by Brit Bennett
“JUST LIKE THAT?” Reese said.
“Just like that.”
“Well, goddamn.”
They were standing on the rooftop of his friend Barry’s apartment. Earlier that night, Barry had performed as Bianca at a club in West Hollywood called Mirage. For seven electrifying minutes, Bianca strutted onstage, a purple boa wrapped around her broad shoulders, and belted out “Dim All the Lights.” She wore ruby red lipstick and a big blonde wig like Dolly Parton.
“It’s not enough to be a woman,” Reese had joked during the show. “He’s gotta be a white woman too.”
Barry’s apartment was lined with wig heads covered in hair of every color, realistic and garish: a brown bob, a black pageboy, a straight Cher cut dyed pink, the bangs slicing across the forehead. At first, she’d thought that Barry might be like Reese, but then she arrived at his apartment to find him wearing a polo shirt and slacks, scratching his bearded cheek. During the week, he taught high school chemistry in Santa Monica; he only became Bianca two Saturdays a month in a tiny dark club off Sunset. Otherwise, he was a tall, bald man who looked nothing like a woman, which was part of the delight, she realized, watching the enraptured crowd. It was fun because everyone knew that it was not real.
Downstairs, the apartment was loud and hot, a new Thelma Houston record radiating out the windows. The girls had come over. The girls, Barry always said, when he meant the other men who performed alongside him at his drag nights. By spring, Jude had been to enough of Barry’s parties to know what everyone looked like without makeup: Luis, who sang Celia Cruz in pink fur, was an accountant; Jamie, who wore a Supremes wig and go-go boots, worked for the power company; Harley transformed himself into Bette Midler—he was a costume designer for a minor theater company and helped the others find their wigs. The girls took Jude in until she felt, almost, like one of them. She’d never belonged to a group of friends before. And they’d only accepted her because of Reese.
“What about you?” she said. “Who was your first kiss?”
He leaned against the railing, lighting up a joint. “It’s not that interesting.”
“So? It doesn’t have to be.”
“Just this girl from church,” he said. “She was friends with my sister. It was before.”
Before he was Reese, he meant. He never talked about Before. She didn’t even know that he had a sister.
“What was she like?” she asked. His sister, the girl he’d kissed. Therese. It didn’t matter, she just wanted to understand his old life. She wanted him to trust her with it.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “So what happened to the horse boy?” He smirked, offering her the joint. He sounded almost jealous, or maybe she just wanted him to.
“Nothing,” she said. “We kissed a few times but we didn’t talk after that.”
She was too ashamed to tell him the truth: that she’d spent weeks meeting Lonnie in the stables at night. In the dark corner, he’d spread a blanket, prop up a flashlight, call it their secret hideaway. It was too dangerous, meeting in the middle of the day. What if someone saw them? At night, nobody would catch them. They could be truly alone. Didn’t she want that?
He wasn’t her boyfriend. A boyfriend would hold her hand, ask about her day. But in the stables, he only touched her, palming her breasts, slipping his fingers up her shorts. In the stables, she swallowed him dripping into her mouth, breathing manure through her nose. But around town, he looked right past her. And yet, she would have kept meeting him each night if she hadn’t been caught by Early. Early hearing her creep out one night, tracking her through the woods, banging on the door until Lonnie, yanking frantically at his pants, shoved her outside. She was crying before she even stepped through the doorway. Early hooked a hand around her arm, unable to look at her.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “You want a boyfriend, you tell him to come by the house. You don’t go off meetin no boy in the middle of the night.”
“He won’t talk to me nowhere else,” she said.
She started crying harder, her shoulders shaking, and Early pulled her into his chest. He hadn’t held her like that in years; she hadn’t wanted him to. He wasn’t her father and never would be, a man whose violence had not yet reached her, whose anger pointed everywhere but at her. Her father made her feel special, and she hadn’t felt that way until Lonnie kissed her behind the barn.
He wasn’t her boyfriend. She’d never been foolish enough to think that he might be. But she couldn’t imagine any boy loving her; it was enough that Lonnie noticed her at all.
A breeze drifted past and she shivered, hugging herself. Reese touched her elbow.
“You cold, baby?” he said.
She nodded, hoping that he might wrap his arm around her. But he offered his jacket instead.
* * *
—
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT,” Barry said. “It’s like a sexless marriage.”
Backstage at Mirage, he perched in front of the vanity mirror, swiping blush across his cheeks. It was an hour before the show, and soon, the dressing room would be crowded with queens jostling in front of the mirrors, swapping eyeshadow, the air clouded with hairspray. But now, Mirage was dark and quiet, and she sat on the floor watching Barry, a chemistry textbook balanced on her knees. They had an arrangement. He helped with her chemistry homework and she joined him at the Fox Hills Mall, where she pretended to buy the makeup he wanted. He guided her down the aisles, her arm looped through his; to strangers, they might have passed as lovers, a tall man in gray slacks, a young woman reaching for face powder. When he paid for everything at the counter, the clerks thought he was a gentleman. No one imagined his bathroom counter covered in tiny bottles of scented lotions, palettes of eye shadow, gold tubes of lipstick. Or that the girl at his side had no interest in any of this, despite his plea to teach her how to wear makeup. She doubted that she would find any shade to match her skin and besides, she knew what people called dark girls wearing red lipstick. Baboon ass.
