Ask the Passengers (14 page)

“Kinda.” I wave back and blow a kiss, which makes her point at me and blow her whistle.

I’m dancing like I am not a not-dancing robot. I don’t know what’s happened. Suddenly, I can dance as if I’ve done it a million times before. Like I am a dancing
queen
. Dee is right here, rubbing up against me. We are two parts of the same animal. People are hooting. We’re on fire. Every time Dee gets her face near mine, we kiss. Right there on the dance floor. After the song is over, we stand to the side and I gulp water and she gulps more lemonade and she has her hand in the back pocket of my jeans. It’s as if someone has taken the real Astrid Jones and replaced her with one who is okay with intimacy in public places.
It’s like I’m the anti-Astrid.

“You two are hot,” someone says. When my ears hear it, it’s fuzzy.

Biker Lady is doing her bar circles with her whistle, and she stops once to grind with the two of us. It’s not as naughty as it seems. It’s not real grinding. We’re just being funny.

And I am pretty sure I’m gay.

I mean, not just by default because I am in love with Dee, but I feel like these people are
my people
or something.

By the time the bartender calls for last call and the lights
flicker, I’m too tired to dance anymore. I’m still soaked, but I’m no longer tipsy. The same can’t be said for Dee.

“I’m going to drive you home in your car,” I say. “Then I can meet up with everybody at the Superfine parking lot.”

“I’m fine,” she slurs.

I take her keys—proof that her reaction time is lame. “I’m finer.”

In the bar parking lot, Kristina and Donna fall into Donna’s car for a few minutes, and Justin and Chad are in Justin’s car. We agree we can leave in five minutes after some
alone time
.

Dee looks at her watch. “Shit, man. We have to be at work in three hours.”

I kiss her on her neck. “Totally worth it.”

“True.” She kisses me sloppily and it makes my insides twist up and we make out for a few minutes and everything is going great until she jams her hand into my pants and I have to stop her from going too far because I don’t want to go that far.

She slaps the car seat and says, “Dammit, Jones! Just shit or get off the pot!”

I decide Dee is now fine to drive home.

How’s that for getting off the pot?

I GET INTO JUSTIN’S CAR
, and we all take off for Unity Valley. I don’t say good-bye to Dee and I don’t cry and I don’t feel anything but numb indifference. Part of me scolds myself for ever bringing her here. Part of me knew this was a bad idea.

Maybe part of me wonders if I’m even gay, though only an hour ago, I was about 99.9 percent sure. It’s like I just walked in a big circle.

But what’s the difference between Jeff Garnet and Dee Roberts right now? Last week, Jeff’s pressing me up against his car like some big jerk and tonight Dee’s doing the same damn thing.

“You okay back there?” Kristina asks.

“Yeah.”

“Something happen with Dee?”

“Nah. Just tired.”

“You danced your ass off!” Justin says. “It was awesome!”

“Yeah,” I say. I think:
But what does it matter now? I can’t just dance. I can’t just have fun. If I start having even a little bit of fun, I have to shit or get off the pot.

My alarm goes off at five, and I hit snooze. It goes off again at 5:09, and I hit snooze again. Finally, at 5:18 I get up and get dressed. I don’t do anything to my hair except run my fingers through it.

By the time I get to Maldonado’s, I think I may have fallen asleep while driving. Twice. I don’t remember at least four blocks of Washington Street. Dee is already inside, which means I must really be late.

I smile and pretend I’m not heartbroken.
Shit or get off the pot.
I can barely keep my eyes open, so the I’m-too-tired-to-talk routine is 100 percent believable. The morning goes by slowly. I devein six hundred thousand million shrimp, and Dee chops broccoli and cauliflower into twelve million trillion perfect little trees. We wash and chop fruit together and grunt occasionally.

I avoid all contact with both walk-ins until a quick inventory check while Dee is doing dishes. I’m sure she notices, but she doesn’t mention it.

The only conversation we have all day that isn’t about food is this:

Dee and I are on our blanket in our usual spot at Freedom Lake, and we’re just lying here on our backs watching the sky. It’s cold today, and we’re both wearing our scarves and hats. I spot a small commuter jet descending to land at the local airport, and I send it all my love. All of it.

Dee doesn’t have much to say, and neither do I. We’re both tired—or maybe she’s more tired and I’m more pretending I’m tired so I don’t have to talk.

I ask the passengers:
Are you shaking your heads with disappointment? Are you yelling
shit or get off the pot
from your reclining first-class seats patterned in neutral-colored propellers and airplane silhouettes? Are you sick of hearing me say it?

As if she’s reading my mind, she says, “Are you pissed off at me for last night?”

