Willa & Hesper Read online

  “Tibby? Like tibia?”

  “Tbilisi. Georgia. It’s where our grandfather is from.” Hesper smiled. “Do you usually name your pets after bones?”

  “I’ve never had a pet.”

  The waitress returned with the fries and pie, each thickly jarred peach slice spectacularly glittering. I thought I should say something about Eastern Europe that didn’t involve Stalin. Probably anything Soviet was a touchy subject. Hesper ordered chicken noodle soup and a Bloody Mary.

  “The president of Estonia went to my high school,” I said.

  “Estonians are dour,” Hesper said. “And taciturn. Wooden, really.”

  “I’ve never met one,” I replied. “Is that true?”

  “I think that was Calvin Coolidge, actually. Oh, no. Willa?” Hesper said, leaning forward across the table. “Can I tell you something?”

  She doesn’t believe me about the Estonian president, I thought. It was true. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. My eyes felt liquidy, about to spill into something incriminating and vulnerable. “What?”

  “I’m substantially high right now. Everything feels so…easy.”

  A bashful blush crept over Hesper’s cheeks. I instantly felt as light and feathery as if I were the Molly-afflicted; I could say anything I liked to Hesper, the guarantee that it would be misty and surreal tomorrow. The bright white lights of the diner suddenly seemed illuminating, cradling boldness. Hesper’s gold necklaces jangled as she reached for the fork, capturing a peach slice with a jubilant stab.

  “Did you know Hemingway’s estate is crawling with polydactyl kittens?” I offered. A French fry burned against the roof of my mouth. Hesper organized her hair into a donut-like bun.

  “I hate that story we read for workshop,” Hesper said. “Masculinity 101.”

  “They have thumbs,” I said. “You can hold their little paws.”

  Hesper slurped her soup ravenously.

  “I heard Liam tearing Isabel’s story to shreds in the lab,” I said.

  “It deserved to be shredded,” Hesper said, between noodles. “She used the word electric eight times. I counted. Not everything is electric, Bells. Some things are just lackluster.”

  As Hesper continued, I felt electrically toward her—the brushing of our bare knees underneath the small table, the warm orb of wanting Hesper’s puffed, silken lips on mine. Hesper moved the peach pie plate closer to her soup and fragrantly tomato-ish drink. “Sorry to colonize your dessert,” she offered.

  I made a robotic gesture that I hoped conveyed generosity. We insulted the work of our classmates: Liam’s blatant misogyny; Elisabeth’s overuse of quilting imagery. Hesper’s laugh was low and melodious.

  Our knees knocked fortuitously. I couldn’t seem to find a way to broach my gayness in the conversation. If gay was even what I was. Queer felt too political; omission and long hair rendered me a straight person. I wanted to avoid the confessional, desperate-for-support tone that so many of these conversations led toward. If only I had a prop. The gumball—I could roll the gumball at Hesper across the table, skirting around our plates of food and perspiring glasses, and if Hesper rolled it back, I would know.

  Did you bring her here? I thought. I waited for God, for a squeeze in my chest to let me know someone was there. If not answering, then not answering for a reason. But I felt no squeeze. Hesper was looking at me.

  “Where is the rest of your family from?” I asked, leaning forward to retrieve the pie. Hesper hollowed out most of the peach slices, leaving a buttery crust-foundation slumping in the center of a white porcelain plate.

  “Pale-skinned places. Ireland, England. Wales.” When Hesper said Wales, she made an ocean-wave motion with her non-soup hand and then laughed, embarrassed. Oh, no, I thought, falling a little bit in love. “What about you?”

  I mused. I hadn’t properly thought about a response to this question. “I come exclusively from people that don’t exist anymore. I mean—places,” I clarified quickly, as Hesper emitted her alto-toned, harmonious laugh. “Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union.”

  “People that don’t exist anymore,” Hesper repeated. “I only sleep with ghosts!”

  I looked into her lap. I thought of the boy’s thumb, digging.

  “Ghostgasm,” Hesper continued, buoyant. “Do you want to leave?”

  I nodded encouragingly.

  “Let’s go right now,” Hesper said brightly, uncrinkling two twenty-dollar bills from underneath the cape’s folds. “Don’t forget the crust,” Hesper advised, so I broke the remains of the pie into transportable pieces.

