Hot Little Hands (12 page)

He put the car in reverse and backed out into the road. A couple of approaching drivers honked at him. He sped up to stay ahead of them.

“Geez,” Ramona said. He was driving faster than he ever did when the family was in the car. Ramona wondered if this was what he did when he went out at night, sped around with the windows down, pretending he had nowhere to be.

“Your mother's very upset about the lying,” he said. “She thought about grounding you, but she's decided just to put it behind us. If I were you, I'd watch my behavior from now on. You've put her through a lot.”

“Uh-huh,” Ramona said.

“What does that mean?” Tony looked at her.

“It means I know.”

Ramona leaned her elbow on the sill and stared out the window, at the park whizzing by, then the hospital, hoping they could sit in silence for the rest of the ride. But a minute later, Tony cleared his throat and said, “Remember my sister Leanne? You met her at the wedding.”

“Yeah.” Ramona pictured the skinny woman with the frizzy hair and sparkly black dress.

“When we were kids,” Tony said, “she must have been ten or eleven, she was playing in the front yard when a neighbor walked past. He came into the garden and tried to—interfere with her.”

Ramona turned from the window and stared at him. “What did she do?”

“She yelled bloody murder. She screamed and scratched him. She said every obscenity she could think of, then ran inside. He never came back. I think he might have moved away. At least, we never saw the man she described.”

Tony changed lanes without a head-check, and turned through a yellow light onto Moreland Road.

“Geez,” Ramona said again.

“What I'm saying,” he said, “is you never had to put up with anything you didn't want to. I was just trying to help you out during a difficult time. If you didn't want my help, you could have said so.”

Ramona didn't know what to say. She wondered what Dr. Carvden would tell her to do now. They had never discussed the possibility of a conversation like this.

“That's good that the guy never came back,” she said finally.

Tony nodded. “It is good.” He reached over and turned on the radio, pressing the buttons without looking at them.
I've sat on my veranda and watched them knocking over every rubbish bin on the street, one after the next,
a caller was telling a radio host.
I'm sure they're doing it on purpose, and that's our tax dollars.
Ramona wished they could switch to an FM station with music, but she settled back into her seat and listened, glad the conversation was over.

Steve was setting the table when they got home, and Lockie was in the living room, drawing a big tree on the cover of his project. “Where's Mum?” Ramona asked. They both ignored her.

She found her mother in the laundry, tossing clothes into the washing machine.

“How was therapy?” she asked.

“It was okay.” Ramona watched her mum turn a pair of Lockie's jeans inside out before dropping them in and reaching for the detergent. “But actually, I don't think I need to go back.”

“Why? I thought you liked it.”

“I did. But my leg's all better now, and I haven't turned off an electrical switch in ages. Except for at the normal times, when you're supposed to turn them off.”

“That's great, hon.”

“It's costing you guys a lot of money and I think I'm cured now.”

Her mum closed the machine and turned the dial. “Did you discuss this with Dr. Carvden?”

“No.”

“Why don't you talk it over with her at your next appointment? See if she thinks you're ready.”

Ramona wanted to roll her eyes and say,
Do I have to?,
but she stopped herself and nodded. “Yeah, okay,” she said.

Ramona skipped dinner that night. She went straight to her room and thought about calling Adil, or chatting with some girls online. But she didn't feel like doing either. Homework was out of the question, so she turned the light off and climbed into bed.

Under the covers, she put her hands inside her school tights and tried to bring a story or scenario to mind that would set something alight in her. She tried to think about Adil and the smell of cinnamon. When that didn't work, she tried to picture herself as Kirsty giving Jeremy a hand job in a room full of boys. Then she was a prostitute in an alleyway with a businessman behind her and a wad of cash in her fist. And then Camilla on
Big Brother,
being held down and humiliated in front of the entire country.

And then she was herself, some sleepy winter morning last year, still in the bath when the door opened. She was rinsing conditioner out of her hair, her fingers pushing hard at her scalp, and wishing she could go away to boarding school. She was turning off the tap and stepping out with his help, raising her arms and inching her legs apart when he told her to. She tried to think of something to say but found she couldn't locate a single word inside her head. She just stood there, shivering dumbly, as water fell onto the bathmat, one drop and then another, for what felt like forever.

Downstairs, she heard dishes clattering. Her clock said nine fifteen when she opened her eyes. Soon
Rove Live
would be starting and everyone would be sitting down together to watch it. Steve would laugh at all the
What the…?
jokes, Lockie would beg to be able to stay up past his bedtime, and Tony and her mother would look at each other and say,
Okay but just this once.

The kitchen was empty when Ramona came in. There was a wok, some bowls, and a pile of chopsticks sitting on the drying rack. Her mother must have made stir-fry for dinner. “Please?” she heard Lockie saying in the next room. “I never get to see till the end.” Ramona dried every dish and utensil and put it away in the cupboard or drawer where it belonged. Then she turned off the light, went into the living room, curled up on the couch with her family, and watched TV.

