by Hurt
“You're punishing him.”
“I just don't feel up to it.”
“Vanka.” Galen took both her hands in his, and nailed her down with his gaze. “I understand you being mad at him. But Khalid wasn't being selfish. He was thinking of you. Of me. Even though I know he cares for you, you know the most selfish thing he could have done would have been to throw away that piece of paper and pretend not to know anything. So don't think too badly of him.”
* * * *
When she woke and saw that the room was lit by daylight, she was cheered.
Maybe the agony that had woken her the night before was over. Funny, waking on one's back when one had slept all her life on her stomach. That even in sleep something kept her from reverting to habit with excruciating consequences.
"Morning."
She turned her head, and there was Galen, lying on his side, watching her lamely pondering sleeping behavior and the possibilities of pain.
"Morning."
"You did better last night, I think."
"Yeah. Better."
"I'm glad."
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He smiled sweetly and affectionately ran his index finger in slow streams up and down her arm. He looked ethereal in the morning sunlight, his hair lit up like a halo, his face somehow boyish.
"Need anything?"
"No. Thanks. I just feel like lying here for a while."
"Mind the company?"
"No."
She smiled. It was nice having him in her bed with her.
“My dad gets in on Friday.”
“He knows?”
“No. “ Her gut sank for the hundredth time in two days, thinking of having to say the words, to see her dad's face as she told him she had the disease he'd watched kill her mother. “No, I want to tell him in person. This way I'm right there, with him, he can see I'm OK. Basically. And Sasha'll be around to . . . well, basically so they can go to the brewery and pity me behind my back.”
“Your brother holding up all right?”
“Yeah.” Sasha had aced the cancer thing—he hadn't tried to hold her hostage to a cascade of forced optimism, and he hadn't gotten maudlin. It was only when she told him she'd had the double mastectomy that he'd sobbed, “Oh, god, Vanka,” over and over.
“So. Do I get to meet them?”
“Sure.”
“And how will I fare? After David?”
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“Sasha and David would make a better couple than David and I did. You might have to promise Sasha a chance meeting with Angelina Jolie to get on his good side.
But Dad will love you.”
The whole sentence was out of her mouth before it all hit her. She was talking like Galen was her fucking fiancé. Like they had a future as a couple and the coming meeting was some kind of audition with the in-laws.
"Where are you going?"
She didn't answer. Into the sunlight, grass tickling and poking the soles of her feet, she let go, let hot tears stream down her cheeks, let sobs convulse her aching chest.
When he found her in the backyard and touched her shoulder she let him even though something about him doing that made it all worse, made her sobbing come on harder. She felt his arms go around her, his hand stroking her convulsing back, the other holding her head to his chest, his cheek or his lips pressed to the sun-warmed hair at her crown.
Later, when she'd finished crying her eyes out, when she'd blown her nose and washed her face, and she'd gone back to him even though her eyes were red and swollen and her cheeks had that post-bawl mottled look, he took her hands in his and gave her one of his brain-boring looks.
"I wish you'd stop pretending to be brave all the time. Acting like you're not sad.
Not furious. Not scared shitless."
"Is that what I'm feeling?"
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"Fine. I admit it. I don't know what the fuck you're feeling. Because you never tell me. I guess I'm just like everyone else you know. Just another person to hide from. I'm trying to be your friend, Vanka. But if I'm just in your way, if you want me to leave you alone, just tell me."
She'd thought the well was dry, but a fresh stream of tears were spilling down her cheeks.
"Or if me being here hurts you," he said in a tender voice, "I'll understand."
She finally managed to whisper, "I don't want you to go."
It felt like coming out of hiding, dialing the phone.
“Vanka,” Khalid's rich, smooth voice, her name stroked into that other shape on his foreign tongue.
“Hi, Khalid.”
“It's so nice to hear you.”
“I was thinking of going for a walk. Could I come over for a bit?” she asked.
“I'm not at home now. What about at three?”
