For Today I Am a Boy

by Kim Fu

  “Been busy?”

  The wind picked up. The tourists went inside the chalet, an empty hall with a Coke machine. After a moment, Bonnie said, “You’re always waiting for the mountains to come to you. It’s exhausting.”

  She turned and saw my face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” She patted the wall beside her. “Come here.”

  I sat down and she leaned her head on my shoulder. She said, “Do you remember when we would pretend to be Adele?”

  “Yes. You got tired of it first.”

  “I didn’t get tired of it. I just . . . Being me wasn’t all that different. And it was more fun.”

  The wind whipped her hair into my cheek. “Lucky you,” I said.

  The daytime shift at Le Carré ended at three, when the night staff came in, and the switchover was lively. The restaurant was officially closed until dinner. The day staff sat at the bar in half-buttoned jackets and charged drinks to their paychecks, leering at the waitresses as they filed in. Servers of both genders wore white-collared shirts and bow ties. The uniform had a strangely eroticizing effect on the women; they looked sexier in the bow ties than in their street clothes. I had a flash of longing to try one on. The night cooks shouted complaints about the state of the kitchen and the prepped food, and the day staff shouted corrosive comebacks.

  John followed me to the small coatroom. Changing around others made me uncomfortable, but there were so many people who needed to get in or out of uniform that there was no time to protest. The door didn’t lock. I faced the corner as I unbuttoned my jacket. “Stay and hang out with us,” he said. He pulled his chef’s jacket over his head like a sweater and it snagged on his T-shirt.

  I glanced over my shoulder. John’s bare chest was revealed for a moment. No bound breasts, no scars, the skin smooth and tan. The waiter had lied. I relaxed. “I’m pretty tired,” I said. “I think I’ll just go home.”

  He shrugged. “All right. Well, I’ll see you at the crack of dawn tomorrow.” He threw the door open before I had finished changing. Two waitresses stood there, holding their bow ties and shirts over their arms and looking at me pointedly. I decided to change at home. I ducked out with my head down.

  As I passed, John was leaning over the bar from his stool, grabbing at one of the tumblers like he was going to make himself a drink. “Get out of there!” the bartender shouted, whacking his hand. Everyone laughed. I paused at the door, pushing against the wind that held it shut. I watched from a distance as John said something that made them all laugh again. Another cook gave him a high-five. Of course it wasn’t true.

  I paced my apartment. For the first time in a long time, it felt too small. I put on my sisters’ decades-old makeup. It was hard to get the color to transfer from the dried-out lipstick. I wiped it on over and over again, chafing my lips, willing it to work.

  I pulled the white—everything was so fucking white—winter blanket off the bed and spread it out on the floor. I set out a toy tea set, also from my mother’s house, painted pink flowers and gold edging on plastic that looked like real china. I sat down with the dolls. Adele’s and Bonnie’s childhoods had been so far apart that the dolls represented different eras, forays in and out of realism. Helen had never played with dolls.

  I lay down with my head on a cushion. It was my husband’s lap. His rough hand stroked my hair. The dolls—small children running barefoot through the grass, a game of chase and tackle.

  There was a knock at the door. My hair dissolved and ran through his fingers like sand. The children died where they stood, stiffening into painted smiles and stickers for eyes. I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hand and succeeded only in smearing the dry color onto my chin.

  I threw open the door. Bonnie stood there wearing a camping backpack almost as tall as she was, her long hair in braids. I remembered when she’d first arrived in Montreal, fattened on Los Angeles, looking like a freshly shorn sheep.

  “How did you get into the building?” I asked.

  Bonnie held the straps of her backpack against her chest. “Is that Helen’s?”

  I looked down at the dress I was wearing, an austere, long-hemmed thing that buttoned from top to bottom. “Probably.”

  She looked past me to the dolls arranged on the blanket. “What are you doing?” She sounded genuinely perplexed. Her question exhausted me. I thought of the wig Adele had sent, of Helen’s terse conversation while I stood naked in the shower.

