by Unknown
“I think that’s it,” I told Lucas, pointing at the bar on the corner.
“Should I get ready for some macho theatrics?” he asked, in a joking sort of voice completely belied by the arm he had around my shoulders, in support. “Because I’m ready.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Absolutely.” He pulled away and let his face go completely expressionless. He held it for a moment, and then jerked his chin once, while simultaneously flexing out his chest slightly. Then he dropped the pose and grinned. “See?”
“That was like a greeting wrapped up in a testosterone bow,” I said dryly. “I had no idea you spoke male animal so fluently.”
“Do we actually know each other at all?” He shook his head at me. “What, if a guy isn’t obsessed with football, he’s a punk? Is that what you’re saying? Because, as I believe I proved in the bathtub earlier tonight, I can bring it.”
“I’m sure you can,” I soothed him, patting his arm.
“You watch,” he suggested. “At the end of the night, I want a written apology and the offer of sexual favors. Which I’ll be turning down, thank you, because you insulted my manhood.”
“How much beer did you drink? Are you drunk?”
“Make that two written apologies, sexual favors, and an original musical composition by you, Courtney Cassel, called ‘I Will Never Underestimate Lucas Again.’ For cello and flute, please, with a hint of bassoon.”
I was still laughing when Lucas wrenched open the door of the club to reveal Matt Cheney on a bar stool in the tiny foyer, as if he’d been waiting for us to appear.
For a moment, everyone froze. And then:
“It’s the Ghost of Christmas Past,” Matt drawled.
I was sure, in that moment, that my heart was beating so hard that it was actually visible.
“Hey,” he said in a completely different voice, because he was addressing Lucas. “I’m Matt.”
“Lucas.” Lucas offered his hand. There was a perfectly nice shake, no chins or flexing, and he let the door fall shut behind him.
The two great loves of my life were shoved together in the same tiny space, sizing each other up, both with perfectly nice smiles on their faces. They launched into what sounded like a perfectly polite conversation, while my head began to spin.
Some people, like Verena, were all about incorporating former lovers into their lives. Some people insisted upon it, and tended to make speeches that included phrases like, if I liked him enough to be with him, why would I suddenly hate him just because our relationship didn’t work out? Then all the like-minded people would throw back their heads and laugh their well-adjusted laughter, while those of us who were significantly less evolved hunkered nearby in silence and felt extremely petty.
But the fact was, I was petty. When I had been in love with Matt, I had expected to love him forever. I had already loved him forever. When he took off, it was like the girl I’d been when I was with him died. The life I’d expected to live with him disappeared.
Lucas was the only forever I knew.
So then, inevitably, I watched Matt and Lucas. My once-upon-a-time life versus my current life. I tried to see them the way a stranger might.
Matt had the better body. Lucas had the better smile. Matt was slightly fidgety and exuded edgy cool. Lucas stood still, calm with the barest suggestion of possible danger. Even now, Matt lounged against the wall as if he needed help to stand, his fingers tapping out lazy rhythms against the wood, while Lucas stood quietly on the balls of his feet, ready for anything. Matt was all about being spontaneous. Lucas preferred to prepare. I imagined that was why Matt was a bouncer and Lucas ran his own business.
It was like some kind of dream to see them standing together, laughing, giving every appearance of enjoying each other’s company.
Not a dream I’d had, mind you.
Watching them together—Matt’s smirk and Lucas’s grin—I understood, far too late, that it was all a dreadful mistake.
I thought I might throw up.
As in, right then and there.
Chapter Eight
Blinded by panic, I yelped out some excuse, then forced my way across the bar and threw myself into the women’s room, which was thankfully empty. Once inside, I hustled into the nearest stall and locked it behind me. Then I just sat for a moment, and breathed in to the wave of nausea.
I hadn’t had a nervous stomach since back in high school. Back then, a change in barometric pressure was about all it took to have me racing for the nearest toilet. Any sort of tension and/or stress made my stomach heave, which was unfortunate if you happened to be a musician forever auditioning or playing concerts, with warring sisters and a grief-altered mother on top of it. By the time I set off for the conservatory in Baltimore, I was an old pro at worshipping the Porcelain Goddess.
But that had all been a long time ago. I’d thought it was just a teenage thing. Until tonight.
Trust Matt Cheney to bring out the worst in me.
Literally.
I concentrated on taking deep breaths for a while, and eventually the fuzzy feeling in my head subsided, and my stomach settled. I let my spine relax slightly, and tried not to think about how ridiculous I probably looked—perched so primly on the edge of the toilet seat, fully clothed, working so hard just to breathe.
It could have been worse. I could have actually thrown up.
Which was when I remembered that it was worse: I’d left Lucas all alone with Matt Cheney. I all but swooned from the horror. No matter the state of my stomach, that was hideous. The things Matt could be saying . . . Private, awful things. Things that wouldn’t match my personal version of my history at all.
I jumped to my feet, and let myself out of the stall. I managed to wash and dry my hands without once looking at myself in the mirror. I knew that if I opened that can of worms, there’d be no prying me away from my reflection. Because no matter what I’d decided to wear or what I’d attempted to do with mascara, the truth was, could anyone look good enough for a showdown with her past? I didn’t think so.
