"I'll tie her down to the chair next time," Vanessa promises. "And maybe we can make her listen to that lady sing Celine Dion."
She points to the middle-aged woman whose karaoke career I intercepted. "You've been here that long?"
"Yeah. Why didn't you tell me you could sing like that?"
"You've heard me sing a hundred times--"
"Somehow when you chime in with the Hot Pockets jingle, it doesn't really convey the full range of your voice."
"I used to play here a couple times a week," I tell her. "I forgot how much I liked it."
"Then you should do it again. I'll even come be your audience so you never have to play to an empty room."
Hearing her talk about an empty room reminds me of the music therapy session my client abandoned. I wrap my arms around the neck of my guitar case, as if creating a shield for myself. "I really thought I could get Lucy to open up. I feel like such a loser."
"I don't think you're a loser."
"What do you think of me?" The words slip out, before I have even meant for them to fly away.
"Well," Vanessa says slowly, "I think you're the most interesting person I've ever met. Every time I think I have you pegged, I learn something else about you that totally surprises me. Like last weekend when you said that you keep a list of all the places you wish you'd gone to when you were younger. Or that you used to watch Star Trek and memorized the dialogue from every episode. Or that, I now realize, you are the next Sheryl Crow."
There is a buttery glow to the room now; my cheeks are flushed, and I'm dizzy even though I'm sitting down. I did not drink very much when I was married to Max--out of solidarity, and then intended pregnancy--and for this reason the alcohol I'm not accustomed to has even more sway over my system. I reach across Vanessa to the stack of napkins beside the olive tray, and the fine hairs on my wrist brush against the silk sleeve of her blouse. It makes me shiver.
"Jack," I call out. "I need a pen."
The bartender tosses me one, and I unfold the cocktail napkin and write the numbers one through eight in a list. "What songs," I ask, "would be on the mix tape that describes you?"
I hold my breath, thinking that she's going to start laughing or just crumple the napkin, but instead Vanessa takes the pen out of my hand. When she bows her head toward the bar, her bangs cover one eye.
Did you ever notice how other people's houses have a smell? I had asked, the first time I went over to Vanessa's.
Please tell me mine isn't something awful like bratwurst.
No, I said. It's clean. Like sunlight on sheets. Then I asked her what my apartment smelled like.
Don't you know?
No, I'd explained. I can't tell because I live there. I'm too close to it.
It smells like you, Vanessa had said. Like a place nobody ever wants to leave.
Vanessa bites her lip as she writes down her list. Sometimes, she squints, or looks over at the bartender, or asks me a rhetorical question about the name of a band before she finds the answer herself.
A few weeks ago we were watching a documentary that said people lie on an average of four times a day. That's 1,460 times a year, Vanessa had pointed out.
I did the math, too. Almost eighty-eight thousand times by the time you're sixty.
I bet I know what the most common lie is, Vanessa had said: I'm fine.
I had told myself the reason I'd left the school without waiting for Vanessa to return to her office was because she was busy. I was afraid she'd think I was an abysmal music therapist. But the other reason I'd run was because I wanted (wished for?) her to come after me.
"Ta da," Vanessa says, and she pushes the cocktail napkin back toward me. It lifts, like a butterfly, and then settles on the bar.
Aimee Mann. Ani DiFranco. Damien Rice. Howie Day.
Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin, Garbage, Elvis Costello.
Wilco. The Indigo Girls. Alison Krauss.
Van Morrison, Anna Nalick, Etta James.
I can't speak for a moment.
"I know, it's weird, right? Pairing Wilco and Etta James on the same CD is like sitting Jesse Helms and Adam Lambert next to each other at a dinner party . . . but I felt guilty getting rid of one." Vanessa leans closer, pointing to the list again. "I couldn't pick individual songs, either. Isn't that like asking a mom which kid she loves the most?"