No, she had no interest in sorting through Barry’s bottles and tubes, which seemed as mysterious to her as the test tubes in her chemistry lab. Weeks into the semester and she was already falling behind. Barry had only agreed to tutor her because Reese asked him to, and he could never tell Reese no. When they’d first met seven years ago at a disco, he thought that Reese was gorgeous and, after too many drinks, finally worked up the nerve to tell him so.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“What do you think?” he said. “I invited him home! And you know what he told me? ‘No thank you.’” Barry laughed. “Can you believe it? He said no thank you, like I was offering him a cup of coffee. Oh, I always like those country boys. Country and sweet, that’s exactly how I like ’em.”
She tried to imagine being so bold, walking up to Reese and telling him what? That she thought about him relentlessly, even now, while she was staring at a textbook filled with confusing symbols and talking to a man applying lipstick?
“We’re friends,” she said. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it.” He glanced at her through the mirror. He was trying a new look—classic Hollywood, Lana Turner—but the blush was too pink, tinting his skin orange. “I’ve just never seen Reese with no friend like you.”
Once, carrying her groceries up the stairs, Reese had joked that he sometimes felt like her boyfriend, and she’d laughed, unsure of what was funny. That he wasn’t? That he would never be? That in spite of this, he had, somehow, found himself playing this role? What she didn’t say: she felt like his girlfriend sometimes too, and the feeling scared her. A big feeling. It took up all the space in her chest, choking her.
“We’re friends,” she said again. “I don’t know why you can’t see that.”
“I don’t know why you can’t see that you’re not.” He sighed, turning to face her. One cheek wa
s covered in full makeup, the other half of his face still clean. “I don’t know why you’re fighting it neither. What could be better than being eighteen and in love? Oh, you don’t even know. If I could go back, I’d do everything different.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Oh, everything.” He turned back to the mirror. “This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.”
* * *
—
THAT SUMMER, she moved out of the dormitories and into Reese’s apartment.
She gave herself a list of logistical reasons why it made sense: she was working on campus, which was the obvious choice even though she hated how disappointed her mother had sounded when she told her she wasn’t coming home. She hadn’t found an apartment yet for next year and she could save money, splitting rent and groceries. She could make a foolish decision if she pretended it was based on thrift alone. So when Reese asked, she said yes, and soon, the two were carrying her boxes up the narrow stairwell. Reese told her that he would sleep on the couch.
“Trust me, I’ve slept worse places,” he said, and she thought of him hitchhiking from Arkansas. Sleeping at truck stops or squatting in abandoned buildings like the ones he’d photographed, over and over again.
At first, she felt strange in Reese’s apartment, like a guest overstaying her welcome. Then she started to feel at home. Tiptoeing through the living room on her way out to her morning run, Reese curled under a blanket, hair falling in front of his closed eyes. Sharing a bathroom counter, running a finger along the handle of his razor. Returning in the evening to find him boiling hot dogs for dinner, or ironing his shirts along with her own, or listening to records with him on the couch, her foot pressed against his thigh. He taught her how to drive, surprisingly patient as she slowly guided his creaking Bobcat around an empty mall parking lot.
“You know how to drive, you can go anywhere,” he told her. “You get tired of this city, you just head off for another one.”
He smiled over at her, an arm hanging out the window, as she made another slow lap. He made it sound so easy, leaving.
“I’ll never get tired of this city,” she said.
During the week, she reported to her job at the music library, where she pushed a heavy cart down the aisles and slid thin scores onto the shelves until her fingers dried from touching their dusty covers. When she returned home, West Hollywood felt so different from that idyllic campus, the brick buildings she still felt cowed to enter, always lowering her voice as if stepping inside church, those endless green lawns, the bicycles constantly whisking past. In the dormitories, she’d been surrounded by the relentlessly ambitious, but in that West Hollywood apartment building, all of the neighbors she met were people whose dreams of fame had already been dashed. Cinematographers working at Kodak stores, screenwriters teaching English to immigrants, actors starring in burlesque shows in seedy bars. The people who did not make it were ingrained in the city; you walked on stars emblazoned with their names and never realized it.
On the weekends, she and Reese wandered Santa Barbara beaches, or explored the Natural History Museum, and even once went whale watching in Long Beach. They’d only seen dolphins, but what she remembered was how she’d lost her balance on the deck and he stepped behind to steady her. She stood like that for the rest of the boat ride, leaning back against his chest.
