Milk Blood Heat

by Dantiel W. Moniz

  I set a napkin down in front of her. “Hey, welcome. I’m Trinity,” I said, my standard greeting. “What can I get you started with?”

  She looked into my face, traces of cold still lingering, pink nose, wet eyes. She was stunning. “As in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?”

  I laughed. “I don’t think so. My mom just liked the sound.” She ordered a scotch and water, and after I brought it to her, I asked her for her name. She leaned over the bar toward me, a smirk playing around her mouth. A perfume of jasmine and rose escaped the collar of her shirt.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “It’s Snow. I’m not shitting you. Can you believe they named me that?” She sat back with pride, as if this were her favorite thing about herself, her success with producing incredulous reactions in strangers. I wondered if this forwardness was a defense mechanism, and if I had something like it too.

  “Hardly,” I said, deciding to indulge her, and she showed me her ID. She looked several years younger in the photo—blue and blonde there too. I raised an eyebrow and started making a ticket of Don Julio margaritas, extra salt on the rim. “Wow, your parents were really on one.”

  She tucked her ID back into her wallet and took a deep pull from her drink. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

  “Ask what?” I said, though I knew she knew I was playing dumb.

  Snow sucked her teeth, then fluffed out her hair and pointed to her eyes. “It’s all real.”

  I held up my hands. “You don’t have to convince me,” I said, and though I’d checked for dark roots, I never would have asked. Mostly, I was just an ear, letting my guests tell me what they wanted to, offering in return what complemented their stories, or propelled them. They wanted to talk about themselves, and always the wildest things. I was a sounding board, some kind of budget therapist. The more I let them talk, the more money I made.

  Snow told me she was Vietnamese on her father’s side and that people, no surprise, constantly fetishized her. My gut leapt in recognition. “They just come right up to you and ask, ‘What are you?’”

  “Or if they’re polite,” I added, “they say, ‘Where are you from?’”

  Snow was a touchy-feely type, like me, easy to talk to. She leaned forward, held my eyes when she spoke. I filled up my other patrons’ drinks, got them extra napkins and au jus, whatever they needed, but I could feel her, a gleaming at the corner of my vision, and I kept ending up right back in front of her.

  Eventually, Snow told me her father had recently died and because she wasn’t close to him, she felt a weird sort of grief. “A car crash. He got in an accident on 95 and a semi hit him. He saw it coming.” I made noises of condolence, but I could tell that wasn’t what she was here for. I could identify her kind a mile off—whatever she was going through, she just needed to name it.

  Jemma came to pick up her margaritas.

  “You like that upsell?” she asked me, arranging the drinks on her tray.

  “You know I do.” The higher the bill, the better my tip out.

  Jemma said she was having a party at her place after the shift—no, a get-together. Just a few of us from work, some colored bulbs in the lamps and a living room full of bass. She said, “Come,” and the command made me shiver. I told her I’d think on it. Something broke in the kitchen and several people at the bar thrust their drinks into the air and cheered, “Opa!”

  Snow asked for another scotch, then started up again like her father was on both our minds.

  “I think I’ve been dreaming about him,” she told me, pressing the glass to her forehead. The condensation wet a streak down her face. “I wake up in the night with this bright terror.” She told me that one night recently, while sleeping in the unfamiliar house of a new lover, she’d again woken up with the feeling and gotten up to pee, fumbling in the dark. She’d run into the closed bathroom door while flipping on the light. “It was this, like, simultaneous interaction. I’m not sure which happened first.” She said there was a mirror on the front of the door, and when the light came on, for just a millisecond, she hadn’t recognized herself. Snow sucked on the ice from her glass. “I saw what my face would look like if I died in surprise and fear. What my father’s face must have looked like. There’s nothing scarier than that.” She said she started seeing a hypnotist.

