29. Alana
“You know,I’ve figured out a pro to you being up in the mountains somewhere,” Alana said one night, sprawled on her bed with every fan she owned turned on and pointed directly at her body.
“What’s that?”
“You probably aren’t sweating as much as I am now.”
Hudson laughed, his voice echoing a little. He was probably in the sauna, especially because his two roommates finally realized that all that had been going on between them was just a lot of suppressed sexual chemistry, and were making up for lost time. Loudly. “That’s questionable.”
“See, minus the not having a washer and dryer in unit, or a porch of any variety, even though we can use the roof unofficially, the actual downside to this apartment is the summer,” Alana continued. The phone was on speaker, and she was currently rolling a water bottle she had just taken out of the freezer across her body. Maybe she didn’t need to be wearing any clothing at all.
But then again, the curtains were open in her desperate attempt to get any amount of cross breeze into the apartment, and the building next door had windows a little too inconveniently placed for her to just walk around with her boobs out.
She wasn’t friends with the neighbors like that.
“It was only just Memorial Day,” Hudson protested. “How bad can it be?”
“You know when you’re in Midtown and you’re walking down the street and it’s like, I dunno, eighty five degrees but the humidity is so thick you would think it was cosplaying as Jello, and the air isn’t moving, and everything smells like pee and body odor and garbage juice, and you wonder if this is going to be how you die until you walk in front of some store with the door open and you’re saved by a blast of air conditioning?”
“That was extremely specific, but also, yes.”
“Anyway, sometimes that’s what the apartment feels like. Minus the pee and sweat and garbage juice but also being saved by the blast of air conditioning.”
“Honey, I hate to ask, but why don’t you just turn on the air conditioner? You didn’t bother taking them out over the winter, so it’s not like you have to install them or anything.”
“Because I already promised ConEd my firstborn child last year!”
There was a long pause. “Alana. Do you think that possibly that promise is null and void because you made it knowing you were never going to have a firstborn child?”
“Well, at the time I didn’t.”
“Just because you weren’t sure if you were going to be getting a hysterectomy doesn’t mean you didn’t know you didn’t want kids, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Alana replied. “But shit happens. Like faulty birth control and people who feel the need to pass laws regulating my reproductive organs. Until all that shit’s cleared out, there’s always a chance. A very small chance, but a chance nonetheless.”
“Not to make light of the situation,” Hudson began.
“No, please do.”
“You do sound like you’re some Long Island dad talking about cleaning out his garage to make room for whatever midlife crisis car he just bought instead of fucking his secretary.”
Alana snickered.
“Just turn on the air conditioner. You’ll feel a lot better.”
Alana wiggled a little. “You know what else would make me feel better?”
“Removal of your uterus?” Hudson offered.
“Correct. But in the shorter term.”
“Turning on the goddamn air conditioner, Alana Rose.”
Alana pouted. “Blah, blah. Besides that.”
“If that’s a sex thing, must I remind you how much more pleasant it is to do any sex related activities when you’re not concerned you’re actively dehydrating?”
“You can be sexily dehydrating.”
“In what world?”
“Shonda Rhimes, probably,” Alana replied, reaching for the insulated bottle of water on her nightstand so she could take a drink.
The frozen water bottle was for cooling. The insulated bottle contained drinking water. Two different products entirely. It was a precise and accurate system. As were the strategically placed fans. All four of them.
Well, three plus the ceiling fan.
“Probably,” Hudson agreed.
“You know what I was thinking about?” Alana asked.
“Hmm?”
If she closed her eyes, she could pretend he was lying next to her. But not close enough for any of their body parts to touch, or for even any of his residual body heat to come anywhere close to her. Maybe she should turn the air conditioner on.
“How people use Jacuzzi jets for sex things, but people don’t usually use fans.”
“Well, you don’t usually get the correlating pressure from fans that you would from water jets,” Hudson said. “I feel like that’s a Deacon question, though.”
“It’s hard to balance the part about Deacon being Deacon and then also a person who designs sex toys for a living.”
“Why? It’s just a job. Just like when he was working at whatever that home appliance company was, it was also just a job.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really mind if I think about my friends when I microwave something. It’s a little weirder to think about a friend when I’m using a vibrator or a dildo or whatever.”
“Would you consider us friends?” Hudson asked.
Well, fuck her (literally and figuratively), what kind of loaded question was that?
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“Why? Because of the whole marriage thing?”
No, because of the whole ‘being in love with you thing’. “Well, yeah. That and the having sex part. Which, for clarity’s sake, is not a thing that’s happening with Deacon. Even when he is in town.”
“I didn’t think so, but thanks for clarifying, I guess?” Hudson replied.
“Anytime. If you’d like a comprehensive list of our friends I’m not having sex with, I can definitely provide that.”
“Is the list of friends you are having sex with shorter?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then I’d prefer that one. It’s less work for you to write down, and I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself when you should be conserving your energy to get up and go turn on the air conditioner.”
“You’re really one-track minded about the AC situation there, Hudson.”
“Because you could be making your life better very easily, and you aren’t.”
