It was done. She and Cassidy had slept together. Katie should have been focusing on what was going to happen next, not existentially but logistically.
Except that sleeping with Cassidy had been like putting on a pair of glasses. It was impossible now to not review all of her previous relationships through this sharper lens.
Was she gay now? Had she always been? Did this mean she should go back and revise her memories of past friendships, reappraise the intensity of her feelings for her former best girlfriends?
Maddie in high school. Hannah in college.
Amy was never really a best friend, even before she ran off with Katie’s fiancé. She only earned that title by default, by being the least insufferable of the crowd that came with Paul Michael. Early on, when Katie sat down to her first brunch with them, they all struck her as something out of a Woody Allen film, which was not a compliment in her mind. Amy was the only one who seemed unpretentious enough to be harmless.
Amy wasn’t dumb, per se, but she lacked a filter enough to be refreshing. She was the kind of girl who would rather have been the butt of the joke than have no one at the table paying attention to her—which gave Katie an out once in a while. Like when Katie asked their brunch waiter what a bialy was, and the whole table burst out laughing, Amy immediately volunteered that she too wished she knew nothing of the existence of this poor man’s bagel that’d give you onion breath all day. Or when Lillian, of Lincoln and Lillian, asked if Kentucky was in the South or the Midwest—Katie gave the most polite answer she could muster through clenched teeth, which was that it was a Southern state with Midwestern influences, but it was Amy who broke the tension by saying, “Whaaat? How is that possible?” Katie offered its close proximity to Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana as the reason. To which Amy replied, “Kentucky is near Ohio?”
Considering it now, this nightmare first brunch with the friends should have sent Katie running, but at the time it gave her an odd sense of comfort. She had sat down at that table feeling like a fish out of water, or rather like a big fish from a small sea that was suddenly a newly self-conscious little fish, encumbered by how rarely she’d left the three-hundred-mile radius of her home state. Meanwhile, these people literally didn’t know other states existed. They couldn’t find them on a map. To Paul Michael’s friends, there was Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn, the Hamptons part of Long Island, and that was basically it. They were no less encumbered by failing to leave their comfort zone than she was—the only difference was that their comfort zone involved bialys.
Katie remembered telling herself that this was what she had come to the city for, to expose herself to such foreign mysteries as a Polish breakfast roll. Sure, Paul Michael’s group could make her cringe, but she still wanted to know them, to understand them, to learn to laugh with them. And Amy would be her ally.
But Katie had never felt a deep closeness to Amy—that feeling of connection and rightness and always wanting to be with this person–ness that she’d had almost instantly with both Maddie and Hannah.
Katie placed the chicken in a roasting pan. She smeared it with butter and herbs, doused it with lemon juice.
Maddie had been like the sister Katie yearned for growing up. From the moment she moved in up the street from Katie in tenth grade, they were inseparable. They looked alike, dressed alike. They made each other brave and needed nobody else.
Katie had met Hannah when they pledged the same sorority during freshman year at UT. They were fortuitously paired together for quiz night—a tormenting process during which recruits were tested game-show style on their sorority’s history, the names of national leaders, and important details about all the current members.
Katie and Hannah, two natural-born test takers with exceptional memorization skills, were a dream team, blowing their competition out of the water. Their fate was sealed that night. From then on, they were each other’s number one, and full-fledged sisters for life.
Until Katie blew their relationship up, just like she’d done to Maddie a few years earlier.
Katie broke into a sweat at the memory of it now, how she was driven crazy when each of them betrayed her trust, her fidelity.
When Maddie changed her mind about going to UT with Katie and followed her boyfriend to Ohio State instead.
When Hannah abandoned Katie for Boyfriend Land in the middle of junior year.
Katie had refused to forgive either of them. How could she? Even with Justin or Travis, or whatever boy happened to be in her life, Katie had still managed to keep her priorities straight. She was utterly loyal to her best girlfriends, and she expected no less in return.
Katie sprinkled salt and pepper over the top of the chicken.
She began to wonder—did she love them? Maddie and Hannah. In more than just a friendship way. Was that what all the fuss was about?
I’m a really good friend, Katie always thought. I put my girlfriends first. If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. But Katie’s bordering-on-obsessive adoration of Maddie and Hannah must have, all along, been about wanting more. Katie remembered her illogical constant need of them as almost painful, agonizing with the possibility that this time maybe they’d get there, that some anonymous expectation would be filled in such quantity and quality that it would be enough.
If Katie had loved Maddie and Hannah, did she ever truly love Paul Michael?
Her sex life with Paul Michael had always been fine. Sex with boys had always been fine. And not once had Katie felt physically attracted to Maddie or Hannah, or at least not that she realized. She just always wanted them near her.
Katie cut tiny grooves into the lemons that would be stuffed into the chicken with her chopping knife.
It was useful to think of it this way: if she were playing a game of Fuck/Marry/Kill, Katie would have absolutely chosen to fuck Paul Michael but marry Maddie or Hannah.
Though taking into consideration last night, and the way for days now her body had been behaving like its own animal . . .