I pushed the door open, prepared to take charge of the evening. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what a conversation between Matt and Lucas might sound like. Or what subjects they might be covering.
Horrifying possibilities began to crop up in my head. I took a few steps, determined to put an end to the madness, and then stopped in my tracks.
Because this place wasn’t just any old bar. It was . . . something else entirely.
The walls were painted deep black and covered with what looked like art installations. Some were paintings, like the huge seascape dominating one side of the long room, done in reds and oranges. The wall nearest me held photographs, divided into groups by photographer, presumably. The focus of the large, loungelike room was a small raised stage at the far end, upon which two persons of indeterminate gender, clad in nude-colored body suits, appeared to be performing an interpretive dance. What they were interpreting remained a mystery to me. An alarmingly skinny-looking man sat to one side of the performers, playing on a ukulele while his long, stringy hair swung from side to side. It took me a few stunned moments to register the fact that the song he was playing was—more or less, emphasis on less—“Blinded by the Light.”
Most of the patrons sat around the tables and/or lounged on the various couches, all watching raptly, applauding every now and again, or, in the case of a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the stage, weeping in apparent identification.
It was all so surreal that it seemed almost run-of-the-mill, almost normal, to look over into the corner near the bar and find my fiancé chatting animatedly with my ex-boyfriend beneath a representation of what I knew to be a Hindu god, made out of what appeared to be macaroni.
Lucas grinned at me from afar. Clear evidence that things were going as well with Matt Cheney as could be expected.
Whatever the hell that meant.
I had gathered myself to head in their direction and find out whe
n a hand slipped around my elbow.
Since I knew exactly one other person in the city of San Francisco, I knew immediately who it was.
“Hey there,” Raine said, smiling at me. Tonight, she looked more mysterious than she had in the harsh light of morning. She’d done up her eyes so they seemed endless and dark. Her hair was spiky, and she’d packed herself into what should have been a run-of-the-mill tank top and jeans, except on her, it was somehow captivating.
I felt myself fall as I looked at her, through the old looking glass and out the other side to my childhood, when I’d worshipped her completely. It was like Raine really was an elf, or some kind of siren. Somehow, one look at her was almost enough to make up for our time apart.
She slipped her arm around mine. “I’m so glad you came.”
“Oh, hi,” I said. I looked around. “You didn’t mention that this place is so . . . ”
“I know,” Raine said, reverently. She pulled me close and squeezed my arm. “I didn’t want you to prejudge your experience. I wanted it to be raw. After all, there’s only one first time here at Space.”
“What? Space?”
“Space is just that. Space. To be.”
I wanted to ask, To be what? But I could tell from the practically devout way she drew out the word that it was supposed to resonate deep within me. I paused for a moment, in case something was resonating quietly or had possibly gotten swept up by the ukulele, but there was nothing. So instead, I looked toward the wall and the nearest cluster of photographs.
“Those are really cool photos,” I said brightly.
“This is why I love you!” Raine declared. “You walk back into my life and just like that, you can somehow sense me. It’s like it’s in our blood.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just smiled gamely as she drew me closer to the photographs.
“I saw you standing over here, but I didn’t realize you’d picked my photographs out,” Raine continued happily. “How did you know? That they were mine, I mean?”
As I was not entirely dim, I realized she’d thought I’d recognized something about her in the photos, which were, evidently, her latest incarnation of artistic expression. Quickly, I scanned the first one. I wanted to say something meaningful about it, but the truth was, I couldn’t make out what I was looking at. It seemed to be flesh. And some dark hair. And a sort of reddish bump. In fact, it sort of looked—
Oh, my sweet lord, no.
My mind balked.
Blinking, I looked at the second in the series. It was a different angle, and it confirmed my panicked fears. Just to be sure, I glanced at all the rest of them. I didn’t want to look, and yet I couldn’t look away.
My sister had taken photographs of her crotch. Ten separate, close-up photographs. As if that were not enough, she had then blown them up, mounted them, framed them, and displayed them on a wall—in a public forum, which also happened to be her place of employment.
“Well,” I lied, hoping I didn’t sound as hysterical as I felt, “I could just tell this was your work, somehow.”
Raine sighed happily and gazed up at the wall.
“Family is so trippy,” she said.
“Huh,” I said, still trying to sound normal. “Are all of them, uh, of the same thing?”
“Oh, yes,” Raine said, her tone serious. “This project was all about demystification and empowerment. About displaying and naming.”
“What do you call the—ah—project?” I asked, for all the world as if I were talking about a nice garden statue. A garden gnome would be far preferable to this, that was for sure.
“It’s called what it is,” Raine said. She lowered her lashes at me almost demurely. “‘My Vulva.’”
When I emerged from the state of hysteria that statement produced, along with the visual aids now seared forevermore into my retinas, Raine had herded me over to a table in the corner and sat me down.
“I promised you we’d talk,” she said, folding her hands and resting her chin on top.
