—No, I mean it’s weird. You haven’t even dirty-joked at me.
—If I was seen joking with you your boyfriend would beard me to death.
—Jealous.
—Ha!
—I know, you have a secret lover.
—Shut up.
—What’s her name?
—Shut up.
—His name? Ha ha.
—Shut up. My secret lover is you, but you sleep right through it. You know how you wake up on your stomach?
—OK, you’re back to normal, dickhead.
We go out sometimes, too. Not go out. But not in his room, driving somewhere and suddenly he smells different. Alec put on cologne—this can not, better not be for me.
I could ask the drama teacher I guess, or they say Mr. Marzada although it doesn’t seem like it. A gay teen help phone line twenty-four hours ask any question, someone is listening, someone is here for you, tacked up outside the nurse’s office. Though I don’t know what it is, I mean, that I’d be asking.
Walking back to his place, our hands keep brushing and we both keep jumping back from it. I mean even if we wanted to, it is not quite the world here of 100 percent nobody will beat the shit out of you, two guys holding hands.
Or, at least, I am jumping away.
—We could,
I know he’s going to say it.
—go out.
—We do go out, Alec.
—Yeah.
—We were at Drew’s party yesterday night.
—Yeah.
—I’m not gay, by the way.
—Fuck you, I’m not either.
—OK.
—But maybe bi.
—I’m not.
—OK but Cole.
—Fuck you.
—Yeah exactly, like what we have? Look it up. Sex is the word for it.
—Yeah I know.
—So I’m saying bi, OK? I said it for me.
But the word, I want to say, for me is mostly horny.
And then I met Grisaille.
Out in front of school, she shrugged up her arms, and I saw all the hair she had in her armpits. She tugged her sweater on while I looked at her lips, and I started wondering who I could ask to find out who she was because I knew there was no way she’d been here all along. But Grisaille just turned her head and imitated me, a big dumb staring monkey look, and then smiled and beckoned me over.
—Anna says you’re Cole.
—Yeah. Hi.
—Hi. Now you ask my name.
—OK.
—OK, what?
—OK, what’s your name?
And then before she told me she gave me a champion smile, like it was too easy, making me ask in my shuffling shoes.
She looked so fucking fantastic agreeing to go out with me. She didn’t look like a girl who would ruin the whole thing at all. Beautiful, breasty, like so warm to roll around in was my first impression. And, the next seventy thousand impressions.
We don’t have girls like this, is what I wanted to say to her. And thank God I didn’t.
—Yeah, there’s stuff to do in this town. My friend, next weekend, is having a thing.
—I’m only here for the semester, Cole, so we’re going to have to make this quick. Friday night?
—Tomorrow?
—Open the thing. There. I’m putting my number in your phone. Figure it out.
It was in a shirt pocket. She had to scratch my chest a little through the flannel to get my phone out. I felt her nail there still, like an itch. But my mouth was just saying stupid Tomorrow? again.
Her skirt ended short and she had black, not stockings, ripped socks. Skin, is what she had. She kept rubbing her own legs while we sat there on that bench talking, with me thinking, who dropped you here into my lap like this?
Alec and I are looking her up and talking about it.
—Scroll down. Look, she’s on a beach with a bunch of guys who look older.
I squint, blink at the hairy chests. —They don’t look older, they’re just Arabic.
—That’s funny, because the photo says it was a beach party in Costa de Lisboa which … screen says … is in Portugal.
—Yeah, her dad is Portuguese. But he’s in Berlin now.
—And how do you pronounce again—
—Grizz-eye. But some people pronounce it like it rhymes with awhile.
—Is that what she told you?
—Yeah.
—Did it sound that amazing when she said it? It sounds like it would sound amazing. Rhymes with awhile.
—I saw her first.
—She saw you, is what you told me. It’s like a movie, some foreign girl comes to town. I honestly don’t even think it occurred to me that girls could have hair there in their armpits. I mean, possible, but not happening. Even in the bushiest porn— —Alec, shut up and where were we?
—Grizz-eye. Portugal.
—OK, Portugal.
—Why has she lived all these places? And why now our lame place?
—Divorce. Her mom’s from here, or used to be.
—And married, wow, look who she married. Follow the link. Her dad looks like the guy in those brandy commercials.
—Rum.
—OK, but he’s handsome.
—I will pretend you didn’t say that. He’s a dick anyway, she says. All he cares about is expensive paintings and stuff.
—Art dealer. Aggressive Art Dealer Taking Barcelona by Storm. You think he’s really smuggling heroin?
—No, because we’re not all in a low-budget thriller.
—OK, he’s actually handsome, you gotta admit.
I’m stuck on the beach party Alec found. There are a lot of guys in it, around her.
—You’re admitting it.
—Shut up Alec. Don’t be gay.
—Fuck you.
—Sorry.
—Seriously.
—Sorry.
—OK. Do you want to come over?
Grisaille brings it up right right right away.
—You know you have a rep, right?
—Rep?
—It’s short for reputation, Cole.
—I know what it means but what do you mean?
—They say, you fuck anything that moves.
I flushed a little looking at the phone. Out the window it was windy. Everything was moving. If only.
—It’s not true.
—I think it is. A girl at lunch was counting on her fingers and she ran out of fingers.
—Well, how many fingers does she have?
Grisaille’s laugh is like when you’re a kid, and adults are having a party you hear downstairs, stylish and wine. Her voice is not done laughing when she tells me, —I had a rep too, sometimes.
—Sometimes?
—Of course, they didn’t call it a rep.
—What did they call it?
She pauses and I’m listening to her breathe. In the static I grasp that what I’m wondering is what she will call it, having a rep. Maybe I’ve already blown it with her, like cops call it onscreen: prior bad acts. Her voice is quiet, or maybe it’s just the way I’m listening to it.
—We could call it anything.
You’ll do, is what she said when we were done kissing that time. You’ll do fine.
—Cole, do you have a favorite German poet?
—
—I said, do you—
—Sorry, I thought you were kidding. Let me answer for everyone you will ever meet in this town, no, we don’t have favorite German poets. We have favorite diners and beers.
—School last year, we all had to pick one. I got Rilke and I’m finishing my translation unit.
—But you go here now.
—I just want to do it. He wrote these elegies that are all about love and sex.
—Are you, sometimes you don’t even seem like a real person compared to everyone.