When Katie Met Cassidy

by Camille Perri

  “You ladies here for dinner?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Cassidy said. “I was thinking—”

  Raquel cut her off. “I’ve got you. I know what you like, Cassidy.” Raquel shot a malevolent glance at Katie and then raised her eyebrows at Cassidy. “You want it raw tonight?”

  Before Cassidy could get a word out, Raquel turned back toward the kitchen. Over her shoulder she said loud enough for the whole place to hear, “I hope your friend eats fish.”

  Cassidy cleared her throat. “Just to clarify, she was referring to the crudo. The raw—”

  Katie held up her hand to make Cassidy stop talking.

  The wine they ordered arrived, and Cassidy was thankful to have hers. She took a long sip.

  “Let me guess,” Katie said. “You used to date Chef Raquel.”

  Cassidy tapped at the side of her wineglass. “Date is a strong word.”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s more like we’ve shared a few special moments.”

  “I see. So should I worry about the pâté being poisoned?”

  “Maybe you should let me taste it first.” Cassidy dug into the pâté then, and scooped them each some beet salad. “She’s a friend of Becky’s. That’s how I know her.”

  One bite of beets and Cassidy’s head spun. She was hungrier than she’d realized.

  “I had no idea there were so many lesbian chefs in this town.” Katie seemed choke on the word lesbian, but she tried to save it by adding, “I’m kind of fascinated by your life. You seem to really know how to have a good time.”

  “If last night was any indication,” Cassidy said, “you do have some idea of how to let your hair down.”

  “Please don’t bring up last night ever again.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make light of it.” Cassidy jumped at the opportunity to steer the conversation away from herself. “It seems like you’re going through a rough time. With your breakup and all.”

  Katie nodded. “I think last night at the bar I was trying to feel like somebody else. For once in my life to be completely careless and carefree.”

  “Hear, hear.” Cassidy raised her glass. “Careless and carefree happens to be my specialty. See? We are meant to be friends.”

  Katie pushed some beets around her plate with her fork. Her face was opalescent in the light from their table’s flickering candle.

  Cassidy was breaking her own rules, contradicting herself by just being here. She was supposed to bid Katie goodbye today, and instead they were sitting across from a table together, alone, and she was leaning too far forward, hopped up and overeager.

  They were interrupted then by a special delivery from the kitchen—an enormous two-tiered plate of oysters, mussels, clams, shrimp, and tuna tartare.

  “Wow,” Katie said. “Raquel was not messing around. There is a whole lot of raw, vaguely vaginic seafood before us.”

  Cassidy squeezed some lemon onto an oyster and slurped it down. “I’m pretty sure vaginic isn’t a word.”

  “It’s not?” Katie went for a shrimp, probably because it was less suggestive. “Well it should be.”

  It had been hours since either of them had eaten, and together they ravaged that plate. Cassidy watched Katie, hungry as she was, lost in the reverie of juice, flavor, wine.

  Behind Katie a wall was painted with quotations from Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sentimental declarations on food, enjoyment, sucking the marrow—the kind of thing Cassidy would normally scoff at as trying too hard, but tonight they struck her as a seamless backdrop to Katie’s iridescence.

  Katie leaned across the table and brought her voice down like she had a secret. “Can I ask you something personal?”

  Cassidy waited, sensing they were on the brink of something.

  “Were you always this way?”

  Cassidy paused midbite to smile crookedly. “Do you mean was I always this awesome?”

  “I mean, this.” Katie waved her fork at Cassidy. “Were you prancing around the halls of your high school wearing custom suits and hitting on girls in the locker room?”

  “Not exactly. It wasn’t until college that this”—Cassidy waved her own fork at herself as Katie had done—“happened.”

  She could pinpoint it to an exact moment, actually, during her first week at NYU when she’d been walking along Broome Street and that woman crossed in front of her—that woman who would never know the profound effect she had on young Cassidy’s future. Like Cassidy, she was tall and slim with broad shoulders. She had the same dark hair, but hers was cut short and she wore a crisp dress shirt with a light scarf that flew behind her in the breeze. When she stepped to the corner and raised her hand to hail a cab, Cassidy quickly pulled out her phone and snapped a photo.

  At the time Cassidy couldn’t say why, but she studied the photo for a long while right there on the street. There was something about this stranger that she had the urge to memorize. She didn’t look like a woman, exactly, and she didn’t look like a man. But she looked good. Cassidy continued on, dazed, not entirely sure where she was going, until she found herself in front of a salon window. Through its slick glass, everyone inside looked like a model or an actress, but intimidating as this was, she forced herself to enter and approach the receptionist.

  “Do you take walk-ins?” Cassidy had asked, having never hated her dark ponytail more than she did in that moment.

  The skinny giraffe of a woman scoffed. “We schedule three months out.”

  But the tattooed woman behind her looked up. “I just had a cancellation. Have you been here before?”

  “No.” Cassidy held up her phone with the picture of the stranger. “But can you give me this haircut? I have money.”

  The tattooed woman squinted at the phone, then back at Cassidy. “Hot,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you washed.”

