Your Face in Mine (14 page)

Look, Kelly, she says, and squeezes my hand again. I’m a little out of practice with the games and all, and plus, I don’t really have time to do a whole dance, but I
would
really like you to come over. Soon.

How soon?

How about in three hours?

—

When the unavoidable time comes—after we’ve picked at our linguine long enough, and started a second bottle of Sangiovese, gulping at our
glasses too eagerly, as if it were Kool-Aid; after she’s switched the music from Nina to Billie to Ella, and gone from room to room lighting candles (trust a lesbian, she says, candles are
essential
) as night comes on; after she comes around the table and leads me to the bedroom, by one hand, undoing her blouse with the other—it happens so quickly, at least by comparison to the buildup, really in the length of one thought, one agonizingly guilty thought: how wonderful to feel a woman’s curves, to have a body spill out, present itself, the breasts penduluming into your face, the alert nipples demanding to be tongued, the satisfying handfuls of her hips, her ass, her unshy legs gripping me, her hand finding me and guiding me into her. My eyes are closed; I look up for a moment; her eyes are also closed. We are two bodies having sex with a multitude. We have abandoned the present. This is my first time since Wendy; I ought to be weeping, to be curled up in a fetal ball; but as it turns out, I’ve waited long enough, the body’s mourning period has passed, unnoticed, and now it cries out for something new, as bodies always will. We twist, and wrangle, on one side, then the other, winding up with me on top, her chin raised, her jaw working, as if readying to spit something out. Eyes closed again. Who do you want me to be? her body asks. I bend down and kiss her neck, work up to her ear, drop my hands under her back, coil my fingers around her shoulders. Robin’s shoulders. Whose else would they be? Robin’s breasts, rising up at me; I bury my face between them. With my eyes closed, I taste them; I pull out, move my face down, burrowing, moving my chin past her thatch of hair, inhaling Robin, tasting Robin, unembarrassed, undisgusted with myself, for the moment. What can I do? Someone once said—in high school, in college? I was drunk at the time, I was sprawled on a smoky carpet—
the cock is its own compass.
I’m with Robin, as long as my eyes are closed. I’m on the verge of saying it. Back on top of her, in the long arc of orgasm, when all our perversities are unleashed, I can taste her name. But I don’t say it. I collapse, like a corpse, and sleep it off, and it’s past midnight when Rina nudges me awake.

I’m going to take this as a compliment, she says.

Do you want me out of here? I should go.

Eventually. Before morning.

She’s propped on one elbow, in a T-shirt and boy shorts, looking amused. I’m not even going to ask, she says. I’ll take it that was a long time coming.

The first time, actually.

Jesus Christ. That’s not funny. How the hell do you feel?

I don’t know. I’m not awake yet.

Take it easy on yourself. They say it can be like starting the grieving process all over again.

I don’t think so. It needed to happen. Even Wendy said so.

What do you mean?

Oh, I say, lightly, she used to visit me. We had conversations. Up until a few weeks ago, actually. And shit, she
scolded
me about not wanting to date. It was a major topic of discussion, believe me. You surprised?

Kelly, she says, remember? I spent the last decade in
San Francisco
. You’d have to work a lot harder than that to surprise me. Half my friends out there have astrologers. More than have health insurance.

Can I ask you an awkward question?

Is there any other kind, at this point?

You were thinking about someone else. So was I. So who was
your
someone else? Who was my body double?

Oh, she says, at first I was thinking about you. Remember that time we tried to have sex, back in ninth grade? God, I was
terrified
. I was thinking about how glad I am to be thirty-seven and not fifteen.

Seriously?

Come on, it’s different for women. Do I really have to explain this, Kelly? I wasn’t treating you like some blow-up doll. I was
synched
with you. Yeah, okay, I thought a little about this guy Brian. My last fling, before I moved back. What about you, though?

Someone I just met.

A possibility?

Definitely
not
a possibility.

Well, you’re allowed to feel guilty, she says. Like it or not, you’re still recovering. You’re still in the process. You can’t just decide that all of a sudden you’re free of it all.

But if I didn’t know I’d had these feelings—

Oh, come on, don’t be ridiculous. You
knew
. She was just in the general class of
women I’d fuck if I got the chance
, and now she’s moved up the ranks to
women I wish I could fuck right
now.

She’s the wife of a colleague.

And?

And, I say, and, I think that, on principle, she’d rather jump off a bridge than sleep with a white man.

Man, Rina says, that is
hot
. A holy vow. It’s like lusting after a nun. No wonder you’re all skeevy about it. Go take a shower. Towels are on the chair. Go home and go to sleep. In the morning it’ll all feel like a vague and pleasant dream.

