As soon as he had gotten up, loping away in the fashion of a much taller man, she had turned to me with authority.

“You should date him and be nice.”

“I can’t be nice,” I said automatically, almost before she finished her command. Don’t you think I’ve thought about it with the desperation the lonely can always summon? About how he would probably adore me absolutely and completely? How he’d write songs and music for me and kiss me with all the passion that he keeps inside with no one to give it to save his piano?

I search him for any trace of blush. Nothing. But he still flinches when I touch him. Intimidated? Embarassed? There are, after all, other people here. And I just want to kiss him so badly. Hard. Here.

“But,” I say, glancing first to him and then to her, “we said you need a nice girl. And we don’t know any nice girls.”

I have been in town less than half an hour, and already the ex-boyfriend news brigade is on the scene.

“Said he had a month left.”

A month of what? His lease? His job? Cancer treatments? Could literally be anything for all I know.

“The season, you know?” he says. “One more month and he’s done. Then he’ll be out all the time.”

Right. I did know that, but I had swept it to the back of my mind along with all the other bits of information I still hold about him: the hours-long training routine, the preferred contemptible electronica music, how he takes his coffee with brown sugar instead of white.

“I didn’t ask him about you.”

There’s too much here and not enough

All at the exact same time.

Too much light and not enough stars, so that she notices the drowning.

Too many “friends” and not enough friends who will do anything for you and who you’d ask to do it.

Too many numbers and not enough notes.

Too much sex and not enough of what goes with it.

She’s losing people along the way, and not sure what she gets.

But here it feels like she gets nothing but competition and criticism and tips for next time.

When she’s supposed to

Do It Better.

Next time she’ll be gone, so you can feel it over someone else.

She’s going to see more stars.

The bar, down the stairs and to the left, is hot, dark, and humid when I arrive, rather like Hell but with more puddles and fewer open flames. Underground. No air.

Opposite the long counter with the bottles and the hipster-thin bartender is the open space for the band. Only one of the three really matters, though, and he’s already there, standing under what seems to be the only light in the place, set into the low ceiling.

He tunes his instrument, sips a beer, tunes more, slightly. For no particular reason, I can’t take my eyes off him. Well, no particular reason that would be obvious to anyone else.

He’s the reason I’m here in this dwntown hole. He couldn’t make it to dinner because of set up for this show, so I quickly, easily, unthinkingly change my entire schedule for the evening just to be able to look at him. Without shame. Because I look anyway, but I probably should hide it better.

I can’t remember when we met, sometimes a few years ago with friends and drinks, likely. I just remember wanting and, at one point, having. Watching and noticing for so long has left me with piles of images of him in my mind, almost as if he were mine to be tracking.

He’s not.

She’s there, too, talking to one of the others of the three. My heart sinks, just a little, before I perk it back up again. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

It used to, at first, be really easy to dislike her. Clearly, she had what I wanted and didn’t really seem to be all that worthy of it anyway. Now, though, she’s a friend, with humor and caring. Further complicating my openly gawking.

The trio hikes up the instruments and the energy and begin to play. I stare directly at him, his head bowed and bobbing rhythmically, his fingers moving up and down the neck and strings thoughtfully, plucking, striking, stroking.

***

Musicians are attractive to women for a reason. Men, take note: it’s the rhythm. The rhythm they feel in their song we imagine will translate seamlessly to their rhythm in body, in bed.

Another good reason: the hands. God, it turns us on to watch a musician’s hands. Any hands, really; a carpenter would be good, too, for example. But a musician, with the rhythm and the hands…

***

He’s still directly under the light, and I’m situated beneath the one opposite, feeling absurdly like this gives us some sort of connection.

His fingers move not so much deftly as fluidly on the gleaming strings, mostly fingertips but occasionally the side of the index finger bringing sound, smooth and low. I know there are calluses on those fingers, rubbed rough from the ridges on the strings.

The nails are kept short, the fingertips rather blunt and rounded. I’m watching too emotionally, my breath catching in my throat with music surrounding me. I can feel it and I am fantasizing about meeting him in the bathroom and feeling more than that on skin and below — I start shifting in my seat.

