Girl Boy Girl

by Savannah Knoop

  Behind me, Laura said, “He barely ever goes out. He’s like a zombie. Just stays in the family room writing. Gets chocolate stains all over ’is keyboard. You know, he stays in the same pajamas for weeks at a time. We finally said ‘Listen, bloke, you can’t be smellin’ that way ’round our child.’”

  They looked at me.

  I said, “Who you talking ’bout?”

  He handed me the lipstick. I flipped it over. The label read, “Vixen.” I leaned in and fumbled with it.

  He said, “Alright, cherry, vanilla, and go!”

  I felt as if my body was caving into itself.

  “And beautiful, very sexy,” he said excitedly.

  My reflection looked awkward, my nose too bulbous and my cheeks too fat.

  He said, encouragingly, “Stunning!”

  I heard Laura ask in back of him, “Can he keep that lipstick?”

  The stick, rolled all the way up, crumbled off its hilt and plopped down onto my sneaker. Laura laughed; Chris snapped away.

  “We done?” I asked trying to drawl a little. I felt exasperated that she was just standing there laughing. Did I look as stupid as I felt? I felt like I had failed at being a graceful fairy.

  “Ah, I think we got that shot.”

  Returning to the big room, Laura said to Chris, “You know, you really should bring me chocolate next time. I won’t forget.” She fixed her hands on her hips. Chris distractedly jogged through his Polaroids.

  “Can I have one of those?” She asked, her voice raising its pitch like an auctioneer’s.

  “Yeah. Here, take this one.”

  “That one? And this one?” She insisted, teetering back and forth a little.

  “No, I can’t give you that one. It’s my marker.”

  “Well how ’bout I trade you this one and that for that?”

  “Here, I’ll give you these two.”

  “But you’ll be sending us the pictures too, right?” she asked with urgency.

  “Yes.”

  “Right on. At ease,” she said. He winked collecting all of his gun-black gadgetry into its rightful pockets. “JT, adieu.” He went to hug me, but I winced. “That’s right. I understand. Real honor to spend time with you, man.” He turned. “Speedie, also an honor. I’ll remember your chocolate in the future.”

  “You better or else the Gods will whip you in your sleep every night ’til you do.”

  “Bye,” I whispered.

  From the landing, we watched him tromp down the long steep stairs, his equipment banging at his sides. He waved once more and shut the door behind himself.

  Laura waited a moment as if she was counting his paces and said, “Fucking great. Just fuckin’ great.”

  I said, still trying to practice my drawl, “I can’t do that accent. I think he knew.”

  “No he didn’t. It was fuckin’ perfect.”

  “You should have given me more details. It looks obvious when he asks me where I live and I can’t give a straight answer.” I cast the blue rat’s nest off my head and started to scratch violently. “I need to get this thing off my chest. I think they’re going to shrivel up and die.”

  “Here, I’ll help. Let me see the chocolate . . .” As she examined the label, she said, “They don’t care. Those details don’t matter. People believe what they want to. I’ve noticed all these years, if I’m speaking with someone and I established myself as someone else, I can drop my accent completely after a while and nobody ever notices because who they think I am is already ingrained in their conscience. People rarely question what you tell them. Why should they? I rarely do. So those details, unless it’s a very blatant fuck-up, don’t matter. And even then I’ll be beside you. You did great.”

  “I know they don’t matter because this is a one-time thing,” I snorted, peeling my shirt off, unhooking the butterfly clips on the ace. The bandage stayed intact and stiff as wet pants put out to dry in a snow storm. I flung it near her lap. She helped me in the back, clutching the chocolate bar. She read the percentage of cacao and muttered, “Dressed up Hershey’s. They all think JT is a pansy.” Once the bind was shed, I lumped it on the sofa. The thing reminded me of skin grafts and pickled body parts in jars. My tits felt like bruised, imprinted lumps, and I quickly pulled my T-shirt over them.

  She asked, “Can I look in your kitchen?”

  I nodded yes. This would become a ritual for us whenever we entered someone’s home.

  I walked with her, rubbing my chest for circulation. Neighbors’ conversations floated up through our safety-glass windows. One naked light bulb reflected off of the Formica counters, which I’d scrubbed a few hours earlier. This was a welcome relief from the usual trail of crumbs, coffee stains, cigarette butts, and pats of butter that my household left around as a collective sacrifice.

