The Kissing List

by Stephanie Reents

  An old organ starts to play the processional off-key in an atmospheric way, and I glide down the aisle as though I have practiced walking in a long gown that I bought from Second Time Around to compensate for my natural clumsiness, until I remember that I am the one who writes the multiple-choice questions, and I know the right answers, and there is only one.

  I wish I could admit to students that guessing still involves a risk, dumb luck, pretty good odds of being in the wrong place at the right time.

  “Shit,” Arnold said the last time I talked to him on webcam. “I almost stepped on a camel spider last night. If I’d gone to the can just a few minutes earlier …”

  He must have recognized the look on my face, the same one I wore the time we saw a rattlesnake in the foothills above Boise. Don’t believe a word of what you read about camel spiders, he told me. “First of all, they’re not technically spiders, they’re solpugids.”

  I thought, Maybe Arnold will go back to school and study entomology when he gets out of the Marines. Maybe he will be able to explain how slugs sneak into houses. Maybe he will show me a way to live with them peacefully.

  “And they don’t eat camels’ stomachs, and they can’t run thirty miles per hour. Yeah, they’re scary as hell, but they’re only six inches long. I don’t know how they doctor those photos so they wind up looking as big as a man’s thigh bone.”

  Despite the delay, which made everything Arnold said and did look jerky, I thought, There is my brother. There he is, even though he is halfway around the world fighting a war, and I said, “What happens if they bite you?”

  He laughed. “Hurts like a bitch, but you can’t die from them.”

  And I laughed too. “That’s a relief,” I said. “That’s one less thing to worry about.” And then, after talking some more, we said good-bye. I meant to ask him whether it’s hard to tell the difference between a scorpion and a camel spider, between a car of confused civilians that fails to slow at a roadside checkpoint and a car that is racing to get as close as possible before exploding. I wanted him to tell me about some secret military strategy more effective than process of elimination, something surer than an educated guess that I could pass on to students in Ohio and West Virginia so that they would never not ace a test, so that every one of them would live happily ever after. But I didn’t get the chance.

  My plan is simple: kiss Peter’s ball as a means of bonking Hayley. After you kiss in croquet, you may whack the other player or take an extra stroke. I want to hit Hayley deep into the heart of the blueberry bushes so that her mallet turns blue from chipping at her ball among the ripe berries.

  “Bamarama,” I say, rattling the ice in my mint julep. “Take that, you playboy.”

  “Shit,” Peter says, stretching out the word like a piece of saltwater taffy. “I guess I’m a goner.”

  I move my ball a mallet’s length from his.

  “What?” Peter says. “I’m off the hook, Sylvie?”

  I aim for Hayley, and my ball smacks hers.

  “You brute,” she says as her ball goes spinning into the bushes.

  I know it’s cruel to go after Hayley, but I’ve been annoyed with her since the drive up from New York to Alex’s parents’ summer house in Maine. “I have to pee, I have to pee, I have to pee,” she chanted at regular intervals, and Alex dutifully pulled over, which makes sense, I suppose, since he has the hots for her, even though she has a boyfriend named Geoff, a reclusive sculptor who’s also a weekend race car driver. Alex is Peter’s best friend, and Peter is my boyfriend. Hayley, as the y in her name suggests, is the kind of woman who always has to be the center of attention. I have this theory that the Western world is populated by two kinds of women: small women with big hair, and average to big women with all kinds of hair. Small women with big hair aren’t necessarily small, but they have some quality that makes them childlike, like little-girl women. Women like this exist in a state of grace; the world still extends to them, everything for their pleasure. Even though Hayley has closely cropped blonde hair, she’s clearly one of them.

  “Don’t be a sourpussy,” Alex says before he takes his turn. “It’s all fun and games until someone’s whites get dirty.”

  “I give up,” Hayley says.

  “Don’t,” Alex says. “Just move your ball to the edge of the bushes.”

  “Yeah,” Peter chimes in.

