raised by wolves

We decided on empanadas and milkshakes. It turned out we were both trying to kick the meat habit, and so we only put cheese and vegetables in the crispy flour shells. The milkshakes were made with soymilk and fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream. When Nola arrived, she didn’t bother knocking. I was sitting in a chair reading an old magazine, killing time while I waited for her to show up. She moved silently as a baby’s breath. I didn’t hear her until the very last moment before she bent down and wrapped her skinny arms around my neck. I felt her breath on the back of my ear. It startled me, but I managed not to jump. I reached up and wrapped my arms around her and embraced her in an awkward backwards-hug. She kissed the back of one of my ears and then I pulled her around over the chair and into my lap. She was really as light as a feather. It was no more difficult to lift her up than it is to lift an empty plastic sandwich bag. She fell right into my lap and giggled and kissed me on the cheek. We smiled big dumb smiles at each other and folded our hands together, four hands and twenty fingers forming a long chain of digits and knuckles and we kissed again. Her lips were like rockets that sent sparks shooting off and ricocheting around between my ears and it was like being under a spell. It was like being under water, but not suffocating. Peaceful. Weightless. Free.
I scooped her up in my arms and carried her out to the kitchen. She giggled and playfully demanded that I put her down, and once we were there, I did.
“What did you get for the empanadas?” she asked.
“All sorts of wonderful things,” I told her. “Do you like zucchini?”

We stopped here and there in our preparations, between cutting the vegetables and grating the cheese perhaps, and stole kisses from each other and spent a few tense moments pressing ourselves against one another, each of us unable to decide between finishing preparing the meal and slinking off to the bedroom. Eventually our stomachs won and we had fresh, hot, melted, delicious empanadas for dinner. Afterwards, I shoved all the dishes in the dishwasher and set it running. I told her it was fantastic, and she said it was nothing, that I did all the work. I told her that might be the case, but I certainly never would have made myself empanadas. It was all for her.
I said this as I tossed the dishrag I had used to wipe the counters into the sink. When I turned to catch a glimpse of her pixie smile, she was already on me. She kissed me and I felt volcanoes erupt and comets fall, and she reached for my belt. She pulled me into the bedroom, walking backwards, lips locked as though by electromagnetism. Our stomachs hadn’t won after all, it seemed.

Later when the deed was done, we sat in my bed and looked quietly out the window, smoking cigarettes and touching idly, curiously, wantonly. I felt a shiver go up her spine when my fingertips brushed across the tops of her feet. She smiled sublimely and blew a perfect smoke ring that sailed from her pouting, satisfied lips and clear out the window. I told her I was impressed, and she asked, what? I told her, “Nothing.”
“You blew a smoke ring,” I said. “It went all the way out the window.”
“Oh,” she said and stretched her arms above her head, letting the blanket fall away from her. Her skin was the color of milk, but with freckles in it, if milk could have freckles. The freckles were the same copper color as her hair. She closed her big brown eyes and exhaled smoke through her nose.
“I feel like I might become addicted to you,” she said breathily. I looked at her over my shoulder from the end of the bed and smirked. She stubbed out her cigarette on the bedside ashtray and fell asleep, all in one fluid motion. I stood and stretched and pulled the curtain closed, then laid down next to her. She nestled close to me, and then was back off asleep, breathing silently, almost without moving at all. I put an arm around her and laid on my back and looked at the ceiling and wondered why it felt so strange to be happy.

She sighed and in the other room I could hear my work alarm going off. I told her I had to go, but that she could call me later. She sniffed again and thanked me, then said she loved me and hung up without another word. I couldn’t get the sound of her pixie-sobs out of my head the rest of the night. But at the end of the conversation, her voice sounded lighter, like a weight was off her shoulders. Her voice didn’t sound pinched or stifled when she said she loved me. It felt like I had accomplished something, but I couldn’t tell you what exactly.

It was another boring night at work. Nola didn’t come in, and neither did anyone else. I missed the regulars. I missed the crowd of new faces, too. I missed tips and making people shitty drinks, and the occasional sound of the bells on the door. It felt like the night would never end, but it did eventually and I went home in the quiet hours of the early morning, when even in the big city, you’re lucky to see a car or any sign that there’s other life left on the planet at all. The city is too bright to see any but the brightest stars, but these I looked up at long and hard before I walked through the door to my apartment building. I wondered where the moon was, if it was full and hiding behind a nearby sky rise or if it was new and invisible somewhere out there in all that dim black outer space.
When I walked inside, the phone was ringing. I knew who it was and my heart began to do the old giddy school-boy thing and fluttered around in my chest.
Nola said hello and said she was sorry she didn’t make it out to the bar tonight. I told her it was okay, there was nothing worth seeing there anyway. “That’s not true,” she said. “You’re there.”
I laughed and told her she was too sweet. I asked what she had done all day. She nervously said “nothing” and changed the subject. She asked if I had off anytime soon and if she could come over and make me dinner. I told her I didn’t have to work the next night, and the plans were made. I asked her what she would make and she asked me what I liked. We laughed and talked and flirted unabashedly and acted like dumb kids in love are supposed to act and then eventually the sun was coming up. She didn’t mention Darren once.

