“Is that your family? I don’t want to keep you.”
“Oh no,” she said. “I’m in my room actually. I’m watching a movie. Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Something about a boat, I’m not sure. I turned it on in the middle.”
“Is it good?”
“It’s okay.”
“Oh,” I said.
I googled the movie theater on my phone where we had gone to see Charade. This week was 12 Angry Men and All About Eve.
“Do you know what’s playing?” I asked. “All about Eve.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Do you like Bette Davis?”
“Not really. But I would go see it if you wanted to,” she said.
“Well, there’s also 12 Angry Men.”
“No, no angry men.” She laughed. “All About Eve. That one’s fine.”
“Great!” I said. “Would you want to go to the Golden Dragon again?”
“Sure,” she said. “I also know another place, great kosher Thai, that’s not far.”
“We could go there,” I said hesitantly.
I was trying to re-create the magic of our first outing precisely!
“No. If you want the Dragon, we’ll do the Dragon,” she said.
“Okay! What night would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. You decide. You’re the one asking me on the date, right?”
Then she laughed. I swallowed hard. We both got silent.
“Thursday?” she asked finally. “Six o’clock?”
“Great,” I said. I would have to skip This Show Sucks. I didn’t care.
When we got off the phone, I considered her choice of words. I wanted her to mean what she’d said, that we really were going on a date. But she was probably just using the language of classic romance films in jest. And the reason she could do this comfortably, easily, was because there was no way we could possibly be romantic. It was friendship, that was it.
CHAPTER 44
Miriam was already seated at the bamboo bar, sipping her drink under the colored lights. It wasn’t a Scorpion Bowl, but some other kind of tropical thing in a coconut with an umbrella and a bunch of fruit.
“Sorry,” she said. “I would’ve ordered something for you, but I just didn’t feel like a Scorpion Bowl tonight, and I wasn’t sure what you would want. The mai tai is good and also the Blue Hawaii.”
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
“A piña colada.”
“Looks creamy.”
“No cream, only coconut milk. If it was cream, they couldn’t serve it with the meat.”
“I’ll have one too,” I said.
She was avoiding the Scorpion Bowl. She didn’t want to get drunk. This meant she was trying to stay on guard, afraid of what might happen if she let herself relax. But wait, there were more layers at play here. If she were really afraid of what might happen between us, she wouldn’t have come at all. Secretly, she did want something to happen. Also, not at all. She was me, walking into a bakery and trying not to binge. Or I was just being hyperanalytical and the drink had nothing to do with her feelings about me.
“You smell good,” she said.
I grinned at her, and my mind began racing again. Was this the kind of lingering little compliment a person would give if they didn’t want to encourage another person to make advances toward them? I was a cobra, slithering behind her every word.
Stop fucking thinking for one second and try to have a good time, I said to myself.
Never in my life have I had a good time, I replied.
It was true: I had a bad relationship with the tree of life. I didn’t water it properly, pruned too much. I needed to fertilize it, or something, find joy. I’d just begun admonishing myself when Miriam said, “Listen, I’m not super hungry.”
“Oh,” I said.
I must have looked devastated.
“Sorry,” she said guiltily. “You should order whatever you want, and I will eat some of it.”
This was heresy! She was just going to leave me out here to creep my way through the menu all alone? What about our chopstick games? What about our sauce play? I needed her confidence, her culinary wisdom, also her protection from the judgment of the waiter. I couldn’t order too much. But you couldn’t come to Golden Dragon and not order too much. So much for trying to reenact our last visit. She’d veered off script, and I did not want to improvise.
Then I noticed that she was wearing the Ruský Rouge. She was giving me a sign! Or did it mean nothing? I was having heart palpitations, and everything was unanswerable.
“The lipstick looks pretty on you,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said. “I figured out how to put it on good, and it only took four botched attempts.”
“I like that you’re wearing it. I like giving you things.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say what I wanted to say, which was, Because you make me feel so good just to be around you.
So I said, “I don’t know. I just do.”
I decided I would pray for a sign. But I didn’t really know how to pray, another of the inadequacies in my Hebrew school education. I could remember building a miniature sukkah out of graham crackers, icing, and candy, stealing half of the supplies and shoving them in my backpack to binge on in my bedroom at home later. But nothing about how to really talk to god.
I imagined googling, How to make a golem fall in love with you. Maybe that’s all that prayer was anyway—a cosmic google. In that case, any iPhone could be a synagogue. I wished I could FaceTime with Rabbi Judah.
The waiter came over, and I ordered a pu pu platter and the same sesame chicken dish, hoping she would eat it with me.
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” asked Miriam, when the waiter walked away.
“Yes, of course!” I said, laughing, as though it were obvious. Then I softened. It was an honest question, and for Miriam, it was totally possible that I hadn’t.
“Oh,” she said.
“You haven’t had one, right?” I asked. “I am going to assume that’s correct.”
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
“What about a girlfriend?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean, have you ever had a girlfriend?”
