He could easily confuse a Natasha couch with a Mom one, or a Tess piece of art with Janie’s taste. As if he never knew them at all.
I’m not my father. I notice the drawings on Bernardo’s sneakers, little stick figures near the soles, etched into rubber that used to be white but is now gray from the grimy New York streets. I want to notice everything about him, and like him because of it. I don’t want to extract or shift or mold. I don’t want to love the way my father loves.
Bernardo is a guy who shrugs and doesn’t smile all the time and draws stick figures on his shoes and likes crazy adventures with strange girls. Bernardo is unafraid.
I’ll look up the band on his shirt later. I’ll listen to no fewer than five songs. I will learn something about him from the lyrics and the rhythm and whether the guitars are loud and electric or cooing and acoustic.
“Montana has to do the honors,” Roxanne says when she’s back in the bathroom. With all four of us in the tiny space, we can barely move. Bernardo sits on the closed toilet and Arizona perches on the ancient standing tub. Roxanne slips rubber gloves over my hands and holds her nose while showing me how to do the bleach and then the dye.
I can’t feel the texture of his hair through the gloves, but it’s intimate anyway, pulling at the strands, covering them in thick paste, making sure I haven’t missed a spot.
“Too late to change my mind?” he says halfway through.
“This is the weirdest day of my life,” Arizona says.
“That’s A, not true and B, really sad if it is true,” Roxanne says.
Standing over Bernardo feels right. And when he winces from the way the cheap dye burns his scalp, I laugh instead of apologize, and that feels right too. “I have a good feeling about this,” I say.
“Me too,” Bernardo says. I don’t think he’s talking about the hair.
“You smoke?” I say as we wait to wash the dye out of Bernardo’s hair. We haven’t moved from the cramped bathroom, although I can’t really say why. It smells like the kind of chemicals that will kill you, and it’s deathly hot. Arizona has shifted from the edge of the tub into the tub itself, where she can stretch her legs out and lean back. Her shoes are off. Her hair’s in a high, frizzy ponytail. If it weren’t for the French manicure and khaki shorts and C cups and pink polo, she could be my old sister. I wonder if Bernardo sees it now too. If the fact of our being sisters has clicked into place as soon as Arizona chilled a little.
I wonder if this side of her came out in hostels in Austria and France last week. I don’t think the dorms at Colby even have bathtubs.
Arizona asks for a cigarette too, but she hates smoking. Used to hate smoking. I should know exactly how she feels about smoking these days, but I don’t.
“I could smoke,” Bernardo says. “I don’t really do it, but it’s one of those days, I guess, right?”
Bernardo is a guy who doesn’t smoke but sometimes smokes.
Bernardo is a guy who starts to look tired when he has been adventurous and free-spirited for over two hours. His eyelids look heavier and his voice has a new grumble in it, on the edges.
I grin at him and he half smiles back.
Bernardo is a guy who never grins.
“On it,” Roxanne says. She has a pack in her purse; she picked them up with the hair dye because she knows how to have the best possible afternoon. We each light a cigarette and I open the window wide so that the four of us can gather around it and blow smoke out onto West 12th Street. Arizona gives up after half a cig, so I stand in between Roxanne and Bernardo and thrill at Bernardo’s shoulder against mine and how quickly I’ve mastered the art of casual smoking. I still hate the taste, but right now I’m enjoying the shape my lips make when I exhale and the grace of bringing my fingers to my mouth. It’s like a ballet move.
“Dad’s gonna kill you, he’s gonna smell it all over you,” Arizona says. She coughs but doesn’t leave.
“Dad’s gonna kill me anyway,” I say. I shake my almost pink hair in her general direction and take another puff. “Besides, his new girlfriend smokes.” I know this is true because when he’s been out with her, he comes back with the smell of someone else’s cigarettes clinging to his blazer.
“Sounds like none of us are going to make it out of today unscathed,” Bernardo says, a little more gravel in his voice.
Bernardo is a guy who says funny things but doesn’t know they’re funny. Bernardo is a guy who doesn’t laugh but watches me when I laugh.
I really like a guy named Bernardo, I text Karissa even though she hasn’t replied to my first text and I’m paranoid that we didn’t actually bond like I thought we did. I didn’t think Bernardos could be hot.