I Must Have You

by JoAnna Novak

  What I don’t cover in ENG 101 is the power of surprise, of defying expectation to achieve an effect. This is the sort of subtlety I appreciated in Rot when he knocked at my office, when we first partied, that Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

  Even though I knew he was coming, I locked my door. The brass aperture, the right-turning key. I waited five hours, sitting at my desk, back to the door, a cramped crucible for my wants. I wanted a rapping, his knuckles on the ruddy blond wood, the sound that would dislodge my heart from my chest, a yank and a tooth. Bad move—that day, it was fifty degrees, higher than the Chicagoland average. The heater was cycling on, and I couldn’t get my window open.

  I drank two liters of Evian before noon. Ate a half-pint of raspberries for lunch, mashing them against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. I wanted my lips to look bled. Prepped for violation. Raw, sore. I reread some Plath, apropos: “I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies.”

  At 3:13 p.m., two minutes before his conference slot, I heard footsteps. There are perks to infatuations with students: teach writing, and you learn everything for free. Air Jordan Bred: those were Rot’s Nikes. Because black plus red? I’d kept myself from asking in the margin of his essay, where he’d used the shoes to talk about bonding with his father last winter, when they’d had a season of courtside seats at the United Center. If nothing else, I could hide the fact I’d been sizing up his feet.

  And then his knock came: a prim one-two. A knock in an academic building is startling and interruptive, a wordless reprimand. Or perhaps this reaction is only mine. There was high school, when I’d be in bed, chewing off my fingernails and spitting the white arcs into the crevice of The Abortion or whatever I was gobbling, and my father’s pounding on my door would terrify me. (He’d barge in, ask why I’d let my brother Marky cram his chubby cheeks full of Maurice Lenell pinwheel cookies for dinner.)

  My heels clicked on the tile as I walked to the door. I wore a black pointelle sweater dress, scoop neck, bare legs. Suede mules. My thought was easy access, like a Skinemax romp: pull up, kick off.

  “Hey there,” I said.

  Rot’s backpack hung from one shoulder. His flannel was half tucked, unbuttoned. He wore a white V-neck, baggy jeans, those red-soled sneakers: they gave him inches. Usually, being a professor made me feel bigger than students, but Rot eclipsed me.

  “Am I too soon?” He glanced at a black-faced watch with a fat gold bezel.

  “Perfect time. C’mon in.”

  I clicked toward my desk. He lingered at the door.

  “Mind if I shut this?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Fine.”

  Context: the smell in the office was vanilla, musk, and dust: vust? Even pushed against the outside wall, stationed beneath a window, the three-drawer desk crowded the room. The chair’s cushion: orange-red weave; its wheels, silver; the ball bearings, thirsty for oil; the entire undercarriage, laced with rust. On the wall opposite from the desk, army-green metal filing cabinets flanking a black bookshelf. Hardcovers, anthologies, textbooks. That’s where Rot stopped.

  He picked up the one visible personal effect (my Butter Blasted and desperation Camels and bottle of ipecac and current journal inside the desk): a 4" x 6" snapshot in a sterling silver frame.

  “You’re married?” he asked.

  I took a few steps backwards. My ass bumped the desk. “I guess.”

  He laughed, his eyes on the photo.

  Why that family? Bourbon and Salinger, couples racquetball with Rolf and University of Chicago, pizza and Poppin’ Fresh, ticking biology and flares of impulsivity and weekends in Door County, nursing champagne hangovers with banana walnut pancakes.

  Why that picture? I looked my thinnest.

  I knew what he saw—me in a lavender shift (early ’90s foray into polychromatic dressing), black eyeliner, hair dyed Winona Ryder dark, clasping my elbows like doves about to flap off. There’s Elliot, age five, blue pinafore and rabbit ears, bunny nose and wavy whiskers painted on her smiley face. I guess we’re happy here. Rolf stands between us: blue-and-purple pinstripe button-down, short-sleeved, his arms so toned they rankle me, Anna Egleston, bearer of a body that refuses to tone, even when said body is maximum rail. The Lincoln Park Zoo Easter egg hunt: the backdrop is trampled magnolia petals; pink, orange, green plastic eggshells clamped around loose Chiclets.

  The frame dinged against the bookshelf when he set it down.

  “So you were always clutch?”

  “Very funny.” I gestured toward the spare chair against the wall. Students sat there—a classroom castoff, complete with bars for books beneath the seat. “What are we meeting about? Your documented essay?”

