After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

  mystery mail #2

  this one’s a watercolor. perhaps it’s a gargoyle, maybe it’s a mound of stones on the front—it’s really too blurry to tell. lots of varying shades of gray and a streak or swirl or two of blue. on the back, scrawled in pen, near the bottom left corner: you are a stone fox. this is from one of your favorite scenes in the virgin suicides. there is no signature. the postmark’s from chicago.

  unwanted memory #2: first sight

  he caught your eye right as you first walked in, and you couldn’t keep your eyes from sneaking back to try to catch him again: tall-tall-tall and cheetah lean, with skin the color of egypt, heavy black eyebrows and curls (moppy on top, short around the sides and back), and a white white smile that he pulled out like a bouquet from a magician’s sleeve as he greeted each new person in the coat-check line. you had never seen such a boy and your eyes could not stay away from him as you stood behind mom, pretending to admire the—um—ceiling while you waited for tickets, looking behind you where sightseers and art students moved in through the main doors. every time you snuck your glance at him though—every time—his own eyes were just darting away. so you weren’t sly and suggested that mom check her jacket—just a light little tweed thing; it was still summer then—trying to count the number of people ahead of you, to see if he’d call you next. you don’t remember what he was wearing that day but you are picturing him now in the striped gray slim pants and the nubby wool sweater, the art institute badge around his neck, along with his collar and tie done in that way that made him look british instead of preppy. above that the firm hard knob of his adam’s apple (oh that adam’s apple, the sinewed hollows of his neck) worked up and down over what he would say to you the fourth time you came in, after it was clear you were going to have something to check each visit. when it was clear this had become a habit.

  these parties

  have ever only served one purpose: drink to mouth and then mouth to mouth, from the beginning of time. it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are: what city, town, or country. when you are beautiful and young and bored you will flock together like beads of mercury. here conditions are particularly ideal since this town’s host is—at least you’ve heard—no one’s best friend, only a rich kid college dropout party boy who’s still trendy with the teens but too odd for his own kind. so as the weekend turns its lazy corner toward you, the messages get sent and the radar is detected and everyone spends all of friday going who-will-drive-us-what-will-you-wear-is-she-going-what-time-will-you-get-there, and just like in charlotte where everyone was everyone else’s business and there wasn’t anything else for anyone, you are swept up and dressed up and carried away. these-jeans-not-those and definitely not a skirt. that-top-no-this-one because it’s warmer than it looks. ten minutes until willow arrives to pick you up and you almost chicken out—mom’s not asking but you can feel her excitement for you buzzing up the stairs; she’d curl up with you and a movie in a minute though—maybe it’s safer to just stay in. but then even just that idea in your head makes you suddenly a desperate bird in a cage, beating wings to be let out. the doorbell rings and it is time to go. you smile as mom smiles at willow-edgar-dorie just inside the doorway. you are not sure you are (will ever be) one of them but just like always your coward heart wants to make sure she is the only one who doubts.

  ellen explains it all

  leaning against the cool smooth stainless steel of this stranger’s refrigerator—you have not met the infamous host (are unsure even how many people live here, besides the two bong-eyed college kids collecting fives at the front door)—you are sipping only tonic, and are here only because it’s where all your friends are, where everyone seems to be really: even everybody from everywhere else. although you are tired of noting faces, keeping track, paying attention, pretending to listen to these anybodies who will turn into nobodies in a few short months, you are still standing here and you are still watching everyone who comes in. it’s like ellen’s reading your mind then, because she rolls her already-bleary-blond head over to look at you, waving her cup in the general direction of all these nobody/everybodies both here and beyond, explaining, this is what it’s all about, man. we won’t be here much longer. so crush as many people against you as you can. soon they’ll be gone. and we’ll be gone too. but if we experience everybody, maybe somebody will remember. she clinks her cup with yours and gives you a lopsided half-sad grin, and though you feel yourself already becoming a nobody—though she’ll never know (oh how well you know) the people you’ve crushed—this minute she just made you her somebody and you are both glad.

