Kiss

by Francine Pascal

  At least he didn't lie or try to bullshit her, she told herself. His honesty made for cold comfort, though.

  "I don't know why. I'm so sorry," he finished earnestly.

  She hated him.

  "Don't apologize," she snapped icily. "Just . . . get out of here. I don't want to see you right now. We'll talk about it some other time." Anger was accessible to her right now. Pain was not.

  Numbly she strode to the coat closet and grabbed his corduroy jacket. She practically threw it at him. "Please go!"

  He looked sorry, all right. Sorry and regretful, but also relieved. So relieved, he was ashamed ofhimself. He was happy to be getting out of there and away from her.

  She hated him.

  "I'm sorry, Heather," he said again as he walked out of the apartment. "I'm really sorry."

  She hardly waited until he was clear of the door before she slammed it with all her might.

  She wheeled around. "I hate you!" she shouted at the empty living room.

  For some reason the story of Medea invaded her head again. The bitter, scorned, miserable woman.

  Heather went back to the couch and threw all the pillows on the floor. It was lucky for Sam that they didn't have any children.

  Grandpa Fargo's Famous Apple Pie

  Ingredients:

  8 red Rome apples

  1 recipe pie crust

  ½ cup sugar

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  2 tablespoons flour

  pinch of nutmeg

  pinch of salt

  1 tablespoon butter

  1 well-beaten egg

  Filling:

  Peel and core apples and slice into ½" wedges. Place in large mixing bowl. Add sugar, cinnamon, flour, nutmeg, and salt. Toss until thoroughly blended.

  Roll ½ pie crust dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Line 9-inch pie plate with dough, allowing ½ inch to extend over edge. Add filling. Dot with 1 tablespoon butter. Roll out rest of dough and lay over pie plate, tucking excess dough along pie-plate edge. Crimp along edge with knife handle to create a wavy pattern. Use fork to puncture a few holes into top of crust in pattern of your choice. Brush top of pie with 1 well-beaten egg.

  Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn down heat to 350 degrees and bake for ½ hour.

  freedom / nothingness

  Without thinking, she threw herself on his bed. It was sick, but so delicious.

  Wobbly

  GREEN. RED. GREEN. RED. OUT the front window of the diner on University Place, Gaia watched the traffic light run its cycle again and again. She thought of Ed.

  She'd meant to go, she really had. But here she was again.

  She realized she was still shivering. She put her hand to her throbbing head. God, what she would do for a dollar to buy a hot cup of coffee.

  "Excuse me, sweetheart, but if you're not going to order anything, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." The waitress wasn't mean. She was old and tired. She had turned a blind eye to Gaia for the last forty-five minutes. Now she was doing her job.

  "But it's so cold out," Gaia said, mostly to herself.

  "What's that, hon?" The waitress leaned in.

  "Nothing, I'm going." It took all of Gaia's strength to climb out of the booth and balance herself on her feet. The room spun around her. She closed her eyes, trying not to be sick.

  "Are you okay?" the woman asked.

  Gaia opened her eyes. She steadied herself against the top of the vinyl seats. "Yes, I'll be fine," she said. She walked as steadily as she could to the door and steeled herself for the cold blast of wind.

  Back out on the street she hugged herself for warmth. She wished she had her coat. She wished she had a blanket. She wished she had anything heavier than this skimpy red dress. And Mary was wrong. These shoes were too small. Her feet ached.

  She made herself walk. What now? Where could she go? The light to cross Thirteenth Street was red. To cross to the west side of University was green. She crossed.

  She kept walking west. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. When she got to Fifth Avenue, the light to cross was red. The light to cross Thirteenth to the south was green. She crossed.

  The wind that whipped up Fifth Avenue seemed to find its way into her skin -- into every muscle and nerve and tendon. It chilled her blood in her veins, and her veins circulated that chilled blood all through her body and into her heart.

  The light to cross Twelfth Street was red. The light to cross to the west side of Fifth was green. She crossed. Without instructions her feet were taking her to her home in New York City -- Washington Square Park. She crossed Twelfth Street and got another green signal to cross Eleventh. The miniature Arc de Triomphe that marked the northern entrance to the park was in full view now.