“Are you sweaty?” she countered.
“Honestly, it’s a little cold here,” he replied.
“Boo, you whore.”
“Ha.”
“Not that I ever really wondered why people would go up to the mountains in the summers, but sometimes I forget it’s not just because there’s grass and trees and fresh air up there.”
“My great-aunt Irma used to say that God gave air conditioning to the rich people at their beach houses, gave mountain weather to the middle class, and the poor people had the luxury of having space in the city in the summers.”
“You had a great-aunt Irma?”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope. Other equally glamorous names, but not Irma.”
“When my parents named me, she asked why they would want to name their baby after a river, and if they were going to name after a river, why not name me East.”
Alana laughed. “How many times did you hear that joke as a kid?”
“Not really so often, except for fourth grade, where we did the social studies unit on New York State. And then it was all the time.”
“Oh man, fourth grade social studies. What a random thought.”
“The day we learned that there used to be oysters in the Hudson…” he trailed off. “Forget it. I had kids coming at me at lunch with plastic knives, saying they were going to cut me open, harvest the oysters, get the pearls out, and get rich.”
“Wow. Your friends were a lot more creative than the kids in my class.”
“They had their moments. I told them the surgeons had beaten them to it, and that’s actually why I had gotten surgery so many times. To take out all the oysters. One kid believed me, but there’s always one kid who does.”
“Yup. I hope they’re all okay, the gullible ones.”
“I assume that wasn’t you.” A door creaked open through the phone.
“Nah. I’ve been like this since forever.”
“Do you think we would have been friends when we were kids?” Hudson asked, a faint rustling in the background. He had left the sauna, Alana noted. She had missed the opportunity to try to see if he wanted to FaceTime while in there and possibly naked.
“I dunno. Maybe? When we were eight and nine?” Alana thought about herself at eight, just starting to have the words to properly verbalize and compartmentalize all the shit that was going on in her life.
It was the year of her first sleepover, the point where she realized that other people’s parents actually liked each other.
“If we were friends then,” Alana said. She sighed. “We probably would have been friends for a little bit, and then I would have stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because I would have been jealous. And I wasn’t great at emotions when I was eight.”
“Fair enough,” Hudson replied. “Although, to be honest, neither was I. Eight was my angry year. But that was third grade. And that calendar year was 2001-2002, so that probably added to the angry part.”
“Yeah.” Alana sighed.
Fuck it.
She stood up with a groan.
“You okay there?”
“Clap for me, husband.”
A pause, then the faint sound of clapping. “What am I clapping for?” Hudson asked a moment later.
“I’m turning on the air conditioner,” Alana said. She walked over to the open window (but not directly, even though she was wearing clothing, she didn’t want to have to make awkward eye contact with the nice old professor who lived in the other building), closed it tightly, and then plugged in the AC unit.
“Good girl,” Hudson said.
That man was a menace to society and also her hormones and she was one hundred percent he knew that and used it to his advantage. Alana scowled. “That’s a dangerous phrase to toss around so casually, Hudson Miller.”
“Oh, I know. And I meant it.”
Alana pressed the power button, and spread her arms as the AC kicked in. “You know, I’m not sure which one is giving me more sexual satisfaction right now, you calling me a good girl, or cold air from the AC.”
“It could be both.”
“Probably is.” Alana tilted the fans so they were blowing onto her bed, so she could lie down and bask. “Where are you now?”
“Just on a little wander.”
“Are the roommates still having sex?”
“At this very second?” Hudson asked. “I don’t know. I didn’t go check.”
“In general.”
“Oh, definitely. So much of it.” Hudson sighed. “I”m a little jealous of them, honestly.”
“Same,” Alana agreed. She walked over to close her bedroom door, so the AC wouldn’t have to work as hard. “Eyeliner of truth time.”
“Go ahead.”
“When I first called you tonight, I had nefarious reasons for doing so.”
Hudson thought about it. “Ohh. Yeah, that checks out. What happened, though?”
Alana shrugged, even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “I dunno. I also like talking to you.”
“I like talking to you too.”
Alana yawned. The promise of an ice cold bedroom sounded like the greatest sort of sleep conditions. “We should, though.”
“Have phone sex?”
“I mean. I’d be into it.”
“Now that the internet’s stabilized? Hell yeah. Tell me the place and time and I’ll meet you there. Virtually.”
“Wait. Hudson. Are we becoming those people who schedule sex?” Alana asked.
“Would it be bad if we were?” Hudson countered.
“I don’t think I’m color coded enough for that.”
“A thing to consider when I get back. Deal?”
It was weird that they were talking like they were actually married. Like this was a real conversation they would have. That all of this, in some way, wasn’t some sort of elaborate charade and make believe that would crumble in a few months. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone that she knew that the great and terrible Oz was a short old guy on a power trip.
“Deal,” she said.
“It’s surgery countdown now,” Lane said the next day. “Less than a month, right?”
“Three weeks,” Alana replied. “It’s on my calendar for the month.”
“How are you feeling about that?”
