by Lori L. Otto
“Oh, I know good times,” she says, teasing me.
I smirk at her briefly as I merge onto the Hudson Parkway. “You know what I mean.”
“Is this The Aurange Peace?” she asks me.
“You know them?”
“I know a few songs. I don’t have any of their music, though.”
“A poet with none of their music? That’s surprising. Their lyrics are very expressive and symbolic. I actually dissected one of their songs for an English class my senior year in high school.”
“It puts me in a desolate place,” she says. “I have to limit my time with albums like this. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
“Oh,” I say, immediately turning off the stereo in my car.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“The last thing I want to do is make that stunning smile of yours go away.” As we slowly make our way north, my nervous swallow is audible in the silent car.
“Hey!” Ninety-percent sure she’s going to point out the color of my face, I turn to look out the driver’s side window. “We’re driving past Washington Heights, aren’t we?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How do I make my music play through your speakers?”
Dividing my time between the road and the controls on my dash, I set it up for her to pair her phone with my car. “Just turn on your Bluetooth and find my Range Rover.”
“You don’t hate musicals, do you?”
“If you turn on Cats, I’m jumping out of the car and you’re on your own,” I tell her as a joke, already knowing the musical she’s about to play. It’s one of my favorites.
“You don’t like Cats, huh?” she says, laughing.
“Not in most senses of the word. I like lions and tigers. That’s about it.”
“Well, it’s not Cats.”
“Then we both get to live to see another day. Let Usnavi do his thing,” I tell her, referring to the main character of the musical.
“You know In the Heights?” God, that smile is like the sun after a week of cloudy skies. The most welcome sight. The warmest aura.
“I’m a writer in New York. Any writer in New York who doesn’t know Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work by heart can’t call himself a bona fide writer. He created Hamilton, for Christ’s sake. It’s the greatest piece of work to come out of our country, like… ever.”
“That might be a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Okay, maybe, but not by much. It’s touched millions of lives. Not many pieces of art can actually be accessible to so many facets and factions of our country. Rich, poor, black, white, north, south, young, old… it made history fascinating to people who were never before even remotely interested in our founding fathers. The world turned upside down,” I say, quoting a line from one of the songs of the Hamilton musical. “That’s what he did. The man’s a genius.”
“I like him, too.” She concentrates on her phone until I hear the woodblock intro to the first song of In the Heights. “I was Carla last year in our high school production.”
“Really? That’s cool.”
“The role called for a pretty, ditzy girl.”
“And now the ditzy girl goes to Columbia. You should have played Nina,” I tell her, referring to the main character who was a student at Stanford. “And wasn’t Vanessa, like, the hottest girl in the barrio? You could have been her, too. Not flirting. Just saying.”
“I don’t dance well enough to play Vanessa. And I wasn’t ethnic enough for the part of Nina.”
“Newsflash, Goldilocks, you’re not ethnic at all.” She laughs, twirling her braid between her fingers. “Have you ever done a family tree, Miss Fitzsimmons?”
“Yes.”
“And how many non-European ancestors are on that tree?”
“None.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Hey, but I spoke better Spanish than any of the other actresses in the musical.”
“Yeah?”
“Sí.”
“Did you guys actually say coño when you performed it?” She smacks my arm. “Don’t hit the driver,” I caution her, but still smile. “It’s a legitimate question. I’ve always wondered.”
“We almost did. Our theater teacher hadn’t bothered to check the meaning of that until the last minute. She was mortified when she found out what it meant.”
“I bet.”
“Still, our Daniela let it slip on our final performance. I’m not sure it wasn’t on purpose.”
“Not much you can do then. Which character did you want to play?” I ask her.
“Nina’s the most like me,” she answers, “but I’m glad I didn’t play her. The guy who played Benny was my ex-boyfriend. So was Graffiti Pete.”
“Oh, wow.” I still don’t like to think of Coley dating other guys, but I guess that’s not very fair–or realistic. Any guy would be crazy to not want to date her. I steal a glance, admiring her beauty before shaking away the thoughts I absolutely shouldn’t be having. What the hell? Remember Zaina? What were we even talking about?
“Usnavi was an incredible douchebag,” she says.
“Usnavi’s such a nice guy!” I argue, returning to the safety of our conversation.
“No, the actor who played him. Thankfully, he was a really good actor and and was able to pull off all of Usnavi’s self-deprecating nuances. He is such a sweet character.”
“I’d love to see a video of you–I mean, of the performance,” I tell her. “I’ve never actually seen it live. I’ve only heard the soundtrack.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You’ll see me with red hair.”
“You dyed your hair?”
“They made me, so I’d look less Aryan. It was temporary hair dye, though. They wanted me to wear brown contacts, too, but I convinced them to let me wear sunglasses for most of the show instead.”
“I can’t wait to see it.”
We swim in the Olympic-sized pool with another student for about twenty minutes before he decides to call it a night, leaving us alone for our workouts.
“Want some music?” Coley asks.