That night the phone rang. The sun was still making it’s way down below the horizon, making it easy to see that the days were once again growing longer. The sky was full of orange and red and purple beams of sunset fire. I answered the phone and it was Nola. She asked to talk to Darren.
“There’s so much more I wanted to say to you,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry…it’s not fair. You were so young and had your whole life ahead of you.” She sniffled into the phone. “I miss you so much sometimes, I just don’t know what to do. I feel like my chest is going to collapse. Do you know what I mean? I wish you were still here. I’m so sorry.”
And I placate her. I try my best to soothe her, to help her. I understand what she’s going through. We’ve all lost people who were important to us, right?
I tell her it’s not her fault. I tell her to say what she needed to say. I tell her I’m listening. I ask her, when was the last time we talked?
There’s a tense moment where I want to apologize. I feel like maybe I’m taking it too far. But then she speaks.
“We were having lunch. We had been fighting, but it was nothing big. We both knew we would be over it in a few days. You were eating a salad with carrots and bleu cheese and hardboiled eggs. I was eating a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and feta. I don’t remember what kind of bread. We were sitting outside of that restaurant downtown, the one that used to hand out the free bread at closing time. I asked if you were enjoying your salad and you didn’t answer. You were off somewhere else in your mind, somewhere far away. I don’t think you were mad at me anymore; just not paying attention was all. I overreacted and stood up and threw my sandwich on the ground when you didn’t answer. I called you an insensitive jerk and stormed off. That was the last time we really talked…”
There was another long, tense silence. There was a pathetic sniffling on the other end of the phone. “I couldn’t have known what would happen,” she squeaked. “I couldn’t have known,”
I decided to change the subject. I told her it’s no good to dwell on the bad things, on what could have been. I told her I would’ve wanted her to remember the good things instead. I asked her how we met. What was her first memory of me?
“We met in high school. Your parents were out of town and you were having a party. I came with my friend Enid, who I don’t remember how you met, but she was the connection. I was upset over a boy who had just broken up with me, and who I saw at the party. I don’t even know if you knew him, or even knew his name. But you saw I was upset, and you came over and asked me what was wrong. I told you my ex was there and he was dancing with another girl, and you asked me if I wanted you to beat him up. I laughed and said it wouldn’t be worth it. You were drunk, but you were charming and you were saying it just to cheer me up. We saw the two of them, my ex and the other girl, walking out to a car and I started crying because I knew they were going to go make out, and it hurt me to be discarded like that, so publicly and unceremoniously. You helped keep my mind off of it though, and soon I was smiling again. You made me a drink and we talked and introduced ourselves. Soon it was like no one else existed. We sat on your deck and laughed and drank for hours, meanwhile everyone else at the party was inside, dancing and being loud and doing their own thing. I forgot all about my ex until him and the girl barged out the back door, arm in arm. You saw the look on my face when I saw the two of them with their hands all over each other and mouthed ‘is that him?’ and I nodded and scowled and tried to hold back the tears. You got this look on your face, such a serious face. You always looked so noble. You always seemed to think whatever you were doing, you had the right reason for it. You downed the rest of your drink and waited until you were certain they weren’t paying any attention. You said you’d be right back, and then you were up and you had my ex by the back of the shirt. He spun around and spilled his drink on your pants and you punched him right in the face. The girl he was with screamed and he went down. You looked at the girl and said, ‘Get this idiot out of here.’ You sounded like a cosmic judge handing down the death sentence to the whole universe. Always so serious. She nodded frantically and helped him to his feet and dragged him towards the door. You stepped in front of her and said, ‘Go around,’ and pointed towards the yard. She nodded again and the two of them scrambled off. ‘And don’t come back, you inconsiderate pieces of shit,’ you yelled after them. Then you came back over to me and smiled and I leapt up and whooped and kissed you on the cheek. I told you that was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me, and it was. I guess nothing inflates a girl’s ego than seeing boys punch each other over her. Suddenly I didn’t feel discarded at all. I felt important and wanted. I wasn’t embarrassed to be there any more. I wished that there had been more people there to see what you did, more people to see how important I was to you, having only known you for a few short hours. It was wonderful. You smiled at me and said, ‘It was nothing. I don’t know you that well, but it’s obvious already that anyone who would go out of their way to try and make you feel like shit is not the kind of person I want coming to my party, and certainly not the type of person I’d ever feel bad about knocking out.’”
She laughed. “You were so macho. You acted like you thought you were some hyper-sophisticated version of The Man with No Name. It was wonderful. We went back into the party and danced and drank more and then we wound up sleeping together. The next week you asked me to start dating you. How could I have said no?”

I poured her a beer and poured myself a beer and no one else came in the rest of the night. The old man let me go early, so Nola and I went back to my apartment.
What followed was a fairly standard procedure among young people who find themselves in a situation of mutual attraction, so I won’t bore you with the details suffice to say that neither of us were raised Catholic.

“No one’s ever done that before,” she said with a sort of sleepy wistfulness. Let me show you more tricks, I thought about saying, but she tells me she has to be up early. I’ve never understood people who start their day when the day starts, which is why I work at night. The day is for lying around and relaxing and enjoying things like sunshine. It makes sense to work at night. I asked if she enjoyed it and she said yes. She said she felt free. She told me she liked to try new things and then climbed on top of me and kissed me. She said with a sigh that she had to be up early again, driving the point home. She kissed me again and climbed off to curl up next to me. I felt her body, skinny and taught like a bungee cord, pressed against mine. My arms wrapped around her and we slept coiled up like snakes.
In the morning she was gone, a note on the table being the only evidence of her ever having been there at all. The note said: “had a wonderful time, will call later, xo, N.”