  “How is it,” I said, “that you know me best and least of all?”

  Bonnie shuffled uncomfortably. “Can I come in?”

  I stepped aside. She sat down on the blanket next to the doll that said Mommy when squeezed. She flicked its pigtails with her finger. “I came to say goodbye. I’m going to Europe with some friends.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw her hands up theatrically and smiled. “Forever! I’m retiring from stripping. Nobody wants to see my thirty-year-old tatas.”

  Sitting among the dolls with her braided hair, Bonnie looked twelve. “Are you going to visit Adele?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t really decided where we’re going. We fly into Paris, and then we’ll just train around until we get bored.”

  “I can give you her address.”

  Bonnie stood up. She tugged at the collar of my dress, flattening it out properly. “I’ll see if I can work it into the trip.” Her face came so close that I was sure she could smell the fruit-skin smell of the expired lipstick. “I didn’t actually come to say goodbye. I came to ask you to come with us.”

  I shook my head. It was just like Bonnie to invite me on an indefinite overseas trip on her way to the airport, giant backpack and all. “I just got a new job.”

  “It’s just a job. You have nothing here.”

  “There’s Mother.”

  “Fuck Mother.” Bonnie kicked at the picnic. The empty teacups tipped over. The head popped off one of the dolls and rolled in a weighted half circle, like a bocce ball. “I know for a fact that you have a shit-ton of money in the bank, sitting around doing nothing.”

  “Is that why you want me to come?”

  “No! I think it could be fun.” Bonnie bent down and picked up the doll’s body and head. She examined the neck like she was trying to figure out how to reattach it. “We could . . .” She hesitated. I could see her weighing her words in her head. “We could tell people that you’re my sister.”

  My mouth opened.

  Bonnie stepped closer. “Paris,” she repeated, like she was casting a spell. “And maybe Adele.”

  I saw it: Sabrina’s Paris in 1950s black-and-white, the city that made her a woman. The Eiffel Tower as seen through her window, the shutters thrown open to the night. Two figures went running through my imagined streets, rain-soaked cobblestones lined by gaslights, girls in matching polka-dot dresses and gold earrings. This is my sister.

  I looked again at Bonnie, teetering under the weight of her backpack, ready to uproot her life in an instant. She was leaving right now. There was no time to think. No time for the doubt that held me in place. I knew this, these dolls and dresses, this miserable little life.

  I was saying no. I could hear my voice saying no and I could see Bonnie nodding sadly; I could see her putting the broken doll gingerly onto my bed, apologizing for knocking its head off. Or maybe for her hubris, or for not asking earlier. For not saying it sooner. For not saying it all along: Sister, my sister, I’ve always known.

  I slogged through my next shift in a haze, my head full of Europe. Now that the opportunity was lost, my fantasies were free to break with reality. No awkward lies and costumes. Bonnie and I sprawled in matching white bikinis on a Mediterranean beach, our thirty-year-old tatas on display.

  The bug-eyed waiter came to the window and said a customer wanted to talk to John. A girl came to the kitchen door and John rushed over.

  The girl couldn’t disguise how good-looking she was, not with her severe haircut and
round, unfashionable glasses, not with her oversize T-shirt and denim overalls. I was used to the waitresses who compensated for the high-collared uniforms with glittery eyelashes and torturous shoes, who were more young than attractive. This girl pushed her femininity away and it sprang back as though coiled.

  “Hi, babe,” John said. They leaned toward each other without touching, like dogs straining against leashes. “What table are you at? What did you order?”

  She pointed into the dining hall. “The fish stew. That’s your job, right?”

  “Yep. I’ll make it special.”

  They gazed at each other with some profound, unknowable intent. It was uncomfortable to look at—worse, somehow, than if they’d just started making out on the floor.

