Chapter 6
The favor was for Tristan’s fraternity brothers from Howard. Their short film was screening that weekend at a local festival, and they were trying to draw a crowd.
Milan and I entered the theater’s red-black lobby, a dazed usher showing us to our row.
“Who invited you to this again?” she asked.
“Jay’s friend.”
At that moment, my eyes caught on Tristan at the front.
He had on a short-sleeved button-down, white tank peeking through, a constellation of crappy arm tattoos that had been hidden by long sleeves the last time.
He was talking to two guys who I assumed were the directors.
Or rather, one of them was talking and Tristan was nodding the way people did when they were half listening.
“That’s him in the striped shirt.”
Milan craned her neck. I told her to stop being obvious. “Damn, is he single?”
I realized I didn’t know. The lights dimmed, but even in the dark I sensed where in the theater he was.
The film followed a woman named Catalina trapped in an abusive relationship.
She split into two women. The first one quietly accepted the abuse; the second fought back.
They were both killed when they tried to leave.
She split off again and again, so many times you lost track.
All of them were killed. But one of the Catalinas met a woman at a coffee shop while her boyfriend was out of town and fell in love.
This was the only version where she escaped alive.
I was a snotty wreck when the lights came up. Milan blinked at her lap. One small tear slipped onto her denimed thigh, leaving a wet mark the size of a pinhole. When I tried to thumb her eyes dry, she pushed my hand back, laughing.
Tristan’s seat was empty. I told Milan I had to go to the bathroom. He wasn’t by the bathrooms or in the lobby. I found him smoking a pre-roll outside on the curb.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Only sometimes.”
I reached my hand out. He passed me the blunt, fingers shaking.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I just can’t watch stuff like that.”
Milan glided out of the theater, letting loose a high-pitched laugh. She was with a guy. It took her a while to notice us. When she did, she came over.
“This is one of the directors,” she said.
The director was broad-shouldered like a quarterback, but his handshake was surprisingly limp. “Ryen.”
“Cat. Nice to meet you. What a beautiful film.”
“Thanks.” He patted Tristan on the back. “Thanks for supporting, bro. Zee and I appreciate you.”
Milan had a shift, so she took off. “Zee” came to say goodbye to Tristan. By the way they hugged with both arms, I understood Zee was the one he’d come to support.
Tristan turned to me and said, “There’s this cool spot up the street. Wanna go?”
The cool spot wasn’t a chic Mediterranean restaurant like I’d hoped, but the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
“What the fuck, are you Catholic?”
Tristan sat on the steps. “Nope.”
“I’m confused.”
“Sorry, I should’ve clarified,” he said, not clarifying anything.
I sat beside him. A breeze whispered through the tree branches. This part of the city had always felt sequestered from the rest. Sprawling by DC standards. I’d passed the basilica in the car growing up, with its blue-yellow dome, but I’d never truly noticed it.
“Churches calm me down,” he said.
I nodded at the gold cross at his neck. “You always wear that?”
“I never take it off.”
“You don’t seem religious.”
He picked at an invisible spot on his pants. “Yeah, well, you don’t really know me, do you?”
I pushed away my embarrassment. “I know the wild stories from high school.”
“Don’t listen to anything Jay says.”
“So, you didn’t fly off a mechanical bull like Raggedy Ann?”
Cupping his face, he laughed. “Did he tell you I landed on a table with a bunch of glass cups on it? A piece of glass got in my neck. I almost died over that shit.”
I noticed a neck scar partially covered by his tattoo. “Is that where you got that from?”
He looked at me, startled then subdued. “No.”
We sat in silence. I was aware of my body’s inner workings with painful ferocity—the roiling of my stomach, the movement of blood through my veins.
I’d forgotten I’d shut my phone off for the film and turned it back on. It hummed with updates. One was about a Gazan father whose newborns were killed on his way to collect their birth certificates. Slipping my phone into my pocket, I stared ahead.
“Your face just got really dark,” Tristan said. “You all right?”
“What else can a person be?”
“You sure you want to ask a person getting their PhD in philosophy that? Like, do you wanna be here for ten hours?”
I smiled weakly.
“Things are terrible right now.” He ducked down to look at me.
“But there’ve been bad things before, people just didn’t know about it like we do.
This is, like, one of the first generations where we know everything that’s happening everywhere.
That’s not meant to feel good. How could it? To know this much at once.”
I met his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Sure. That observation’ll cost you five hundred dollars—how would you like to pay?”
“In animal stickers from Rite Aid.”
“I actually do have some notebooks that could use some sparkly monkeys on them.”
I laughed. I decided the weird, tense moment between us at the bar was nothing.
“Did I really get drunk and piss on your shoe?” I said.
He surveyed me strangely. “Yeah. It was a lot of pee too. You really don’t remember?”
I shook my head. The wind picked up. My hair blew into my mouth.
Tristan grabbed the strand and wrapped it behind my ear.
It was an empty, utilitarian gesture, but my body reacted with heat.
The sensation kindled a memory in me: those first weeks in Jay’s dorm, the quiet electricity of his hand running absently up and down my thigh, like playing an instrument.
I stood, stumbling. “I’m supposed to be somewhere!”
“Oh… kay. You need a ride? I parked at the theater.”
I had plans to see Rah. “No. I’ll get the bus.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming today.”
He hugged me. I didn’t know what to do with my arms. I brought them loosely around his back. A trace of cologne on his collarbone: the woods after it’s rained, but from a bottle. Afraid I was hanging on too long, I let my arms fall.
Rah never let me come over, so we often rendezvoused at the restaurant.
I felt invincible in my non-work clothes.
What I did off the clock had no bearing on what I did on it.
I lived in separate, parallel timelines.
In one, I had mayonnaise in my hair. But in the other, I was bent over a bun shipment with Rah’s hand over my mouth.
He pulled up his jeans, which hung off him like clown pants, leaning down to kiss me. I used to hate the taste of cigarettes in his mouth, but now it made me feel close to him, like the decisions he made about his body were also mine.
“You hear about Stevie?” he asked.
I pulled my top back on. “No. What?”
“He got locked up again. They not letting him out this time.”
“Jesus.”
“Stabbed some nigga at his other job.”
Stevie was one of the dishwashers. We didn’t speak much. He was always quiet, passive.
“That’s awful.”
Rah shrugged. “It is what it is.”
The storage room door swung open. It was Leigh: five feet, a teakettle whistling steam. Her honey-blond hair was in a lopsided bun. I wanted to take a piece of toilet paper and wipe away the glob of glue on her eyelid holding her fake lashes to it.
“Y’all getting on my last nerve.” Her eyes cut to me. “You not even on the clock.”
“I’m leaving.”
Leigh turned to Rah. “Get back upstairs.”
Rah muttered, shouldering past her.
On the way out, she caught my elbow. Her grip was strong. She was only three years older than me, but she had two kids. She seemed so much older.
“Be careful hanging with him.”
She released me, lifted a box of ketchup bottles, and left.