Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  “Stay with me,” Phoebe said.

  Mina lay down beside her.

  “Can I be little spoon?” Phoebe asked. The back of Phoebe’s neck was sweat shiny.

  Just when Mina thought she was asleep, muffled by the pillow, Phoebe said, “Thank you. It’s been a while since anyone nursed me.” She took Mina’s hand and held tight. Mina lay still until a thousand pins and needles prickled her palm.

  *

  Oscar and his father walked in silence. There was driftwood all along the beach, the logs stacked into pyramids. The ashes of old parties blew themselves out across the sand and the wind whistled inside a plastic cup that threw itself towards the sea.

  “My doctor says I should be exercising more,” his father said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking maybe you could help me get started? One of my friends has one of those step tracker things.”

  “You don’t need that,” Oscar said. “You just need to begin.”

  “Tomorrow?” his father asked.

  “Okay.”

  “You know, if you want you can keep it going,” his father said. “Umeda Trading.”

  “My Japanese is still ちょっと.” Oscar gave the word for a wobbly ambiguity, something that is not quite right, a word he had always known applied. But as he said it, he thought about one of the kids who worked for George. A skinny girl with a smart mouth who wore her ponytail slung through her baseball hat. A girl who grew up in Osaka, and who often looked on the verge of laughter. She’d said she was homesick, was thinking of moving back but that she didn’t know what she’d do once she got there. All Oscar needed was someone bilingual.

  “It’s up to you,” his father said. “But it would be nice to keep the name alive.”

  Of course he would do it. Mina would be—he stopped himself because he didn’t know what Mina would be. Would she be excited for him? Worried about it? Dead? No. He couldn’t deal with that now.

  NOVEMBER

  After two more days in bed, Phoebe went back to work. Mina pulled the laundry from the washing machine and wondered at how easy it was to tell their clothing apart. Phoebe’s spangled dresses gleamed. Mina’s black jeans lay among them, like slugs in the flowerbed. She hung the laundry. She gathered the dirty clothes that Phoebe had left by the bed into the now empty laundry basket. She stacked Phoebe’s bangles on the windowsill. They were light. Scratches in the goldish veneer revealed an aluminum interior. Mina picked up the thinnest and slid it over her hand, pushing and pushing until it was as far up her arm as it would go, flesh caving under metal. There was a pleasure in the pressure from something Phoebe owned. Mina thought of the sharply angled wrist.

  Why? her brain asked. Why this girl? Mina had seen so many wrists in New York and so many in London. Wrists were everywhere, grazing bus poles, leaning on benches, spurting out from cuffs. Why this wrist? Was it because Phoebe was a woman? But so many of those wrists had been female.

  Mina sloshed water into Benson’s bowl and tried to put aside the thought. It didn’t matter, did it?

  Why? her brain asked again. Mina thought that if her brain could be a person, a person who wasn’t Mina, it would be a bitch. It would cut its hair blunt, wear fierce glasses, and tell her she was problematic.

  Is it because she’s English? Mina’s brain asked. Do you think it’s because she’s foreign and exciting?

  No, Mina thought. It’s not that.

  The brain crossed its unreal arms.

  Because she’s young? Or maybe it’s just because there’s something wrong with your brain.

  But you’re my brain, Mina thought. How can I love her because of you and doubt it because of you?

  You love her? the brain asked.

  I don’t know. She smells of life.

  That stinks of false romance. And what if it stops just like the pills?

  Benson lapped at the water, slopping it all over the floor.

  The brain reminded her of a seminar she’d taken on Women in Rome. Hadn’t Cato said a woman could be killed by her husband if found to be an adulteress?

  Oscar just told me to be happy and fucked off, she thought.

  But he’s your husband, her brain said. You’re greedy. You’re selfish and greedy. And fucking undeserving. You’re even letting the crazies down. When they say depressed people can’t be trusted they’ll point at you. When people say women are weak they’ll point at you. When they say bisexuals are greedy they’ll point at you. You’re pathetic.

  I feel like I’m drowning every day, she thought, and when I kiss Phoebe, sometimes, just for a moment, it makes me feel like I’ve broken past the surface of the water. Is that greed?

