Yolk

by Mary H. K. Choi

  He has the decency to keep a straight face, but I can detect the mirth bubbling just underneath. “No one’s accusing you of being shy…,” he says, regarding me seriously. “And you’re extremely fun and… fizzy.”

  I swat his arm. I want to tell him that the greaseball fat kid he knew back then is dead. That I’m exciting now. Desirable. That admirable people have made all sorts of terrible decisions with me.

  The line for the bathroom spills out of the red-lit hallway and wraps around the old-school jukebox. I lean on it, pushing the buttons that flip the CDs. I want piano music. Something keen and unsentimental. I want Ravel, but I’m also open to Jason Mraz.

  I turn around and almost collide into him. Patrick’s eyes widen. His lips are inches from mine. It occurs to me how preposterous it is that our mouths had to travel this far over this many years without ever once touching. I press my mouth on his. After a moment, he pulls away.

  “All right, killer,” he says affably. I can’t tell how mortified to be about the brush-off. It doesn’t matter. My light is on now. I’m sparkling above this moment, this room, this entire city. All I know is that whatever else happens tonight, Patrick will like me before it’s through.

  I flip the pages of the CDs in the jukebox. When I see the Cruel Intentions soundtrack, my palms sweat. I turn back to Patrick.

  I feel like I’m in a dream. My fingers caress his cheek. Possibly with more force than is required.

  His hair’s curling in the back from the humidity. I reach out and touch it this time.

  50 Cent comes on. There’s a wall of screaming to “In Da Club” at our left.

  Just then the bathroom door opens somewhere behind him, a bright slice of yellow light. I cut the line, grab him by the wrist, and pull him into it with me. I need him to pay attention. To see me as I am now. The bathroom’s covered in a thousand stickers that are tagged over with a thousand different Sharpies and smells so overwhelmingly of pee that I feel like I can taste it.

  “Hi,” he says. “This is a variant on the original plan of peeing separately, but it can be remedied.” Patrick grabs the door to leave.

  “Stay for one second. I can’t hear you out there.”

  “Oh,” he says. “We’re here to talk.”

  It occurs to me that my makeup’s running down my face. There’s no wall mirror. Only one of those plastic handheld ones. This one’s black and chained to the faucet. The glass has been broken out of it.

  “Wow. Metaphor much?” I ask.

  He smiles indulgently. It really does smell so much like pee. I gag slightly.

  Someone knocks at the door.

  “Just a second!” I call out, laughing.

  Right then the unmistakable trill of a Tinder match erupts from his pocket. His hand shoots to his phone.

  “Oops!” I blurt jokily. “Guess the night’s looking up.” Even in my soused fog, I know this is not going smoothly. I’m trying to be a good sport, to be fun, carefree.

  “Sorry,” he says, and looks at me with such compassion I want to hit him. I wish he’d made a joke. Suddenly I’m weepy. I don’t know what I’ll do if he leaves for his date.

  I reach for him and kiss him again. A Hail Mary pass. His mouth is warm and bittersweet from his cocktail and I know this is the weirdest thing to think about, but it’s the perfect moisture level. God, he probably remembers to drink water throughout the day or something annoying. Again he pulls away.

  I keep staring. Boldly. He leans into me then, grabbing the back of my neck and kissing me. His other hand is on my hip. I grab him by the waist of his pants and pull him toward me. I kiss his neck. It’s briny and slick. I wonder if the Tinder girl he matched with is prettier than me.

  “Okay,” he says, breaking away again when I squirm the tips of my fingers down his pants. I’ve never had sex in a bar bathroom, but I’m game. Patrick is safe. I just don’t want to leave. I can’t face going back to that apartment. Either apartment.

  More urgent knocking at the door.

  “All right,” he insists, pulling away and reaching for the lock. “I’m calling it. I’ll put you in a car if you want.” Then he kisses me lightly again before turning. “This is not the place,” he says firmly, as if convincing himself. Before he leaves, he looks at me as if he can see all of me. As if he’s privy to something I don’t know about myself.

  I close the door on him.

  God. Maybe he’s religious. Fuck that. Maybe he’s one of those good Catholic boys. Or maybe he’s just not into me.