She’s next to me, of course, the only other person I know in this bar besides him.

“It’s funny,” she says, as if she can sense where my gaze has lodged itself. “People are always like, ‘I bet he’s really good with his hands…’ and I’m like, ‘Not…really.’” She shakes her head comically slowly, eyes downcast for a mourning effect.

It’s funny. I never thought so. I seem to remember differently.

***

We were in this grey-sheeted bed, in the dark but for the light filtered from the streetlight through the dark curtains, the time unknown and unimportant.

I am on top, legs tucked up underneath themselves to make room for him between. He’s on his back, skin still humid and slick from the pool, and, more recently, the shower after the pool. His hands, those hands, are on my thighs, hips, chest.

I shift my body upward slightly, and he groans, curling his chest up, head level with my breasts. His hands go to them, followed by his mouth. He tickles my skin lightly and I think it only proper to arch that back, tilt that neck back, let him go further.

I breathe.

“Oh, my God,” he says when he can bring his mouth, lips, tongue away from my skin, no doubt also slick and probably salty at this point as well. “Your boobs are perfect.” Lips back like metal to a magnet.

“Really?” I flinch. “They’re small.” Don’t stop moving.

“God, no. They’re perfect.” He wraps his arms around my lower back, the better, I guess, to bury himself in my perfect chest. To lodge this time in my tired, spinning mind. To make my chest tighten noticeably every single time I see him from then after.

I’ve never been comfortable with these things. Small breasts, flat butt, rather thick, in my mind, waistline. Never been perfect to him in this way before.

***

I laugh – chuckle, really – conspiratorially with her and turn quickly back to the band.

I don’t want to think about that. That he might touch her and let her – God, I can’t think of that.

It helps, however, to think he fumbles with her. Fingers not perfectly rhythmic and pleasing after all. Not confident and stroking. Not cupping one in each hand, overflowing with gentle but very enthusiastic praise. Not tickling her with breath and fingertips.

***

In the morning, he had had to get up to drive a friend home. Early. I rolled onto my stomach, arms cupping my pillow to my head, sad to have him leaving the bed where we have just spent our first night together. I may even have protested sleepily in what I imagined to be seductive, “Stay with me…” type of voice.

He didn’t stay. He tucked the fluffy comforter back up around my shoulder blades, actually closing the gaps between my body and the blanket with his palms.

He leaned down, kissing my forehead in one of the most intimate gestures I can think of.

“Go back to sleep,” he says into my ear. The skin on my back rises in shivers and I shift deeper into the sheets and covers that smell a little like him and a little, now, like me. I guess like us.

***

Now, it doesn’t help to be next to her in the same place. Same space and same time, but different scents and different estimations of the skill of his hands, his fingers. Different, I imagine, amounts of desire.

I can’t imagine she loves his hands the way that I do.

Heading back to the Institute currently. Feeling pretty agitated about it.

I don’t want to tell the doctor what I’ve been doing and thinking. I don’t want to drive all the way over there on the same route I always had to use all those days and think about all the other people who had to use those same roads last fall just to come see little old emaciated me. I don’t want to admit that I can’t seem to do it the way I used to, but that I’m still trying and failing miserably.

So, on the way over here, I think about him instead.

***

He is tall and thin, with brown hair receding slightly and round brown eyes. Conventionally, movie-starily, he’s not handsome. He seems to have permanent circles of dark cradling his eyes, like someone in perpetual need of one more hour of sleep.

He smiles, though, quick and big, bobbing his head above his broad, square shoulders. He has a small waist and hipbones I’d like to touch, and big hands with thin fingers by which I’d like to be touched.

“Ive never had a one-night stand,” he’s telling me from across a avery small table bedecked with a single votive candle, a leather and laminated menu, and two large wine glasses.

Never? I’m surprised. The man is charming, 26 years old, and a bartender in a college town. So I’m surprised. Before I can say so, though, his face brightens.

“Wait! I did once, but it was a threesome, so…” he cocks his head to one side, spreading his hands to show innocence, a bystander who just couldn’t pass up this little detail of an opportunity.

