When Katie Met Cassidy

by Camille Perri

  “I like your little setup here.” Cassidy slid her fingers along the edge of the wooden box. “It’s like a bento box, but with writing materials instead of sushi. Is that an embossing stamp?”

  “My mother gave me the box when I moved to New York.” Katie slammed its lid shut and latched it. “The stationery is my Christmas gift every year.”

  “Your mom gives you the paper she wants you to write her letters on?” Cassidy cracked a smile.

  “Uh-huh,” Katie said.

  “And I thought my mother was controlling.”

  “Watch it.” Katie held up her pen like a knife. “Or I’ll stab you with my quill.”

  Cassidy nodded at the folded letter Katie still had in her other hand. “Can I read it?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Come on.” Cassidy tried to snatch the letter from Katie’s fingers.

  “Quit it.” Katie took a step back. “I’m not kidding around. This is private. This is a private correspondence between mother and daughter.”

  Cassidy took another swipe at the letter. “That only interests me more.”

  Katie had no choice but to run the letter into her bedroom. She shoved it into her nightstand drawer and then stood in front of it. “Stay back,” she said. “And stop being a dick.”

  “Who are you calling a dick?” Cassidy tugged Katie down onto her bed, pretended to go in for a kiss, and then dove for the nightstand drawer.

  Katie tried to tackle and subdue her, to take Cassidy down with a linebacker blitz, but she was too late, and Cassidy was too quick.

  “Whoa. Hold on!” Cassidy pulled something from the drawer, but it wasn’t Katie’s letter to her mother. “Is this the Boss Lady?”

  Katie threw herself onto Cassidy again, this time trying to swipe the hot-pink vibrator out of Cassidy’s grasp. “How do you know her name?”

  “We’ve met before.” Cassidy allowed herself to finally be taken down by Katie. She pulled her in closer by the waistband of her jeans.

  “I am so mad at you right now.” Katie pinned Cassidy’s wrists to the bed.

  “I should be the one who’s mad. You’ve been holding out on me,” Cassidy said with a smirk. “We can have some fun with this.”

  * * *

  After they had their fun, Katie wrapped her arms around Cassidy’s bare torso. “I needed that,” she said.

  Cassidy kissed her on top of her head. “Me too.”

  “Work today sucked,” Katie said. “And tomorrow’s going to suck worse.”

  Katie was getting accustomed to this—the cuss words that came flying out of her mouth after sex, the rapid-fire jokes and questions, all the ways her postorgasmic euphoria, instead of quieting her, made her giggly and wired.

  She was glad she’d been careless enough to leave the bottle of bourbon from her and Cassidy’s last bedroom romp in place, because now all she had to do to refill their glasses was reach over to her nightstand. While doing this, she deliberated on whether she should tell Cassidy about her run-in with Gina and Becky at the food festival. Katie was still angry about it. She’d walked away from them feeling offended in a way that was new and unexplainable to her.

  People who barely knew Katie made assumptions about her all the time. It came with the territory of being tall and thin with blond hair and blue eyes—not that she was complaining. Though she longed for the day when a man, a coworker, or opposing counsel across a boardroom table didn’t automatically assume she wasn’t as smart as they were, or that she had gotten where she was because of her looks or some manipulative use of sex.

  Maybe Katie was paranoid, maybe they weren’t always thinking those things, but she was pretty sure they were.

  This, though, was new. Could she honestly be offended by anyone assuming she was straight? Did she really want to read as gay?

  “I had a pretty good day,” Cassidy said. “In fact, I have a surprise.”

  “Did you get put on the Credit Suisse deal?” Katie handed Cassidy her glass. “Tell me they chose you over that walking penis you work with, what’s his name, Hamlet? Hampus?”

  “His name is Hamlin,” Cassidy said. “Like in ‘The Pied Piper.’ And no one’s been put on Credit Suisse yet.”

  “Who was Hamlin in ‘The Pied Piper’?”

