I grab the carton of milk and it slips from my hands, the white ghostness of it splashing on my legs and over the dirty yellow linoleum. I bite my lip. I will not cry. I shut the door a little too forcefully and Jill's picture that she'd drawn of me and Sam slides with its magnet down and flutters into the milk. I crouch down and put the drawing on the table, after blotting it against my dress.
I pick the carton of milk up — there is still some inside— and put it back in the fridge. I wipe up the milk with paper towels and as I stand up to go to the trash can, my bare foot comes down on something cold and hard. It is the magnet. I pick it up and instead of just putting it back on the fridge, I sit down with it still in my hand. I hear the neighbor's dog bark, twice. I lift my head and listen but the house is still quiet. The magnet is an old-fashioned valentine, fifties-style cornball romance, a smiling orange saying "Orange you glad you're mine, valentine?" on metal, heavily laminated.
Sam had been on a magnet-making kick, and took anything she got her hands on — old stamps, postcards, cards, pictures — and turned them into an endless stream of magnets. Sam was with Diana then and I remember seeing them in their kitchen together, Diana was doing the dishes and Sam leaned into her in a way that made my own back feel cold and exposed. I thought of what it would be like to have Sam's lips on my neck, warm, laughing into my skin over some private joke. I pretended to look at the books on their shelves in the dining room, a good fifty square feet of shelving displaying Foxfire books, Marion Zimmer Bradley's entire body of work, and a lot of Quality Paperback selections. I was going to ask Diana if she wanted help washing up from the dinner they'd made for me, the new single girl at work. Diana at work is perfect and I admit I'd sort of hoped her home life was different but it was worse. Her girlfriend Sam was beautiful and handsome, with olive skin, an aquiline nose, and eyes that really looked at a person. She repeated my name when we were introduced and asked me what I thought of St. Petersburg. She looked in my eyes as I stumbled over the answer, revising it for her approval as I went along. I looked down, just to avoid her eyes, and saw the best mouth I'd ever stared at — a little smirk, with the lightest laugh line on the left. I thought of kissing her then but told myself that I'd been without a girlfriend for too long.
Holding the magnet, so square and so dense, a nice hard weight in the center of my palm now. Sam's mother had a laugh line just like hers in that little picture, the only picture, Sam had of her. I remember going to Sam's apartment after she'd moved out of Diana's, the sparseness of the furnishings— a rocker, a table and chairs, a dresser, a bed, a stereo, and one set of bookshelves. She kept her books boxed up by the wall next to the front door. On her dresser she had a photo of Diana (it hurt me every time I saw it but I'd never asked her to take it down) and the tiny photo in the metal frame of her mother. I'd picked it up while she was in the kitchen, making us dinner. I'd gone to the bathroom and since her bedroom door was open, I stepped inside, amazed at the austerity of the room— the unmade bed, the clean floor, the bare walls, the dresser with its two pictures. I'd lifted the picture of her mother, cupped it in my hands and lifted it to my face as if I were smelling it. I have no idea why. "That's my mother," her voice came over my shoulder and I jerked, put it back on the dresser, nearly knocking over the picture of Diana. Sam reached her arm around me and picked it up.
"Sorry," I mumbled, my face hot.
She didn't say anything. "She's beautiful," I offered and Sam nodded. She put the picture back down and for a moment I was afraid she'd pick up the picture of Diana and I couldn't stand that, I'd have to leave, and I desperately wanted to stay. "She looks like you," I smiled, trying to show I meant to harm.
"You think?" Sam wrinkled her nose, cocked her head. Is she playing with me?
"Your mouth," I began and floundered.
She smiled, ducking her head.
"You have the same mouth," I continued.
"Thank you," she paused, looking at me like I might be about to pass out and I might have. "Do you want some wine? That's why I came looking for you, to ask if you wanted some wine."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Diana. I've really fucked things up for you and I should leave."
"What do you want, Dee?"
I smiled helplessly, looking at the picture of her mother as if for guidance. She took a step closer. We were a foot away from each other. I smelled her lavender soap, her deodorant, a piney-clean scent, I could even smell the Carmex on her lips.
"I want to be with you," I said and didn't just mean it euphemistically. I do, I want to fuck her, I want to sleep with her, I want to wake up with her, but I want to just be with her too. Just sit very still with her sitting very still beside me and know that we are the only two people who belong in that room, who are wanted in that room.
"Why?" she asked, and I laughed. Why is never the right question to ask about sex. How, maybe. When, sure. Where, that can be an issue. Even what has its place if you know where to shop and you aren't timid. But why?
"Is that a 'no'?"
She grabbed my hand and led me to the kitchen, which smelled of basil and garlic and was warmer than the rest of the house. She poured wine into the two glasses on the counter without letting go of my hand. "You have through dinner to
tell me why," she said and raised her glass to mine before we drank.
I'm still thirsty, sitting at the table with the smiling orange-head magnet no longer cold in my hand. I squeeze it hard. It leaves dents in the flesh of my fingers. The orange face, faded to the color of Tang with too much water, grins up at me as if we share some embarrassing secret. "Orange you glad you're mine?" I hear the front door open. Sam's home. The why from my memory echoes in my head.