  I hover pee, thighs burning in my heels, and then wash my hands for a long time, grateful for the cold water on my wrists, grateful that I can’t see my reflection. I’m sure my face is sticky. I don’t want to touch my face, this bathroom is so filthy.

  Now that I’m taking a breath, I’m glad we stopped. I like Patrick so much. Even if his ethics feel like poetry in that the meaning behind the words evade me.

  When I open up there’s a girl on her phone, dressed like a nun. She shoots me a look like, “Seriously?” and then slams the door in my face.

  I’m surprised to find Patrick waiting in the hall. “Jayne,” says a voice from behind. I look over. Patrick turns too. It’s Ivy.

  “There you are,” she says. She’s wearing blue lipstick and a matching boa.

  “Hey,” I say, throwing myself into her arms and hugging her. “What are you doing here?” I run my palms through her soft feathers. I’m so happy to see her. It feels like a miracle that we’re reunited like this.

  “Jayne,” she scoffs, pulling away. “You literally told me to meet you.”

  I did. I had. I feel Patrick’s eyes on us. I’d texted her when I was scared that he wasn’t coming.

  “Fuck.” I smile and roll my eyes. “I’m so wasted.”

  “Okay, well, come with me to Pete’s.” Ivy pulls out her phone to show me. “His Halloween parties are mental.” The IG stories are full of beautiful bodies in lowlight heaving to loud house music. Pete is Benzo Pete. Or Pedo Pete. This creepy forty-something A&R who last year tried to guess my age and was delighted that I was nineteen.

  “You said you weren’t going to hang out with him anymore.”

  “Jayne.” She says in singsong, teeth flashing, “I have shrooms.”

  I sense Patrick’s attention on us. The thought of him meeting Ivy is intolerable somehow. I don’t want my worlds colliding.

  “I can’t.” I take her hand in both of mine, but she snatches it back. The idea of partying with Ivy and returning to my body three days later turns my stomach.

  “You’re the worst.” She turns on her heel for the bar.

  I force myself to smile. “Let’s get some air.” I link my arm gamely in Patrick’s and march out without meeting his eyes. My chin dimples from the effort of keeping my mouth shut. My nose clogs. I cannot let myself cry.

  chapter 22

  “So,” he says once we’re outside. “Can I make a confession?”

  I nod, bracing myself for the news that he’s leaving.

  “I really still need to pee. You’ll stay here?”

  I nod. “Of course.” I don’t expect him back.

  I watch him go. At least the air on the street is deliciously cold. Sweet. The best air I’ve felt in ages.

  I check my logs. That I had no memory of texting Ivy until she showed up feels itchy in my brain. I wonder if that was it for us. The thought that she’d be angry with me makes me vaguely ill. Karl Lagerfeld, the late designer of Chanel, said it was best to be sort of afraid of friends, to have a sword of Damocles hanging over you. To have tension where all parties had something to lose. I don’t know that I have that with Ivy beyond how she’s my only friend.

  I’m reminded of an evening with her on my bed in my old room. We were smoking cigarettes out of the window, which drove my roommates crazy, but they weren’t home. We’d gotten all dressed up but changed our minds and dumbed out on TikTok and ate junk instead. We’d dipped into Ivy’s good credit card, the one from her dad
for emergencies, and tossed all the wrappers and crap onto my floor as we ate until we were numb. I wanted to ask if she did things the way I did. Whether she left her body on the fizzy, glittery, shit-faced nights we saw each other and collected it on the other side of the morning trying not to think about everything that happened in between. Instead Ivy told me she’d been super depressed in high school back in Jersey. She told me how much everyone hated her. I was picking all the breadsticks out of the Chex Mix since the rye chips were gone when she told me her boyfriend in junior year used to “throw her around a little.” She’d slept with his friend as revenge and been so badly bullied for being a slut that she transferred.

  As soon as she said the word, it appeared on the movie screen at the back of my mind.

  Slut.

  It’s bizarre how the word loses its sting after high school. I hadn’t even thought about it since I saw it scrawled next to my name on the third-floor bathroom. JAYNE IS A CHINK SLUT.

