As Zorka was slipping the bottle of Sprite into her jacket, he called out “Hey,” but didn’t move from behind the register.
Zorka grabbed the bag of chips and began to walk around the small aisle towards the door.
“You can take whatever you want, I don’t give a fuck,” he said.
Zorka stopped.
“My name’s Paul,” he said. “You from out of town?”
Zorka gave him the middle finger.
“O yeah I heard of that place. It’s hot over there . . . full of flames . . .” Paul laughed and took out a pack of Marlborough Reds from behind the counter and chucked them at Zorka. “On the house,” he said.
Zorka caught the pack and put it in her jacket pocket and began to leave.
“Wait, hold up. You ain’t even gonna tell me your name?”
Zorka stopped and thought about it.
“Zorka,” she said.
“You got a place to stay Zorka?”
Zorka shrugged.
“You wanna place to stay?”
“Not looking for rape,” Zorka replied.
The man laughed.
“Yeah me neither. Shit’s gross,” he said. “Wait, hold on – hold up. Look. Just hear me out. Like take me, right: thirty-six years old, working the cash register at 7-Eleven, most people’d think, that dude’s a fuckin loser, right? Bet when people look at you, they don’t see the truth neither do they? You ain’t a loser and I ain’t a loser.”
*
One could have called it a chance meeting. Paul was just filling in this shift for his younger cousin Ben, who worked the 7-Eleven after school. Financially speaking, Paul was not a loser. He lived in a pale-yellow house with a teal and purple painted porch in Jamaica Plain, off the orange line on Barowell Street in south-east Boston, which his uncle had left to him and his cousin Ben, after he got diagnosed with prostate cancer and tried to move down to Florida to take it easy for a couple months, but seizured in the airport and died near the baggage claim. Ben’s mum was living in Dorchester with another family, and Paul’s family had moved to Florida after his uncle’s sudden death, thinking, life’s too short. They called Paul from the baggage claim area, whispering into the phone.
“Why you whispering, Ma?” Paul said.
“I love you, Pauly, you be a good boy.”
“What the fuck, Ma, why you saying that, what’s going on?”
“Don’t swear, Pauly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m putting your father on the phone.”
“Ok.”
“Pauly?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s your father.”
“I know. What’s up with Ma?”
“Pauly we’re ok, we’re just—” His father stopped speaking and a muffling sound twisted in the phone.
“Pa . . . ? You crying?”
His father sniffed.
“Can I be honest with you, Pauly? You a grown man now so I can be honest with you.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re scared . . . We don’t wanna . . . go . . .”
“Go? Go where?”
“You know, Pauly. We don’t wanna . . . die . . .”
“DIE?! You think cause Uncle Hal drop dead all the sudden that it run in the family or something, I’m sorry but it was Uncle Hal’s time, that’s all. It ain’t your time and you know it. So just relax, ok?”
His father sniffed again into the phone.
“Maybe you’re right . . .”
“Take Ma to the beach.”
“I will.”
“Get some vanilla ice-cream in a cone.”
“I will.”
“I love you, Pa.”
“We love you too, Pauly!” his father said into the phone, then he heard his mother yell out in the background “I love you Pauly! Tell Pauly I love him and to be a good boy and to take care of Bennie!”
*
Ben was twenty, a computer science student at the community college in Roxbury, and working at 7-Eleven part time. Paul had a series of his own start-up businesses that he ran from home, one always failing and another succeeding, each idea growing from the decay of the previous. He used to freelance on Rentacoder.com, then built himself up as the Goldfinger, so-called because he could solve a client’s coding problem in no time, and always billed reasonably, and moved on to bigger clients that reached out to the Goldfinger with an emergency project here or there.
Since the house that Ben’s father, Paul’s uncle, had left them was big, with spare bedrooms, they decided to rent out the rooms to make extra cash.