“Nah.”

Silence.

“That means yeah, doesn’t it?” she says.

I sit up and cross my legs and look at her. “That thing you said. It pissed me off.”

“Thing I said?”

“Shit or get off the pot.” When I say this, I hear her say it all over again, and this huge, out-of-proportion anger fills me.

“Oh. That,” she says. She sits up, too. “What’s wrong with saying that? You say it all the time.”

“I say it to people who take their time at red lights or who can’t make a decision about a subject for their next research paper. I don’t say it about important things like this!” I’m yelling a little. “How can you be so calm and act like it was nothing?”

She stares at me.

“Is that how you want to make love to me the first time? Forcing yourself?” I’m crying. I know I’m crying about everyone who’s trying to control me, but I can’t explain that to Dee right now.

“I wouldn’t have ever done something that made you feel horrible. Jesus! You make me out like a date rapist. You know I’m not like that.”

“You were last night.”

“Stop saying that. I was not.”

“Dude, I had to stop you. If I hadn’t stopped you, what would have happened?”

“What the fuck?” she yells, throwing her hands up. “I can’t figure you out, Jones. One minute you want me, and the next minute you don’t.”

“That’s bullshit. I want you all the time, but I asked you to be patient.”

“I was patient!”

“For two weeks. That’s how long you were patient!”

She chews on the inside of her cheek. “I just don’t get what the big fucking deal is. I mean, we’ve been together for over five months now. I’m pretty sure I love you!”

Wow. That was… gutsy. Not romantic, but… wow.

“Oh,” I say.

“Oh? That’s all you’re going to say?”

“No,” I say, trying to be gutsy, too. “I’m also going to say that if you—if you think you love me, then shouldn’t you treat me like you love me and respect me? And be patient with me?”

I realize that I’m saying this not just to Dee but also to my mother. And Kristina. And Ellis. And Jeff. And maybe even myself.

Dee sighs and squeezes my hand. “I’m really sorry, Astrid.”

We look at each other for a whole minute. I trace her high cheekbones down to her full lips and wish I wasn’t attracted to them at all. I think about going back to being an asexual sea sponge, and I cry more.

She says, “I’m really sorry, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

“It’s just really frustrating for me. I’ve never had a person hold out so long, you know?”

“Can’t you see how even
that
hurts?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

We’re quiet for a while. I dry my tears. “Look. I didn’t want to get all loud and mad. I’ve just—just been under a lot of pressure from everyone, and I need a break.”

“From us?”

“What?”

“You need a break from us?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know.” I watch a plane zoom across the sky, and envy the power and control of it. I simultaneously realize that without a pilot, it would crash. “I need to be my own pilot,” I say. “And I don’t understand why my copilot is saying stuff like
shit or get off the pot.
It just doesn’t seem like a good team.”

Dee looks at me softly. “I don’t want you to get hurt, you know?” She picks a long piece of grass and scars it with her thumbnail. “Do you remember Deanna Klinger?”

“Yeah.” I vaguely remember her. I think she ran cross-country.

“We dated for a while, you know?”

I feel my whole face go hot. “Oh.” Reason number 543 Dee Roberts was a bad first choice. She has dated a lot of girls, and I haven’t dated any.

“She—you know—chose the wrong side. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Chose the wrong side?”

“Yeah. She found some guy she really liked, and now she’s all hetero.”

I sigh deeply and lie back down to look at the sky. No airplanes. No passengers to ask. So I ask the clouds.
Did you guys
know there’s a wrong side and a right side? Why didn’t you tell me?

The clouds don’t answer.

“So when you said
shit or get off the pot
, you didn’t mean for me to make up my mind,” I say. “You meant for me to just come out, be gay, and be done with it.”

“Well, yeah. I don’t see what the holdup is.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I say. “Obviously, this was a piece of cake for you.”

“Are you saying you might not be gay? That this is all just some kind of joke or something?”

“It’s not a joke.”

“So what is it, then?”

“It’s a question. And I’m answering it. But I don’t know the answer yet, and I’m sorry.”

She lies back down and crosses her arms.

“And you shouldn’t dis Deanna Klinger. Maybe she realized she wasn’t what she thought she was,” I say. “People change, you know?”

“Are you gonna change?” she asks.

“How am I supposed to know? I can’t see the future,” I answer.

We lie there, and when a plane finally appears in the sky, I picture a cabin full of fliers getting excited about their destinations, and I ask:
Isn’t it enough to be in love with Dee’s amazing eyes and the smell of her hair? Isn’t it enough that she thinks I’m funny? That we have fun when we mess around at work? Why does everything come with a strict definition? Who made all these boxes?