  She glanced up and stopped. The building to her right was familiar. Familiar mostly in a painful way. It was Sam's dormitory, the place where she'd walked in on Sam and Heather having sex.

  She started walking and stopped again. Another image appeared in her mind. The broken doorknob. Too well she remembered the wobbly brass sphere almost falling off in her hand, giving her access to one of the worst sights a person could see. But right now, from where she stood, the broken doorknob held a certain appeal.

  Now What?

  SAM FELT DISGUSTINGLY LIGHT ON his feet as he walked down Third Avenue. He should have been miserable or at least heavyhearted. But he wasn't. His muscles were buzzing with life. The world looked new to him. Clean and fresh and in excellent focus.

  He looked at the shops on either side of the avenue, closed up for the holiday, with their iron safety gates pulled down and locked. It was the kind of sight that had depressed him when he'd first moved to New York. Tonight he liked it.

  He was sorry about Heather. He was sorry for Heather. He genuinely was. She didn't deserve to be treated the way she'd been treated. But nor did she deserve to have a boyfriend who thought so constantly of someone else.

  And now, for the first time in months, he felt free. Free for the moment, anyway.

  Free to be with Gaia, a voice in his mind added.

  Hold up, he ordered that voice. He wasn't sure about anything yet. He wasn't sure what the real status was between him and Heather. He wasn't sure whether Gaia had ever looked at him the way he looked at her.

  Most importantly, Gaia was a major proposition. For him, he knew, she represented a love-of-his-life possibility. He had to be slow. He had to be careful. He had to make sure he didn't somehow get killed in the process.

  He stopped at a red light. His happy legs had covered a lot of ground without him even knowing it. Now where?

  He imagined his dorm room. It would be so lonely tonight. The place would be absolutely deserted. But where else could he go? All his friends were back home or visiting relatives. He imagined his family back in Maryland. His older brother was bringing his new girlfriend home to meet the folks. His parents were sorry that he wasn't there, and now, the way things had turned out, so was he.

  His mind turned to Gaia, as it often did. Where was she spending Thanksgiving? She didn't have parents; that was one of the few things he knew about her. A very sad circumstance on a day like this. Did she like the Nivens, those people she lived with? Was she in their house on Perry Street right now? Was she happy? On some level he knew she wasn't, and that gave him a deep, achy feeling he didn't often feel for another person.

  Why did he care for her like this? How had it happened?

  He saw the lights of an all-night diner burning up ahead. It was one of the few establishments open along the whole avenue. Maybe he'd duck in there. Find himself a copy of The New York Times and while away the evening with a couple of cups of coffee.

  The Key

  THERE IS NO WAY SAM COULD BE here, Gaia told herself for the tenth time. She was certain of it. Sam was the kind of guy who had a loving family and scores of other good backup options for Thanksgiving in case the family thing wasn't happening. In fact, he was probably sharing warm food and feelings with the she-wolf.<
br />
  Still, Gaia felt self-conscious as she stepped into the entrance of the NYU dorm. She was tired of looking like a prostitute in this awful dress. The place was nearly deserted but for the omnipresent security guard at a table a few yards into the lobby. Shit, she'd forgotten about him. He was absorbed in a noisy hockey game playing on the tiny TV perched on the table less than a foot from his eyes.

  The warm air felt so good. If she could just manage to stay in here for a few minutes, maybe she'd be okay. Now that she'd finally slowed her pace, the dizziness was coming back.

  The guard and his TV were in their own little world. Maybe she could just . . .

  "Excuse me? Uh, miss? Can I help you?" Damn. There must have been a time-out in the game or something. The security guard was now staring at her with his full attention.

  "H-Hi. I j-just. Um. My f-f-friend lives here, and he inv-v-vited me over," Gaia said. She was shivering so hard, it was difficult to talk.

