The Vanishing Half(36)

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IN THE MORNING, she wandered through the bright campus, dazed. She hadn’t slept a second after Reese departed down the darkened sidewalk. Even now, thinking about him, her stomach twisted with dread. Maybe he’d been so drunk he wouldn’t even remember kissing her. He’d awakened at home, vaguely recalling that he had done something embarrassing. Or maybe he’d sobered up and regretted it. She was the type of girl that boys only kissed in secret and, after, pretended that they hadn’t.

That night, the girls threw a party. In Harley’s crowded living room, she squeezed onto the windowsill, nursing a rum and Coke. She wasn’t in a partying mood but she still felt too embarrassed to go home and face Reese; of course, he then arrived at the party, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, his hair still wet from the shower. He’d waved to her when he first walked in but he didn’t come over to say hello. Maybe he pitied her. He’d only kissed her because he felt so bad about yelling at her. He knew that she hoped that kiss meant more so he was avoiding her, standing so far on the other side of the room that Harley asked what was wrong.

“Nothing,” she said, tilting more rum into her cup.

“Then why’re you both acting so damn funny?” he said.

He had blond feathered bangs like Farrah Fawcett that he kept sweeping out of his eyes. She shrugged, staring out the window. She couldn’t continue like this, pretending that everything was normal. She needed air. But the room suddenly fell into complete darkness. The music cut off, the silence as jarring as the black. Then voices ringing out, Barry asking where to find a flashlight, Harley offering that there might be candles in the bathroom, and Luis, leaning over by the window, calling everyone over. All around the block, all the other buildings descended into darkness too.

She said that she would look for candles and groped her way down the dark hallway toward the bathroom when Reese grabbed her hand.

“It’s me,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

In the dark, you could be anybody, but she knew him before he even spoke. His cologne, his rough palms. She could find him in any darkened room.

“I can’t see shit,” he said, laughing a little.

“Well, I’m trying to find the candles.”

“Wait. Can we just talk?”

“We don’t have to talk,” she said. “I know you don’t like me. Not like that. And it’s okay. We just don’t have to talk about it.”

He dropped her hand. At least she didn’t have to look at him. Maybe she would never find the candles and she wouldn’t have to see his face. She inched farther down the hall, finally feeling the tile on the bathroom wall, but when she opened the medicine cabinet, Reese pressed it shut. Then he was kissing her against the bathroom sink.

Down the hall, their friends were gamely calling each other’s names, laughing at their own blindness. But in the bathroom, they were kissing desperately, as if both knew that the moment couldn’t possibly last. The lights would flicker on, someone would come searching for them, they would wrench apart at the sound of footsteps, guilty, caught. But by the time Barry returned from the kitchen, triumphantly waving a flashlight, they’d already slipped out the door. They felt their way down the stairwell until they emerged on the sidewalk, still holding hands, fading into the blackened city. Overhead, traffic lights blinked uselessly. Cars crept along the street. The skyline above them disappeared, and for the first time in nearly a year, she saw stars.

Somewhere, across the vast city, a grandmother listened to children tell ghost stories in front of the black television screen. A man sat on his porch, petting a dog’s graying muzzle. A dark-haired woman lit a candle in her kitchen, staring out at her swimming pool. A young man and young woman walked home, climbing the silent steps, shutting the door on the rest of the city. She held his lighter as he searched the cabinets for candles. He couldn’t find any and they both felt relieved. She wasn’t afraid of the dark; he felt safer inside it.

In bed, he tugged off her shirt, kissing down her neck to her breasts. Only once he was kissing between her thighs did she realize that he hadn’t undressed at all.

All over the city, couples doing what they were doing. Teenagers kissing on blankets at a beach, the ocean rolling in black. Newlyweds fumbling in a hotel room. A man whispering into his lover’s ear. A woman holding a match to a slender candle, her face glowing off the kitchen window. Across the city, darkness and light.





Six


There’s something different about you,” Desiree Vignes told her daughter over the phone.

By late August, a heat wave had rolled through Los Angeles, and even with all the windows open, you couldn’t catch a breeze. Outside, the pavement shimmered like a pond. Big brown crickets searched the pipes for water, and every morning, Jude always found one or two in the shower; she grew so paranoid that they would blend into the beige carpet that she refused to walk around barefoot. The heat was maddening but life could be worse, she thought, watching Reese slide an ice cube between his lips. He was wearing blue swim trunks and a black T-shirt, his collarbone glistening with sweat. She twirled the phone cord around her finger.

“Ma’am?” she said.

“Oh, don’t ma’am me. You heard what I said. There’s somethin different. I can hear it in your voice.”