  He set his backpack in the chair and, facing the wall, started rummaging around. I watched him. His flannel had a gray hood and, below that, the red and blue flannel. He had broad deltoids, swimming muscles, butterfly. I was water, ready to be thrashed. My pussy ticked. A zipper whinnied, a cork popped. It was loud, unmistakable, but no one was in Building 13: the holiday break had begun yesterday after 2:45 classes.

  He faced me, holding a bottle of Dom Pérignon. “I thought, my essay’s pretty tight. You’re probably sick of looking at our shit.”

  I scoffed. “Who carries champagne in a backpack?”

  Between us, the air seemed like regular Cook County air—muggy, stuffy, scholastic—but really, it was trembling. Flammable. One match away from blue licks of heat and soul-evanescing fucks. He reached a hand into his jeans’ front pocket and pulled out a baggie.

  “Better?”

  “And what might you be serving here?”

  “Remember when it used to actually snow on Thanksgiving?” he said. “This blows. I’m, like, hot.”

  I swallowed. “Well, feel free to take your shirt off.”

  “Hold this?” he said, passing me the bottle.

  I took a swig, another gulp, and knelt down on the cruddy floor before him. I unzipped his jeans and took his cock in my hands. It was like I remembered from college—a virile dash, not a comma like Rolf’s. It tasted like body wash, citrus and amber.

  “Yes,” he said in a voice like defeat.

  Maybe that was all I had wanted—to hear someone say yes to my mouth. The sound of Rot’s sigh—that hitching breath—when he came on my breasts, after he’d fucked me on the surface of the desk, tabled me and ate me; the nothing we spoke of; the coke we AmExed into wormy lines; the champagne, drunk, drunk: in the context of my office, on a sweaty November Wednesday, that was everything to be thankful for in the world.

  ··

  A minute later, I smell pretzels.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” says Glenn Decklin. Prop. COCC is stamped on the flap pocket of his pea-green parka. “But we’re getting reports of a leak, some people, they’re saying smelling gas or a busted water main about here. You notice anything like that in your room? Floodwater? Weird smell.”

  I sniff through post-purge congestion; I inhale loudly, unflatteringly—a snort.

  “I don’t think so.” I glance down the hall; I might catch some trail of Rot. But there’s no one. Why would there be, in the middle of a period? There’s a red trash can. Hairs corralled into corners. A purple Magic Glove, the kind you buy for $.99 at Walgreens, the kind that fits anyone. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “Serenity now! I’m joshing—that won’t do you much good.” Glenn laughs. “Get it—eyes open, gas?”

  “Ah—well, water. But, right.”

  “We’re at extension 4444. If you smell something, say something.”

  I nod. I have never been comfortable being a mandate reporter. If I smell something, I’ll let my students burn. This time, I’ll be bolder: I’ll snort myself stupid with Rot’s coke.

  Just the thought of him gives me pause. I relish the dumb hallway. Sweat tattoos my neck. Each second, I expect something to happen, and each second, nothing definitive does: womanhood.

  I wait. I blink. Sniff out the tinder. Breath
e. Blink. Behind me, the classroom door that filters quiet out of quiet. I try to listen for the click of pens lifting off paper, the exhale of pages turning, an ebon spark, but my heart pounds too hard in my ears.

  6 ·· ELLIOT

  MISS TROUBAUGH YELLED SO MUCH her voice was a scab. “Wrap it up, folks! Balls in bins!”

  Spikes and serves rocketed across the gym. I ran toward the supply closet, holding an orange Wilson to my chest. My face was plastered with hardcore grit. My legs seared. Franz Ferdinand had been the day’s lesson in Social Studies, and with Mrs. Harper’s cello voice, I learned nothing except that he was almost royal. Now my wrist throbbed from the paper clip cut. The pain cleared my mind.

  “Let’s move, folks, we’re not sitting down for cream cheese sandwiches, you cupcakes! Show me how fast you’re gonna move during the Pacer tomorrow! Git!”

  And Miss Troubaugh kept shouting, presidential fitness trials tomorrow, day of reckoning, blah, blah, blah, everyone’s favorite skinfold test.

  I paused by the pull-up bars. The skinfold test? I dreaded that more than anyone. Regardless of the three years I’d been flaca, I didn’t want grown-ups to freak out over my size. I was alone with my weight. Extra alone, now that Lisa faked fevers so Junior Carlos could slink through the sunroom, crouch like a bulldog, and play hide the bone. Well. By now, he was probably mouth to muff.

  “One, two, three, four,” Coolio bumped over the sound system.