  That past summer, at the café, someone had left the skins from the roasted hams in the metal garbage bin out back. They sat baking in the sun. When I lifted the lid off at the end of the day, a cloud of black flies poured out and engulfed my head. Their wings brushed my cheeks and hissed in my ears. I thought of a picture I’d seen of a calf dying from black-fly bites, its sores red and swollen. No one heard me screaming in the alley. That moment, flat on my back in the filth around the bin, and this moment, watching John watch his girlfriend back out the kitchen door, felt the same. Loneliness exploding out of nowhere in a screeching swarm, dark and dense enough to blot out the sun.

  The other cooks stopped what they were doing to make fun of John as he made a heart out of chopped scallions to top the cream garnish of his girlfriend’s stew. The music playing in the kitchen was the pop hit of the season, sung by a group of boys who must have speaking voices like John: perky, irrepressible.

  “What are you doing here so early?” John asked. It was a Friday morning. He stood yawning in his rumpled street clothes at the kitchen door, his blond hair sticking up at angles.

  “I’m on the schedule for six.”

  “Yeah, but nobody shows up for their six until six thirty, at the earliest. Jeez. What have you been doing?” He surveyed the kitchen. “You already set up your station? Oh man. Don’t let Chef find out about that. You’re ruining it for everybody. Sit down and let me make you some coffee.”

  I sat at the bar. John danced around behind it, though there was no music playing, making a show of preparing the espresso. He flipped the small cup and caught it like a coin toss. “How about that? Pretty cool, huh?” He did the same thing with the tamper and tried to catch it behind his back. It clattered on the floor.

  I laughed. He handed me my espresso. It burned my mouth. I coughed. “It’s hot,” he said helpfully. He sat down on the stool beside me with his cup, his elbows on the bar. I leaned away from him. He had a habit of getting too close.

  “So,” he said. “Where do you go after work every day? Why are you always in such a hurry?”

  “I don’t go anywhere,” I said, surprised.

  “You run out of here like your house is on fire. Why don’t you stay and hang out?”

  I felt like he was questioning some fundamental aspect of my person. Why are your eyes brown? Why do you like your steak rare? “I don’t know.”

  “Stay today. I’ll buy you a shot.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like you?”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  He laughed and put his hands up in defense. “Okay, fine. Don’t stay, I don’t care.”

  I nursed my espresso in my hands. John hopped off his stool and headed to the coatroom, still dancing to the music in his head. It took a moment before I felt bad. Yes, I could be friends with this simple-minded kid. I liked him. Everyone liked him. And he was right: with Bonnie gone, I had nowhere to go.

  I went to the coatroom to apologize. I knocked and pushed the door open without waiting. “Hey, John . . .”

  He was stepping out of his jeans, his gray boxer briefs wadded up against his sweaty skin, wedged into the crease where his thighs met his hips. His chef pants were on the floor. He reached for them. I had startled him, and he tried to dive into both legs at the same time. He finally yanked them up and turned his back to me. For a moment, I doubted what I’d seen. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking.

  His voice stayed cheery. “What’s up, Peter?”

  Did I burst in on him on purpose? Did I want it to be true? This door didn’t lock. People were constantly walking in on each other. With the wait staff, it had turned into a game. The waitresses went in two at a time and one of them held the door shut.

  He turned around. Our eyes met. He was depending on me not noticing; it was such a subtle thing, an empty fold of fabric. I was frozen.

  John was still smiling, though it had tightened. “Did you talk to Damian?”

  “Who?” I took a step back.

  “The waiter with the . . .” John held a hand over his eye in the shape of a ball. “With the eyes.”

  “Yes.” I scanned John’s body: the stout muscle, the teenage facial hair, his natural voice. His flat, unmarked chest. “Is it true?” I asked. Before he could answer, I said, “It’s not true. I’ve changed in here with you before.”

  “I keep my pants on.” John shrugged. “Look, it’s not a secret, exactly, but not everyone knows. I tell people only if it comes up and I feel like they can handle it.” I could see the horror in my expression reflected in John’s face. His smile dimmed.