*
In the two-storey house lived Paul and his cousin Ben, Rico from Texas, Kimberley from Vermont who hated when people called her Kimmie so Paul called her Kimmie, a French girl with rusty-brown hair and freckles who everyone called ‘the French Girl’ cause she had only recently moved in, and now Zorka, who Paul announced should be called Zoro cause she always wore black. Zorka said that anyone who called her Zoro would get kicked in the nuts and/or pussy, she said it with such a straight face that no one called her Zoro, except for Ben, who wasn’t there when she made the announcement, and promptly got kneed hard between his legs and doubled over, confused.
*
Zorka shared a room on the second floor with the French Girl, who was working at the European Wax Center on the crossroads of Beacon and Harvard. When Paul told Zorka she needed to get a job, she told him she didn’t have a high school certificate. Paul said, “Not a prob!” and the next day she had a high school certificate. “You can pay me back when you get a job.” Zorka took the thick piece of paper and inspected it. Then she let out a laugh. It was the first laugh he had seen from Zorka.
“I finish with honours!” Zorka exclaimed.
“Yeah, I figured . . . why not, you know. I’m sure you would’ve finished with honours anyways . . .” Paul said and gave her a wink.
*
Rico was different from the rest of the guys. He was short and chubby, with smooth tanned skin, and no facial hair except for a couple of wisps on his upper lip. He was from the Philippines but moved to Texas when he was three, and now he was studying comparative literature at Emerson College off Boylston Street in front of the Common, and he was there mostly on scholarship. Rico was a shy guy. Three times a week, he worked as a cashier at Whole Foods in Brighton.
*
Zorka and Rico would sit together on the teal and purple porch of the house, Zorka smoking, Rico twisting blades of grass between his thumb and forefinger.
“I know career,” Zorka said. “It’s like doctor lawyer cash-machine.”
Rico laughed.
“No . . . careers don’t have to be like ‘doctor lawyer cash-machine’, it’s like, how you want to interact with the world.”
“I wanna . . . fight maybe.”
“Fight for what?”
“So people don give me shit.” Zorka looked at Rico. “You dunno shit about shit!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, Zorka, I’m a short, chubby, brown trans kid. You wanna know what getting shit feels like.”
*
While Zorka was thinking about her career, Paul got her some shifts at the 7-Eleven and Rico got her books to read during her shift. Mostly poetry books, which looked easy to Zorka because they were short lines and only a page or two. For the first time in her life, sitting behind the cash register and watching the petrol pumps hung with their noses in the machines, Zorka felt a sort of calm. She didn’t want to pick a fight. She didn’t feel angry. She just wanted to sit and read and think and look at the sky negotiate its blues and whites.
She decided she wanted an aesthetician’s licence like the French Girl, so the French Girl gave her her books to study and led her through some of the waxing tutorials at home, when she’d sneak back some supplies from work, heat up the wax, and show Zorka how it was done. The French Girl gave her lessons on waxing – upper lip, chin, armpits, bikini line, butt-cheeks, bu
tt-crack, anus . . . Zorka took to waxing right away. It was methodical and intrusive and she liked that. Her favourite were Brazilians, which she imagined onto those prissy private university girls with a personal sense of accomplishment.
“I make their pussy look like a blind eye. They never see, what do they see, they see nothing.”
*
Since the French Girl was completely waxed already, compliments of the job, and they had already done Zorka, and Kimberley said, “No way,” and Rico had no hair cause he was Filipino, Paul volunteered Ben.
“Oh come on, Paul, I ain’t gonna get waxed!”
“Sure you are. Zorka needs to practise.”
“But I don’t want to walk around with legs like a girl for a month – no ’fence Rico.”
“It’ll be good for you, Ben. You too stuck on appearances anyways.”
“You kiddin me? They gonna beat the shit outta me—”
“Ain’t no one gonna touch you. If you think hair on your legs makes you a man, then you can draw the hair back on,” and he threw Ben a black sharpie.
*
Ben walked around with smooth hairless legs and hairless armpits for all of that warm autumn, and something in him changed. He started coding programs just for fun, then getting curious about people who were different from him, then he crashed an MIT party where he met a girl to whom he explained that his hairlessness was a sacrifice to his sister getting her aesthetician’s licence.
