by A. H. Kim
Sitting at the dining table and flipping through the latest New Yorker, I can’t focus on the words on the page. I keep thinking about the birdlike young woman’s texts. I reach over for my laptop and start typing Owen’s name, which automatically populates from the dozens of other times I’ve run the same Google search. I stare once again at the images of my onetime college boyfriend smiling at various Bay Area charity events. He’s done quite well for himself, owning and operating several successful music venues in San Francisco: Alphaville, a gay bar and 1980s-style dance club in the Castro; Erasure, an electronic music space in SoMa with pitch-black walls and a dizzying menu of “energy drinks”; Culture Club, a café/bar/art gallery in Dogpatch featuring Blue Bottle Coffee, handcrafted cocktails and a coterie of heavily pierced and tattooed young artists. And there’s his first venture, the one that made him famous: Stardust, a luxe 1920s-era speakeasy right on the San Francisco Bay featuring local and world-class jazz performers.
As I scroll through the photos, a wave of relief tinged with sadness washes over me seeing his graying hair and thickening waistline. According to a recent profile in San Francisco magazine, he got divorced a couple years ago and is currently single, which I’m embarrassed to admit gives me a small measure of consolation. I don’t know why; it’s not as if I have any chance with him now. After thirty years, I wonder if he ever thinks of me.
Owen and I met freshman fall in a class called Rhymes, Rhythms and Rhapsodies. It’s one of those humanities survey courses that underclassmen take to fulfill their general education requirements and to prepare for the kind of erudite cocktail conversation expected of a Harvard graduate. Informally known as R-Cubed, the class is taught by two renowned experts in their respective fields of poetry and musicology and explores the relationship between poems and music over the centuries.
A couple years before I took the class, R-Cubed generated a swirl of controversy when the professors decided to add the then-burgeoning genre of rap music to the curriculum. For several weeks, the New York Times was filled with articles and op-eds bemoaning the decline and fall of classical higher education. The controversy led to a nearly fivefold increase in enrollment. R-Cubed had to be moved from a modest-size lecture hall in the music building to Harvard’s imposing high Victorian Gothic cathedral of learning, Sanders Theatre. Students were quickly made to realize they’d have to wade through volumes of Petrarch, Goethe and Auden and spend countless hours listening to Palestrina, Bach and Stravinsky before getting to hear even one verse of Afrika Bambaataa or Grandmaster Flash.
It is in the Loeb Music Library that I first meet Owen. Schubert’s Winterreise is playing through my oversize headphones when Owen pops his head over the carrel wall and gestures for me to remove them.
“Did you hear that?” he asks.
“Hear what?”
“Wait for it,” he says. “It’s oddly predictable.”
I climb up on my carrel so that Owen and I are just a few inches apart. I strain to hear the mysterious noise, and then there it is: the distinctive sound of someone farting.
“It sounds like a cross between a trumpet and a tuba,” he says.
“A French horn,” I respond.
“Tooting his own horn?”
It’s not that funny, but I’m a sucker for bad puns.
“I think it’s that guy over there,” he says. He looks toward a dumpy guy wearing a Ghostbusters T-shirt. I immediately feel sorry for him.
“It’s not fair to accuse someone without proof,” I say.
“I’ve got incriminating circumstantial evidence,” Own says. “He keeps lifting his butt cheek every few minutes.” Owen shifts his hip to demonstrate.
“Oh my God, that’s gross.”
“Let’s get outta here before he busts out another one,” he says. Owen jumps deftly off his carrel and extends his arm to help me off mine. Uncharacteristically, I don’t hesitate to take the leap.
“Wanna get some ice cream?” he asks as we leave the building.
“Who doesn’t like ice cream?” I reply. We walk from the library to Herrell’s, my favorite of the nearly half dozen premium ice cream shops in Harvard Square. Each of us orders a single scoop in a cup—banana for me, coffee with Heath Bar smoosh-in for him—before heading to the register.
“I got this,” Owen says, pulling out his billfold.