As she dressed, she reached for the thick cardigan she'd been hiding in since the surgery. And then she just stood there, absently fingering the loose weave of the charcoal yarn. The thought of going out her front door with that cardigan on suddenly felt about as doable as showing up for a shoot in her bathrobe. The walk to Khalid's took on the portent of a debut.
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Rationally, it was ridiculous. But she felt, at her core, like she was a different person now, without her breasts. She was asexual. Sexless. No breasts, but no cock, either. And so, as she dressed, she recreated herself. An androgyne.
She abandoned the mastectomy-camouflaging layers of T-shirts and hoodies and cardigans and seized a short-sleeved black turtleneck, which, thanks to the properties of its knit, she'd always thought showed her tits off to great advantage and now emphasized her flat chest just as shamelessly. Even her bandage was faintly discernible. She'd endured the pain of getting her arms into those sleeves, so she convinced herself she could take the pain of getting out of yesterday's knickers and into her favorite pair of boyshorts—a cut she'd loved even before "the transformation," as she was starting to refer to her new self-image. Next she worked her way carefully into her favorite pair of black slacks. They rode lower on her hips, already—if she'd dropped this much weight just the stress and the surgery, what was chemo going to do to her?—
but they didn't sag or drag on the floor, once she'd managed to get her boots on. She thought her reflection in the full-length mirror looked sort of mod—all black and sleek.
Sexless, maybe, but not a caricature.
After some deliberation, she decided to forgo the makeup. She just put on a little moisturizer and shaped her eyebrows. Her bob she just tucked behind her ears, thinking, as she did every time she brushed or washed it, that soon she'd be shaving off that soft blond hair.
She walked the five blocks to Khalid's, then hinged the heavy pewter knocker, which seemed for a moment to have magical properties, the big, carved door swung open so instantly. God, Khalid. She'd forgotten how obscenely beautiful the man was.
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She waited for the furtive appraisal. But Khalid gently grasped her shoulders, read her face, smiled, then kissed her cheeks, left, right left. Then he backed up to put her at arm's length, and blatantly looked her down and up.
"I hardly expected to find you looking so well, Vanka," he pronounced. "Or flaunting your new figure so boldly. You're lovely. Really."
Khalid brought her a glass of water and they settled onto the bench swing on the generous porch.
“Are you angry with me, Vanka?” he asked, his gaze steady, direct.
“I can't decide,” she laughed. Then she gave him a stern look, only half kidding.
“I'm glad, mostly glad, you and Galen are still around. But I think you knew what I wanted. And you, you and Galen both, ignored that. You had no right to use that piece of paper, to give it to Galen.”
“No, I didn't. “
“Well, say you're sorry.”
“I admit that you have a right to be angry with me, that I did something . . .
unethical, in undoing a choice you had made. But it would be hypocritical of me to apologize to you, because I do not regret what I did.”
<
br /> “The ends justify the means, do they?”
“Yes, sometimes. But also, it would have been very hard for me, to live with it, if I had never seen you again, knowing I might have done something to keep your friendship. And, even more, it would have been very hard to live with Galen's sadness, with him wondering what had happened to you, while I would always know, and know that I had let you go.”
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* * * *
“Did you and Khalid kiss and make up?” Galen asked when she got back, fatigued and a bit sticky with sweat and L.A. grit. Fatigued by a five-block round trip, cautiously undertaken at the pace of a leisurely stroll. Another way she no longer felt like herself.
“Yeah,” she felt low. Melancholy. Like she'd wronged a saint.
“I learned a long time ago, and I've learned it over and over since. It's not possible to stay angry with Khalid. Now, come out back with me.”
He was obviously up to some mischief. She stepped through the slider and rounded the corner. At the center of her little patch of lawn was a deck chair, flanked by a table with three pitchers and a couple towels.
"What's up?"
"I'm going to wash your hair."
"Ooh, how Out of Africa.
"Please say you're not telling me you have syphilis."
