“Princess? Sweetheart?”
My throat was dry. How had I forgotten about my dog? I had been back for two days and this was the first time I’d thought of her. What was wrong with me? That was what my fiancée had asked me. Two days before we were supposed to get married, I told her that she had better get tested for chlamydia. Part of me still wondered what would have happened if I had waited to tell her. We would have married. Maybe we would still be married. We could have gone to a marriage counselor. We could have kept all of the wedding presents. We would have had the ceremony and reception she had spent so long planning.
I looked under my desk. Princess was not there. Princess was not in the apartment. And then I remembered my student, the only student in the class who had not turned in her final story, the student who was in love with me. I could not remember her name. She was pretty. She had my dog. She would take good care of my dog.
Khloe
It was my first summer in Brooklyn.
I thought at first that I would move to Manhattan, closer to work, but it didn’t take me long to realize that Brooklyn was the place to be. My twin sister was a writer and she was the one who found me the place. Her best friend, Zahid, another writer, always with the writers, was going to be gone for the summer. My sister was clearly in love with him, but she would always deny it. She told me that he had cheated on his fiancée. That he was his own worst enemy and she would not date him for a million dollars. My sister, she protested too much. Still, it was a sublet. I would have to take care of his dog. I didn’t like dogs, but it was a nice apartment in the neighborhood I wanted to live in.
Except at the last minute, Zahid decided to leave his dog with someone else for the summer. And because I did not have to take care of his dog anymore, he wanted to know if I could pay him more rent.
“Like how much more rent?” I asked him.
“Six hundred dollars,” he said.
“Fuck,” I said. “Fuck you. That wasn’t our deal.”
I cursed when I was angry. I lacked a filter, something that had gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion. I blamed it on my first babysitter, who had taught me by example, starting with shit and damn and moving up to motherfucker. Jane lived a few blocks away from Zahid.
I did not understand until I was thirteen, when Jane came back from college and stopped by to say hello, how hopelessly in love I was with her. I confessed my love, and she said, “Good. I was hoping you would figure it out on your own.”
Good, but she didn’t love me back. She was in love with a filmmaker who was making a movie in Toronto. Her girlfriend was getting famous, around less and less, and she was afraid she would not be around much longer.
“Love,” my babysitter told me, “is a bitch.”
“That fucking sucks,” I remember telling her, thinking that she should love me instead. It was going to take time, I knew, for her to stop seeing me as a child. But I was getting older, was old enough. I had plans for her. It was why I had taken the job in New York instead of Chicago. My babysitter lived in Brooklyn. She worked in publishing. She had taken me out for drinks a couple of times already. I had met her friends, I liked them, it made me wonder why I worked in finance, but I knew the reason. Money. I wanted it. I was also in massive debt, student loans from business school, but the paychecks were rolling in, and come Christmas, I could expect a big bonus.
My colleagues were straight. Straight and male and white. Asshats, all of them, except for Danny Tang, the token Asian. Whereas I checked off two boxes. Black and female. It was not the most hospitable place. But Brooklyn was filled with lesbians. I was making good money, I was buying just about everyone drinks. I was popular among Jane’s publishing friends. Sometimes, I bought my babysitter drinks, too. She was also broke. She refused to tell me what had happened with the filmmaker, but I knew that it had ended badly.
Of course, I paid Zahid the extra rent money for not taking care of his dog. I had not wanted to take care of his dog anyway. I would have had to find someone to take her out for walks in the afternoon. But that six hundred dollars a month was money I had calculated into my budget, money slated for drinks. My twin sister, Kristi, said I drank too much, but that totally wasn’t true. I went to work, and after work, I wanted to unwind. I wanted to go out for a drink, and then I would find myself in a bar full of beautiful women and cold beverages served in tall glasses. There were nights when I would buy drinks for five women at a time. I loved Brooklyn. Many of these women came home with me. They were even impressed that I lived in a famous writer’s apartment. I would watch my babysitter watching me, watching me go home with other women, and I knew that I was on my way.
I met Zahid for the first time at a bar near his apartment, the same bar where I bought him tequila shots when he gave me the keys to the apartment. He was leaving for Pakistan in a few days. Zahid had started to cry when he asked me for the extra money and I thought there might be something wrong with him.
Like mentally.
Later, I asked Kristi. “Duh,” she said. “Zahid is a total nutjob. He needs to go on antidepressants, but he refuses.”
And Zahid, he told me he was fine, but for someone with dark skin, he looked pale. Yellowy green. He was going to be spending the summer in Pakistan.
“Fun, right?” he said.
I didn’t know. I had an idea about life in Pakistan, and it wasn’t exactly informed. I was from the Midwest. I thought about going out for Indian food and finding out that the cooks were actually from Pakistan. I thought that Zahid could be a prince. He had delicate features. As far as men go, he was incredibly good-looking.
He came back from Pakistan in a week and a half.
A week and a half.
Motherfucker.