“Oh no,” I say, “you don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to—I want to.” Owen pays the cashier and quietly slips a dollar in the “Leave the Change You Want to See in the World” tip jar. My heart warms at his generosity.
The normally crowded shop is quiet. We sit in the colorfully painted back room, which used to be a vault in the days when the store was a bank.
“So, how’re you liking the class so far?” Owen asks.
“I love it. I’ve always loved poetry and classical music. How ’bout you?”
“Not so much. I took ten years of piano lessons and played way too much classical. I’m just waiting to get to the good stuff.”
“I play piano, too,” I say, not knowing what he means by “the good stuff.”
Owen looks down at my hands. “You’ve got mighty small hands for a pianist,” he says. He holds up his right hand. I lift my own hand and place it palm-to-palm with his. My fingers barely reach his first knuckle joints.
“You know what they say about big hands,” Owen says. He takes a dramatic pause before cracking a smile. “Big gloves.” We take down our hands and begin eating our now-melting ice cream in earnest.
“So, I’ve been sitting behind you in R-Cubed,” Owen continues, “and couldn’t help noticing your color-coding system for taking notes. But you never use green. Don’t you like green?”
I clear my throat as a time filler. I don’t know whether to be flattered or scared. Perhaps I’m a bit of both. No one has ever paid such close attention to me.
“I hope that’s not too weird,” Owen says. “It’s just something I’ve been dying to ask. We four-color-pen types have to stick together.” He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a Bic four-color pen. It’s the kind with the blue barrel, medium point, just like mine.
I can feel my face flush as I stand up. Owen stands, too, as if trying to stop me from leaving. I shake my head and pull out my R-Cubed notebook. I open it up to the back pages and show him the contents: pages and pages of green ink drawings, tiny shapes and swirls that fit together like puzzle pieces. The pages are curled and rippled from the pressure of my pen point against the cheap, lined paper.
“I like to doodle when I listen to music,” I say.
“Wow, they’re really cool. They remind me of M. C. Escher.”
Bingo—he got it on the first try. Owen looks at me with amazement, and for the first time in my life, I see myself reflected in his eyes.
All freshman year, Owen and I are inseparable. We eat together, we study together, we sleep together. No one is more surprised than me about my personal transformation. Where did this person come from, I wonder, and what would my parents think if they knew? By the time freshman year comes to an end, I can’t bear the thought of returning home to my dreary life in Buffalo. More exactly, I can’t bear the idea of being separated from Owen for three whole months. During our weekly calls, my parents tell me about Sam’s latest run-ins with the neighbors. As usual, I feel the weight of responsibility—I should be home to help take care of him—but at the same time, I start to feel something new: a sense of independence, an impulse to run in the opposite direction.
“Stay in Cambridge with me,” Owen says. We’re squeezed together on the narrow mattress in Owen’s dorm room. When outstretched, Owen’s feet dangle over the end of the extra long bed, but he usually curls his body around mine, big S next to little s.
“I couldn’t,” I say.
“Why not?” he asks. “I’ve got a sublet in Porter Square l
ined up for the summer, and you can stay with me for free.” It’s an extremely tempting offer.
“But what would I do? I don’t have a job or anything.” Owen has already gotten a paid internship at a local music production company, courtesy of his father, a noted jazz musician from New York City, who called in a favor. I don’t have any such connections.
“You could do anything, Hannah. You’re one of the smartest people in our class—I’m sure one of your profs could help you find something to do in Boston over the summer.”
Now that Owen mentions it, my R-Cubed professor did offer to put in a good word for me at one of the publishing houses in Boston if I ever wanted a summer internship. I wonder if it’s too late to take her up on the offer.
“But how would I explain it to my parents?”
Owen kisses the space between my eyebrows.
“Tell them that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you just can’t pass it up.”