"Well, I didn't when I met you," she said pointedly.
She'd almost forgotten about the model. The boy she'd used in her film, then fucked. But he was a virgin. Supposedly. And it was just a joke anyway. She didn't have syphilis. She had cancer.
"Naughty girl. You shouldn't tease a man who, in just a minute, is going to be holding a pitcher of water over your head."
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She sat down, letting herself be suspended by the strip of canvas looped into the frame of the chair, resting her neck against the thick layers of towel folded behind her, tilting her head back slowly, tentatively, waiting for a hint of pain to tell her to stop.
"Your hair's so soft," he said, running his fingers through it as it hung loose behind the chair.
"Enjoy it while it lasts. It's bound to be the next casualty. By next week, I'll be shopping for wigs."
"Mmmm. That could be fun." She felt his lips brush her ear. "You could become a mistress of disguises." Suddenly, his lips and his voice were at the other ear. "And I would be sleeping with a different girl every night."
His playful voice had dipped into a low growl. She suddenly felt incredibly sad.
What was he doing? With her? This man with such appetite. Her the invalid.
Invalid.
It had been a one-night stand. A couple of fucks. A fling. What was he doing nursing her, cooking for her, doing her household chores?
His lips brushed over her neck and left a little kiss just behind her jaw, and a pleasant tickling trickled down her nerves. Next liquid heat washed over her scalp, tugging gently at her hair, dripping into the grass below. Then she heard the click of a bottle cap being flicked back, and she smelled her shampoo, like sweet almonds. There was warm sun and a cool breeze on her face as she heard the slurp of the bottle sucking at the shampoo and the air, then his hands rubbing together, smearing and slicking the liquid. Then his hands cupped her skull, cradling, fingers spread, working into her hair, rubbing slippery and lathery against her scalp.
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"Galen," she sighed, her lids closed, the sun glowing brick red through them.
"Hmmmm?"
"You're so good. I'm actually happy."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Me too."
He massaged her scalp a few minutes more, sending a shower of tingles down her neck and arms when he used his nails. Then he rinsed, conditioned, and rinsed again, never sending the river of suds into her eyes, as she'd expected, knowing how things that look romantic in movies tend to turn out like comedies—and tragedies—in real life. Even the towel felt good in his hands, pressing, rubbing. She was glad to lift her head and straighten her neck, though.
"Did you like that?" he purred warmly, massaging her neck now.
"Yes," she sighed, feeling like she might melt into the grass, a puddle to merge with the water and bubbles under the chair.
"Good," he said in a playful, husky voice. "Then you're going to love the sponge bath."
Her melting body froze. Was he fucking kidding? She looked to see. He was grinning. But he wasn't joking.
"Have you been dipping into my meds?"
He laughed. "I know you like being a dirty girl, Vanka, but there are standards of hygiene that must be observed."
"What? I miss one day of bathing, and I smell?"
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The humor was gone from her voice. As if she didn't have enough to feel selfconscious about. Now she was a smelly androgynous anorexic.
"No," he chuckled. "No." His look softened and warmed. "No doubt you could skip a week of showering, and I would only get pheromones off you. But I know you shower every day. So let's get you scrubbed down."
"You’re not dumb, Galen. I know you get it."
"What?"
"I'm not ready."
"For what?"
He was making her say it.
"I don't want you to see me."
"You've still got a bandage, don't you?"
"It's not enough."
She was starting to cry.
"Vanka," he said, not pulling her body to him, because it would have hurt her, but bringing her head to his chest, holding her that way, "your breasts are gone. I can see that, even when you're dressed."
Her face flared hot, and her gut froze cold. Like he'd slapped her. He was cruel.
She was angry. She hated him. For saying something so brutal. Hurting her.
True. He'd only said what was true. Her breasts were gone. It was true. It was obvious. She didn't look the way she'd looked five days ago. Part of her body was gone.
Cut away. It was done. Irreversible.
