“Does it have pot in it?” Sloane whisper-asked.
“No,” Jin whispered back.
“Sounds great!” Sloane yelled. And then, quieter, “I can’t believe you live with your mother.”
“I like my mom,” Jin said, with a charming shrug. “She’s great.”
“It is trending, returning to the nest,” Sloane went.
Jin nodded his head to a beat she couldn’t hear. In the space of his nonreply, Sloane considered her tendency toward sarcasm. It was unnerving, really, when people didn’t banter back at you. You actually had to pay attention to the things you said.
Jin shrugged. “We work together sometimes,” he said, leaning down to rub the back of his left calf. His body had a physicality to it that she no longer recognized in others. Underneath his sweatpants, he had legs, for example. Legs. It seemed incredible all of a sudden. What a gift was human skin.
“Like I said, we do energy therapy stuff,” he continued. “I help her out sometimes when she’s not in the Berkshires. Massage. Nothing major.”
Well, that was fine, Sloane would just pretend that she hadn’t heard the word “massage.” She would pretend that Jin had told her that he helped his mother with her accounting, instead of pouring oil into his palm and cupping it to touch somebody else’s shoulder, the small part of the back. Oil, that was it, finally! She’d been trying to place his scent and in her tangential thoughts it came to her. Jin smelled like almonds. Like heated frangipane. Nutty, toothsome, sweet.
“Here we go,” Jodi said, setting a tray down on the table and clapping Sloane back to earth.
Sloane took in the dish of sugar, pot of honey, the three cups she’d put out. Her decision to consider her presence no big deal fragmented in the face of these undeniable facts: she was uninvited, she was his colleague, she was slightly drunk.
“I’m sure I’m interrupting,” Sloane said, her fingers at her coat zipper, “I should probably go.”
“Interrupting what?” Jodi said, pulling out a chair. “I was just about to watch Million Dollar Listing. I love that fucking show.”
“That show is the best,” said Sloane, encouraged by Jodi’s colloquialism to sit down herself.
“Maknae, I forgot spoons,” Jodi said. “Would you mind?”
Jin went into the kitchen, taking with him whatever maknae meant.
“Hmmm.” Jodi breathed in deeply over her tea, taking her in across the table. After a while, she said, “I see.”
Sloane reddened. She didn’t need to ask her what. Sloane was a trend forecaster, for goodness sake, this wasn’t her first time in front of a member of the healing arts. She had acquaintances who were animal communicators and intestinal clairvoyants, she knew a psychopharmacologist who only consulted online. She was versed in alternative employment. She wasn’t sure yet whether Jodi was legitimate, but she was sensitive enough to have recognized that Sloane Jacobsen was a mess.
Jin came back and put down two spoons by their cups. Then he picked up his own mug.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, without looking at Sloane.
“You will?” she asked, turning, feeling suddenly desperate.
Jodi calmly spooned some honey into her chamomile while Sloane watched Jin’s retreating back. A door closed, and she had no choice but to face Jodi once again.
Jodi smiled. Both she and her son were very good at silence. So Sloane stayed silent, too.
“I’m sorry,” Sloane said. “I sort of just . . . arrived.”
“Did you?” Jodi asked, a smile on her lips. “You’re here though.” She shrugged. “Aren’t you.”
“Right, but I just—” Sloane cupped her hands around her mug and willed herself to stop jabbering dishonest froth. She wasn’t particularly good at it. “I just felt like going on a drive,” she said.
Jodi stood up and walked to the window, the glare from a streetlight casting an orange shadow on her hair.
“I find it helpful sometimes if they ask me a question.”
Sloane’s stomach clenched: this woman wasn’t going to let her off any easier than her son.
“And by ‘them,’” Jodi continued, “I mean you. Why don’t you ask me something?” she said.
Sloane bit her lip.
“Ask me anything.”
“Okay,” Sloane said, searching through her mind for something clean to grasp. “What does maknae mean?”
