by Gae Polisner
“Uh, no, none for me, thanks,” I say. “We ate at Nathan’s earlier. If I’d known Uncle Matt was getting that, I’d have snuck him a hot dog.” Karina waves a spoon at me. “By the way, this is Karina,” I say to the girl, “and this—this is my friend.”
Some girl I found wearing wings.
Hillary. Haley. Hannah.
Some girl I’m crazy for.
I shake the thought and walk to the tray, peering in through the pink plastic wrap. Karina says, “No touching until you taste the food.” She carries the bowl of pineappled chicken back to the table. “Sit, then,” she says.
“No, thanks,” I say again, but the girl sits next to Uncle Matt and starts asking him questions about his morning.
As he answers her in slow motion, Karina spoons chicken salad onto her plate. When she stops, the girl takes a bite and says, “Oh, man, this is delicious. You should try some, Kyle.”
I shake my head and walk to the bathroom to wash up, the whole time thinking how doomed I am.
Seriously, doomed.
Because I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with her.
ACHTUNG BABY
I take a leak, then, instead of returning to the kitchen, I go to my bedroom and lie down. Suddenly, I’m beyond tired and can’t keep my eyes open.
I let them close and let the morning wash over me, Karina’s voice drifting in now and again through my half-open door. The girl laughs at whatever she’s saying. I think of her laughing at my Sven story on the subway, her hand in mine. Then, down at the shore, disappearing under the waves. The way she buried her head in my chest when she came out, let me wrap my arms around her. And how her wet hair still smelled of vanilla through the salt water. The look on her face when Madame Yvette said that thing about her deep and terrible tragedy, one that happened around the very same time as Uncle Matt’s accident.
“What a shame, eh?” Karina’s voice drifts in again, “Terrorists. Who ever hears of such a thing? We never had terrorists in my country, not when I was a girl. Only here, now, in America. In this world. Zwariowałeś.” There’s a pause, then the girl coughs, and her chair scrapes, and I hear her footsteps move down the hall.
The bathroom door closes and the shower runs.
Karina continues, “Strugać wariata. Crazy idiots. The world has gone mad. Come, finish eating, Mr. Donohue. We need you strong and out of this chair.”
* * *
There’s a knock, and I bolt upright.
I’ve been asleep. I have no idea what time it is.
I glance out the window. Still light, at least. The girl stands at my bedroom door.
Nathan’s. Coney Island. Karina.
Has Karina gone home already?
I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and say, “Sorry. I fell asleep. Come in.” She steps tentatively in, her hands behind her back.
Is Dad home yet?
How long was I sleeping?
My eyes go to the window again. Definitely still daylight. It’s not like me to nap. Everything feels off. I’m so tired. I miss things being normal like they were.
The girl walks over and sits on the edge of my bed, pulls her hands out, and presents two powdered sugar–covered cookies shaped like bow ties.
“Chrusciki,” she says, struggling to pronounce the word. “Karina said to bring you some. Flour, eggs, sugar, and brandy,” she pauses before adding, “Angel wings, she called them.”
“Brandy,” I say, trying not to react to the name of them. “What if I get drunk?”
The girl laughs, and I take one and wolf it down before doing the same with the second. “Oh man, are there more?”
“So good, right?” she says. She’s fresh and cleaned up, back in my plaid pajama pants and bare feet—and, now I notice, she has found herself a clean T-shirt. This one is from the Joshua Tree tour. “Hope you don’t mind. I put a load of laundry in and took this from the clean basket. My stuff was gross, and Karina thought it would be okay.”
“Yeah, of course it is.” My brain goes to the washer, to the faded ID in my desk drawer, and I imagine bits of white paper winking at her from inside the drum. Then my dumb guy brain skips from that to what’s on, or not on, underneath my plaid pajama pants, presuming what little she owns is now inside the washer.
Either way, if she stays here much longer, we’re really going to need to get her some new clothes.
“What time is it?” I ask, trying to refocus my thoughts.
“Five.”
“Is my dad home?”
“No. But your mom called.”
“She did?”
“Yes. But Karina talked to her,” she says, hearing my concern. “That was before she went home.” I raise my eyebrows, and she adds, “Your mom said to tell you they’re working on flights, and that she’ll call again later. She thinks they might be able to get out tomorrow.”
“Where’s Uncle Matt?”
“Karina put him in his room for a rest, said she worked him hard today and tired him out good. Oh, and she said she’ll be back tomorrow.”
I nod, still feeling fuzzy about it all.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asks. “Am I bothering you? Do you want me to leave so you can rest?”
“No!” I say, too quickly, overeager. “I mean, I’m okay, and no, you’re not bothering me. At all. You’re the opposite of bothering me.”
I look away, embarrased, then get up and move to the window, overwhelmed by it all. Overcome by the constant, growing need I feel to pull her close to me and kiss her.
I need to kiss her really, really bad.
I walk to my desk, grab a box of mints, slip one in, and chew.
“You planning something?” she asks.
“What? No!” My eyes dart to hers, and she smiles, and so now I’m wondering if she’s thinking what I’m thinking, if she wants the same thing I do. “I mean, not exactly…”
“Kyle…?”