  I felt Ivy’s eyes on me. Impatient for a response. An acknowledgment of this gift of trust. I let the silence hang as I observed her naked need for my approval. It was so keening. She wanted it so badly I didn’t want to give it to her. The smoke curled out of my mouth. I could have asked her what happened. If the incident had changed her. If ever she went a little dead inside any time a dude touched her since. But I just kept my head turned to the street outside until she cracked a joke to fill the silence.

  All I could think was how I didn’t want a friend who was anything like me. I have enough of me to go around.

  “Bet you can still make that Tinder date if you leave now.” The line sounds practiced, but my gratitude at Patrick returning makes my heart thunder in my ears.

  “Don’t do that,” he says, putting on his coat and fixing his collar. As he does, I see a tendril of tattoo lower on his neck, by his clavicle. I try to steal another glance but snag his attention instead.

  “You want to talk about what just happened?” he asks.

  My head’s swirling. “Nope.”

  “Fair enough.” He nods.

  “What does your mom think about your tattoos?”

  “She’s glad they’re not in color because that would make me a yakuza poser, which is the only thing worse than actually being in a gang.”

  “Wow. That’s cold.”

  “She also thinks it’s my dad’s problem since she doesn’t have to deal with a criminal-looking son on her side of the bathhouse.”

  She seems chill. Even if in appearance she looked like any other Korean Catholic golf mom. I still can’t believe she had an apartment in the East Village this whole time.

  “Move to the left,” the bouncer bellows at us.

  We duck next to the entrance of a Chinese takeout.

  The black metal cellar doors have been left open, a yawning maw in the sidewalk, and Patrick steers me way out so we don’t fall in. A skinny Asian girl, about eight, pops up out of the stairs, as unexpected as a gopher, and is trailed by another a few inches shorter. Sisters. They both have wet hair. As a restaurant kid, I know this means that they went home at some point, showered, and then had to come back here. Probably for homework.

  They file into the small restaurant, taking their seats at a corner table closest to the glass-front window, and set up an iPad. They share a single pair of earbuds. Watching them, I feel as though I got socked in the solar plexus.

  I remember being a restaurant kid. How it sets you apart from others. I wonder if their mom and dad ever took time off work for a parent-teacher conference. Or if they’re able to help with homework beyond checking to see if it’s done.

  “Do your parents speak English?” I ask Patrick.

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling and putting his phone in his back pocket. “Mom works in NGOs, so she speaks French, Mandarin, Spanish, and conversational German, and she thinks it’s pathetic that we don’t. I guess Kiki speaks a little Spanish now though.”

  I force myself to smile back. I only vaguely know what an NGO does.

  “What about your dad?”

  “He went to Berkeley, so…” Patrick clears his throat.

  “Did you know we had a restaurant?” I ask him.

  “Yeah,” he says. “My parents went, I think. It’s off I-10, right?”

  “And 410.”

  Patrick watches me watch the girls and taps a cigarette loose from a soft pack out of his jacket pocket. He lights it with a black lighter that reads A24 in white.

  “I should call Kiki,” he says, nodding at them.

  I snatch the cigarette from Patrick’s mouth and take a deep drag. I haven’t smoked in a while. It catches deep in my chest, scratching the length of my throat, making me spasm in great whooping, mortifying coughs, coughs so seismic I can’t catch breath between them. I turn away from him just in time as a stream of scalding acid ejects from my guts.

  I really should have eaten.

  “Holy shit,” I hear somewhere from behind me. I can’t tell if it’s him.

  “Ew,” another street voice chimes in.

  I double over and wipe my lips with the back of my hand. “Whoa,” I breathe.

  I open my wet eyes. My vision’s blurred. I’m in the street, staring at the dark hole of the storm drain. All the storm drains, since my eyes are crossing. They’re pulsing together along with my heartbeat. I experience a sudden stunning moment of clarity.

  A gentle pressure on my elbow pulls me back.

  “Come out of the street,” he says. I can’t look at him.

  Patrick hands me a bandanna from his back pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble, covering my mouth, desperate to catch my breath.

  It’s gauzy from many washings and smells like fabric softener. It’s such a tender personal gesture. “It’s clean,” he assures me.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  I feel a hundred times better for having voided my stomach. I always do.

  “Don’t sweat it,” he says.

  To his credit, he seems more concerned than horrified. I pull away, to save him from my sour breath. Now that I’ve got a clearer head, now that the spell of hooking up with him, of trying to be attractive, is broken, I shoot my shot.