Jodi smiled with the faintest hint of a nod. Sloane felt a current pass between them. She had struck a chord.
“Maknae means ‘youngest one’ in Korean. Korean.” She nodded in the direction of the room that Jin had entered. “Jin’s dad.” She waved her hand around as if to encompass the apartment’s space. “I lost a child when I was younger. When I was pregnant. At seven months, so you can imagine. If you can imagine.” She turned her attention wistfully to the streetlamp once again.
Sloane could not imagine. Perhaps sensing that, Jodi sat back down. She put her hand on top of Sloane’s for just a moment—one second, two. Sloane only realized how warm her hand had been once it was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Sloane said, honestly, and left it at that. When her father died, she’d learned that she preferred short, sincere condolences over thin probes into her pain.
“Your question comes from a place where your hurt is harbored,” Jodi said, touching the side of the teapot to see how hot it was. “Random questions are never random.” With a heavy smile on her face, she poured them both more tea.
“You’re not formally here,” she said, “but you still came. So we can talk about why you came here, or we can not talk.”
“Or you could watch Million Dollar Listing.” Sloane laughed.
Jodi continued smiling, but she didn’t laugh.
“You’re a deflector. My son has some of that. It’s New York, I think. It’s habit.” She blew air across her tea. “Have you ever worked with an energy therapist before?”
“I’ve done Reiki,” Sloane offered, humbled. She scanned Jodi’s face for signs that this was comparable to energy therapy, but she didn’t see any. “So . . . no?”
“Well—” Jodi folded her hands across the table. “Through talking and touch work, we find places where the energy is blocked. Then we work through things to clear that path.” She took in a deep sigh. “The principle is simple. The work is very hard.”
“So you don’t work mostly in New York, then? More in the Berkshires, is that what Jin said?”
“You’re deflecting again,” said Jodi. “Of course, you can deflect all you want. This isn’t official. We can sit down and watch TV and chitchat on the couch. I just want you to be aware of it, is all.”
Sloane swallowed, hard. Had she really come here on purpose? How preposterous was that?
“Well . . . what does it entail?” she asked.
Jodi leaned back in her chair. “This is just an initial reading. I mean, it’s you sitting here, unannounced, in my kitchen. But what I’m getting from you is a deep-seated hurt. Or more like something cauterized. But anyway”—she waved her hand through the air—“I’m seeing a cord-cutting ceremony. If you’ve had a loss.”
“Oh, but I’m not—I didn’t lose a child,” Sloane said, instinctively touching her stomach.
“Honey, it’s not that kind of cord.” Slowly, almost languidly, Jodi spooned more honey in her tea. “When we start a relationship, professional, romantic or otherwise, even when we’re born, we establish these threads of energy that connect us to another person. You have an energetic thread with people in your family, with your colleagues—” Jodi paused here to accommodate Sloane’s blush. “Even by just being here, you’re creating one with me. Many times, as people grow or change, or hurt us, the energy that was flowing gets confused and trapped. Especially in the case of loss, where the energy doesn’t have anywhere tangible to move toward. We can become very sick by st
oring up outdated energy. Cord cutting isn’t always about severing completely from someone, but it is about separating ourselves off from the iteration of the relationship that no longer enriches our life. It’s a ceremony, really. And a difficult one. But it’s tremendously important.”
These words sunk in slowly. They made sense to her. So much sense it cut through the soppy inebriation and the jokey walls that she’d put up. “How long does it take?”
Jodi smiled. “Sometimes just one session, if someone’s strong enough.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it takes a few sessions to get to the point where someone’s ready. Some people never are. Some people really need to work under manipulative bosses, or have substance abusers as lovers. Some people need trauma to define themselves. Other people want to be free. So it’s your choice, really. All I can say is, once the cord is cut, there’s no going back. At least not with me. I don’t do sessions after cord cutting to discuss the relationship that brought you to me in the first place, at least not the relationship in its old form. After the cord is cut, it’s about going forward. New beginnings. I can be a bitch like that.”
