Nine
THE NEXT MONDAY, at lunchtime, I go through the cafeteria line. I choose a sandwich and a slice of melon and a cup of coffee, carry my tray outside to the edge of the parking lot, and sit on a far bench.
Delphine’s here, in Los Angeles. She has a child and she has money.
She waved to my sisters. She called their names.
She would have talked to them, maybe embraced them, had they given her the chance to.
The knowledge of it all dislodges something, like I’ve been holding my breath, waiting to see what we’re doing next.
But she’s living her life. I am, too. We’re okay, both of us.
I wonder if she still wears her hair long down her back when she’s home and no one’s looking.
If she still stacks bracelets on both wrists, still reads books most people don’t understand.
I wonder who her friends are, if their children play together on the floor while they stand in the kitchen, if she ever senses something of me, if she knows I’m close.
Her house could be just blocks from here.
Maybe she’s on a lounge chair out back, sunglasses hiding her eyes.
Maybe she’s reading in bed with her daughter napping next to her.
Maybe she’s fixing Bill a sandwich. Maybe she’s planting something, gloved hands easing the roots from the pot. I’m in a trance, imagining her.
A little white car pulls into the far side of the lot, its engine growing louder and quieter as it weaves through the rows for a spot.
It stops. A door opens. Ginny rises from the car like a gift.
Like while I’ve been wishing Delphine a near-perfect life, she’s been wishing me one, too.
There, she’s saying. Go ahead and take it.
Ginny sees me and waves, locks the door and comes toward me. I haven’t seen her since the first time, in the yard. I gather my plate and mug and stand. She’s carrying a box, balancing it on her hip. Cropped hair tucked behind her ears, dimples flashing, eyes dark and pleased to see me.
“Are you switching to the day shift?” I ask her as we fall into stride, heading for the entrance.
“Just swinging by with a few things I’m giving away. My roommate and I are moving.”
“You’re leaving the plant?”
“Gonna miss it.” We’re already at the doors, waving to Owen, who mans the front desk, pushing farther into the building.
“We’re having a little going away party on Saturday night.
Lionel’s coming. You should come, too.” To the left, down the hall, is the Finishing Department.
Production is to the right, up the stairs.
We take a few steps in opposite directions, watching each other.
“All right.” I force a smile through my disappointment. “I will.”
Ginny’s apartment is on the second floor of a squat, two-story building. At first it seems quiet, but as we near the door I make out some indistinct voices and brassy jazz. The door opens at Lionel’s knock and the noise is louder, pouring onto the steps before the girl who opened it hurries us in.
“The neighbors have it out for us,” she says. “We’re trying to keep it down.”
“What are they gonna do?” Lionel asks. “Get you evicted on your last night?”
She’s tall, dressed in a partially unbuttoned men’s shirt and a pair of khaki trousers, not dissimilar to Ginny’s clothes but worn looser, less neatly. She holds a beer by its neck, takes a swig. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“Odette, this is Mare,” Lionel says. The name suits her. She’s strawberry blond, her face long and elegant, absent of makeup, something equine about her.
“Welcome to our home. For approximately ten more hours. Beers are in the fridge. Ginny’s somewhere.”
I follow Lionel past other guests in small groups and pairs.
He opens two beers and hands me one, and Jeremy from the Art Department comes from behind, claps him on the back.
Aside from the guests, the apartment is largely empty.
A stack of boxes along the living room wall, a worn sofa and chair, people piled atop them.
I peer through a doorway and see a mattress on the floor with a suitcase and some folded clothes.
Lionel and I squeeze onto one side of the sofa next to a boy and girl I don’t know, and soon Ginny appears from down the hall, perches on the arm of Mare’s chair.
The two of them together with their bare faces, their masculine clothing, the confident positioning of their bodies. It’s a miracle just to look at them.
“I didn’t catch where you’re moving to,” I say.
“Montana,” Mare says.
I wait to see if she’s joking. No one laughs. “Montana?”
“We’re going to live and work at the Glacier Park Lodge,” Ginny says. “They’re hiring for the Christmas season.”
“Don’t ask them why,” Lionel says. “They don’t have a good answer.”
“Adventure,” Mare says. “The biggest sky in the world.”
“Wherever you are,” Lionel says, “the sky is the sky.”
“You clearly haven’t been to Montana,” Mare says.
“Lionel’s just sore because I’m leaving.” Ginny reaches her leg out, nudges his knee with her foot.
He shrugs. “What can I say? I get attached to my friends.”
“Friends are the true loves of our lives,” the boy next to me says. “Romance is fleeting.”
Lionel gives him a mock-solemn nod and raises his bottle. “I’ll toast to that.”
“You can take the train all the way there, the Great Northern line,” Ginny says. “It stops right at the mouth of the park. Hotel employees get a discount for friends and family.”