Alana shrugged. “I dunno. There’s a part of me that still doesn’t believe it’s going to happen, and so even though it’s on the calendar and I’ve already made my hospital packing list and started buying all the shit I’m gonna need after the surgery, it feels like I’m cosplaying somehow? Like, I’m doing the thing that some of the manifestation people talk about? Like I’m dressing for the job I want, except that I don’t want a new job, I want to take my uterus out.”
“Well, that seems reasonable.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. We’ve talked about this before. That you have a lot of feelings mixed up in this, and a lot of trauma that you’re carrying when it comes to your body. It makes sense for it to be difficult to try to figure out how you feel at any given time or day.”
Alana didn’t say anything for a bit, just stared at the laptop screen where Lane calmly looked back. “I feel like we keep on having this conversation, though. Like, I dunno, eighty percent of the conversations we’ve been having since Dr. Bradford said yes have been about how I don’t fucking know how to feel. Which is stupid. I should know how to feel by now.”
“Why is that stupid?” Lane asked.
“Because it’s been fucking months, and we’re still circling this goddamn conversation like it’s a drain I can’t get down. And like, not that I want to talk about other shit, because, I dunno, I don’t really, but I just feel like a broken record.”
“Which, not to poke a bruise, but we’ve talked about you being frustrated about having the same issue for more than one week in a row.”
“Ughhh.” Alana groaned, and flopped back in her chair. “Don’t say it.”
“Are you going to say it, then?”
“No!”
Lane raised one eyebrow, that jerk. “One of us is going to say it, Alana.”
“Fiiiine. Blah blah blah, I can’t just expect myself to fix everything in one session, that’s not how people work, even me, blah blah blah.”
“Want to say that one more time for good luck?”
“No.” Alana folded her arms and pouted.
“Are you going to anyway?”
“No.”
Lane sat there.
“You know, sometimes I don’t like you.”
He laughed. “I know. You may have mentioned that the last time we talked about how therapy is not a quick fix.”
“I know it’s not a quick fix, I’ve been unpacking shit for years with you. But couldn’t it just move a little bit faster?”
“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. And we’ve had this part of the conversation before, too.”
“We have.”
“But at least this time I’m three weeks out from surgery so the conversation is different?” Alana offered.
“Why do you think you need to feel like you’ve fixed some part of yourself after every session?” Lane asked gently.
“Don’t you start with that bullshit again,” Alana grumped. “Because, okay?”
“Okay,” Lane allowed. “You told me the doctor was going to talk to you about how your body is going to go into menopause after the surgery. Do you have anyone you can ask about that experience? I can recommend a book that just came out, but having people to talk to might also be helpful.”
“Hudson’s mom,” Alana blurted. “Actually…”
“Actually what?”
“I wouldn’t want to bother her.”
“Do you think she’d be bothered? I know you’ve met her a few times, and you really enjoyed spending time with her.”
(Did Alana also spend the first therapy session after meeting Mrs. Miller crying to Lane about the unfairness of her mother being her mother? Yes. Yes she had.)
“Yeah, but…it’s Hudson’s mom. It’s not like it’s Shannon’s mom.”
“Would you reach out to Shannon’s mom?”
“No,” Alana replied. “She’s kinda flighty, and anyway, she’s not really reachable now.”
“So then it’s anyway not the same.”
“I guess.”
“What if you asked Hudson if he thought it was a good idea?” Lane suggested. “It’s his mom. He would know.”
“Maybe,” Alana said. “That’s weird, though.”
“Which part?”
“I dunno, the part where I’m gonna have to say, ‘after my surgery I’m going to go through menopause’?”
“Why?”
Alana stopped. “Ugh, this is a weird residual ‘periods are gross’ thing, isn’t it.”
“Sounds like it.”
“And he’s going to have to know if I get extra sweaty all of a sudden because then the electric bill is going to go up.”
“That would be responsible.”
“And why would he care? He has his own medical shit to handle, and he’s handled the rest of mine so far.”
Lane said nothing.
“And he would tell me the truth if he thought it would be weird to ask his mom.”
If they were really married, it wouldn’t be weird to ask her mother-in-law medical questions she couldn’t ask her mom, provided that she had a good relationship with said mother-in-law. Which. Honestly, if Mrs. Miller found out, any positive thing they had going now would immediately be nuked.
It’s a good thing Mrs. Miller was never going to find out that Alana and Hudson were married, because there was no fruit basket big enough to count as even close to an appropriate apology.
Lane looked at her expectantly.
“I’ll ask him when he comes home,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to bother him now.” She sighed. “You know what’s dumb?”
“Hmm?”
“Feeling resentful, still, that he has a mom that he likes. That he has a mom I like. I thought I got over that part already.”
“What am I going to say?” Lane asked gently.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“But do you?”
“Apparently not.”
“Or this situation unlocked a different facet. That’s how feelings work. You rarely get all of something uncovered on the first, second, or third pass.”
“Now I’m visualizing Dr. Pimple Popper, but for feelings. Which, I guess you are.”
Lane laughed. “That’s gross, Alana.”
She grinned. “I know.”