Chapter 2 #5
“Um, nothing?” Susan says, wondering if she should have pretended to have plans in order to seem busy and important. But it’s too late.
“Why don’t you come meet me in Park Slope when you get off work,” Ramona says. “I’ll text you the address of a bar.”
Susan agrees, though she had not counted on Ramona wanting to meet her that same night.
It’s almost ninety degrees out and her T-shirt has yellowing pit stains. Susan leaves work early, knowing no one will notice, and walks to the nearest secondhand store, where she grabs a stretchy black American Apparel dress from the first rack she sees and runs into the dressing room.
It’s skintight. She turns around and looks at her butt over her shoulder.
This is fine, she thinks. There’s a little rip at the bottom but it’s not major.
Her panty line is showing pretty severely, though.
She sighs, facing herself in the mirror, and then pulls her underwear off and stuffs it into her bag.
If she stands up straight, her bush is visible through the dress, a small round mound of wiry hair, but if she slouches, you can’t see it at all. She’ll just have to slouch, then.
When Ramona first eyed her, Susan wore skinny jeans and an oversize T-shirt. Still, she can’t imagine anyone would like her like that, in her natural state.
“Can I wear this out?” she asks the dressing room attendant.
The attendant shrugs without looking at her. “You could have just taken the tags off and left.”
Susan is so nervous she can barely speak, but the good news is that Ramona just keeps talking, only occasionally prompted by questions from Susan.
They’re sitting in a mostly empty bar, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs blasting through the speakers, red leather bar seats sticky and cracked.
A bartender with full-sleeve tattoos is cutting lemons a few feet away from them.
The walls boast photos of famous people who have drank here, though at a glance there’s no one Susan recognizes.
She’s grateful for the air-conditioning and the new dress and the fact that Ramona hasn’t stopped to ask her anything about herself.
She’s not sure what she could say that would be remotely interesting.
Ramona is twenty-six. Most recently she was in Berlin on tour and then decided to stay for an extra month just to be there, which strikes Susan as deeply glamorous.
She’s been all over Asia, South America, Europe; she has stories about waking up in celebrities’ homes, about warehouse raves and limos at sunrise.
“So, like, do you have a day job?” Susan asks at one point, thinking of Jonny and how hard he works to be able to play music. She takes a sip of her Pbr. Somehow she’s already on her third one.
“A what?” Ramona looks offended. “No. Music is my whole life.”
“Oh,” Susan says. “Cool.” Perhaps the Monas are more successful than Susan realized, though it feels unlikely.
“Hey,” Ramona says, finishing off the last watery sips of her whiskey. “Do you want to just come over?”
“Sure,” Susan says, though the truth is she’s not sure if she wants to come over. It feels very abrupt. But there’s no time to reconsider.
Ramona takes her by the hand and leads her down the street to the entrance of a brick building.
“Oh,” Susan says, too drunk and nervous now to keep her observations to herself. “That’s why you wanted to meet in this neighborhood.”
Ramona grins. “I like to be close to home, just in case.”
In the doorway of an ornate brownstone, Ramona pauses, keys in her hand, and kisses Susan with an open mouth. Her tongue flicks across Susan’s deftly. Despite her whiskey breath, she’s a good kisser, a practiced one. Susan doesn’t know what to do with her arms, and they hang limply at her sides.
Ramona pulls away with a smirk, a trail of saliva still connecting their mouths. “Come on in,” she says.
Ramona guides Susan up two flights of stairs and into an apartment that takes Susan’s breath away.
Huge windows, furniture that looks like it cost more than Susan’s parents’ house, not that Susan knows how much furniture costs.
Not a speck of dust anywhere, not even on the baseboards—so, professionally cleaned.
Susan can always spot the difference between people who have a housekeeper and people who don’t.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she blurts out, frozen in the entryway. “How do you afford this?”
“Technically this is my parents’ apartment.” Ramona shrugs.
Susan feels relieved. “Oh! I live with my parents, too.”
Ramona shakes her head, laughs. “Oh, no. I mean, they don’t live here. They bought this for me and my sister.” She kicks her shoes off, and Susan does the same.
Susan is unmoving and silent while Ramona gets a glass of water from the kitchen.
“Something wrong?” Ramona says. It sounds defensive. Like she wants Susan to criticize her so she can get mad.
Susan thinks: I’m just learning a lot about who gets to make art in this city. But what she says is “No. That’s cool.” She finally forces herself to enter the apartment and sits down on a large, plush white sofa.