  The haircut turned out to be an outrageous three hundred dollars, but Cassidy considered it worth every penny, especially because she used her parents’ credit card to pay for it. Back on the street she found herself newly capable of keeping her head up while she walked—a trait of contention her mother would have gladly forked over three hundred bucks to see corrected. She checked her reflection in every storefront she passed, reassessing herself from the neck down—her baggy hoodie, loose jeans, and torn-up Converse. She paused on the corner of Broome and Mercer, bowled over by the yearning to shop for new clothes.

  She could almost hear her mother’s incredulity in her ear. “But you hate shopping, Cassidy. You hate clothes!”

  No. Young Cassidy observed the stylish panorama of well-groomed men wearing jackets and ties and tailored pants with superb chic. She didn’t hate clothes. She hated clothes for girls.

  Katie forked the last shrimp from their two-tiered plate and dipped it in cocktail sauce. “Were you straight before college?” Cassidy hesitated, and Katie set down her fork. “Sorry. Maybe that was rude to ask. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Not at all.” Cassidy wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I was just trying to think of the right answer.” She gestured to their waitress for more wine. “I brought a girl home for the first time Thanksgiving of freshman year. Though I should clarify that by home for Thanksgiving I mean I brought a girl to the uptown restaurant where my parents rented a room each year to host the holiday.”

  “Only in New York,” Katie said.

  “Exactly. Stodgy venue, catered menu, and the enigmatic roster of my parents’ friends who were a mix of doctors and artists.”

  Their wineglasses were refilled as Cassidy continued.

  “When I arrived at the restaurant holding hands with this girl, I was wearing a sport coat, a button-down, designer jeans, and dress shoes, all from the men’s department at Barneys. As expected, my mother gasped at the sight of me. I’d always been a tomboy, but I’d neve
r actually worn men’s clothes before, and on top of that I’d chopped off all my hair.”

  Katie interrupted Cassidy there. “And you didn’t feel you should’ve given your folks the heads-up about any of that before showing up?”

  “Nope. I just said, ‘Hi, Mom and Dad, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Jen.’”

  “So what did your parents do?”

  “My mother took me aside and said, ‘So was this your way of coming out to us?’ Then she softened and said, ‘Jen seems like a very nice girl.’

  “I said, ‘She is.’

  “She said, ‘And very pretty.’

  “I said, ‘I know.’

  “Then she said, ‘I just don’t understand why you can’t let yourself look more like her. She wears dresses and makeup.’”

  Cassidy looked straight into Katie’s eyes then to read her expression, unsure if she’d absorbed her meaning. “So the gay thing was fine,” Cassidy said. “It was my clothes she couldn’t get past.”

  “Huh,” Katie said. “That’s interesting.”

  Cassidy reached for her wineglass. In her experience, when someone said something was interesting, it meant she’d somehow freaked them the hell out.

  “Something tells me your path to adulthood went a little smoother than mine,” Cassidy said, eager to change the subject. “Maybe because I saw all those old photos of you on your fridge. Your family looks . . .”

  Katie fiddled with her cloth napkin. Had it been paper it may have been torn to shreds. “Let’s just say our Thanksgivings are all about turkey, stuffing, and football.”

  “Women cooking in the kitchen,” Cassidy said. “Boys on the couch watching TV.”

  Katie’s face shot up. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not passing judgment—”

  “It sure sounds like you are.”

  “I’m sorry.” Cassidy tried to backpedal. “You’re right. Maybe that’s not at all how it was at your house.”

  Katie cracked a smile. “Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like in my house, but that still doesn’t give you the right to be uppity about it.”

  “It doesn’t drive you nuts, though?” Cassidy said. “That double standard?”

  “So what you’re saying is”—Katie leaned in and rested her hand on top of Cassidy’s—“you’re the way you are because you hate doing dishes?”

  Cassidy had to laugh. “You might be on to something.”

  Their plates were cleared, the disaster remnants of their feast cleaned away. In the heat of discussion, one of them had blown out their table’s candle, but Cassidy hadn’t noticed until their waitress relit it. The wall of quotations behind Katie flickered like a nervous poem.

  Katie may have been the most traditional girl that Cassidy had ever sat down to a meal with. She radiated obedience, but instead of finding this off-putting, it only drew in Cassidy more. How rare to encounter someone so classic and authentic—so timeless.

  “I enjoyed college, had lots of friends.” Katie swirled her wine. “Not like now. I got lazy about friendships after Paul Michael. His friends became mine, and now I’m paying for it. I lost my entire friend group in one fell swoop.”

  Cassidy was already calculating ways to prolong the life of their meal when their waitress set down a giant piece of molten chocolate cake and two forks.

  Hallelujah, Cassidy thought, even as she pushed the plate closer to Katie. “I’m not really one for desserts.”

  “Neither am I,” Katie said. “But one bite couldn’t hurt. We wouldn’t want to anger Raquel.”

  She handed Cassidy one of the forks and dug into the cake with the other. “God, that is good.”

  Cassidy surrendered, forked herself a bite, and then said with as much levity as she could muster, “Since you don’t have any other friends to meet up with tonight, why don’t you come out to the Scene after this? That’s where I’m headed.”