We should get together again. Just to hang out, I mean. Let me buy you dinner sometime?

And then more kabuki sex? She reaches over and runs her fingers through my hair. I don’t know, Kelly. Maybe this should just be like one of those little winter-break hookups in college.

I don’t want to wait another fifteen years to see you again.

You won’t be in Baltimore long, she says. That’s my prediction. In the end it was never much more than a way station for you, was it?

I don’t like to think of it that way.

Look, it’s too late to be sentimental, isn’t it? Of course you feel bad. We all feel bad. I mean, why did we leave, any of us, in the first place? Because of the crime. Because of the
unsolvable social problems
.

Which is just another way of saying—

That we don’t want to look at so many poor people.

So many poor black people.

Yes. It hurts, doesn’t it? In high school, you can feel optimistic about it. It’s a
project
. But then after the project’s over, and they’re still poor, and it’s the end of the Nineties, the greatest postwar expansion, blah, blah, blah, Sandtown-Winchester, economic development zones, and they’re
still
poor, what do you do then?

You move to fucking Boulder.

Boulder, Portland, Santa Monica, Burlington, Park Slope. And look at me: I can’t wait. As soon as I can, I’m going back. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still putting my shoulder to the wheel. I was McKinsey’s charitable-projects girl for two years. Twenty hours a week at the Oakland Partnership. But at least then I got to help poor black people and still live in paradise.

Rina, I say, how did we get this way?

What way?

The way you say,
it hurts to say it,
but it actually doesn’t. The world is full of people apologizing for saying unconscionable things they actually mean.

Well, she says, I’d rather be cynical than self-deceiving, the way most Boomers are. I’d rather be mean and accurate. Like the line from the Liz Phair song. You know?
Obnoxious, funny, true, and mean
?

I want to be your blowjob queen.

She throws a towel at me.

You had a thing with Martin, too, didn’t you? I ask, trying to be casual, as if I’ve just remembered it. Jesus, I forgot about that.

A
thing
?

Well, didn’t you?

We hooked up once. One night. Sophomore year. So?

That was all?

Yes, that was all, she says. Now tell me: why are you so interested in Martin, all of a sudden?

You remember that song by the Pageboys, “Of All the Lost Ones”?

Of course. I loved that song.
You were the most lost of all the lost ones.
So?

So—okay. Forgive me for being schlocky, but that was him. He was always the most lost. And now, still, he’s the most lost. The weakest link.

The weakest
living
link.

Yes. Right. It bugs me. It’s always bugged me. How hard do you have to work, in 2012, to be utterly untraceable? So, you know, I’m just trying to jog my memory. I mean, he was slippery. It’s hard to recall just what he was like.

He was a normal high school boy, Rina says, as I remember it. In that way. In that he was too eager. Sticking his tongue down my throat like he was trying to get my tonsils out. Grabbing me between the legs, groping around for the right button to push. You really want this kind of detail? It doesn’t, like, turn you
on
, does it? Because that would be weird.

Trust me. I’m utterly unmoved.

I was really into him, she says, always was, and frankly I also always assumed he might be gay. In that he didn’t have much time for any of us. And he was cute, in his own gangly way, and in a band and all. And the bass is a very phallic instrument. He just didn’t
try
. Didn’t wear deodorant. Didn’t try to get rid of his acne. Kind of an enigma, really. But so that one night I guess someone had dragged him to the party at Ayala’s house, and we were both drinking gin and Sprite, and somehow we wound up together in her dad’s garage. You remember what it was like? That old Morgan he was always rebuilding, and the couches? So that was where it happened. Once I gave him the signal he was all attention, put it that way. Really wanted to have sex. Really,
really
. He might have been a virgin, for all I know. But we didn’t have a condom or anything. So in the end he went down on me, and then I gave him head, and that was more or less it. We wound up sleeping all night back there. That enough for you?

That’s plenty. Thanks.

Part of his mind was always elsewhere, she says. But in that sense he was just like Alan. Only the elsewhere was different.

What does that mean?

Well, she says, scratching herself between the eyebrows again, think about it. For Alan the elsewhere was death. We can say that for sure. But Martin wasn’t one of those suicidal emo boys. He just wanted to be, I don’t know,
elsewhere
. Far away. On some other planet.

Or to be somebody different.

Yeah, she says. Oh, wait! Fuck. I completely forgot. I
did
see him again, once. Just for a moment. God, that was years later, wasn’t it? Nineteen ninety-nine. It must have been 1999, because that’s the year Mom was diagnosed. I spent a month here, going around to nursing homes and things.