  “How?” I choked out.

  “I don’t really want to—”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. I couldn’t stop myself. “How?”

  John pushed me hard. I stumbled back and slammed into the wall, one of the coat hooks striking my spine, before I fell to the ground. I started crying. Loud, ugly weeping, heaving in staggers like a child astonished by his own tears.

  “I’m sorry! It was a reflex. I thought you were going to hit me.” John knelt down. “Are you okay?”

  “How?” I whispered.

  John considered my pathetic form, slumped on the ground. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  I waved my arm around his body viciously. “This. How?”

  He straightened up. “Look, I don’t know you that well, and it’s really none of your business. I’m a guy. That’s all you need to know.” He hovered over me, still more concerned than threatening. “Why are you crying?”

  “It’s not fair. Give it to me.” Give me your girlhood, John, I thought nonsensically. You don’t want it? Give it to me. I want to be the woman you would’ve been: blond, simple, sunny.

  “What’s not fair? What are you talking about?” John was too close again; we were almost nose to nose.

  I lifted my head. John searched my face. His eyes widened. He sat down beside me and looked at his hands, his fingers thick and stout as the rest of him. A moment passed in silence. The hooks above our heads were crowded with left-behind clothes and junk. Toques and scarves, a T-shirt, a bow tie, a nude-colored bra.

  Another of John’s smiles, this one small and solitary, for himself. “Did you think . . . you were the only one?” he said.

  “No, I thought . . .” Yes, and I still did. John wasn’t like me. Whatever he was, whatever he called himself, he was something else entirely. He had to be.

  “Are you a woman?”

  He threw off this question readily, like it was nothing at all. My whole life summed up in a question I never got to ask. “I can’t do this,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me what—”

  “I can’t work today.” I stood up. “Tell them . . . something.” John followed me out of the coatroom. He followed me all the way to the door. I didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

  I realized I had left my coat and bag with my transit pass inside of it. I walked for an hour to get home through the October slush, that first, strange snow that doesn’t quite take.

  John called me that night. I asked him how he got my number. “From your resumé. I also have your bag, your wallet, and your coat.”

  “Am I
fired?”

  “No. I told them you called in sick. No big deal.”

  “Then I’ll get my stuff on Monday.”

  “You’re going to go all weekend without your wallet?”

  It was also my only warm coat. “Yes.”

  “Where do you live? I’ll come drop it off.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “We’re having some people over for dinner tomorrow. You could come, and pick up your stuff then.”

  John had a girlfriend, without the quotation marks around the term that came with a Margie or a Claire. I remembered their electric stares. “I’m busy.”

  He exhaled. The mouthpiece crackled. “I want to help you. Tell me how to help you.”

  I looked down into my lap. I picked at the skirt I was wearing: white denim, yellowed with age, ending several inches above my knees. Bonnie’s. My mouth was gluey with lip gloss. His questions bothered me a lot. What are your life goals? Why don’t you hang out with us? Tell me how to help you. As though all people understood themselves and had neat, one-word answers. “There’s a lot about you that I don’t understand.” I tried to be honest. “I’m not sure I want to understand.”

  “We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. It’s just dinner.”

  I rubbed my shin. The stubble prickled against my hand. Time to shave, I thought, not without pleasure. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, hot damn,” John said. I could picture his smile.

  John’s girlfriend, Eileen, pointed to each dish spread out on the coffee table. “The chickpea salad has mayo in it. The green salad has soy sauce in it. The pasta has cheese and gluten in it. But the macaroons are gluten-free, and nothing has shellfish or meat.”

  I’d been introduced to the five faces who were now nodding solemnly, but none of their names had stuck. They appeared to be memorizing this information. We sat on cushions on the floor. All of the furniture in the living room consisted of piles of cushions, aside from the coffee table and a wide, backless bookcase.