  “I don’t know if I believe in that,” I said, plopping a garnish-­cherry into my mouth. I didn’t even like them, sugary as they were, it was just something to do, but as I worked it in my cheek I became hyper-aware of Snow watching. I swallowed.

  “So you don’t believe in star charts? Or like energy?”

  I stacked dirty glasses at the sink. “I don’t know. It all just feels too . . . whimsical. Or immaterial? Too much like coincidence.”

  Snow nodded, the way we do when we doubt what someone else has said. She told me, “By the end of the night, I’ll convince you.” I just smiled in response; I thought I understood her. Deep in the mire of grief, who didn’t seek companions?

  The ticket machine spat up an order of four strawberry daiquiris and I groaned. Real drinkers—people who sat at the bar—never bothered me with frozen drinks, but the main diners, with their penchant for fruity or flashy, could weed you quick. R.J. sauntered over, a languorous grin on his face, doing to me what we did to the patrons, working me, turning me soft.

  “Sorry,” he said, touching my hand, and I couldn’t be too mad. He was the one who got me ice when I was low, who went back into the kitchens to check on my orders when most other servers claimed they didn’t have the time. We had an arrangement: I made all of his drinks first.

  “Don’t let it happen again,” I said, and poured mix into the blender.

  He leaned on the bar while I made his ticket, eyed Snow the way everyone had been all night. Then he said to me, “You in love?”

  I made a face. “What are you talking about?”

  R.J. inclined his head at Snow. “You’ve been staring all night.” I started to deny this, but stopped when I realized what it meant about me—that I could be both a victim and a perpetrator of gaze. I ducked the implication, saying, “So, what, you’ve been watching me?”

  I considered that this was all being human amounted to, layer upon layer of looking.

  R.J. laughed. “If you’re ready for that break, get Johnny to cover the bar.” He loaded the drinks onto his tray, the daiquiris already starting to melt under their own weight, and hustled back onto the floor. Maybe I did believe in energy—his body left a signature. A trail I could almost follow.

  “That your husband?” Snow asked, and I startled. Everything that was wrong between Derrick and me came rushing back. I twisted the white-gold band around my finger. Often, working the bar made me feel inscrutable, anonymous, but with Snow peering at me under her lashes like that, the idea seemed ridiculous. I was a fish in a bowl, and if I was analyzing my customers, some of them were doing it right back.

  “My husband doesn’t work here,” I said shortly, and turned to run fresh water in the triple sink. I was annoyed. I didn’t like thinking of Derrick in this space. It was too easy to pit him up against some simpler ideal, and it made me feel unfaithful. I thought about how we lay in bed at night, our stone bodies breathing in the dark; how only inches separated us—his dreams and my wakefulness—but it was that growing metaphysical distance that felt impossible to cross.

  This sudden awareness of myself clamped over me like a lid. I did a quick sweep of the bar and then called for Johnny. “Take over for a minute? Seat two’s waiting on a plate of fish-and-chips.”

  “Be quick,” Johnny said, and he slid into the work, second-natured. I watched him surreptitiously tip a bottle over his Styrofoam cup, then dried my hands on a towel and left the familiar tumult of the bar for the kitchens, its food-slick floors and different, harsher light. The din of plates sliding into
the window, metal clanging against the grill, the line cooks surrounded by steam and swears, as well as laughter. It was like passing from one world into another—the acceptable order the guests could see, and the chaos that made it possible.

  R.J. sat in the usual smoking spot, around the side of the building near the enclosed dumpsters, out of sight of patron view. The cooks had drug out three old crates for chairs and a table. R.J. nodded at me as I approached. I sat next to him and wrapped my arms around myself. Our breath garlanded the air.

  “You going to Jemma’s party?”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  R.J. brought out the baggie and it seemed like half the coke was gone. He scooped some out and took a hit, thumbing his nose against the burn.