And?

Well, it was downtown, on Charles Street. Near that bookstore with the café, what was it called? The one across from the Walters. Anyway, it was definitely him. But he looked like a different person altogether. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.

Did you talk to him?

No! I mean, that’s what makes it so strange. I rolled down the window and called out to him, and he didn’t even look my way. Then, I mean, I pulled over, and got out of the car, and yelled,
Martin! Hey, Martin!
And he turned around, stared at me, I mean, obviously recognizing who I was, and then walked away. No smile. No wave. I was stunned. But then—I mean, I was busy. I was stressed. I just put it out of my mind. At the time I was
sure
it was him. And I was sure
he
knew it was me. But later, you know, I started to wonder. I mean, who the fuck would do that?
I
never did anything to hurt him. Maybe he became an assassin or something. He looked like he might be going to kill somebody. But whatever it was, it was permanent. I feel sure of that. Whatever it was, we’ll never know.

You’re sure it was 1999? And he looked exactly the same? I mean, his face, his skin, everything?

Why would you ask that?

No reason, I say, trying to keep my face blank. Just looking for all the available information.

Of course I remember you, Steve Cox says, over a stormy cell-phone connection, filled with flurries and zings of static. You know what I remember? Your face. You have a very open face. Or at least you did. Very—I don’t know. Vulnerable. Not rigid. What’s a word for not rigid? Flexible? No. Soft?
Permeable.
Not the kind of person an attorney gets to meet very often. I could tell instantly that you didn’t deserve to be wrapped up in—well, what you were wrapped up in. And anyway, the details were pretty memorable, Kelsey. I see a lot of hinky stuff in here, but even by those standards. Say, did you ever think about that Costa Rica deal I told you about?

It’s Kelly.

Sorry. I’m terrible with Christian names. Guess it comes from a lifetime of X v. Y. Kelly
Thorndike
, I have that right? How’s your wife?

I’m having this conversation in the entryway of my apartment, cradling the phone against my shoulder.

Long story, I say. She’s not in the picture.

My condolences. Personal and professional.

I’m actually calling about something unrelated, I say, a completely different subject. I need someone to do a private investigation. A background check.

Employment? School?

Employment, I guess you could say. Loosely speaking.

The more you tell me, the more I can help you.

Okay, I say. Actually, cancel that. Call it a missing person instead.

Silence.

You still there? Steve?

I’m waiting.

It’s an odd situation, I’ll grant you that.

Life is full of nothing but. Listen, Kelly, you’ve got my full attention. Pen poised and ready. Pad on my desk.

The name’s Martin Lipkin, I say, with a slight hiccup, a juttering of the chin. He was a high school classmate of mine. Willow School, Brooklandville, Maryland, class of ’93. Last known address somewhere near Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore.

Last time you saw him?

Nineteen ninety-four. February. In Towson. That’s a suburb.

I know where Towson is. Any sense of his plans at that time? I mean, you used the phone book, right? I’m not going to do one PR search and get his number?

No trace. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. And no one I know from Willow has seen him, either. Not in fifteen years.

Anything else?

I can get his yearbook picture. I’ll send it to you. And, oh, yeah, there’s a very small chance—just the smallest possible chance—he might be using a different name. Martin Wilkinson. His mom’s last name. You could search for both. It’s a shot in the dark, but there it is.

So let me ask you one last question. What’s your instinct? You think he might have moved to California? Alaska? Is he playing in a band somewhere? Doing porn? Selling drugs? He in prison? Selling real estate? Or just, you know, a bad correspondent? You think I’ll find him with a wife and two kids out in Hunt Valley, just trying not to be noticed?

He was slippery, I say. Always kind of a mystery. Kind of fascinated by disguises. I think he could have made a really concerted effort to hide his tracks. Not even necessarily for any good reason.

You know what my retainer is, in that case?

I’ll pay it.

Then you must have had a good divorce lawyer. Better than mine, anyway. Listen, I’m telling you, if you ever have a moment.
Costa Rica.
There’s still parcels left. The country doesn’t even have an army.

It’s my turn to be silent, as he rattles on, his voice weaving in and out, packets of data colliding and falling apart.

Was he another depressed case, like your other friend, maybe? Be honest. Makes my life easier and saves you money. Could he be dead, you think? Homeless shelter? Halfway house? Because in that case you could spend everything and get nothing. You know how hard it is to get dental records on paupers’ graves? DNA on a John Doe?

He’s alive, I say. Definitely alive. Though that doesn’t mean you’ll find him.