  “Hamelin was the town. He was the Pied Piper of Hamelin.”

  “Why do you know that?”

  “I prosecuted him in mock trial. I argued that he intentionally put the children of Hamelin in harm’s way when he lured them from their homes with his magic pipe. Now, do you want to know the surprise or not?”

  “I do.” Katie sipped her drink. “Please proceed.”

  “Thank you.” Cassidy straightened her posture. “And perhaps you want to brush up on your medieval folklore. I got us tickets to the opera for this weekend. It’s a gala, actually. It starts with a cocktail reception, followed by a new production of Romeo and Juliet, and then dinner and dancing— What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Katie felt her buoyancy sink like a dense chunk of coal.

  “You hate the opera.”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you making that face?”

  “I am making no face.” Katie forced an overly chipper smile.

  “Is Romeo and Juliet not your thing?” Cassidy said. “Too schmaltzy? Were you hoping I was going to say it was a production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin?”

  “Shit. Okay.” Katie gave up on trying to appear less crestfallen. “The opera makes me think of Paul Michael. That’s where we went on our first date.”

  “Oh. Forget it then.” Cassidy made a poor attempt to mask her disappointment with nonchalance. “I’ll just give the tickets away.”

  “No,” Katie said. “You must have gone to such trouble.”

  “Not really. I just thought it would be fun to get dressed up and do something fancy, but we can just stay in bed all weekend and order takeout if you want.”

  Katie thought for a moment. She knew the right answer was not more takeout in bed, and if she was being honest, this onset of opera phobia wasn’t just about Paul Michael. It was about her fear of the unknown. What would it be like to go somewhere so proper and public with Cassidy? On a real date out in the real world of regular people. But the look on Cassidy’s face told Katie just how much she wanted this. The longer Katie hesitated, the more she could feel the disappointment drumming off Cassidy, and she just couldn’t bear it.

  “I’m being silly.” Katie downed the last of her bourbon. “It’ll be fun. We should go. I want to go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Katie did her best to sound as sure as she knew Cassidy wanted her to be. “Positive,” she said. “How fancy is it? Do I wear a gown?”

  “It’s black tie.”

  “So what will you wear?” Katie asked.

  “A black tie,” Cassidy said.

  “Right. Okay.” Katie reached for the bottle on her nightstand and refilled her drink again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Cassidy adjusted her bow tie and stepped back to admire her reflection in the mirror. She looked damn good in a tuxedo. Maybe not a purple paisley one like Gerard had threatened to make for her, but this classic two-button with notched lapels did her right.

  Of course stepping into the world wearing a tuxedo also brought its own problems. Any event that called for formalwear was, by definition, marked by adherence to strictly proscribed forms. In such a setting a female body in a tuxedo—a tuxedo without a plunging neckline or cropped bottoms paired with stiletto heels, but a proper men’s tux—confused the hell out of people. Sometimes it made them angry, as if Cassidy were trying to trick them, like she had some nefarious intention other than just wanting to feel comfortable in her clothes. But as far as Cassidy was concerned it was worth the trouble.

  She unbuttoned, then rebu
ttoned, her jacket, adjusted her shirt collar.

  For the most part, people meant no harm, just as she meant no harm, and she never held innocent people’s bewilderment against them. Getting called “sir” was no more or less correct than getting called “ma’am” or “miss.” None felt exactly right, so it was all the same to Cassidy.

  Still, even after all these years of digging in her heels, of refusing to bend to the senseless conventions of the straight world, sometimes it was just plain hard. The last time Cassidy had worn this tux was when her firm bought a charity table at an Audubon Society fund-raiser. It was a stuffy night of lawyer small talk and mingling with bird lovers that culminated in Cassidy’s getting stopped in the vestibule of the women’s bathroom by a confused attendant. Normally when this happened a simple smile coupled with warm eye contact and a gentle, nonthreatening “It’s okay,” remedied the situation—but on that night it failed. And of course who came out from one of the stalls in the midst of the escalating spectacle but Cassidy’s most senior female partner, drawing all sorts of unnecessary attention, crooning, “What’s going on here? This is a woman. I can vouch for her.”