“Yes…” I look at her there on my bed, and my brain is yelling things at me, things I can’t stop anymore and, more than that, it’s reminding me that I may not have too much time left with the girl.
How can I like her so much?
(How can I love her?)
I sit down, leaving sufficient room between us, but reach out and take her hand.
“You snore,” she says, finally.
“I do?”
“Yes. A little. Not bad.”
She shifts forward, lets go of my hand, and lies back, folding her arms up behind her head. The front of my T-shirt rides up, exposing the soft, flat middle of her stomach. Close enough for me to touch. To lean down and sweep my lips over.
I don’t.
I don’t want to do the wrong thing.
From where she lies, she nods up at the Achtung Baby poster from U2’s UK concert, but I can’t take my eyes off her skin. “You like them a lot, then, huh?”
“U2? Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Who else? What else?” she says. “I’m making a mental list so I can remember.” She gives me a smug, playful smile, which fills me.
“Not sure. A lot of artists. Different bands.”
“You’re truly a great conversationalist,” she says.
I laugh, because she’s funny, but also because I can’t think of words, because all I can think of is what I’m about to do.
And then I do it. I can’t help it anymore. I lean down and put my lips over hers. Her mouth parts gently to mine. And, right or wrong, I don’t care. We’re kissing because I have to.
For a while we just kiss, and everything else falls away, and it occurs to me that, in the middle of one of the worst things that has ever happened to me, is now also one of the best things.
He kisses me softly,
softly,
softly,
then harder, but in a
good way.
Insistent. As if he means it.
He kisses me like I am here,
and he is here,
like he never wants me to go.
&
nbsp; And as we kiss, I spin.
I spin and I spin and I spin.
I’m a jewel-box ballerina,
and he is the music
that’s winding me.
I stop, move my face away, and say, “I have to tell you something, have to make sure you know.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“I get that I don’t know you well. I mean, not really, or completely, or maybe at all. But I feel like I do. I feel like I know you more than I should. And I like you. I like you so much more than I’ll ever know how to show.”
I press my lips back to his,
and we kiss some more,
and I spin.
His hands slide around,
slip up under my shirt on my back,
then down around to my sides, to my
bare stomach.
“Can I?”
He crawls on top of me,
his body pressed to mine through our clothes.
And still, I ache
to be
closer.
“I think I love you,” he whispers, then slips his tongue around mine.
The spinning stops, and
I float,
a raft, adrift in the water.
His hands, his words:
the anchor
that holds me here.
I press back, sit up.
Her cheek is damp. She’s crying.
I start to ask, but she shakes her head and promises me she’s okay.
“They’re not sad tears,” she says, but I move off her anyway.
I roll to her side, afraid to do too much, or to hurt her, and we lie like that, both of us breathing, her fingers intertwined with mine.
“Are you sure?” I ask again.
“Yes.”
She squeezes my hand tighter.
CONVERSATION
The sky outside my window shifts to dusk.
As much as I don’t want to, I figure we need to move from here, stop kissing, get up.
I could stay here like this with her forever, but I should probably check on Uncle Matt.
The girl sits up, too.
“So, you never told me,” she says, “besides U2, who else do you like?”
I pull out my desk chair and straddle it, facing her. Her brown eyes gaze at me, their amber flecks reminding me of those gemstones you only see sparkle in the right light from a certain angle.
They make me want to go back and kiss her more.
“Okay, let’s see,” I say, forcing myself to manage a conversation. “I like a lot of different music. Like, I appreciate older stuff, rock, mostly. The Beatles, Santana, The Who. And U2, obviously. Their new album is great, though, so they sort of count as old and new. But I like new-new stuff, too, like Radiohead, or Jamiroquai.”
“Who?”
I laugh. “Jamiroquai. They’re from London, ethnic funk, sort of. They won a Grammy a few years ago. My friend Marcus turned me on to them.” I pop another mint.
“Sing something of theirs for me so I know.”
“Not a chance.”
“Well, something else, then. A U2 song. Please? Just play it. I bet you’re good.”
“What do you mean?”
She nods at the corner of my room, behind my desk, where my untouched Guild sits, gathering dust in its case. It’s probably badly out of tune.
“That’s a guitar, right? So you must play. So, play something for me. I bet you sing, too.” I give her a look now like she really is crazy. “Come on, Kyle, please? I really want you to.”
She’s not wrong. I used to play in a band. We seriously sucked, and I haven’t played much at all since the beginning of last year. I quit after I got tired of Dad and Uncle Paul giving me shit. Even though Uncle Matt said I shouldn’t take it so personally.
“My dad wasn’t a huge fan of me wasting time on music,” I say. “So I haven’t played much in the last year. I guess I mess around once in a while on my own, when no one is around to listen…” I shut up mid-sentence, because she’s walking across my room to the case. She slides it out, removes my Guild, and places it in my lap.
“Here you go. You know you want to,” she says.
“I’m not singing, but I’ll play…” I can’t say no to her, no way. Not with the way she’s looking at me.