  Ignore this, I told myself. I felt back to usual, nearly: I couldn’t have Coolio making me miss my best friend! Still, denying Lisa’s talents was like claiming I hadn’t been obsessed with Carmen Sandiego: for a white girl, Lisa could rap, and when she sang Whitney it was like she was Dionne Warwick’s niece. She was good at things you wouldn’t realize could be valuable life skills, like droning with Montell Jordan—this is how we do it. Ever since Marissa had wrecked Real Talk, the day had been so up and down: Ethan Suva talking to me one minute, Lisa hanging up the next.

  Well. Now was fine. Volleyballs banged into their cages. Boys stampeded, hopping, swishing the net, diving like mosh pit limbo, and the few walkers shuffled, shorts sagged to flaunt Marvin the Martian boxers. Park guys, even nerdy ones like Chase Pritzker and Zach Dend, announced themselves through ostentation: grease-painting their faces with Wite-Out or feeding pencils eraser first into the electric sharpener. My feelings about these behaviors depended on who I was looking at. Ethan Suva galloped backwards, his eyes shut, a scuffed volleyball balanced on his greasy blonde head. My glower softened.

  He’d touched my wrist.

  Most girls trudged. Not me: I darted, a firefly in a Gatorade jar, taking the least direct route to depositing my ball. These were steps, every one of them. I zigzagged across the gym, darting through the throng, and though my patellae were liable to bloom purple bruises, wound chic was my forte. When my heart felt like a Tamagotchi ready to hatch, I launched my volleyball toward the bin. It fell short.

  “Whiff!” Nick Pastorino yelled, but I shuffled on, head down, palmed the ball, dropped it with its brothers, and searched for my girls.

  As usual, my clients were dragging. Fortunately, I only had three this period; I slowed down and jogged up to each of them.

  “Hey, Sheena! Have you talked to Marissa Turner, by any chance?”

  She scowled at me.

  “Well, okay then! Don’t throw in the towel! Hustle, aight?” She shook her head and ran off. Well, her arms were thinner. She was my oldest client, if I didn’t count Lisa, proof that, no matter how long you committed to flaca, you could still benefit from a friendly nudge, a boot off the cliff between normal eating and real dieting.

  “Just a few steps, Jessica, sprint ’em, and then you’ve put in the work! Yeah! Dang, girl!” She was a great eater—watermelon and cucumber were her faves, she told me at our initial consultation; granola, her guilty pleasure—but she was a Nickelodeon buff (she’d taped every episode of Clarissa Explains It All and boasted she could watch four seasons in three days, with only bathroom breaks). That meant she liked to sit. Just for her, two Real Talks ago, I’d written “10 Easy Ways to Burn Calories During Commercials.”

  (Leg lifts, running up and down stairs, pretending to search for the remote.)

  “I’m crumblin’, El,” she said. “I just ate carrots for lunch.”

  “Sounds like you’re missing protein.”

  “Ughhh.” She stared at the ceiling. Huge black overhead fans hid inside black grates. Between the rafters, a white volleyball was wedged like a giant snowball. Jessica’s glittery purple eyeliner dripped toward her cheeks. That’s why I didn’t wear makeup.

  I hopped from one foot to the other, a drill we did with tires. I smelled the grossness of the gym: socks, cheesiness. I clamped my fingers around my waistband where my mom had markered my name on my red uniform XXS shorts. Jessica could be motivated. I knew my stuff. For these girls, I had a knack.

  “Jessica.” I rested my hand on her arm. The heat of her skin reminded me how small I was. She had to know: she belonged on a horse farm, not in a gym. Her body made you believe in the myth of big-bones. My father had called me that pre-flaca.

  I aimed my gentlest voice at her Peace Frog earrings. “I’m about to check up on Rocyo—see? She’s not official yet, but we’re meeting today. After school. Like, in literally fifteen minutes. She really needs to lose … she’d be so beautiful! I want her to know how much my coaching helps you guys, yah know, how Real Talk goes, etcetera? So, like, ándale! Show her how good you feel. Sprint to that locker room! And have, like, seven almonds, ASAP.”

  Jessica sniffed. I held out my hand. She slapped me five. Then she sped off, parting lackadaisical boys singing—or trying to sing—Tupac.

  “That’s just the way it is!” someone yelled operatically.

  I spun around. Rocyo was hunching, hands on her hips, huffing against the bleachers. Ugh—what a sight! Elastic bric-a-brac banded her neck, kinda medieval, and her hair was still cornrowed from a winter break trip to the Bahamas. Her improvement potential was sky high. I tried out the phrase—Rocyo, my newest girl.