  Just the memory of it gave Cassidy the sweats, but none of that needed to be on her mind tonight.

  Tonight was going to be special, and Cassidy couldn’t get to Lincoln Center fast enough. She flicked a few specks of lint from her jacket sleeve and out the door she went.

  Their meeting spot was the fountain in front of the Opera House. Watching it do its watery thing, Cassidy wondered how many other young lovers had set this as their rendezvous point in the past fifty years. How many pennies had been tossed into this falling water and wishes made? There were no coins in Cassidy’s formalwear pockets, only paper bills and credit cards bound by a silver money clip—what might the whole stack be worth in wishes if she just plunked it in, clip and all, as an offering?

  Cassidy checked her watch, scratched at the back of her head. She was becoming antsy, uncharacteristically anxious and fearful that Katie might not show. Then she spotted Katie coming toward her in a ruffled evening gown with beading that refracted the plaza lights.

  Cassidy could barely conceive of her good fortune watching Katie make her way through the crowd, that this was who she was waiting for.

  “Hi, handsome,” Katie said.

  “Hello, beautiful.” She kissed Katie on the cheek, then took another look at her. “Your dress . . .”

  “Do you like the color? The salesgirl called it—”

  “Rose quartz,” Cassidy said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  They crossed the promenade and entered the theater. Cassidy took a chance and reached for Katie’s hand. Katie startled at first, like she might pull away, but didn’t.

  Just inside, a butler in tails greeted them with a tray of champagne flutes, and Cassidy took one for each of them.

  It was almost more than Cassidy’s senses could take in, the regal red carpet, the swirling white staircases, chandeliers like diamond fireworks exploding overhead.

  In the corner a string quartet played Canon in D, a sadly romantic song that reminded Cassidy of every wedding ceremony she’d ever been to. Katie stopped to watch the musicians from across the floor, their bows moving in perfect harmony across their instruments.

  “This is nice,” Katie said. “I’m glad we’re doing this.”

  “It’s not too weird for you?”

  “Not now that we’re here reclaiming it as our own.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Cassidy raised her flute and held it there. She found herself striving to verbalize something, to somehow mark this moment. “You know, Katie,” she began, “these past few weeks have been— I feel so—”

  “You don’t even have to say it.” Katie sipped her champagne. “I know, it’s been crazy.”

  “But I want to say it.” Cassidy forced herself to look Katie directly in the eyes. “This is so not like me, but . . .”

  Katie’s eyes, Cassidy realized, were fixed somewhere over her shoulder.

  “Oh shit,” Katie said.

  A woman’s voice behind Cassidy called out, “Katie, what a surprise. How lovely to see you.”

  “Lillian, Lincoln, hello.” Katie’s face curled into a tight smile. “Oh my goodness, you’re all here.”

  Cassidy stepped aside and turned to see a stiff-necked foursome approaching.

  Lincoln and Lillian, whose names she recognized from Katie’s stories, and just behind them, a string bean of a guy in horn-rimmed glasses who quickly dropped the hand of the panic-stricken blonde at his side. Paul Michael and Amy—it had to be.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Paul Michael bumped Cassidy’s elbow with his when he stepped past her to give Katie a peck on the cheek, and he didn’t say excuse me.

  Cassidy immediately despised him. His severe haircut and weak chin. His boring black suit with black necktie with black shirt that he obviously thought made him look chic but actually made him resemble a nerdy mortician even more than he already did. The man was a straight and narrow line—a flat line in the way of a life expiring on a table.

  This was the dude Katie had spent five years with? Who had her heart in his pale, scrawny hand and discarded it? To be with that girl? Amy was so routinely pretty, so complacently average. She didn’t contain a shard of Katie’s magic.