“I don’t really get the point of travel,” Lionel says.
“It’s the best way to learn about yourself,” Mare says.
“That’s what I’m saying. I know myself plenty already.”
“Travel’s a disruptor, though,” Mare says. “You think you know something and then you learn you don’t know anything.”
“How about you, Odette?” Ginny asks. “Any interest in visiting Montana?”
“I’d never thought about it before. But why not?”
Ginny smiles.
The conversation turns to someone I don’t know; he was here earlier but left to go home to his new wife. “How long,” Lionel asks, “before a baby’s on the way and they trade it all for domesticity?”
“Maybe three months,” Ginny says. “Do you ever imagine it? A wife and a couple kids and a nice little house?”
“No,” Lionel says flatly.
Ginny laughs. “No consideration needed.”
“Don’t tell me you do?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “If I picture my life in five or ten years, I can see settling down with someone.”
“My cousin Delphine and I used to do that,” I say. “Dream about the future, tell each other what we saw.”
Mare clears her throat: “‘We dream. It is good we are dreaming. It would hurt us, were we awake.’” She pauses. “Emily Dickinson.”
“Mare’s a poet,” Ginny tells me.
“What’s your poetry like?” I ask.
“Romantic,” the boy next to me says. “Too many love poems.”
“I’ll admit it. In fact, I’m currently on the lookout for a new muse.” Mare sets her chin on her hand, angling toward me. I blush and everyone laughs.
“Uh-uh,” Lionel says. “I promised her sisters I’d take care of her. No flirting allowed.”
“Hard to resist,” Mare says.
“Here, this’ll help.” Lionel scoots to the edge of the sofa and puts his hand over Mare’s eyes. Another rise of laughter, and I’m in on it, one of them.
“I need a little air,” Ginny says a few minutes later, watching me.
“I’ll join you.” I’m lightheaded, rising from the sofa. Ginny leads me outside and down the main apartment steps and around to the edge of a lawn. She leans her shoulder against the building.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Two years.”
“Just you and Mare?” She nods. “And you’re…?”
“Friends,” she says.
“You must be excited for tomorrow,” I say.
She shrugs. “I haven’t even been to Montana.” For the first time tonight, she seems unsure. “You didn’t tell us what you saw for yourself. With your cousin.”
“I saw a lot of things. They seem silly now. A second-story bedroom with white curtains. Lunches at nice restaurants. A vase of wildflowers at my kitchen table. I thought I’d stay in New Orleans.”
“Anything else?”
My pulse quickens. I answer before I can think better of it. “A woman in my bed.” I’m leaning against the wall now, too, a foot away. Her gold chain glints in the light just above us, disappears into her shirt. “I’ve been wondering what’s on your medallion.”
“You’re welcome to look.”
I expect her to take it out for me but she doesn’t. She waits, so I step closer and I slip my fingers between the chain and her neck. I pull until it’s here, warm in my hand. A lion’s head with a full mane and a powerful gaze.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. So is the dip of her throat, her neck, the soft angle of her jaw. I pull her shirt open at the collar and tuck the medallion back in. Her eyes roam my face.
I lean toward her, ever so slightly, and it’s all the confirmation she needs.
Her mouth on my mouth, so easy, like this is something I do.
Like I haven’t worked hard to snuff out any kind of longing.
Her palm on my cheek, taking her time. My whole body warm with it.
It’s a kiss for what might have been, a goodbye before we started.
It’s soft, and it’s teasing. Safe because she’s leaving.
By the time Lionel and I get into the car, something inside of me has shifted: a window swung open, view to a different landscape.
I can make out a little life for myself.
An apartment of my own, just me and Clément.
Friends come over; we balance plates on our laps and talk for hours.
We go to the pictures. We go to dinner. Clément spends the night with his cousins sometimes and I stay out or bring a woman home with me.
Years, since I’ve been with anyone in that way.
Intoxicating, that such a thing is possible.
“Something on your mind?” Lionel says.
“Do you ever think about moving out?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “Al and Adele won’t put up with us as housemates forever.”
“I heard Al call your room ‘the den’ the other day.”
He glowers at the road. “Ominous.” A minute later, he sighs. “It did hit a certain way, didn’t it? Seeing Ginny’s place. I could get used to something like that.”
“Me too.”
“You don’t see yourself getting married again?
” His voice is measured, careful. Maybe he noticed how long Ginny and I were outside.
Maybe he’s on the verge of finding me out.
Maybe I’ll let him one day. The thought of it swarms me.
Dangerous and enticing. Not yet. Not yet.
But there’s a charge between us and I want to give him at least part of the truth.
“No. I’ll never get married again.”
We reach the driveway, headlights shining on the neat lawn and the camellia, the upright mailbox and paved path, the cream exterior, the comfortable family home on a block of comfortable family homes.
He cuts the engine, turns off the lights.