Not that I’d care. I, oppositely, have had one-night stands. One that, rather famously, didn’t turn out so well, and one that turned into a two-night stand. But two nights doesn’t seem that much more respectable, really.

***

I remember too much as I pull into the Institute and start to panic slightly. Maybe this is why the doctor wanted me to come back every once in a while: to scare the eating disorder right out of me so I don’t end up sleeping up the hill from here at nights, alternately sweating and shivering from hormones and hot flashes.

***

Since I’ve never had a threesome, the only contribution I can see fit to make to this conversation is that I had found a song the day before entitled “No I In Threesome.” It had made me laugh then and now seems even more relevant.

I tell him, laughing and wondering whether or not he’s joking. Funny date confession, really.

“Was this in Japan?” I ask, eyes narrowed in what I hope is playful inquisition.

He looks surprised. He had been telling me earlier about his year in Japan, studying the language and getting personal with the natives. Also, I imagine, being the tallest person in the whole country by a solid ten inches.

“No, why?”

“I don’t know. I guess it just seems like something a Japanese girl would do.” I shrug, feeling slightly racist.

He regards me for a moment, leaning back in his spindly wooden chair, and then laughs so loudly and heartily that I have no choice but to join. He is filled with mirth and I with slight fumbling embarrassment, but at least I can laugh. We can laugh.

The dark circles disappear when he laughs out loud, replaced by lovely laugh lines by his eyes and a smile that shows lines of straight but not perfectly even teeth.

He catches me appraising his face and I glace downward, the picture of the coy sweetheart.

His left arm, thin and lightly toned, reaches across the short distance between us, his hand resting briefly on the side of my face. “You’re beautiful,” he tells me.

I laugh, swinging my head away from his hand, showing him my white teeth and smooth skin, but not my eyes.

***

When I first entered the Institute, I refused to do laundry.

We had a washer and dryer in the middle of the women’s unit, and powdered detergent to our heart’s delight, but I was convinced I’d be out in three days’ time, tops. I’d just eat a few sandwiches, lay off the obsessive exercising and endless walking, get my weight “stabilized” (read – “up”) and then be free of this lovely, padlocked prison.

I didn’t understand the padlock part, either. We went on a tour of the facility, filled with just-showered ladies in various states of disrepair winding down for the evening.

Here’s the living area, with some couches and jigsaw puzzles and a television. The atrium with the nurses’ station. The porch and garden where smokers can gather at designated times only. The hallway. The little window where your “meds” will be doled out to you in a thin paper cup. Your room, with two plastic-mattressed little beds and no roommate because she has to sleep in the hallway. The nurses need to keep an eye on her. She’s at risk for self-harm or suicide.

At first, I am delighted. “It smells like a girls’ dorm in here,” I said, detecting shampoo and sun-ripened raspberry scent from the eight bathrooms with the eight showers.

Then, at the end of the tour, we’re back at the front door.

“So, this is the front door. The only time you’ll go out here is if you go down to the cafeteria to eat,” the assistant explains.

What?

Then I see. The door is locked. The other door at the end of the hall is locked. The garden has a high fence surrounding a few benches and trees. The fence has no door, but if it did, I bet it would be locked.

The nurses finish going through my bags to confiscate the contraband materials (things like floss and conditioner are available only in supervised supply, and tweezers and razors are not allowed at all) and I settle onto my hard little bed for the evening.

***

It had been raining, hard, while we were ensconced inside the little wine cafe, gradually moving our chairs closer together. I let my hand rest on his arm, his firm lower back, those hipbones, just briefly, experimentally. He likes it, takes his cue, letting his hand linger on my shoulder blades before running his fingertips gracefully down the curve of my back.

Every place in town is closing now, forcing separation. We wander slowly to his car, him tucking me briefly and perfectly under his arm. He smells warm and fresh, and I’m tempted to wrap myself into him there on the sidewalk. And stay. And not separate.

He opens the passenger door and I slide into the seat as gracefully as I can in the high heels I decided were allowed on account of his height. Legs crossed toward him. Right foot bouncing in adorable, delicious nervousness.