Sloane laughed nervously into her tea, causing some to splash over the sides.
“I did just kick out the person I’ve been living with,” Sloane said, allowing a question mark to rise.
Jodi nodded, but Sloane could tell that her confession hadn’t made the impression she’d hoped.
“Doesn’t mean the relationship is over,” Jodi remarked, with another slow smile. She folded her hands across her arms and started rubbing her own forearms. “I’m going to let you think about it,” she said. “I’m around. Even when I’m not around, I’m around.” She shrugged. “I’m glad to have met you, whatever it was that brought you here.”
“A driverless car, actually.”
Jodi nodded.
“Sorry,” Sloane stammered. “I’m deflecting again.”
“No, no,” Jodi said, standing. “I mean, it is quite something, that car. I saw it from the street. It’s strange. I think I’d want a wax chauffeur at the very least. It’s odd to see someone sitting in the back of an empty vehicle. Anyway. You have my information.” Her eyes brightened. “You know where I live. But right now I’m going to Million Dollar List myself to sleep. Stand up,” she said. “A hug!”
Jodi waved Sloane around to where she was standing and pulled her to her bosom, which it really was. Some people have chests. The lonely ones have torsos. Jodi had a port. Her embrace was familiar and transformative. She smelled like a Salvation Army couch completely stuffed with lavender, and the effect was curiously settling, like the times that Sloane had hid behind clothes racks as a child, accompanying her mother on errands, watching the feet of strangers as they shopped.
However, after holding her, Jodi did exactly what she said she was going to do and disappeared to her room. Sloane was left standing by the table she had complimented, wondering what to do. There wasn’t any reason, really, to take her leave of Jin, seeing as how he hadn’t invited her over in the first place. It was rather complicated. She’d just met his mother. Even if he hadn’t asked her there, leaving without saying good-bye was rude.
Sloane was staring at the front door still wondering how to exit it when Jin came out. He didn’t have any socks on, and it felt very intimate, looking at his naked feet. His toes, his arches—smooth and flat. There was a part of Sloane that, despite the absurdity of her being in his house, felt very whole and calm. And then there was another part of her that felt completely panicked. She could feel it between them, that energetic thread. It was pulsing. It was orange. It was hot and close.
“So . . . that was my mom,” Jin said, scratching his scalp.
“Yes, well! Quite the speedy courtship!” His presence was having something of a debilitating effect on her. Or maybe she’d drunk the wrong tea. It was—it was like there was a T-bar pulling her up a mountain slope, and Jin was at the top of it, waiting with a tube of peppermint lip balm and a frosty mug of beer. He was someone she wanted to call a snuggle bunny and tease as she rolled under him and pushed her nose into his armpit. He was someone whose breath she wanted to smell. She hadn’t been attracted to someone in such a long time that she forgot it felt akin to losing your mind.
“So I kicked my partner out,” Sloane said. And then, inflexibly, her right foot started to tap. “He’s packing right now.” Foot tap, foot tap, “That’s why I was on a drive.”
The heat between them was staticky. She kept tapping her foot. His not saying anything underscored just how inappropriate it was for her to be in his home.
“Okay, so I’ll be going now,” she said, looking down to take in Jin’s naked feet. Accordingly, she made an awkward gesture to indicate that she’d just see herself to the door.
Jin brought his knuckles to his lips. Neither of them moved.
She really must have had the wrong tea. She was feeling very lithe. “I can’t believe you live with your mother,” she said under her breath.
With this, Jin pulled her roughly toward the door and out onto the landing that led to the other apartments. Then he shut the door behind them and banged her up against it; brought her face to his and kissed her with all of his stark sweetness and his hands behind her back. His hands, his warm hands, she responded to his kiss, tilting her head against the incredibleness of this happening thing. He moved his lips to the area just behind her earlobe that made her very organs go out-of-the-oven soft.
