One last stop, p.30
One Last Stop, page 30
“You’re…” August attempts. “I just like everything about you.” She waves her hands at the smile that appears on Jane’s face. “Stop! It’s gross! What I said is gross!”
“Everything about me?” Jane teases.
“No, definitely not that shit-eating grin. Categorically hate that.”
“Oh, I think you like that the best.”
“Shut up,” August says. The darkness, she hopes, hides the blushing.
Jane laughs, popping a bit of orange into her mouth. “It is crazy, though, when you think about it.” She licks a drop of juice off her bottom lip. “You kind of know everything there is to know about me.”
August scoffs. “There’s no way that’s true.”
“It is! And I used to be so mysterious and sexy.”
“I mean, you’re literally sitting on the third rail conducting electricity right now, so, still mysterious. Now, sexy … hmm. I don’t know about that.”
Jane rolls her eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”
August laughs and dodges the orange peel Jane throws at her. “Tell me something I don’t know about you, then,” she says. “Surprise me.”
“Okay,” Jane says, “but you have to do one too.”
“You already know more about me than most people.”
“That’s a testament to you living like you’re under deep cover and can’t compromise your civilian identity, not how much you’ve told me.”
“Fine,” August relents. Jane taps her nose, and August scowls—she’s a pushover for Jane. They both know it. “You go first.”
“Okay … hmm … oh, I’ve made friends with a subway rat.”
“You’ve what?”
“Look, it gets really boring down here!” Jane says defensively. “But there’s this one white rat that hangs out on the Q sometimes. She’s so big and so fat and so round, like a gigantic steamed bun. I named her Bao.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I love her. Sometimes I give her snacks.”
“You’re a nightmare.”
“Judge all you want, but I’m the only one who’ll be spared in the inevitable Great Rat Uprising. Your turn.”
August thinks, and says, “I’ve cheated on one test my entire life. Junior year of high school. I’d been up all night going through public records with my mom, and I ran out of time to study, so I picked the lock on my teacher’s room before school, found out what the essay question was, and memorized an entire page from the book by fifth period so I could answer it.”
“God, you fucking nerd.” Jane snorts. “That’s not even cheating. That’s … being unfairly prepared.”
“Excuse me, I thought it was very edgy at the time. Your turn.”
“My mom started going gray at, like, twenty-five,” she says, “and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna happen to me too. Or at least it would have if I weren’t, you know.” She does a vague hand gesture to express the whole ineffability of being. August shoots a finger gun back.
“In fourth grade, I memorized the entire periodic table and all of the presidents and vice presidents in chronological order, and I still remember it all.”
“I saw The Exorcist opening weekend and didn’t sleep for four days.”
“I hate pickles.”
“I snore.”
“I can’t sleep if it’s too quiet.”
Jane pauses, and says, “Sometimes I wonder if I fell out of time because I never really belonged where I started and the universe is trying to tell me something.”
It’s offhand, casual, and August watches her pull off another orange segment and eat it unceremoniously, but she knows Jane. It’s not easy for her to say things like that.
She figures she can give something back.
“When I was a kid, after Katrina—you remember how I told you about the hurricane?” Jane nods. August goes on, “There was this year I got moved around to different schools until my old school reopened and we could go home. And my anxiety got … bad. Like, really bad. So, I convinced myself that, because the statistical likelihood of something happening in real life exactly the way I imagined it was so low, if I imagined the worst possible things in vivid detail, I could mathematically reduce the odds of them happening. I convinced myself that my brain had power over the probability projections of the universe. I’d lie awake at night thinking about all the worst stuff that could happen like it was my job, and I don’t know if I ever really broke the habit.”
Jane listens silently, nodding. One of the things August loves most about her is that she doesn’t go chasing after unspoken words when August is done talking. She can let a silence settle, let a truth breathe.
Then she opens her mouth and says, “Sometimes I like to have my ass slapped during sex.”
August squawks out a laugh, caught off guard. “What? You’ve never asked me to do that.”
“Angel, there are a lot of things I’d like to do with you that can’t be done on a train.”
August swallows. “Point.”
Jane raises her eyebrows. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you gonna write that down in your little sex notebook?”
“My—” August’s face is instantly hot. “You weren’t supposed to know about that!”
“You’re not that discreet, August. One time I swear you whipped it out before I even got my pants buttoned.”
August moans in dismay. She knows exactly what entry Jane is talking about. Page three, section M, subheading four: overstimulation.
“I have to die now,” August says into her hands.
“No, it’s cute! You’re such a nerd. It’s endearing!” Jane laughs, always so amused about making August suffer. It’s despicable. “Your turn.”
“No way, you already exposed a thing I didn’t think you knew about me,” August says. “I’m feeling very vulnerable.”
“Oh my God, you’re impossible.”
“I’m not going.”
“Then we’re at an impasse. Unless you wanna come over here and kiss me.”
August lifts her face out of her hands. “And get electrocuted? I’m pretty sure if I kissed you right now, it would literally kill me.”
“That’s how it always feels, isn’t it?”
