by Andrea Speed
I took it to the dining area—much safer to people-watch there. I chose a small table in the corner, my back to the wall. A group of Indian engineers came in for lunch, arguing about something technical while they waited in line, their exotically familiar accents carrying easily across the room, a trio of soccer moms sat down and fed organic crackers to their cranky toddlers and gossiped about who spent the most on their Christmas party, and a quartet of guys walked out through the dining area wearing holey jeans and ratty canvas Converse All-Stars, a rainbow of neon colors in their short, spiked hair, each carrying a foot-long sub sandwich and a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. They were all photographs, studies of one portion of society, or of their own creativity. But still slightly boring.
I almost left before she even came in, but for some reason I lingered over the crumbs of my cake and the dregs of my cappuccino. I hadn’t believed in fate any more than pairing up before then, but something kept me in that chair.
I saw her as I got up to leave, holding a bottle of berry-flavored tea in one many-ringed hand and chewing on her pinkie fingernail. She stood at the bakery counter, trying to decide between a cinnamon roll and a muffin. Eventually, she used the time-tested “eeny-meeny-miney-mo” method. At first I thought she might’ve been a boy, which still would’ve been cool but in a different way. Anyone wearing a black hoodie sweatshirt with that sign safety-pinned to the back over black jeans and heavy black boots had to be cool, but a girl… I had to know her. The sign was a square of black fabric with lettering in white Olde English script, each word capitalized with a flourish, like you’d expect the first letter of every chapter in a first-edition Dickens novel to look. The solitary sentence read: It’s Not Our Fault Your Children Masturbate.
She chose the cinnamon roll, and even though she wasn’t a tiny little person (from my vantage point behind a line of people waiting for their lunch orders, she looked taller than me) it was so big it didn’t fit in her palm. The icing glistened under the store’s fluorescent lights, like her lips. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but as I watched her pay for her food and sit at the table in the exact center of the dining area, I realized I was going to stay. I got an organic soda and sat at the counter. With a newspaper open in front of me, I felt free to savor every detail of her. Her hair, the yellow of a yellow crayon, fell like a fountain around her head, perfectly chin-length, framing her angelic face. She wore just enough black eye makeup without going overboard, and her silver bangle bracelets and rings caught the light as she brought bites of cinnamon roll to her pink lips. It wasn’t easy to keep from staring at her. She ate her roll with a knife and fork and as far as I could tell didn’t leave one crumb, even on the napkin she used as a plate. She wasn’t what you’d call classically beautiful, but she had a magnetic attitude that shouted, yes, you want to know me; yes, you’d be lucky to know me.
And I did want to know her. I also thought I could fall for her, so I wasn’t sure if I should talk to her. Too scary, the thought of chasing such a cool and confident girl. Failure, royally crashing and burning, was my norm where girls were concerned. I did want to know what kind of underwear she wore, what color sheets she slept on, and if it’s true that you know a real blonde when you see one intimately. The chances of any of that happening were nonexistent. Twice while she was eating she looked up, coincidentally right at me, but I kept my head down like I was absorbed in the sports section and everything was cool. I hung around while she ate her cinnamon roll, and when she left I followed her.
Out on the street, it was easy to stay close without getting caught. I didn’t want her to think I was a stalker or anything. I kept my distance, watching the back of her head, hypnotized by the heavy swing of her hair, so I didn’t notice where she was going until she went into the green entrance of Powell’s City of Books. I thought I’d have a joygasm when she stopped to browse in the sci-fi section, but I managed to maintain my composure and settled in to browse there too. How was I going to get up the nerve to talk to her, a goddess, a goth, sci-fi, masturbating goddess?
I’m not worthy.
I’d started to talk myself into leaving when a girl came up and gave her a hug. She called my goddess Nay.
Renee? Is her name Renee?
