Jake and Rachel flew off to their honeymoon that night.  The next evening, Michelle took the train back into the city.  The polluted grey streets were familiar, but strange after a week in suburbia.  Even at night, the weather was so humid that she was sweating by the time she reached her apartment.  Opening the door, she reminded herself once again to look into air conditioner window units, and in the meantime fanned herself continuously with an old magazine.

She realized immediately upon returning that her refrigerator and cupboard was almost bare.  Reflexively she reached for the phone and called her favorite pizza parlor.  A large pizza with sausage, green peppers, mushrooms, and extra cheese was now on its way to apartment 118A.  It would arrive in about forty-five minutes.  She suddenly wished she weren’t alone.

She went to her freezer and reached for bottle of Grey Goose, then paused, slid the bottle back, and set to unpacking her bags.

The business of her hands left her mind free.  He had said she wouldn’t lose him, but he would never really be back, even if he and Rachel did get a divorce.  They would never be young again.  They could never go back to Maryland.  Michelle knew that really, she had lost Jake a long time ago.

For a moment, a tear welled up, and it fell, lonely and languid, down her cheek.  She wiped it away just as she heard a knock on her door.

“That was fast,” she said to the flies and ghosts in her bedroom.  The flies became excited at the prospect of leftover stale pizza.

She opened the door digging with one hand through her purse, saying, “Is a check okay?” without looking up to see Samantha standing like a frail reed.

“Sure, but I don’t know if you can afford me,” Sam said.  Michelle nearly dropped her purse.

“—Hey…” she said.  “I thought you were a pizza.”

Sam laughed.  “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.”

Sam lilted against the doorframe with her arm wrapped in front of her waist.  Michelle shuffled her feet.  “Do you… do you wanna come in?  I’m getting a big pizza.”

The red, red lips smirked.  “You sure do know how to charm a girl.”

Sam sat on Michelle’s sofa, Michelle sitting stiffly in the chair across the living room.  Their eyes traveled.  “When did you get back?” Michelle asked.

Sam brushed a black strand of hair away from her face.  “A few days ago.  I heard you coming in from my apartment.  I wanted to come say hi.  Where were you?”

“At a wedding.  My brother’s wedding.  I was a bridesmaid.”

“Always a bridesmaid…” Sam said, then stopped.  “You know, I’ve never even been a bridesmaid.”

“No?”

“No.  I was never close enough to anyone.”

Michelle was sweating and pulled the bottom of her tank top away from her body to let her skin breathe.  “Where were you?” she asked her neighbor, whose complexion was dry as powder.

Sam sighed through her nose.  “I had to get away for a while.  I had to visit my mother.  I needed some advice.”

“Oh.  Did she give you any?”

“Of course not.  She’s dead.”

Michelle thought she saw a glow emanate from Sam’s eyes that she only ever glimpsed before.  She looked away.

“Could I… ahem… help?”

Sam closed her eyes, then in an instant they snapped open and gazed into Michelle.  “I hadn’t seen my mother’s grave since she died,” she said.  “That’s strange, isn’t it?  I mean, we didn’t have the greatest relationship, but you’d think in nine years I’d have made it back there at least once.”

“I guess.”  Michelle fidgeted with her sweat-marked tank top.  “Um, how was it?”

“Grown over.  No one takes care of it.  It was sort of sad.  I took her a flower and I laid it down on her headstone, and I asked her what she thought I should do in the situation I was in, in this big ol’ mess, and nothing.  Just grass in the wind.”

“Oh.”

Sam chuckled.  “Of course, she gave such shitty advice while she was alive, I don’t know why I thought it would be any different now that she’s dead.  We romanticize death, don’t we?  What if dying is no more enlightening than waking up in the morning?”

“I… um, don’t know.”  Someone knocked on the door, and Michelle jerked.  “Oh,” she said.  “That’s the pizza.”

They ate at the table in near silence.  After two slices of oozy pizza, Sam asked, “Do you have anything to drink?”

“Oh, yeah,” Michelle said.  She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge.  “Um, we have orange juice, and water… we have soy milk?”  When she turned around, Sam was standing behind her.

“Do you have anything, to drink to drink?” she said, one hand on her hip.

“Oh, yeah.”  Michelle opened her freezer and took out the Grey Goose.  “I’m, um, not going to join you….  I… I think I have a problem….”  She went to the cupboard and took out a glass, setting both it and the bottle on the counter.  “Here, I can make you a screwdriver.”  She went back to the refrigerator and took out the orange juice, but when she turned back, Sam had already poured two inches of liquor into the glass.  She shot it down, and Michelle put the orange juice back.

