A good time to talk about the sex: we had a lot of it, except at the end, and it was always good, except when it wasn’t. This is when it wasn’t good: on Thursdays, when other people were in on it, and especially when Sophia assumed I had my own interests for the night. I did not, because that’s the thing about Sophia: she gives you the kind of freedom you don’t want.
Before I met Sophia, I never thought of myself as a woman who could be with women this way, and maybe I’m not, maybe it’s only with Sophia. But my sense is, it’s the kind of thing that once you let it in, it is going to play itself out.
When I called Lydia to let her know I was all settled in, as we’d agreed I’d do, she said, Well, has she fucked you yet, and I said, What do you mean, you said she’s a nice and generous person. As I said before, I knew but I did not yet want to know. Lydia said, I’m talking about sex — have you had sex yet, and she sounded tired like I was an assignment she had to complete. I said, No … I’m not gay, Lydia, and Lydia said, Right, right. Then she said, Do you know what a rollercoaster is? And I knew she didn’t mean the regular kind so I said no and she said, Why don’t you ask Sophia about that.
I did. I asked Sophia, and she laughed her Lydia laughter, like that first day in the hallway: head tilted all the way back like she was trying to reach the floor, and something liberating like relief emanating from her lungs. We touched each other for the first time that night until the outside looked purple and small butterflies were flapping their wings against some inner wall I never knew I had. We lay in bed after, me facing the window, where Sophia had the strangest-looking plant; its leaves had a redness to them that made the whole thing look plastic, and I had the urge to touch it and see whether or not it was real, but I couldn’t reach it. I sat up, wings still fluttering in me, and said to Sophia, I’m not a lesbian, though, and Sophia smiled a new smile and said, Sweet Booney.
Friday
For the first few months, every Friday was City Lessons Day. Before I moved in, Friday was something else, but I never found out what. So Fridays we would take out a map of Manhattan, a subway map, and sometimes maps of other boroughs too. I also had a blue spiral notebook for tips that seemed important. Sophia started this tradition because, one day in the Village, walking east, I asked how much farther we had to walk to hit Central Park. She looked at me then like maybe I’d just turned out to be a mistake. This look had a sting and I thought, when someone looks at you this way you’ll never get to go with them to their dark places, and all I ever wanted, since that first moment in the hallway, was to be the person Sophia reached for when she cried. I said, I don’t even know how long I’ll live here, so I just don’t bother with the city. Sophia nodded, and I knew I’d said the right thing. I was just starting to learn then how to be a woman who intrigued her. Then she said, But will you let me teach you, Boon? I mean, you do live here for now. I said Maybe. She liked that answer. Then, the following Friday: the maps, the spiral notebook, and Sophia saying, Tip number one, in New York City, if you reach Chinatown you’ve gone too far.
Saturday
Saturdays we’d have brunch at Curly’s, and, more than any other place and more than any other time, I felt envied at Curly’s, because I was Sophia’s Saturday-morning person, and everyone knows that’s something you can’t beat.
Once, the waitress was rude to me — the same waitress who was always asking Sophia out. Being rude by way of hitting on the woman you’re with when you’re peeing is different from being rude to your face, from saying, No you didn’t say provolone, I’d remember. Sophia said, If you don’t like it here anymore we’ll find somewhere else, Boon, and I knew then that something was different.
* * *
Saturdays at Curly’s we put salt on our curly fries like powder. Every time Sophia would say, It’s not good, we’re dehydrated as it is, but she said it like you say I know, I know when a friend says something true you don’t want to hear. Because Saturdays at Curly’s we didn’t want to hear that salt is bad for you, that alcohol dries you up, that other women can come on to your woman when you’re looking away, that in love sometimes you blink and when you open your eyes there’s change.
Saturdays at Curly’s it was warm, then cold and then snowing, and always people were waiting outside or by the radiator, and always we didn’t have to wait, because the thing about Sophia is, she doesn’t like to wait in lines, and mostly the world agrees she shouldn’t have to.
Saturdays at Curly’s we always stayed for hours — long after we were too full, long after we stopped feeling the pain of stretch in our stomachs — and played checkers or drew on white paper mats with crayons. Saturdays at Curly’s I would look at the people crouched over the radiator, being pushed against the small door every time someone entered to add her name to the list, to ask about the wait. Saturdays at Curly’s I felt privileged, and guilty, and sometimes I would look at Sophia and see that she felt neither.
Saturdays at Curly’s, looking at the people outside, sometimes this is what I wanted: to be one of them. Saturdays at Curly’s, when Sophia was suddenly flexible about where we brunched, she looked like she was trying on a new dress that didn’t fit her, and it made me sad, like reaching the end of a good novel. The thing about Sophia is, you love someone like her, it’s for good, it becomes part of your body, an organ. But Saturdays at Curly’s sometimes I would think, maybe I can take this organ and leave, go to a place where I can wait with the rest of the world by the radiator, feeling the chill of icy wind every time the door opens, because maybe that’s what life is about: waiting your turn.
NONE THE WISER
I’m sure they have things in common, yes. But not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. I’m sure they have things in common, Ludvig and Henrietta, but I’m not sure what these things might be. To be quite honest, if someone asked me to guess — just venture a guess as to what these two people could possibly have in common, what it is that got them to suddenly “fall in love” at such a late point in life — I would have to say, “I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea.” And then maybe the person would say, “Of course you have no idea, that’s why they call it a guess” and I would say, “I’m truly sorry, sir”—or madam; perhaps it would be a woman saying these things to me—“but I couldn’t even guess.” It brings to mind that expression “to save my life”; as in “I couldn’t guess to save my life.” That’s how I feel about them. Or not about them, really, just about their relationship; they are very nice people, kind people, both of them. Especially him.
He used to collect seashells. Years ago, I am talking about years ago. Back when they were both married to other people and didn’t even know each other, back when my Saul was alive, that’s when Ludvig collected those seashells. He would show me, every time we had one of our gatherings. Look at this special one, Yolanda, he’d always say, and always away from the gang, waiting for me outside the kitchen or by the big window in the hallway. Look at this special one. I used to wonder back then if he ever showed them to his Judith, and I had a feeling he didn’t. Certain things you only share with certain people — nothing wrong with that. And why me, I also wondered sometimes. Because he knew I understood, was my answer. And I really did, I understood. It’s only a man with a soul who does something like that — collect seashells. And what a rare thing that is, a man with a soul.