  “Tempting,” Katie said. “But I think I’ll pass.”

  “But you’re tempted.”

  “I’m more tired than tempted,” Katie said.

  “I’ll order us some espresso.”

  Katie smiled politely, and Cassidy understood she was pushing too hard.

  “I should head home.” Katie reached for her bag. “Can we get the check?”

  “No,” Cassidy said. “It’s on me. It’ll only come to like five dollars, so don’t worry about it. But I am going to go pop into the kitchen to say thanks.”

  Katie stood up. “This was fun. We should do it again.”

  Cassidy reached for her suit jacket from the back of her chair. “Yeah? You’re not just teasing me?”

  “I might be,” Katie said.

  Cassidy tried not to linger on the hint of flirtation in those final words as she watched Katie walk out of the restaurant. Instead, she tossed a breath mint into her mouth and made her way to the kitchen.

  Raquel was in the middle of scolding a line cook for dicing an onion that should have been minced. When she noticed Cassidy, she came right over. “I see you’re back into straight girls,” she said. “Is this one married like the last one?”

  Cassidy took the hit. “I just came to say thanks for the fine treatment.”

  “I should have warned that poor girl.” Raquel moved in closer than she needed to be.

  Cassidy could smell the sweat and stock on her skin, and it made her hungry all over again. “It’s not like that,” Cassidy said. “She’s just a friend from work.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Raquel said. She still hadn’t moved away.

  Cassidy could feel the sous-chef and line cooks looking on.

  “What time are you getting out of here tonight?” Cassidy asked.

  “You wish.” Raquel shook her head and returned to the faulty onions.

  Cassidy left a stack of twenties on the counter before making her exit.

  SEVEN

  Katie decided to walk the twenty minutes home. Buzzed and energized and full of chocolate and mercury, part of her wished she had gone with Cassidy to whatever hellhole she was off to, just so she could keep moving.

  Cassidy could come on strong, that was for sure, but Katie found Cassidy’s self-assuredness and even her occasional obnoxiousness intriguing. She seemed to really know how to live, to always know what she wanted. Katie could have learned a thing or two from the way Cassidy conducted herself.

  Katie thought back to her first date with Paul Michael, when he took her to the opera—the real opera, the one Katie had grown up seeing in movies and on television. Before the show, Paul Michael ordered them French wine at the concession stand using the correct pronunciation, and it dawned on her all at once just how much she could learn from this man. “Thank you,” she remembered saying, conscious to not draw out the yooouuu, when Paul Michael handed her that twenty-dollar glass of opera wine.

  Katie walked along West Fourth Street. The night was cool and moonlit. Rowdy groups of twentysomethings, not so much younger than her, ran circles around her tense business suit. NYU kids most likely, fresh on a new school year. Along Washington Square Park, she passed a group of young men drumming on buckets. She wanted to join them, to bang on something, too. She wanted to dance.

  Would she ever hang out with Cassidy again? Maybe. Probably, in fact. Why the heck not? Cassidy apparently had an in at every female-run restaurant in town.

  Entering her lonely apartment killed some but not all of Katie’s exhilaration. She was still restless as she changed into a T-shirt and sweat pants, and fidgety as she flipped through TV channels. She settled on a crime show where some girl had gone and gotten herself kidnapped and now a bunch of men had to find her—but she couldn’t focus on it.

  Katie felt strange, first on her walk home, and now here again, like her bodily senses had all been shaken awake and she couldn’t get them back to sleep. It was possible she was n
ervous, but what about? She tried lying down, then sat back up, shifted her legs. There wasn’t really any question that what she felt was aroused. Nothing about this procedural drama she was watching was the least bit stimulating, and yet somewhere within her there was a heat, a throbbing that would not quit.

  She really needed to get out more if this was what happened when she went someplace new, had a little fun.

  Katie brought her computer onto her lap. She would go on a date, a real date, even though she barely knew how because she’d hardly ever done it. Everything Katie knew about adult dating she’d learned from that home wrecker, Amy. Still, it would be enough to get by.

  Katie was well versed in the various apps, but from witnessing Amy’s constant swiping left and right, the idea of subjecting herself to that made Katie’s stomach ache. An old-fashioned website seemed more appropriate if a proper date was what she was after, and she remembered the importance of choosing a site that charged a fee in order to filter out the riffraff.

  She located one, and the online form seemed easy enough to work through.

  I am a WOMAN seeking a MAN between ages: 25 and 35

  Hold on. Best to be as specific as possible. She changed it to “between ages: 28 and 33.”

  Near zip code: 10014

  Your height: 5'9"

  Your hair color: blond

  Your eye color: blue

  Your body type: athletic

  Your best feature: . . .

  Do you smoke? No.

  How often do you drink? Umm, lately?

  About me and what I’m looking for . . .

  Katie thought hard about this one. What did she honestly want? This was her chance to get it right.

  I want to get over my ex, she wrote. And then deleted it.

  I want to fall in love, she wrote instead, and then deleted that.

  She just didn’t know.

  How could she not know?

  About me and what I’m looking for . . .

  Katie wrote: I want to have some fun.

  That seemed vague enough to get somebody’s attention, didn’t it?