“Sure. Anything you like,” I tell her, knowing I won’t be concentrating much on my surroundings while I’m swimming. I subtly watch her leave the pool, her figure flawless in her one-piece swimsuit. She gets out a small speaker from her bag and plugs it into her phone. As she finds something to listen to, I continue a few breaststroke laps, pushing hard now that my muscles are warmed up. After going end-to-end three times, I decide to focus on my backstroke, setting the timer on my stopwatch before I begin.
I concentrate on my form and put forth all the strength I have, but I’m not happy with my time after one lap.
“Your hips aren’t rotating enough!” I look around, surprised to find Coley on the three-meter springboard.
“What are you doing over there?”
“I was going to practice my diving.”
“You didn’t tell me you dive.”
“You didn’t ask!” And all of a sudden, she vaults into a reverse two-and-a-half somersault off the board, diving into the water with perfect structure and hardly any splash at all. I swim to the median that separates the lap pool from the diving pool and wait for her to emerge from the water.
She’s grinning when she sees me. “That was a medal-winning-caliber dive.”
“Nah,” she says.
“That dive will get you on the team! Who cares if all you can do is doggie paddle. Nobody here can dive like that.”
“I had a bad day at tryouts,” she admits, swimming toward me. “I was just having a bad day overall.”
“Wow. Well if any coach could have seen that, they would probably sign you up on the spot.”
“We’re not here for me,” she says. “We’re here for you. You’re not rotating your hips enough.”
“So you say.”
“Are you stiff?” I don’t answer her question, giving her time to catch the double entendre. She splashes me with water from her pool when she does. “You
idiot.”
“Well, don’t ask me questions like that.”
“Get out of the pool and stretch. Or is that something you’re too stiff to do at the moment?”
“You wish,” I taunt her, pushing myself up.
“Whatever,” she says, laughing as she gets out of the pool, too. “Just touch your toes, side-to-side,” she instructs as she does the exercise with me. “It’ll loosen you up.”
“I feel like I’m in P.E. class.”
“Back to basics, boss. What kind of workouts do you typically do?”
“Running, weights, swimming, done.”
“You should do yoga or Pilates. It’s good for flexibility.”
I keep touching my toes as I try to ward off the thoughts of Coley and her flexibility, but I can’t seem to get them out of my head. I should not be thinking about her like this. We’re here to swim. We’re here as friends. We’re all alone in this complex, and she’s already hinted at the things she can do with her body with that spectacular dive. You have to have excellent muscle control and stamina to be able to do that.
“Well, now you’re a little stiff,” she says. Immediately, I dive into the pool to hide the evidence and my embarrassment.
“It’s not what it looked like,” I say when I come up from underwater, halfway across the pool.
“I know,” she says, being generously merciful of my inability to hide my attraction to her. She knows I can’t be. She knows I can’t do this. “Go ahead and try the backstroke again.”
The breaststroke’s best for now. A few laps later, after I’ve recovered, I flip over and continue practicing. She jumps in the pool with me and tries to keep up, but she’s not as fast. I stop when I reach the south end of the pool.
“Now I think it’s your shoulders,” she tells me. “Your right one, specifically. It’s not coming out of the water like the left one is.”
“Really?”
“Really. May I?” she asks, reaching for my upper arm.
“Go ahead.” With her fingers pressed flat against my muscle, she pushes against my bicep, then moves toward my shoulder muscle, and then onto my upper back. “Here’s your culprit. Does that hurt?”
“No,” I tell her.
“Well, you’re really tight. There’s a knot right there–“
“Shit! Ouch!” I pull away from her after she plows her knuckles into a sensitive spot.
“You said it didn’t hurt!”
“Well that did.” I reach around and rub the muscle, feeling the tender spot for myself.
“You need a massage. I guarantee that’s what’s holding you back. It’s probably affecting your range of motion and you don’t even realize it.”
“Coach did tell me to see the trainer.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think that was the problem… Obviously. Plus, it’s weird getting massages from strangers, you know?”
“You think it’s a sexual thing?”
“It’s an intimate thing,” I correct her. She nods, but I can tell from the look on her face she doesn’t agree with me.
“Do they have a sauna here?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go. Heat may work instead. You can do some light stretching. I’ll help you.”
I lift a brow at her suggestion. To the best bad thing I can do…
“Surely you don’t mind keeping your speedo on in there,” she says. “If I’m offering to help.”
“Oh, no, of course. It’s a small sacrifice to make.”
We gather our things and head back toward the locker rooms, both of us coming to a standstill where they split between men and women. I hold my finger up, silently requesting her to wait while I check out the men’s area.
“Is anyone in here?” I yell as I walk inside and look around. The only sound I hear is the dripping of a leaky shower head. I look inside the sauna to make sure it’s unoccupied, too. “Nobody?” Still no answer.
I walk back to the entrance and hold the door for her.
“What’s the punishment if I get caught in here?” she asks without hesitating a step.
“I’m sure I’ll get some sort of disciplinary action.”