  I look at Peter but fail to establish eye contact with him through the mosquito netting that’s wrapped around the baseball cap he’s wearing. We’ve all donned these contraptions to keep away the bugs. All Peter told me about Hayley before the trip was that she was supersmart, even though she didn’t go to college. This is code for cool in the language spoken by Peter and Alex, who get turned on by women who read Hegel, not as well as they do, but well enough.

  “Those aren’t the rules.” My voice sounds shrill. “You have to hit from wherever you find yourself.”

  “Fine,” Hayley says, suddenly turning away from us and walking toward the bushes. “I can play by whatever rules.”

  “It’s just a fucking game, Sylvie,” Peter says. “We’re not setting organizational policy. We’re on vacation.”

  In the shadows of the blueberry bushes, Hayley misangles her mallet, and her ball barely moves.

  “Can I just quit?” Hayley whines, but Alex is by her side, telling her she can take a do-over: “Croquet rule #256 states that ball must progress or regress by at least six inches, and if, whereby it fails, the stymied gent or lady must shoot again.” He looks at me. “Agreed, Sylvie?”

  “Of course.” I feel myself soften a little toward Hayley.

  “Have you some advice?” Alex asks Peter.

  “Do you mind if I show you how?” Peter asks Hayley.

  “I need all the help I can get,” she says.

  Peter is a master of croquet, not because he plays much, but because he is a ruthless competitor in all sports that involve using an intermediary device to hit balls. His specialty is tennis, but he can also hold his own in badminton and pool. If there were an Olympics of social games, including bridge and hearts and perhaps backgammon and debate, Peter would clean up. He hates to lose. When I once reminded him that social means sociable, he growled, “What’s the point?” Then he hitched his fingers through my belt loops and yanked me toward him. “I eventually won you, didn’t I?” This is true, though it didn’t take much. I was pretty lost in something I still can’t quite explain when Peter persuaded me to go out on a real date with him. “Since kissing doesn’t seem to count as intent to get serious in your book,” he said, “you’ve forced me to go old school: dinner and a movie?”

  Now, I watch as Peter stands behind Hayley and wraps his arms around her so that they’re standing parallel, aiming toward the ocean and the second wicket. Peter shuffles in his flip-flops, moving into position, and Hayley’s clogs answer. Then he pulls back her arms, like he’s setting the pendulum of a grandfather clock into motion, and the heavy ball darts through the kelly green grass like a small, furtive animal running for cover and rolls right on-target toward the wicket. A nickel-size dimple appears in Hayley’s cheek. And Peter’s face is stamped with a clown’s grin so silly I can feel his jaw ache.

  The cottage has five bedrooms, and Peter and I retreat into one at the far end of the second floor. There are mouse droppings in the box of Kleenex next to the bed. Naked under the cumulus cloud of goose down, we begin to fight.

  “So,” I say.

  “So?”

  “What was that all about?”

  “What?” Peter answers.

  “You know. During croquet.”

  “I was helping her,” he says. “Why are you like this, Sylvie?” Peter opens a book the size of a cinder block on the history of New York.

  “I can’t believe you like people like her.”

  “Why?”

  “Her whole Marxist critique of higher education? Her family’s hardly the proletariat. How do you think she can afford to work for a photogra
pher?”

  “So?”

  “She didn’t go to college because she hated school.”

  “She’s interesting.”

  “Give me a break. She’s insipid. Were you listening to the conversation on the way up?” I slump against my pillow.

  “Which one?”

  “Where she said she hated high school, but sixty-seven of her classmates have friended her on Facebook.”

  “So what? I’m friends with people I don’t even remember.” Peter pretends for a moment to get engrossed in a page of his tome, which annoys me.

  “She contradicts herself constantly, and she doesn’t seem the least bit aware of it. She told me that until six months ago she didn’t own any shoes besides combat boots. Then she started wearing clogs and Converse low tops. It was as if she experienced some profound breakthrough when she realized she could wear clogs. I wanted to shake her and say, You’re twenty-six. You can wear any kind of shoes you want. How does Alex know her, anyway?”

  “They met in Costa Rica last summer.”

  “And he’s hoping for something to happen?”

