Summer in the City of Roses

by Michelle Ruiz Keil

  He tries to remember the last time he ate. The night before. Pizza. Normally, he can handle an entire medium pie himself, but he remembered what Mom always said about making sure there was enough for everyone in group dining situations. The etiquette training seemed ludicrous then, but he’s gone by many of her axioms since he took up with the Furies. After pizza, the girls had band practice. That had been the best part of the night. He didn’t think about Mom or Dad or Iph or the polar ice caps. He didn’t think about sex or his brain or how it would feel to contract a horrible disease. All that was in his head were Mika’s drums and Allison’s bass and Jane’s caterwauling over her badass guitar.

  Yesterday, Orr had loved the Furies and their ramshackle pink house. welcome to the pussy palace, a sign on the door read in gold. A stylized sixties cat in an odd shade of green looked over its shoulder under the loopy cursive.

  “That’s your house’s name?” Orr had looked back to ask Jane, but it was tiny Mika with the shaved head who answered.

  “Yeah, but we usually call her Penelope.”

  Last night, Orr appreciated Penelope’s quirks—the front door you had to slam to make it shut, the windows you had to prop open with moldy encyclopedias. He delighted in the number and variety of things on the dining room bookshelf alone: the encyclopedia set, a bunch of wilted daisies in a Slurpee cup, a discolored glass bong, a green glass ashtray stuffed with matchbooks, an aloe vera plant in a plastic pot, a set of jacks, a framed photo of the band onstage, a rusted metal Slinky, a Raggedy Ann doll with fishnet ankle socks and safety pin earrings, a pack of American Spirit cigarettes, a plastic tub of Red Vines (stale, but Orr eats three), a stack of feminist zines, and five books: Blood and Guts in High School, SCUM Manifesto, Bastard Out of Carolina, Parable of the Sower, and This Bridge Called My Back, which Orr recognizes from Mom’s bookshelf.

  Now, in the daylight, the house feels different. Stale, ugly. Sinister. Orr goes to the bathroom and thinks about a shower. The bath mat is soaked and smells like mildew. He curls his toes away and slits his eyes, tiptoeing out.

  Back in the kitchen, sitting in the corner by the window in an easy chair with loose stuffing and a not-right pillow, Orr tries to get the feeling from last night back. All his usual ways of coping—hot food, hot shower, dark bedroom, clean clothes, even a run—are lost to him here. His feet are still blistered from the sockless hike. He nursed them the best he could last night, but had a hard time getting the Scooby-Doo Band-Aids to stick after putting on the antibiotic ointment Mika gave him. “I’m always scraping my knuckles on the rim of my drums,” she said. “This shit works.”

  Orr likes Mika with her gruff words and high, gentle voice. He likes Allison’s soft body and red hair and tough-guy attitude. He likes raspy, funny Jane the best. Yesterday, he didn’t know any of them. Today, is he living at their house? Does he live anywhere?

  Orr is shaking. Mom did this experiment with him when he was younger, adding baking soda, spoonful by spoonful, into a glass of vinegar. It was a metaphor for meltdowns—meant to show that you needed to know how many spoonfuls of stress you could take before you started to bubble, how many more it would take to make you blow. At home, he knows exactly where he is in this process at any given moment. But here, he has no idea. He wants to go back to the coat closet but can’t remember how. He wants to go home! He wants Mom! He needs the white oak outside his window, his Rescue Remedy tincture. He hears a buzzing—what if it’s a bee? His EpiPen is miles away!

  “Hey! Hey, you okay?”

  A voice. It sounds . . . frightened. This makes Orr shake harder. Something, a hand, touching him. Orr flinches, his teeth aching like they do when he touches newsprint, like when he needs to get something out of his head. He puts his fist in his mouth to quiet the nerves in his gums. He knows he’s crying too loud, but nothing can be done. He needs three hands: two for his ears, one for his mouth. Four hands, a long arm, octopus limbs to wrap around himself tight.

  The girl is saying something, but he can’t remember her name right now. All he can do is squeeze himself with his nontentacled arms and wait for Mom to come. He rocks and rolls. Mom calls it that. She plays him Jimmy Page, who can howl almost as loud as Orr.