***

The door of the hospital bedroom must be left open so the nurse on duty can come in and shine a flashlight on me every fifteen minutes, presumably to make sure I’m still there and not, say, doing squats in the bathroom or something.

Hallway light beams into the room, which has a high wooden ceiling and a little drawered nightstand between the two twin beds.

I don’t mind the light, always having been frightened of the dark anyway. What I do mind is that the nurse on duty has some kind of odd cough that does not stop all night long, and against which I cannot close my door.

My protruding hipbone grinds against the hard mattress, my body covered by a single thin, yet heavy blanket. The following day, I will get another, fluffy blanket from my friend, which I will use as a cushion where my flesh should be. But right now, I’m unprepared.

I don’t sleep the whole night.

***

He pulls me to him gently, hesitating slightly, which I take as a way of his asking if this is okay. It’s okay.

He presses his lips to mine, mouth closed, hand at my chin. I’ve always found car seat kisses to be exceedingly awkward, but he feels good. My hand on his chest. My mouth open slightly, and him taking his cues from me.

“I had to see.” He pulls back slightly.

I look at him, interested and bemused by what he thinks he had to investigate.

“There was verbal chemistry,” he says, pointing open-palmed in the direction of the dashboard, “and I had to see if-”

I kiss him this time, harder and more urgently. There is, and I need to be clear about that. Lips parted. Clear.

I have to leave him and get into my car, where I’m the driver and no one opens the door for me. I drive home through the night, reminded of my favorite poem that asks, “Why must I leave you / to wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?”

My lips, warm from him mouth, cool slowly on the drive home.

That doesn’t matter, the environment doesn’t matter. She pushes the salad to the side, preferring to look dainty rather than eating while on the phone; turns to her right, toward the stairwell, away from the the bar glinting with glass bottles and televised baseball games.

She’s been trying to contact him all week about this particular occasion, but since she met him four years prior about how she just wants to be able to touch him freely so badly. He’s elusive, scheduled and popular, making any meeting or contact that much more precious in her mind.

So he’s coming now. Coming to find her. She is shining, attempting to explain to her twin-tailored companions what exactly it means that he’s coming. He is the Holy Grail, after all. She talks fast, stumbling on syllables, eyes darting toward the stairwell he will climb shortly, please, let it be shortly.

The explanation – the verbal one, anyway – feels inadequate, but the two young gentlemen didn’t need the words anyway. They can tell. Their new friend, usually cheerful, is positively vibrating with joy. Her blue eyes, fully locked onto their faces as her hands punctutate her speech, are frantic with excitement.

She feels this, hard. They know. They can see it.

Her right foot kicks when she gets anxious, so now her whole leg bounces energetically under the cover of the blond wooden tabletop. They see this too, the gentlemen, but she tries to pretend it’s not happening and so they do not comment on it.

***

One time, he spent the night with her, in her bed, bodies curved toward one another in the dark forming a perfectly lopsided circle.

She had kept her promise not to touch him. She had promised, feeling utterly ashamed that he might see her as the kind of girl that usually touches, who expects to be touched and might even demand it.

She is that kind of girl, but not with him.

They had talked, facing one another on separate pillows, a margin between she and he. In the dark, she couldn’t see his eyes, but had imagined them to be open, searching for hers in a similar fashion. The only thing she can remember about that particular conversation is how badly she wanted to touch his cheek. Her left hand had been free, the right one tucked up underneath her pillows.

She had been aware, painfully, of how absurd it would have been to stroke his face, running her fingertips over his cheekbones, eyebrows. Lips would have been the ultimate goal, but that was absolutely out of the question with him. It would have been like a knife going in, bleeding the years of honesty and restraint that had built up to this particular scene in which they had simply stayed up talking so late that it was easier and more comfortable for him to stay with her rather than leave, as he had always done before.

***

She sees him before he’s even halfway up the stairs, and rises in mid-conversation to go to him.

He’s wearing pale yellow, his hair shorter than the last time she’d seen him. It almost pains her that he’s been walking around, changed, and she was in no way aware of it.