“That’s partly endearing,” the girl said, “and partly super-weird.”
But something about his easy way of listening and his dark, bowing eyes kept the girl there.
“So you wanna tell me your name?” Bennie said with a smile.
“Nidhi.”
“That’s cool. I like that name. My name’s Bennie. Or Ben. However you wanna say it. Nidhi, what is that like Indian?”
“Yeah . . .” the girl said. Then, after a pause, she said, “You don’t go to MIT do you?”
“What makes you say that?” Bennie replied.
Nidhi let out a laugh.
“Just your manner of speaking, Bennie, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I know, right. I’m actually doin a double, MIT/Harvard, because I couldn’t decide so I thought why not, you know. It’s like at a buffet when you end up putting a chicken drumstick and a slice of meatloaf on your plate cause you can’t decide, and it looks weird, but it’s not too bad actually.”
*
By winter, Bennie and Nidhi were dating and Zorka got her aesthetician’s licence and started waxing at the European Wax Center, where it was considered a point of expertise for the woman who was waxing you to have an accent. Part of the European touch.
*
At times, Rico and Zorka mumbled to each other with clunky Russian accents like Boris and Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, the tall female spy with sharp eyebrows and a tight smile, and the shorter agent with two evil moustache wisps. Other times, Rico read her poetry from his classes. Zorka kept saying “I don’t get it” to all the poems, except Anne Sexton. She got that. She wrote intrepidly about all the things “no one wanna see” as Zorka put it, like menstruating, masturbating, wanting to die, addictions, incest, cheating, begging . . .
*
All My Pretty Ones
*
Anne Sexton lived and wrote in Massachusetts, Newton, Lowell, Boston. Some of her poems could be a walking tour. One that would lead nowhere, but gave you firm instructions. Like “45 Mercy Street”, up and down Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Charles River . . .
*
Anne Sexton got home. She poured herself a glass of vodka. She put an arm into one sleeve, then the other, of her mother’s heavy, bristled fur coat, she slid them off her fingers, one by one, her rings, she went into the garage. She locked the door. She got into her car and started the engine, then closed her eyes and leaned back.
*
Ghosts . . .
*
Rico took Zorka to Anne’s grave at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.
*
My Friend, My Friend
The Fury of Abandonment
The Fury of Earth
The Fury of Sunrises
The Fury of Sunsets
*
Rico spent every Christmas with his family in Houston. That year he invited Zorka to come down with him, and so they got into his midnight-blue Toyota Corolla, and began their road trip southwest, down past Hartford, New Haven, Krispy Kreme, Wendy’s, the 95 to the 78, around New York, the 476, past Hershey, past Harrisburg, then on the border Zorka rolled down her window and yelled out “PEACE OUT NEW JERSEY” and Rico honked twice.
They continued down through Maryland, the long 81 down into Virginia, through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Zorka took a small invisible hat off her head and said with a bow, “Khello Mr Presidents, how you do . . .” and Rico burst out laughing.
Past Roanoke, Blacksburg, Firestone Complete Auto Care, LaQuinta Inn, Kingsport, “What up, Tennessee,” Rico saluted, “the gays are comin,” at which Zorka began to sing the new song she made up as their talisman for driving through the South: “gay as fuck, wish us luck . . .”
Knoxville, down the 75, around the corner of the Chattahoochee National Forest, through the tip of Georgia, then onto the 59 into Alabama. Rico was tapping on the steering wheel. Then he reached over and turned the radio up and Zorka began to swivel in her seat, singing along to the lyrics with a thick pronunciation while rolling her window down.
Misssssssyyyyyyyy!” Zorka yelled out into the passing field. In the distance, a cow responded “mooo.”
*
They stopped for the night at a Super 8 motel, the coral exterior with the yellow sign holding the dilated orange-red 8 popping out of the wood. The woman with the name tag “Candice” gave both Rico and Zorka a long look, then slid the paperwork over and handed them the key.