  The kitchen is loud. Led Zeppelin loud. He forgets where the volume control is in his brain. Pinocchio is never never never going to be a real boy. Never never never never never—

  Orr gasps.

  Gasps!

  He’s wet!

  “I’m wet!” It’s his voice! Speaking words!

  “Yep,” Jane says. “Sorry, dude. I didn’t know what else to do.” She stands in front of him with an empty glass in her hand. She hands him a towel to wipe the water from his face.

  “Janie.” Mika says this.

  Mika, Allison, Jane. Orr remembers.

  “Jane . . .” Mika’s eyes are filled with tears. Orr sits at the kitchen table. He knows that look. He’s frightened her.

  “Mika,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s cool.” Mika tries to smile.

  “It was a meltdown,” Orr says. “I used to have them all the time. My mom helped me get them under control. Tame them.”

  Jane grins. “I’m picturing your mom in, like, fishnets and a sparkly leotard and tailcoat. Holding a chair and a whip, you know?”

  “Uhh, that sounds kinda wrong in the context of his mom, Jane,” Allison says.

  “My mom would wear that,” Orr says. “She loves costumes. But it’s me who needs to wear it. I have to be responsible for taming myself.”

  “Word,” Allison says. She gets up and plugs in the coffee maker. “Look, dude, I don’t want to talk behind your back, so I’m gonna say what we’re all thinking here. We can’t keep you around if you’re going to be doing that. I mean, what’s the plan here, Jane?”

  “We already decided last night,” Jane says in a that’s final voice. She’s the one who could tame lions.

  “Keep him till his mom comes home?” Mika pulls out a box of cereal and a container of soy milk from a cupboard next to the basement door. “We could get in trouble. His dad could, like, prosecute.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Orr says.

  “How do you know that?” Allison sits next to Orr. “Look what he did to you.”

  “That’s different,” Orr says. “He wants a real boy, not to sue an awesome rock band.”

  “You think we’re awesome?” Allison is smiling now. Orr likes the chip in her front tooth.

  “Oh my god,” Mika says, plopping an empty cereal bowl in front of Orr. “Allison, you’re such a compliment whore.”

  “We’re not putting him out like a stray cat,” Jane says, lighting a cigarette and pulling a beer from the fridge.

  “Jane!” Mika groans and takes the beer away, replacing it with coffee.

  “Fine,” Jane says.

  “None of us would put a cat out, either.” Allison coughs and produces a cigarette from the pocket of her bathrobe. Jane lights it with her shiny silver lighter. It smells like the ones Great Aunt Lolly used to smoke—attic dust and breath mints. Mika frowns and opens the window, propping it up with three encyclopedias. They’re silent while the coffee machine slurps like a very rude eater. Orr starts to laugh.

  “Your coffee machine,” he says between giggles. He’s often punchy after a meltdown. “That sound!”

  “Like a queef, am I right?” Allison says.

  “What’s a queef?” Orr asks. This sets them all off laughing. Orr keeps asking, but every time he says queef, they laugh more. Finally Jane sits up straight, folds her hands, and says, “A queef, young man, is like a fart.”

  “Only it comes out of your . . .” Allison is laughing again, a great sound peppered with little snorts. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says property of san quentin and fuzzy slippers shaped like Oscar the Grouch.

  “I like your slippers,” Orr says.
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  The laughter calms down. Mika gestures for Orr to pour himself some cereal. Cheerios, not cornflakes, but he complies. Soy milk is a Mom food, not preferred but acceptable.

  “Do you have any honey?”

  “Above the stove,” Jane says. Orr gets it down and honeys his Cheerios.

  “Out of where?” he asks when they are all crunching their cereal. They look at him askance, as Iph would say. “A queef is a fart that comes out of . . . ?” he reminds them.

  “Persistent,” Allison mutters.

  “Fine,” Mika says. “Fine. A queef is a fart that comes out of your . . . Penelope.” She bursts out laughing. Allison nearly spits out her coffee.