I pick up the picture of me and Sam drawn by her daughter. Jill has drawn the laugh line on Sam's face. It is a good likeness. I put it back on the fridge. I pick up the letter and crumple it up, stuff it beneath the milk-wet paper towels. I climb the stairs to our bedroom and find Sam already undressed, already in bed.
Christie Grimes
Stone
I fell asleep on the futon again. When I woke, my eyes darted to the muted TV and I wondered what could have woken me. I felt an ache in my chest as if all my muscle were taut against my breastbone. The dingy carpet was in the shadows but I spied pieces of tortilla chips that had been brushed from the coffee table in a feeble attempt to clean. My back and muscles ached. The muscles in my calves were tight from being rigid, poised, ready for some type of assault or flight. I smelled a faint odor of furniture polish which fit oddly into the forgotten dusty apartment. I rolled my head to the side feeling the creases on my face. I worked my jaw, slowly unclenching it and loosing the muscles. The clock on the bookcase read 4:00 and Oprah was smiling at a guest. The small marble cat on my coffee table appeared to grin at me in the shadows, its green eyes flittering in their purple housing. The cat was the last gift I had received from a man. Not a potential lover, mind you, he was married, had three children, and told stories about how he brought his wife a flower each day until she fell in love with him. He had given me the cat the day I left. Something he saw in the store and thought of me. Our relationship had always clicked. He would have bailed me out of jail or picked me up at the hospital, but 1 never would have asked. Our relationship was strictly work. His shaggy too long hair hung in his eyes when we hugged and wrestled, and I knew that he cared about me like an adoring brother, or maybe a what-might-have-been look with a smile. I treasured that purple cat, but today it spooked me. The toothy smile did not seem playful, it was sinister. The whiskers blowing from the air vent made the plastic come alive and twitch at me. I pulled the small blanket up to my chin and tucked my feet under me, locking the blanket into a sleeping bag comfort. I glanced up at a picture adorning my bookcase which I took alone at the top of a mountain. No one would climb the formation with me to see the spectacular view of green, yellow, and auburn tones. The picture did not show my smiling face, nor anyone else's. 1 had pocketed a chunk of granite on the way down. It was larger than my hand and heavy in my pack, but the grainy wholeness of the rock felt more real than the picture, and it gave me comfort even when I felt the solitude of not being able to share the moment with another. The rock lay at the base of my bookcase crammed between particleboard and the wall. I walked over to it, shuffling my coarse feet across the carpet, creating a scratching sound. I picked up the rock and rolled it from palm to palm, small particles of dirt and crystal attaching to my hands. I rubbed my forefinger over the black streak creating a jagged Z through the center of the beige and gray rock. My fingers traced the letter, feeling the smooth black penetrating. It felt coarser, more raw than the granite exterior. I rubbed my fingers into it, softly scraping my index finger, enjoying the painful sensation in my skin. Still holding the rock in my left hand, I gently swung my arm up, feeling the lift of the weight of the rock. My finger wandered to the blunt edge of the back of the rock. On the floor it balanced flat, raised in a trapezoid shape with the black only visible in a small streak on the top and only completely visible in design from underneath. I had almost ruined the Z by breaking the rock. I hurled it the last time he left me. He walked through the door leaving me only with myself. No answers, no accommodations, and no love, understanding, or kindness on his face. I wanted answers. I thought I could fix everything if he would only let me kiss him, grab him by his large arms and trace his lips with my tongue. Slowly, erotically seducing him, sucking on his lower lip and forcing my tongue into his mouth probing for answers. But he pulled away, taking a backward step toward the door when I tried to push my body into his and against the wall. Instead he turned to the side like a matador and he left me. Motionless without a grip, I saw his hand reach behind him and I stood tense, afraid to spook him. He glanced at me, at my body rather than my eyes and his head started to shake but he stilled it, cocking it instead. He opened the door, sidestepping through it and quietly pulling it shut, clicking into the door frame. I stood for a moment before crumbling to the ground. It was no use chasing him. I knew when he would not look at my eyes. I felt it in my chest, a strange tightening, a hope coiling around nothing, pulling tighter and tighter trying to capture something so thin that it cannot be grasped. That is when I walked to the window and stood at the edge, trying to see out the corner of the blinds without moving them and without being seen. I could only see the dark headlights of his car as it reversed out of view. I felt angry, humiliated, and defeated. I backed away from the window into the bookcase and tripped into the rock, stubbing my large toe. I hopped backward and seized the rock, hurling it with my arm and my body into a shot-putter stance and flinging it into the floor where it bounced on the hard ceramic tile, breaking a quarter inch off the side into a crumbling piece and shattering the tile beneath it into cracked jagged pieces. I walked over to the rock and carefully rolled it over, afraid to see what I had done. I saw the dirt and residue on my hand and the small black shards falling off in dust. I looked for the Z. Once I brushed it clean, it was still there, only slightly torn, a small piece of the end of the rock still had the black streak but now that flat surface was no longer level, it was split into several layers of rocky slope down a path of granite. I breathed out, he never even knew what that rock meant.