  the surprise

  he comes into the kitchen, and before you’ve even thought twice you’re asking ellen who he is. when she tells you he’s the catcher for seymour high’s nationally ranked baseball team you aren’t the least surprised: he is a pyramid boy with atlas shoulders and merman hips—a boy with muscle to spare. he is a quick boy—moving to one of the coolers under the table, fisting a mouthful of chips—but not a fast one: the ease of him almost too easy, everything about him actually too and easy as you’re looking-not-looking at those glossy curls thick enough to balance grapes, the toothsome smile, the heavy hands that stay shoved in pockets while he talks. only thirty seconds in the room and everyone is moving around him like it is their birthday and he is the cake, even the other guys, the shorter soccer guys, the baseball-capped groupie guys and even those from tennis and track. he is stay-away-from-me handsome, likely all gimme hands and grabby mouth—one of the ones who knows so much and about whom you know lots better. you can spot them coming a mile away like a slowball high and to the right: this one no different with his chisel-chin-chin, except when he turns his eyes toward you its not a slowball but a curve—his soulful eyes a mirror that shows your own solitary reflection.

  hooking up

  not sure what time it is anymore—the room is full of smoke and mirrors but you could navigate it blindfolded, not a flitty bee but a smooth shark who needs no eyes, constantly moving and seeing with the edges of your fingertips, elbows—sensing with your earlobes. you are restless and it is time for something to happen. this one will not do and not this one either, too-tall/too-short/too-loud/too-just-too much leering there in the door frame. there is music you don’t like but don’t pay attention to—it’s all part of the vibration of the current by now, what keeps the kelp swaying and what keeps you camouflaged. twice around the room, one time more (so many rooms, so many rounds, you cannot keep them straight anymore only a curved glass barrier against which you pace). your glass was half-empty and now it’s half-full of something that vaguely tastes like rum. a friendly face you know swims before you, pale pulsing jellyfish aglow against the dark. the pyramid boy with the mirror eyes has disappeared but you are glad—there are simpler fish to shoot in this barrel. his name is josh his name is matt his name is kristopher his name is astrophel—it doesn’t matter you only have to say it once. the smiling is the rest: that tender hooked worm that he will soon snap and swallow whole. there is a cove there is a room there is a corner there is a hallway there is a place you go where it is dark and for a moment—when he doesn’t speak—where it is quiet. it’s there everything will be silenced and stilled and forgotten, only one mouth on the other, one hand in another fist, one body against another body and all the nattering talking remembering thinking parts of your brain dissolved and dismembered in a swirl of salt. there is only the fish brain working now, only the part of you that is octopus. the part that is disappearing now in a cloud of ink.

  Becca

  Sunday Morning Shift

  Bacon-egg-cheese biscuit

  two coffees here is

  your change (seventythreecents). Nadia brings

  Good morning what can I get you?

  another basket of croissants from the back;

  —Yes ma’am here is your bagel the toaster is over

  there, here

  More coffee? Refills are—how much?—

  ninety-eight cen
ts

  plus two muffins equals three

  ninety-one—no four—my feet

  are killing me already

  Good morning what can I get you?

  even in these new shoes. There’s the phone ringing I

  hope someone else can get it

  —slice the bagel—what are the herbal teas again?—

  Here you are, sir.

  Yes whatcanIgetyou?

  Smile hi to Denver grinding another batch of beans;

  Yes thank you six eighty-one please.

  Someone will have to get that man’s

  papers off the table,

  and do I need to brew another batch I forget.

  Good morning what can I get you?; three people add

  themselves to the line—I

  was waking up

  in a tent

  with Alec

  two weeks ago this minute.

  It was cold

  we had a sleeping bag—

  so divebackdownunder warm.

  He was at the Lake House last night

  while I stayed home,

  having to get up at six for this,

  and I wonder

  when we will ever

  wake up together

  again?

  Subservient

  Janayah is actually smiling

  and Denver cracking me up

  each time

  I go in the back.

  No orders mixed up—

  and I’m giving the right change.

  I’m beginning to be used to it—

  beginning to fit,

  when in strides Iris-Casey-Josey-Miette.

  Their eyes say we know you,

  but their nostrils jerk like horses’

  and their lips smirk, we don’t want to.

  Being almost cool here flushes suddenly into being hot

  with embarrassment:

  this stained apron,

  my lank ponytail,

  the empty wallet

  I am hourly trying to fill.

  Their cashmere scarves,

  perfumed bangs,

  the sheaves of cash flicked in manicured hands.

  Skinny mochas, all of them

  —hold the whipped cream—

  and for the first time

  all day

  Janayah has to take over.

  She’s so angry

  she makes me clean the espresso machine,

  but at least the steam hissing

  covers up their high laughs.

  When they’re gone I get the bussing bin,

  and I think of Cinderella:

  even after the glory of the ball she was

  still wiping up after the stepsisters

  —still on her knees

  cleaning up their mess—

  remembering the prince

  and his quiet, handsome charm,

  wondering if he’d already

  forgotten

  about her.