“That’s good pizza,” Sam said as she poured more vodka.

“Yeah.  It’s my favorite place in town.”

They went back to the table.  Sam took the bottle.

“So, have you gone back to work yet?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t think I’m going back.”

“Really?”

“Really.”  Sam paused.  She fumbled with the lid to the pizza box.  “What do you know about love?”

Michelle spoke through a mouthful of food.  “Me?”

Samantha raised her eyebrows and took a large bite of a dripping slice.

“Um,” Michelle said.  “I don’t… nothing, I think.”

Sam drank more vodka.  “You know what?” she said.  “Neither do I.  You’d think I would, wouldn’t you?  I mean, they way they watch me.  The way I own them.  Everything.  You’d think I’d be the expert.”

“You are!” Michelle interjected.

Sam glared at her.  “You don’t know.  I lost someone.”

“Your mom?”

Sam drank more, then looked around the room and said, “You know, I think I made a mistake by coming here.  I don’t think this is something you can help me with.”

She stood up and let herself out.

Michelle locked her door, put away the vodka, and wrapped up the rest of the pizza.  Then she finished unpacking, put on her pajamas, and went to bed.

Only she couldn’t sleep.  After lying in bed for thirty minutes with eyes open, she walked down the hall.  She knocked gently on the door of 118C, then loudly.  There was no answer for a few moments, then a noise, then Sam.

“What do you want?” she said, hanging out of the door.

“I, um, I was worried about you.”

Sam squinted at her.  “You were?”

Michelle nodded.

Samantha rolled her eyes.  “Well, come in then.”  She stepped back and held the door wide open for Michelle to enter.

Sam was still dressed, the lights still on in her apartment.  Everything was tidy and clean, except for a conspicuously opened bottle of dark rum and a partially filled tumbler.  Lily was purring, asleep in the corner of the living room.  Michelle sat on the Victorian sofa.

“So,” Sam said as she sat down next to her.  “What’s this problem you’re having?”

“I’m not having a problem,” she said.  “You are.”

Sam looked at her glass.  “Oh yeah.  Would you like some rum?”

“No, I’m trying to cut down.”

Sam nodded.  “Probably for the best,” she said.  She leaned back and shut her eyes.

For a few terrifying seconds, Sam ceased moving altogether, became waxen and ashen like a corpse.  Michelle felt a shiver, then slowly reached out and touched her neighbor’s knee.  “Hey, Sam.  If you, like, want to talk about anything, you, uh, can.”

The only thing about Sam that moved was her lips.  “Honey,” they said, “no offense, but I really don’t know how much help you’d be.  I don’t think you’d understand.”

“Try me,” Michelle said.

Sam’s eyes now opened, but looked at nothing.  “Do you know what I am?”  The eyes looked now straight and unwavering into the eyes of the ballerina.

Michelle knew of many things that Sam was, but “scary” and “a little slutty” didn’t seem appropriate when her neighbor was drunk and possibly suicidal at two in the morning.

“You’re a very good dancer,” she said.

Sam nodded.  “I sure am.  I never asked for it, but I am.”

“A lot of people would kill to have your rhythm.  I mean, I bet you could have been a ballerina.  You’re so graceful and… and thin.”

“Thanks,” Sam said.  The eyes closed again, but her skin seemed less lifeless, some trace of blood now residing beneath the pallor.  The mouth said, “I’m not a normal person.”

“No one is.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Sam said.  “I mean… you know it, you’ve seen it, right?  In the club, the way people watch me.  Something’s weird about me.  I—can can see people.  Really see them.  Like I touch them and look at them the right way, and I read their whole lives in their eyes.  I’ve been able to do it for years now.  Those boys and girls who spend the night with me, we don’t fuck.  We just… see each other, and it helps us both, just fills us with love and strength.  It’s so hard to explain.  It’s almost like, mystical.”

The dark-haired woman was sitting back in the sofa with her arms crossed over her slender torso.  Her face looked very pale, very tired.  Hollows beneath her eyes and under her cheekbones made her seem even thinner than she was.  Michelle rubbed her temple with her fingertips.

“I – don’t think I understand what you’re saying.  So you think you’re like, psychic or something?”

“I don’t think anything.  I’m just telling you what happens.”  Sam sighed.  “It all started with Louis.  He was so special.  He woke me up.”

Michelle wanted to slap her neighbor in her emaciated face.  She wanted to beat this smug fantasy out of her and bring her into the same dirty, desperate world where she herself had to spend every night without a crutch.

Then the dark, fathomless eyes looked at her again, and in their depths Michelle saw no trace of insanity or delusion, only the mundane disturbance of a broken heart.