She blushed. I could tell she knew exactly what I meant.
“I’ve had girls who are friends, of course. But never anything like that.”
And that was all she said. She didn’t say I’m not gay or I’m not a lesbian. She didn’t say that it was something she could never have in the future. I didn’t dare press her further.
When they served the pu pu platter, she told me to go ahead and eat first if I was hungry, that she was only going to eat a little. The situation was growing tragic. The whole point was to share!
“Well, I’m not eating both egg rolls,” I said. “So you might as well have one.”
“Okay,” she said, and picked up an egg roll. As she bit into it, she seemed to relax a little. Then she filled her plate with more of the platter.
I loved watching her eat, the way she licked a little bit of sauce off her lip, the way she licked her fingers. She ate like a woman for whom food possessed no dilemma, turbulence, or hardship. But as I watched her grow calmer with every bite, I realized it was not delight alone that compelled her to eat that way.
“So, boys and girls are not allowed to touch amongst the Orthodox, even modern Orthodox, is that right?” I asked her.
“That’s right,” she said.
“So kissing is definitely off-limits, but also hugging or holding hands.”
“Yeah, I definitely don’t hold hands with boys.”
“What about girls? Are girls allowed to hug?”
“Girls are allowed to hug.”
“And hold hands?”
“Of course, girl friends could hold hands if they want to.”
She narrowed her eyes, put down her chopsticks.
“
I was just curious,” I said. “You don’t mind if I ask you these questions, do you?”
“No,” she said, looking me in the eye.
I wanted to know if girls could kiss each other. But I didn’t say anything. Instead, I took a bite of chicken. It felt tough in my mouth, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to swallow it. I chewed and chewed. I chewed it past the point where chewing it still seemed possible. Then I chewed it some more.
CHAPTER 45
“I might like Bette better than Audrey,” I whispered to Miriam in the glow of the theater.
We were about fifteen minutes into All About Eve. She was sucking on a Twizzler from the big bag we were sharing. We also had a bag of Peanut M&M’s and had parked them both in the cup holder between us.
“I’ve thought about this,” she whispered, Twizzler dangling from the side of her mouth. “Bette is tough on the inside and the outside, right? Which is fine. Great. Audrey seems a little fragile on the outside, but inside you know she’s tough. Like a Peanut M&M. She’s more special.”
“But isn’t a Peanut M&M supposed to melt in your mouth, not in your hand, or whatever?”
“Everyone knows that isn’t true.”
“Oh, right.”
We continued to snack and watch the movie. Then I whispered another question.
“What about holding hands in a movie theater?”
“What?” she whispered back.
“What about holding hands in a movie theater? Can girls hold hands in a movie theater?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. I wondered if she was just going to ignore the question. Now I felt embarrassed for asking it—like I had crossed some kind of line. I was pretending to be innocent and naïve, not knowing what Orthodox girls could do. But people didn’t hold hands at the movies without romance. Everybody knew that.
Etz chayim hi lamachazikim ba, vetomecheha me’ushar, I thought to myself.
On-screen, a black-and-white Anne Baxter sat on a staircase with a black-and-white Marilyn Monroe and purred to a black-and-white Gary Merrill, “If there’s nothing else, there’s applause. I’ve listened backstage to people applaud. It’s like… like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up.”
Suddenly, Miriam turned to me. I felt her head move, her breath close to my ear.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Girls can hold hands in a movie theater.”
I stared straight ahead at the screen and did not dare stir. I tried to look at her out of the corner of my eye, and it seemed that maybe she was smiling in profile. I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know what to do. Should I make a move like dudes had made moves on me—that whole arm-stretching thing? Should I pretend to be going for an M&M, then just drop my hand on hers?
Counting backward from ten, I edged my hand toward the M&M’s. But when I hit three, I botched my mission. Instead of circumventing the bag and rerouting to my true target, I panicked and ended up with my hand in the candy. I took a few and shoved them into my mouth. Then I returned my hand to base camp on my lap.
“Why?” whispered Miriam suddenly.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
I looked at her face in the glow of the movie screen, swaths of light and shadow flickering on and off her pale skin. She was like a moon cycling through all its phases in rapid-fire.
“Oh,” I said. “Because—I wanted to hold yours.”
And just like that I took her hand.
It was so exciting to hold her hand. With this simple gesture, I felt nearer to her than anyone. Her hand in my hand was a deeper intimacy than any sexual act, all my past performances of pleasure. I felt brave, princely, thrilled in my bones, electric in my toes. I was holding her hand and she was letting me. I felt lucky; also, protective of her in the darkness of the theater. I remained very still. I was so quiet and aware of our being there together, like that, that any micromovement either of us made became a loud broadcast: the twitch of her finger, the sound of her swallowing. I swore I could hear my own blood. The movie was no longer on the screen but between us.
Then, suddenly, she let go. My arm dropped to my chair. A wave of disappointment welled up inside me. The hand-holding had felt like an arrival, an answer to a question, a resounding yes. But the dropping of my hand seemed like another, more final answer.
