Luster(52)

“Eric is sick,” she says dryly, and when I turn, Eric is a few booths down, puking into one of those blue buckets. While he retches, Akila holds his shield and checks her watch.

“Shrooms,” I say, and Rebecca nods. Her hands are shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Perfect,” she says, as Akila hands off the shield. She and Akila slip wordlessly into the crowd, and I go over to Eric, who is in the recovery area having some juice. I find some loose Tums in my purse and give them to him.

“What, you don’t like me anymore?” he says after a long silence. The way he says it, it’s as if some nicer half of a conversation has already occurred, and now we are here. He gets up to go to the bathroom and I follow him inside. He turns and gives me a look, but his privacy, and the privacy of the Aquaman at the urinal, means nothing to me.

“I don’t know if I ever liked you,” I say, and bathroom acoustics being what they are, the declaration is magnified and that much more unkind, which makes me feel bad until I see that he is missing a shoe, and I feel it anew, this terrible disappointment in myself that I am happy to take out on him. He is the most obvious thing that has ever happened to me, and all around the city it is happening to other silly, half-formed women excited by men who’ve simply met the prerequisite of living a little more life, a terribly unspecial thing that is just what happens when you keep on getting up and brushing your teeth and going to work and ignoring the whisper that comes to you at night and tells you it would be easier to be dead. So, sure, an older man is a wonder because he has paid thirty-eight years of Con Ed bills and suffered food poisoning and seen the climate reports and still not killed himself, but somehow, after being a woman for twenty-three years, after the ovarian torsion and student loans and newfangled Nazis in button-downs, I too am still alive, and actually this is the more remarkable feat. Instead I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say, mostly to make myself feel better, but also because despite everything, it’s true. I did like him, once. When we were theoretical. When we were at the top of the coaster and the wind was in his hair.

“It’s fine if you did.” He seems to notice now that his shoe is missing. “I was careless with you.”

“No, I liked that,” I say, and he smiles.

“Yeah. What was that about?”

“I don’t know. Probably something to do with my dad.”

“Good.” He laughs. “I mean, not good. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Hey. Have you ever thought about going to a meeting or something?” I say, and he takes off his mask and looks at me.

“I’d like to be alone if that’s okay,” he says, and I go back out onto the floor and wander around as the night is coming in, all the Saturday attendees wilted and missing pieces of their costumes, toting around swords and crystals and polyethylene toys.



* * *



A happy black family comes up to me and asks if they can take a picture with me. A black Leia! the mother says, so excited that I actually try to get the smile into my eyes, though when they scroll through the pictures, I can see from their faces that the pictures have not turned out well. I wander around for a while and end up in Artists’ Alley, a section of the convention I saw on the website and assumed would be composed of signing tables for comic book conglomerates, but which is so much more—sexy, modern portraits that have been reproduced from their original graffiti; sleek, hyperrealist fan art; painters working on the floor, pausing to stow their brushes while they make a sale; homemade zines and tarot cards; graphic novelists struggling with mobile card readers and strongboxes as attendees press their noses to their newly purchased canvas prints. Of course I am envious, but as I am coming to the end, there is a booth with the coolest prints I have ever seen. The artist, a very normal-looking black woman in a wool sweater, looks up from her ice cream and tells me that her graphic novels are loosely based around her quest to find adequate psychotherapy. I open one of the books to a random page and there is a spread of dark, residential road. And I don’t know if it is the texture of the pavement, or the single yellow window suspended above the trees, but there is a feeling in my chest, and for a moment I can’t breathe.

“This is really beautiful. I’m sorry,” I say, so determined to put this feeling behind me that I leave the convention center entirely and remain outside until Akila, Eric, and Rebecca are ready to go home. On the way to the car, Rebecca mentions that she has had to park a ways uptown, and after we get on the A and take it all the way to Fifty-Ninth, she mentions that there was a minor accident, though when we get to the car, the front is smashed in, and two of the windows are gone. We don’t talk about it. Instead, we pile into the car and begin removing the less comfortable parts of our costumes, and by the time we make it home, there is an increased police presence in the neighborhood and the car is filled with smoke. All night, everyone has a cough.

When everyone is asleep, I go out to get some air, and I look up the average cost of diapers, but even this is an optimism I can’t afford, as it is unlikely any child of mine would have normal intestinal health.



* * *



It is only when I get up to go back inside that I look across the street and see the old woman watching me, standing in her yard with a leash in her hand. Once I am back in my room, I look out of the window and she is still there. I close my curtains and look up the graphic novelist. I find her LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and I am shocked that she is the same person on all three. Four years at RISD, and then a stint in a posh mental institution before she began her series. On a badly produced podcast about how to handle getting stiffed for freelance work, she says that when she was in the hospital, her assigned therapist kept falling asleep, and when I hear her laugh, the way it is big and ugly like mine, I go to the contact form on her website and send an effusive and apologetic letter. In the morning, Rebecca comes into my room and begins to clean the windows. Before she leaves, she tells me that I should find a way to tell Akila that I’m leaving.