Some Saturday nights, they passed under the cascade of rainbow flags and ducked inside Mirage to catch Barry’s show. Other times, they saw a movie at the Cinerama Dome, where, in the darkness of the theater, she thought Reese might reach for her hand. But he never did. At Barry’s Fourth of July party, everyone crowded on his rooftop, watching fireworks crackle across the sky. All around them, boys drunk and kissing, and she thought Reese might even kiss her—a friendly kiss, right on her cheek. But instead, he stepped inside to get a drink, leaving her alone washed under red and blue light. What did he want from her? It was impossible to tell. Once after Barry’s show at Mirage, Reese asked her to dance. The night was nearly over; the DJ had already started playing slow songs to usher lovers out the door. He held out his hand and she allowed him to guide her onto the dance floor. She’d never been held so closely by anyone before.
“I love this song,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I hear you singin it.”
She wasn’t drunk but she felt lightheaded, swept up in Smokey Robinson’s voice, Reese’s arms around her. Then the lights flipped on rudely, all the couples groaning, and Reese let her go. She hadn’t realized until then how depressing Mirage looked with the lights on: the exposed pipes, peeling paint, wood floors sticky with beer. And Reese, laughing as their friends drifted toward the door, as if dancing with her had been as casual as helping her into a jacket. Somehow she felt closer to him and further away than ever.
Then one evening in July, she came home early from work and found Reese shirtless through the open bathroom door. His chest was wrapped in a large bandage, but there were red bruises peeking out, and he was gingerly feeling his ribcage. Her first thought was her stupidest thought: someone had attacked him. When he glanced up, their eyes met in the mirror, and he quickly yanked on his shirt.
“Don’t creep up on me like that,” he said.
“What happened?” she said. “That bruise—”
“Looks worse than it feels,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
She slowly realized what he was trying to tell her: that no one had attacked him, that it was the bandage he wore that was digging into his ribcage, bruising him.
“You should take that thing off,” she said. “If it hurts you. You don’t have to wear it here. I don’t care what you look like.”
She thought he might be relieved, but instead, a dark and unfamiliar look passed across his face.
“It’s not about you,” he said, then he slammed the bathroom door shut. The whole apartment shook, and she trembled, dropping her keys. He had never yelled at her before.
She left without thinking. She had never seen him so angry. He swore at bad drivers, he griped about his co-workers, he shoved a white man in a bar once who kept calling her darky. His anger flared and waned and then he was back to himself again. But this time he was angry at her. She shouldn’t have looked at him—she should have turned as soon as she saw him through the open door. But the bruises shocked her and then she’d said something so idiotic and now she couldn’t even apologize because he was angry. He’d slammed a door, not her face, but maybe that was out of convenience. Maybe, if she had been closer, he would have slammed her against the wall just as easily.
She was crying by the time she reached Barry’s. He just pulled her into a hug.
“He hates me,” she said. “I did this stupid thing and now he hates me—”
“He doesn’t hate you,” Barry said. “Come sit down. It’s gonna be all right in the morning.”
* * *
—
IT WAS NO BIG DEAL, Barry said. Just a little fight.
But all her life, she would hate when people called arguments fights. Fights were bloody events, punctured skin, bruised eye sockets, broken bones. Not disagreements over where to go to dinner. Never words. A fight was not a man’s voice raised in anger, although it would always make her think of her father. She would wince a little when she heard raucous men leaving bars or boys screaming at televisions during football games. The sound of slamming doors. Broken plates. Her father had punched walls, he smashed dishes, and even once his own eyeglasses, hurling them across the living room at the door. To be so angry that you’d make yourself blind. Strange, and yet so normal to her then in a way she wouldn’t fully realize until she was older.
She spent the night on Barry’s couch, staring up at the ceiling. At half past three, she heard a knock on the door. Through the peephole, she found Reese under the glowing porch light. He was breathing ha
rd, his fists balled in the pockets of his jean jacket, and he started to knock again when she finally unlatched the deadbolt.
“You’re gonna wake everyone up,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His breath smelled sweet like beer.
“You’re drunk,” she said, more surprised than anything. She’d never known him to disappear into a bar when he was upset, but here he was now, swaying on his feet.
“I shouldn’t have hollered at you like that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—goddamnit, you know I wouldn’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you, baby?”
You could never know who might hurt you until it was too late. But he sounded desperate, pleading with her from the step, and she cracked the door a little more.
“There’s this doctor,” he said. “Luis told me about him. You gotta pay him upfront for the surgery but I been savin up.”
“What surgery?” she said.
“For my chest. Then I won’t have to wear this damn thing at all.”
“But is it safe?”
“Safe enough,” he said.
She stared at the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I just don’t want you to hurt. I didn’t mean—oh, I don’t even know. I wasn’t trying to act like I’m somebody special.”
“Don’t say that,” he said.
“Say what?”
He was quiet a moment, then he leaned in and kissed her. By the time she realized it, he was already pulling away.
“That you’re not special to me,” he said.
* * *
—
IN THE MORNING, she wandered through the bright campus, dazed. She hadn’t slept a second after Reese departed down the darkened sidewalk. Even now, thinking about him, her stomach twisted with dread. Maybe he’d been so drunk he wouldn’t even remember kissing her. He’d awakened at home, vaguely recalling that he had done something embarrassing. Or maybe he’d sobered up and regretted it. She was the type of girl that boys only kissed in secret and, after, pretended that they hadn’t.