“Not there,” Ramona says. “Come to my room.”
Later, when they’re naked and wound around each other in the bed, Susan realizes she’s going to have to fake an orgasm.
“Tell me what you want,” Ramona keeps asking.
Susan doesn’t know what to say, how to describe the way she wants Ramona to fuck her.
What she wants is for Ramona to know without having to be told.
Ramona is doing it too hard, too fast, her fingers a little farther up and to the left than they need to be, but Susan, who doesn’t understand that she should just give directions, that giving directions might even be hot, keeps saying “Just do what you’re doing,” until she can tell that Ramona is getting bored of rubbing her and, fearing that means Ramona will soon be bored of her, she begins to moan in a way she hopes is believable, louder and louder, arching her neck to really make a point. Finally, Ramona stops.
Ramona seems to accept the performance and rolls off her. “That was cool,” Ramona says, and turns away from her, checking her phone.
Susan lies there until it sounds like Ramona is asleep and then she tiptoes into the bathroom, where she puts the toilet seat down and perches on top of it to finish the job herself.
As soon as her eyes close, a familiar image surfaces: Eliza in her car all those years ago, leaning in for a kiss.
Unlike what happened in real life, though, in this fantasy, Susan doesn’t ruin it.
Instead, their lips meet and their tongues swirl.
Eliza’s hands dig into Susan’s hair. She can practically feel Eliza’s hot breath as she imagines what sort of sounds Eliza might make if she wanted Susan to touch her.
This has been her go-to masturbation vision for a while.
Back in real life Susan comes quickly, doubling over, trying so hard to be quiet that she can’t enjoy it. If anything, it’s a little painful; Ramona has rubbed her raw. She pees, wincing when she wipes. She’ll be shocked if this doesn’t turn into some sort of yeast infection or bacterial vaginosis.
She goes back to the bedroom, curling up in Ramona’s bed. There’s no way she can actually fall asleep here; she feels unwelcome even though she was literally invited.
She waits for the sun to rise, then sneaks out and heads to the office, wondering what Heather would say if she knew—if last night counts as something that compromises her work or if sleeping with talent is par for the course.
A few weeks later, Susan and Jonny are at a diner at 2 AM.
The lights are abrasively bright, and it’s full of people dressed as they are, in tight black clothes, everyone boisterous and young and alive.
Only the waitstaff looks miserable. Susan eyes a girl wearing a T-shirt that says RIDER DIE.
She loves seeing the label’s merch in the wild.
They’ve just left the afterparty of a show at Elvis Guesthouse in Manhattan where one of Jonny’s friends was performing.
Susan’s backpack is stuffed with her things for tomorrow, since she’ll sleep on Jonny’s couch tonight—something she’s been doing more and more of, now that they’re hanging out regularly.
Her neck hurts from keeping the backpack on for the whole show, but there hadn’t been a safe place to stash it, and anyway, getting to stay in the city for the night is worth the pain.
She puts a cold, too-chewy mozzarella stick in her mouth. Susan essentially drank beer for dinner and she’s starving.
“Have you heard that Ben wants me to go on tour again?” Jonny says.
“You gonna go?” she asks, her mouth full.
“The problem is, I already took four weeks off earlier this year to record the album.”
“You still need to send me that,” she says.
“Yes, yes, when it’s done,” Jonny says, waving her off, because this is beside the point. “But if I lose any more vacation days, I won’t be able to see my family for the holidays.”
“Oh no,” Susan says. “But you have to go on tour.”
“Do I?” He raises his eyebrows. “Is that really the most important thing?”
Susan looks at her food. She’s not sure what to say. She thought Jonny’s music was his everything.
“I just can’t really risk my day job like this. Or my time with family. The tour will barely pay me enough for gas. And Ben, that cheap asshat, doesn’t want to put me in hotels anymore.”
“Shit,” Susan says, her eyes meeting Jonny’s. They both startle at the sound of a plate clattering to the floor followed by shouting in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry. Where does he expect you to stay?”
“Couches.” He shrugs. He seems uncomfortable with sympathy. “It’s fine. Let’s talk about something else. How’s it going with your spoken word artist girlfriend?”
Susan and Ramona have had a few more dates since the first one. Susan meets Ramona at different bars near Ramona’s apartment and spends hours listening to Ramona ramble on about the places she’s been and the shows she’s played.