  She opened our dank fridge, and I felt her disappointment. Naomi only ate vegetables, fish, and rice. I insisted on buying Swiss chard that I never cooked. The boys had nothing but greasy jarred condiments and a box of Jiffy cornbread mix. I fished an orange from the back shelf and handed it to her. We leaned on the counter and looked out into the dark open space. The sheets, which partitioned my roommates’ personal spaces, undulated in the breeze from the open freight door. I watched as she peeled the orange. Her overextended left thumb bulged on one side. As I learned later, every night before she went to bed, she popped it in her mouth, hooking her pointer finger over her nose, often proclaiming, “Time for a cigarette.”

  She said, “You know, I think you just needed to get warmed up.”

  I replied, “I’m not cut out for this.”

  “You did fuckin’ perfect.”

  I fell silent.

  We scissored the orange pulp, chewing on the rinds, while waiting for her cab.

  Twenty minutes after she’d left, my phone rang. As was her habit, she began by asking, “Are you on a landline?”

  “You know I only have one phone and it’s cordless.”

  “You need to get a land line.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry,” I said irascibly. “I am perfectly happy without one.”

  “So listen,” she cleared her throat. “I’ve got another meeting. In two weeks.” She described the impending meeting with Gus Van Sant.

  “Will you dye your eyebrows blond? I’ll make you an appointment and you can get another wax on the side. One of those Brazilian thirty-five dollar jobs.”

  “Why do I need to dye them?”

  “It’s a good disguise.”

  This made no sense. Certainly, I would be more noticeable walking around with peroxided eyebrows. I repeated, “This was a one-time thing . . .”

  I could have quit. There was a part of me that wanted to, but I was also intrigued. Pretending to be JT was like starting a love affair. I felt energized even during the most mundane parts of my day.

  The next day, setting up for the lunch rush at Basil, I allotted lemon rinds to rows of perspiring ice waters and replayed the best moments of the photo shoot in my mind.

  I ended up dying my eyebrows blond, and my hair, too.

  HAUTE CUISINE

  EVEN THOUGH I WAS ALREADY LATE, I decided to get a cup of acrid coffee from the Mr. Pickles deli. Ignoring the endless ringing of my cell phone, I popped my bike’s front tire up on the curve and stopped before a plywood plaque of Mr. Pickles himself. He was painted the same lewd green on both sides, and wore a sombrero and a gun-belt loaded with “MUSTA,” the R and D having long ago worn off. My phone rang again, and I glanced at the pad. It was Laura calling, again. I had already spoken to her about fifteen minutes before. She was nervous because Gus Van Sant, the director, was coming out to talk about optioning JT’s novel Sarah. He was bringing Mike Pitt, an actor who had been discovered on the street and had recently become a teen icon after his stint on Dawson’s Creek. I was nervous, too. I slammed the coffee, surrendering to my slight hysteria. I flattened the paper cup, threw it in a waste bin, and jumped on my bike.

  I rang the do
orbell to Geoff and Laura’s apartment. Swinging open the door, he said sweetly, “Hey, you’re here.”

  He had on black jeans and a paisley shirt, which he’d unbuttoned to reveal his smooth mid-chest. This was a lot flashier than his usual corduroys and sweatshirt uniform.

  “You look so handsome,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he said, “I was worried about my hair.”

  “No, no. You look good.” I said, walking up the stairs. “I’m sorry that I’m late.” Late and apologizing after the fact, as usual.

  “That’s alright. We’re not ready anyway. You want something to eat or anything? Laura’s still getting dressed.”

  “I’ll take a glass of water.”

  Laura called out in a small voice, “Savanni, can you come here for a minute?”

