SARAH LEE SAT at a wide wooden picnic table on the back porch of a stranger’s house, trying to figure out what to do next. Though the rain had stopped a few hours before, the wood was still damp, and she could feel her jeans soaking through, but she didn’t want to go inside. Outside was where her friend was, and it was good to stick with a friend at a stranger’s party; outside was where it smelled good, the flowers in the garden, plus the wood and the rain and the grass smelled rich and sweet together. But outside was also where it was quiet, and she didn’t like to meet people in silence—her stutter was more obvious then, and sometimes after that, people stopped listening to her completely. (Which is worse? To have never been acknowledged, or to be discarded? She could never decide.) She had compensated tonight by smoking some pot, which relaxed her, slightly stunned her nervousness.
Earlier her cousin had made her stew. She did this every Friday, invited Sarah upstairs for big bowls of her specialty, a spicy stew with thick chunks of beef and tomatoes, sometimes with sweet carrots and cabbage, whatever looked good at the market. Her cousin wanted to make sure she was getting enough iron. Iron was very important, said Nancy. She had a lot of opinions about what was important: fresh air, exercise, fruits, vegetables, and Democrats. Sarah listened to whatever she had to say, she didn’t mind. Sometimes Sarah would tell her about her art classes, or funny stories from her job at the bakery. None of Nancy’s work stories were funny—it was almost always about another person dying—so she kept them to a minimum. They dipped hunks of bread Sarah brought from work into the stew, clinked together their glasses of red wine (one a day, also important), they rubbed their bellies at the end of the meal and laughed. Sarah thought Nancy was an all-right lady. A little lonely, but all right.
And then, at the tiny mirror in the bathroom of her basement apartment, Sarah Lee had meticulously applied eyeliner, and admitted to herself that it might be time to get a new boyfriend. She didn’t know if her ex had tried to contact her, and she could finally admit she didn’t care. He was ruined now, soiled by the stain of getting caught, hustled in handcuffs, fingerprinted, fingers pointing, branded for life as a criminal. You can’t wash that off, no matter how hard you try.
So she headed to a party with her coworker Melanie, as a replacement friend for Melanie’s best friend, Jemma, who had homework to do. Melanie’s new boyfriend, Doug, had invited them. The two had met a week before at the park by the reservoir, during a break between classes. Doug was playing Ultimate Frisbee, and Melanie was making a bag out of hemp (she was always making something out of hemp) that she planned to sell in the parking lot of a Phish show in Portland the following weekend. Doug had thrown a Frisbee into her head, apologized for throwing a Frisbee into her head, told her he liked her dread-locks, and then they had totally fallen in love.
“He gives me hickeys on my tummy,” said Melanie, as they hovered behind the counter at the bakery, the sweet smell of fresh rhubarb pies swirling around them. “Look.” She had pulled up her T-shirt. They were plum-colored and surrounded her belly button, which had a silver bar through it. Sarah thought it looked like a tattoo. And if you were into that sort of thing, it was probably very pretty.
She was trying not to judge. No one judged in Seattle. It wasn’t cool to judge. People would think less of you if you did, Melanie had told her this. The whole idea wrapped around in Sarah Lee’s head and met itself again at the beginning, this judging of judging. She didn’t want to disagree, but hadn’t figured out how to agree.
Sarah Lee was just trying to sort out the Seattle bus system. That was for starters. The whole judging thing was way down on the list. Not that she had a list. Some people could think that way, in numbers or bullet points or alphabets, but not Sarah. She thought in circles.
IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN. A car door slammed, and there was a shuffle of feet and then a knock at the front door, which echoed to the backyard through the quiet night air. Two voices, two more guys, Sarah thought. That makes fifteen men. Fifteen is either a lot, or not very many at all.
She dug her thumbnail into the moist wood of the table, traced the shape of a heart. There were three other people seated at the picnic table, all guys. Maybe I should say something, she thought. What do I say? I should have something to say.
Everyone else was inside except for Melanie and her boyfriend, who trampled through the grass, smelling the flowers in the dark. Sarah could hear Melanie laughing, a sweet tinkling laugh that usually made an appearance after she smoked pot.