I hope they’re happy together, she says.
I’m laughing about this. About the years I wasted on David and David’s cocaine habit. David’s bad spelling, and his job as a “Gentlemen’s Club” director. David’s secret JDate account and fetish chatrooms, the way he sang Bowie’s Oh, oh, my little China Girl into my ear when he first picked me up, at eighteen, outside a nightclub in the Meatpacking District. I am laughing into the phone until there’s a screaming of tires, a horn, then another, the driver’s voice—Please don’t, I can’t get in trouble, Here, Go, Stay—a hospital, a nurse—hit the glass divider, you’re at St. Vincent’s, you’re okay—and my father’s voice and my mother’s voice—You didn’t get his cab number?—and my suede boots, freckled bloody, they look so filthy against the sheets, a wheelchair, a flashlight in the eyes—The driver, he dropped her and fled—Where are my bags? Where are my things?—The driver—do you remember his name?—my bags in the hospital trashcans. What about my phone? I just want Lennox there, on the other end.
My mother stays with me in the hospital. She wheels me around each floor. She takes me into the hospital cathedral because the lights aren’t as bright in there. She massages my neck.
Daddy and I have that big trip to China, she says. Do you want us to cancel?
I’m okay, I say.
Can any of your friends come over, take care of you? Why were you leaving David’s apartment?
I’m okay.
We’ll see you for Christmas, she says. That’ll be nice, huh? Florida sun? David-free? No fishing?
Lennox shows up to my parents’ apartment with soup and cartons of juice. She calls herself my nurse. We spoon mint ice cream into each other’s mouths in bed. We watch movies but face each other the whole time as the television light flicks the walls—What did it feel like to almost die? / You are the most interesting person I’ve ever met—I ask her to read pages of Frank O’Hara aloud; we take my painkillers with large bulbs of red wine. We clasp hands under the blankets. I rest my head on her bare stomach, kiss her rib cage, her belly button, but never her lips.
I always want to kiss you, I say.
Then kiss me. Anywhere.
The truth: when I’m around Lennox, when our noses come too close, I fear that she’ll feel my weakness right through my shirt, the same weakness that makes me say good-bye early each night I see her, that brings me straight home or into a stall of the closest public bathroom where I will jerk my hand down the front of my pants, give in to that knot inside me that only loosens when I think of her long enough to make myself come, the knot that tightens back up as soon as it’s finished, as soon as the tears come in hiccups. But what I say is, Let’s just take it slow, okay? We don’t leave bed for days.
I tell my college roommate, Karolina, a Romanian ballerina with the personality of a nubbed crayon. This is later, the aftermath. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other. Gay is the word that I use.
While you were with David?
Sometimes.
I thought that was a phase. That sad crush on your writing teacher.
It wasn’t.
And then you had a—girlfriend?
I did. Her name was Lennox.
Karolina zipped her purse just then. She wiped nonexistent crumbs from her lipstick with a napkin. She cleared her throat once, twice, three times, tilted her small head as she looked at me. Her hair, gelled slick into a bun, shone under the lights like a chess pawn.
I lived with you, she says. This bitch, she started crying. I changed my clothes in front of you.
So you eat pussy now, is that what you’re saying? Addison Katz French inhales a Marlboro. It looks like gray tapeworms are winding from her mouth into her nostrils.
I guess you could say that.
Lennox Price. Really?
I nod.
Figured you would, you always had it in you, says Claudia.
We’re having a small high school reunion at Dani’s mom’s mansion. We wear black paper top hats with gold, mirrored lettering, NEW YEARS 2009, cardboard noisemakers piled on the patio table like Chinese finger traps. Dani’s mom bought us these accessories—Let me take a picture, the girls back together again!—before locking herself in her room with a romance novel, a glass of champagne, and their dachshund.
It’s not like I was always—it just happened to me, I say. But leave it, she’ll be here soon.
The four of us have nothing in common—we were barely friends in the first place—but we are the only people back home in Boca for the holidays. We reach for conversation from every corner of the room—Addison’s new haircut, Dani’s ailing dog, Claudia’s new gig at a makeup stand in the mall—but the conversation always circles back to Lennox Price, the girl she once was in her pictures, the woman she is now.
So what’re you lesbos doing tonight? asks Addison. Besides eating pussy?
Going to the beach, I say, because this is our plan: Lennox is picking me up after her family reunion, just before midnight. She wants to kiss me just then, she said, on the dot, as the ball plummets in Times Square, as people recite wishes and resolutions, as fireworks trail the sky like chalk. A new beginning—she and I. We’ll go to the beach, whip open the bedsheet I packed, let champagne dribble down our chins and into our shirts. We could be the better, truer version of us going forward, now that we are telling people, now that we’re ready.
Well what time’s she coming? Because it’s almost here, says Dani, lighting another smoke from one of the packs on the table. Her hair keeps sticking to her lip gloss, so she lumps it together at the top of her forehead, snaps a rubber band. There is a way in which Dani has always looked older, over it, ready to retire to Palm Beach.
Lennox hasn’t called yet. Rumor has it that the cell towers are down. That’s what I tell them, anyway, these girls. The lines are busy. Too much traffic. Too many calls.
Once my head is healed from the accident, Lennox takes me out for dinner and drinks on St. Mark’s Place. She wants me to meet an old friend of hers, a childhood neighbor. His name is Thomas, and he carves ice sculptures. Thomas does not acknowledge me; he does not shake my hand. The three of us sit. We sip Manhattans, poke at a limping salad.
I didn’t know you were this way, Louisa, I didn’t. What about your parents?
Thomas, she laughs. Come on, stop.
It’s not right, he says.
It’s nothing, she says.
So what’s it like, I ask him. To spend so much time making art that disappears?
These drinks are strong, says Lennox.
You’re a child of His, don’t forget. Thomas excuses himself to the bathroom.
This is fun, I say.
I think he’s always liked me, she says. It’s nothing personal.
Everyone likes you. That’s not an excuse.
Do you want to just, go? she asks.
While he’s in there?
Yeah.
We don’t say another word before standing up and shoving our chairs under the table. Before I have time to think about it, I take her face in my hands and kiss her.
I kiss Lennox every five feet of our walk. I kiss her on every corner. Against every building. I kiss her in front of every person we pass. If someone says something about it, I kiss her harder. If they say nothing, I kiss her harder. I kiss her for every girl I have ever not kissed.
I kiss her against the door of my parents’ empty apartment, and against the kitchen sink, and then in bed. Let me fuck you, I say. I want to love you.
She takes her top off, nodding. I unhook her bra, easy. I’m relieved to manage this part. She unbuttons my shirt, unhooks me. We press chest to chest and I have never felt this naked in my life. Her breasts are large, shining, firm.