Cherries In The Snow by Emma Forrest Page B

fucking Christ!’ shrieks Holly, breaking my calm, and leaps into his arms, wrapping her naked legs around him and causing the cherry heart formation to crash to the floor. Ivy stares from Holly to him, her ears visibly pricking up. And out. She looks like Spock.
    â€˜What’s up, my favorite dyke?’ He has a soft voice, like an animal trainer’s. Or from the way Holly clings to him, pretzel-style, a lesbian trainer’s. Holly unravels herself and he places her neatly back on the same ground above which I feel myself hover. ‘This, girls, is my old friend Steven Marley.’
    â€˜Oh, wow,’ says Ivy. ‘Hi, I’ve heard so much about you. I can’t believe it’s you.’ What looks like it might be a blush ofjealousy on her cheeks subtly morphs into a blush of confusion. My objectifying turns a shade of intrigue. Who the hell is Steven Marley?
    â€˜Your work,’ adds Ivy, ‘is amazing.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ he answers. ‘You must be Ivy. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re the better half.’ With a single sentence he soothes the inflammation eating at Ivy’s soul, and she smiles shyly as she shakes his hand. She seems small next to him, an accidental and additional kindness on his part. For all her ballyhooing about reclaiming the word
fat
, I see how much she enjoys the tininess of her hand in his.
    Having delighted Holly and Ivy, he turns his attention to Vicki. What, am I invisible? Am I only cute by the light of the bodega? I wait for the bowling ball of charm to knock out Vicki and she’s waiting too, her mouth twisted into a truly terrifying grin, gummy and wet.
    â€˜Hi.’ He nods briefly, giving her just enough time to say ‘Hi, I’m Vi,’ and then he turns straight to me.
    â€˜Hey.’ Vicki blinks, fluttering her lashes. But he doesn’t stop looking at me. He stares so hard I start to wonder if I too have dancing fruit behind my head. He has the same confused look that Sidney Katz gets when I have to blow-dry him after his biannual bath.
    â€˜We’ve met before, no? In the deli? I was on my way home from yoga. You said you’d call and you never did.’
    You say deli, I say bodega. Oh, it would never work out between us.
    â€˜You didn’t call him?’ says Vicki out loud, then realizes she said it out loud and skulks to her desk in shame. We have covered a spectrum of reds – exuberance, jealousy, shame – and this guy has only been in the office three minutes. Except he isn’t really a guy. He is, quite indisputably, a man.
    Each muscle on his stomach waits for a response. I feel sobad for not calling that instead I say, ‘I have stretch marks. Look.’ I point like a museum guide. ‘Look here. And here. And also here.’
    â€˜Oh,’ says Marley, placing his bag on the floor, ‘is that a good thing?’
    â€˜In certain cultures.’ Holly laughs.
    â€˜I have trousers,’ I add quickly.
    The whole office loves it when I slip into a Britishism and they always repeat it back at me in an accent somewhere between Helena Bonham Carter and Dick Van Dyke in
Mary Poppins:
    â€˜I have TROW-sers! I have TROW-sers!’ they shriek. Marley looks befuddled.
    Then I go to get the trousers. I come back with them on, half-dry, still gray-streaked. Holly, Ivy, and Vicki are back at their desks and Marley is still standing in the middle of the office. As I walk back toward the girls, he calls after me.
    â€˜I like them.’
    â€˜What?’ I ask, too embarrassed to turn around and face him.
    â€˜Your stretch marks. Graphically appealing. They’re cool. They’re pretty gorgeous actually.’
    I go back to my desk, blushing. I take a test sample of red lipstick, scratch out ‘Harpo,’ and write ‘Humiliation.’
    Vicki is peering over my shoulder. Her round face looms before me. ‘Why would anyone want to buy something