“There’s a picture?”
“Yeah, it was some Little Orphan Annie shit. A picture of her holding me as a baby. Or, you know, a picture of some black lady holding a fat little kid.”
“All the time?”
“Huh?”
“You still think about her all the time?”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess that’s something I’ve never talked about.”
“See? Do you still have the picture?”
He shook his head.
“What happened to it?”
Leo cursed as the car in front of them hit the brakes.
“I don’t really know. That house was chaos—no one could keep anything. Every time I saved up a bunch of coins in a jar, someone would break into it and say they needed twenty bucks for a phone bill or something.”
“You think the picture of your mom got sold down the river?”
“Pretty much.”
There wasn’t usually any traffic on this route. Unless there was a thunderstorm. Then the Volvos and Subarus piled up in hatchbacked bunches and every stand of trees looked like it could be home to the Headless Horseman. But today was clear after the recent rain, and the glut of vehicles on the county road made no sense.
“You really don’t remember anything about her?”
“No, stop. You don’t get to distract me with questions about mine. I asked you.”
Saina tried. “It’s true, I don’t talk about her a lot. I don’t know. There’s not a lot to say.” She searched for something. “A friend of mine, she lost her mom at around the same time, when she was thirteen. She said the only true thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about their mom dying. We were . . . I don’t know, it’s weird. I think we were laughing about something. We were trying to joke about it, because that’s what nobody else ever does, right? And then she looked up at me, and said, ‘That bitch just keeps on dying.’”
Leo laughed, a low, sardonic guff of it. “Mine, too. Fucking bitches.”
Saina leaned over the gearshift and brushed her cheek against his shoulder, soft as a cat. Sometimes she forgot that Leo was an orphan. It was enough to make her cry. Or to make her want to have babies with him so that he’d have someone of his own, a little somebody who might have his big, sweet eyes, his crooked hairline, his easy smile. Leo had grown up looking only like himself, while Saina didn’t just have a father who gestured and stood exactly like she did and memories of a mother and two infuriating, adorable siblings, she had a whole giant country, a billion potential family members to love and loathe and claim as her own because the Wang bloodlines were traceable backwards and forwards, if she cared to search them out. She nudged her head into his armpit, digging it against his soft plaid shirt, and said: “Come in.”
He kissed the top of her head and they sat like that, quiet, idling at a red light, until Saina raised her eyebrows and Leo grinned in recognition and swerved down a side street just a few blocks from the warehouse where Bard’s final MFA show would be held. Without speaking, they opened their doors and, half a second later, collided in the backseat.
“Can people see us?” asked Leo.
“Who cares?”
“The guy who could be mistaken for a rapist cares.”
Saina swung one leg over him and ran her hands across his shoulders. “I think the consensual nature of our union is pretty clear.” She tugged on his belt buckle.
“Do you remember the first time we kissed?”
She nodded, still struggling with his buckle. “At your place.” Why did guys always belt themselves in so tightly? This must be what it was like to have no curves.
“Hey! I’m trying to be romantic here!” he said.
He swiped a knuckle over her lips and she caught it lightly between her teeth. Released it. “I’m just trying to get some. Boys are so sentimental.”
“Oh yeah?” In one practiced move, he’d opened his jeans and thumbed her underwear aside.
“Yeah.” She smiled down at him, feeling her lids flutter shut as he positioned her hips, the zipper of his jeans digging against her ass until they moved into each other.
One of the things Saina liked most about sex was that it made her feel sexy. As if she could see herself through the soft blur of a Vaseline-smeared lens, back arched, boudoir hair a fetching mess. A vintage Playboy version of sex. Smut with a smile.
She tried to pull him down onto the seat, but he shook his head. “Stay like this,” he said, out of breath. “Just in case.”
“Cops?”
“Five-o.”
“Oh, you’re tough now?” she teased.
He nodded and bounced her in his lap. “Do you think it’ll always be like this?”
“In the backseat of a car? Probably.”
“Illicit and open to misinterpretations.”
“Exactly.” They kissed, lips parted a little too wide in their haste to finish the deed, to cap the moment.
She could always tell when Leo was close. He made his surprised face and nudged at her so that she knew to slide up and snatch a crumpled T-shirt from the floor of the cab, positioning it under him just in time.