They talked awhile, about their weekend plans and the books they were both looking for. Nay was looking for The Song of the Earth by Hugh Nissenson! Kyle and I are the only ones I know of who’ve even heard of it, let alone read it, despite the fact that it’s a phenomenal book. In a little while, her friend left, and I slowly browsed my way closer to her. She spent a long time looking at every book in the N section, so it was like she was waiting for me. Finally, I had to either make my move or pass her. I passed her.
Without thinking about it, I turned back and smiled. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
At first I didn’t think she heard me, but slowly she turned her whole body to face me. “Why did you stalk me from the deli?”
It felt very hot in the sci-fi section all of a sudden. “Because I want to know you.”
She raised her eyebrows and grinned.
“You seem like an intriguing person.”
She kept grinning at me, her perfect yellow eyebrows raised. I felt like a bird in a cage, the door open and a cat’s grinning face in front of me. Before I could say or think anything else, she grabbed my shoulders and shoved me back against the stacks. She pressed her thigh between mine. Everything about her seemed larger this close.
“You want to know me naked, you mean.” Her knee caressed my inner thigh, higher and higher, and stopped just short of hurting my balls.
“Um, if you want… or not, I mean, sure….” I was shaking and sweating by then, so turned on everything else disappeared. She pressed her body against mine, full length and hard. One of her hands slid between us and squeezed me through my jeans and that ’gasm I’d avoided earlier had its way with me. Somehow I didn’t end up on the floor, and that’s a real mystery. When I opened my eyes, barely an exhale separated the tips of our noses. She was even hotter when she glowered.
“Asshole, don’t stalk. It’s not sexy, even if you are cute,” she hissed, her cinnamon breath caressing my lips. When her knee moved back up the inside of my thigh, I didn’t think anything of it until it connected, a little too hard, right where I was feeling so good. My on/off switch.
WHEN THE world wasn’t made of pain anymore and I could open my eyes, I found myself slumped on the floor with my back against the stacks. A guy dressed in a strange combination of thrift-store, preppy, and a Powell’s name badge stood over me. “You okay?” He was grinning.
After three tries I could say “Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to leave. You can’t stalk people here. It’s against store policy.”
“But she….” I slid up a little straighter, carefully. It still hurt to move. I kept waiting for the pain to fade, but it didn’t seem like that would happen anytime soon. “What she did is okay?”
He crossed his arms, frowned down at me, and slowly shook his head, “tsk-tsking” like my mom would.
“Dude, they’re equal, but that doesn’t mean we can treat ’em any way we want. You gotta be more subtle.”
If the abasement I felt right then had somehow become physically manifest, it would’ve filled all four floors of my favorite Portland building. I squeezed it out the green entrance with me and left the store.
SO, YOU can imagine how I felt the first day of my photography class when I walked in and saw her brother sitting in the exact center of the room, fooling around with the settings on an amazing camera. The guy had the same angelic profile, all the way down to the pretty pink lips. Maybe a twin? But even twins wouldn’t look that much alike. He tilted his head to get a closer look at… something… and slipped his pinkie into his mouth just like— That wasn’t her brother.
I chose the seat closest to the door, in case any part of her—him?—was still angry with any part of me, and tried to forget she was there by looking through some of my pho
tos. I came across one from that day, and it seemed like a good time to study it. I’d been walking on NW Ninth, a few blocks from Powell’s. The focal point of the shot was a particularly striking architectural feature that I couldn’t remember the name of with the scent of vanilla filling the room. That was what I thought I’d taken the picture of, but the crowd on the street was the cool part. In late morning, around ten or ten thirty, you don’t get many suits in street photos—more like army surplus, thrift store, and post-modern art—much more interesting, especially with the camera focused above the people so they look dreamy and surreal. I made a mental note to go back with color film, to catch a different feeling than you get with black and white, and then the person sitting in front of me dropped a pen. I looked up, and it was her. Him? Nay? Renee?