  Moored in the middle of the bedroom was a king-sized mattress, heaped with snarls of covers, clothes, and laundry. One side of the room was lined with built-in drawers and cupboards. Fruit-patterned curtains obscured the only window on the far wall, lending the room a greenish tint. Laura, dressed in her customary shapeless flower print, was leaning into the closet, tossing chunky sandals in various hues onto the narrow strip of floor between her and the bed. One could almost measure the importance of the impending meeting by the height of the pile. If Sarah got made into a movie it might mean no more dim, crappy apartment, no more day-to-day money worries, a few of Geoff’s songs on the soundtrack, and maybe even a record deal. The unfathomable potential made me want to dive into the porto-closet alongside Laura and start chucking shoes in the air with her. I waited for my marching orders—what she and Gus had discussed regarding the option, details of their friendship, what she’d said to Mike Pitt to convince him to come out along with Gus. I confess that my apprehension was also fueled by the fact that I was a huge fan of Gus’s since I’d first seen Drugstore Cowboy at the age of thirteen. I’d watched it over and over, memorizing lines. While Laura disappeared into the rickety closet, I scanned the bed for a hat, the hex of hexes.

  “What do you think? These?” she muttered, holding up a pair of the same sandals in black.

  I said, “Sure.”

  She then walked out into the hallway and placed them at the top of the stairs. I waited in the doorway of the bedroom.

  “Geoff,” she said a little more shrilly than before, but still gently, “Did you take out the car seat yet? We’ve really got to get out of here.” She looked at me a little desperately and said, “Here, can you help me?”

  I obediently followed her back into the kitchen. From behind a sarong curtain that hung before the pantry, she retrieved two Neiman Marcus shopping bags. She said proudly, “I found these in my neighbor’s recycling bin.” She began packing them with bottles of olive oil, fancy chocolates, chili jam, gummy-candy hamburgers, fortune-telling fish, and two bona fide Cheat River mugs, just like in the novel Sarah.

  “Wow, the Cheat River.”

  “Yeah, I got them just in time.”

  “So, what did you want to tell me about Gus?” I asked carefully.

  “Gus, right. God, I am sorry I am so scattered. Ah.”

  “It could be any little detail. I just don’t want to go in cold.”

  “We talked about, um, the option, but I said I wasn’t sure, so just say that. You can leave it open. And I talked to Mike briefly over the phone, and he sounds, real, sort of, displaced. He wasn’t sure what coast we were on. But there’s a sweetness to him.”

  I frowned and said, “Something else?”

  She said, biting the edge of her thumb, “Let’s see, I’ll think of more.”

  She led me to the top of the stairs, pulled on her shoes, then handed me the wigs. I placed the red one on her head, adjusting it so that it was straight. She looked so fragile and pale with all that scarlet nylon hair framing her face. She’d lost a lot of weight in the past couple weeks since we’d done the Cherry Vanilla shoot. She donned a straw hat with a little white flower in the band. I carelessly yanked at my blue wig and slid on my glasses. Geoff plunked the car seat behind the front door. He leaned against the banister, rocking his thumb and pinky back and forth like an incessant drum roll, and asked, “You guys ready?”

  Geoff hovered in the white zone in front of the hotel. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he pulled at his bangs, trying to conceal his receding hairline. Our father had been officially bald by the time he was twenty-nine, so considering that, Geoff wasn’t doing too badly. He was only thirty-three, but he knew that if he was going to make it as a musician it had to be soon—nobody was giving any breaks to balding rockers. Meanwhile, Laura dialed Gus’s room number on her cell phone and told him in JT’s southern drawl, “Hey y’all, we’re down heere waitin’.”

  In the backseat, I repeated under my breath, “Down here waitin’. Heere waitin’.”

  Mike and Gus crashed into the backseat like a wave. Mike squished in the middle, and Gus leaned over Mike to shake my hand. I bowed my head, extending my right hand limply, growling almost inaudibly, “Hi, hi.” I was certain that my voice would give me away. I imagined Gus saying to himself, “This doesn’t sound like the same person I spoke with a moment ago on the phone.” After a few seconds of awkward silence, Mike grabbed my shoulders and said coaxingly, “You don’t have to be shy with us. Here, I brought ’choo something.” His cheeks were flushed, and his lips bright fuchsia as if someone had painted them. Frank and Chuckie, my roommates, would have swooned over his sulky boyishness. His features were delicate like a doll’s. His malapert hair hung over his misty blue-green eyes. I felt jealous that he was the authentic reformed urchin—Mr. Real-life Oliver Twist. At the same time, I couldn’t help but be charmed by his good looks.

