Katie could see almost exactly what her mother was doing in that moment, even without the help of an app. She would be talking to Katie from the kitchen, the phone crooked between her ear and her shoulder, while she went about preparing Sunday dinner—chuck roast with potatoes and carrots, or roast pork with applesauce, or maybe chicken and corn bread. There’d be a skillet sizzling with buttered green beans or buttermilk-dipped okra. Her mother would be wearing a brightly colored cotton top—turquoise or magenta or a flower pattern—and comfortable pants, but also a full face of makeup, with her highlighted hair blown to perfection.
“Have you heard anything from the professor?” she asked.
By “the professor,” her mother meant Paul Michael, who she understood worked in the arts, but long ago she’d decided that—in her words—“he didn’t just talk; he professed things. Plus, he looked like a college professor with those thick eyeglasses of his.”
“No,” Katie said. “I haven’t heard anything from him, and I don’t expect to.”
“You just need to find somebody better,” her mother said. “Somebody more like us. To get you halfway straight.”
Dear lord. If her mother only knew where Katie was headed after she hung up this phone.
“Are you in for the night?” her mother asked.
There was that sixth sense again.
Katie hated to lie. Her mother had always been difficult, but she’d also been Katie’s main confidant all her life. Katie had “ripped my guts out” (again, her mother’s words) by moving to New York, and then made a bad situation worse by bringing home an “airy-fairy” boy like Paul Michael, and still her mother had not given up on her.
But telling her mother the truth this time, that she was off to a gay barbecue to meet up with her new gay best friend, was more than Minnie Daniels could reasonably bear. It would raise too many questions in her hidebound, alarmist mind. What could you possibly have in common? Is she fixin’ to get you to hate men? How do you expect to meet a good man if that’s where you’re whittling away your time?
Katie considered it an act of love to reply, “Yeah, I’m in for the night.”
“Are you eating?”
“I will have dinner.” Katie filed through her closet hangers. “Yes.”
“I wish you’d come home.”
“I know, Mama, but I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”
Katie picked out possible skirt contenders while her mother persisted. “I haven’t gotten a letter from you in ages.”
“I’ll write you one, I promise, but you have to let me off the phone first.”
“My green beans are starting to burn up anyway.”
“Okay then,” Katie said, gladly accepting her mother’s passive aggression with a goodbye and an I love you before ending the call.
Back to focusing on her outfit. Katie settled on a printed skirt and black moto jacket, then dug through her jewelry box, certain she had some accessory that could be read as Metropolis appropriate.
Aha. The fishhook-clasp leather wrap bracelet that she’d bought a year ago but never wore because Paul Michael said it looked “sadomasochistic in a Mapplethorpian kind of way.” Perfect.
* * *
When Katie arrived at the Met, Gina was leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette. She exhaled a gray cloud and whistled, which Katie interpreted as validation of her ensemble. Then Gina asked, “What in hell are you doing here?”
Inside, the bar was astonishingly uncrowded, and somehow this was worse than when it was full. Seeing Metropolis empty in the daylight was like looking at Darth Vader with his mask off—stripped of its prowess and capacity to intimidate, and all-around forlorn. But there was a raw vulnerability to it, too, that Katie found endearing. This larger-than-life space was in fact just a room like any other. It struck Katie then how much it was about the people who filled a space with drama and personality, with love and grudges and outsize emotion, that made a place what it was.
“Keep going.” Gina followed behind Katie. “Everyone’s in the back garden.”
Katie continued on to the “back garden,” which was actually just a concrete patio surrounded by a high wooden fence. A latticed veranda paradise this was not. And yet, the moment Katie stepped foot on that cracked concrete, she felt at home among the checkered tablecloths, the red and blue plastic cups, and the smell of singed meat.
“This way.” Gina escorted Katie past two women in skinny white tank tops manning the grill, their nipples visible through the thin cotton.
Dahlia the bartender was pouring a pitcher of beer, wearing pigtails and a hot-pink bikini.
“How’d you get back in here?” she called out to Katie. “Didn’t I put you on the Banned for Life list?”
Katie halted, and Dahlia’s face broke into a warm smile. “I’m just playing with you, Wild Turkey. Welcome back. Make yourself at home.”
Katie returned Dahlia’s smile and relaxed just enough then to fully absorb the backyard-family-barbecue vibe of her surroundings. It occurred to her how long it had been since she’d gotten to kick back and enjoy a shitty hot dog and some cheap beer surrounded by friends. She suddenly wanted to pull her American flag bikini top out of retirement—the one Paul Michael forbade her from wearing in public—throw on some shorty-short Daisy Dukes, and get loud. Maybe try to talk everyone into a touch football game.
She and Gina reached a long rectangular table in the back that was already littered with potato-salad-splattered paper plates and half-eaten tofu pups. Seated at the table were Chef Becky and a few people Katie had been introduced to her last time at the Met—and there was Cassidy next to a girl Katie didn’t recognize.
“Look who I found,” Gina announced to the group.
Cassidy turned around, shocked to see Katie standing there, and not in a good way. She was a deer in headlights—no, she was a deer just downed by a Remington .308.