  “He’d be thrilled. I’d be too.”

  “I’m sure you would.” I press the palm of my hand against my chin.

  “Don’t start. You know that’s not what I mean. Kiss?” he asks.

  Even though I know I should tamp down my ugly feelings, I feel them wriggling like worms in a container of fishing bait. In the past year, I’ve only added one new name to my list: Peter’s. “Gonna get married?” Laurie teases when we chat over the phone. She has moved back home. “Gonna have babies?” I’m twenty-eight, a socially appropriate age for settling down. I love Peter, but being with someone means being with yourself in a way that’s harder than when you are on your own.

  “I have a tattoo,” I say illogically. “Why doesn’t mine count for anything?”

  My tattoo is small—just the call numbers for Clarissa inked in neat penmanship across the lower left side of my back. I got it on a whim in Oxford when literature still felt urgent to me. The first time Peter peeled back my black wool tights, I gave him the sexy one-line summary: “It’s about a coquette who’s ruined by a rake.” Peter laughed: “You’re the thinking man’s bombshell.”

  Now Peter answers, “Of course yours counts. But it’s different. It’s an allusion to a book, for Christ’s sake.”

  “So butterflies are better?”

  “Not better,” he says, “just different. Stop being so competitive.”

  I don’t move. “I don’t understand how you can like someone like her and like me, too.”

  “I can like her, but like you differently,” Peter says. “I can think she’s wonderful and still love you.”

  I turn away.

  “All right, then,” Peter says. “No kiss.”

  But I turn back, and we begin kissing. We come up from the covers, and I straddle Peter, and we start to have sex. His face comes unmasked, and I notice the things that are pure Peter: how half of his left eyebrow has been rubbed away by worry, and how above the other is a small scar he got from jumping off the shed in his backyard when he was a child. His fine blond hair sticks up. All of this, and especially his expression—which is always stunned when we first come together—reminds me of a little boy. I press my hand against Peter’s neck, gently at first, then I gradually clamp it harder between my thumb and index finger. I can feel his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows. Peter likes this; he likes it when I take control. He’s told me it’s a turn-on, which is why I do it. Usually I loosen my grip after a few seconds, sit back on my heels, forget about how Peter looks unmasked, and concentrate on how we feel together. But tonight I don’t.

  Peter rasps; his expression changes. He looks at me as though I’m a stranger. I shift my weight and move my other hand to Peter’s neck, my thumbs pressing in on both sides of his voice box. The flesh yields, but not the bones. His tongue comes out of his mouth, the narrow tip of it touches his top lip, and his eyes close. And then suddenly they open, both at the same time, and he says, “Stop it, Sylvie. You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, reducing the pressure, turning my fingers into something light and without intention, like birds’ feathers. “You should have said something.”

  Peter pushes himself up on his elbows until he’s sitting. He grabs my shoulders and presses me backward to the bed, and we keep having sex until he comes. Then he rolls off and faces the windows away from me, and I know that it’s over.

  It’s so quiet and still when Peter speaks, his voice is like an object that trips you in a dark room.

  “Why did you do that?” he demands.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Good night.”

  “Kiss?”

  Peter doesn’t move. His back is still turned to me.

  “Backs can’t kiss, can they? All right, lipless back, no kiss. I get the picture.”

  The next morning, Hayley announces that she’s going to fix blueberry pancakes for everyone.

  “Frowns or smiles?” she quizzes, sashaying around the enormous oak table and touching each one of us on the head with an orange-handled spatula.

  “Confounded,” Peter answers.

  “You mean confused?” Alex asks.

  “No, more like bewildered,” Peter says.

  “What’s the difference?” I ask.

  “They’re completely different,” Peter replies. “Confused is more straightforward—like directions are confusing. Confounded is more like confused beyond comprehension.”

  “Do you know that for a fact,” Alex asks, “or should we check the OED?”

  Hayley looks from Peter to Alex. Her hair’s pulled back from her forehead with a pink band, and she’s wearing a long apron that says, “If you want your dinner, kiss the cook.”