The eyes are the same, though not covered by glasses as per usual. They are blue, wide and expressive, with lovely crinkled laugh lines that deepen with each smile. That smile, too, is quick, as usual, with dimples and a laugh that usually causes him to tilt his head back, the better to announce his echoing charm. His Adam’s apple is defined and therefore vulnerable. She has always wanted to kiss him there.

They embrace, she probably squealing with delight. He’s just tall enough to tuck her little shoulder under his, and she leans into and wraps around his torso.

She always touches him there and on the arms, possibly to keep herself from cupping his face in her hands like she really wants to. He’s strong without being intimidating, toned but not hard. Her hands linger at his hipbones as they separate.

There are introductions to occur, so she does them, proud to introduce him to her new friends, new people in her life who have not been there as long as he has. She’s giddy as niceties pass, wants to embrace him and hold him for longer, for closer. He’s laughing, happy and friendly, and she pulls him gently closer so she can rub his back possessively.

He leans down for another hug, cheek to cheek, and says to her something she has not heard from him before.

“I found someone.”

***

In the morning, he was still there, resting between the sheets and under the comforter. He had stayed and she had not touched but had awakened smiling anyway.

This had been something new, and she had wished him a good morning, sweetly relishing the very intimacy of that moment. He had stayed and she had not touched.

He left quickly but not hurriedly, perhaps sensing that her resolve to hold back the touching was disintegrating in the strengthening light. That had been a breakthrough, she had decided.

He had looked the same in the morning, not like herself. His hair was just slightly more rumpled than usual. She had made the bed dutifully, but had lifted the pillow on which he had slept and had breathed the scent left there deeply in.

He had not worn cologne, and so had smelled of himself and nothing else.

***

She pulls back from him sharply, a shriek of surprise popping out of her chest before she can stop it. Her hands, removed now from him body, clench up close to her stomach, the only shield she has left. Her high-pitched exclamation echoes briefly, reminding her that she needs to react in a less dramatic and more supportive way.

She already knows who it is, but asks anyway, masochistically wishing for detail, for confirmation. Apparently, the someone had been crying in his car one day and had simply asked him.

She had had plenty of rides in that car, in that very seat. She had told him frankly, honestly and openly about what she wanted from him and what she expected from the two of them together: greatness.

Had she cried? She doesn’t think so. She can’t remember. Maybe that was the key. Men cannot handle tears. He cannot ignore tears.

She’s forgotten to relax her arms and appears stricken, wounded. This is not how a friend reacts to another friend’s happy news, but it appears beyond her power to act as though this jealousy is not crushing her. She feels the knife going in, just to the right of her sternum. She feels the bleeding start, mercifully just opposite her heart. She will not crumple, but she feels this.

He’s still explaining and then farewelling, touching her left elbow and asking for another hug. Inviting her to call him. As if this time it might finally have a different outcome.

She promises, touching softly and briefly.

She returns to her two young gentlemen, her back to his retreating yellow polo, her eyes drained of that crackling electricity that had so fully occupied them just moments before.

He had come, announced, and left. She had touched, gazed, and promised, and now she’s spent.

He left swiftly, and she wonders if he felt the knife going in. She doesn’t want him to crumple. She just wishes desperately for him to feel it.

She turns to her companions, the ones that will not leave her all evening. She tells them the update – “He’s founf someone” – but she doesn’t need to. They can see it in her. They can tell.

He looks a little surprised. I feel a lot surprised. Thrilled. Electric. It sounded good coming out, not rushed or insincere. Intimate and close. Laying on his chest. Blue eyes wide. Mouth crooked up in bright satisfaction.

“I love you, too,” he tells me.

I think I already knew. I can tell in the way that he never wants to stop touching me and the way he’ll look at me for a long time, smiling, lost.

I had shown him my childhood house – the yard where I played kickball and dizzied myself with cartwheel contests, the tree that was the only tree I was really ever brave enough to climb. Then I had shown him my mother’s house, the bed where I’ll sleep this summer when I’m away from town, away from him. The cats that are so sweet and fat. The photo of baby me, grinning dimpled while playing with a blue plastic ball that’s about as big as my arms are wide.

“Still smiling,” he observed. Endearing.

