The Better Liar(36)

Nancy gave me everything I wanted. We kissed in the girls’ bathroom at lunch, shoved into a single stall. I stopped her in the middle, brushed her bangs back from her face. “Wait,” I said. She froze, her eyes focused on mine, tracking every minuscule change in expression. I thought: If I blink, she’ll cry. I imagined myself licking off her tears.

Her sisters didn’t know at first. No one knew. We fucked with our hands over each other’s mouths. She called me almost every night, compulsively. For my part I couldn’t get enough of how badly Nancy wanted me—me, specifically—not the girlness of me, the headless story I became in boys’ mouths. In Nancy’s mouth I only ever tasted myself.

I was the first person Nancy had ever slept with, but she was the first partner I’d ever fought with—really fought. In a way it was the same thing, a means to stick your fingers in. You never knew exactly what someone was like in bed or in a fight until you were in it with them, and once you had the feel of them, they were yours forever, yours in a deep secret way. They kept their peace of mind at your pleasure; you had only to stroke them correctly and they became your little animal again, purring or scratching.

    After a while I think she hated me for knowing her like that. I wasn’t careful with her, I can see that now. Still—she made herself naked for me, again and again, told me she loved me, let me lick the salt from her. There was something insubstantial to me; I felt I didn’t exist until I could see my effect on her. Did she know that?

Maybe it’s only my memory. I’m getting dimmer, as ghosts do.





26


    Mary


Nancy agreed to meet me at the Pop-Pop’s around the corner. I was sitting cross-legged on the wooden bench outside, burning the insides of my thighs in the sun, when she pulled up in an old green Nissan.

For some reason I hadn’t expected her to look like she did. Maybe it was the way she sounded on the phone, or her sister’s round-cheeked face and button nose. She wasn’t especially tall, but she swung out of the car like a cop in her collared shirt and flat-fronts. Her black hair was almost crew cut short, and dimples appeared in her tanned cheeks when she smiled nervously. She came up to the bench and did an awkward little dance as she tried to figure out whether to shake my hand or hug me.

Ten years and she was still nervous. I decided to experiment: I leapt up and threw myself at her like I was still her girlfriend, Italian ice dripping off one of my hands. When I touched her a jolt rippled through her body into mine. We fit together too familiarly, her hands sliding around my waist, then slipping away just as quickly. Like she still expected to know my body.

“Oh, wow,” Nancy said, laughing a little as we separated. “Robin…I mean…this is a trip, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”

    “I’m visiting my sister,” I said. “She had a baby. Isn’t that wild?”

“Is it? I thought everybody we knew had babies now.”

I widened my eyes. “You had a baby?”

“No, no,” she said. “You?”

“I’m the baby,” I told her.

She smiled. “I mean, you still look the same.”

“You look like a cop,” I told her. I wondered how good of a cop she was.

She scrubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “You like it? I cut it not too long after you left, actually.”

My Italian ice sloshed red onto my hand. “Oh, fuck,” I said, licking it off.

“What flavor is that?” Nancy asked.

I grinned. “Tiger’s blood.”

“Oh, you got the good stuff. Hold on, I’m going to get one of those.”

I finished off the syrup-soup while she was inside. A breath of chilled air hit me as she came back out. I didn’t move over when she sat down on the bench, and my bare thigh pressed against her slacks. “So, um…” I said, shifting my weight so that our legs rubbed together. “How did you get into that?” I gestured at the cop car.

She dug her spoon into the ice. “I, uh, did a couple tours in the army. I wanted to get out, after…But my roots were here. I came back and ended up staying.”

“Yeah, I met your roots in the gas station.” I pointed over my shoulder. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Lindy?” Nancy snorted. “No.”

“Because we dated?”

She cast a short look at me. “Because I dated anyone, probably.”

“But it was me who gave you the idea to date girls.”

Nancy laughed. “Is that what she said?”

“I was really flattered.” I tipped my head from side to side. “I never converted someone before.”

    “I don’t believe you,” she answered, meeting my eyes. Hers had faint cheerful crow’s feet at the corners. I loved them immediately.

“Well,” I said, looking away, feigning demure.

Nancy went back to her tiger’s blood, but there was a certain agreeability to her posture now; I was getting somewhere. “What about you, what do you do?” she asked after a minute.

“I don’t do anything right now,” I said, mirroring her body language, lowering my shoulders. “I’m still kind of figuring things out. I was a waitress until this week.”