Oh dear lord. Katie let go of her chopping knife and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. She’d forgotten all about the salacious book still hidden in her couch’s seat cushion and the hot-pink Boss Lady vibrator lying somewhere beneath the couch like a forgotten dog toy.
Katie went to the living room and got down on all fours to retrieve both items, then carried them into the bedroom like contraband. The vibrator went into her nightstand drawer, shoved all the way to the back. The book she stood with for a moment, while her mind spun out.
If fucking, marrying, and killing Cassidy all at once was a possibility—then she had no idea what to do next.
Forget her lemon roasted chicken.
Katie brought the book into bed with her. Studying for a test had always calmed her. It was why she’d always achieved straight A’s.
Okay, she thought. Let’s do this.
She switched on her bedside lamp for some proper task lighting and opened the book to chapter 8: “Lesbian Sex: A How-to.”
The chapter’s section headings indicated that she should not skip ahead but start at the beginning. The introduction on “techniques and positions,” for example, seemed way more approachable than the latter section “Fisting Safely.”
Katie was engrossed in the section titled “Licking: Also Known as Cunnilingus” when she got a text from Cassidy saying she was still unsure when she could leave work.
It was already so late. Who were they kidding?
She texted Cassidy back: That’s okay. I think I should go to sleep soon anyway. Zzz.
But now she was all hot and bothered from the reading she’d done—the obscene bodily feats she’d spent the last hour imagining, step-by-X-rated-step, in her mind’s eye. She was relieved to not be seeing Cassidy tonight, but with all these images fresh in her mind she needed—something. Some kind of release.
Katie considered her
nightstand, and the vibrator lying dormant inside.
This was all too much.
She should cook.
She should eat.
Katie reached over to the nightstand, opened the drawer, and felt around until she had the Boss Lady in hand.
Then she clicked off her bedside lamp.
* * *
On Wednesday evening Katie had already closed out all the tabs on her computer and was about to apply her leaving-the-office coat of lipstick when Marion knocked on her door.
“The call with Merrill just got moved up to tomorrow morning,” Marion said. “So the partners are going to need that draft by sometime tonight.”
Katie re-capped her lipstick. “You’re kidding.”
“I guess we can’t really complain. We haven’t worked past two in a while.” Marion pulled down her eyeglasses from on top of her head onto her weary eyes. She was thirty-seven and didn’t look a day under forty-five thanks to nights like this. “Your hair just keeps getting longer,” she said.
Katie stared into Marion’s eyeglasses. Guilty as charged. She was still avoiding getting her hair cut because she was still avoiding Vivienne.
“Yes,” Katie said. “It does just keep getting longer. Hair is funny that way.”
Once Marion was out of earshot Katie let out a few choice words—and then picked up her phone to text Cassidy.
Another night would have to go by without their seeing each other.
Another night of thwarted efforts.
Looking down at her and Cassidy’s most recent texts back and forth, Katie considered the possibility that divine intervention was keeping them apart. This was old thinking and she knew it, the kind her mother and grandmother resorted to in times of frustration. If it rained on their Fourth of July picnic or if there was traffic on I-64 making them late to the Taste of Derby Festival, somehow it was always God’s will. Katie had long since decided, quietly, on her own, that sometimes stuff just happened for no reason.
And yet the thought still haunted her as she texted Cassidy, So sorry. Have to pull an all-nighter.
Katie urged her attention back onto her work and reopened all the necessary tabs on her computer. She searched the file labeled Merrill for where she’d left off in her notes and switched on Track Changes.
A thought entered Katie’s mind then. A picture really, or pictures—a multitude of nude, un-Photoshopped bodies. Page after page of them.
The memory alone made her sort of . . . Wet was such a crass word in this context. Lubricated?
Excited, maybe. Beneath her desk, Katie uncrossed and recrossed her legs.
She might not get to see Cassidy tonight. But she would still go home to bed—and her nightstand.
If this was her out, though—having to work late via divine intervention—surely it wasn’t God’s will for her to go home and cuddle up to the vibrator she’d bought at a sex shop. Old thinking or not, did that seem like something the real Katie Daniels would do? Katie the good girl, eager to please, obedient daughter. Or, in more recent years, the hardworking, striving-to-fit-in country-girl-at-heart in the big city. None of those labels were 100 percent right. So who was to say sexually awakened, vibrator-owning possible lesbian would suit Katie any better?
Her phone chimed with a text back from Cassidy: I understand, but I was really hoping to see you tonight. Then it chimed again with an immediate follow-up: The Met’s closing. It’s a total disaster. Could use your moral support!
Whaaat? Katie replied. Closing for good?
I’m afraid so, Cassidy wrote.
That’s terrible, Katie began, and then paused. She was ultra self-conscious of the ellipses on Cassidy’s screen revealing that she had halted midthought, her ambivalence made visible by three little dots. If by chance I get out earlier than expected, she continued, I’ll try to come by.
Try was good. Try was always a safe bet. It gave Katie an out just in case.
