Chapter 20 Boundaries
Sam
Two weeks since Summer came apart at my bar and let me hold her up.
She still takes the same stool. She still drinks the bourbon. She still talks until two AM. Some nights I lock up early and we go upstairs. Some nights she falls asleep on my couch after a game or movie night and I cover her with the blanket from behind the bar and she doesn't wake up.
She falls asleep on my couch.
I watch her in Reclamation from the bar, through the open door to the studio. The woman who walked into the first class was arms-crossed-shoulders-hunched. The woman in the mirror now rolls her hips like they belong to her and makes eye contact with her own reflection.
I keep wiping the same glass.
***
For the third time this month Marisol's babysitter cancels. I find myself in the dressing room at four PM with a toddler on my lap and a coloring book and the growing realization that I am not qualified for this.
"Sam, hold still." Marisol is doing her stage makeup in the mirror. "She's coloring your arm."
I look down. Lucia has abandoned the coloring book and is applying a green crayon to my forearm with the artistic vision of someone who has never encountered the concept of boundaries.
"Lucia. That's my arm."
"Wucy making Sam pretty."
"I'm already pretty."
"Not pretty 'nuff." She works the crayon up to my elbow with the seriousness of a surgeon. "Corner lady is pretty. Corner-watching man pretty too. Now."
I go still.
"Corner-watching man?"
"You watch corner lady from corner of bar. Wucy sees."
Marisol snorts so hard she has to set her eyeliner down. "She's been workshopping that one all week."
I sit very still on the dressing room stool while a two-and-a-half-year-old paints me into the supporting cast of her own private show. Corner-watching man. Caught and named by the smallest, most observant person in the building.
"SHNAKE," Lucia announces, putting the finishing touch on a green spiral on my forearm.
"Lucia. That's not a snake."
"Is a shnake."
"It's a spiral."
"Spiral shnake."
Marisol caps her eyeliner. Turns. "Sam. Be careful."
"With Lucia?"
"With Summer. With whatever you guys are doing." Her eyes are direct. Marisol's default setting. "She's in love with someone else. You know that."
"I know."
"And you're okay with it?"
I look at the green crayon on my arm. Lucia's shnake.
"Mostly. She's not mine to want. She matters to me anyway."
Marisol watches me. Then nods. "Good man. Stupid. But good."
"SHNAKE," Lucia confirms from my lap.
***
After the show, late, on the couch in my office, Summer and I are eating dumplings and she says it like she says important things: without buildup.
"Bex asked me to perform. One number for a three minute set."
"What did you say?"
"That I'd think about it. Which is a lie. I've been thinking about it nonstop. I just don't want to commit out loud because then it's real."
"What scares you about it?"
She thinks. Chews. "Being seen. Which is ironic. But the audience is anonymous. The stage is naked."
"You won't literally be naked."
"Metaphor, Sam."
"I know. I was deflecting because this is a genuinely important moment and I'm allergic to sincerity."
She throws a dumpling at me. I catch it. She looks impressed.
"Sincere version. I think you should. You've got something. Not technique. Presence. You walk out there and people are going to stop breathing."
"More powerful than a bestseller list?"
"The list is other people deciding what you've created is good. The stage is you throwing off everything and owning your damn self and not giving a single fuck what anyone else thinks. Different muscle."
She leans against me. I put my arm around her. The dumpling containers cool between us.
I think about Elise.
Not with the knife-twist. Not with the grief.
I pick up my phone. The folder labeled Don't Open This that I've opened four hundred times in three years. Photos of us. Elise and me. Happy. Or looking happy.
Select all. Delete.
Are you sure?
I'm sure.
The folder empties. My phone feels lighter.
"Two weeks," Summer says. "I'll tell Bex that I'll do it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She squares her shoulders. "I'm going to take that stage and terrify every person in the room."
"You'll be magnificent."
"Obviously." She steals my last dumpling. "Now stop being sincere. It's unsettling."
I let her have it.
In two weeks she's going to stand on a stage in front of strangers.
She falls asleep against my shoulder. I don't move.