Chapter 7
Seven
Sputnik greets me at the door, brushing against my shins. For a twenty-three-pound shelter cat built like a brawler, she has
the most innocent, crystalline meow.
I crouch down, combing my fingers through her silky tortoiseshell coat. “Honey, I’m home,” I whisper against her fur, and
immediately feel ridiculous.
Is it more ridiculous that I’m talking to my cat or that I’m using the stereotypical 1950s hardworking-family-man-greets-housewife
line, and what business do I have calling myself a hardworking family man, anyway? It’s not like it was hard work choosing work over my family.
Then work called itself my family and told me that my identity was a threat, all in one breath.
In my room, I try to kick off my shoes, but they’re too tight. I pry them off while batting off Sputnik’s “help,” then peel
off my sweat-steeped socks.
Sputnik drops and rolls on my discarded shoes, luxuriating as if they’re lined with catnip.
I wake up my laptop, open my “Songs to Avert a (Nuclear) Meltdown” playlist, all chosen for their steady tempos rather than lyrics or genre, and pick one to play on repeat. Stimming by another name.
I tug the polo over my head and ball it between my fists.
The thing is, I can take off the shirt. I can rub aloe over irritated skin. I can slap a generic bandage on my nape. But I
can’t cut out the tag like I do for every other shirt I buy. It isn’t mine to snip out because this shirt isn’t mine. I signed
it out and swore to return it in good condition, lest the museum garnish my last paycheck.
How many previous owners has this particular polo had before me? It smelled clean when I picked it up, no obvious stains or
holes. Whoever wore it before me took good care of it.
Did they wear the uniform with pride? Did they treat museum guests like family? Did Dagny Kane ever lecture them about institutional messaging?
I toss the shirt on the floor. It isn’t supposed to land on Sputnik; it isn’t supposed to be on the floor at all. I’ll wash
it later, just as soon as I remember that I give a fuck.
I swap my binder for a high-compression sports bra. I don’t bother with a shirt. I know it’s improper to gallivant around
in just a bra, especially if you’re packing flab at your waist, but I don’t care. I’m alone.
Everything itches, from my skin to my bones. I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom in a sports bra and boxer briefs with an outlawed pronoun button on my palm.
I shove the button in a drawer and bring my laptop over to my bed. I click through the fifty-odd tabs in my browser, find
the appropriate streaming service, scroll to “Continue Watching,” and hit play on Nuclear Seasons.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
There are pebbles pelting my window.
Outside, it’s dark. I must have fallen asleep watching NS hours ago.
Thunk.
It’s like something out of a rom-com. I’ve been thrust onto the set of a John Hughes movie and conscripted into a lead role
when I only came to play an extra in a punchy screwball workplace comedy. I’m neither prepared nor willing to play the part
of sheltered heroine in her bedroom, her anger unconvincing when her bad boy love sneaks over to her bedroom window.
Especially not if that bad boy love interest is Efraín.
Because who else besides Efraín would’ve ridden his bike here, wearing a headlamp on his helmet and a neon windbreaker with reflective stripes
and, oh, okay, those are actual cyclist shorts—the skintight, clingy kind—and thanks to the headlamp, I can see everything.
My window squeaks when I push it open. Cool, not-quite-summer air slaps me in the face. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“Why the hell aren’t you answering your texts?” Efraín whisper-shouts.
Because I didn’t realize I had any. Sputnik is napping on my phone.
“Why aren’t you knocking on the door like a normal person?”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
Fact check: It’s not even one. Hardly the middle of the night. “So?”
“I didn’t want to wake Naomi or your moms.”
“How thoughtful.”
“Are you coming down or not?”
I’m sure as hell not inviting him up, but I know he won’t leave until he gets his pound of gray matter.
Only when I go to grab a flannel do I realize I’ve had this entire window exchange in my sports bra. Fuck.
After I throw on actual clothes, Efraín’s waiting at the bottom of the stoop, the light from his headlamp hitting me in the
face.
I wince. “Can you take that thing off? You’re going to burn my eyes out.”
Efraín conscientiously clicks off the lamp before clipping his helmet to his handlebars.
Now, illuminated only by motion-activated porch lights, I’m seeing Efraín with pink helmet hair.
He really must keep a comb in his backpack pocket because I’ve never seen his voluminous tresses matted to his scalp.
Back in our PE days, he put his hair up in that signature half bun that always looked downright sculptural in its artful dishevelment,
too intentional for sweat to do anything other than cast a sheen on a bronze statue, rendering him as untouchable as ever.