Hadn’t Katie hinted hard enough that she might show up? Did Cassidy think she was bluffing?
Chef Becky leapt from her seat. “You came back to us! Come, come, sit down. I just got a fresh pitcher.”
Katie approached Cassidy and stood oddly at the table’s edge over the stranger who was seated between them.
“I didn’t think you’d show,” Cassidy said.
“Surprise,” Katie said.
Everyone shifted one space over to make room for Katie at the table, so instead of getting to sit next to Cassidy, she was stuck beside this stranger.
“This is Annika,” Cassidy said.
“Nice to meet you.” Annika put out her hand.
Katie sized her up. She had long red hair, green eyes, and a scratchy voice like a sexy movie villain. She was pretty and stylish and capable of properly applying lipstick—which Katie was quickly beginning to realize was Cassidy’s type.
“Annika’s visiting from LA,” Cassidy said. “She’s working on a cooking show with Becky.”
More lesbians in the food industry.
“Hey,” Annika said. “Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” Katie said. “What?”
“Your bracelet.” Annika touched the soft black leather encasing Katie’s wrist. “I love it. I mean, it’s basically a cock ring, but you wear it well.” Then Annika let out this ba-ha-ha laugh that was unbelievably loud.
Cassidy laughed with her, and Katie noticed how Cassidy was hovering all close to Annika, and she was smiling wider than she normally did.
“So you’re a food stylist.” Cassidy reclaimed Annika’s attention and direct eye contact. “Forgive my naiveté, but what does that mean exactly?”
“I dress up food,” Annika said. “For photos and TV. You know the perfect cherry pies and turkey skin you see in magazines? That’s all me. You’d be amazed by what I can do with a blowtorch and some PVA glue.”
“I’m already amazed,” Cas
sidy said.
Annika reached into her empty rocks glass, picked out an ice cube, and slipped it into her mouth. She asked Cassidy, “What do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Oh. That’s . . .” Annika crunched hard on her ice.
“It’s all right,” Cassidy said. “You don’t have to pretend it’s cool.”
“Okay, good,” Annika said, a smidgeon too loud. “I won’t. Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Katie claimed a plastic cup from the stack at the end of the table and poured herself some beer while Cassidy listened to Annika go on about LA: “It’s so annoying how, like, no one talks about weed like it’s a drug. They talk about it like it’s a vegetable.”
The beer was warm, but Katie drank it anyway.
“And you first met Becky on the set of Knife Fight?” Cassidy asked.
“Ugh! Yes. She tried to hit on me while cranking pork butts through a manual meat grinder. I was like, gross.”
Katie poked at someone’s abandoned paper plate with a plastic knife. She made a little hollow in a mound of potato salad and filled it with baked beans.
Annika was now going on about how to manipulate pancakes so the syrup glided perfectly over the edge: “First you stick cardboard between the layers, then you spray them with water-repellent Scotchgard. Then you feed ’em to your worst enemy. Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Over the course of the next hour, Annika’s laugh got rowdier, her humor brassier, her voice sultrier.
Cassidy turned up her charm about as subtly as a dog coming into heat.
Katie couldn’t decide which of them she wanted to smack across the face more. Cassidy, probably. Who was Annika to her? Nobody. While Cassidy was . . . well, whatever she was. Not a very nice friend at the moment, or very considerate.
Out of nowhere, a girl wearing overalls with only undergarments underneath came over to hit on Katie. She stood over her, leaning against the edge of the table, suggestively sucking on a lollipop. “Is this your first time here?” she asked between licks.
Katie watched Annika’s hand travel to Cassidy’s knee. Then she watched Annika lean in toward Cassidy’s ear and whisper something. Katie couldn’t make out exactly what, but she imagined it was something along the lines of “You are so goddamn sexy.”
Cassidy glanced in Katie’s direction for a split second before turning right back to answer Annika. “So are you,” she most likely said.
“Should we get out of here?” This part Annika announced loud enough for all to hear. “I’m staying at Becky’s. It’s just around the corner.” She stood up before Cassidy could answer. “I’ll get her keys.”
Cassidy stood up, too, as Annika headed over to Chef Becky.
Katie reached for her purse. She wanted to do something to stop this. She couldn’t let Cassidy go.
Becky, Katie noticed, looked to Cassidy once Annika got hold of her keys. In fact, it seemed to Katie like everyone was looking at Cassidy right then—but Cassidy was looking at her.
“You’re leaving?” Katie asked, startled at finally having Cassidy’s undivided attention. “With her?”
Cassidy nodded.
“Why?” Katie said.
Cassidy stood still, dumbfounded. “I don’t know.”
Katie stepped toward her. “I don’t want you to.”
“You don’t?” Cassidy said.
“Hey, asshole,” Annika called out from behind Cassidy with Becky’s apartment keys in hand. “Get out of the way.”
All drinking and laughter and chatter ceased.
Katie waited.
Time slowed down but also somehow sped up. Katie’s senses heightened, her heart rate jumped, and she became conscious of every surrounding detail even as she fell into a hallucinatory, oblivious state that felt kaleidoscopically unreal.
