For Today I Am a Boy (25 page)

“Hi, babe,” John said. They leaned toward each other without touching, like dogs straining against leashes. “What table are you at? What did you order?”

She pointed into the dining hall. “The fish stew. That's your job, right?”

“Yep. I'll make it special.”

They gazed at each other with some profound, unknowable intent. It was uncomfortable to look at—worse, somehow, than if they'd just started making out on the floor.

That past summer, at the café, someone had left the skins from the roasted hams in the metal garbage bin out back. They sat baking in the sun. When I lifted the lid off at the end of the day, a cloud of black flies poured out and engulfed my head. Their wings brushed my cheeks and hissed in my ears. I thought of a picture I'd seen of a calf dying from black-fly bites, its sores red and swollen. No one heard me screaming in the alley. That moment, flat on my back in the filth around the bin, and this moment, watching John watch his girlfriend back out the kitchen door, felt the same. Loneliness exploding out of nowhere in a screeching swarm, dark and dense enough to blot out the sun.

The other cooks stopped what they were doing to make fun of John as he made a heart out of chopped scallions to top the cream garnish of his girlfriend's stew. The music playing in the kitchen was the pop hit of the season, sung by a group of boys who must have speaking voices like John: perky, irrepressible.

 

“What are you doing here so early?” John asked. It was a Friday morning. He stood yawning in his rumpled street clothes at the kitchen door, his blond hair sticking up at angles.

“I'm on the schedule for six.”

“Yeah, but nobody shows up for their six until six thirty, at the earliest. Jeez. What have you been doing?” He surveyed the kitchen. “You already set up your station? Oh man. Don't let Chef find out about that. You're ruining it for everybody. Sit down and let me make you some coffee.”

I sat at the bar. John danced around behind it, though there was no music playing, making a show of preparing the espresso. He flipped the small cup and caught it like a coin toss. “How about that? Pretty cool, huh?” He did the same thing with the tamper and tried to catch it behind his back. It clattered on the floor.

I laughed. He handed me my espresso. It burned my mouth. I coughed. “It's hot,” he said helpfully. He sat down on the stool beside me with his cup, his elbows on the bar. I leaned away from him. He had a habit of getting too close.

“So,” he said. “Where do you go after work every day? Why are you always in such a hurry?”

“I don't go anywhere,” I said, surprised.

“You run out of here like your house is on fire. Why don't you stay and hang out?”

I felt like he was questioning some fundamental aspect of my person. Why are your eyes brown? Why do you like your steak rare? “I don't know.”

“Stay today. I'll buy you a shot.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you?”

“You don't know anything about me.”

He laughed and put his hands up in defense. “Okay, fine. Don't stay, I don't care.”

I nursed my espresso in my hands. John hopped off his stool and headed to the coatroom, still dancing to the music in his head. It took a moment before I felt bad. Yes, I could be friends with this simple-minded kid. I liked him. Everyone liked him. And he was right: with Bonnie gone, I had nowhere to go.

I went to the coatroom to apologize. I knocked and pushed the door open without waiting. “Hey, John . . .”

He was stepping out of his jeans, his gray boxer briefs wadded up against his sweaty skin, wedged into the crease where his thighs met his hips. His chef pants were on the floor. He reached for them. I had startled him, and he tried to dive into both legs at the same time. He finally yanked them up and turned his back to me. For a moment, I doubted what I'd seen. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking.

His voice stayed cheery. “What's up, Peter?”

Did I burst in on him on purpose? Did I want it to be true? This door didn't lock. People were constantly walking in on each other. With the wait staff, it had turned into a game. The waitresses went in two at a time and one of them held the door shut.

He turned around. Our eyes met. He was depending on me not noticing; it was such a subtle thing, an empty fold of fabric. I was frozen.

John was still smiling, though it had tightened. “Did you talk to Damian?”

“Who?” I took a step back.

“The waiter with the . . .” John held a hand over his eye in the shape of a ball. “With the eyes.”