  Even this is some ridiculous construct you have. A way of making it seem like you’re doing more than just talking to yourself.

  Benson finished his water and sat on his haunches looking up at her, his fuzzy ears alert.

  “Oh, cutie,” Mina said, and pressed her nose into his fur. He smelled of soil after rain, somehow mucky and clean at once. His breath fell across her face. No magical mutt heart-healing took place, but she held him close anyway.

  “Let’s go on a walk,” she said to the dog.

  *

  It was late when Phoebe returned. She began talking as soon as she was in the door.

  “God, this fucking couple they just wouldn’t go home. We had to tell them the bar was closing. And you just know they’re fucking around or thinking about fucking around. That’s why they don’t go home. Because they probably have spouses and kids who are waiting up for Mummy and Daddy.”

  Phoebe moved too quickly for Mina to kiss. She stripped off her waitress uniform, dropping it at her feet. “My head is killing me.” She pulled a cigarette from her bag and lit it. The filter tip clashed with her hair. Oscar would be upset if the apartment smelled of tar and nicotine. Oh, fuck him. Why did she still think of him?

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke if you’ve just been sick,” Mina said.

  “Oh, don’t be a puritan. I’ll quit in the morning.”

  Mina opened the window.

  “It’s fucking freezing out,” Phoebe said.

  “I was just trying to get some air into the place.”

  “I’m tired.” Phoebe dropped the cigarette into the mug of coffee that Mina had let go cold. “I’m going to bed.” Her rapid feet on the old floorboards creaked.

  Mina followed her to the bedroom. “I miss you,” she said.

  “I’m right here.” Phoebe pulled on a floppy Ramones T-shirt. Her own or one of her almost-ex-husband’s? Mina didn’t ask.

  “Are you mad at me? I just don’t want you to get sick, to get cancer, and die. They say smoking’s like roulette. You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine, and then one of them gets you.”

  “Well isn’t that a cheery thought.”

  Mina followed Phoebe into the wide bed.

  They lay facing each other. Nose tip to nose tip. Mina was thankful for the slatted blinds that never quite closed and the slivers of light that threaded across Phoebe’s face.

  “I really like you,” Mina said. “A lot.”

  “What are you? Fourteen?” Phoebe asked. “You like-like me? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Um.”

  “Stop looking so worried. I like-like you too.”

  They kissed. Mina nosed her way under the covers and between Phoebe’s knees. The sheet slid over her back onto the floor. Phoebe twisted and rocked so that Mina found herself trying to hold the woman down. She needed to get better at keeping their bodies aligned. God, she hoped she’d get to practice this.

  After they’d gasped to a level of mutual satisfaction, Phoebe rolled over.

  “Do you have to?” Mina kissed the cliff of Phoebe’s shoulder blade.

  “Have to what?”

  “Sleep facing away from me.”

  “I can’t sleep with someone else’s breath in my face.”

  How had she been so quickly reduced to a someone?
Mina slung her arm experimentally over Phoebe’s back. She could feel the warmth of Phoebe pressed against her stomach. It wasn’t comfortable. Her bones were smaller than Phoebe’s and the spooning was a stretch. After only a minute Phoebe said, “Would you mind? I just sleep better if no one’s holding me.”

  So Mina let go and the shadows moved across the ceiling. Did Phoebe want to sleep alone? Was it just that half a bed was better than her brother’s sofa? The questions squirmed in Mina’s lungs. She rolled over to check her phone. It was the zero’th hour. A new day had begun only a few minutes ago. And begun like this.

  Phoebe sighed. “Go to sleep, Mina.”

  “I’m trying to. It’s just you feel so far away.”

  The binder was as thick as a briefcase. The pages were plastic and stuck to one another as they turned. Each one had a business card. The cards were thick white cream. Some were embossed with the owner’s name in roman letters, some in kanji, some sprang for both. The geekiest kid in Oscar’s school had had such a binder for his Pokémon. And once, just for laughs, someone had torn them all out and thrown them across the room in rainbow flashes. The business cards were not as bright.

