The Girl who Couldn't Come by Joey Comeau Read Free Book Online

grew up, or the ski slopes an hour out of town. I have never seen mountains the way you mean mountains, enormous, reaching up into the sky, peaked with snow. You paused and I might have told you that. I might have told you about how my father used to climb mountains and how every year he promised to eventually take us with him. It is a promise he still makes when the family is all together again. But I stayed quiet. I’ve heard my own stories before. Every new story out of your mouth was exciting and unexpected. I would have been a fool to speak.

    Our skinny waiter bowed and fawned over you, as though you were someone’s grandmother. He checked on us too often, asking, “Is everything alright, here? Is there anything I can do?” as though you were about to keel over. I wanted to tell him that you could snap him like a twig.
    Instead, I put my hand on yours and I gave him the look, the lesbian look, the animal-crouched-over-her-family look, mixed with sex. This is mine. I will tear you apart. 

    He stepped back, still smiling politely. 

    I can tell you this, Edith. When you squeezed my hand in return, I knew I had done the right thing, writing to you. The waiter faded into the background, leaving us alone. I wanted you to tell me another story, but you watched me instead. 

    You asked me questions then, and I gave only short answers, certain you couldn’t be interested. But you persisted. I babbled about the first girl I had ever kissed, Laura. I’m not sure that you were interested in how her room was decorated, or how strange we acted around one another after that kiss. I should have told the story better. 

    I wish I had asked you about your first kiss, Edith. But instead I babbled about university, about programming computers, about hiding from the lesbians at my school, because I don’t like belonging to clubs. 

    You told me that a woman should be brave. I don’t recall the context. You said, “A woman should be brave.” Are you someone’s grandmother? When was your first kiss? I should have told you, Edith, about the look on Laura’s face after our kiss, half-shocked, but half-dreamy. I imagine I looked the same way when you kissed me last night. I died. You walked me to my cab and kissed me on the mouth, and I died.

    I died and I am living forever.

    Ann.

    ---

    Edith,

    My roommate Liz told me that I hide in my room. We finished dinner and I put away my dishes. I was on my way back to my bedroom and Liz said, “It’s no wonder you don’t have any friends.” 
    Her theory, bless her concerned soul, is that I am “antisocial.” She had a whole list of examples prepared. I never talk at the dinner table when she has guests over. She phrased it, “When we have guests over,” though the guests are never mine. I never go dancing on Friday or Saturday nights, despite having been invited on two separate occasions by Liz herself. I wondered, as she listed these proofs of my anti-social tendencies, how long she had been preparing this list. It did not have the feel of a spur-of-the-moment conversation.

    I held my tongue. I wanted to tell her about you, Edith, and about how I slipped out of my room last night, long after she had gone to sleep. I walked through the dark streets, and you met me down in the subway station, wearing a long black coat that suited you well. Light fell into that coat. You looked like a revolutionary. 

    Would Liz have worn that same smug smile on her lips if she had seen me, hand in hand with you, slipping past the security cameras, climbing past the gates? We disappeared down the walkway along the inside of that tunnel, and Liz has never done anything of the sort. You led me down thin metal platforms. We climbed down ladders, into deeper tunnels, down where the air tasted like dirt and oil and machinery. 

    There were switches there, and controls. You pushed me up against a box covered with grimy buttons, and you told me, “This is where you can have me.” I was