After what seemed like a year or so, her smile turned into a grin. She winked and turned back around in her seat. I didn’t say a word. Smooth.
It wasn’t easy, but I listened to almost everything that instructor said as he explained the syllabus so carefully a third grader could’ve followed it.
When the instructor called roll, stumbling over most of the names, she answered to Nash. The voice was the same; it wiggled around in my shorts like an animal trying to keep warm—but without the makeup and jewelry and crayon-yellow hair….
I’d been looking forward to the class for weeks—no, months—but by the end of the first hour, I seriously considered dropping it. I’d probably fail anyway if Nay, or Nash, or whoever they were, insisted on sitting right in front of me all quarter. No matter how hard I tried to ignore her, I kept thinking I could smell her perfume, or shampoo, or whatever that delicious vanilla smell was that drifted around her and commanded my attention, beckoning my mind to settle on her and not wander.
What the hell?
I was first out the door after class. Watching the toes of my boots move across the floor toward the café, I tried to think of something practical, like my assignment for algebra, and I wasn’t doing too badly. Until someone bumped into my shoulder. I looked up and there she was, Nay, matching my stride and smiling.
“That was a great photograph you were looking at before class. Is it one of yours?”
“Uh, yeah.” My next steps were off balance, and I hoped she didn’t notice. I was afraid I’d step on her foot, or she’d think I was on something.
“Cool. Can I see the rest? I mean, if you don’t have another class right now.”
“No, I don’t.” Her smile made that animal in my shorts very warm. It was like she really wanted to see my photos. “Listen, about the other day… I didn’t mean—”
“Let’s go get some lunch and you can show me the rest of your photographs.” Nay winked and picked up her pace.
I followed her into the café. We didn’t talk at all while we grabbed sandwiches from the cooler, and then drinks and chips. I followed her to a table in the corner. She sat with her back to the wall.
“Soooo… Nash?”
“That’s what my parents call me.” She made a dismissive gesture with one hand and then quickly looked around to see if anyone noticed.
“They don’t get to decide what your name is?”
“No, my new little friend. They do not.” The wink that followed turned my guts to mush. Even without eyeliner, those eyes….
“So, um, what should I call you?”
She unwrapped her sandwich. My appetite was afraid to miss a word, so it had gone quiet.
“What do you want to call me, Jordan Pond?”
I ripped open my bag of chips and stuffed a few into my mouth. They tasted like fear. How did my name sound so different when she said it? It almost sounded cool.
“So, Jordan, what’s a blue-eyed blond such as yourself doing in community college?”
We ate in silence for a few minutes while I studied her up close. I tried to concentrate on the fat content of the chips and will my skin not to break out, but it was hopeless. All I wanted to think about was her. Obviously the crayon-yellow hair was a wig, because the hair framing the heart-shaped face across from me was curly and brown. With red highlights.
“I didn’t mean that in a racial way.”
“Huh?”
For the first time she sounded, I don’t know—unsure? Nervous? Ha! Like I knew this person at all.
“The blue-eyed blond crack. I meant it in a cute way—not a ‘you’re white so you could do better’ way.”
“Oh. Okay.” I cleared the lump from my throat and took a second to search her face for something that didn’t look Caucasian. Maybe the shape of her eyes? “I want to be an architect, but have to do my first two years here.”
“Ah. An architect. That’s pretty serious.”
“Why’re you here?”
She sighed and ran the fingers of her left hand through the short curls on the side of her head. I considered doing a little silent pronoun-updating but let the thought fizzle without actually doing it.
“My parents are too squeamish to let me go to school with their friends’ kids, now that—you know, now that they know—but won’t fork over the cash for even one year at a private school unless I make certain concessions.”
“Whoa.”
“I know, right? TMI. But I figure I owe you for, you know, hurting you like that.” She blushed a pretty pink. “Renee is what you can call me. If you want. Or Nay. Here at school, probably Nay would be better.”