  “What’s up, babe?” Babe made girls feel special. Hot. Sexy. Sexy reminded them of bodies. Who didn’t picture her sexiest self at least ten pounds thinner?

  “What up? You see my spiking? I was da shiz.” She raked her fingers through the sweat on her forehead. “You coming over today?”

  “I am indeed, but that doesn’t mean you get to putz. This is a transition. Real Talk rule: don’t bomb your transitions. You’re moving between one place and another. From activity to relaxation, school to afterschool. Whatever! Regardless! Gym to locker room! Make something of this! Make it count!”

  “How you have so much energy, Elliot? Aren’t you tired?”

  I smiled, triumphant, mega-all-star. “There’s no time to be tired! I’ll see you on the bus. Run!” I lunged at her, throwing my arms wide. “Or I’ll chase you, beeyatch!”

  “Woah, woah, hey! Okay, I move! Locasita!” She unpeeled herself from the bleachers and ran off in that do-I-have-to way, dragging her heels.

  The gym was empty except for me and Miss Troubaugh, a pear-shaped caution cone in her tangerine spandex. She was harmless, unless she had fitness test results. The last thing I needed was her calling Nurse Golombki, Dr. Kluk the principal, a pair of ever-changing guidance counselors, and my parents for a “strategizing session.” Lisa had been subjected to one of those. Gang flagellation in a grody conference room, she’d told me last May. Her session had resulted in in-patient. You sit there, people talk about you like they understand what’s right for your so-called well-being, and you try not to cry/look for any blunt object with which to bash your brains in. And FYI: there are no blunt objects in the conference rooms. Just water lily prints. Monet.

  There were three minutes left until the bell. Under the volleyball net, I dropped to my knees. The floor smelled like rubber and dandruff. Type O waves crashed in my head; my arms burned. Los deportes son bien ejercicios,
said my volition. I heard my name. I started pumping.

  Miss Troubaugh could bite me. My breath was precious, like certain metals or white AirHeads. Kids were on their way out from the locker room. They needed to see my push-ups. I pictured MJ standing on my back, wagging his tongue, twirling a basketball on his pinky like one of the Harlem Globetrotters. That reminded me of the porn I’d watched with Lisa, the fishy way the first sister had tasted the second sister’s nipple. I shivered and shut my eyes. My legs felt crossed (they weren’t). Depending on the body butter, a nipple might taste salty, milky, fruity, caramelly—.

  “Knock, knock. Egleston? I’m turning off the tunes—”

  Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were singing, Watcha gonna do? Miss Troubaugh’s faded Reeboks were an inch from my fingertips. I poked a purple pump.

  “Hun. B-ball practices here in ten. Elliot. Quit overachieving and change.”

  I hopped to my feet and threw my arms into a wide ta-da. “Now laps! Be happy I love fitness!”

  “Happy Gilmore,” she said dryly. Then she raised one feathery blonde eyebrow toward the rafters, where felt banners sewn by pathetic PTA moms blew in the gusts of industrial fans. Anna had been a room mom in first grade, and quit when she had to pack plastic pumpkins with kernels of poison (candy corn) at the Monster Mash.

  “Elliot, honey. What’s that on your wrist?”

  I jogged in place, shaking my hands like maracas.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Let me take a look, sweetie.”

  “Gotta go,” I yelled and then I zipped off, sprinting, full-blast.

  “Elliot, come here!” Miss Troubaugh shouted. But she was too old to chase me.

  I ran. The gym bleared. My cuts were for Lisa. I felt robbed, angry, deflated, sick. I hated school. The vagina-shaped pennants, angular Pollocks of puffy paint and glitter. Fuck. The mahogany bleachers, brilliant with thick wax. The dormant scoreboard. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The pull-up bars that smelled like iron and salt. The blue floor mats in the corner next to the closet where the balance beam and pommel horse and parallel bars lived. Miss Troubaugh had seen. That was bad. Bad bad bad. I pumped my legs. Spewed my navel up my esophagus. Light as a laser, eighty pounds, alive, Lisa-less and fine—well, for who knew how long. She could suck an extra-large egg. I didn’t need her, I would show everyone. I was Skeletor, flacisimia, Below Average according to my biweekly BMI calc. I felt epic, fascinating, the only real person to ever walk this earth. And I bet you’re creaming to know how I skipped breakfast, lunch, and dinner; how I whittled my victuals down to white rice and black olives; how I sprinted strip malls; how I fit into an eight at Gap Kids, where everything ran small to begin with, how I safety pinned my panties… and they still sagged, how—