“Oh my God,” August groans, even though her heart does something humiliating at the words. “Shut up and eat your orange.”
Jane sticks her tongue out but does as she’s told, finishing off her half and licking her fingertips when she’s done.
“I missed oranges,” she says. “Really good ones, though. You gotta start grocery shopping in Chinatown.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, back home, my mom would take me to all the markets every Sunday morning and let me pick out the fruit because I always had this sixth sense with sweet stuff. Best oranges you could find. We used to get so many, I’d have to carry some home in my pockets.”
August smiles to herself as she pictures a tiny Jane, chubby cheeks and untied shoes, toddling through a fruit stand with her pockets full of produce. She imagines Jane’s mom as a young woman with her hair tied up and shot through with premature gray, haggling with a butcher in Cantonese. San Francisco, Chinatown, the place that made Jane.
“What’s the first thing you’ll do,” August asks, “when you get back to ’77?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “Try to catch that bus to California, I guess.”
“You should. I bet California misses you.”
Jane nods. “Yeah.”
“You know,” August says, “if this works, by now you’ll be almost seventy.”
Jane pulls a face. “Oh my God, that’s so weird.”
“Oh yeah.” August gazes up at the tunnel ceiling. “I bet you have a house, and it’s filled with souvenirs from all over the world because you spent your thirties backpacking through Europe and Asia. Windchimes everywhere. Nothing matches.”
“The furniture is nice and sturdy, but I never take care of the yard,” Jane puts in. “It’s a jungle. You can’t even see the front door.”
“The homeowners’ association hates you.”
Jane chuckles. “Good.”
August lets a quiet moment go by before adding, carefully, “I bet you’re married.”
In the low light, she can see Jane’s smile dip downward, a corner of her mouth tugging. “I don’t know.”
“I hope you are,” August says. “Maybe some girl finally came along at the right time, and you married her.”
Jane shrugs, pursing her lips. The dimple pops out on one side.
“She’s gonna have to live with the fact that I’ll always wish she were someone else.”
“Come on,” August says. “That’s not fair. She’s a nice lady.”
Jane looks up and rolls her eyes, but her mouth relaxes. She rests her hands on the rail and cranes her head back.
“What if I stay?” she says. “What’s the first thing you’ll do?”
There are a thousand things August could say, a thousand things she wants to do. Sleep next to her. Buy her lunch at the jerk chicken joint across the street. Brighton Beach. Prospect Park. Kiss her with the door shut.
But she says simply, “Take you home with me.”
Before Jane can respond, a flashlight beam cuts through the darkness at the city hall end of the tunnel. Jane’s head whips around.
“Hey! Who’s in there?” a gruff voice shouts. “Get the fuck out of the tunnel!”
“Fuckin’ pigs,” Jane says, jumping up and scattering orange peel everywhere. “Run!”
They run back through the tunnel toward Canal Street, Jane stumbling in the rush but never losing her balance on the third rail, and at some point near the fork, they start laughing. Loud, breathless, incredulous, hysterical laughter, filling up the tracks and pulling at August’s lungs as she struggles toward their line. When they reach the Q, there’s a train just pulling out of the station, and Jane takes a running jump and grabs the handle on the back of the last car.
“Come on!” she yells, turning back for August’s hand. August grabs on and lets Jane’s strong grip pull her up.
“Is this our thing?” Jane shouts over the rattle of the train as it carries them toward Brooklyn. “Kissing between subway cars?”
“You haven’t kissed me yet!” August points out.
“Oh, right,” Jane says. She brushes August’s windswept hair out of her face, and when their lips meet, she tastes like oranges and lightning.
* * *
August stays on the train late into the night, until the cars start to clear out and the timetable stretches longer and longer. She waits for the magic hour, and from the way Jane drags her hand along her waist, she’s waiting too.
There’s no convenient darkness this time, no perfectly timed stall, but there’s an empty car and the Manhattan Bridge and Jane pressing into her, hips moving and short breaths and kiss-slick lips. It should feel dirty, to be with Jane like this, here, but what’s crazy is, she finally understands it all. Love. The whole shape of it. What it means to touch someone like this and want to have a life with them at the same time.
Deliriously, the image of Jane with her house and her plants and her windchimes swims into view, and August is there too, wearing the shape of her body into an old bed. Jane slots between her legs and she thinks, fifty years. Jane bites down on her throat and she thinks of framed photos and stained recipe cards. Jane tightens against her fingertips and she thinks, home. Her eyes shut for Jane’s mouth and a good night’s sleep just the same.
I love you, she thinks. I love you. Please stay. I don’t know what I’ll do if you leave.
She thinks it, but she doesn’t say it. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
14
new york > brooklyn > community > missed connections
* * *
Posted October 12, 2004
Woman with red Converse on the Q (Brooklyn)
Apologies if this isn’t the right place for this, but I’m not sure where else to post. Not looking for a romantic connection. I was riding the Q with my son on Wednesday evening when a short-haired mid-twenties woman approached us and offered my son a pin from her jacket. It was a 70s-era gay pride pin, clearly a well-loved antique. My son is 15 and hasn’t had the easiest time at school since coming out earlier this year. Her act of kindness made his whole week. If you’re her, or you think you might know her, please let me know. I’d love to thank her.