  The desk was pushed close to the window and there wasn’t really room for two behind it, but Oscar had angled a kitchen chair so that they could sit side by side. He noticed that his father smelled old. Not unclean, just old, a smell he’d noticed before only on buses or subways, his head pushed too close to some clucking granny. Or perhaps he was making that up. His father was sixty-nine, too young to smell like an old man.

  “And this is Tanaka-san, he works for the two sisters. The one with the brewery up north. He’s good with people and he loves Jack Daniel’s. Always bring him a bottle around New Year’s, but don’t let him drink it with you. He’ll never go home. And then his wife will be angry. And if his wife is angry, he’ll be in a bad mood.”

  Oscar’s laptop was perched on the edge of the table and he wrote Tanaka, Jack D, NY, don’t drink with.

  There were pages and pages of the compendium. Later, Oscar would have to put this in a spreadsheet. That was assuming any of it would carry over. There was nothing to say that Tanaka-san would want to drink with him or that Tanaka-san’s heart would not blip out.

  His father’s finger slid down to the next card. The nail was thick and slightly yellow, very ridged. As a boy, he’d tried to memorize this man. But, between birthday visits, his father’s features ran like honey so that each year he was surprised by the face that appeared.

  “This is Ito-san. He has a granddaughter at Rutgers. She’s studying international relations. He’s very proud.”

  Oscar tried to imagine Ito-san but saw only an image of his own father’s face. He tried again so Ito-san looked more like the guy who ran a ramen place up in Harlem. It wasn’t much better.

  “This is Sato-san. He died last year. You don’t need to know anything about him.”

  “Dad,” Oscar said.

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you take me over this sooner?”

  “I thought there’d be more time.”

  One week since moving in and two whole weeks total since the kiss. Mina did not mention the two-week anniversary. It was important not to freak Phoebe out. It had been long enough for Mina to detect the edge of a pattern. When Phoebe spoke in her sleep, the mumbles were too quiet to decipher. When Phoebe looked up at the corner of the ceiling and Mina asked what she was thinking, Phoebe said only, “Nothing much.” As soon as she’d met him, Mina had known what Oscar was thinking. He basically drew her a spreadsheet of his life plans. But Phoebe . . . Phoebe just smiled at her.

  Phoebe sat on the end of the bed while Mina crouched behind her to blow dry the red hair. The strands rippled between Mina’s fingers. Phoebe craned back into the heat.

  “That’s lovely, all tingly,” Phoebe said.

  “I told you so,” Mina replied.

  Mina cupped her right hand under the bowl of Phoebe’s skull, feeling the weight of those secret thoughts. The moon of Phoebe’s face was caught in the window glass. Tonight was a waitress night. There would be seven hours to spend alone in the flat. Seven more hours to try to force her research to make sense. Seven hours of staring at Oscar’s photo on the phone. Seven hours of trying to believe she hadn’t irredeemably fucked everything up.

  She flicked off the dryer and kissed the top of the chrysanthemum curls. “I wish you could just stay with me,” she said.

  Phoebe smelled of Mina’s shampoo.

  “Tell me about one of your women,” Phoebe said. “The ones that survive.”

  “How about Penelope? You know, Odysseus’s wife. Her husband doesn’t come home from the war and everyone assumes he’s dead. So these men come to her hall to eat and drink and demand that she marry one of them. But Penelope says first she must weave her husband’s funeral shroud. All day her fingers dance across the loom. Every night she unpicks it, which means she can put off the new marriage by another day. She survives by cunning.”

  Mina wove her fingers under Phoebe’s hair as she talked, feeling the rhythm of her words.

  “Didn’t her husband fuck a sorceress?”

  “Circe, and actually the goddess Calypso too,” Mina conceded.

  “Not that cunning, then, to sit there waiting for some great bullshitter to come home.”

  “True.” Mina rested her palm on Phoebe’s dryer-warm head. She’d always liked that story for the moonlit unstitching. It was so easy to unpick at night the statements you made in the day. The day-brain might call someone gone, but the night-brain would believe they’d return. And in this story, he does. He returns to hold tight his wife and son. When would Oscar come back?