  “Okay,” I begin carefully. “I have to ask you something.” This is humiliating, but if I’m going to be banished to the friend zone for all eternity, I may as well go for it. “Can I come over?” I smile weakly. “Don’t worry, I won’t try anything. I’m just not entirely ready to go home yet. And for what it’s worth…” I touch the tip of my nose with both hands. “Instantly sober. Ish.”

  He seems amused. I try not to read it as pity.

  “Look,” I tell him. June or Jeremy aren’t options right now. “I’m between homes.”

  “So, you’re asking if you can move in?” he deadpans.

  I laugh gratefully. “I’m experiencing some roommate turbulence. Me and June live together. We had a real barn-burner earlier tonight.”

  “Ah,” he says, nodding, and a strange look passes across his face.

  “That’s not why I called you,” I assure him. I’m rummaging around in my purse for a piece of gum I know isn’t there. “I wanted to call. Honest. I’ve wanted to text for a week.”

  I take a beat, lean into his whole sincerity thing. “I got scared of how accomplished you were. The whole art school, Yale…” I gesture widely. “I was embarrassed because I have no idea what I’ve been doing for ten years. But I wanted to see you.”

  He nods evenly. “I feel like maybe it’s an ESL thing, but I never know if a barn-burner is a fight or a party.”

  I locate a cough drop and pop it in my mouth, training myself to look at him when he looks at me. “I think it’s a political thing,” I tell him, rolling the lozenge with my tongue so it extinguishes my breath. “Or sports? Every trending topic I don’t recognize is a politics person or a sportsperson.”

  “That’s me with most famous people at this point. It’s a running joke with my friends.”

 
“Well, that’s ’cause you’re old.”

  The corners of his mouth tug upward. “Yeah, we can hang out at mine,” he relents.

  In the car, he’s silent. Seemingly lost in thought as he looks out the window.

  “Do you want to split the ride?” I pray he won’t take me up on it—I can’t remember what card I have synched to Lyft.

  “Don’t sweat it,” he says. I wonder if he regrets inviting me already.

  chapter 23

  The car stops on Ninth and A. Right across from Tompkins Square Park and around the corner from a gelato bar. It’s a part of New York that I wish I knew better. The part that you read about in books and see in documentaries about kids and drugs from the eighties. I know it’s changed a lot, but I’m impatient to recognize it from my own memories.

  “Wow, so it’s you who gets to live around here,” I tell him, looking up out of the car. “Sick.”

  “Yeah,” he says, getting out and holding the car door for me. “The first time we stayed here, back when me and Kiki were in grade school, it was so different. In the last few years, it’s gotten unrecognizable.” He points over my shoulder as he handles his keys. “All those high-rises are new. My mom said that when she bought the place, Tompkins was choked with drug addicts. Syringes everywhere. Called it Tetanus Park. But now…” He up-nods at the pristine artisanal café on his block with an Instagram-bait mural about love.

  He leads me into the narrow foyer of his building, and we trudge up to the second floor. “I’m right here.” He gestures to the left. It’s an older building, with patterned tilework on the ceilings, and the hallways are cool stone and smell a bit like basmati rice. My buzz from the drinks is wearing away at the edges. I feel as tense as I ever do walking into a guy’s house for the first time, but I remind myself that this is Patrick. He’s my church pal. Also known as a man with whom I have successfully extinguished any possibility of romantic entanglement. Patrick’s seen me puke. We’re good.

  He holds the door for me.

  His apartment is tidy. A little stuffy if anything. I peek into the cramped galley kitchen on the way in. The walls are lined with bookcases, with additional stacks of books on the floor under the windows. On the windowsills there are rows of the smallest flowerpots I’ve ever seen, with miniature cacti standing sentry. The furniture is old. And stylish in an aggressively retro way. Probably his mom’s. His sofa is enormous, cushioned in mustard leather, an overstuffed, oversized freestanding futon mattress that stays bent by some trick of interior design magic. It’s concertinaed at its hinge and almost resembles a giant catcher’s mitt. It’s ugly in a way that speaks to its expensiveness. It’s jolie laide. The Marni of sofas. We take off our shoes.