My sandwich finally looked good again, so we ate our lunches and compared schedules. We’d both done the AP track in high school, so even though she didn’t have a diploma, we had some of the same classes. Different sections of the same classes, though, because that’s just how things go in my world.
We finished lunch and tossed the trash, and I tried to think of a smooth way to suggest hanging out later. I didn’t have another class, but the idea of studying while she sat in biology appealed to me. Outside the café she said something about making a pit stop, and it sounded like she used someone else’s voice. Only for a single sentence, but I was stunned silent as I followed her into the men’s room.
She ducked into a stall, I stood at a urinal, and we met at the sinks. As I washed my hands, she caught my eye in the mirror. “So, you thought I was only a girl?”
“Um, yeah.”
She grinned. It was one of those we have a secret grins. “Sure you did.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Mr. Vocabulary’s reduced to common speech by the queer.” She smirked. Or maybe that was a grimace.
“Please elaborate.” The water stopped, so I punched the button to turn it back on.
She laughed. “Okay, cutie. If you thought I was only a girl, why didn’t you just say hi?”
“Um, because pretty girls don’t usually appreciate that.”
“What? Being treated like humans?”
“By me.”
“The pretty girls you know must be blind. Or they’re mean.” Nay blushed and looked down into the sink for a few seconds. “You think I’m pretty.”
I should’ve been blushing like mad, but nope, I looked her right in the eyes and nodded. The water in both sinks stopped, like exclamation points for the sentence I hadn’t said yet. “With your, um, yellow wig and makeup and jewelry… yeah.”
She grinned and turned to the hand dryer. For a few seconds the room filled with the romantic melody of a leaf blower. When she pulled her ringless hands away and it stopped, the only sound was someone’s ragged breathing. It got louder when she came toward me. Water dripped from my fingers and onto the toes of my boots, but I couldn’t move. She rested her hand on my chest and leaned forward—if I leaned forward too, our noses would touch.
“I think you think I’m pretty right now too.”
Nash stepped closer, so close I felt his chest move as he breathed. A puff of air tickled my nose, and the way his eyes changed sucked the air from my lungs, from the whole room. Not the smoothest move I’ve ever made—but nobody’s ever accused me of bei
ng particularly smooth—I gulped a few mouthfuls of air and hoped I wouldn’t pass out.
Part of my mind was in control of my lips, parting them and hoping, but the larger part was in control of my feet, and they fled. That part of my brain also shook my head and made a horrible sound. I think it was the word no. My feet took over, and I zipped down the hallway and burst through the door. I walked right past the bus shelter. And then past the free campus shuttle stop. My feet kept going until I was sweating and shaking and well and truly lost.
IT SHOULD’VE happened sooner, but I’ve always been better at math and science than knowing how to be around people. It wasn’t until I made it home that I realized how big an asshole I really was. Being scared was no excuse, and if I thought I’d been scared in the men’s room, I reached a new level when I realized I couldn’t call Nay—Nash, Nay—and throw myself on her mercy and apologize about a million times for being such a douchecanoe. Because I was so into how pretty she is, I couldn’t remember a last name.
I spent every possible moment on campus—for days—but since I also couldn’t remember the details of her schedule, it didn’t surprise me when I failed to see her. That was about the longest week of my life, but at least I had photography class to look forward to. Afterward, I’d apologize and say what I should’ve said, and… well, she’d probably tell me to go fuck myself. Which I deserved, but maybe I’d feel like less of a jerk? Which I did not deserve but still hoped for.
ONLY SHE wasn’t in class. That was the fuck you I deserved.
The class only ran two hours, but we still got a break after one. As I waited for my turn at the vending machine, mentally kicking my own ass, which had become my new favorite hobby, a familiar curly head disappeared into the men’s room. My feet had wised-up over the past week, because I ran down the hall and slid to a stop on the other side of that door—face-to-face with the person I’d been hoping to see all week.