  “I might. If you go. I have more fun when you’re around,” he said, then reached over to tug gently on my ear. The spot glowed with warmth and traveled through me, striking hard between my legs. My body felt made of stars. I admitted to myself, right then, that what was between R.J. and me was maybe not nothing. Easily, I could imagine him as a lover, and what that quick pink tongue would do.

  The hugeness of R.J.’s pupils seemed to suck at me, and finally I had to turn away.

  “It’s cold,” I said. “We should both get back in there.”

  “Here, warm up.” He measured a bit of powder onto the back of his hand and held it up to me. I looked from him to his hand. There were only two more hours in the shift, and the high was so brief. Who could it hurt, other than myself?

  The hit landed right between my eyes, making them water, and R.J. smiled, like he was proud of me. He said, “Now we can finish strong.” The drug came on almost instantly, shuddering the cold out of my body. My heart pumped faster and little tremors zipped through me, a kind of focus. I could taste it in the back of my throat.

  When I emerged from the kitchens, Johnny was looking in my direction. He pointed to his wrist and threw his hands up, and I held up one finger and ducked into the ladies’ room. He’d be snippy about it, but I needed a moment alone. The restroom was mercifully empty, and I braced myself against the sink, the star-feeling throbbing on and off. If I went to Jemma’s, something would happen, and as bad as that would be, I knew it was the easier option, a ready-made out. Harder was facing that I was too impatient or lazy to understand the work of love; behind that, my glowing fear, my almost certainty, that I wasn’t worth the effort. I studied my reflection and found it difficult to look into my own eyes; like Snow, I couldn’t recognize myself.

  The door wooshed open and she strode in, like I’d summoned her.

  “I saw you come in,” Snow said. She pulled a vial of liquid from her purse and held it up for my inspection. I was already shaking my head when she asked, “Want to try something?”

  “I’ve got to get back to the bar,” I said. I kept feeling like someone would walk in and bust me for every single sin, and if it happened, I’d deserve it.

  “It’ll take just a second.” She crossed to one of the stalls, her bright hair whipping behind her, and leaned against the frame. “You don’t believe, so you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “What is it?”

  “Holy water from the mountains.”

  I wasn’t certain why, but I walked toward her and went in. We fit inside the stall facing one another, our backs pressed against the thin walls, the toilet between us. The slender space, dim lighting, our solemn eyes—all of a confessional mood. I dared her to convince me.

  Snow sprinkled the vial over my head, then lifted both hands and passed them in front of my body like a scanner, slowing at critical points, my third eye and throat, hovering over my belly button and lower. She said, “You’re going to have problems with your chest.”

  I blinked. A pressure ticked at the base of my skull. “What do you mean? Like physically or emotionally?”

  “You know what? I don’t really know.”

  I laughed, not bothering to hide my derision. I put my hand on the latch, eager to return to the bar, that golden light, where I knew how to manage. “Well, thanks for that,” I said generously, and as I opened the door to leave, Snow said, very quiet, as if talking to herself, “I don’t know why you doubt he loves you.”

  Spooked and hopeful, I looked over my shoulder at Snow but quickly rearranged my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, and left the stall, pushing through the main dining room and back behind the bar.

  Johnny scolded me, lovingly, and I tried to drop into the work, refilling, wiping down, teasing, but I could feel sweat gathering under my arms, my heart racing. I told myself it was the coke. Snow came back out, and I could feel her trying to catch my eye. I flitted from customer to customer, laughing too loudly, trying to drown her presence out. I swooped up an empty pilsner, foam clinging to the side, and it slid from my grip, shattering at my feet. “OPA!” my patrons roared, as if they’d been waiting for this, and in the upset, I finally looked at her. Snow stood up and put on her coat, all of us watching. She set her empty glass on the money she’d thrown down, and once she was gone, I slid the damp bills from the bar top and counted them—a 50 percent tip. Then, like a sarcastic fairy godmother, Johnny appeared, handing me the broom so I could clean up my mess.