“Jesus,” she whispered, opening her mouth against the all of it.
He brought his hand up and pulled her hair so that she had to give her mouth up more to him and she couldn’t believe it, she wanted all of it, she wanted all of him. She had been waiting decades for someone to pull her hair.
“Fuck,” she said, his thigh between her legs now, the pressure jolting her blooming ache. She hadn’t been participating until this moment but she reached her hand behind him, spreading her fingers to contain the wholeness of his back which was just there—just there for her!—beneath his expensive sweatpants.
He whispered something incomprehensible, slipped his fingers beneath her underwear, his fingertips the same place that hers were, warm and demanding, kneading into the desperate yearning of the tender stretch above her ass.
She responded by reaching her hands up to she didn’t know where, up to the masculine, willing neck that wasn’t Roman’s, the beat of this new body whose gorgeous, useful, human erection was hot against her clothed skin.
“I can’t, we can’t do this in the hall,” Sloane said, her mind nearly collapsing on itself with the realization that “it” was a possibility.
“No, I know,” he said, his lips on her neck again. “Your car.”
“Oh, God, that’s even worse,” she said, twisting so that she could feel his hardness. She literally felt like her body was falling away from her, melding into one single, burning want, and if she didn’t have it, she wouldn’t find her way back to the bipedal person that she’d been before.
“I mean, this is—” She started pushing against the swell of his desire. With the flimsy sweatpants, it was like the clothes weren’t even there. “Your mom . . .”
“We’re on the top floor,” he said, pulling her hair harder.
“I’m not even,” she gasped, “there are things that need to be talked through.”
He cupped her head in his right hand and thrusted hot against her. The utter delectability of his want against her yearning made her reach for him again. He pulled her to and onto him, the desire so consuming they were making love through their clothes.
Before she knew what she was doing—no, she knew what she was doing, but she hadn’t done it like this in so long—she moved her hand to his stomach and slid her hand down to grab him, taking her breath in sharply when her fingers met his girth. He pulled back just enough so she could tug her leggings down, his breath against her as if this cres
cendo was one she’d been hearing her whole life.
And then his fingers, the long and graceful fingers she’d admired from a safe distance were yanking aside her underwear so he could get at her deepest place. Another push again, and then he was supporting her weight with his free arm and it was her, she knew this even as she was doing it, it was her who moved up and closer to him and guided him inside.
When you are a woman and you haven’t been penetrated for a long time, when it finally happens you wonder why everyone in the world isn’t constantly coupling, taking cash out of the ATM with a penis deep inside them, awkwardly going about the errands of the day, reaching up distractedly to pay for a meal at a drive-thru window while being beautifully fucked.
The feeling of this basic stranger coming full of her sent Sloane into such a rapture of completeness, she grabbed jealously to push him deeper inside. He had her off the ground now, and he moved her roughly against the opposite wall so the sound of their fanaticism wouldn’t make the front door tremble.
It was wrong, in a dozen ways wrong, they hadn’t discussed birth control or fought over a bill at a drinks date that had turned into a dinner date, they had never texted. She didn’t know a thing about him except for the way he felt inside of her and on her and the way he smelled. And also, she’d met his mother, who was right there beyond the wall. It was depraved and it was reckless and even before they reached the highest point together, his temple resting clammy against the wall and her own forehead at his chest, she knew that she didn’t give a fuck about the in-between moments that they’d skipped over, that this was what she needed, communion with the now.
20
Work the next day! What an oafish vessel of a word—employment—when what Sloane had in front of her was an entire future to ignite!
Simple, prolonged intimacy had refueled her instincts. Blissfully, she was awash in the sensations and sharp visions that presaged the understanding of a larger trend. She was back. Granted, many of her premonitions flew in the face of what Mammoth stood for, but she would find a way to tame them into dutiful foot soldiers. What mattered is that she was having ideas again.
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