by Pamela Ribon
“Do you really know how to play or is it just a line?” He leaned in toward me again.
“Oh, I’ll kick your ass in Street Fighter,” I boasted. “And then you’ll be in love with me forever.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said quietly. We went back to our food. That line worked every damn time. I knew he was into me just as much as I was into him.
“What’s your best?” I asked.
“I’m not as crafty as you are. I don’t lure women into arcades to force them into loving me.”
“Okay, you win for ‘Less Desperate.’ Now tell me your line.”
“Ever since I first saw you I’ve been dying to know what it’s like to lean into your body as I slowly make love to you all afternoon. I want the smell of you all over me. I want to do very dirty things to you until you’re so weak you can’t move anymore. And then I want to go get some ice cream.”
I know he said things after that, but I didn’t hear them. I was imagining what his apartment looked like and exactly where I’d be pinned as he slowly worked me over. Would we be in the kitchen? Would we be in a hallway near a bathroom? Was there a mirror where I’d spot myself smiling before I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fall into him?
I don’t know if he even asked me, but within the hour we were at his place. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t actually dark outside yet; the bar had tricked me into thinking it was late at night. It was still the afternoon, and the overcast sky gave everything a beautiful blue-gray haze.
His apartment was small. The floors were wooden, and there were signs of a dog.
“Heather’s dog. She’d stay here sometimes because I loved her so much. The dog. Well, and Heather. In any event, she’s not here anymore. Trooper. Or Heather.” He showed me a picture of a big, floppy basset hound.
The painting he was working on was wonderful. It was the family portrait broken up into little squares, and inside each square was another painting of his family, and all of the squares added up to a larger version of the family. It was like a memory of a family gathering, how if you stared at something long enough, when you closed your eyes it broke apart in your head and you only remembered tiny squares of things.
I closed my eyes and saw his apartment as it shattered into tiny squares in my mind. His coffee table, where there was a very old TV Guide, three pens, and a 7-11 Double Gulp cup. The wall over his couch, where he had a framed Rothko print (it was blue and red). I could see the kitchen, where he had wineglasses and a stainless-steel refrigerator covered in photos and magazine clippings. In front of his television there was a guitar I hoped he wouldn’t play. I saw his desk. The computer was off. I stared at the keyboard for a few seconds as Kurt went to get a glass of water. That was where he spent so many hours writing to me. That’s where he wrote all about himself and asked questions about my life and probed into my head. That’s where he thought about me, about who I was and about how he wanted me in his life.
I had been in this apartment so many times over the past year and yet this was the first time I’d ever seen it.
As Kurt handed me a glass of water, our fingers touched. I blushed for noticing it. Behind him was a section of wall, close to his bedroom, that would be a great place to get pinned against. I could hear my pulse and feel the blood rushing through my wrists.
“It’s wonderful,” I said, gesturing toward the painting as I sat on his dark green couch.
The room filled with the sound of an ambulance siren. Kurt laughed and pointed in the air, his awkward motions reminding me about the nearby hospital. Over his shoulder I saw a framed picture of a woman laughing. Was that Heather or his sister?
“I’m going to show you something,” he said as he walked back to a stack of canvases against a wall. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
I walked toward him. “I can’t promise a thing.”
He pulled out one canvas and held it against his chest. His arms were wide as he gripped the sides. “I painted you.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“Don’t say anything yet,” he said. “I didn’t know what you looked like, so this is all wrong now that I know, but I was thinking about you one night and I painted what I thought you’d look like. It’s dumb, but I promised myself that I’d show you this some day, and now here you are. So here.”
He rested it in our laps. The wooden brace felt cool to the touch. The paint sat thickly on the canvas. A young girl was smiling at me. She had strawberry-blond hair—straight but full as it fell around her pale skin. She looked delicate, with a very small forehead that curved into a tiny nose that perked upward. He had given her dimples, and her chin jutted out in a smirk. Her hair hung down loosely, but one hand was frozen beside her head, pulling a strand of hair behind her ears, right beside her vibrant green eyes. There was a sparkle he had painted in them that was so sharp it seemed that the girl in the painting knew something about me that I didn’t want her to know. She wore a tiny silver tiara. A banner hung over her head. “Love Until Later,” it read. She might not have been me, but she was certainly Anna K.
“She’s beautiful.”
“I’ll do another one now that I know what you look like. But I thought you might get a kick out of this anyway.” Our legs were touching and his arms were over mine as we both held the picture.
“I love it,” I said. I could feel his breath on my skin, next to my left ear.
“I’m glad,” he said quietly. He leaned the picture against a table and looked at me.
“I’m glad to have met you, Anna K,” he said plainly. “You are one very charming lady.”
“Cool,” I responded. Cool?
Kurt put the picture out of our reach and then moved his hand near mine. I went to put my hands close to his and ended up tipping my glass of water. I shot up and cursed. “The second time today,” I moaned. “What is wrong with me?”
“You’re starting to sober up,” Kurt joked. He mopped the spill with a towel from his bathroom. “It’s okay. Sit back down.”
I sat near him and he put his arm around me. “Do you know what kind of nasty things I’ve spilled right here?” he asked.