  “Mind if I eat dinner at the restaurant?” Mina asked.

  The neck tilted upright and away. Phoebe turned, and two lines cracked between her eyebrows. “Why?”

  “I just want to see your life. I want to know you.”

  Phoebe looked uncertain.

  “I’ll take Benson on a walk first. I’ll get him good and sleepy. He won’t even notice I’m gone.” Mina dared to press a stream of kisses up Phoebe’s neck towards her cheek.

  “I suppose. Just, I don’t know, can you act like a normal customer?”

  Mina’s face was too close to understand the context of the rising cheekbone, but she hoped it was a smile.

  Mina got to the restaurant early. She knew that the hours had not yet begun, but somewhere inside, Phoebe would be laying out knives and forks, adjusting wineglasses, chitchatting to colleagues Mina had never met. She waited on the park bench. It was cold now, properly cold, and she kept her hands plunged into the pockets of her black raincoat, the only jacket she’d brought to this wet country. Even the pigeons were hiding from the clawing wind. She had to be a normal customer, which meant she couldn’t be the first one in. Eventually the first customer arrived, a woman in a suit and neon-pink running shoes. Mina followed her.

  Inside, the restaurant was warm. Mirrors were screwed to every wall. The wood paneling reflected the mustard-yellow light. She was shown to a corner table. Mina scanned her view for Phoebe. Phoebe leaned towards the running-shoe woman. The folded half-apron wrapped her hips snugly. It was a nonsensical piece of uniform. She was not a chef. But Mina could see the appeal of the apron-string bow. It called out to be untied.

  The petite notepad in Phoebe’s hand was not so different from the one she took to galleries. She didn’t seem to need to look down as she wrote. Her eyes were reserved for the diners’ faces. Even from across the room, Mina recognized that graceful attention. It was the sort of attention for which people paid a hundred dollars an hour to their therapists.

  “Anything to drink?”

  Mina looked up at her own assigned server. An unmemorable boy. But Mina didn’t need Phoebe’s customer-service smiles: she wanted the real crooked-tooth variety.

  There were three vegetarian options. She requested tap water and the endive salad. She hadn’t learnt the word en
dive until her twenties. Her grandmother had never made salads. The vegetables she served must’ve had specific Chinese names. But when Mina asked, all her grandmother said was “Green vegetable.” Or “White vegetable.” Which had seemed adequate at the time. Now Mina had no idea how to replicate those meals.

  Phoebe darted to a closer table. An older man sat with his young wife and sons. The woman was dab-dab-dabbing at one boy’s mouth. The man was looking straight at Phoebe’s breasts. The thin shirt left their slopes visible and vulnerable. He touched Phoebe’s arm. Mina stood. Her legs moved quickly towards the pair. But by the time she arrived at the table the woman was asking if it was possible to get the sole meunière without the butter, so Mina just brushed against Phoebe, hip skimming hip. Phoebe looked up. Mina realized that Phoebe’s eyelids were bright yellow, as if a sunflower petal had been painted across each one. How had she not noticed earlier? Phoebe flicked her head around, and quick-marched to the kitchen.

  It was hard to make the meal last. The endives were so meager. Mina sliced the salad into sawdust. When all that was left was the oil-wiped plate, she ordered tea and let it go cold. Phoebe bustled and bussed tables. She never looked up or over. No smile rolled off her lips. Mina opened her phone to reread Phoebe’s last blog—a Halloween post about Edvard Munch. Mina looked up and Phoebe was out of sight. And although Mina knew that she would come back, Mina had a dread that Phoebe had vanished, crawled into an oven, or sprinted away through a back door.

  Ami stood chopping apples into quarters. The knife glistened as it slid through each one.

  “I’m thinking of getting Ichiro a sister,” Ami said. “We’ve only had him for a year—we wanted to start small. But they’re herd animals, really. They’re happier together.” She picked a slice up from the board and bit into it. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks,” Oscar said. “I was thinking, I should probably go back and deal with the flats.”

  “You know, you and Mina don’t have to go back to New York afterwards. You could stay with us. There’s room. Your father would like that.”