Every single artist she has put on her list is one I would have put on my list. And yet I know I've never shared that information with her. I couldn't have, because I've never formally made my own CD playlist. I've tried but could never finish, not with all the possible songs in this world.
In music, perfect pitch is the ability to reproduce a tone without any reference to an external standard. In other words--there's no need to label or name notes, you can just start singing a C-sharp, or you can listen to an A and know what it is. You can hear a car horn and know that it is an F.
In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.
When Max and I were married, we fought over the car radio all the time. He liked NPR; I liked music. I realize that, in all the months I've been friends with Vanessa, in all the car rides we've taken--from a quick run to the local bakery to a trip to Franconia Notch, New Hampshire--I have never changed the station. Not once. I've never even wanted to fast-forward through a CD she's picked.
Whatever Vanessa plays, I just want to keep listening to.
Maybe I gasp, and maybe I don't, but Vanessa turns, and for a moment we are frozen by our own proximity.
"I have to go," I mutter, tearing myself away. I dig out all the money I have in my pocket and leave it crumpled on the bar, then grab my guitar case and hurry into the parking lot. Even as I unlock my car, with my hands still shaking, I can see Vanessa standing in the doorway. Even when the door is closed and I rev the engine, I know she's calling my name.
On the night that Lila was shooting up heroin, there was a reason I'd been wandering through Ellie's house.
I had awakened in the middle of the night to find Ellie staring at me. "What's the matter?" I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
"Can you hear that?" she whispered.
"Hear what?"
"Ssh," Ellie said, holding a finger up to her lips. Then she moved the same finger to my lips.
But I didn't hear anything. "I think--"
Before I could finish, Ellie put both of her hands on my cheeks and kissed me.
At that moment, I heard everything. From the bass in my blood to the sound of the house settling, to luna moths beating their heavy wings against the glass of the windows, to a baby crying somewhere down the block.
I leaped out of the bed and started running down the hallway. I knew Ellie wouldn't call after me, because she'd wake up the whole household. But Ellie's mother, as it turned out, wasn't home yet. And Lila, Ellie's sister, was OD'ing in her bedroom when I burst through the door.
Back then I thought that I was running away from Ellie, but now I wonder if I was actually running away from myself.
I wasn't upset because my best friend unexpectedly kissed me.
I was upset because I started to kiss her back.
For two hours I drive aimlessly, but I think I know where I'm headed even before I get there. There is a light on upstairs at Vanessa's house, so when she opens the door I don't feel guilty about waking her.
"Where have you been?" she bursts out. "You're not answering your phone. Dara and I have both been trying to reach you. You never went home tonight--"
"We have to talk," I interrupt.
Vanessa steps back so that I can come into the entryway. She is still wearing the clothes she was wearing today at school, and she looks like hell--her hair's a mess; there are faint purple circles beneath her eyes. "I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean for you--for me to--" She breaks off, shaking her head. "The thing is, Zoe, nothing happened. And I can promise you nothing will happen, because it's way too important for me to have yo
u as a friend than to risk losing you because--"
"Nothing happened? Nothing happened?" I can barely breathe. "You're my best friend," I say. "I want to be with you all the time, and when I'm not, I'm thinking about being with you. I don't know anyone--including my mother, and my ex-husband--who gets me the way you do. I don't even have to speak a sentence out loud for you to finish it." I stare at Vanessa until she looks me in the eye. "So when you tell me Nothing happened? You're dead wrong, Vanessa, because I love you. And that means everything happened. Everything."
Vanessa's jaw drops. She doesn't move a muscle. "I . . . I don't understand."
"That makes two of us," I admit.
We never know people as well as we think we do--including ourselves. I don't believe you can wake up and suddenly be gay. But I do believe you can wake up and realize that you cannot spend the rest of your life without a certain individual.
She is taller than I am, so I have to come up on my toes. I put my hands on her shoulders.
It is not like kissing a man. It's softer. More intuitive. More equal.
