“Mmm, yeah, say more big words.”

“It’s not sexy!” August says, even as her smile gets so big it hurts, even as she lets Jane press her into the door. “I could have lost an eye!”

“I was in a hurry,” Jane says. “I haven’t gotten laid in forty-five years.”

“Technicality,” August says.

“Let me have this,” Jane says, trailing her smiling mouth over August’s pulse.

“Okay.” August laughs, and she does.

They kiss again, and again, melting kisses that barely hold the weight of what just happened, and August keeps waiting. August keeps waiting for one of them to say something that will change everything, but they don’t. They just kiss until they pull into a station in Brooklyn, and a bleary commuter climbs on with a coffee and an unamused expression, and Jane muffles a laugh in her neck.

It’s good, August thinks, that they don’t say anything. Jane loves like summer for a reason—she doesn’t stick around. August knows it. Jane knows it. There’s nothing either of them can do about it.

It’s enough, August decides. To have her like this, here, for now. Time, place, person.

10

 

New Restaurant Lucille’s Burgers Opens in French Quarter

PUBLISHED AUGUST 17, 1972

[Photo: An older woman in an apron stands in front of a bar, arms crossed, while a young woman in the background carries a tray of burgers]

Lucille Clement remembers growing up in her mother’s kitchen while waitress Biyu Su delivers orders to customers.

Robert Gautreaux for The Times-Picayune

“So you’re sleeping with Jane?”

August turns, toothbrush in mouth. Niko’s looking at her from the end of the hallway, holding a golden barrel cactus the size of a basketball between two tattooed hands.

She managed to dodge him when she stumbled back into the apartment at five in the morning with her shirt buttoned wrong and the shape of Jane’s mouth bruised onto the side of her neck. But she should have known she could only avoid the resident psychic for so long.

She spits and rinses. “Can you not do that?”

“Sorry, was I skulking? Sometimes I skulk without realizing.”

“No, the thing where you know things about my personal life just by looking at me.” She racks her toothbrush. “But also the skulking.”

He pulls a face. “I don’t mean to, it’s just, like … the energy you put out about Jane. It’s burning a new hole in the ozone layer.”

“You know, the old hole in the ozone layer closed up.”

“I feel that you are deflecting.”

“I can send you a National Geographic article about it.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Niko says. “But I’m happy for you. You care so much about her, and she cares so much about you.”

August stares into the mirror, getting the rare chance to watch herself turn pink. It happens in big, unattractive splotches. This is what Jane sees. It’s a miracle she wants to have sex with her.

Sex. She and Jane had sex. She and Jane are, if they can figure out the logistics, possibly going to have more sex. August isn’t a virgin anymore.

She wonders if she should be having some kind of mental journey about that. She doesn’t feel different. She doesn’t look any different, just round-faced and splotchy, like a hard-boiled egg with a sunburn.

“Virginity is a social construct,” Niko says mildly, and August glares at him. He does a vague sorry-for-reading-your-mind gesture. August is going to dropkick his cactus out the window.

“It’s true,” Myla says, head popping out of their bedroom, eyes wide behind her welding goggles, still wearing her satin bonnet from the night before. “The whole idea is based on cissexist and heteronormative and quite frankly colonial-ass bullshit from a time when getting a dick in you was the only definition of sex. If that’s true, me and Niko have never had sex at all.”

“And we both know that’s absolutely not the case,” Niko says.

“Yeah, our walls are thin and I have ears,” August says, heading toward her bedroom in search of something to tie her hair up. “What kind of safeword is ‘waffle cone,’ anyway?”

“Speaking of overhearing things,” Myla presses on, “did I hear Niko say you’re sleeping with Jane?”

“I—” August shoots a perturbed glance at Niko, who has the decency to look as sheepish as he ever does, which is mostly just a slightly less jovial jut of his hips. “You can’t really call it ‘sleeping.’ There’s not really a bed involved.”

“Fucking finally! Like, literally!”

“Lord.”

“Did you make sure she was clean? Can you catch an STI from a ghost?”

“She’s not a ghost,” August and Niko say in unison.

“Okay, still, let me be a mom for a second.”

“Look, yeah, she’s—it’s fine.” August would love for their creaky floorboards to finally open up and drop her out of this conversation. “It’s come up before. I have to keep track of everything she remembers, okay?”

“Oh, yeah, classic getting-to-know-you conversation,” Myla says from across the hall. “What kind of music do you like? Where are you from? Do you now or have you ever had crabs?”

“You just described our first date, verbatim,” Niko points out.

August, still searching for a ponytail holder, picks up her bag and upends it on the bed.

Her blue ponytail holder from last night falls out, and she tries not to think about tying her hair up while Jane’s teeth worried at her skin. With Niko on the other side of the wall, she might as well project a PowerPoint presentation of herself getting railed on the subway for the whole apartment.

She frowns down at the mess from her bag. A pack of batteries? Where did those come from?

“Oh,” she says, realizing. “Ohhhh, bitch.”

God, she can’t believe it took her so long to notice. This is why you aren’t supposed to kiss your case. She fumbles her phone off her desk so fast, she nearly flings it out the open window.

Weird question, she texts Jane, fingers trembling. Distantly, she hears Niko and Myla in the hallway discussing soil brands. Can you open the battery compartment on your radio and tell me what you see?

Nothing? There’s nothing in there. Why?

There are no batteries in your radio?

Nope.

Didn’t you ever wonder how it works?

I figured it was like my cassette player? It doesn’t have batteries either. I’m a sci-fi freak show, I just assumed that was part of it.

You’ve had a magical cassette player all this time and you never thought to investigate?????? Or mention it???????

I don’t know! I told you when I showed it to you that I didn’t know how it worked! I thought you knew!

I thought you meant you didn’t know how it worked because it was so old???

Wow, that’s calling ME old.

asldfjasf if I thought you could die I would strangle you

She slams back out of her room and into the hall, almost getting a faceful of Niko’s cactus.