Tonight, sweaty and rumpled, he looks almost . . . mortal? Though those shorts would put Michelangelo’s sculpting skills to
shame, and I am resolutely not looking down.
I’m tired and frustrated, and I’m not going to let him distract me.
“How did you know which window is mine?”
I don’t have to ask how he knows where I live. Efraín and I always end up paired for school projects. It’s less to do with
our alphabetically adjacent names and more to do with the fact that no one else wants to work with either of us.
Usually, we meet at Lou’s or the library. For projects that require space, however, we end up in my living room, like that
time we constructed a French Revolution diorama featuring a semi-functional guillotine built from an X-Acto knife cartridge
and Popsicle sticks, with one of my long-abandoned Ken dolls under the blade.
“We used your window for the egg drop experiment.”
That would be the physical science experiment where Efraín told me he’d gotten permission from Mrs. Babbitt to use light bulbs instead of eggs. Spoiler: He did not get permission.
“Hard to forget the spot where we spent an hour digging glass shards out of your moms’ herb garden.”
“So you can remember my window based on one experiment in ninth grade, but you can’t remember the pickup time for the carpool?”
“Are you serious right now? How are you still—that’s what you’re pissed about right now?”
“I contain multitudes of irritation.”
“And contradict yourself.”
I open my mouth and shut it again. No one ever seems to remember that half of the Whitman quote; they like the poetics of
multiplicity but don’t want to grapple with the politics of doublethink. Yes, maybe I’m contradicting myself by the second
because as much as I want to tell Efraín to go mindfuck himself, I’m already screwing myself by asking, “Why are you really
here?”
Efraín wrings the strap of his crossbody sling bag between his fists. “You know why,” he says, in an ominous undertone. “Lola
and Naomi spent happy hour downing milk-alternative milkshakes after work, celebrating like we won the war, even though I
told them it was premature.”
“Because of Dagny’s visit.” I understand now that Efraín texted their group-chat-of-three after Dagny’s drop-in. Efraín sees the same warning signs I do. What’s worse, I can put two and two together and make five; Efraín’s here to convince me.
Something clenches in my stomach, irritation and guilt laced with something ugly I have yet to digest.
I look away, to the hanging birdhouse Naomi built in woodshop two years. A chartreuse A-line cabin with whittled shutters
over faux windows, it’s basically the Barbie Sonoma Dream Birdhouse.
Efraín asks, “Can we walk?”
I acquiesce because it’s the least of all evils.
We set out past the same collection of pastel rainbow houses featured in “Guess Who’s Coming to Barbecue.” Egan’s Creek hasn’t
really changed; the town has only been lightly gentrified and spruced up for the benefit of roving wine tourists.
Two blocks away, the square is empty and dark. Shops closed, second-story apartments shuttered, and the red neon CLOSED sign
flickering in the diner window. There is no clean, well-lighted place for nighthawks to seek refuge.
I was expecting a walk-and-talk—or a walk-and-excoriate—but Efraín has yet to say anything. He has definitely forgotten that
I can’t match his stride length. I veer off the sidewalk and make my way toward the gazebo at the center of the square.
The steps creak under me. I lean against one of the columns and bounce on my toes, imperceptible to the uneducated observer.
Efraín makes a valiant attempt at standing still, but I’m not an uneducated observer. I know his stims if not his tells. He’s
clenching and unclenching his fists, telegraphing impatience and anger—that’s what my emotion-sensation wheel key chain would
say.
This is the standoff in every spaghetti Western. Like the high noon duel in the NS episode “The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny.”
I flick my fingers against my thigh, twitching for the trigger. Sick of watching tumbleweeds roll by, I shoot first. “Are
you actually going to ask me anything, or have you already composed the lecture about what a terrible person I am for not
dyeing my hair? Because you can save me the holier-than-thou spiel.”
“I’m not—”
“Yeah, you are. Because this is what you always do.” Efraín sees everything in black and white, but anyone who’s watched a
black-and-white movie knows the image has fifty thousand shades of gray. “You decide what’s right, and anyone who doesn’t
automatically fall in line is in the wrong.”
“You are in the wrong, Elisha.” Efraín’s still in motion, circling like a shark, and I’m the one bleeding out in the water.
“I don’t understand why you care so much what I do. Is this some supermassive savior complex talking? Are you trying to save me from myself? Because, news flash: I don’t need you to save my soul. That’s what Yom Kippur is for.”