“No.”
“I’m not going to tell you. But I want you to know that this water puddle would be disgusted to know what it covered up. It’s okay. Calm down.”
He pulled his glasses off his face and put them on the table. He rubbed his eyes. He blinked as he refocused on me. He looked younger without his glasses. Smoother. His entire face softened, and I wanted to kiss his forehead so badly. Just pull him toward me and thank him for making me feel better so many times over the past few months. I was so happy to be right there.
He held my hand, stroking my pinkie with his.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I don’t want to cross any lines with you,” he said.
“You’re not crossing any line,” I said, as I moved my head to his shoulder. I was leaning my entire body against the side of him, hoping he’d grab me and pull me to him. I wanted him to take control and move me, clutch me, and make me forget we had met under these strange circumstances.
He stood up. “We should go,” he coughed. He walked into his bedroom. He turned back around to say, “You smell very good. Now put your shoes back on.”
In the solitude of the bathroom a few minutes later, I wondered how upset Kurt would be when I told him the truth about Ian. Would he be relieved to know that I was available or would he feel betrayed? I wondered if he was the kind to forgive easily. Was he even ready for something like this, so soon after Heather? I looked myself over in the mirror and fixed my lip gloss.
Kurt deserved to know the truth, and he’d want to know that I was actually a single girl who thought he was fascinating and sexy. Then we’d have a wild night in Pittsburgh. No pressure, no guarantees of anything, just one night (with the possibility of more). I’d put it all out for him to decide what he wanted. He’d see how vulnerable I’d become in telling the tru
th, and he’d want to take advantage of our remaining time together.
Kurt said it’d be cold where we were going, so he gave me an old sweater of Heather’s as we left his apartment.
We drove for a while before we walked deep into downtown Pittsburgh.
“I like all the Christmas stuff,” I said, looking up at the tall brick buildings.
“Sparkle stuff. Pittsburgh doesn’t allow you to say Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or Kwaanza or Ramadan or anything religious, because there are all different kinds, including atheists. So they made a city mandate and it’s now called The Sparkle Season. We hate it.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Everybody.”
Later down the road, Kurt pointed at a sign in front of a bar that read FUCK THE SPARKLE SEASON.
“See?” he asked as he shot me that smile, the one I’d always imagined but never believed I’d really see. And now there he was right next to me, within touching distance. Real. Flesh. A person. Anything was possible now. I felt giddy with anticipation.
He pointed out the new baseball stadium. As he stood at a statue of Roberto Clemente, I excused myself to find a bathroom. I pulled my list out of my coat pocket. I had brought my lie list with me. I was going to remember everything I had said that was untrue and explain everything. I was going to come clean. It was time.
As I found my way back to Kurt, he smiled when he saw me. “Hey, you,” he said. “It still trips me out that you’re here, just a bit.”
He kissed my cheek. “You’re cold,” he said. “Come on. Run with me. We’ll warm up.”
He started running down the street. I broke into a sprint. My feet found an ice puddle and I slipped. My hands flew out of my pockets to steady myself and my lie list flew into the air. I reached to grab it, but it swirled into the wind. Kurt ran back toward me to help.
“No!” I shouted. “Just let it go!”
He kept grabbing for the list, the paper twirling in the air just out of his reach. “No, I got it! I got it!”
I saw him getting closer and closer to the list of lies. He’d grip the edge of the paper right before another gust of wind would rush in and pull it away. He jumped and grunted as his gloved hands groped for the paper. Another gust of wind pulled the paper up and down the street.
“Just forget it!” I shouted.
Kurt pulled off his gloves and started running toward it. “It’s going to go over the bridge!” he shouted.
I ran after him, screaming for him to stop. He was determined to be a hero. The paper was sailing toward the bridge. I prayed my lie list would suffer an icy, wet death.
The wind died, the list began its descent, and Kurt lifted his hand.
I threw myself into Kurt’s body. My hands went around his waist and my mouth found his neck as I blew hot air on his skin in an exhale. I heard him gasp and saw the paper fly out of his hands and over his head. I watched it sail down to the water.
His arms were around me as he started chuckling. “I think you ruptured my spleen.”
“Thanks for trying.”
“Was it important?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not anymore.”
“I was worried it was your airline ticket.”
“No, it wasn’t. That would have been terrible.”
“Not too terrible,” Kurt said. He smiled at me with a smile that said I could never do anything wrong. He was absorbing me with his eyes, taking in all of me. I felt more beautiful than I ever had in my life. I felt captivating. Important.
He grabbed my hand and held it. He hadn’t put his glove back on. My hand felt hot inside of his. I felt my face flush as he walked me down the street. It started to snow.
When you live in Texas, every single time you see snow it’s magical.
I didn’t want to tell him anything that would change the way he looked at me. The way his eyes searched mine, I felt he was fascinated every time I spoke. If I told him that I’d been lying, he might never look at me that way again. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I wanted more time on this pedestal.