She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.
And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.
I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.
Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that, even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.
VANESSA
When I was little, I became obsessed with the prizes offered on Bazooka Joe comics. A gold-plated ring with my initial, a chemical magic set, a telescope, a genuine compass. You remember those wax papers, wrapped around the nuggets of gum? A fine white dust coated the Bazooka and would rub off on your fingers as you read the joke, which was rarely if ever funny.
Each prize sounded more exotic than the last, and could be mine for a pittance and a ridiculous number of Bazooka comics. But nothing captured my fancy as much as the one I found on a gum wrapper in the spring of 1985. If I could just manage to amass $1.10 and sixty-five Bazooka comics, I could have my own pair of X-ray vision glasses.
For a full week I would go to sleep at night wondering what you could see with X-ray vision. I pictured people in their underwear, the skeletons of dogs walking in the street, the insides of jewelry boxes and violin cases. I wondered if I would be able to peer through walls, if I would know what was going on in the teachers' lounge, if I could read through the manila folder on Ms. Watkins's desk and see the answer key for the math test. There was a world of possibility in X-ray vision, and I knew I could not live another day without it.
So I began to save. It didn't take long to scrape together $1.10, but the Bazooka comics were another story entirely. I bought twenty pieces of gum that week with my allowance. I traded my best Topps baseball card--a Roger Clemens Red Sox rookie--to Joey Palliazo for ten Bazooka comics (he had been saving up for the decoder rings). I let Adam Waldman touch my boob for another five (believe me, it didn't do anything for either one of us). Eventually, within a few weeks, I had enough comics and change to mail off to the address listed. In four to six weeks, those X-ray vision glasses would be mine.
I spent the time imagining a world where I could see beneath the surface. Where I could eavesdrop on the conversations of my parents about my Christmas gifts, could see what leftovers were in the fridge before I opened it, could read my best friend's diary to see if she felt about me the same way I felt about her. Then one day, a plain brown box arrived with my name on it. I ripped it open, unraveled the Bubble Wrap, and pulled out a pair of white plastic glasses.
They were too big for my face and slid down my nose. They had slightly opaque lenses with a fuzzy white bone etched in the center of each one. When I put them on, everything I looked at was printed with that stupid fake bone.
I couldn't see through anything at all.
I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It's bound to disappoint you.
You would think, after that first kiss, there would have been some kind of apology, an awkward pause between us. And in fact the next day, after eight hours at school analyzing every moment of that kiss (Was Zoe drunk, or just a little buzzed? Did I encourage her, or was that entirely her own idea? Was it really as magical as I thought it had been, or was that twenty-twenty hindsight?), I met Zoe at the hospital where she was working with burn victims. She told the nurses she was taking a ten-minute break, and we walked down a long hallway, close enough to hold hands, except we didn't.
"Listen," I said, as soon as we were outside and out of earshot of anyone who happened to be eavesdropping.
That was as far as I got before Zoe launched herself at me. Her kiss was blistering. "God, yes," she breathed against my lips, when we broke apart. "That's exactly how I remembered it." Then she looked up at me, her eyes bright. "Is it always like this?"
How was I supposed to answer that? The first time I'd kissed a woman, I felt like I had been shot into space. It was unfamiliar and exciting and felt so incredibly right that I couldn't believe I'd never done it before. There was an evenness of the playing field that was different from the kisses I'd shared with guys--and yet somehow it wasn't soft and delicate. It was surround-sound, earthshaking, intense.
But that said, it wasn't always like this.
I wanted to tell Zoe that, yes, the reason it felt like her skin was on fire was because she was kissing a woman. But more than that, I wanted to tell Zoe that the reason it felt like her skin was on fire was because she was kissing me.
So I didn't actually answer. I just reached for her, cradled her head in my hands, and kissed her again.