Upstairs, I had looked desperately around the room that is mine but is not where I live for something to show him. Framed high school prom photo?

“Beautiful,” he commented, kissing my cheek as I squirmed away. That wasn’t what I wanted to show you.

Then I find it. Of course. The pictures of my did I keep in a little golden box. When he was nineteen, with a dark beard and dark floppy hair, but the same blue eyes. When he got married to my mother. When I was little and he held me on his lap all the time. These are what he needs to see.

Then I knew. It changed. I wanted to show him and tell him and let him. Yes, this probably should happen. Yes, that feels good. Yes.

Driving back to town, I sing. He can tell that I want to play the same three songs over and over because I currently love them. And he knows that.

it just seemed like the most natural idea in the world. It was repeating in my head so much that I was sure he could see it on my face, eyes, lips.

I’m proud and he’s proud. I think.

Last night I let him make me dinner. I let him feed me strawberries dipped in chocolate. This morning I lay in his bed naked as he climbed over me gently to go help a friend. His body is amazing strong skin soft. I am sleepy eyes closed at ease. He leans down from above, close to my ear in his dim bedroom.

“I love you.”

But there are none on you

Your face

So I don’t need them anymore

Your body is not angular

Fluid and strong

But not angular

And now that is what keeps me safe

The right angles seem a little lonely now

Far and not touching

“You’re so soft,” you say

I can embrace that

Because angles are losing their appeal

There are none of your face

***

My mom wrote a poem today, too:

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I’m in Miami

And you’re not”

Good work, Ma.

Probably even beter than with you

Deeper, you know?

Less heat

Less guilt pressure distraction

But I don’t really want to.

I can do things without you

Carry on entire conversations

Less explaining

Less thinking planning justification

But I don’t really want to.

I’d rather

have you here or be with you,

where you are.

It doesn’t matter really,

together.

I can do it alone, sure

But if I could choose

I’d chose you

wherever you happen to be.

I wanted to write you a poem,

something, because I’ve been thinking of you so much,

so much.

I don’t know if this is what I had in mind,

but it’s a start

and I’ll try again

I want to

23 March 2008

“Does this scarf make me look greenish, pale, sickly?” she fidgets.

“Jesus, that blue brings out her eyes, sparkling clear honest,” he fidgets. “My gut showing?”

“He’s strong,” she observes, rearranging the salt and pepper shakers, balancing rolled-up bits of napkin on top. “I swear, my palms are so sweaty, shaky.” Clasps her fists to hide it.

“Graceful,” he thinks of her hands. “Clean soft sturdy.” He doesn’t like feeling as though a simple handshake might cause irreparable damage to the oh-so delicate recipient. “She could create, play, show with those hands.” He smiles to note his positive appraisal of her fingers, palms, knuckles. “God. Did she notice?” If he had to do it over again, he’d wear that retainer every damn night.

“Nice healthy white,” she decides, glances up, flushes. “Teeth, lips, tongue.” Starts to wonder. Kicks her foot to cover the wondering. Feels her legs, skin, thighs. “That’s right. You just call all attention to yourselves. He must be noticing.” Flexes to cover the movement.

“Real,” he notices self-consciously. “I must smell like a damn locker room.” Is he wearing acceptably clean underclothes? He probably is. Of course. He is.

“Man smell. Soap, skin, fresh,” she deciphers. What would it smell like on her pillow in the morning? Glances around, like people can see what she’s wondering, planning, hoping. Like people are judging the way she is. “Not that I care.” She cares. “I hate these clothes. Trying too hard.”

“She looks good confident.” Feels predictably underdressed by comparison. Of course. He never has nice. Nice enough. Nice looking enough. “Is this place even okay?” Loser. Poor little loser.

“Like it here. New,” she appreciates. “I’m never adventurous creative open to exploring.”

“I could take her somewhere.”

“I’d go with him. If he were there.”

“If she wanted to.”

A young, polished, perky waiter appears, rushes up, leans over the table.

“So…” she says aloud, uncertainly, slowly.

He looks at her, blue scarf and eyes.

“Are you ready?” he says.