We went to The Andy Warhol Museum. More specifically, he took me to his favorite room in the museum. The Silver Clouds room is quiet and white. It’s filled with giant silver pillows that float and suspend. A fan in the corner of the room keeps the air circulating so that the pillows keep bumping into each other, gathering and separating, floating around the room like a giant space romper room.
As we stared into the room from the doorway, Kurt explained that there was a period in time when Warhol decided his art was over. He thought his career was coming to an end and that he was working on his last exhibition. So he decided to end it himself by making his art float away forever. He created silver Mylar pillows filled with helium. But the Mylar was too heavy for the balloons. Instead of taking off, they hovered in the air. Andy’s art wouldn’t leave even when he was trying to send it away.
The fans in the room tossed the clumsy, lumbering silver balloons in a hushed, beautiful dance. They were like elephants suspended and slowed down in time—moving and bumping, hoping for contact, repelling touch.
“You have to walk through this thing,” Kurt said. I was nervous, so he pulled me by the hand into the room.
I saw our reflection in each pillow as it slowly floated toward us. Pillows were over my head; more were hanging out next to my feet. I kicked one accidentally and it bounced into another, and they both slowly floated away from me. Everything moved slower than the pace of life. It made everything seem quiet and small and still. I hesitantly reached out and touched one. It made a soft crinkle as my fingers slid over the smooth surface, my image distorted in the reflection of this exaggerated silver Pop Tart.
One pillow moved out of my way as the fan pushed it to my right. I looked up to see Kurt standing in front of me. I could see myself in the balloon to his right. I saw my face, red from the cold and smiling from the boy. I saw my arms reach for him. I saw him look down and then at me. I saw us hold each other by the waist. I saw us kiss.
I’ve never had a kiss that tasted as sweet as that kiss in that room with that boy. That feeling, right there, of everything falling into place—of mouths uniting two people who have been searching for so long for the perfect moment—I had never believed in it before. Standing against him, I was still the fastest-spinning object in the room.
We kissed as the silver clouds danced around us. We kissed as we moved to the couches in the lobby. We kissed until they kicked us out. We kissed every three steps in the street. We couldn’t find the car because we were kissing so much. We kissed in an alley as the snow came down around us. We shivered into each other and held each other’s skin under our clothes. It had grown dark and the streetlights illuminated our breath as it rose around our heads.
As we leaned against a brick wall, I pulled away to pull a stray hair out of my mouth. My face was wet and stinging from the cold. My jaw ached. My lips were chapped from the raw weather. We both giggled.
“You’re a very good kisser.” I smiled.
“So are you,” he exhaled as he leaned in to kiss me again.
The next time we came up for air, he asked, “Are you okay? Is this all okay?”
I nodded, unable to talk. I was panting.
“If at any point this becomes not okay, you let me know and we’ll stop. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I thought you didn’t use lines on women.” I smiled, surprised that I was able to fire enough synapses to crack a joke.
“You make me weak,” he answered.
With each kiss I got stronger. Every time his mouth moved on my neck or his hands gripped my sides I felt more confident that I could tell him the truth.
As we drove home, I made him pull over five times to kiss on the side of the road, headlights whirring past us in the dark. I wondered how I was so lucky. I was kissing him and still nothing had screwed it up. Maybe it was because he didn’t know everything about me or because I was something forbidden.
Right then I didn’t care to find out the answer.
We kept kissing until we got back to his apartment. We kissed against his front door. I was ready for anything, wanted him to do everything. I wanted him to steal me and keep me in his apartment forever. I had to let him have all of me.
Once inside his apartment I took off my coat and said, “I’d feel better if I wasn’t wearing this sweater.”
“You’re hot?”
“No, it’s Heather’s.”
He looked me in the eyes. “I didn’t even notice, Anna. I just saw you.”
It was time to tell him the truth. If he was going to have all of me, he had to know who I really was. I opened my mouth to say something, but he backed up. “I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “‘I just saw you.’ That’s what I said. When did I become so cheesy?”
He kissed me again. Full and strong. I lost my words.
“When I’m kissing you I can’t say anything stupid. From now on, whenever I say something cheesy, I’m going to follow it with something gross about myself. Here: ‘I just saw you.’ I sometimes forget to brush my teeth before I go to bed.”
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
“Okay. Say something nice about me and then something awful about yourself. Something good; something gross.”
He couldn’t have set it up any better.
“I think you’re an incredible person. And I’m a liar.”
“Too vague. We’re all liars.” He kissed the base of my neck and said, “Try again.”
I started falling to the ground as my knees weakened, my hands jutting out behind me to catch myself on whatever was closest. I felt him breathing into me, pulling me tighter to his body as he eased us to the floor. I wanted to tell him as much as I wanted to never speak again. “I think you’re amazing,” I gasped. “And I need to tell you something about Ian.”
He pulled back from me. “Another rule,” he said, holding up one finger and wiping his mouth with his other hand. “No talking about Ian.”
“It’s not like that,” I started.
“I don’t care what it’s like,” he said. “I don’t want to hear his name. Is that okay? It’s selfish, but I don’t want to think about him while I’m with you. And I don’t want to know that you’re thinking of him while you’re in my home. If we’re going to keep doing this, I can’t think about him.”