I stood behind her in line and stared at her pornographic legs. Strong calves and soft thighs. I imagined cutting into parts of her with a fork and knife.
She ordered two dozen clams without asking if I ate clams or whether I wanted something different. And a bucket of beers, she said to the boy behind the counter, who knew her. No charge, he said. She smiled and slipped a twenty into a tip jar.
I was afraid in that way you can only be afraid in an early friendship with a woman. I was afraid of being too careful. I was afraid of being too old, of not understanding music. She carried the clams they’d packaged in a to-go container and I carried the bucket of beer. We crossed the median. Cars zoomed past and my heart thumped between my breasts. The times you are most willing to die are, ironically, the times you are having the most fun.
—There’s a fine for drinking in Malibu, she said, but I don’t know, I’ve never been caught.
The beach was remarkable because of how close it was to the highway and because I was with Alice, who took off her sandals and led me to the shoreline. She was a Pisces, like you. She sat down on the sand and set the box of clams before us.
—Here, she said, they don’t need salt but lemon, all right?
She indelicately squeezed lemon across them all. I hated clams. They tasted like blood and metal. My father loved them. I’d watched him eat hundreds.
—Oh, God, she said, sucking one down, that’s all I need in life. Clams, beer. The occasional fuck. Twice a month, someone nice. Hey? I really weirdly want to know all about you.
—It gets darker.
—Tell me the rest of Big Sky. We are getting to something. I can feel it. Please don’t call me crazy, I’m not sucking up or being a metaphysical twat, I can just feel this.
A V of birds flew by overhead. There weren’t too many people on the beach, just some wetsuits in the distance. The water was dark. Suddenly I missed him so much that I felt I was about to get swallowed by the blackness all over again.
I told her that he was more than a man for me. He was a jetliner to a world I so terrifically wanted to be a part of. As a girl I was enthralled with the American restaurants my family never went to. Places with teak banquettes and warm lighting. One place in particular, a vegetarian American café, I dragged my parents into, and the waitress, who had a thick blond braid down her back, served us a loaf of warm pumpernickel bread on a scratched walnut cutting board with a knife and soft butter in a steel ramekin. Ivy plants dripped from the ceiling. At home, it was melting slices of prosciutto and wedges of Parmesan wrapped in cloth beside a grater. Big Sky was a passport to being American.
—Everybody wants to be Italian, Alice said, and there you are, trying to slough off your own particular beauty.
—Where in Italy did you and your mother return to?
—Porto Ercole. Have you heard of it? It’s in Maremma. We had a wonderful little cottage near the water. I don’t know why we left.
—You never asked her?
—Please, she said, I’m boring. Continue with your story. It’s like a warped fairy tale.
I smiled and told her how Big Sky grew up in the mountains and rivers, fly-fishing in Wisconsin and Montana and riding horses and herding cattle. He was a man you could put in a seersucker suit for Easter, but he also chopped wood and understood how meat was processed.
I told her how he emailed me the very next morning after our sloppy session in my bed. I left my gear, can I pick it up later?
The font looked different to me from the Sweet dreams message of the previous night. I could feel the chill. I thought of all the boys I had jerked off because I didn’t want to risk disease by putting my mouth on some twiggy, contagious penis. With Big Sky I finally understood why other women risked themselves. I wanted to walk around with him inside of me.
—Fuck, Alice said. I have never felt that way. In the moment, sure, but not after the man left. Does that mean I haven’t been in love?
—I think it means that I haven’t been in love.
She smiled.
—I wrote back, Sure. He said he’d come by after work. So I spent an entire day getting ready for him. The whole day. Every little thing, including putting a flower in a rocks glass in the bathroom. At five thirty my doorman—don’t misunderstand, it was a shitty building, it was one of those accidental grandfathered-in doorman situations—called up and announced Big Sky’s first name and I began to shake. Do you want to know what I was wearing?
—Oh, God, she said.
—A long-sleeved navy Henley, very fitted and tight around my waist. It ended just above my hip bone. Then my white lace panties and that was it. Bare legs down to a pair of high-heeled Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes.
—Jesus Christ.
—The colors were off, the navy shirt and the black shoes and the white underwear.
—I was going to say.
—It was humiliating. I was a disaster.
—But he didn’t care.
—No, in fact, I am fairly sure he did. It was one of those moves you think is a good idea in your head. But if you slept on it, you’d say, Whore! Dumb whore.
—Had you consulted with any friends?
—I had nobody, I said, but I thought of Vic. I hadn’t told him about Big Sky until Big Sky began to drip away from me.
I told her how I heard his knock and the blood from my heart leaked down my legs and I walked to the door with his headset and cap in my hand, and the sound of my heels clacking immediately wrecked my confidence. The sound of my heels was the sound of loneliness. I considered running into my bedroom, pulling on a pair of pants or sexy shorts, but at the very least removing the heels for fuck’s sake. But I opened the door as planned. He saw me half-naked, took me in. He looked shocked but not in the way I had hoped. I suppose I was hoping for him to be a cartoon of the regular man. Horny, tongue-wagging. Or to look at me the way Vic would have if I’d ever opened the door for him like that. Vic would have looked at me like I was an angel.
—This Vic, Alice said.
I didn’t want to tell her about Vic but she had to hear about him. I wanted a woman to finally see me. At the same time, I worried she would be disgusted, the way Big Sky was when he saw Vic and realized he was my group.
I explained how the outfit, the ludicrous idea, was based upon the previous evening. A couple of martinis, darkness. But I hadn’t lived an emotional life in between the night before and that moment. I was stuck in last night, whereas he had gone home to his family then to work in the morning and now, in the innocent light of half past five, I looked like the reason he married his wife and not a girl like me. Imagine the mother of his children, presiding over a roast in the big nice oven, and then me there with my bare legs and my old heels. Here, I said to him, shaking, nervously handing him his headphones and his Mets cap. I thought of my father loving the Yankees. I thought of what my father would think if he could see me now.
—Okay, Alice said, so let’s stop for a moment. Because this is important, right? I mean, let’s really stop and get inside this man’s head. So he comes to the door of a woman he ate out last night who wasn’t his wife. Now it’s the next day and he’s sober. He showered last night and once again this morning. He ate pizza with his wife in their apartment off the park. He felt like he could erase it. Now if he can just get back the very expensive headphones his wife bought him last Christmas, it will be like he never stepped foot in a strange animal’s apartment. He spent a weekend thinking of you but then last night he put his mouth between your legs and he felt wrong and sad. Last week he only kissed you, and it felt innocent and full of promise. But last night was too quick and sour. He wondered how many men you did that sort of thing with. You had no compunction about his wife and for God’s sake his infant. Because of course you are the temptress and he is the tempted. And now here you are, opening the door with no pants on. In high heels. His dick is like hey whatever what’s up, but otherwise he feels like you’re nuts. Already he felt strange and awkward coming here, but now he is downright appalled.