When we got out of bed we were hungry, and October wanted to have a picnic, but the contents of her fridge were meager. She had milk, bread, cheese, anchovies, and Luxardo cherries. All I had was beer, chocolate milk, and tequila.
We went to the farmers’ market in San Rafael and got two big bags of groceries. Predictably, once we got home, October wouldn’t let me help her cook. But she did give me the task of scrubbing a bag of red potatoes and washing the lettuce. Though when she saw me rinsing the heads under the faucet, she laughed and said that wasn’t the best way to wash lettuce; she showed me how to break the leaves apart and swish them around in big bowls of water until all the bugs and grit sank to the bottom.
I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and we drank it over the course of the afternoon while October poached the potatoes, sous-vided chicken thighs, and made a salad.
At some point I found a Truth or Dare game in the junk drawer in the kitchen. The game looked like a deck of cards, but one side of each card had a truth question on it and the other side a dare. I told October that if she wasn’t going to let me cook, she had to play the game with me. I shuffled the cards, picked one, and said, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” She was working on the salad dressing, using a marble mortar and pestle to mash garlic and anchovies.
I flipped to the truth side of the card. “Name a memory from childhood that you’re ashamed of.”
“Ugh. Sissy Brown,” she said instantly. “Sissy lived on my street in eighth grade. We were the same age and rode the bus to school together. And when I tell you Sissy was mean, I mean she bullied everyone. There was a handicapped boy in our class named Ricardo whom she called Retardo. She made fun of my best friend Delia’s mom for being overweight. And she’d dubbed me Demon Girl, for obvious reasons. Anyway, she always sat in the back of the bus, and Delia and I sat a few rows in front. One day after school, Delia and I are sharing a Kit-Kat just as the bus is approaching Sissy’s stop. Sissy walks up the aisle, sees the Kit-Kat in Delia’s hand, and says, ‘You’re going to be as fat as your mom.’ Then she leans over me and makes an oink-oink sound in Delia’s face.” October paused to crack an egg, separate the yolk, and toss the eggshell into the compost bin on her counter. “Something in me snapped, and as Sissy was walking by I put my leg out and tripped her. She went down with a thud, and all the stuff in her book bag spilled all over the floor—pens, papers, notebooks, and gum went everywhere. The entire bus cheered while Sissy scrambled to pick up her things. And at first I felt cool and justified. But then Sissy stood up and looked back at me. She was crying, her face was all red and wet, and her hair was sticking to the tears on her cheeks. We made eye contact and I felt—I don’t know—her insides, I guess—the part of her life I didn’t know anything about. A barrage of sadness, loneliness, and neglect; I immediately understood why she wasn’t nice to anyone. Because nobody was nice to her.”
“Don’t tell me you befriended her and turned her life around.”
She shook her head. “She moved away a couple of months later and I never saw her again. But that was over twenty years ago, and I still feel horrible about tripping her, and for never telling her I was sorry.”
I ate a strawberry from one of the cartons we bought at the market. “If it makes you feel better, I was a lonely, neglected kid, and I wasn’t mean.”
October wiped her hands on a dishtowel, took a sip of her wine, and pecked me on the nose. “You have a good heart, Joe. I know you don’t always think so, but you do.”
She whisked olive oil into the egg yolk, and I picked another card. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” she said again.
“Excluding your current occupation, what’s the longest you’ve ever held a job?”
“For three years I worked as a massage therapist in college. But it’s my turn to ask you.”
I shook my head. “Nope. If I can’t cook, you can’t ask questions. Hold on, though. You were a massage therapist? How?”
She gave me a look. “What do you mean? With my hands.”
“No, I mean, how could you touch people all day, with, you know, your gift?”
“That’s why I did it. To hone my gift. I used to ask my clients to fill out a questionnaire about their emotional state before I worked on them, and once I finished the massage I would read their responses, to see how close I was. That’s how I got good at it.”
“This is very enlightening.” I picked another card, October once again chose truth, and I huffed. “The whole reason I’m playing is so I can make you eat a dog biscuit or force you to prank call Rae and ask her if her refrigerator is running. Come on. Pick ‘dare.’”
“I happen to think it’s more daring to tell the truth than it is to eat a dog biscuit.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “And I’ll let you off the hook, but only because I want to know the answer to this next question.” I ate another strawberry and said, “Name a nonsexual act that you find erotic.”
“That’s easy. Painting my lover’s toenails.”
Intrigued, I raised my brow and tried to imagine if that would turn me on. “No one