  “You mean vagina?” Orr asks.

  The Furies look at Orr like he’s a cute stray cat. He grins back at them. Mom always taught him to use the proper words for body parts.

  “What are we gonna do with you?” Jane says, stubbing out her cigarette and opening the cooler from yesterday. She gets out the last pack of tofu wieners and stabs one with a fork. Holding it over the open flame on the gas stove, she looks at Orr like he knows things.

  “Keep me?” Orr says. “Maybe till my mom gets home?”

  ACT II

  Whoever drinks from me will become a wolf

  1

  The First Journey

  to Petrograd

  Iph’s first act as a profoundly hungover girl detective is to drag herself to the gas station and call the diner in Sandy. The waitress isn’t there, but the guy answering the phone claims he was out having a smoke when the group of them—three girls and a boy with a shaved head that had to be Orr—left. “I asked if they were a gang. They said no, they were a rock band.”

  It’s been oddly easy between Iph and George from the moment they woke up back to back on the carpet, heads pounding and parched in the stuffy apartment. Iph couldn’t face the bumpy ride on the bike rack. She had bruises, she finally admitted. Black and blue and green ones. So they walked.

  Now, at a little vegan diner on Belmont, they share veggie biscuits and gravy and the free weekly paper, reading each other’s horoscopes.

  “Okay, Gemini,” Iph reads, “It’s time to regain the focus you need for the massively ambitious work of the next few years. Review all commitments and connections, especially your closest ones.” Iph wonders—does that mean Cait and Lorna? Or her?

  “Don’t look at me like that,” George says, taking the paper and reading Cancer to Iph. “There’s power in what you say and hear now. This week brings a flurry of messages and ideas, pushing important pending matters (including relationship decisions) decidedly forward.”

  “Hmm,” is all Iph says, taking the paper back in the spirit of leaving no clue unturned to read Virgo for Orr.

  Focus on gaining the momentum where you can, Virgo, without resorting to road rage. The opportunity here is to become more structurally sound. Relationships are challenged now; you might even feel trapped. Some of this alleviates next week, after the full moon.

  She reads it twice but can’t find anything useful. The thought of Orr feeling trapped is scary, but maybe the horoscope is referring to Meadowbrook?

  Fed and properly caffeinated, they begin part two of George’s plan. They hit Showcase Music and Portland Music, asking if people know a band who meets the diner guy’s description, with no luck. They also tried Music Millennium, a record store where bands would definitely advertise their shows.

  “We still need to make a flyer,” Iph says. “Maybe later could you draw Orr for me?” She tenses her body for the blow that comes with imagining his shaved head, but she is stronger today. It feels good to have a plan.

  All morning, George has been lugging around a huge backpack full of clothes to sell, including Iph’s shoes of pain. Her feet are better now. Have they healed quickly? How many days has she been in Portland? Time feels so strange. It’s hard to remember a life before this one.

  At 6th and Burnside, Scout runs up to a door and barks. The shabby storefront doesn’t look like the sort of place with air-conditioning, but anything is sure to be better than the naked sun. The sign on the door is lettered in pink duct tape:

  shiny dancer

  finery for the fine

  A woman in cutoffs and a turquoise tank top is sitting on the counter, acid-green platforms dangling in time with the toot-toot beep-beep of Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls.” She drops to the floor at the sight of Scout, allowing herself to be flagrantly kissed. “Who’s my baby?” she asks Scout. “Who’s the best girl?”

  “Wow,” George says. “My dog is such a slut.”

  “She’s come to the right place then,” the woman says. After another kiss and then one more, she holds out a hand to be helped up. “Hey, Georgie. And Georgie’s cute friend,” she says.

  “This is Iph,” George says. “Iph, meet Glow. She runs this joint.”

  “Hi,” Iph says. The walls are pink and peppermint, and the floors are stenciled with stars in gold and baby blue. “I love this shop! Great feminist reclaiming of pink.”

  “See?” Glow sticks her hip out at George.

  “You’re a pinkist?” Iph puts her hands on her hips, too. Glow might be a fellow Latina, by the look of her—light-brown skin and big brown eyes, hair dyed honey blonde.