His grandmother had died. Apparently right away. The day after he arrived. And so Zahid changed his ticket and came home early, looking more than ever like a sad prince, an orphaned prince who had lost his castle. It was weird for me to think things like this, because I wasn’t the creative one. That was Kristi. I didn’t even like books. Or men, either. I had slept with two men, once in high school, and then once again in graduate school, just to know for sure. I had assumed that I was gay since I was a girl, probably because of my feelings for my babysitter. Maybe if I’d had a different babysitter, I would be a different person, a heterosexual. There is no way for me to go back in time. I wouldn’t want to.
I also knew early on that I wanted to work in finance. I wanted to be normal. I wanted money. I liked wearing crisp suits, tailored shirts, even the shoes, the heels that made me taller than I already was. I didn’t look gay, even with the short hair, because I could not take the time to straighten it. I was sexy. But it was always girls for me, even though it had been fine with both of the guys I had slept with. They had used their fingers. And probably, if I were to admit the truth to myself, they were probably also gay, using me for the very same reason I had used them.
* * *
—
The night Zahid came home from Pakistan, I took him back to the bar where he had taken me the night he gave me the key to his place. It wasn’t my favorite bar. It was more like a dive. Not where the publishing people hung out. He seemed like he needed a drink and so I bought him several.
It seemed like the right thing to do. I was living in his apartment. I was also afraid that he would want me to leave, and that didn’t work for me. I had a plan. I was spending the summer in Brooklyn, working hard and drinking hard, seducing women who didn’t have the money to get out of town. I wasn’t going to the Hamptons or Fire Island. I would rent my own place come fall. I was saving. As a junior analyst, I was making low six figures with a promise of a bonus at the end of the year, and then a big increase in salary if I was kept on. I would be kept on. I could feel it, understood that I had been taken on by my boss, his prodigy, not that I liked him, but that did not matter. This other anal
yst, a jealous prick, said it was because I was the only African American on the team with long-ass legs, but that wasn’t even true. My boss appreciated my mind. I knew my shit. I fucking loved the work.
My twin sister was in Iowa, teaching where she had gone to college, getting her PhD in fiction. She was leading the most boring life I had ever heard of, but she seemed happy. We were both happy, though she said I was morally bankrupt. Not a nice thing to say, really, but I didn’t tell her where to go. She had this idea that we were supposed to be closer than we were.
Zahid, the famous novelist, was a bad drunk. I had to drag him home and when we got back to the apartment he threw up everywhere. Everywhere.
“Fuuuuck,” I said.
He threw up so much I was afraid that he was going to die. I could call an Uber to the hospital, but would anyone let him get into their car? Did he even have health insurance to pay the ER bill? I couldn’t be sure, the guy was such a fuckup, so I cleaned the vomit off him as he turned his head and proceeded to vomit some more—not on me, I made sure of that. When he went from the toilet back to the floor in front of his couch, I cleaned up the trail he left behind.
I knew that Zahid was my sister’s friend, but still, this wasn’t cool.
* * *
—
He was still there when I got home from work.
He was drinking a beer, reading a book.
He had cleaned the apartment. It didn’t matter. There he was, sitting on the couch of the apartment I paid three thousand dollars a month for. We had not talked about it last night, his coming back two months early. I had already paid him for the entire summer.
“Zahid,” I said.
“Hey, Khloe.” He smiled at me, a sad puppy dog smile. It was not going to work on me. “That was something last night, huh?”
“It was something.”
“My head still hurts.”
I was not unsympathetic.
I took off my heels. It was a tricky thing with this job I had, a black lesbian who looked white and straight. Kristi opined that I was having identity issues, but I disagreed. I liked the way I was. I figured my life outside the office was my life outside the office. I had chosen my career. I wasn’t a social worker. I wasn’t a poet or a PhD. My co-workers didn’t like me, but they weren’t supposed to. There were twelve of us, vying for six jobs. The execs loved me and that was what mattered. I was walking diversity. They all wanted to fuck me, and that wasn’t a bad thing.
I took a beer from the refrigerator, realizing that, of course, Zahid was drinking one of my beers. There was also a pot cooking on the stove. I smelled something good. I opened the lid.
“I made a dal,” he said. “Do you like lentils?”
I sighed. This was him trying to apologize, butter me up.
“What is your plan, Zahid?”
I couldn’t help it. I could not be compassionate. Zahid was not part of my plan.
“My plan.” He sighed. “I’m working on the book. I need to get a job for the fall. I have some applications out. Something always comes through. I need to write to my mother, explain why I left the way I did. I disappointed her. She does not understand my life. She still thinks I should have been a doctor.”
“Dude. That’s not what I meant.”
“You mean about me, now. Being here?”
I nodded.
“Well, this is my apartment.”
I waited.
“I realize you sublet it for the summer.”
“I did,” I said. “And I am paying more than I expected originally.”
“Because my dog isn’t here.”