  The security guard got a knowing look in his eyes. "Hey, I'm sorry, sweetheart, but we can't have none of that here." He took in her slinky, ripped dress, her heels, what was left of her makeup. "This is a college building, you know? You oughtta get out of here." He kept jingling his keys in one hand. It seemed like a nervous habit. She noticed that the key ring said Mustang and showed the black silhouette of a horse bucking against a blue background.

  "B-B-But I --" Gaia knew there was really no point in arguing. There was no way he was letting her past his table unless she clobbered him, and she simply didn't have the strength. She just wanted to use up a little more time inside. She couldn't face the cold again. What could she talk about with him? The New York Rangers? Cars? Guns?

  "Look, kid, I'm sorry. I really am. You look like hell" -- he shook his head with a mix of sympathy and disgust -- "but you can't stay here."

  Moving Right Along

  SAM TOOK OUT HIS WALLET SOON after he'd sat down at a table to see how much cash he had. He rifled through every compartment. Unfortunately, he had none. He checked the pockets of his jacket. He had no money. Not one red cent.

  He remembered now that he'd given Heather two twenties to buy pies for dessert from an overpriced Upper East Side gourmet shop.

  He flagged down a waiter. "Excuse me, do you take credit cards?"

  The surly waiter fixed him with a look that clearly meant no.

  "Do you know if there's a bank or an ATM around here?" he asked.

  The waiter looked like Sam had burned his house down. "Twenty-theerd," the man replied in a clipped, Eastern European accent.

  "But this is Thirty-first Street," Sam said, wondering why he bothered.

  "Twenty-theerd," the waiter said, louder.

  Sam blew out his breath. "Okay, thanks." He headed toward the door. It looked like he was going to end up in his dorm room after all.

  Moony

  AS SHE LEFT THE DORMITORY, THE cold practically knocked Gaia senseless. She was covered head to toe in goose bumps, only they didn't seem the least bit compelling. Suddenly, a few yards from the building, she stopped. Her eye caught on a logo on the hood of a car parked directly outside the dorm's entrance.

  So she wasn't totally senseless. She walked slowly around the car, studying it for another moment. Then she saw the vanity license plate. RANGERFAN, it read. Oh God. Could it be? Could there actually be a small piece of good luck in all of this blackness?

  Gaia put her hands to her head. She needed to expel the dizziness, to gather her wits and her physical capabilities if she had any left.

  Okay, now. She raised her foot to the side of the hood and shoved it hard. The car rocked violently, and a car alarm blasted through the silent night air. Perfect.

  She ran to the side of the building and backed herself up against the wall, a few feet beyond the front awning.

  Exactly as she'd hoped, the security guard dashed out of the building to check on his precious vehicle. Thank God.

  Gaia found enough speed left in her legs to carry her into the building, undetected. With excitement fizzing in her veins she sprinted into the stairwell and up four flights to the door of Sam's suite.

  She slowed down. Okay, this was starting to bring back some bad memories. Still, it was warm. There was a bed. She had to put her emotions on ice for a while.

  Slowly she opened the door to the common room of the suite, blanking out her mind. Good, it was empty. The door to room B5, with its infamous doorknob, was just ahead. Please be broken still, she begged of the doorknob. She closed her eyes and closed her hand around it at the same time.

  Yes. She let out a breath. It jiggled brokenly in its socket, and she was able to push open the door.

  Icy as her emotions -- and the rest of her -- were, she wasn't prepared for the effect of the smell. The tiny dorm room smelled like Sam. In a good way. In an aching, moony, grab-you-bythe-heart way. The smell intoxicated her. It gave her shivers. Why was it that a smell could evoke a person more powerfully than a million pictures could?

  This, she realized, was what people meant when they talked about chemistry.

  Without thinking, she threw herself on his bed. It was sick, but so delicious. His bed. Where he slept. She imagined him in his boxers, tangled in the sheets. His shoulders, his torso, his stomach, his . . . God, what heady torture.

  She sat up. She had to pull herself together. She was semidemented from bashing her head and from cold and exhaustion. Time to act like a sane person.

