So that was when the boy, when Massimiliano, came around with his rich red hair and his confident saunter and his attempts at speaking my language—Wud going for a walk with me?—I took off with him. My father was distracted and he would always think I was his little girl—sexlessly beautiful—so we walked out of the sightline of the guests, down into the cool shade of a cypress grove. Massi picked up some figs and placed them in my hands. He’d hidden away a half bottle of grappa from one of the tables. It seemed the worst thing in the world if he were a cousin, but I didn’t ask, I only thought it, and my cheeks glowed like the stove burners we had in the Pocono house, the glass kind without iron that got hot and red behind your back.
You wait for me, he said, and left and came back with two juice glasses. He took the figs from my hands and put them in the cups and filled them with two inches of grappa. You say cheers? he said, and we sipped our grappa and I almost choked but first love like that inures you.
That was the year before the year my parents died and if only I had known. But I did know. I knew for the whole sunny day; when at night we went back to the fig and it was swollen with one of the strongest liquors, I knew. When the boy kissed me—the tongue and the lips, more sensual than I’d imagined—I was drunk in a way that was more mature than any drunk I would ever be in the future and I knew that this was the first and last perfect day of my life. I wanted to tell Alice about that day. I wanted to rub her face in the cow-trampled grass. I wanted her to know everything that she had taken from me.
9
THE NEXT DAY I WAS hired at the health food store. Nothing had ever come so easily. A man called. His name was Jim and I would never meet him. He burped on the other end of the line. The phone call was supposed to be an interview but it seemed I was hired before we even spoke.
—We need someone every day. Can you work the whole day those days?
I was frying an egg on my yellow range. Every time I accepted a job I felt terrorized, like I was about to be sent to jail. For most, it’s the opposite. The money is freeing, so they see the hours of work as a way out. I’ve had a strange relationship with money, as I’ve told you. I’ve been gifted things that are worth an entire year of steaming milk at a coffee shop.
—Yes, I said. When I flipped the egg, the yolk ran. I was so heartbroken that I stopped listening until Jim said the hourly rate. It was less than half a yoga class at the studio. In the news that week a lawmaker said that destitute Americans who complain about the price of health care should forgo buying the new phone they want and use the money on insurance instead.
—Sound good?
Out the window I saw River. He was loading heavy-looking panels into the back of his work truck. On the side it said SOLAR FORWARD. A sun was pushing a lawn mower. He wore a bandana and a white t-shirt. I watched his arms crank in the sunlight.
—Yes, I said. When should I start?
—Tomorrow.
—Perfect.
I figured I could always quit right away. Really I had just wanted to get off the phone. The previous night Leonard hadn’t left until I yawned three times, the final time very aggressively. I’d washed all the dishes. I’d banged around so many pans, but he either didn’t take the hint or didn’t want to. After he left I’d taken two pills and tried not to think of Vic’s boy.
I went outside. I walked by River while he was in the back of his truck, and I opened my car. Nothing made sense to grab. I picked up a pack of gum from the hairy console.
—Hey, he said. He was so awake. I smiled and shielded my eyes from the light and hated myself for waking up late almost every day of my life.
—So weird, I had a dream about you.
—Oh?
—Yeah. You were this wolf lady. Ha. Not in a bad way. Because of that song, I guess. You tore through the house looking for blankets, which is nuts because of how hot it’s been.
The kid in New York, Jack, had been just like this. Young boys make you feel wanted but also like they could take you or leave you. Jack had long balls that hung like Dalí’s clocks. He was unembarrassed about them. He would come to my apartment from the place he shared in Hoboken with two other boys. He would say my apartment was in violation of a fun code. It had not had enough fun for weeks. When I missed him, I wrote, all in lowercase, something about something I had to show him.
Are you trying to lure me into your city fort? he replied.
i don’t know, am i? it’s just that the city fort is buckling under the weight of its lack-of-fun-code violation. it needs to be violated…
Vic knew about Jack. He was the one who gave him the name the kid. He used to call me that until I started seeing someone so young. Are you going to get ravaged