T
here is a new boy in the neighborhood. Working at the gourmet ice cream place and bar-backing at the Make Out Room. He has a Japanese bike and a scar on his forearm and he always keeps a little notebook in the back pocket of his jeans. Gray ones. Tight. He has curly hair with a fringe that sweeps across his forehead and the eyelashes of a pretty girl. That's what everyone calls him: the pretty one.

I go to a reading at the Make Out. I don't know why. I see him there, moving across the room with pint glasses stacked a meter high, leaned up against his shoulder. The girl at the door is watching him, too. I hold out my money until she notices me.

Sean finds me at the bar. “Thanks for coming,” he says. “It's nice to have groupies.”

“There's a warehouse party in the Bayview,” I tell him. “I can only stay for half an hour.”

“I'll be on late,” he says. “And I'm reading the part about you.”

“Enthusiastic exclamation,” I say without smiling. I order a dirty martini. Sean pays for it with a sweaty drink ticket. “Well, in that case,” I tell the bartender, “I'll have two.”

“A humble you're welcome,” Sean says. He hands over another ticket and joins the crowd in front of the stage.

The place is filled with the literary strain of hipster: girls in bright T-shirts with jeans worn through at the back from sitting on desk chairs all day, and guys in plaid shirts they bought new, hiding bristly faces behind square-rims. Everyone has tattoos of text. Kundera and Eliot and others I don't recognize—big blocks of words inked in cursive and Helvetica and Arabic script, crawling down calves, forearms, upper backs. The girl on stage has a big old
DADDY
tattooed in blue on her ankle.

“The only. Thing. To fear,” she reads from a chapbook. “Is tears. Themselves.”

“Can I get another?” I ask the bartender. This time I pay for myself.

One after the next, they get up there, hands shaking, smiling at the microphone, prefacing with, “This is from this new thing I'm working on.” Some of it is probably really good but we're in a bar, and the only bits that people pay attention to are funny or about sex.

“I wanted. To sleep. With him,” reads a tiny girl with a big blond Afro. “But I had. Thrush.”

The next time I order a martini it comes dry. “Can I get this dirty?” I call to the bartender, but it's intermission and the kids have him slammed. “Excuse me!”

I leave my glass where it is, stumble down off my stool, and sneak back behind the bar. I crouch down and open the door of the fridge. Behind me I can hear people calling for Anchor Steams and PBRs. The only things in here are half a jar of maraschino cherries, an open carton of milk, and a stick of celery sitting in a glass of water.

“What are you doing?” Black Converse, tight gray jeans, a yellow T-shirt inside out, and a bunch of curly brown hair pushed to the side of his forehead. I stay where I am.

“I'm looking for something.”

“What?”

“Olive juice.”

He crouches down next to me, leans an elbow on the fridge door, and smiles. “Well, we haven't properly met yet, but thanks, I'm flattered.”

I wait for some smart reply to come to me, something drink-related or cherry-related or a play on the word
dirty.
But he's looking right at me and he's so damn pretty, I blank. I stand up, slide past him, and run away, back around the bar.

“Hey, that's my martini,” I tell some guy who's holding an empty toothpick between his teeth.

“I didn't drink any,” he says. “I just got hungry.”

The bar-back is turned away now, slicing lemons on a chopping board.
I didn't say “olive juice.” I said “elephant shoe.”
That's what I should have said to him. But it's too late now to get the upper hand. My heart feels panicky and unfamiliar. I turn to the toothpick guy and, in a shaky voice, I say, “Why aren't we kissing?”

He takes the stick out of his mouth. “I don't know.”

It's a weird kiss, more high school than grad school. He has his mouth so wide open, I can't even find his upper lip. And he's tentative and soft, like he might actually like me one day, and want to go on a date and tell me about growing up different in rural Michigan.
Oh, that's why,
I want to say when I pull away. But suddenly I remember how it feels to like somebody, and I feel sorry for this guy, teetering in this same rocky boat called love-at-first-sight, so I take a sip of my drink and kiss him again. In the background I hear Sean laughing into the microphone. “This is from this new thing I wrote.” The guy's glasses push up against my face. I put my hand on the back of his head.

“She was good at beginnings. Good at the flirtation and the small talk and the straight talk and the glow. But after that, I saw her flinch and protect herself. Guy after guy became a first date, a second date, and then an ex. I waited for her to settle down, waited for her to want to settle down with me. ‘You can't be pregnant at fifty,' I told her. All she said was ‘Neither can you.' ”

“That was great,” I tell Sean later, after the toothpick guy's gone home with my number scrawled illegibly next to the Frank O'Hara on his right biceps. “But that character is nothing like me.”

“That's the golden rule of fiction,” Sean says. “Give a girl big tits, and she'll forgive all the awful stuff you write about her.”

“Oh.” I perk up. “I've got big tits in the story?”

“You weren't even listening.” He shakes his head. “You were too busy making out with that guy to even clap at the end.”

“I was clicking my fingers under the bar,” I say. “Like in the olden days.”

The bar-back is leaning over, wiping down tables, and it's only a matter of minutes before he gets to where we are. I stand up and sling my bag over my shoulder. “Hey, what do you know about that guy?”

