Charlie
You look at her and all you see are her huge blue angel eyes. But you already have an angel. Sometimes she’s blond, sometimes a redhead, always wild. Lena, you remind yourself. You have to remind yourself of her name a lot lately, like if you don’t say it aloud it’ll disappear into the U.K. or Boston—at boarding school or into her family’s palatial house—along with her face and body and the way she laughs. If you don’t say her name every now and then, she’ll cease to exist. She’ll become one of the stories you make up for the guys, a hot lay and a tongue ring and bang. Your stories always pack it, whether they’re real or not.
This one isn’t wild like Lena. She’s guarded, vulnerable. You’ve got a sixth sense about people. They always say it: the teachers, the therapists, even your mom when she talks around that cigarette. Your dad doesn’t say it because—where is he? Bangalore, Abu Dhabi, Shihezi . . . and you’re in London, Paris, Bombay, wherever the closest and best international boarding school is. And your dad’s off being a diplomat and making other families but not necessarily taking care of them, and your mom’s just smoking that cigarette, telling you you’ve got a sixth sense.
“Let me help you,” you tell the girl, just as a sweaty guy wearing a wife-beater that doesn’t cover his gut bumps hard into her shoulder. All these people, these commuters—they walk around her like they’re a creek and she’s a rock in the middle of it. She looks at you with hesitation, so you flash her the charming smile that’s seen results. She’s got two suitcases and for the whole thirty seconds you’ve been watching her, she’s been yanking them up the subway stairs. The wheels of one suitcase catch on an old, wadded-up napkin and drag it up with her. Drag, lift, bump. Drag, lift, bump. It’s dumb because there are, like, thirty stairs and at this rate it’ll take her thirty minutes and then people will really get pissed. As she leans to the left to leverage her weight, her shoulder brushes against the grimy, tiled walls. New York City subway stations aren’t places where you want to touch anything, not even the things specifically meant for touching, like wooden benches and elevator buttons.
“Okay,” she says a little reluctantly, and she hands you the bigger one.
“You sure you’ve got the little one?” You want to be certain she knows you’re a gentleman, the kind of guy who gives a shit. She smiles and nods and heaves the smaller load the rest of the way without much trouble. You walk behind her so you can check out her ass.
Lena, Lena, Lena, you remind yourself, biting your cheek hard, like it’s some kind of mortal sin to check out another girl. (It is.)
Then you get it. It sweeps across you, this tidal wave of revelation:
If you don’t say Lena’s name, she’s imaginary. When you’re not with her, does she exist? She may as well not, except in your imagination. The brain, Adam always said, likes to play tricks. All this right now could be an illusion. Lena could be a fantasy, Aubrey could be 110-degree heat making watermarks on asphalt. You get me.
You’re nineteen when you meet Aubrey. She’s seventeen; it’s the summer after her junior year. You’re getting a few extra college credits at NYU. She’s moving a bunch of stuff out of a boyfriend’s dorm room.
A whole existence passes between the bottom of the 6 train landing (at Bleecker) and the top. When you emerge into daylight, there’s an intersection with a gas station and the thrum of steady SoHo traffic sweeping across Lafayette. You decide to kiss her, just not right then. You bide your time.
“What do you have in here?” you ask her. You’re a little out of breath and trying not to sound like it. She brushes her short, wavy black hair out of her eyes. It’s glossy, like the fabric of your dad’s ties. Silk. Her eyes are blue and her skin is so pale you can make out the veins beneath her lids. Her lips are red and chapped. She bites the bottom one.
“Clothes, books, some shoes,” she says. She reaches for the handle but you act like you don’t see. Now that you’ve got her, you’re not letting her walk away.
“Visiting the city?” (You don’t know yet that she’s moving her shit out of her boyfriend’s place.)