In the end, it takes exactly one phone call for Gabe to agree to meet Myla for coffee.
“What can I say?” Myla says, pulling on an extremely flimsy top. “I’m the one who got away.”
“I’m going with you,” August tells her. She slings her bag over her shoulder, double-checking the pocketknife and mace. “This could be a ploy to get you alone so he can exact a bloody revenge.”
“Okay, Dateline, reel it in,” Myla says, shaking her hair out. “Love the instinctive mistrust of cis straight white men, but Gabe is harmless. He’s just boring. Like, really boring, but thinks he’s really interesting.”
“How did he get a job at Delilah’s?”
“He’s from one of those New York families, so his dad’s the landlord. He’s very straight.”
“And you dated him because…?”
“Look,” Myla says, “we all make mistakes when we’re young. Mine just happens to be six-foot-three and look exactly like Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“Revenant or Inception?”
“You really got me fucked up if you think I’d settle for anything less than Romeo + Juliet.”
“Damn, okay, I guess I get it.” August shrugs. “But I’m still going with you.”
Gabe lives in Manhattan, so they take the Q over the river, Jane wedged between them as they catch her up the latest status of the plan.
“I have to say, I’m impressed,” she says, throwing her arm over August’s shoulders. “This is definitely the most organized crime I’ve ever been involved in.”
“When are you going to tell me about all the other crimes?” August says.
“I have told you. They were mostly vandalism. Squatting. Disrupting the peace. The occasional breaking and entering. Maybe some light petty theft. One incident of arson, but I was wearing a mask, so nobody could prove it was me.”
“Those are some of the sexiest crimes,” August points out. “For people who are into crimes. Very Bender from The Breakfast Club.”
“That’s—” Myla starts.
“I know,” Jane says. “August told me about The Breakfast Club.”
Myla nods, mollified.
August forces Myla to let her go into the coffee shop a minute ahead to maintain cover, so she’s perched at the bar with an iced coffee when Myla enters. She tries to case out which of the twenty-something guys with black coffees and dogeared moleskines could be Gabe, until one with floppy hair and a pointy chin waves Myla over. He’s got a flannel tied around his waist and a faded Pickle Rick button on his messenger bag. August cannot imagine what he and Myla ever had in common. He looks almost pathetically happy to see her.
August sits back and sips her coffee and swipes through the substation homework she gave herself this week. She’s narrowed down which substation they need access to, so now it’s just about making sure they can get into the control room. Myla will take care of the rest.
Myla and Gabe wrap up after an hour, and she hugs him goodbye and throws him a call me! gesture before easing out the door. August hangs back for a minute, watching him stare after her. He looks like he might cry.
“Yikes,” August says under her breath as she heads for the door.
She meets Myla down the block, where she’s thumbing through her phone.
“That looked like it went unexpectedly well.”
Myla smiles. “Turns out he blocked me on social media because he ‘couldn’t stand to see how I’m doing’ without him. Which, I mean, fair. A bitch is doing spectacularly.” She holds up her phone. “He already texted me.”
“What did he say about the event?”
“Oh, this is the best part. Get this: he got the job because his uncle is one of the managers, so he doesn’t think he’ll have any trouble getting them to agree to let us use the space. Good old-fashioned nepotism to the rescue.”
“Holy shit,” August says. She thinks about Niko pulling the ace of swords from his tarot deck, about all the jade he’s been hiding around the apartment lately. Maybe it’s luck, but August can’t help but feel like someone has his thumb on the scale. “So now what?”
“He’s gonna talk to his uncle and call me tomorrow. I’m gonna head to Billy’s and talk to Lucie about moving things to the new venue.”
“Cool, I’ll come with you.”
Myla puts a hand out. “Nope. You have something else you need to take care of.”
“What?”
“You need to figure out how to talk to Jane,” she says, pointing toward the Q stop down the street. “Because if we pull this off and it works, you might never see her again, and Niko says you have a lot of things left to say to each other.”
August looks at her, the summer sunset gleaming off her sunglasses and sparkling against the Manhattan sidewalk. The city moves around them like they’re pebbles in a creek bed.
“It’s—we’re gonna be fine,” August says. “She knows how I feel about her. And—and if it’s gonna end like this, there’s nothing either of us can do. There’s no point ruining whatever time we have left by being sad about it.”
Myla sighs. “Sometimes the point is to be sad, August. Sometimes you just have to feel it because it deserves to be felt.”
She leaves her on the corner, staring at the sharp tops of buildings heavy with pink and orange light.
How does she talk to Jane? Where does she even start? How does she explain that she used to be afraid to love anyone because there’s a well at the center of her chest and she doesn’t know where the bottom is? How does she tell Jane that she boarded it up years ago, and that this thing—not even love, but the hope for it—has pried up nails that have nothing to do with love at all?