“Yes.” I scanned John's body: the stout muscle, the teenage facial hair, his natural voice. His flat, unmarked chest. “Is it true?” I asked. Before he could answer, I said, “It's not true. I've changed in here with you before.”

“I keep my pants on.” John shrugged. “Look, it's not a secret, exactly, but not everyone knows. I tell people only if it comes up and I feel like they can handle it.” I could see the horror in my expression reflected in John's face. His smile dimmed.

“How?” I choked out.

“I don't really want to—”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. I couldn't stop myself. “
How?
”

John pushed me hard. I stumbled back and slammed into the wall, one of the coat hooks striking my spine, before I fell to the ground. I started crying. Loud, ugly weeping, heaving in staggers like a child astonished by his own tears.

“I'm sorry! It was a reflex. I thought you were going to hit me.” John knelt down. “Are you okay?”

“How?” I whispered.

John considered my pathetic form, slumped on the ground. “I don't know what you want me to say.”

I waved my arm around his body viciously. “
This.
How?”

He straightened up. “Look, I don't know you that well, and it's really none of your business. I'm a guy. That's all you need to know.” He hovered over me, still more concerned than threatening. “Why are you crying?”

“It's not fair. Give it to me.”
Give me your girlhood, John,
I thought nonsensically.
You don't want it? Give it to me. I want to be the woman you would've been: blond, simple, sunny.

“What's not fair? What are you talking about?” John was too close again; we were almost nose to nose.

I lifted my head. John searched my face. His eyes widened. He sat down beside me and looked at his hands, his fingers thick and stout as the rest of him. A moment passed in silence. The hooks above our heads were crowded with left-behind clothes and junk. Toques and scarves, a T-shirt, a bow tie, a nude-colored bra.

Another of John's smiles, this one small and solitary, for himself. “Did you think . . . you were the only one?” he said.

“No, I thought . . .” Yes, and I still did. John wasn't like me. Whatever he was, whatever he called himself, he was something else entirely. He had to be.

“Are you a woman?”

He threw off this question readily, like it was nothing at all. My whole life summed up in a question I never got to ask. “I can't do this,” I said.

“I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me what—”

“I can't work today.” I stood up. “Tell them . . . something.” John followed me out of the coatroom. He followed me all the way to the door. I didn't turn around, and he didn't speak.

I realized I had left my coat and bag with my transit pass inside of it. I walked for an hour to get home through the October slush, that first, strange snow that doesn't quite take.

 

John called me that night. I asked him how he got my number. “From your resumé. I also have your bag, your wallet, and your coat.”

“Am I fired?”

“No. I told them you called in sick. No big deal.”

“Then I'll get my stuff on Monday.”

“You're going to go all weekend without your wallet?”

It was also my only warm coat. “Yes.”

“Where do you live? I'll come drop it off.”

“That's okay.”

“We're having some people over for dinner tomorrow. You could come, and pick up your stuff then.”

John had a girlfriend, without the quotation marks around the term that came with a Margie or a Claire. I remembered their electric stares. “I'm busy.”

He exhaled. The mouthpiece crackled. “I want to help you. Tell me how to help you.”

I looked down into my lap. I picked at the skirt I was wearing: white denim, yellowed with age, ending several inches above my knees. Bonnie's. My mouth was gluey with lip gloss. His questions bothered me a lot.
What are your life goals? Why don't you hang out with us? Tell me how to help you.
As though all people understood themselves and had neat, one-word answers. “There's a lot about you that I don't understand.” I tried to be honest. “I'm not sure I want to understand.”

“We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. It's just dinner.”

I rubbed my shin. The stubble prickled against my hand.
Time to shave,
I thought, not without pleasure. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, hot damn,” John said. I could picture his smile.

 

John's girlfriend, Eileen, pointed to each dish spread out on the coffee table. “The chickpea salad has mayo in it. The green salad has soy sauce in it. The pasta has cheese and gluten in it. But the macaroons are gluten-free, and nothing has shellfish or meat.”