  “You guys,” she says, staring straight at me, “sound like you woke up on the anal side of the bed.”

  Only after hearing the second half of the sentence do I realize she’s not addressing me. Instead, her look is inviting me to be her co-conspirator, her secret ally. Girls united; whatever. Peter grins, and Alex strokes his goatee, treading water in his own thoughts.

  “Anal, eh,” Alex says at last. “Look, we’re eggheads. Got a problem with that?”

  Peter cracks up first, and then Alex begins to giggle, his shoulders gently shaking. It’s not that funny, but it means something to them.

  Now Hayley’s the one who looks bewildered. She bites her bottom lip. “Right,” she says. “What’s the OED, anyway?”

  In any other situation, this kind of question would prompt Peter to say: “Oh my God.” I can hear him, the way he would draw out the space between each word, aiming for the maximum dramatic effect. “Oh. My. God.”

  It’s silent—just for a split second—but this cook is very kissable. If I asked something like that, they’d have me immediately trussed and ready to hold over the hot flames of their sarcasm.

  “It’s just a dictionary,” I tell Hayley, surprising myself and probably Peter. “OED—Oxford English Dictionary. It’s like a history of language.”

  “Sylvia went to Oxford,” Alex says.

  “Sylvie’s very smart,” Peter adds.

  “Fuck off,” I tell them.

  “Oh,” Hayley says. She’s quiet for a moment.

  “Where’s the wand?” I say. “You’ve got to find out how Alex woke.”

  “Here.” She taps him on one shoulder, twice on the head, then on the other shoulder.

  “Astonished,” Alex says.

  Hayley narrows her martini olive–colored eyes. “You woke surprised?”

  “I dreamt my arm was amputated,” Alex explains.

  “How?” Peter asks.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you get it stuck in a thresher?” I say.

  “There’s our farm girl.” Peter smiles at me.

  “You grew up on a farm?” Hayley asks.

  “Sort of,” I answer, “an orchard
near a small town called La Grande, Oregon.”

  “Cool,” Hayley says.

  “The dream wasn’t about me losing the arm,” Alex says. “In the dream, I’d already lost it, but I thought it was there.”

  “Of course, because it was.” Peter hates talking about dreams. He thinks two people have been together too long when they start being fascinated by each other’s dreams.

  Alex leans back and tilts his chair onto two legs, and Hayley stands behind and kneads his shoulders.

  “You had a phantom limb,” I say.

  “You’re tense,” Hayley observes.

  “I was at a party on someone’s terrace,” Alex continues.

  “Like your parents’?” Peter asks.

  “Maybe. I remember looking down on the park and thinking how wild it was, how with the trees hiding everything you can imagine being alone.”

  “Your parents have a terrace that overlooks the park?” Hayley asks.

  “My parents …,” Alex starts.

  “His parents …,” Peter says.

  “Eat high on the food chain,” Alex finishes and laughs.

  On the table are salt and pepper shakers that look like small dachshunds. The one time I met Alex’s mother, she talked to her dogs more than she talked to me.

  “Geoff’s parents are super rich, too,” Hayley says, peering into the refrigerator. “His sister’s spending three hundred dollars a plate for her wedding. The only place they registered was Tiffany’s.”

  Outside it’s sunny, but an irregularly shaped shadow is drifting across the back lawn. Peter’s face looks like someone has pulled a tinted transparency over it, like a shade dimming a window.

  “Geoff’s parents have money?” Alex asks.

  Knowing Peter and Alex, they are probably thinking that Alex’s odds with Hayley aren’t looking so good anymore, even though he’s a social worker, which gives him the do-gooder-with-money angle. But in men’s fantasies of women’s romantic interests, the artist with coin is practically at the top of the pyramid, alongside the rich-as-shit cowboy. What they don’t know is cowboys don’t exist, not in the way that easterners imagine western men. La Grande was filled with guys who worked as hired hands on big ranches, and they all wore baseball caps and tried to put away enough money so that they could move into town and start taking classes at Eastern Oregon State College. And the ranch owners, the ones with the real money, were more businessmen and politicians than anything else.