The Vanishing Half(32)
“Finally,” she said. “One good picture of you.”
In all of her school pictures, she’d either looked too black or overexposed, invisible except for the whites of her eyes and teeth. The camera, Reese told her once, worked like the human eye. Meaning, it was not created to notice her.
“There you go again,” Erika said sleepily, each time Jude slipped out early Saturday morning. “Off to see that fine man of yours.”
“He’s not my man,” Jude said, again and again. Which was technically true. He’d never asked her on a date, escorted her into a restaurant, pulled out her chair. He didn’t kiss her or hold her hand. But didn’t he shield her with his jacket when they were caught in a rainstorm, leaving himself dripping wet? Didn’t he attend all of her home track meets, cheering during her heat and, after, pulling her into a hug outside the girls’ locker room? Didn’t she talk to him about her mother and father, Early, even Stella? On the Manhattan Beach pier, she leaned against the turquoise rail while Reese aimed at three fishermen. Biting his lip, the way he always did when he was concentrating.
“What do you think she’s like?” he asked.
She fiddled with the strap of his camera bag. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I used to wonder. Now I don’t think I wanna know. I mean, what kind of person just leaves her family behind?”
She realized, all too late, that this was, of course, exactly what Reese had done. He’d shed his family right along with his entire past and now he never talked about them at all. She knew not to ask, even as he wanted to know more about her life. Once, he asked about her first kiss and she told him that a boy named Lonnie had grabbed her outside a barn. She was sixteen then, sneaking out for a late-night run; he was tipsy from a stolen bottle of cherry wine that he’d passed, back and forth, amongst friends all night on the riverbank. She would always wonder if that empty bottle was the only reason he’d kissed her, why he’d even wandered over to her, climbing unsteadily over the fence, as she finished her lap behind the Delafosse barn. She stopped hard, her knee stinging.
“W-what you doin out here?” he’d asked.
Stupidly, she glanced over her shoulder and he laughed. “You,” he said. “Ain’t nobody here but us.” He’d never spoken to her before outside of school. She’d seen him, of course, goofing around with his friends in a back booth at Lou’s or hanging out the side of his father’s truck. He always ignored her, as if he knew that his teasing was out of place beyond the school halls, or maybe because he realized that ignoring her was even crueler, that she preferred his taunting to the absence of his attention. But she only felt irritated that he’d decided to speak to her now, when she was panting and dirty, her skin misted with sweat.
He told her that he was on his way home, cutting through the Delafosse farm. He tended Miss Delafosse’s horses after school. Did she want to see them? They were old as dirt but still pretty. The horses were locked in the stable for the night but he could use his key to get in. She didn’t know why she followed him. Maybe because the whole night was unfolding so strangely—Lonnie catching her, Lonnie speaking to her decently—that she had to see where it would end. In the stables, she followed Lonnie blindly, overwhelmed by the smell of manure. Then he stopped, and through the streaming moonlight, she saw two horses, brown and gray, taller than she’d imagined, their powerful bodies sleek with muscles. Lonnie touched the gray one’s neck and she slowly touched him too, stroking his soft hair.
“Pretty, huh?” Lonnie said.
“Yes,” she said. “Pretty.”
“You should see ’em run. R-reminds me of you. You don’t run like no person I ever seen. Got a hitch in your gait like a pony.”
She laughed. “How you know that?”
“I notice,” he said. “I notice everything.”
Then the brown horse stamped his hoof, spooking the gray horse, and Lonnie pulled her out of the stable before Miss Delafosse’s light flickered on. They skittered behind the barn, laughing at the nearness of getting caught, then Lonnie leaned in and kissed her. Around them, the night hung heavy and damp like soaked cotton. She tasted the sugar off his lips.
* * *
—
“JUST LIKE THAT?” Reese said.
“Just like that.”
“Well, goddamn.”
They were standing on the rooftop of his friend Barry’s apartment. Earlier that night, Barry had performed as Bianca at a club in West Hollywood called Mirage. For seven electrifying minutes, Bianca strutted onstage, a purple boa wrapped around her broad shoulders, and belted out “Dim All the Lights.” She wore ruby red lipstick and a big blonde wig like Dolly Parton.
“It’s not enough to be a woman,” Reese had joked during the show. “He’s gotta be a white woman too.”
Barry’s apartment was lined with wig heads covered in hair of every color, realistic and garish: a brown bob, a black pageboy, a straight Cher cut dyed pink, the bangs slicing across the forehead. At first, she’d thought that Barry might be like Reese, but then she arrived at his apartment to find him wearing a polo shirt and slacks, scratching his bearded cheek. During the week, he taught high school chemistry in Santa Monica; he only became Bianca two Saturdays a month in a tiny dark club off Sunset. Otherwise, he was a tall, bald man who looked nothing like a woman, which was part of the delight, she realized, watching the enraptured crowd. It was fun because everyone knew that it was not real.