“The pretty one?” Sean says. “His name's Sylus. Or Sy, I guess.”

“Le sigh,” I say. “Is he single?”

“I think so.”

“How can that be?”

“He's young. I think, like, nineteen or something.”

“How can he work at a bar, then?”

“He doesn't drink,” Sean says. “You guys would be awful together.”

I take off. I don't go to the party in the Bayview and I don't even feel like riding my bike. I walk it next to me, whacking my ankle on the pedal every few steps, and carry it up the stairs when I get home. Sophie is listening to Lykke Li in her room, but I don't feel like knocking and going in to chat. I close my door, kick off my shoes, and get into bed fully clothed. I don't feel like a nightcap, don't feel like brushing my teeth, getting undressed, falling asleep, or looking at porn. I just want to lie still and think about him all night and all day. I do that for about three minutes. Then I open my laptop and change my Facebook status to
abstinent until further notice.

What's going on?
a few people write on my wall.

Holy shit, I think I'm waiting for someone,
I write back.

No one responds. They probably have no idea what to say to that, or maybe they just all fell asleep.

I get a taste for ice cream. I go to the shop at all times of day, trying to get a sense of when his shifts are, tipping big, sitting on the bench out front because I'm too nervous to say more to him than just my order.

“I liked it better when you dated baristas,” Lars says one morning when I drag him there for a scoop of Secret Breakfast: ice cream, cornflakes, and bourbon. “You had all this energy back then, and you smoked more. Now you're just gonna get all fat and American, and I'll have to kick you out of the band 'cause you won't be cute anymore.”

“But I'm getting it in a cup, not a cone,” I protest. On the other side of the window, Sy has his hand up his shirt. He's scratching his chest and yawning. I turn back to Lars. “Do you think he's too young for me?” (Last year, on our way to a gig in the East Bay, Lars pulled up at a petrol station to buy a birthday card for the girl he was dating, and came back to the car pissed that they only had a
Happy 17th
card on the stand. “She'll just think it's funny,” I said. “No, she won't,” he said. “She'll think I'm a forgetful dick.” Then he leaned on the steering wheel, crossed out the
7,
and replaced it with a
6.
)

“I think
you're
too young for him,” he says now. “You revert to this weird preverbal state around him.”

I laugh. “It's true because it's funny.” I sit back and let the cornflakes go soggy on my tongue before I swallow them. The sun is out even though it's San Francisco in June. There is a tree right in front of us, with all its leaves bristling on it like goosebumps: a little miracle on Harrison Street that I never noticed before because I was too busy worrying that the wind was messing up my hair on my way to the shop.

“Isn't this gorgeous?” I say, leaning back against the glass. “Isn't it just fucking gorgeous in this town? Aren't we so lucky to live here?”

Lars shifts away and turns to stare at me. I smile and shrug and take a lick of my breakfast, and all he says is, “Ew.”

I tell everyone about my new crush. I call friends in England and wake them up to talk about it.

“Babe,” their boyfriends say, “who's calling so late?”

“How long have you been seeing him?” they all want to know.

“Well.” I try to calculate. “If you add up all the interactions we've had, the time is probably equivalent to about half a date.”

I tell all my friends and people I meet at parties, and I find it a legitimate enough excuse to use on other guys who ask me out. I tell every pretty, skinny, younger, single, straight girl I know, and half of them seem to know who I'm talking about.

“That guy?” says a girl at the Bike Kitchen who comes over to borrow a pedal wrench. “That guy's got hell of eyelashes.”

“He's too young for you,” I say.

I tell my Cinema 101 summer-school students at the end of class one day, after I've switched off
Annie Hall
and turned on the lights. They stop packing away their books and sit there blinking at me.

“Any questions?” I ask. “About Woody Allen's view of romantic love versus passionate love? Or about my new crush?”

They're silent for a moment and then Chelsea raises her hand—Chelsea from Santa Fe, who said on the first day of class that her favorite movies are the classics, like
Point Break.

“I'm just confused,” she says when I call on her. “I guess we all thought you were kind of, I don't know, old and married and settled or something.” The other girls in the class nod. The boys sit there with their legs out straight, staring at their shoes.

“I'm not old,” I say. “I'm twenty-seven.” It takes a second of silence for me to realize that to them it's the same thing.

I go to tell my ex-boyfriend at the Common Room. A girl stops me on the corner of Valencia and 21st to ask me if I want to save the world.

“I'm a member in England,” I say. That's the line I use for everything.

“No, we're a local group,” she says. “We're lobbying the mayor to provide more community garden space in the city, so people can grow their own organic produce and eat locally.”

“I mainly eat ice cream,” I tell her.

“That can't be good for you.”

“Well, I kind of like the guy who works at the ice cream place.”

“Oh, okay.” She looks up the street; waiting, I guess, for a more viable petition-signing candidate to come along.

“So I keep dropping in, you know. And I probably look like such an idiot.”

“Uh-huh,” she says.

“The guy's probably scared of me by now.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I better get back to work, so—”