I pull a CD from the stack on my desk and put it in the player. “I’ll play you this,” I say holding up the case. “It’s from their new album.”
“‘Mysterious Ways’?” she asks.
I look at her funny, because the song she has named is from, like, ten years ago. “No. It’s brand-new. ‘Beautiful Day.’ From the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Ring a bell?”
She shrugs, so I turn up the volume and wait for the music to start. And then, before I can change my mind, or worry my guitar is out of tune, or care that I’ll make a fool of myself because I probably suck for real now, I play. Only a few chords at first, while Bono’s plaintive voice sings about skies falling and not letting the beautiful day get away. But without realizing it, after the first verse, I’m singing along, because how can you not when it’s U2?
When the song ends, I sit there quiet and a little embarrassed, but she walks over, wraps her arms around me, and says, “Thank you. I’ll never forget that, Kyle.”
MISSING PERSONS
Dad comes home late looking like crap. Worse than yesterday times ten.
I don’t hear him at first, don’t realize he’s standing there watching me.
I’m in the guest room, getting Uncle Matt ready for the night, struggling to get his pajama pants on, to move him back into his chair. When I finish and turn around, the look on Dad’s face nearly makes me break down in tears. It’s a look I rarely see. A look that says I’m doing something right for a change.
“Well, I see you’ve got that down to a science,” he says. “I’m really impressed with you, son.”
“Thanks, but not exactly,” I say, flipping the footrests up, moving Uncle Matt’s feet where they belong.
“Don’t leh him … fool … you, Tom,” Uncle Matt says. “I dih all … the … work.”
The man who stands in the hallway looks a lot like Kyle.
I watch him through Kerri’s half-open door.
They have the same face,
the same red-blond hair,
although his father is
larger.
But when he turns, I see the difference.
There is something harsh in the father’s face.
Kyle’s eyes are kinder and
more vulnerable.
I introduce Dad to the girl, feeling weird that he hasn’t yet met her.
“How are you doing, hon?” He stands at Kerri’s door and holds his hand out. “You been cooped up in this purple room?”
She shakes it awkwardly. “No, not at all. Thank you so much for letting me stay here.”
He looks her over in my T-shirt and pajama pants and takes in how pretty she is, I’m sure. I’m not sure what else he sees, but I can tell his detective brain is working, the way he’s scoping out things. The wings hang on the chair. I wonder if he’ll comment on them. Then again, he may not realize they’re not Kerri’s.
I never did tell him about the wings.
I’m worried he’s about to give her the third degree, but all he says is, “Oh, the hospitality part is all Kyle. And, to be honest, probably not the best protocol. But we’re all making exceptions this week. We’ll have to bring you in sometime soon, though. Someone out there must be very worried about you.”
I shoot him a look, anxious for him to be careful what he says, to be vague so he doesn’t upset her. “Meanwhile, if there’s anything you think of that you want to tell me, please do. Then we can work on getting you back home.”
“Okay, thank you.” She shifts uncomfortably. “I will.”
In the hallway, I ask him, “So, are you home for the night, or do you have to go back down?” He shoots me a look, and I don’t blame him. The question com
es out way more hopeful than I intended. Of course, I don’t want him to have to go back down. But I know better than to try to fix it. I’ll only dig myself in deeper.
“I should,” he says. “But the president is coming tomorrow, so I have to be cleaned up and back at the crack of dawn. So I’m going to shower and get some shut-eye here. Plus, I have to make a few calls. Reach your mother. Don’t know if you heard, but they closed Kennedy and LaGuardia airports again. Sounds like they’ll reopen tomorrow, though, and your poor mother is anxious to get home. I’m hoping we can get them on a flight by Saturday. Maybe late tomorrow, if we’re lucky. Then again, God knows what security will be like to deal with.”
He walks down the hall toward his bedroom, and I follow, my mind racing. Tomorrow is Friday already. I want my mom and sister to come home, and I know the girl can’t stay here indefinitely, but I don’t want her to leave so soon. I only just met her. Besides, where will she go? How can everything feel so different in a few short days?
“Did you hear anything at the Pier?” I ask, standing at his bedroom door. He strips off his pants and his socks.
“Nothing. No. But it’s hard without a name. There wasn’t a shred of identification on her? It would sure help a lot if there was.”
“Not that I saw,” I answer too quickly. He gives me a funny look, but I’ve waited too long. No way I can tell him about the ID now. Besides, I’ve looked at what’s left of it ten times in the past two days. There’s not much to make out, so it’s not like the lie is so bad.
Still, I feel guilty, so I’m worried I might give myself away.
He pulls his shirt off over his head and stands there in his underwear. “Man, I stink,” he says. “You gonna keep watching me? If so, there’s a girl in the house. You may want to close that door.”
* * *
After he showers, Dad wheels Uncle Matt into the living room and turns on the news.
The black box for Flight 93 has been found.
The White House has declared that the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden.
All NFL and Major League Baseball games have been called off through the weekend.
And President Bush has announced that tomorrow will be a National Day of Prayer and Rememberance.
