shoulder blades and pulled me against her, her nails digging into my skin. It was sudden; our clothes were off and we were entangled with each other; I was inside of her; I was inside of her and she gasped and then she was biting, truly biting, the rise of my collarbone. It hurt. I was bleeding, I was sure of it. Was my blood in her mouth? This is what I was thinking of—my blood in Natasha’s mouth—as the car shook a little, as the windows clouded with the condensation of our breath, as her body seemed to stretch infinitely long and wide and consume me completely, erase me. We were all erasure, and in the middle of one of the loudest festivals in the country, in the center of its most uproarious night, I could hear nothing but my breathing and Natasha’s. There we were in the front seat of the Mercedes station wagon, and it was quiet enough to imagine the ghost of Evel Knievel wrapping itself around the city, enfolding Butte in its infinite vaporous hush.
Growing up, I was drawn to stories about werewolves and lycanthropes and all manner of shape-changing beasts. I think this was partly my mother’s fault. I never knew when I’d come home to find her utterly transformed. My interest in shape-changers, however, had led to an especially mortifying moment in eighth-grade biology class where I’d mentioned
lycanthropy
as if it were a real medical condition. The teacher laughed because she thought I was kidding.
“But really,” I persisted. “Is there a treatment?”
By lunchtime the whole school had heard the story of Cozy Sucker, the boy who believed in werewolves.
Natasha found me hiding in the PE supply closet, sitting on a pile of playground balls. “I poisoned the Kool-Aid in the lunchroom,” she said. “You won’t be having any more problems.”
“Hope it’s slow-acting.”
She assured me that it would also be disfiguring. “They’ll turn into moose,” she said. She always seemed to say the right thing.
In the front seat of the car, I wasn’t the only one dislocating from the present moment. Natasha, I noticed, was also somewhere else, her body almost lifeless. We were both naked. My skin stuck to the slightly warm, moist leather, and to make matters worse, I was wedged up against the steering wheel, the knob of the gearshift poking into my side. I looked up at Natasha’s face—looked across the flat plane of her stomach and the soft, feathery hair that marked the center of her body. She was staring at the roof of the car.
“Is everything okay?” I said. I kissed her hip bone.
Natasha said nothing. That made me nervous. Then she said, “Khosi,” and that made my palms start to sweat. I rested my head on her stomach. I pressed against it with my face; I wanted to burrow. Natasha never used my name in conversation. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. That didn’t make things better. I stared up at her: the luxurious sweep of her once-wild red hair, the soft, rich fabric of her unbuttoned blouse crumpled on the seat beside her. There was a touch of East Coast prep school to her clothes these days. There was a whisper of the
real
yacht club about her now—not just the Berkeley Pit Yacht Club, not the yacht club coded with irony.
“Last night,” she said, and sighed. “Calvin asked me to marry him.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “What are you talking about? And—and you said no?” I sat up in the driver’s seat. “You said no, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Otherwise we’d be wearing clothes.”
Natasha retracted her legs and curled herself into a wedge on the other side of the car. Her voice was soft and distant and ruminative and filled with a certain smoke. “I said yes,” she said.
I shook my head. “We just had sex in a station wagon—and you’re telling me you’re going to marry someone else?”
Natasha reached over and started reassembling her clothes. I looked at the car parked directly in front of us. It was an older car, a 1970s
Growing up, I was drawn to stories about werewolves and lycanthropes and all manner of shape-changing beasts. I think this was partly my mother’s fault. I never knew when I’d come home to find her utterly transformed. My interest in shape-changers, however, had led to an especially mortifying moment in eighth-grade biology class where I’d mentioned
lycanthropy
as if it were a real medical condition. The teacher laughed because she thought I was kidding.
“But really,” I persisted. “Is there a treatment?”
By lunchtime the whole school had heard the story of Cozy Sucker, the boy who believed in werewolves.
Natasha found me hiding in the PE supply closet, sitting on a pile of playground balls. “I poisoned the Kool-Aid in the lunchroom,” she said. “You won’t be having any more problems.”
“Hope it’s slow-acting.”
She assured me that it would also be disfiguring. “They’ll turn into moose,” she said. She always seemed to say the right thing.
In the front seat of the car, I wasn’t the only one dislocating from the present moment. Natasha, I noticed, was also somewhere else, her body almost lifeless. We were both naked. My skin stuck to the slightly warm, moist leather, and to make matters worse, I was wedged up against the steering wheel, the knob of the gearshift poking into my side. I looked up at Natasha’s face—looked across the flat plane of her stomach and the soft, feathery hair that marked the center of her body. She was staring at the roof of the car.
“Is everything okay?” I said. I kissed her hip bone.
Natasha said nothing. That made me nervous. Then she said, “Khosi,” and that made my palms start to sweat. I rested my head on her stomach. I pressed against it with my face; I wanted to burrow. Natasha never used my name in conversation. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. That didn’t make things better. I stared up at her: the luxurious sweep of her once-wild red hair, the soft, rich fabric of her unbuttoned blouse crumpled on the seat beside her. There was a touch of East Coast prep school to her clothes these days. There was a whisper of the
real
yacht club about her now—not just the Berkeley Pit Yacht Club, not the yacht club coded with irony.
“Last night,” she said, and sighed. “Calvin asked me to marry him.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “What are you talking about? And—and you said no?” I sat up in the driver’s seat. “You said no, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Otherwise we’d be wearing clothes.”
Natasha retracted her legs and curled herself into a wedge on the other side of the car. Her voice was soft and distant and ruminative and filled with a certain smoke. “I said yes,” she said.
I shook my head. “We just had sex in a station wagon—and you’re telling me you’re going to marry someone else?”
Natasha reached over and started reassembling her clothes. I looked at the car parked directly in front of us. It was an older car, a 1970s
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