  * * *

  ON THE TRAIN, I refrained from asking about logistical considerations. I wanted to appear nonchalant, unconcerned about getting eight hours of sleep and whether it made more sense to transfer to an express train. Hesper leaned close to me on the tiny cold seats, her slender body a force field of expectation and knobby joints. I tried not to think of that word electricity—the sharp hook of the c, submerged between two prominent i’s. Hesper entwined her fingers with the strands of my hair, seemingly reveling in the intricacies of texture. I ballooned with self-consciousness, thinking of adjectives I could use for my curls: fluffy, diffuse. Triangular. My hair had become awfully triangular.

  “Your hair is so frothy,” Hesper said finally. “Like a latte’s milk hat.”

  I thought: she has to be gay. She has to at least be in the vicinity of gayness.

  “Do you want the crust scraps?” I asked. Hesper wrangled her fingers away from my scalp and scooped the bits of pie from my careful grasp. When our skin touched, my entire body liquefied, a sloshing outline of a girl, waiting to condense back into herself. Then I did. Then I did, and was looking at Hesper, who was feeling the tulle of her skirt with incredible focus and precision. Like someone on drugs, I remembered. I kept forgetting. I, too, was partially submerged in a place that was not-here.

  “You’re sunburned,” Hesper observed, pushing her thumb into my arm.

  “It’s my natural color,” I said apologetically. “Not the sun’s fault.”

  I watched the mark of Hesper’s touch disappear and felt the salty taste in my mouth return. A tiny cactus was growing at the base of my throat, itching up to my esophagus. I thought of bruises. I thought of Hesper marveling at the pattern of my bruises in the serene yellow light of a reading lamp.

  “Do you want to feel my dress?”

  I let Hesper guide my hand, warmly, across the fabric pooling over her knees, her hidden thighs and hip flexors and motion-related muscles. The ivory skirt was scratchy, protrusive tulle. The sensation of ballet practice, secondhand prom attire. I wondered if I should move my hand away from Hesper’s knees but lingered there. These were her knees. My fingertip slipped comfortably, serendipitously, into a small cave between Hesper’s kneecap and bone.

  Everything feels so easy.

  “We fit,” Hesper said, mesmerized, and I tried to keep my balance with my other hand, knuckles whitening as I pulled hard on the bottom of the subway seat. It was a miniature miracle. A polyp, if polyps could be engorged with romantic potential. I wouldn’t ruin our puzzle-piece quality because of the train’s jostling as we pulled into and from each station. I would conquer the subway’s unsteadiness; I would preserve this, like a fly cushioned beneath layers of amber.

  * * *

  WE TRANSFERRED TO A different, ricketier train that seemed swollen with light. Hesper’s skirt shimmered, fish scales of ivory and metallic sheen. Each station we passed looked deserted. Hesper and I sat on a glossy bench, several seats distance from a mangy, pallid man with a large plastic bag balanced between his oversized feet. In slow motion, he folded in half, retrieving a stuffed banana wearing a pair of sunglasses made of black felt. The banana had a large, menacing grin, each tooth elongated into the shape of a carrot.

  The man began to laugh.

  I covered my mouth. I didn’t want him to see my lips.

  Hesper’s expression shifted from perplexed to am
used. The other passengers, too, seemed to regard the laughing man with a distanced sense of entertainment. I arched my neck back to examine what else may have been in the plastic bag. An ear of corn? A handgun, glinting with possibility? If it were a gun, I knew, it would have to go off. But I couldn’t distinguish any of the objects; just dark, untenable shapes. The man wrapped his stolid arm around the banana, as though it were a child needing support for its journey.

  At the next stop, a group of teenaged boys sporting NYU lanyards trailing from their pockets boarded. Draped in nearly identical outfits: hipster plaid shirts and Warby Parkers. Immediately they pointed at the man and his banana companion, dipping their heads low. Bellowing with judgmental laughter. I did not want to look at them. I felt his fingers, everywhere. Marking me.

