Harmless Like You

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  She giggled through the taste of salt. Edison’s rubber-band arms couldn’t beat even her up. “What’s going on, Yuki?”

  “Can I come over?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Sitting side by side on his bed, he held an ice pack to her forehead. His other arm wrapped around her shoulders. It amazed her that Edison had ice cubes in his fridge. She and Lou didn’t even own the plastic trays. She could feel the sharp edges of the cubes through the flannel.

  “Marry me,” Edison said. The ice cubes trembled.

  “Hey, you’re pressing too hard.” He adjusted the pressure.

  His watch, the strap neatly folded under the face, was on his desk. Telling her it was late, so late. And yet, she couldn’t stop talking about Avery. A baby named Avery, Avery, Aviary. A baby named after a cage.

  “Lou won’t marry you, marry me instead. I wash my own underwear. I can draw and do higher calculus. I have a Metropolitan Museum membership. Marry me.”

  She laughed. Being married to Edison seemed sitcomical. He was so nice. But she was not a sitcom wife. She’d never seen herself on TV. She’d never even seen the all-American-girl version of herself on TV. “When?”

  “At New Year’s. We’ll go upstate to where the big houses are and the horse tracks are all iced over. We’ll hide in feather blankets and pretend to be Pilgrims.”

  “What then?”

  “Then, I’ll start looking for a house. Connecticut somewhere. A place for you to raise our two point five children. A studio for you.”

  “You don’t want a studio?”

  “Nah, I spend enough time working at work. I’ll come home, and I’ll watch you paint and bake you pies to keep your energy up.”

  She tried to imagine it. She wouldn’t have to get a second job, or move to outer Queens. Edison, with his perfectly folded underwear and his French press coffee. Edison, who washed his pencils to keep them spick and shining. Edison, who bought shoelaces with metal aglets because he didn’t like to see things fray.

  “Let me take care of you.”

  “But what happens when I mix up your charcoal-gray ties with your ash-gray ties?”

  Silence in the gray night. A hand reached up to touch hers. Warm fingers. She had expected him to be cooler-blooded. Lou had hot hands too. Maybe she was just cold. She felt the ridged edge of his lips under the tips of her fingers. The skin was dry, rippled. She let her hand hang loose. He pressed his face into her palm. The touch of his thin nose tickled. Her lungs emitted light, flittery laughter. Her arms flapped. Deep breathing. Closed eyes. Laughter spouted everywhere, unstoppable. She grabbed his wrist, unwilling to let the hand move up or down.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Since I met you.” His voice was steady.

  “And you were just waiting?” A bad folk song.

  “There was a girl in my urban design class.”

  “I never met her.”

  “She didn’t stick.”

  His sheets rustled. He shrugged in a cartoon character fashion, raising his thin shoulders all the way to his ears.

  “Maybe.” The giggly-giddiness threatened to climb back up her throat. There had to be worse things than marrying someone whose shrugs you knew by heart.

  Then a full three minutes after he’d asked her to marry him, he kissed her for the first time. The nose dug into the side of her face. The mouth was soft, and came at her sideways. The kisses were small, but constant and beaded with breaths. Her hands touched his neck. This was not a person she had wanted. She had never wished for him. Her pencil had never absent-mindedly outlined his clavicle on an empty page. And yet as her fingers found it, they knew the slope.

  And she laughed as his fingers gave up on the buttons of her shirt, and reached up under it. But then he looked at her so earnestly, his face floating above hers. So Edison wanted her. She’d been right.

  “We don’t have to,” he said. His fingers paused their moving up and down her ribs, but did not let go.

  “It’s okay.”

  The next morning while Edison was at work, Yuki took the subway down to the old apartment. Yuki would explain to Lillian that she needed desperately to speak to Odile. Of course, Lillian would be angry. But Yuki would show Lillian how she had been punished. She’d display the raisin of her heart. It was such a shriveled thing.

