Cult Classic(39)

“I knew it,” she said, resuming vaping. “Your heart is bigger than mine because it’s been broken so many times.”

Was Georgette the Ghost of Christmas Present?

“Did Clive send you?”

“Who?” She laughed and coughed at the same time.

Boots returned, recharged, with two glasses in his hand and a cigarette rocking in his mouth like a loose tooth.

“You don’t smoke,” I said.

“Ith fur you,” he said, in a better mood now.

“My hero, my murderer.”

Georgette dug into her pouch once more to produce a few pale pills. She inspected one, bit it in half, and chased it with a glass of tonic water. Evidently, the sobriety only applied to liquids.

“Nice,” Boots said, almost meanly.

“Fuck,” Georgette said, vigorously rubbing her arms. “Why is it so cold?”

“Because we’re on a farm,” he said.

Neither of us cared to fight this logic. Boots was still irritable and he and I were no longer an intriguing conversational experiment for Georgette, forget a sexual one. We were pusillanimous and predictable. It was as if we’d all gone to the movies together and Boots and I insisted on staying for the credits and this is how she knew that we were not her people.

“The point is,” she said, as if wrapping up a speech, “you guys seem perfect for each other.”

Whether this was a dig or sincerity did not matter. What mattered was how I’d allowed myself to feel aligned with this stranger. And how I now felt aligned with neither of them. I had the urge to walk down the road, to keep walking until I came to a bus stop, take the bus as far as it went, transfer to another bus, and just circle the globe like that until I died. Instead, the three of us shifted in place, surveying the gaiety, the grass cold against the arches of my feet. Tomorrow’s brunch would bring the dual aroma of bacon grease and mothballs. But, and this I guessed correctly, Georgette would not be there. She’d probably never attended a wedding brunch in her life. Too much of an extension of the day before.

In the moonlight, I could see the glint of a safety pin at the zenith of her jumpsuit, the flimsy mechanism holding it together.





7




I couldn’t stop saying goodbye. When Boots got out of the shower, I wrapped my arms around his waist, clinging to his damp skin. It was barely light out but the neon star made it seem later. I watched, hypnotized, as he coiled his phone charger. I followed him into the living room, padding after him, bleating, “How long, again?” Two weeks. Fifteen days, to be exact. And, as he reminded me, San Francisco is not the moon. His enjoyment of this role reversal was apparent. Though not starved for bursts of affection, he was unaccustomed to them for no reason. He welcomed my clinginess without question and did not see it for what it was—an alcoholic’s fear of an unlocked liquor cabinet.

“I’ll miss you, too,” he assured me. “You’re my favorite thing.”

I didn’t cringe at his referring to me as a “thing.” I was happy to be put on a shelf like a cake platter and think of nothing. Watching him arrange piles of shirts in his beaten bag, I thought of the last time I’d seen this particular bag. He’d returned from a camping trip and I was in the bedroom, reading. I greeted him without getting up, which was its own kind of performative romance (he with the “Honey, I’m home,” me with the “How was your trip?”). Then he asked, with strained calm, if Rocket was in the bedroom with me.

“Yes?” I said, making eye contact with the cat.

“Can you please get up and shut the door but stay in there?”

“Umm, okay.”

I remember feeling that it was too early to propose, that we had not discussed this and, superficially, that whatever ring he’d picked up at a truck stop gift shop might not engender unbridled enthusiasm for the idea. The cat and I sat on the bed, our eyes wide, as Boots rustled around in the living room. I heard the sound of a box being unfolded, followed by a “motherfucker!” Then he whipped open the door.

“I had a stowaway. There was a brown recluse spider in my bag. It was not small and I trapped it. I’m getting rid of it and everything is fine.”

“Can one of those kill a cat?”

“Better not find out, right? Be right back!”

Then he blew me a kiss and dove back into the living room with a hunter’s spring in his step.

Had I ever made him as happy as that venomous spider? I wanted to. I knew how precious it was to have a person love you as Boots loved me. I did not take it for granted that such a person was living in my house. But my efforts to turn stability into desire and familiarity into respect were coming unglued.

“You, too, are also the thing that is my favorite,” I told him, “as well.”

“I know that,” he said.

I kept the door open as I watched him disappear down our steps. The moment he was gone, I issued a correction to the cat.

“Second favorite. Obviously.”

She was resting with her chin between her paws. Aware of being addressed but unsure of how she might benefit from this conversation, she looked at me without moving her head. Then my phone vibrated, a skirmish with my desk. It was Vadis, asking me how the wedding was. I did not answer since I knew that’s not what she was asking.