  I reached for Hesper’s hand but ended up instead resting my own nervous fingers in the crook of her elbow, a warm spot that exuded safety. Hesper seemed entirely at ease, her limbs loose and ethereal. She could have been doing anything: examining plums for dents in their violet skins, outlining a hopscotch board on planks of sidewalk with thick pastel chalk. How was it possible she seemed so unthreatened as the voices increased in volume, insistent in their aggression of Banana Man?

  “Shit,” the boldest boy said, pointing at the banana and its keeper. His laugh felt like fingernails. His friends chorused around him, mutinous. Warmed by the attention, Banana Man swept his arm back and punched the banana’s eye. I could hear the distinct sound of his fist meeting stuffed fabric. He began to hit the banana faster, faster, until the boys’ cheering became a continuous wave of sound.

  Hesper tucked a loose curl of my hair behind her ear. “Don’t worry,” she whispered.

  “Bet you I can pull out his eye,” Banana Man boasted toward the boys.

  “I bet you’re too weak to pull out his eye,” the boldest of the boys yelled.

  “Oh, shit,” one of the friends said. The others clapped, delighted. They circled each other.

  “Oh yeah?” Banana Man said. In a sudden motion, he toppled the banana to the floor, pummeling its face with his raised fist. His cheeks exploded with color from the exertion. Each new passenger avoided the violent exhibition, skittering toward the opposite end of the train. The boys hollered, watching rapt as Banana Man draped himself across the stuffed animal. In victory he raised a fist, having retrieved the plastic eye.

  “What should we name him?” Banana Man asked.

  “Andy?” one of the quieter onlookers suggested. His suggestion was rejected.

  “Bubbacunt,” Banana Man said. “Bubba-cunt,” he repeated, striking him again.

  I watched the banana’s still body on the floor of the train. That could be me, I thought. That could have been me, my arms scraping against the sandpapery texture of the tree in the dark. With each meeting of the fist against the banana’s face, I felt it against my own. I imagined all the tiny, unnamed bones that formed the infrastructure of my cheekbones caving in under the pressure of Banana Man’s unstoppable fist. His knuckles, tinged with white.

  When the boys shuttled off the train, they shook hands with Banana Man. “Peace,” they said to each other. “Peace.”

  * * *

  “AT LEAST THEY LEFT his hair attached,” I said. My voice trembled feebly.

  “What?” Hesper asked.

  “Weren’t you…” I began. “Didn’t you find that disturbing?”

  “It’s the New York experience,” Hesper said. “I felt like I was watching it on YouTube.”

  I tried to concentrate. I imagined my discomfort as a dining room table that I could transport once the leaves were safely removed. “Yeah,” I managed. My voice was tart. “Me too.”

  “You are not a good liar,” Hesper said, and ran a pinky along the slope of my nose. Her tone was dulcet, not admonitory. “I’m an incredible protector, luckily.”

  “Are you?” I searched Hesper’s eyes. Within them the pattern of bloodshot lines were mesmerizing, tributaries of pink. They were the color of the center of a rare cut of meat. “How do I know if I can trust you?”

  I intended for this to be an extension of flirting. Instead it seemed elegiac, searching.

  “I’ll make you a solemn promise. That means five Mississippis of eye contact.”

  “Okay.”

  “Willa Greenberg,” Hesper said. I felt a flutter that filled my whole body. I hadn’t realized that Hesper knew my last name, or that Hesper would want me to know that she knew my last name, and it felt incredibly significant. I knew how I would read this, if it were a short story. This was the moment when things would become permanent; when their tectonic plates would twinge into a new position.

  “You can trust me,” Hesper said. Her teeth were such small, lovely squares in her mouth.

  “I can trust you,” I repeated.

  “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  “You won’t let anything hurt me,” I said.

  “Do you feel satisfied by the terms of this agreement?”

  I nodded. Drugs, I reminded myself. Hesper was on them.

  “One Mississippi,” Hesper counted, but I had to avoid her gaze. It was too much.

  * * *

  AT THE 7TH AVENUE stop, I followed Hesper down a long, hilly corridor. Unblemished advertisements stared at me and Hesper from their positions on the station wall. 80 Years of Secrets! exclaimed a poster for Russian vodka. Hesper’s skirt swept baggily across the backs of her knees, occasionally brushing my leggings. The desire to ask where we were going eddied inside my chest. I had never been to this bloodclot of Brooklyn, though I knew by reputation that it was diffuse, decorated with flea markets and artisanal popsicle stands on Sundays.

