busy untangling a clump of necklaces. "So? Close enough."

  Apparently Mary didn't get hung up on little matters like housing all five toes.

  Again, though, Mary was right. The shoe was close enough to fitting. Gaia put on the second one and stomped around the room, trying to get used to the heels.

  Mary spent the next twenty minutes coaxing Gaia into the makeup chair, and the twenty minutes after that brushing Gaia's hair, spangling her with jewelry, and hunting down the exact right shade of lip gloss. At last she was done. "Oh my God, my brothers are going to be drooling," she announced, nodding at her finished work.

  Gaia did feel prettier, but she also felt like someone else.

  "Are you ready to meet the clan?"

  If Gaia had the potential to feel nervous, now would have been an obvious time. "I guess so." She looked at Mary. Mary was still wearing blue nylon warm-up pants and a wife-beater tank top. Light freckles stood out on her thin shoulders and arms. Her hair was possibly the craziest mess Gaia had ever seen.

  "Oh, I'm fine," Mary claimed. Her eyes darted around the room, and she picked up the first thing in her path, a blue chenille sweater, and stuck her head through. "All set," she confirmed.

  Gaia was speechless as she followed Mary out of the room. She remembered what Mary had said about not holding on to love very well.

  Potato Physics

  "HOW ARE THE POTATOES COMING, Sam?" Mrs. Gannis's voice floated into the kitchen.

  Sam looked up from the huge aluminum pot. He felt like a wolf with its leg caught in a trap. He finally understood the wolf s perverse temptation to chew off its own leg.

  Why had he insisted, in that breezy, thoughtless way, that he would take care of the mashed potatoes? At the time, mashed potatoes seemed like the simplest thing on earth. You get potatoes; you mash them.

  Besides, he'd figured this important job in the kitchen would keep him out of the fray of tense Gannis-family relations. It would give him a little breathing room from Heather, too, which they both needed. It had gotten to the point where every single thing brought them right back into the danger zone. A casual question from Heather's mother about what they'd done the previous night, an innocent reference to chess, a song on the radio about a girl with blond hair. Not being in the same room with Heather or talking about anything at all seemed the safest bet.

  But Sam now understood that making mashed potatoes belonged in a category with particle physics, only harder. Before you mashed them, you had to cook them to make them soft, it turned out. How were you supposed to do that? First he'd thrown the whole pile in the oven, but what was the right temperature, and how long would it take? Then he took a cue from the one meal he'd ever made successfully -- spaghetti. You made hard noodles soft by boiling them. So he boiled up the potatoes. It seemed to take hours before they were soft.

  Now he was beating the crap out of those poor, boiled potatoes, working up a sweat. On the table was a whole tool kit of discarded instruments. The dinner fork was too small, obviously. The plastic whisk was wimpy. The metal slotted spoon made a tremendous racket. At last Mr. Gannis had acquainted him with a tool called a masher. A masher! A holiday miracle. Who could have guessed there'd be an implement built for this exact purpose?

  Now he was madly mashing. Only the potatoes still didn't look right. Mashed potatoes were supposed to be smooth and pale yellow in color. These were lumpy and riddled with brown skin. Oh. Something occurred to him. You were supposed to take the skin off first, weren't you? He tried to fish out the bigger pieces of skin. It was hopeless.

  Well, maybe they tasted good. He took a taste.

  They tasted slightly more flavorful than air. All right, well, that's what salt was for. He shook in a small blizzard of salt.

  He cast an eye at the fridge. Hmmm. He took out a box of butter. He remembered his mom once saying that her motto for cooking was, When in doubt, add butter. He threw in a stick. He threw in another stick. He was still in doubt. He threw in a third.

  He stirred, hoping his mother hadn't just been being witty.

  Disappointment

  "SO, GAIA, HOW LONG HAVE YOU lived in New York?"

  Now Gaia remembered the problem with meeting strangers, particularly the parents-of-friends variety of strangers. They asked you things.

  Gaia chewed a piece of turkey breast and tried to look agreeably at Mary's mother. She swallowed it with effort. "Well, I guess I -- "

  "No questions," Mary interrupted, coming to Gaia's rescue yet again. "No interrogating Mary's new friend, Mom."

  Mary's mom laughed, which Gaia thought was pretty sporting of her. She gave Gaia a conspiratorial look. "My daughter is very bossy. You may have noticed this."

  Gaia liked Mary's mom so far. She had dark red hair, sort of like Mary's but far better behaved. She wore cropped black wool pants and a bright orange velvet button-down shirt that clashed mightily with her hair. It wasn't standard middle-aged mom apparel, but it wasn't a grown-up person trying too hard to be cool, either.

  The family's cook, Olga, appeared at Gaia's elbow with a steaming silver serving dish of baby vegetables. They were tidy and beautiful, not the creamed vegetable slop that usually showed up on Thanksgiving. Gaia guessed from Olga's accent that she was Russian and that she hadn't been speaking English for long. "Thank you," she murmured, trying to serve herself without bouncing baby potatoes into her lap. Or Mary's dress's lap.

  "The food's fantastic," Mary's brother said to Olga.

  Was he Paul or Brendan? Gaia couldn't remember. He was the cuter one, though, with light blue eyes and a quarter-inch of stubble on his chin.

  "Absolutely," Mary's father agreed. He raised his glass for at least the fourth time in the meal. "Let's give thanks for Olga, a godsend." They all clinked glasses and agreed yet again. Gaia noted that there was sparkling water in his glass and not wine.

  Olga seemed pleased with the attention. "Stop eet, Meester Moss," she ordered coyly.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Gaia saw Mary stand up.

  "I gotta pee. I'll be back in a minute," Mary announced to the tabl
e at large.

  Mary's mom smiled in her forbearing way, and Gaia saw an emotion she wasn't sure how to analyze. There was something in the woman's face that struck Gaia as both worried and apologetic at the same time.

  Suddenly Olga was back at Gaia's elbow, this time holding a basket of corn bread. It smelled like happiness. "Would you like some?" Olga asked.

  Remotely, without really thinking about it, Gaia registered that Olga's words came out clear and crisp, without an accent.

  "Of course. It smells delicious. Did you make this, too?" Gaia asked politely.

  She served herself a fat piece of corn bread, and when she looked up, the entire Moss family, minus Mary, was staring at her. Olga was staring, too.

  Gaia glanced from face to face. Oh, shit. What had she done now? These stares were too extreme to signify she'd used the wrong fork. She felt her mouth to see if she was wearing a mustache of cranberry sauce or anything.

  "You speak Russian," Mr. Moss declared.

  "I do?" Gaia found herself asking dumbly. She looked back at Olga and realized what must have happened. Olga must have murmured to her in Russian, and she must have answered in Russian without thinking. "I -- I guess I do. Some, anyway," Gaia said, her fingers pinching and pulling at the napkin under the table.

  Gaia felt badly thrown by this. Her mother spoke Russian to her from the time she was a baby, and Gaia grew accustomed to switching back and forth between languages hundreds of times a day. But those words gave her a feeling on her tongue that she associated purely with her mother. She hadn't spoken Russian in five years.

  The table was still silent. Gaia felt her vision blurring. She stood up, keeping her gaze down. "Excuse me for just a moment," she mumbled.

  "Of course," Mrs. Moss said.

  Gaia walked blindly from the dining room and down the hallway. She hadn't meant to go to Mary's room, exactly. She just wasn't thinking.

  The moment she opened the door to Mary's room, Mary froze. Gaia took two steps forward and froze, too.