On Sunday morning, I call my parents and have no problem repeating Owen’s explanation. After all, it was absolutely true.
beth
twenty-one
I jiggle my leg, waiting for my stylist, Erin, to call my name. The air in the dingy room is thick and smells of rotten eggs. Like in any hair salon, there’s a pile of glossy magazines on the faux wood table, only most of these date back to the early 2000s.
I dump a couple months of New Yorkers on top of the pile. Hannah got me a five-year subscription. Not that anyone in here would read them. Hell, I can barely make it through the cartoons myself.
The Alderson hair room is worlds away from my beloved Park Avenue salon, but it isn’t half-bad, especially for the price. I’ve got a box of L’Oréal Preference in Champagne Blonde on my lap, along with Erin’s preferred form of payment—the latest Danielle Steele, also courtesy of Hannah. According to the back cover, this one’s about a beautiful but damaged Eastern European princess who falls in love with a tough-as-nails NYPD homicide cop assigned to investigate the murder of her ex-husband. I didn’t know they still made Eastern European princesses anymore.
The gal next to me has a faded pink streak through her yellowy bleached blond hair. Her hair is buzzed on one side, permed on the other. In her twitchy hands, she’s got a couple packets of Kool-Aid, the hair dye of choice among the younger, edgier inmates. On the dusty floor by her feet is a six-pack of Diet Coke. A widely accepted form of payment. She must be seeing one of the stylists in training.
“Hey, Lindstrom,” I hear someone say.
I look up and see Deb, who glares at the Kool-Aid chick.
“Move or die,” Deb growls. The girl scampers like a mouse to the other side of the room, sitting as far away from Deb and me as she can.
“Move or dye, get it?” Deb says, pointing to the L’Oréal in my lap.
Who knew Deb the Destroyer liked bad puns?
“Damn, someone should clean this shit up,” Deb says, riffling through the teetering pile of magazines. She glances at the date on my New Yorkers and sets them aside before holding up a dog-eared commemorative issue of People devoted to William and Kate’s royal wedding and throwing it in the garbage. She pauses when she gets to an old issue of Esquire with Beyoncé on the cover. I recognize it right away. It’s the Women We Love issue. The one I’m featured in.
“This one’s from 2007, can you believe it?” Deb says.
When God Hälsa’s CEO demanded that Esquire abandon the American Booty photo spread, the magazine almost dropped the entire idea of doing a feature on me. With a little sweet talk, I managed to convince the editors to keep the article but replace the full-page nude photo with a smaller, more tasteful headshot. God Hälsa’s six-figure advertising commitment helped, too.
“I do love me some Queen B,” Deb says. She starts flipping through the magazine. The feature on me starts at page ninety-four—the feature that describes in glowing detail my genius creation and marketing of Metamin-G. I think about Deb’s ex-girlfriend, Sugar. Deb’s never told anyone what Sugar OD’d on, but something in my gut knows the answer. Metamin was the cheapest high on the street.
As Deb flips closer to page ninety-four, I fight the urge to grab the magazine out of her hands. And then I see salvation in the form of a Trésor ad.
“Hey, is that a perfume strip?” I ask. Most perfume strips have long been torn out of the magazines at Alderson. They’re one of the few luxuries available for free.
I reach over and take the magazine from Deb, rip out the perfume insert and rub it along my wrists. I don’t usually wear department store perfume, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“What do you think?” I ask. I lift my scented wrist under Deb’s nose.
Before Deb can answer, my stylist, Erin, appears in the doorway.
“Beth, you’re next,” she says.
“Perfect timing,” I reply. I quickly tuck the magazine underneath the Danielle Steele and box of L’Oréal. “See ya later, Deb.”
I follow Erin into the hair room and bury the Esquire magazine deep inside the grungy trash bin filled with old peroxide bottles, cheap plastic gloves and hair clippings.
I sit down in the salon chair, and Erin ties the black nylon cape around my neck.
“So, what do you want today?” Erin asks.
“Surprise me,” I say. “Cut it short. Change the color. Whatever you want. Starting today, I want to be unrecognizable.”
