Luster(25)

* * *



That Rebecca also appears uncomfortable is comforting to me, because even as she bends over and I finally conclude that I’m better looking, I am aware of her competence, of her satisfied charity, even as she stands gravely in the doorway and says, this is just for now, as if she has begrudgingly accepted my presence in her house and did not in fact initiate this whole thing. She just lingers as I slip off my shoes and peel off my socks. I let my hair down and try not to feel her eyes. And then she comes back into the room. She begins to speak but looks elsewhere, wringing her hands. She says she is an evolved woman, that it is debatable whether monogamy is biologically sound, and an open marriage can be good in theory, but Eric is not great at time management and could this thing with her husband please stop. Then she leaves the room, apparently as excited as I am for the moment to be over. For a while I lie awake in the dark, wondering about how ending things with Eric might feel, and the answer is that it would feel great, not just because he’s borrowed anyway, but because I would have the last word. He may be the only man in recent memory to make me come, but he is not even on Twitter. I could find someone my age. Someone my age who is clean-cut and doesn’t drink and refers to God as a woman, whose formative development I can track online. But then I think about all the work I’ve already done with Eric. I think of our correspondence, the fevered, early-morning confessionals we indulged without shame. So when he calls at midnight and says, “I’m not a violent man,” it doesn’t matter if it’s true. And when he says, “I know you are a person,” and then hangs up, it doesn’t matter that the words are slurred. What matters is that there is a record, of a call, of a conversation, of a girl on the other end.





5


In the morning, there is a text from Eric. It says, I’ll be home in four days. and I have a surprise. I don’t text him back because just as I’m sitting up in bed and noting the film on my teeth, I hear the unmistakable sound of someone doing Tae Bo downstairs and remember where I am. I remember Rebecca asking me to return her husband, and now that I have slept more than four hours, I feel less inclined to honor this request.



* * *



Just as my mother might crank Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir on Friday nights when my sole purpose was to sterilize the bathroom, Rebecca is another passive-aggressive alarm clock, her obedient clapping along to Billy Blanks a signal that it is no longer acceptable to sleep. But for once I’ve slept enough; I am delighted my body is still capable of issuing its own dopamine. Then I see my wilted sneakers in the corner and remember that I should be embarrassed. I try to find something wrong with the place, but I look around and it is pristine. Not beautiful, but carefully considered. On my bedside table, there is a bar of soap in the shape of a rose, a new toothbrush, sweatpants, and a T-shirt that says Hudson Valley Tulip Festival. I take a moment to pretend the room is mine. I press my face into the memory foam, and when I come up for air, Akila is standing in the doorway. Us being kinfolk notwithstanding, it is hard for me to empathize with a child whose footsteps are nearly undetectable. I did not even hear her open the door. Like her mother’s, her silence is aggressive in its ease, and even though I usually have a hard time interacting with people’s children, her shamelessness emboldens me, and I take a moment to really look at her, her shiny brown cheeks, her soft frown and Adventure Time nightshirt, her towering hair and balled fists. Because once upon a time my weird adolescent breasts were subject to the dissection of aunties everywhere, my BMI always a hot topic among the Jamaican deaconesses in our SDA church, I would like to mind my business when it comes to the subject of Akila’s hair. However, it is a massive, two-foot condemnation of her limp-haired parents, who had clearly made some previous effort that did not pan out.

“You’re the girlfriend,” she says with no ire or judgment, which somehow makes it worse. I want to get out of bed, but sometime during the night I shed all my clothes. My underwear is on the floor between us, inside out. I am the adult here. I have bills. I am not slavering under the weight of my pituitary gland. But to demand that she respect me is so ludicrous that I can’t get the words out of my mouth.

“Yeah,” I say, and she frowns and shuts my door. In the shower, the water pressure is excellent. I feel an unexpected reverence for my new toiletries. I use the soap but try not to smooth any of the dimples that constitute the petals. I use the toothbrush and relish the stiff bristles, the gross baking soda notes of their geriatric toothpaste, which is an appropriate departure from the sweet Peppa Pig brand I prefer. I can’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth, and so, in this moment, I feel like a responsible person. I put on the sweatpants and T-shirt Rebecca laid out for me and decide that the only way I can repay her charity or leave this place with any semblance of dignity is to touch nothing and be as scarce as possible.



* * *



I restore the room to its original form and listen to the suburban quiet, the soft hybrid hum, the monastic baying of land-protecting dogs, the laughter of clear-skinned kids, a chorus of perpetually unlatched screen doors, and all the bugs, trying in earnest to fuck before they die. The calm is killing my peristalsis, but more pressing is my access to the Wi-Fi, so I go downstairs and Rebecca is there doing push-ups. She glances at me but doesn’t say anything, and in fact seems to be angry, though maybe that’s just what she looks like when she works out. I stand there in hopes that she might give me an opening, but the intensity of her focus is so keen, so uncomfortable to watch, that I retreat to the kitchen, where Akila is eating a bowl of cornflakes. She ignores me and I try to ignore her, but I don’t know where they keep the cups.