  Out of his knapsack, with a magician’s flourish, he pulled a white mesh thong with lace trim the color of Spanish moss, cut for packing, and a matching cupped bra, cut for stuffing. I felt the heat of my blush burn my cheeks.

  Laura, turning around in the passenger seat, whooped, “That’s hot, fucking hot.” Then she retrieved the Neiman Marcus bags and pushed them into the backseat, saying in her cockney accent, “Look, JT brought you presents too!”

  Geoff pulled out into traffic as Gus and Mike took inventory. Gus held up the pepper jam and nodded at me approvingly while Mike pulled out the gummy burger packages and, tearing them open, whispered to me, “You white-trash bitch!” Laura kept herself wound-up in her seat and said, “So, Gus, Mike, I’m Speedie,” then pointing to Geoff, continued, “And this is Astor, my partner.”

  “Yes, JT has told me about both of you—it’s a pleasure to finally meet.” Gus said.

  “Been talkin’ about us JT, have you? Hope he didn’t say anythin’ embarrasin’ about Astor here!” And she nudged Astor’s arm with her elbow, implying all sorts of sordid connections that I didn’t want to even begin to consider about my blood.

  “JT told me many wonderful things about you both,” Gus reassured.

  Geoff cleared his throat awkwardly, nodded in the rearview, and asked, “So this your guys’ first time in San Francisco?”

  In a reserved voice, Gus replied that he’d visited before. He propped up his head with his hand, leaning his elbow against the closed window. He wore a plain postal-blue crewneck sweater and a pale-beige collared shirt. He had a tiny frame and a big head with sandy overgrown brown hair. His eyes were deep amber like tree sap. As he explained that he had been living in Portland for a long time, he didn’t look at Laura or Geoff directly, but watched the scenery outside the window. I thought of one of my favorite scenes in Drugstore Cowboy, when the Matt Dillon character is high and has fantasies of escape—rabbits, spoons, and keys blowing past the white light of the backseat window. I wanted to ask Gus if he’d compiled the soundtrack for the movie himself, but I figured that JT wouldn’t ask such a toady question. Meanwhile, Laura and he talked about the astronomical prices of Victorian homes in Noe Valley. I marveled at how she kept the conversation constantly flowing.

  We drove up to Twin Peaks. T
he sky was a naked blue. We looped down the other side of the hill and headed to the Presidio while Laura kept talking, pointing out her favorite houses. I kept quiet, sighing occasionally, my head drooping like a dehydrated flower, my hands folded in my lap. I felt Mike staring at me. I stole a few glances myself, feeling as if I was in junior high, making gooey eyes with one of the popular boys. His leg pressed against mine with gentle pressure imposed by the backseat. Finally he said, “You don’t have to be shy with me, JT. Will you let me see your eyes?”

  I opened my mouth a few times like a guppy.

  Laura pounced.

  “Go ’head, JT, show ’im your eyes. Go on. You ’eard ’im. Don’t be shy.”

  I whispered dumbly, “I uh, I don’t uh—” I knew I sounded like a girl.

  Gus watched me curiously. Mike, his mouth opened slightly, scratched his ankles with his long fingernails (alarmingly long, I thought) and pressed, “Come on, JT.”

  I shook my head back and forth, feeling the wig wag. With the intonation of Eeyore, I said, “Alright.” Here I hadn’t even said a word, and I didn’t feel like they were doubting my intelligence. My silence was endearing. I pulled my bike glasses off hesitantly and dramatically, blinking like a daunted baby rodent. Here they are, I thought, the windows to my perfidious soul.

  Laura gushed, “Aren’t they beautiful? Isn’t ’e angelic? You could see why ’e needed protection on the street. ’E’s just so delicate. Can you imagine the throngs of men around ’im?”

  Geoff laughed at her exuberance.

  Mike said, “Yeah. You have pretty eyes, JT. Why’re you keeping those hidden?”

  Because it’s a disguise, I thought to myself.

  I couldn’t tell what Gus was thinking. He was very contained. I could feel him taking it all in, enjoying the bizarre silence that followed. I cracked my window. Geoff speeded us through the Cyprus-lined byways of the Presidio, the same route I took on my daily bike ride. The grass and miner’s lettuce along the road were still lush from a month’s rain. We passed the boarded-up insane asylum. I thought to mention something about it, but laughed a little to myself instead.