FOURTEEN
Metropolis felt like a funeral. Gina was hunched over, elbows on knees, puffing on a cigarette. Becky lingered over a spread of comfort food she’d laid out on the pool table, a tray of baked ziti, garlic bread, and an extra-large serving bowl of Caesar salad. Even Dahlia had come out from behind the bar to just sit with them and drink.
“Go ahead,” she called out to the gaggle of confused out-of-towners looking to order. “Leave your money on the bar. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Off to the side of it all was Cassidy, lounging on her stool, still in her work clothes, shirtsleeves rolled up. Like her friends, she was having trouble grasping the reality of life without Metropolis, but unlike her friends she was doing it quietly.
“Who are these new owners?” Gina asked. “Who was the old owner?”
“Some guy,” Dahlia said. “He’s a broker or something. He doesn’t even live in New York. And now he’s sold the building to some other guy who’s also a broker or something. It’s all just an investment to him.”
“Which him is that now?” Becky asked.
Dahlia shrugged. “Both.”
Cassidy stayed silent. Nobody was more attached to the Met than she was, which was why her first reaction when she’d woken up this morning was to try to single-handedly rescue the bar herself. She would have liked just about now to lean back on her barstool and calmly, without fanfare, assert, I took care of it. To reveal that she’d saved the day by throwing money at the problem. Be the hero. Accept their thanks but shrug off their praise, say, It was nothing.
But this morning’s due diligence had only reinforced the worst. The deal was done, it was done privately, and there was nothing Cassidy could do but accept it.
“Maybe Cassidy can negotiate with the fuckers,” Gina said. “Rent out just this space, as an investment, give it to Dahlia to run.”
Cassidy looked up.
They were all looking at her, eager for her reaction.
“Do you have any idea how much this space would rent for?” she said.
Their faces all dropped at once.
Cassidy did in fact know. She also knew how the building would be gutted and rebuilt, how the ground floor would become retail space, one more bullshit store filled with pointlessness, and luxury apartments floating above. But why tell these guys about that now? The pain that came from learning the truth, of her trying and failing—it would be worse somehow if they knew.
“Becky,” Cassidy said. “You said it yourself. There’s no negotiating with these guys. They’re set on converting the building to some kind of mixed-use development.”
“What the fuck is mixed use?” Gina flicked her spent cigarette onto the floor. “Why does everyone keep saying that? What’s more mixed use than this?” She gestured at the room. “Where else can you find a bigger mix of age and race and class—and genders? This is about as mixed use as a place can get. That’s the whole point.”
Gina patted around her pockets for her pack of cigarettes and pulled out a fresh one. “We’re just not the right mix, I guess, which is bullshit. I say we protest.”
“If big bucks over here can’t buy our way out of this,” Dahlia said, “I don’t think a freak parade of us out front holding up signs is going to move the needle much.”
Gina lit her cigarette with a match. “I’ll chain myself to the goddamn Erotic Photo Hunt machine if I have to.”
“I just can’t believe this is it.” Becky reached for a hunk of garlic bread off the pool table spread and bit off its end. “Every inch of this place holds a memory. Over there was where I slow-danced with that girl dressed as Diana Ross after my first Pride parade. That was where I was standing when the great beer-spitting contest of 2012 broke out. In that corner there was where I was sitting the night gay marriage was legalized and watched three separate proposals. Remember that, Cassidy?”
Cassidy nodded.
“Hey, Dah
lia.” Gina pointed with her cigarette. “There’s an unidentified bodysuit-wearing hottie at the bar looking for the bartender.”
Dahlia handed off her glass of whiskey to Cassidy. “Duty calls.”
“I’m calling dibs on striped-bodysuit girl,” Becky said.
Gina scoffed. “You don’t stand a chance with bodysuit girl. She’s way too baby-got-back for your baby back ribs.”
Becky squared her shoulders to Gina. She was wearing a T-shirt she’d designed for her butcher shop that featured the slogan Come for the tail, stay for the head.
“I’ll have you know,” Becky said, “I once shared an intimate moment with a certain well-known fitness guru in the greenroom of the Today show.”
Gina blew a stream of gray smoke in Becky’s direction. “Doug the Pug hardly counts as a fitness guru.”
“Go ahead and make fun.” Becky tightened the knot on her purple bandana. “But I guarantee that she, who will remain nameless out of respect for the closeted, is coming right to me on her next cheat day.” Becky smiled in bodysuit girl’s direction. “And anyway, I met Doug the Pug on Good Morning America.”
“Earth to Cassidy.” Gina waved her hand in front of Cassidy’s eyes. “Care to get in on this bodysuit-girl game?”
“I already called dibs!” Becky screamed out.
“You can have her,” Cassidy said. “I’m not interested.”
Gina picked a fleck of tobacco or baked ziti from her teeth. “Not interested ’cause you’re goddamn pussy-whipped. Not even. Katie-whipped is more like it.”
“Wrong,” Cassidy said. “I’m not interested because I hooked up with that girl at Cherry Grove last summer.”
Becky shrugged her shoulders. “Lucky for me I’ve never been opposed to scooping up your sloppy seconds.”
Cassidy swallowed down the remaining whiskey in Dahlia’s glass and tried to tune everyone out.
When Katie Met Cassidy Page 11