“Enjoy your stay,” she said, uninterested in her own sentence.
They parked their car and went up the stairs, past the ice and snack machines, to the second-level rooms, 5B.
In the room the carpet was the colour of mashed potatoes and the two twin beds had a quilted comforter with square patterns in mauve and turquoise. On the wall was a watercolour painting of a bouquet of flowers and another of a large seashell.
*
They drank a couple of beers then turned on some music and Zorka danced around while Rico read. They talked about what Rico wanted to do after he graduated. He said he wanted to go to grad school. And to Paris.
“You wana go to Paris, Zorka?”
“Yeah, sure, Rico. Maybe French Girl can take us. Zhe parl an pu fransay, vou savey.”
“You got a good accent . . .”
“Shut up.”
“Ha, well no less discreet than your accent in English.”
“Yeah, this shit suck big time. Wish I just have no accent and speak like you.”
“No way, Zorka. It totally works for you.”
“Cause I know how to verk it . . .” Zorka dipped down, touched her toes and rolled back up.
*
They woke up in the middle of the night to yelling in 5A.
“I fucking knew it . . . !” a man hit his palm on the wall, right above Rico’s bedside lamp.
“You don’t know nothing,” the woman yelled back. “You too busy with your goddamn self to know something . . .” The woman began to over-enunciate her words. “You an embarrassment, William don’t want to see you, he tell me he don’t want to see his Daddy no more, you got him getting knocked round in school cause of you and he just a kid . . . comin home with a black eye, got his nose bleedin!”
“Oh I’m a embarrassment? Who the fuck you think pay all your bills?”
“Fuck you, that shit’s called child support and it’s for Willie to get his notebooks and shit for school you asshole, it’s for him to get his fuckin Hepatitis B shot!”
The man hit the wall again. The seashell
watercolour swivelled on its hook.
“I ain’t ’fraid of you, Mitch.”
There was some pacing, then the room became quiet. The bed next door creaked shyly as each person got in it. Not long after, the couple was asleep.
Zorka got up, fixed the seashell painting and got back into bed.
*
In the morning, they checked out, got back on the road, past Birmingham, stopping at Denny’s for a late breakfast. Zorka got extra hash browns and covered them with a thick, swirling layer of ketchup. They continued on the 59, crossed into Mississippi, past Laurel, past Hattiesburg, right to the tip where they could see the water, then drove on the 12 into Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Big Head’s Bar-BQ, Goodwill, then the 10 to Lafayette, Beaumont, straight to that southern tip of Texas, into Houston.
“Home Sweet Home,” Rico said and parked the car in the driveway.
*
When Rico and Zorka came through the door, Rico’s mum was spraying vinegar on the countertop and wiping.
“Oh take off your shoes,” Rico pointed to the neat row of shoes by the door.
“Honeyboy!” Rico’s mum came running into the hallway with her arms wide, her right hand still holding the vinegar spray.
“Hi Mom,” Rico said and gave her a hug.
“This is Zorka.”
“Khello,” Zorka said awkwardly.
“Come here, honey.”
Rico’s mum pulled Zorka down to her level and gave her a squeeze.
“Are you hungry? I hope you’re hungry.”
*
Dinner reminded Zorka of those New Year parties she’d had in her building as a child, with the long table of plates of food, and her and Jana sitting under the table, whispering.
On this table: a ceramic pan of beef in a thick brown sauce with sliced green peppers, plates of cold cuts, ham, turkey, pastrami, a large aluminium pan filled with slices of pork belly, cubes of crispy fried pork, a square plate of sweetened cured pork, piles of glass noodles, dishes topped with halves of boiled eggs, shrimp, a macaroni chicken salad, bright indigo rolls, pastries in all colours, pink and yellow and green, rows of meatballs, and finger-sized fried rolls with bright orange dipping sauce, white rice with sliced chives, glistening barbecue skewers, white bread puffs splitting at the top . . .
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