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She cried, and he held her, stroking her wet, just-washed hair. Oscillating like a fan, holding on to each other, bare feet in a square of grass wet with shampoo-scented water.
Then she let him take her in, let him undress her, let him sit her in her tub. It was a way of letting go. Of accepting that he wasn't her lover anymore. He was her kind, good friend.
The cool ceramic of the tile and porcelain of the tub felt good against her anger-inflamed skin. He washed her face first, bringing the damp cloth to her cheek, touching her almost like a caress, but with the rough terrycloth texture between his skin and hers.
Soaked up her warm, salty tears, left her forehead, her nose, her lips, her cheeks fresh and cool to the air. He kissed her. She was sad. Bare. Exposed. She let him.
He rinsed the cloth under the faucet and brought it back to her damp and cool and clean, and pressed it to her throat, washed her neck, her ears, her shoulders, her arms, her hands. He took his time with her hands, and she thought it was either careless or sweet, because she could wash those herself. Back to the faucet, back to her. Her back. The rough, soap-slick fabric felt so good on the back of her neck, the back of her shoulders, between her shoulder blades.
Back to the front, the cloth freshly dampened, freshly soaped. He touched her above the bandage, along her collarbones and above and a little below, being careful to keep the bandage dry, being careful with everything that might be tender.
Below the bandage. Her ribs. Her waist. Her belly. His touch was softer now than it had been as he'd washed her shoulders and back. Like a caress that left her wet and 220
a little sudsy, her skin slick and shiny with a trail of translucent, milk-hued bubbles here and there.
She loved that hand. The look of it, large and strong, but delicate in shape and texture, the fingers long, the skin smooth, soft. The feel of it as he touched her, the way he could caress her skin so softly she hardly felt more than his heat and the faint, tickling stirring of the invisible down on her face, her back her thighs. The way he could touch her more deeply, softening t
aut muscles. Forcing her body to feel him.
Acknowledge him.
Now, though, his hand didn't touch her. The warm wet textured cloth traveled between his skin and hers. Across her ribs, just below the bandage. In an oval described around her belly button, below and between her ribs, between pelvic bones, above public bone, leaving a faint swirl of lather in one orbit, wiping it away in the next.
Then down. Down the length of her thigh, just gently scrubbing the skin in a long slow sweeping stroke, and she was quiet when the limp wet edge of the cloth being dragged along beside his hand trailed over her sex, slipping between her thighs, touching her a brief second before it was pulled taut and pulled along, down her thigh, then double back, back to her belly, innocently brushing against her again.
She let herself feel it, those accidental touches that weren't him but were caused by him, the man bathing her. The man who'd been her lover. She even closed her eyes for a second and focused on the fleeting feeling, then the memory of it. It surprised her, somehow, that her body was still able to experience that kind of pleasure. It seemed incongruous with the pain. With how she felt about her body now.
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She came back to herself, back to the present. She'd missed a few seconds. He was washing the other leg now, the top of her thigh, her knee, her shin, her ankle. Just sliding along the surface. Then up again, and another incidental brush of fabric as he moved his hand past the crease between thigh and pelvis, to circle her navel again.
Astonishing. She was aroused. The way she'd felt when she was in junior high, and just feeling the closeness of a boy's body at a dance made her ache and want, when that was everything, because nothing was going to happen. So the throb, the pull, the heavy ache went on and on, never disturbed by a real touch.
His hand moved down again. The textured cloth slid over her again, disturbing, stirring all the expectant feeling pooling there. Now, with the cloth still keeping his skin from hers, he was massaging her thigh, first gently, then deeper and deeper, his strong fingers working her muscles, his thumbs working her outer thigh, the other fingers working her quads and lightening up as they massaged the more delicate muscles at the inside of her thigh. As he squeezed and rubbed, the fabric bunched a little between her thighs, and when it brushed against her as his grip descended over the curve of her thigh, or ascended again, it was startling. Powerful.