Zahid looked worried. I felt worried. I didn’t know who had the power in this conversation.
“I kind of need to stay here,” Zahid said.
“But you sublet the apartment to me.”
“I could sleep on the couch.”
I wondered what my sister would say about this. This was not all right with me. But I tried to make it better. “And you will give me back half of my rent,” I said, realizing that I did not want half of the rent. I did not want him there. Period.
Zahid laughed.
“That would make sense,” he said. “But if I am sleeping on the couch, half seems like too much, don’t you think?”
“Fuck, Zahid.” I knew what was coming. This was why I would never be a writer. Even the editors were broke and they had benefits.
“I’m a really good cook,” he said.
“Zahid,” I said.
“I have nowhere to go.”
“If you give me my money back,” I said, “I’ll find another place. I understand this is your apartment. I understand that plans can change. But this, what you are suggesting, won’t work.”
We stared at each other. I was not a nice person. I was not a person filled with compassion. I put myself first. If I didn’t take care of myself, who would?
“Where is your dog?” I asked him.
“My dog?”
“Yes,” I said. “Your dog. The one I was going to take care of until you left her with a student.”
“Connecticut,” Zahid said.
“Connecticut.” I thought about it. “Connecticut is supposed to be beautiful.”
“Then that is where I shall go,” Zahid said, as if his life were a fucking fairy tale.
Rachel
My mother and I had a fight about the dog.
She had started calling her Posey, for one thing, and she had the dog sleeping with her on her king-sized bed. Princess slept on my father’s side.
“You can’t keep her,” I told my mother. “This isn’t the real Posey.” My mother gave me this blank, vacant gaze. “Posey is dead,” I said.
“Thanks, sweetheart, thank you for reminding me,” she said.
And then I felt bad.
“I just don’t want you to get confused.”
“Whose big idea was it to bring this dog home?” she said. “I told you it was too soon.”
Clearly, it was too soon.
But I wanted to take care of the dog. My professor had left Princess with me. That had to mean something. I wanted to ask my mother, Did that mean something?, but then I would have to tell her what had happened between me and my professor, and she wouldn’t approve. My mother was not that cool. I didn’t think anyone would approve. I did not think my friends would understand. My best friend from high school, Agatha, was in California for the summer and I wasn’t even sure if we were friends anymore. I understood that this kind of thing, sleeping with your professor, was considered bad. An abuse of power. Even if I had urged him.
“He is going to come back for her, you know,” I said.
Honestly, I had this a little bit confused, too. As if he were going to come back, my professor, come back for me. But he would be coming back for his dog. I knew that I did not matter, that I was just a student, a former student, even. He didn’t even like my writing, but maybe, maybe at least I had been good in bed.
Princess had absolutely no use for me anymore. She tolerated me, let me pet her. She would chase after a ball if I threw her one, but she had fallen in love with my mother. She would sit at my mother’s feet and lick her face and lick her face, and my mother let her. I was jealous. It was stupid.
“This dog is a licker,” my mother said, delighted.
It was disgusting.
Growing up, all of my friends thought that my mother was cool. She let us eat unhealthy snacks. She did not monitor our screen time. She would swim in the pools with us and jump on the trampolines in other people’s backyards while all the other mothers watched.
I didn’t know why or when it started to bother me, the way my mother was nice to my friends. My mother would talk to them and they would linger in the kitchen. One time, I saw her hugging Agatha and neither would tell m
e what the conversation had been about. I used to worry that my friends didn’t actually like me. They liked hanging out in my house. They liked my mother. We had a swimming pool. Once, when I was much younger, eleven or twelve, I let another girl have her birthday party at my swimming pool. She invited over girls who did not like me and who wouldn’t talk to me, even while they were at my house, swimming in my pool.
My mother had not opened the pool this summer.
“Your dad does it” was what she said, as if that were that. I certainly did not know how to open a swimming pool. “Can’t we call someone?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. It felt disrespectful to my mother. She was grieving somehow, even if she had no idea, and maybe this was part of it. The loss of our pool. It was sad, sitting there all covered up. And it had always been my father’s job to take care of the pool, the chlorine, the shock treatment, even the vacuuming, he did it all himself, but he was living in New York, living in his girlfriend’s apartment. He could have come home, at least, to open the pool. And she could have hired someone, obviously. It really wasn’t fair that I couldn’t go swimming because they’d broken up.
It was my mother who insisted I have dinner with my father and his new girlfriend. The pilot, my mother called her.
“You take the train,” I said. “You give up your night and make polite conversation.”
“But I was not invited,” my mother said.
“Have you met her?” I asked.
“I have not.”
And then I understood. I was going to dinner for my mother. She was not concerned that I maintain my relationship with my father. She wanted a report about my father’s girlfriend. I supposed I could do that for her.
“I am insisting you go because it will be good for you.”
This was such bullshit that it seemed pointless to call her on it. She had read my short story. She knew that I was on her side.
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