Oh well, I thought. That’s that, I guess.
I watched her hand fumble in the Twizzler bag. Had she only dropped my hand because she was reaching for a Twizzler? She placed the end of the candy in her mouth, chomped on it. Then she reached for my hand again. I gave Miriam’s hand a little squeeze, and the sparks lit up in me again, every inch of my skin, every hair on my head, thrilled.
We sat like that for a long time, very still, Miriam’s hand in my hand, only letting go every now and then to grab a piece of candy. Neither of us looked over at the other. The only acknowledgment of separate personhood was when one of us would briefly release the other’s hand to grab a piece of candy or adjust our bodies. The first time I dropped her hand to scratch my forehead, I was terrified. What if, while my hand was gone, the rules changed and her hand became suddenly off-limits? What if it wasn’t where I’d left it? I scratched my head quickly, then snatched her hand again, relieved to have it back. Each time our hands reunited, I felt bliss newly restored.
I hoped my hand wasn’t too damp. Hers never got sweaty. Her skin was soft and powdery, and the texture of her skin evoked old-time blotter papers, violet pastille candies, the petal of a tea rose. The shape of the webbing between her thumb and pointer finger was the tubey mouth of a calla lily. Ever so gently, I took my pointer finger and slowly traced the lip of that tubey mouth. I traced it cautiously and lightly, as though I were gathering a bit of pollen that was dusted upon it. Then, after I had gathered enough pollen from the lip, I dipped my fingers delicately into the space where her thumb and pointer finger curled onto each other atop the webbing. Slowly, I entered the throat of that flower, as though to carefully excavate more pollen from the inside.
I remembered, just as I entered the flower, that it was not a flower at all. It was Miriam’s hand. And not only had I just stroked her hand, but I’d moved inside of it—in a gentle way, a comforting way, yet also in an undeniably sexual way. I stopped moving and just kept my finger resting inside that flower opening of hers, that sweet little hole, without thrusting, just leaving my finger there so she could feel some of that fullness. I noticed that I was flicking my tongue back and forth against the backs of my teeth like a hummingbird wing—as though my tongue wanted to be my finger and I wanted her hand to be her elsewhere. My tongue felt irritated. I wondered how long I had been doing it.
The next time she reached for a Twizzler, she changed the direction of our hands. Now instead of her hand forming a little floral opening, it was my hand that was opened in a circle and hers that was the fingers, the penetrating object. I was surprised by how cock-like her hand felt resting in mine: fat, hard, content, warm. When the cock shifted, I wondered for a moment if it would try to fuck my hand. But her hand flattened into a hand again, and mine did too, and each of her fingers began to search the skin of my palm.
When she found my lifeline, she gently rubbed it with one finger—more of a tickle actually, up and down, as though it were something she was doing mindlessly or haphazardly. She did it in the softest possible way—like a ghost haunting a place, elusive, felt only in flutters. The tickling stimulated me so much that I wondered if I was wet through my clothes, if I had gotten some of me on the movie theater seat.
Etz chayim hi lamachazikim ba, vetomecheha me’ushar, I thought.
With every sensation of her moving finger, I felt it down there, so that when she approached the top of my lifeline, she was slipping her finger ever so lightly over my clit. And then as she reached the bottom of my palm, she was tracing my inner lips, up and down, almost entering me, but never fully entering me at all. No, she was not even almost entering me. It was not even t
hat close, not nearly.
CHAPTER 46
When the movie ended, she dropped my hand. We both sat there silently in the dark as the credits rolled until we were the only ones left in our seats. I was glad she wasn’t speaking or getting up to go, and I wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. I didn’t want to leave the dark theater.
Finally, she turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
“Wow,” she said. “That movie was better than I remembered.”
Then she stood up, and I stood up, and we filed out into the harsh light of the lobby, the smell of popcorn, people no longer in profile: three teens in heavy eyeliner laughing in the corner, a man pushing an older woman with oily hair in a wheelchair. I told Miriam that I had to use the bathroom before we left. She said that she didn’t have to go and would wait for me.
I peed, and when I wiped myself I was shocked by how slick my vagina was.
“Goodbye to the dregs of bitterness,” I whispered, though I had no idea what that meant.
I felt feverish, delirious. My face in the mirror was pink, my eyes bloodshot. A faint rash crept up my neck. We were just two girls holding hands and eating candy in a movie theater, that was all. But my desire: I was sick with it. Sweet sick. Good sick. With trembling hands, I turned on the faucet, splashed cold water on my face. It gave me a moment’s relief. Then, still dripping, my temperature rose again.
In the lobby, Miriam didn’t say anything about the hand-holding. We left the theater and walked silently together down the street. When we came to the furniture storefront where I’d applied her lipstick on our last outing, she stopped us under the awning so she could light a clove.
“You know, I think I realize what Bette Davis is lacking,” she said.
I didn’t want to hear any more about Bette Davis.
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