  After the shift, my high worn down, my co-workers loitered in the parking lot, stripping to undershirts, passing around body spray and breath mints. R.J. paced near our cars, his hands in his pockets. It didn’t feel as good as it used to, to know he was waiting for me. He gestured to the others hyping themselves up for the party. “You coming?”

  “Um,” I said, opening my door, “give me a sec.” I sat behind the wheel, pretending to check my makeup in the rearview, buying time, and R.J. leaned down and said into my ear, “Don’t worry. You’re pretty,” before leaving to join the rest. I stared after him, the emptiness of his words touching down in me. I wanted to go home.

  I could see him so clearly, my husband, as I hadn’t been able to for months—tired, off from work, wrestling the trash from the can. He tied it up carefully and hauled it to our front door, forgetting his jacket, flipping on the hall light so that when I came home I would not stumble in the dark. The flurries promised flickered through the night like restless spirits, the flakes so delicate they would melt long before their cold could reach him. I watched him drag the bag to the curb and pause. Maybe he looked at the moon, full and ringed with frost, or maybe he looked for me.

  Necessary Bodies

  Management didn’t remove the glass bottles, burger wrappers, used condoms, or the cigarette butts—they just dyed the water blue, a kind of golf-course aquamarine Billie had to squint and step closer to make sure of as it frothed from the fountain that ran from nine to nine. Even standing there a few minutes, she couldn’t tell if the hue was only a trick of light. The women in the front office were dreadful, a sneering bunch who had lost their charm as soon as she and Liam signed the lease, so she stopped the first maintenance guy she saw as she crossed the parking lot, one with whom she was on nodding terms. It was an easy relationship that required no names. She said, “Did y’all color the pond?”

  “Looks good, right?” he said cheerfully, his white-white teeth flashing in the sun as he hauled cardboard boxes into the back of his utility vehicle. “You can’t even tell it’s not real.”

  “Mmm,” Billie said, inclining her car keys toward him. About as real as those veneers, she wanted to say. Everyone knew Jacksonville water to be mostly brown. Moss swayed lightly from the oaks, suggesting breeze, but if there was one, it was a dead wind and even the sidewalk seemed to sweat. A heron ducked its gray head under the ripples, plucking something up and swallowing it—a small fish or maybe a piece of plastic, confused by its glint. She wondered if the pond now had a new taste, a smell or texture that, as humans, they were dumb to. There were turtles in that retention pond, ducks, minnows by the hundreds, and at least two giant carp that patrolled the shallo
ws, smoky-scaled and silent until startled, opening their mouths to green algae and miniature ecosystems tumbling in. What would the dye do to them? She refrained from voicing this as well; there was no time for a debate. As usual, unluckily, she was late. She wished the maintenance guy a good day and got into her car where she thumbed a text to her mother—who more than likely was already seated, peering over her menu toward the door, constructing a slick reprimand for her daughter: I’m otw. Her mother replied: I was so hungry I ordered an appetizer! See you soon!

  Billie waded through the dining room chatter, the business types on lunch hour gulping down sweet teas and giant salads smothered in ranch, noodle-armed women leaning over the table talking urgently with their friends while their children made toys of the sugar caddies. Servers weaved in and out of the jumble laden with trays but nimble, in flow with the rush. Her mother was seated at a booth for two, picking daintily at a platter of fried cheese. She looked beautiful as always—hair freshly relaxed and swept from her forehead, a black shift dress, her legs smooth with shea butter.

  “Last night I dreamt of fish,” Colette said, even before her daughter could sit. For a moment, Billie couldn’t separate this statement from her earlier concern, wondering how her mother could know about what her complex had done to the pond in the interest of rental value. But then the moment passed and she had to work hard to control the grimace pinching at the corners of her mouth. “You know what that means,” her mother continued, and unfortunately Billie did. That old wives’ tale. Colette meant fish as in fertility, as in birth and babies. Grandbabies. “Last time it was cousin Em. Maybe this time it’s you?”