I'd been introduced to the five faces who were now nodding solemnly, but none of their names had stuck. They appeared to be memorizing this information. We sat on cushions on the floor. All of the furniture in the living room consisted of piles of cushions, aside from the coffee table and a wide, backless bookcase.

“What else is in the chickpea salad?” I asked.

“Fruit and spices,” Eileen said, passing around a stack of plates.

“So why did you mention the mayo?”

“I don't eat eggs,” said a blond girl. Her eyeliner was drawn in sharp points nearly an inch away from each eye.

“And some of us can't eat dairy,” added the boy in the skintight baby-blue pants.

“Mayo's not dairy,” Eileen said.

“Oh.”

The floor was now open. “I can't eat wheat,” explained a thick-bodied girl with a deep voice.

The girl with aviator glasses said, “Me neither. And shellfish gives me hives.”

“I'm allergic to nuts and soy,” Blue-Pants chimed in. “And mushrooms.”

John said, “I don't eat mushrooms either, but that's not an allergy. Something about the texture just makes me want to retch.”

Deep-Voice said, “Oh, I'm like that about potatoes.”

Eileen turned to me. “I'm sorry, Peter. I forgot to ask you if you had any food sensitivities.”

“Um, no,” I said. They seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, so I added, “It's sort of funny that you all do, isn't it? Have so many allergies, I mean. For one group of friends.”

“They're not all allergies. Some are intolerances,” Pointy-Makeup-No-Eggs said. She started gathering food onto her plate.

“I read somewhere it's a generational thing,” said Blue-Pants-No-Soy. He was waiting for Pointy to relinquish the tongs, his plate hanging limply from his hand. “Something about us not getting tapeworms, or parasites, or something. Like, we're the no-tapeworm generation, so we're the food-allergy generation too.”

Deep-Voice-No-Wheat said, “Or maybe it's all in our heads. We're the hypochondriac generation.”

Aviators-No-Shellfish replied, “My EpiPen would disagree with you.”

“My stomach hurts so bad when I eat dairy. Like, I can't get out of bed,” Pointy-Makeup-No-Eggs said.

“Maybe in previous generations, they wouldn't have figured it out, and you would've just died,” I said. “Maybe there wasn't as much choice. Maybe you just had to eat what was there or starve.”

Blue-Pants tapped the tongs together like a castanet to get my attention. “What are you saying? That we should just suck it up and deal with it? Lisa would asphyxiate, you know. Her throat closes up.”

“No,” I said. Even though we all sat around the table, it felt as though they were all facing me. “Sorry. I just meant that no one would have thought to blame the nuts.”

“Shellfish,” said No-Shellfish, apparently Lisa.

“Shellfish.” It was rare for me to talk so much at once, especially to strangers. “You wouldn't realize it was the shellfish. You wouldn't try it out and think about how you felt afterward. If you lived somewhere where the dominant food was shellfish, you'd just have a reaction and die, and no one would know why.”

“Why are you talking about Lisa dying?” asked Pointy.

“Sorry,” I repeated. I turned my eyes down to my plate. It was the only one still empty.

 

Blue-Pants and I stayed after everyone else had left. Eileen washed the dishes and I dried, while Blue-Pants sat at the table behind us typing into his phone. John was outside fiddling with the compost in the small garden of their first-floor apartment.

“Way to help, asshole,” Eileen said casually to Blue-Pants. “What are you doing?”

“Coming up with a short, pithy summary of the evening to share with the Internet,” Blue-Pants said, in a self-mocking drawl.

“Yes, the Internet needs to know what you thought of my macaroons.”

“They were acceptable,” Blue-Pants said. His chin was lit from below by the screen. At dinner, everyone had been fascinated by the fact that I didn't own a computer. “I didn't know there were dinosaurs like you still left in the world,” Blue had said.

Eileen handed me a wet glass. My small hand, with a dishcloth wrapped around it, fit inside. We worked to the soft clinking of dishes and Blue's tapping thumbs. “May I ask you something?” I said.