  Yuki walked past the club where her art might have shown, but the owner was Lou’s friend and Yuki was too ashamed to ask if the offer was still good. The brownstone came into sight. She walked up to the door. Someone had been smoking on the stoop and the cigarette stub still glowed like the tiniest lighthouse. Hope. Yuki reached out toward the handle, before realizing that she no longer had a key. Fine, she could wait. Someone would leave for work, and she could slip inside. All along the street, men and women bustled toward their employments, the tapping of their polished shoes fading into the hum of the city. Her own desk at the paper would be standing empty; perhaps the editor-in-chief would finally take his mistress’s call without Yuki to intercept it.

  Odile had never in all these years called Yuki. She’d never asked how Yuki was, or mailed a postcard of some dying European bit of stone. Yet Yuki needed to whisper down the telephone line: I’m getting married. I’m starting again. Are you happy now?

  Finally, a young man came swinging out of the building. Yuki caught the door.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I locked myself out.” The apartment was four flights up. Yuki had forgotten that the stairs sagged in the middle like old laundry. She pressed the buzzer: no sound. It still wasn’t fixed; typical Lillian. Yuki beat the door with a fist. Minutes past. Was Lillian asleep? She banged again. The door heaved open.

  An elderly man. He spat out what she thought was Chinese. The pores on his nose stood out in tiny bullseyes. Behind him, she could see the same old furniture, chipped and ugly. But no typewriter. The apartment smelled different too, sweet and delicious. It was the smell more than the strange face that told Yuki that Lillian had moved out.

  Yuki ran, skidding away down the stairs, one hand holding onto the banisters; she leapt downward like a frightened child. At the last flight she slipped, her feet surged forward and she landed on her ass. When would she stop falling down? The tears were sharp and physical, more similar to coughing than sorrow. Then she stood.

  She could find Odile in any magazine, but her friend was missing from this earth. Love was a limited time offer. It was time to buy Edison roses.

  Jay

  13.

  Berlin, October 2016 / New York, June 2007

  I snapped the telephone cord against my thigh. It hurt more than I expected. I remembered the fall and guessed that I was bruising. Cobbles do not make for an easy landing. The handset was old; a coiled rubber cord connected it to the body. I wondered if the apartment’s owner kept it to be ironic. Each squeak of the dial tone, I bounced the cord against my pain. Mimi would not pick up.

  She worked from home. It was ten thirty. She should’ve been at her desk. I tried her cell. Nothing. She wasn’t there when I needed her most. Probably feeding the baby. Celeste batted the cuff of my pants, and I lifted her up into my lap. Cats might land on their feet, but I’d never had to test it. When I held Celeste, I just didn’t faint. Not even when I’d been at my hysterical mouth-sweating worst. It just didn’t happen.

  Celeste bit my hand. She was being gentle, but the bloodless bite still hurt. Cats overestimate the human resistance to pain. To be fair, humans often make the same mistake.

  “Oh, you want second breakfast?”

  The organic, stomach-friendly cat food was in my bag. She was supposed to be on a diet, but travel always made me hungry, and I took pity on her. Kneeling on the patchy rug, I fed her straight from the spoon. She wouldn’t take food from Mimi like that. After each delicate bite, she twisted her head left and right.

  I went out to fetch my own lunch. Down the street was a doner stand. I assumed it was the crows’ breakfast spot. The slab
of halal meat spun hypnotically around, and I stood in the stiff breeze watching it. But when the owner said something to me in German, I shook my head and walked away. Unimaginatively, I ended up buying a six-pack of beer and a bag of rolls, selected at random from the plastic bins from the same store as the day before. Mimi would scold me; I needed my protein and my vitamin C. I threw in ham slices and a bag of banana chips. Did bananas have vitamin C? I wasn’t sure.

  The rest of the day I wandered from straße to berg and back to straße. I was trying to get lost in that scramble of pre-war and post-war architecture, trying to ditch my headache in the mess of cafés and bakeries. But I turned too many rights or too many lefts and ended up on streets I recognized, past the same knotted trees and the same dry-cleaner’s window crowded with stuffed bears. Around sunset, I returned to the apartment and fell into refreshing my email again and again, failing to see anything from my wife. I called again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I thought about calling Annika to ask if she’d said anything, but thought better of it. She was the last person I wanted to explain this to.