“Just lie and tell them I got lost.”
“I don’t lie well. I’ll just tell them I needed help. It’s true. This is completely innocent.”
“That it is,” she says as she wraps a yellow towel around her body. All the other towels in the room are blue.
“Did you bring that from your dorm?”
“I went into the girls’ locker room. I don’t want gross boy towels.”
“They’re all washed in the same place.”
“In my mind, it’s different.”
I smile at her and follow her into the dark, steamy room, waiting for her to take a seat first. After she sits down, I find a place on the bench across from her, about as far away from her as I can be.
“Am I that scary?”
My only response is a sigh. Well, I blush, too, but I don’t think she can tell since my face is already red from the heat. I’m afraid I’m giving too much away–secrets I have no intention of telling her or anyone else.
“So take your elbow like this,” she says, demonstrating with her own arms, “and pull back gently until you feel it in that spot.”
“I feel it,” I tell her quickly, wincing.
“Just hold it. Don’t strain it. Go easy.”
I do as she says, but press against the knot again. “I don’t think this is really helping.”
“Can I… approach the bench?”
“Sure,” I tell her, holding my breath.
“Do you mind if I feel it again?”
“Go ahead.” Looking in the opposite direction, I tighten the towel around my waist. She gradually presses her fingertips into my upper back, careful not to focus too intensely on that one area. She massages the area around it, too, so the sensation of her hand on my skin is spread across a wider surface rather than directly on the tender knot.
“Is that okay?”
“It feels really good. Thank you,” I say, still short of breath and feeling monumentally guilty. The silence in the room makes me even more uncomfortable. “So you dive and sing,” I say. “Two things I didn’t know about you.”
“Yes. And this is making you very nervous,” she comments.
“Yeah.”
“You’re getting more tense, not less. You need to relax.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“This isn’t intimate or sexual,” she says. “This is me trying to get you on your coach’s good side. I’m helping you with homework. No, it’s not our normal editing session, but it’s the same thing.”
“My girlfriend wouldn’t agree with that.”
“Do you have to tell her?”
“I think so,” I say. “I think she deserves to know.”
“Do you tell her about when we edit together, or discuss articles?”
“Well, no, but… c’mon, laureate, this is not the same thing.” I wring my hands together. Every time I call her that nickname, I feel like it’s screaming to her that I like her. It just slipped off my tongue.
“Trey. Relax. Let’s talk about something else.”
She puts her left hand on my other shoulder and kneads it, making her point that I am getting more tense by the minute. With my head down, I try to think of things to get my mind off of my guilt.
“So, this room has some great acoustics. Why don’t you sing me your favorite part of In the Heights?”
“Carla didn’t have many good parts.”
“It doesn’t have to be Carla. Pick Nina or Vanessa.”
“My favorite part wasn’t by them, either.”
“Okay. Anyone.”
“Don’t laugh,” she says.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I can’t sing, so I respect you more for being able to.”
I can feel her breath on my ear before I hear her. “I’m not gonna sing.”
&nbs
p; Goose bumps break out all over my skin. That didn’t help at all.
She clears her throat, and just before I can question her decision not to sing, she stands up in front of me and breaks out in a rap about the social injustices in Washington Heights that was a part of one of the musical’s best known songs. Just as the rhymes came out of nowhere in the show–the shining moment for a younger character who didn’t seem to have such insight–I’m thrown by Coley’s performance. But she’s spot-on and committed and completely entertaining.
When she’s finished, I have one comment for her: “You are so cute.” My chest tightens as our eyes lock. The line followed the rap in the musical, but it’s exactly how I feel about her in the moment, too. “That’s what Vanessa says,” I say softly.
“I know.”
I break away from her gaze and bite my lip, looking down at the floor. “The response to your stories is something else,” I tell her, thinking this has to be a safe topic. “Asher told me your articles get more and more hits every day on the site. I think people like the format.”
“Good, because it’s a lot of work.” She sits back down next to me and tentatively places her hand on my back again.
“Tell me about it,” I tell her, laughing. “I never thought my editing assignments would involve coming up with rhymes. But it’s fun. It’s expanding my vocabulary.”
“You don’t hate it? Sometimes I think it annoys you.”
“It doesn’t annoy me. It’s challenging. Sometimes it’s frustrating. But it feels good to finish one, and I’m always proud to see them in print. Proud of you; a little amazed at what you can do.”
“Don’t act like you get nothing out of it,” she says, still massaging my sore shoulder. “Don’t forget you’re being graded by proxy.”
“I guess I am. I’ll happily mooch off your talent.”
“You have your own. The ability to make people feel–it’s a gift. And it’s rare to see it in news journalism. You make it seem artistic.”
“I’m doing better this year. Now that I know that’s what Aslon wants.”
“But your whole blog is about emoting with the people you’ve met. You didn’t do that last year on The Wit?”
“No. I thought it should be dry. Factual. I was following rules. But Aslon told me to stop doing that. I’m very good with rules. I find it very difficult to break them.”