  First thing was to get out of this dress. She pulled it over her head in one swift move. She pulled the shoes off her miserable feet and stripped off the tights. She wound up the dress, the shoes, and the tights in a ball and sank them into the wastebasket next to Sam's nightstand.

  Shower. She needed a shower. She wanted a boiling hot shower so bad, she could feel it.

  Aha. There was a towel hanging over the door of Sam's closet. On his bureau were a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. Eureka. She had to hope that this dorm really was as empty as it appeared.

  She cast off her bra and panties, feeling an unfamiliar and lustful pleasure at seeing them strewn about on Sam's bed. She wrapped herself in the towel and set off in search of the bathroom.

  She listened for the sound of the germs, and they led her to a totally filthy and wonderful bathroom off the common room. What could you ask from a bathroom shared by four college students? She didn't care. She loved every microbe.

  She blasted the shower as hot and strong as it would go and climbed in.

  She gathered sex felt pretty good, but she couldn't imagine it felt much better than hot jets of water pounding against her frozen flesh. Ahhhhhhh.

  Suddenly the tiles were starting a slow spin around her. She pressed her palms into her eyeballs. It didn't help. She sat right down on the floor of the shower and let the water beat down on her head. She would wait for the dizziness to pass.

  When her body finally felt warm from the outside in, she got back to her feet and scrubbed her hair and face and body and rinsed for ages. She had to force herself to turn off the water.

  She wrapped herself in Sam's towel and crept back into his room. Now what? Should she sleep naked or should she . . . hmmm. She went over to Sam's bureau and opened the top drawer. Waiting for her there were a soft, clean, ribbed white tank top undershirt and a pair of well-worn cotton boxers in a faded plaid of blues and greens. Yum.

  This night had turned from sheer torment to the most sensual and thrilling experience of her life. She felt a bit like a stalker, but she wasn't doing any harm, was she? She'd put everything back in order before Sam returned. He'd never even guess she was there.

  On the floor at the foot of his bed she suddenly spied his shoes, the scuffed leather, lace-up shoes he'd been wearing the day they played chess. For some reason, the sight of them stole her breath. Though empty, the shoes sat in a pose that was strongly suggestive of Sam -- of exactly how he stood and walked. It was crazy that a pair of uninhabited shoes could carry so much subtle information about him. B
ut they did. They brought him right into the room with her.

  The aching feeling was back in force. She shivered again. An army of goose bumps invaded her arms and legs and back. Almost like fear.

  It was like fear, but it wasn't fear.

  Maybe it was . . . love.

  Dear Gaia,

  I made a decision today, a few hours after you left. I'm going straight -- I'm giving up drugs. Not "one day at a time" or any of that crap. I'm giving it up for good. Right now. When you saw me snorting coke today, I saw myself through your eyes, and I hated what I saw. If I keep going like this, I'm going to die. Yeah, it's that bad. And I don't want to die yet.

  You probably wish I'd just leave you alone. You're wondering why I'm dragging you into my problems. I'm not sure, exactly. I'm not a very reflective person. But for some reason, I really do want to be friends with you. I want to be close. (Don't worry. Not in that way. I'm not a lesbian.) I've made a specialty out of not caring what other people think. But I do care what you think. I want you to think I'm a good person.

  I have this idea about you and me. I have everything -- parents, money, friends, a lot of love. You have nothing. I get so much, and the thing that sucks is, my heart is like a sieve. I want you to have some of what I have. You deserve it, not me.

  That's weird, right? Sorry, it's just how I am.

  So, anyway, I'm kicking the drugs whether I ever see you again or not.

  But I just wanted you to know that wherever you are,however you feel, you always have a friend out there in the world. Not a perfect friend or anything, but one who's trying to do better.

  Mary

  Mary finished the letter and stuck it in an envelope. She'd get a stamp from her mom later. Then she got an idea. She went to her desk drawer, where she'd had a one-pound bag of M&M's ever since Halloween. She dumped the entire contents on her floor and picked out every last one of the red ones. She transferred the letter into a bigger, sturdier envelope and threw in all of the red M&M's to keep it company. She threw in a few green ones, too.