  Exiting the subway station, I stayed quiet, growing increasingly wary of the less-trafficked paths. After we passed a bodega on the corner, with its brightly advertised breakfast specials, the likelihood for commerce disappeared. An occasional sign demarcating an optometrist or acupuncturist’s office aside, there were only houses. Four-story brownstones crowded around wide streets like soldiers. We were traversing a seemingly unending number of blocks. Not electric, I thought, startling as I mistakenly identified a crumpled black plastic bag as a threat. Interminable.

  There was no one else outside.

  Trees stretched upward into the darkness.

  He hadn’t been afraid.

  “Do you ever feel like nature’s really dangerous?” I asked Hesper.

  “I once slept through a huge earthquake,” Hesper said. “Four point six.”

  “I meant more like everyday nature,” I said.

  “Are you one of those people that’s really into the moon?”

  “No.”

  “I’m an Aquarius, but people always say I’m more of a Pisces.”

  “It’s like being stuck in an elevator shaft,” I explained. “Feeling all these—trees around. Closing in around you.”

  I gestured outward with my hands, like someone demonstrating the girth of a deeply pregnant woman. Hesper was looking at me very intently, even though we were walking next to each other speedily, and I felt flattered by her efforts. It was worse than being stuck in an elevator shaft, because then there was a large, clearly designated HELP button. Besides Hesper, there were no living human beings around. A green water hose coiled like a snake against the side of an adjacent building. Grandly designed churches, stocky mailboxes with their legs low to the ground.

  “I can’t understand you,” Hesper lamented. “Oh, no. Is it the drugs?”

  I felt immensely grateful for the existence of drugs. “Probably.”

  “But you’re sad,” Hesper said, dream-voiced.

  “Scared,” I corrected.

  “What would make you less scared?” Hesper asked.

  “I want to go to Times Square,” I said. “I want to be squelched by all those tourists and caricature-makers and places to buy individual slices of red velvet cake.”

  Hesper laughed. “Times Square is the worst place in the world. The
world!”

  I thought of being sandwiched among businessmen, the miserable souls hidden by Dora the Explorer and Elmo costumes in the blocked-off street by the TKTS line. Clusters of teenage girls swingsetting between American Eagle and Forever 21. Everyone struggling across midtown, politely ignoring the makeshift entrepreneurs with their burned mix CDs and relentless promotion. I thought of all the eyes that would be able to see me.

  I watched Hesper slide her finger across the smudged universe of her iPhone screen and type furtively. Of course, I thought—I had damaged the affection polyp with my innate, incomprehensible weirdness. It was only a matter of time. But then Hesper passed the phone to me with a dimpled smile. On her screen, the first image of Times Square was garishly pumpkin-colored, golden arches of McDonald’s glowing benevolently. Bank of America, Kodak, Toshiba, Toy Story. Smudges of bowling-pin-shaped people dashing into a taxi. Pearly skies hidden behind towering, safeguarding skyscrapers.

  “You can carry it with you,” Hesper offered.

  I accepted, eyes blurring against the colors. I wished I knew Hesper well enough to ask: What are you thinking, underneath all of that ivory fabric and secretive layered hair? I cradled the phone in my clammy palm. Lending someone your phone was an act of trust. It said: If my best friend texts me a picture of a watermelon wearing sunglasses, you will see this and it is okay because I would never need to hide my love of accessorized fruits from you. It said: When I am with you, I don’t need to be with anyone else.

  * * *

  HESPER STOPPED ABRUPTLY IN front of a tall brownstone. The steps outside were the color of dried figs. I blinked expectantly; this was it, the moment of reveal. I knew it wasn’t Hesper’s apartment; she walked to class, cheeks flushed from running across campus. Every four seconds I touched the iPhone screen with my fingertips and there it was, comfort in visually arresting shades of neon, tall metal flagpoles in the center of the frame. Hesper and I trudged hurriedly up the five flights of stairs in the building. As Hesper dug for her key ring in a buttery leather purse, her elbow touched my arm. We were careening toward an increase in contact. An attraction, pooling like a blister in a hidden place.