  Covert Operation

  Two minutes stolen Monday

  in the far-left stall of the bathroom—me and my

  forbidden keypad—

  saying simply that I love him,

  risking everything for those words,

  risking confiscation,

  detention to remind him

  that small

  (gigantic) thing.

  Busy Work

  Afternoon of would-be no-work freedom

  with my ankles chained instead

  to scrubbing the bathtub,

  vaccuming the foyer,

  folding sheets and towels,

  putting away each dish.

  My housechores have piled up

  clogging the table—cluttering the floor.

  Mom pulls her weight, nursing at the hospital,

  but she has me to do the cooking,

  and no homework, either.

  The acid unfurls now

  across the back of my brain—

  another afternoon without Alec,

  another assignment in the way.

  Why Poets Don’t Belong in the Marketing Department

  The universe of literary thought

  —and all of poetic genius—

  perches

  on its toenails this afternoon

  clutching

  at its own tunic

  with consternation

  and suspense.

  Rama puffs,

  Sara sighs,

  Caitlyn dutifully

  takes notes

  as the debate of the ages—or at least the hour—

  rages

  through the silence

  of barely-suppressed disdain.

  Three calls for submissions face the judges:

  —Mr. Burland insists, choose today—

  one of Rama’s

  one of Sara’s

  —the best one Charlie’s—

  all not quite right.

  Will the dyslexic cats

  call forth good poetry?

  Or the blacked-in butterflies

  and Yorick skull?

  Is an open coffin

  festooned with roses

  the current equivalent

  of I Want You?

  I wonder what Alec

  would say

  if he were here.

  The ancients suck in their breath—

  they are too stunned

  —we are all stunned—

  by our stupidity

  to even speak.

  On the Seventh Day

  Holy Wednesday again and I am

  supine in the cathedral of Alec’s embrace.

  Peace washes over his

  loosening Adonis face and normally

  I would let my eyes worship

  for an hour

  the pew-straight line of his nose and

  the tender dip—Aphrodite’s fingerprint—

  of his upper lip

  before moving

  fully

  to the praise of his mouth.

  But today I am a child in church

  swinging my feet and squirming,

  glancing at the clock.

  There is dinner, as always, to make for Mom

  but also math homework undone,

  a senior “exit survey” to complete for guidance,

  call for submissions rewrites,

  and a chemistry test

  too close for comfort.

  With work again Friday and

  then on Saturday too

  Sunday will be no day of repose,

  the thought of which makes even this sanctuary

  feel a little like work.

  If God got a day of rest,

  when will I?

  Dramatic Shift

  Face curled into my neck on the carpet, he says

  Where are you? and I say Where I always am:

  here.

  And his strong arms are a band around me,

  holding me in,

  keeping me close.

  No you’re not. You’re—

  And I can’t help it—You think I’m where?—

  And then the arms are gone with the rest of him,

  holding me

  but somewhere else, somewhere I sent him:

  some distant place full of worry and frown.

  I’m right here—my hand on his arm—it’s just

  there’s a lot . . .

  And he really lets go.

  You should probably go, I guess.

  And I should probably go. I have

  too much to do

  to be here now.

  But now I don’t want to.

  No I can stay. You just know how Mom is.

  Dinner, you know.

  And it is too long a pause,

  it is too much space,

  before he says, Yeah. I know.

  I have nothing to say,

  so I reach for my shirt.

  It’s just a phase, comes out of my mouth—

  but th
ey are just some words I read in a magazine,

  some words I don’t believe in,

  words that

  —by the face of him—

  he doesn’t believe either.

  A Few of My Favorite Things

  Adjusting the doughnuts in their tray:

  single file,

  curve to curve,

  holes lined up like a string of pearls.

  Finding that

  the whole milk (or half and half, or skim milk) pitcher

  is almost empty

  and filling it

  before anyone

  knows it’s needed.

  Pulling down

  out-of-date flyers

  —tacked up by anyone—

  from the congested bulletin board.

  Walking in for my shift

  after school,

  Nadia

  —all black spikes and dimply smile—

  behind the counter, chirping,

  Well what took you so long? and in general

  being able to focus

  on something else

  for a change.

  Thursday Night Latrine Duty

  Someone has

  spewed

  in the women’s bathroom—it is alloveritisreally a

  mess

  and Nadia needs me to clean it up; I say sure I have

  four more tables to clear and then—.

  Alec is

  at the movies with Quinn-Blake-Steve and we

  haven’t texted in hours.

  Maybe he is glad