  “You look great,” Paul Michael said to Katie, while plain-Jane Amy looked down at her plain-Jane shoes. “But this is the last place I ever expected to see you. Who are you here with?”

  Cassidy steeled herself. Here it was, the moment of truth. She took a breath and stepped forward, but Katie swiveled away from her.

  “I’m here with a date,” Katie said. “But he had to step outside to take a call.”

  Cassidy nearly tripped on her own feet.

  “He’s a doctor,” Katie continued. “So when his phone rings . . .”

  “A doctor,” Lillian said. “And here we were worried about how you were holding up.”

  They all laughed, so Katie laughed, but defensively, shamefully.

  Cassidy could see it all of a sudden—who Katie was when she was with them. How she strove for their approval. How she submerged her accent and all her spunk, and straightened her posture to match the rigidity of theirs. Even her voice sounded different, cloying in its sweetness, overly eager to please.

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” Katie said to Lillian. “I’m doing great. In fact, I couldn’t be better.”

  Cassidy took a step forward, and another, and another. Her legs were moving on their own, to rescue her by carrying her out of earshot, but she could still hear Katie gushing niceties for Paul Michael’s benefit.

  Cassidy abandoned her champagne flute on a butler’s tray and continued taking steps until she was back outside, where if Katie’s pretend doctor date was taking an important call, she may have encountered him. She walked straight past the plaza fountain with all its motherfucking pennies and wishes, to the curb.

  She held up her arm to hail a cab.

  “Cassidy, wait!” Katie jogged toward her, holding her floor-length gown up to her knees.

  Cassidy waved with more vigor for a taxi.

  “That was horrible of me, I know.” Katie caught her by her nonhailing arm. “I’m sorry.”

  Cassidy shook her off. “You can’t apologize for what you just did.”

  “I panicked! That was like the worst thing that could have happened. That was every single person I’ve been avoiding for weeks ambushing me all at once. You have to understand what that was like for me.”

  “You want me to understand? You made me invisible, Katie. Because you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true,” Cassidy said. “And I don’t need your shame.”


  “Look, I fucked up, okay?” Katie’s voice, back to its normal register, cracked with emotion. “But you can’t just leave.”

  This was where Katie was mistaken. Cassidy could always just leave.

  A cab pulled up to the side of the curb, and Cassidy opened the door. “Whatever this was between us, Katie, it just ended.”

  She got in the cab, slammed the door closed, and told the driver to drive.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Katie watched Cassidy’s cab drive away, then walked in the same direction down Broadway, dirtying her gown’s bottom on the filthy sidewalk.

  She stopped at Columbus Circle and took a seat on the stone steps beneath the infamous colonizer’s statue. All around her couples flirted and kissed and snapped selfies—men, women, young, old, multicultured, multigendered city dwellers and tourists of all stripes. Katie’s heartbreak seemed to magnify the way this stone circle could have passed for some jungle watering hole where even the most hunted creatures could gather without fear of being eaten.

  If only she and Cassidy had come here to sit, instead of heading into that man-eat-man gala where the vicious predators of Katie’s past life lurked and pounced.

  Fuck the fucking opera.

  She shouldn’t have pretended to not be there with Cassidy—Katie knew that. She also shouldn’t have been sitting here now. She should have forced herself into Cassidy’s taxi, tried harder to apologize, made promises to do better. That’s what you do when you really don’t want a person to leave you.

  But Cassidy was right; Katie had pretended to not be at the opera with Cassidy because she was ashamed to be seen at the opera with Cassidy. The split-second decision to tell the truth or lie to Paul Michael and her former friends was decided automatically, by instinct alone. She lied to sidestep the humiliation of their faces rearranging at the sight of Cassidy in her tuxedo, how their initial confusion would have turned to shock, then slightly more amused shock. Then what?

  A skateboarder zipped past Katie, missing her toes by mere inches. He jumped his board up against the stair’s edge, then promptly fell on his ass at Katie’s feet. Unfazed, he bounced up and chased after his board to try the trick again.