  Men aren’t conditioned to think about love. As a guy, people don’t ask about the girl you brought home, Do you love her? Before Mimi, I considered women to be a form of art. And I’d studied art. I considered the attention I paid them to be a sort of respect; I noticed shifting shirt lengths, haircuts, verbal tics. I never forgot their eye color, birthstones, horoscopes. I could still catalogue them.

  Hana, Japanese American Princess, provenance LA

  New York Period (2002)

  Slightly burnished skin with added vermillion. 5'4" high.

  A prime specimen of the type. High firm breasts almost perfectly symmetrical, finely crafted eyes and mouth. Lacquered, waxed all over. Legs of greater than half proportion make this a particularly unique piece.

  Linnea, aka Pookle, WASP, subgroup Manhattan

  New York Period (1999–2002)

  Of fine and elegant bone structure, particularly noticeable in the collarbone and shoulder blades. Iron oxides create bright wave-like patterns in the hair. Intricate folding design of lips. Narrow but prominent nose blends feminine and masculine in a cunning synthesis.

  When I met Mimi, she seemed another collectable, if a rather extraordinary one. This was long before I owned my own gallery. I was working for Quentin Taupe, at his space in Chelsea. He specialized in female artists, and for this was supposed to be some great feminist, but I thought he was just a sleaze. He hired me because his last receptionist had left in a possibly sexual huff just before a major opening.

  Mimi walked in wearing this slightly sheer blue dress, through which I could just see the scallops of underwear. I leaned back on the Aeron chair.

  “Welcome to the Taupe.” Neither of the two girls replied. Mimi was with Agatha, who even then I didn’t like. I liked her less once I found out her name was Agatha. It sounded like a name she’d picked up at a thrift shop to get a laugh. Mimi’s name was beautiful. Miranda Cecily Liang: the 3-3-2, the rhythm of a tango. Each syllable sharp-stepping, clean and firm. But I didn’t know her name then.

  Mimi and Agatha weren’t going to drop ten thousand on ink paintings of sonograms. They’d come to us because art galleries in Chelsea don’t ask for “voluntary” donations or have bag checks for the whiskey flask in Agatha’s tote. The flask bulged against the cotton weave. Mimi had her back to me. Her hair was cut short like a man’s, like mine in fact. Her shoulder blades lifted the dress, leaving a gap that a man could slide a hand down.

  “We have brochures.”

  Brochures was a weak attempt. I never had the balls to pick up a girl or guy on a sunny, sober Saturday. Mimi did seem sober despite Agatha. She stood with ballet posture. It wouldn’t have worked if it hadn’t been for genetic bingo.

  Mimi turned, as if seeing me for the first time. She had the smile of someone who’d worked in the service industry, polite and completely impersonal.

  “Sure, that’d be great,” she said.

  It was Agatha who gasped. She wanted to take a photo. The camera was an SLR with a flashgun almost as large as the whiskey flask. But Mimi covered her face.

  “Please, pretty, please. You look fine. And seriously, he’s like your twin.”

  And really, I could have been. It wasn’t just the hair. We both had fat Buddha earlobes, pointed chins, eyes slightly too far apart; neither of us had the oft-longed-for double eyelid fold. Later, we’d line our arms up, we’d wrap our fingers, we’d contort over and under one another, and we wouldn’t be able to tell where one ended. We were matching color samples. Our skin was the shade of the vanilla-banana pudding I’d bring her in bed for her birthday. Agatha was the first to notice, but she wouldn’t be the last. An ex of mine would say we reminded him of the Siamese cats in Lady and The Tramp.

  “Do you mind? She won’t shut up otherwise.” Mimi sounded more tired than apologetic.

  “If I get a copy.”

  I was flirting, but Agatha told me to give her my address and she’d send me a print. I beckoned to Mimi. She let me pull her onto my lap. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, but dangled, tickling my calves. She was wearing flip-flops. Her gold toenail polish had flaked. Black specks of grime had worked their way under the nail-edges. It was a childish sort of dirtiness. There was something cleaner about it than any amount of adult sanitation.

