Nothing But Blackened Teeth(5)

The look on my face must have been a sight to see because Phillip flinched and ducked out of the room, mumbling about mistakes, cheeks blotching. I ran through my to-do list thrice, counted out chores, precautions, a thousand trivialities, until order restored itself by way of monotony. I glanced over, breathing easy again, to see Faiz and Talia bent together like congregants, a steeple made of their bodies, foreheads touching. It was impossible to miss the cue.

Exit, stage anywhere.

So, I followed the shutter-pop of Phillip’s new camera to where he stood in an antechamber, painted by the evening penumbra, dusk colors: gold and pink. A moting of dust spiraled in the damp air, glinting palely where particles caught in the cooling sun. At some point, the roof here had fissured, letting the weather slop through. The flooring underneath was rotten, green where the mould and ferns and whorls of thick moss had taken root in the mulch.

“Sorry.”

I shrugged. There were wildflowers by the lungful, swelling at Phillip’s feet. “It’s fine.”

His eyebrows went up.

A bird shrilled its laughter. Through the wound in the roof, I saw a flash of ambergris and tanzanite, the teal of a feathered throat. Phillip stretched, a Rembrandt in high-definition. “Cat—”

“You were just worried about a friend. It happens.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I’m not going to throw myself off a building because you were trying to be nice. That’s not how it works.” I swallowed.

“Okay. Just . . . tell me what you need, all right? I don’t—I don’t always know the right things to say. I mean, I’m okay at some things, but—”

Like women, I thought. Like being a star, being loved, being hungered for. Phillip excelled at inciting want, particularly the kind that tottered on the border of worship. Small wonder he was so inept at compassion sometimes. Every religion is a one-way relationship.

To our right, a half-opened fusuma—the opaque panel stood floor to ceiling, slid noiselessly on its rail when I pushed—that opened into a garden: a neat square of emerald bracketed by verandahs, an algae-swallowed pool at its heart. The foliage crawled with red higanbana, dead men’s flowers.

I ran my fingers through my hair. I was suddenly, irrevocably exhausted, and the thought of having to exorcise Phillip’s guilt again, to assure him that he wasn’t a bad man, nauseated me. In lieu of comfort, I groped for inanities.

“When did you date Talia? Was it after or while we were seeing each other?”

“Cat?” A laugh startled from him.

“I don’t mean that as an accusation. It doesn’t matter. I was just wondering.” I stroked a finger along the bamboo lattice, came out with dust, decomposing plant material, an oiliness that I couldn’t place.

“About a month after. But we weren’t exclusive or anything.”

“You never did like the exclusive thing, no.”

“It’s not that.” So much sincerity in those gold-blue eyes, crowns of honey around black pupils. “It’s just we were kids. We’re still kids. These relationships won’t last us into adulthood. Most of them won’t. Talia and Faiz, that’s something else. Anyway. When I’m older, I’ll settle down. But these are the best years of my life and I don’t want to waste them shackled to a person I won’t like at thirty.”

His gaze became pleading.

“You understand, right?” said Phillip, yearning for affirmation.

“I’m just wondering if Faiz knows you two were together.”

He stilled.

“That’s on Talia to tell him. Not me.”

I considered my next words.

“In case he doesn’t know, I feel like you should make it a point to pretend that you two weren’t ever an item.”

Guileless, the reply: “Why?”

I thought of Faiz and his teeth, bared and blunt and bitter. “Faiz might not like suddenly finding out that you slept with his fiancée.”

“He’s an adult. And male. He’s not going to care about someone’s sexual history.”

“Better safe than sorry, Phillip.” I paused. “Also, fuck you. Faiz is an adult who can make his own decisions, but you’re a kid who shouldn’t commit yet?”

“Hey, people mature at different speeds.”

“Jesus. Fine. Just make sure you don’t let Faiz know you used to sleep with his wife-to-be.”

“Okay.” Phillip put his hand out, his blunt nails grazing a fold of my shirt. “For you.”

I wove my shoulder away.

“Don’t do that.” Something below the crossbeams of my lowest ribs clenched as I absorbed him, the chiaroscuro of his face in silhouette, his faultless smile. Nothing ever said no to those cheekbones. “You know you’re supposed to ask.”

“Sorry, I forgot.” Glib as the first word out of a babe’s milk-wet mouth, one shoulder raised then dropped.

My gaze drifted, moved until it came to rest on the fusuma. There were images of marketplaces teeming with black-lipped housewives, raccoons darting between—

I squinted. No, not raccoons. Tanuki, with their scrotums dragging behind them. Someone’d even painted the fine hairs, had made it a point to emphasize how the testes sat in their gunny sacks of tanned skin. Somehow, the profanity of the art repulsed me less than the undergrowth in which Phillip stood. The ferns grew knee-high, curled against his calves like vegetal cats.