  “Look,” George says, “I have a complicated relationship with pink. My mom dressed me like a Polly Pocket until I staged a coup when I was nine.”

  “Pink was a boy’s color till the twenties,” Iph says.

  “Whoa. That’s weird. I mean, it’s not a bad color. Roses and girl parts and strawberry ice cream and bubble gum, all good stuff.”

  Girl parts? Iph closes her gaping mouth, also pink.

  “Fair enough,” Glow says, laughing. Turning a movie-star smile on Iph, she says, “Nice outfit, Georgie’s friend Iph.”

  Iph is wearing another Nana ensemble, a muumuu printed with little hula girls and hibiscus flowers that hits mid-thigh and may have been originally intended to wear over a bathing suit at the beach. It’s thin as onion skin and so light it feels a little indecent. The boots make it an outfit, even if they’re basically functioning as foot ovens. Iph imagines her feet in Nana’s white ankle socks, a pair of biscuits getting browner as they bake.

  “I think I’ve discovered my new look,” Iph says. “Nana chic.”

  “It’s working for you. As for you and that big-ass bag,” Glow tells George, “you know the rules, right? Iph, you listen up, too. Word on the street is I only take donations, so this is on the DL. I don’t want people trying to sell me the clothes off their backs when they come in here for a health kit. However, since you’re a Pippi Longstocking–level thing finder, Georgie my love, I will happily transact with you. But mum’s the word. Yes?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” George says. “And nice Pippi reference.”

  Iph eyes George. Another childhood book in common. She’s smiling and realizes it when George goes, “What?” Flirting again. But under the flirting, there’s always a hint of sadness. Lorna, maybe. Or something deeper, older. In every detective story, the partners getting to know each other’s deep dark secrets is always Iph’s favorite part.

  “Quit mooning and show me your goods,” Glow says, feeding Scout a tortilla chip.

  While they do business, Iph wanders. Clothing carousels packed with magpie treasures are topped by displays with posters listing statistics illustrating the public health benefits of needle exchange programs, diagrams of how to properly put on a condom, and complimentary travel-size bottles of lube. Iph first encountered the concept of lube recently—and only then because of the terribly uncomfortable conversation she’d had with the nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood the time Mom took her to get birth-control pills—not for sex, but to help her heavy periods and monster PMS. A sex-ed 101 lecture was the price she had to pay to slow her monthly deluge.

 
And then there was all the other stuff Mom—oh god—told her when she started high school. Lube was probably the only thing she forgot to mention.

  “Eww,” was all Iph could manage as Mom did a thing with a rubber and a banana. They’d been in the kitchen of all places on a rare Saturday afternoon when Orr had agreed to go on an errand with Dad.

  “You need these anytime there’s contact with fluids,” Mom had said. “Even if it’s just a blow job.”

  “MOM! There are no blow jobs in my near future, I can guarantee it.”

  “Safe sex is important with women, too.”

  “Like that’s really going to happen in Forest Lake. Can we table this till college?”

  “Sometimes you don’t see it coming,” Mom said.

  Mom would certainly approve of Shiny Dancer with its glitter and sequins and high-heeled shoes and radical posters—everything you needed to look hot and be safe and get justice. Iph likes it, too. Except the dildos propped here and there in the displays. They’re one of those things you hear about and think you can picture, and then the reality is so much worse. Some are oversize and grotesquely fleshy. Iph can barely look at them. Surely no real penis is that enormous? Even the not-especially-detailed ones in sparkly pink and green to match the walls do not bode well for the real thing. Just . . . gross. Maybe Iph is a straight-up lesbian after all.

  The far wall of the shop is all shoes. Iph fingers a pair of pink flip-flops with little daisy toppers and wonders if she could use some of the money her shoes bring in to get them. She puts them back. They’d be cool on her toes but terrible for trekking around Portland. Another vestige of her pampered life—not having to worry about practical shoes because your mom will always give you a ride. Iph should have womaned up and gotten her license. This would all be so much faster with a car.