“Sam, what happened?”

Samantha inhaled deeply through her nose, then exhaled through parted lips.  “There was this woman – this girl – at the club.  We had a night a long time ago.  I think—I know I fell in love with her.  I would, or could have given it up for her, but the next day, she was gone.”

“Given what up?”

“Everything.  The dancing, the seeing.  I would have been happy to live the quietest, most ordinary life with her.  I would have abandoned everything that’s been my identity for the past nine years.  I could do that.  I know I could if I ever found that person.”

Sam sighed, sank deeper into the sofa.  “With her, it was all different.  After we sat together, I just wanted more.  All I’ve ever gotten from anyone was there in her, and so much more.  When we fell asleep, I knew I was ready to make the journey with her, to discover anything and everything about ourselves, and to make that my life instead of this, whatever this is, this seeing, this dancing.  But when I woke up, she was gone.”

“What was so special about her?”

Sam thought.  “I don’t know.  She told me she had never been in love, and that she knew nothing about life.  Maybe she was so closed-off and many-leveled because of her isolation that I couldn’t penetrate her so easily.  But I started to see her.  Really see her as I’ve never seen anyone before.  It was… she was beautiful.”

Michelle sat with her wrists between her knees, hands clasped, eyes watching her hands.  “And you never saw that girl again?”

No answer, only Sam’s silent staring.  The soft purring of Lily from the corner.

“Sam,” Michelle said.  “Did you see her again?”

“She came to the club the night I left.  She was sitting there in the back by herself.  I couldn’t believe it.  I practically ran up to her.  She recognized me right away, and we threw our arms around one another.  We went back to my place that night.”  Sam raised her hand and rested her forehead against it.

“What happened?  Where is she?”

“I don’t know.  We went to my apartment.  We – we slept together.  Actually had sex.  She was… completely open.  I got everything from her.  There was no… no mystery.  She told me afterward that I was the reason.  I had changed her life.  She said I freed her.”

“So what happened?”

Sam shook her head.  “It was so… physical.  It felt good but there was no point.  I almost think it made me see her too well.  Like I saw the animal part of her as well as the mental, the human.  I asked her to leave.”  She winced as she said the last sentence.

“Well, so that’s it,” Michelle said.  “I mean, it just wasn’t what you thought it was.  It sounds like you helped her, and that’s good, but… you are what you are, and I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Sam breathed deep.  “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Michelle repeated.

For a moment, neither moved.  Lily’s paws played with the carpet, occasionally making a snapping sound when she snagged a pile.  Sam watched the cat and laughed.  “Then why can’t I get her out of my head?”

Michelle shook her head, but said nothing, and had nothing to say.

“Maybe it was just the shock of the physical.  Have you ever felt that way at all?  I mean it.  I have no idea what it is for normal people.  What’s sex like for you with someone you really love?  Is it mysterious, fulfilling, draining, what?”  Sam leaned toward her neighbor with earnest, pleading eyes.

“I—” she began to fabricate some story, pieced together from movies and novels and things she’d heard people say after drinks on late nights, but she coughed and swallowed and said, “I’m a virgin.”

Sam squinted at Michelle. “You’re a virgin?”

“Yeah,” said Michelle.

Sam started to laugh, but caught herself.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “It’s just not something you’d expect…  Even me, it’s not something I would have expected.  I mean, you’re—”

“A stripper?”

“Well, I was going to say, ‘sexy.’  But you’re right, you’re also a stripper.”

Michelle paused, her eye caught for a moment by Lily’s waking up and slow stretch on the carpet.  “You think I’m sexy?” she said, her eyes downcast.

Sam tossed her head back.  “Oh, totally!  You’re extremely sexy.  I mean, you hide it, for some reason.  At the club, you hide it, but I saw it in you that first time I met you, when you were crying on your kitchen floor.  I saw it in you that night when we danced.  You have an extreme sense of sexiness, I guess you’d call it rhythm, in you, you just…”

“…hide it,” Michelle completed.  “I hide it.”

“You need to let it out, that’s all.  You need to be—”

“…woken up.”

The women’s eyes met in awkward silence.  Sam smiled.  “Well, whatever you want to call it.”

It was late.  Lily rubbed against Sam’s leg and purred when she picked her up.  For a moment the pale woman petted the white cat before Michelle stood up.

“I better get back to bed,” she said.  “I have to work tomorrow.”

Sam sat quietly petting her cat as Michelle left.  She didn’t look up when the ballerina waved goodnight.

Filed under: Jake, Marriage, Michelle, Samantha, alcohol, love, sex by Jade