  Chick flicks have it half right; even assholes fall in love. What they forget is that assholes don’t stop being assholes just because they’re in love. I looked down the back of her shirt to check, and no, the bra didn’t match the panties. It was black and smooth, with white polka dots.

  “Just one more.”

  Agatha could have used the whole roll for all I cared. Just then, Celeste, still sprightly in her youth, jumped out from under the desk and onto Mimi’s lap. Her ears were pushed back and she was hissing. Quentin let me bring her to work, in part because I had a documented disability and in part because Celeste looked like the sort of cat that belonged in a gallery. Mostly, she hid under the desk by my feet, a breathing shadow. But she was territorial as a Rottweiler and had to be kept away from lovers of all sorts. She seemed to have an extrasensory ability to measure my attraction to someone. Friends she watched from under chairs; clients she ignored; lovers she pissed on while they slept and bit their bare toes at breakfast. So Mimi should have taken the twenty claws as a compliment. She didn’t. I ran for the first aid kit. Pressing a cotton ball into the flesh, I cupped the curl of her pale knee in my other hand. I was grateful for the excuse to touch her so close and so soon.

  Did that red constellation foretell disaster; would a more fortuitous meeting have left room in my life for my wife, my baby and my cat? Celeste eventually seemed to trust Mimi, but Mimi continued to look on Celeste with the suspicion of a woman who has a connect-the-dots-style scar on her right leg.

  I dialed Annika. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Is this about the Whitney?” The Whitney. Oh god. Fuck. I needed to deal with that. What had I been thinking? Did I really think I could get her the Whitney?

  “I’m working on a meeting. They sound really interested. But, this is about my wife. Have you heard from her?”

  “Miranda? Not recently.”

  “Well, she isn’t picking up the phone or her email. Hasn’t been all day. I thought maybe . . . after what happened.”

  “Oh, that. No. I mean I didn’t. Wouldn’t have said anything. I mean, you’re my dealer.”

  Yes, I could rely on solid self-interest. She wouldn’t have said anything. Not to Miranda or anyone. She was too touchy already about not being taken seriously as an artist.

  “So thanks. Sorry. I just thought I’d ask.”

  “But you’ll tell me as soon as you talk to the Whitney people.” No talk of leaving me for Quentin now, I noticed. At least if I failed, she wouldn’t tell anyone; she’d be too proud.

  “The very second.”

  The apartment seemed strange and hollow, and I regretted again
sticking my dick in her. I tried to think if we could’ve left a trace in the gallery. I’d taken the trash out myself, flaccid latex included. Six months had passed. There couldn’t be anything left; even her skin cells must be gone from the dust. I sent Mimi another text. Asking her to please, please call me.

  I opened a window, leaning out; someone nearby was smoking pot. The smell was sour and reassuring, so much like my stoop at home in Brooklyn at the tail end of the summer.

  Then, I crawled into bed. I felt Celeste drape herself over my neck. A full body embrace. I slept wrapped up in bald cat.

  14.

  Berlin, October 2016

  Connecticut, August 1996

  My father didn’t like to talk about my mother. He didn’t tell stories, and I didn’t ask him to. Of course I was curious, but he would always begin, “Your mother, your mother, well her name was, is, Yukiko. And she. Well, your mother. She was an artist.”

  As a child, it is frightening to see an adult in pain. As a teenager, it’s embarrassing, which is another word for frightening. I’d learned not to ask. Still, I couldn’t help but Google.

  The first time I found her, I was fifteen. The website looked like it had been designed by someone who’d taken a half-hour night school class in HTML: black text, white screen and a series of blue links to articles. One article included an audio file. It was about her breakout show, an exhibition in Germany. A large warehouse in the Eastern Bloc converted into a “Museum Space.” Reproductions of famous works hung on all the walls. As visitors entered, they were given an audio guide. The kind with scratchy headphones into which visitors dial codes. The audio clip was excerpted from this reel.

  I still remember watching the blue bars build and the estimated download time creep up. Halfway through, I left to make a sandwich but turned around at the kitchen door and sat my vigil through to the end.