Cassidy’s kiss was hesitant at first, provisional, but soon they fell into a rhythm.
“What the fuck?” Annika’s scratchy movie-villain voice pierced Katie’s ears. “You New York bitches are all fucking crazy.”
Others were whooping and howling.
“It’s on!”
“I called it!”
“Everyone pay up!”
Cassidy was the first to pull away. “Leave with me,” she said.
“Yes,” Katie said. “Okay.”
TEN
Cassidy rushed them out of the bar, to the street. The moment they climbed into a taxi she was ready to kiss Katie again, her mouth, her neck. All the questions disappeared; she could disregard holding back—Katie wanted this as much as she did, and this part Cassidy knew how to do.
“West Eighteenth and Tenth,” she said to the driver, and leaned across the seat.
Katie was looking out the window. Cassidy admired her face in silhouette against the city passing by. She had the urge to reach over and sketch its outline on the glass.
By god, how she ached for this girl.
“Why were you being so god-awful mean to me?” Katie said, and only then did Cassidy realize that Katie was leaning on the door of the far side of the cab like she was considering jumping out.
“Wait. What?” Cassidy said.
“Why were you acting like that?” The hurt in Katie’s voice was too familiar. “When I went there just to see you?”
But we were just making out, Cassidy wanted to say. Can we just get back to doing that?
Katie turned to look at her, finally, waiting for an answer Cassidy didn’t have. Cassidy thought about bringing her mouth to Katie’s again, to remind her that they’d already moved past this, that they were already moving forward.
Cassidy should say she was sorry. Why couldn’t she just say that she was sorry?
Katie shook her head. “But watching you with that other girl,” she said. “I got jealous. What do you think that means?”
Cassidy tried to maintain a neutral expression, to not startle Katie one way or the other. “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know,” Katie said, “how am I supposed to know?”
Katie turned back to the window, and Cassidy let her do her ruminating in silence.
You got jealous because you like me, Cassidy thought, because you wanted me to take you home. Isn’t that obvious?
When the taxi pulled up to the front of Cassidy’s building, she stepped out onto the curb and held the door open for Katie, but Katie remained seated.
“I’m going to go home,” Katie said.
Cassidy searched for the right words to put Katie at ease, to save the night, to convince her to come upstairs, but all she said was, “Okay.”
* * *
Cassidy entered her apartment, looked around, and rubbed the back of her neck like she had whiplash. What the hell was she supposed to do now, after being ditched like that?
She considered turning around and going right back to the Met, but she didn’t really feel like explaining how she ended up back there alone, especially to Annika. Or worse, Gina.
Instead she trudged into her kitchen, where she immediately noticed that Katie’s coffee cup from that morning was still in the sink. She opened the fridge, stared into the light for a few seconds, and then closed it. She gazed into the fruit bowl on the counter, deliberating whether she felt like eating an apple, decided no, and then grabbed a lemon.
She would fix herself a proper drink, a Manhattan with a shaved lemon peel for garnish and all, and then she would find someone to come to her.
Why were you being so god-awful mean to me?
She slammed a glass onto her bar, threw in a perfect square of ice.
Why were you acting like that?
Bourbon. Vermouth. Bitters. Shake. Pour.
The lemon zest really did the trick. Pleased with herself, Cassidy carried the drink into the living room. She sat in her favorite Zanotta lounge chair and scrolled her phone.
Who was she in the mood for? She could have whomever she wanted. There were probably twenty girls in her phone whom she could text right now and have undressed within the hour. She specifically designed her life to function this way. She worked hard and played hard, and she didn’t apologize. And anyway, she didn’t tell Katie to show up at Metropolis; Katie did that all on her own.
She had nothing to feel bad about.
This was who she was. She had sex. It was basically her hobby. Why should she feel guilty about that all of a sudden?
Since her first college girlfriend this was how it had been. Cassidy had told Katie about Jen, but she’d failed to mention that what she and Jen did best was fuck, all the time. And that back then, Cassidy never imagined that she could be so carnal and uninhibited, or so fully satisfied by another person—so she surprised herself the first time she cheated on Jen with a girl from her Political Theory class. And the second time with a girl from the gym. And the third time with a girl who waited on her at Starbucks. But thinking of it now, Cassidy remembered how each indiscretion began as an innocent flirtation, a stroke of the ego that quickened over time until it progressed into something fated and unstoppable.
Maybe Cassidy didn’t need to tell Katie any of that because Katie already knew. She sensed it in Cassidy’s inability to convince her otherwise, and that’s what sent her home. It was simple good intuition.
The way Katie looked at her in the cab—it was the same look that Jen had given her after she found her out, when on what would have been their six-month anniversary, Jen confronted Cassidy on the steps outside her dorm and asked, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with her? A lot, most likely.
Cassidy sipped her Manhattan with one hand while furiously scrolling through names with the other. She reached the K’s, and her phone’s roll settled onto Katie’s name like a losing slot machine.
When Katie Met Cassidy Page 8