“Um, here?” I looked around at the people crowded in on all sides, some of them now dancing along to the ukulele. Though no one was actually waving a scarf in the air, I felt the manner of dancing referenced scarves somehow.
“Why not?” Raine was asking, a vague frown on her forehead.
How silly of me. Clearly, the woman who displayed her private parts on the walls of her place of employment would think nothing of discussing intimate family details in the same establishment.
It was hard to believe I actually felt a little stab of nostalgia for her solo interpretive dance period.
“No reason,” I said, shaking all of that off. I squared my shoulders. “I thought maybe we should begin with Norah’s wedding.”
“Of course we should,” Raine agreed immediately. “You know, I wanted to write you a letter and explain everything, but I just felt that putting it all into one document couldn’t really do my feelings justice, and it took me a long time to truly access my feelings. My raw emotions, not my interpretation of them.”
“Okay,” I said, because what else was there to say?
“And the truth of it is that I allowed the alcohol to create a snapshot version of my feelings at Norah’s wedding, when really, I should have just trusted myself enough to express those feelings.” Raine sighed. “But as bad as that experience was, it was also an awakening.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t go back to sleep once I’d woken up to my reality, could I?”
That didn’t seem to require an answer, but she was looking at me so expectantly, so I nodded.
“I’ve spent a long time learning how to trust myself, Courtney,” she continued. “A long, long time. And it was a process I had to keep precious. I couldn’t allow any toxicity or negativity or judgment in, because it would have stunted my growth.”
She looked at me as if she had just explained it all. I nodded automatically, again, but was saved from having to respond further when a woman appeared at Raine’s side.
“Raine,” she said in an extremely urgent voice. “Raine.”
My sister looked up and managed to look encouraging and regal all at once.
The other women inhaled in such a way that she used her entire body in a sinuous movement, flared her nostrils, and let her gaze go heavy-lidded. All this while clasping her hands directly beneath her impressive breasts, which appeared to know no bra of any kind.
“I am awestruck by your latest exhibit,” the other woman eventually said, her voice thready with emotion. “What bravery! What a fearless slap in the very face of the patriarchy!”
“That was my hope,” Raine said, inclining her head. Humbly. “I’m so glad it worked for you.”
The other woman looked at me, still rapturous.
“This woman,” she intoned, gesturing to Raine, “is genius. Genius.”
Raine demurred, the other woman insisted. I watched them go back and forth on this for several moments. Then:
“I have to study them further,” the other woman finally said. “We’ll have to talk about this more, Raine. I feel a poem coming together.”
And then she swept away.
“That was Marisol,” Raine told me. “She’s a fabulous poet. This place is absolutely filled with the most amazing creative energy.” She shook her head slightly as she gazed around the big room, as if savoring it. Then she looked at me. “But what were we talking about?”
“It sounded like you were saying that you think I’m toxic, or negative.” I tried to sound matter-of-fact, as if her saying so hadn’t hurt my feelings.
“Sweetie, don’t be angry,” Raine said at once. She reached over and grabbed hold of one of my hands. “The fact is, Philadelphia is filled with so much negativity that I feel allergic when I’m there. Sick, Courtney. And don’t even get me started on Norah’s aura, which I’ve realized is black. Jet black, and I couldn’t be around that any longer. I had to escape. I’m sorry I couldn’t take you with me.”
“Norah means well,�
�� I began, feeling defensive, and unsettled, too.
“Meaning well isn’t the same as doing well,” Raine replied gently. “I had to escape from the claustrophobic darkness, Courtney. Or die. It was that extreme.”
“But . . . ” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t argue about auras. I wasn’t even sure I knew what an aura was. That wasn’t true—I knew what auras were. What I didn’t do was spend a lot of time worrying about their various hues.
“I wish things hadn’t happened the way they did,” Raine said softly, “but I’m not sorry they happened. I can’t be. I would never have had the courage to pursue my art if I hadn’t learned to express myself. And it all blew up at Norah’s wedding. If she weren’t so judgmental and small-minded, I would think she’d be happy for me.”
I looked at her for a long moment. I still felt uneasy about the conversation I wasn’t monitoring in the corner under the macaroni Shiva, but between vulvas, poets, and this interpretation of past events, I was starting to feel significantly confused by this one.
“I don’t know what to say about all that,” I managed to say after a while, when staring at her imploring expression became too much. “But that’s only one part of what I think we should talk about. The more important thing is that you disappeared six years ago. Six years, Raine.”
“Six crucial years in my development,” Raine said, as if agreeing. “I don’t mean only as an artist, I mean as a person, Courtney. A woman. From the things Mom’s said, I don’t get the impression Norah has really pursued her personal growth. If anything, it sounds like she’s regressed, and you know what, that really supports my decision to get away.”
“Okay, but I’m not talking about Norah.” I sat a little bit straighter. “I’m talking about me. It’s been six years since you talked to me.”
My voice didn’t crack when I said it, which made me unreasonably proud of myself.
Raine held my gaze for another long moment, and then sighed a little bit. But she didn’t say anything.
“I always thought that what was between you and Norah didn’t extend to you and me,” I continued carefully, when moments passed and she still didn’t speak. “I thought it was different with us.”