“Great,” Erin says, spritzing my head with a spray bottle. “I’ve been wanting to give you some foil highlights.”
* * *
The first time I met Alex, he had the most flawless foil highlights I’d ever seen. This was years ago, when Eva and Alex had just started dating. Alex was wearing white chino shorts, an immaculate white polo shirt underneath a white V-neck sweater with navy stripes and white Fred Perry tennis shoes that looked like they came straight out of the box. He flashed a smile so artificially white I almost expected a cartoon starburst to go “ping.”
With this as a first impression, I don’t think it’s unfair for me to assume this guy who’s dating my sister is gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. After all, who am I to judge?
“He’s not gay,” Eva says.
We’re sitting at the bar of The West End and sipping rum and Diet Cokes.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Because we’ve done it,” she says. She looks down at her lap.
“It?” I laugh. “And what exactly is ‘it’? The Jane Fonda workout?”
“Sex,” she blurts. The patrons at the next table look over curiously.
“We’ve had sex,” Eva whispers. “More than once. And it was really good.”
I stifle another laugh. I don’t want to be unkind. In truth, I’m happy for Eva. She’s had it rough the past several years with her cruel roommates and ongoing struggles with bulimia and depression.
Now that I’m at Barnard, just down the street from Columbia, it’s nice to be able to spend some time with my older sister, even if that means resisting the impulse to make fun of her gay boyfriend.
“Well, I’m glad it’s good,” I say. “You deserve good.”
Eva looks surprised. We sit in silence sipping our drinks and listening to the music playing on the stereo.
“Remember when we used to spend Saturday afternoons dancing in the living room to American Bandstand?” I ask. “God, I think we wore a groove in the carpet with all the times we did the Bus Stop and Electric Slide.”
The rum must be working, because the two of us laugh like we used to when we were girls. Back before things got complicated.
I look over at an older couple dancing to the music in the corner of the bar. They must be in their thirties or forties. They’re laughing more than they’re dancing. Something about seeing them so happy makes me feel generous.
“I’m glad you’re
happy,” I say.
“Thank you,” Eva responds. She doesn’t even try to suppress her smile.
“You’re welcome,” I reply. “And anyway, if worse comes to worst, you can always share clothes. Those white chino shorts were simply darling.”
About five or six years later, it’s the late 1990s. I’m a newly minted God Hälsa drug rep and Eva’s a dermatology resident. Eva just got back from her honeymoon in the British Virgin Islands, and we’re catching up over oysters and champagne at Balthazar.
“So, how’s the Fat Virgin?” I ask. I think it’s hilarious Alex chose Virgin Gorda for their honeymoon destination. Although, Eva’s not fat anymore. Or a virgin.
“It was gorgeous,” Eva says. “The resort was to die for.”
“It must’ve set Alex back a pretty penny.”
“He’s doing really well these days.”
“Oh really,” I say. “So he’s stopped auditioning for America’s Next Top Male Model?”
“He only did that once. As a joke.”
“Right. So what’s he doing now?”
“He’s a trader,” Eva says.
“A traitor?” I ask.
“Ha ha, very funny,” Eva says. “A day trader.”
I roll my eyes. Of course, Alex is a day trader. The dot-com bubble is at its frothiest, and everyone seems to be making a quick buck day-trading stocks. Leave it to Alex to choose a job because it’s trendy.
“He’s actually very good at it,” Eva claims. “He makes more money as a day trader than I do as a doctor.”
I stop myself from pointing out that that’s a pretty low bar. As poor as I am as a drug rep, Eva’s got it even worse as a medical resident. You wouldn’t think it takes that much to become a dermatologist, but for some reason, Eva works crazy hours and gets paid almost zero.
“How does he know what to invest in?” I ask.
“Believe it or not, he meets a lot of really connected people on the tennis courts,” Eva says. “Guys who work on Wall Street. Guys who’re starting these crazy new tech businesses. Guys who are just loaded. They’re always talking about what’s the next hot stock.”