In the three days since then, we have spent hours in her car, on my couch, and in the supply room at the hospital making out like we are teenagers. I know every inch of her mouth. I know what spot on her jaw, when brushed, makes her shudder. I know that the hollow behind her ear smells of lemons and that she has a birthmark shaped like Massachusetts at the nape of her neck.
Last night when we stopped, flushed and breathing hard, Zoe said, "What happens next?"
Which is how I've ended up where I am right now: lying on my bed, fully clothed, with the curtain of Zoe's hair covering my face as she kisses me. With her hands moving tentatively over the terrain of my body.
I think we both knew tonight would end up like this--in spite of its humble beginnings of an Italian dinner and a bad movie. How does sex ever happen between couples, except as an electrical storm that's been gathering in the space between the two people, which finally combusts?
But this is different. Because even though it's Zoe's first time, I'm the one who has everything to lose if it's not perfect. Namely, Zoe.
So I tell myself that I'm going to let her go at her own pace, which means the most incredible torture, as her hands move from my shoulders to my ribs to my waist. But then she stops. "What's the matter?" I whisper, imagining the worst: she is disgusted by this; she is feeling nothing; she knows she has made a mistake.
"I think I'm scared," Zoe confesses.
"We don't have to do anything," I say.
"I want to. I'm just afraid I'm going to do it wrong."
"Zoe," I tell her, "there is no wrong."
I slip her hands beneath the hem of my shirt. Her palms brand my stomach; I am sure I will wake up with her initials seared into my skin. Slowly, her hands inch up, until they are touching the lace of my bra.
Here is the thing about lesbian sex: it doesn't matter if your body isn't perfect, because your partner feels the same way. It doesn't matter if you've never touched a woman, because you are one, and you already know what you like. When Zoe finally takes off my blouse, I think I cry out, because she covers my mouth with h
ers and swallows the sound. And then her shirt comes off, too, and the rest. We are a tangle of smooth legs and peaks and valleys, of sighs and pleas. She grabs for me, and I try to slow us down, and somehow we meet in the glorious middle.
Afterward, we curl together on top of the covers. I can smell her skin and her sweat and her hair, and I love the thought that, even when she is gone, my sheets will still retain that memory. But things that are this perfect don't last very long. I have been down this path before with a straight woman, so I know that having a fantasy come true doesn't always mean it will be permanent. I can believe Zoe wanted this to happen between us. I just can't believe she'll want it to continue.
She shifts in her sleep and rolls over, so that she is facing me. Her leg slides between mine. I pull her closer, and wonder when the novelty of me will wear off.
Two weeks later, I am still waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop. Zoe and I have spent every night together--it's gotten to the point where I don't even ask if she wants to come over after work, because I know she'll already be there waiting with Chinese takeout or a DVD we had been talking about watching or a fresh-baked pie she insists she can't eat by herself.
There are moments I cannot believe how happy I am. But there are just as many moments when I remember that, to Zoe, this is still just the bright, shiny new toy. In private, Zoe is so, so gay. She reads all my back issues of Curve. She calls her cable company and gets Logo. She starts talking to me about Provincetown: if I've ever been, if I'd ever go again. She acts the way I did when I first embraced who I really was--like I'd been let out of my cage for the first time in twenty years. However, she's never told anyone--not even me--that she's fallen for a woman. She's never been in a relationship before that causes people on the street to whisper when she walks by. She's never been called a dyke. This isn't real yet, for her. And when it is, she will come back to me and tell me it's all been a wonderful, fun mistake.
And yet . . . I'm too weak to turn her away now, when she wants me. When it just feels so damn good to be with her.
Which is why, when she asks me to observe her second session with Lucy, I immediately agree. I had asked to be there last time, but now I wonder if that was only so that I'd get to see Zoe working, and not because I was thinking of Lucy's welfare. Zoe had refused anyway, and she was right--but she's changed her tune this week, after Lucy's abandonment. I think, frankly, she wants me there to bar the door if Lucy tries to run again.