But I didn’t want to deal with anyone else. I just wanted to be in Liz’s apartment and see her looking disheveled in the morning. I loved the way she would roll over and smile at me with crusty raccoon eyes. “Morning, Glory,” she would say. Then she’d kiss me and I’d run my hands over her bare breasts, over her back, into her panties.
“Well, too bad she was a nut job,” Amy laments.
I nod and half-smile. “And now she’s straight too.”
Liz had moods sharp like knives. She said she was stressed with grad school and would apologize, but then she’d go into rages, break dishes, and yell at me to get out. One time she bit me so hard on my arm it left a scar. My mom asked if a dog did it.
“Some of it was good,” I say. Amy looks up from her cards. “I loved going to brunch with her on Sundays. And she wrote me letters, even when we saw each other every day. Sometimes we just sat together on her porch, reading books and smoking cigarettes.”
Amy nods thoughtfully. Then she gives me a big smile and I groan. “Gin,” she says.
By the time we head back across the river, the train is almost empty. We sit side by side, Amy texting a mini-novella while I stare out the window. so then i got a donut and kate was a total bitch to her ex and we played gin and i won every time and we’re heading home now so maybe i’ll come over later and you can meet my hummingbird?
A guy about our age in an Old Navy T-shirt is sitting across the aisle. He’s rocking his head back and forth singing “Brown Eyed Girl” to himself. “Sha la la la la la la la la la ti da,” he mumbles. He’s got short brown hair and a hooked nose. I look at his hands because he’s drumming his fingers on his leg and his hands are all fucked up and scarred and dirty. He looks familiar.
He catches me looking at him and lopes over to our seats. He goes, “Hey.” He’s got pale skin and he smells wet and sour, like a gutter that’s been pissed in too many times. I breathe through my mouth. I look at Amy and we don’t say anything.
The guy smiles like one half of his mouth is all shot up with Novocain. “Hey,” he says again, and leans closer to Amy. “You’re really pretty.” She tenses up but doesn’t move. He runs a finger along the edge of her hair, from the base of her neck down to her shoulder blade.
I swat his hand away. “Hey, man. Don’t fucking touch her!”
Amy is red and frozen, not looking at either of us.
The guy straightens up and laughs. “Whatever. I’m just giving her a compliment.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his neck and suddenly I want to wrap my hands around his throat. Make him shut up. Make him sorry. His eyes roll around, like he’s not sure where to look. He stares into Amy’s lap, at her purse. “Hey,” he says again, and points. “What’s what?”
The Hummingbird is sticking out of her bag. He can see the cupped tip and the edge of the package, where it says, Requires two AA batteries, in large print. “It’s a toothbrush,” Amy says, and tries to push it down into her purse.
“Nah,” he says. “That’s a dildo.” He stretches it out into two heavy syllables: Dill. Dough. He laughs again and I want to crush his windpipe. My fingernails are digging into my palms.
He touches Amy’s neck. “You need some help, honey? Need a man to help you, baby doll?”
Amy cringes and I leap over her, shoving him with force. There are three other people on the train and they are all working very hard to seem like they are not looking at us.
I warn him, “Keep your fucking hands and your compliments to yourself.”
“Don’t touch me, you fat fucking dyke,” he growls. His glassy eyes darken and he pushes me back, so I stumble into Amy, who, miraculously, is still texting. this is so crazy!!
I take a deep breath and feel my body hum. There’s a rush of blood that starts in my feet and burns straight up my legs to my pussy. It feels like an hour passes before the train stops and the doors slowly pull apart, and in one moment I do two things-I stomp on his foot, which distracts him enough to look down for a fraction of a second, then I jam the palm of my hand upward into his face and I hear his nose pop into my fingers. Suddenly there’s blood streaming down my forearm and I yell, “Run!” to Amy, who’s already jumped out and is racing to the parking lot.
I run as hard as I can, pausing only once to glance over my shoulder, and I see that he’s stepped off the train but he’s not going to catch us. He’s stumbling around with blood all over his shirt. The last thing I hear from him is a muffled cry like a broken animal.
Amy shouts for the keys and I toss them to her. She sprints ahead to the car and has the engine started before I even reach the passenger door.
We burn through signals regardless of their color and pull onto the freeway. The blood on my hand slowly dries and turns brown. Amy stares straight ahead, a death grip on the wheel, her chest heaving. Her right foot is planted to the floor. The album is still blasting from the stereo and we don’t turn it down.
Stand up so I can see you
Shout out so I can hear you
Reach out so I can touch you
This is our emergency
This is our emergency
A moment turns into half an hour. I make Amy turn around at Multnomah Falls, the scenic area thirty miles east of where we started.
“I don’t want to go to Idaho,” I say. I try to make it funny but she doesn’t respond.
Amy quietly, slowly pulls the car around. She looks left and right three times. Stops. She finally speaks: “Do you think we lost him?”
In the dark night, it’s so funny, all I can do is laugh, and finally Amy laughs too, and I say, “He never even had us.”
SHANGHAIED BY GIGI LITTLE
Old Town
Eight o’clock
So, I’m walking down this seedy street in Old Town with Kit and Rhonda, silently lamenting my sorrowful existence-how rent’s going up again, how I need some new clothes, how good cheese is so fucking expensive-and up ahead, on the next corner, here’s this old woman begging. How’s that for juxtaposition?
In other words, I’m a pathetic, whiny bitch.
She’s squat like a folding chair. Hunched, head straight out from the crossbar of her shoulders. Hand out at the people walking by. And this funny look on her face, this little twisted thing with her lips, almost a smile-and, damn, look at her eyes. She’s got crooked eyes. Like she’s wearing crooked glasses, but she’s not wearing glasses at all.
“Spare change?” she says. “Pretty jewelry?”
And that’s the thing that really has me reaching into my purse. Pretty jewelry. Because Jesus, I mean, just look at her.
All right, it’s not the dress-that’s just some old house-dress. Yellow faded to white. Some splattery stain covering it that, when I step close enough, turns out to be what was once a pattern of flowers. But her hat. That’s bright blue velvet. With one of those little feathers at the side and some torn net hanging from the brim. And her jewelry. Trying so hard to be pretty. She’s covered in junky plastic-big earrings, clinking bracelets-old and broken. And what looks like-step closer-clippings of wire circled around her fingers. Necklaces made of tied-together pieces of gutter-stained string and buttons and faded sequins. Step right in front of her now, and the brooch pinned to her chest is an arthritic metal claw with no rhinestones.
She looks her crooked eyes down my face to the pearls at my neck. “Pretty jewelry?”
I’ve got a fistful of coins and I step up and hang it over her open hand and let go.