And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida Read Free Book Online

stomach, his fingers spreading out like a starfish. I put my hand on his stomach—he has a beer belly.

    We kiss for a while and it's a little smoky but nice and then he says he has to go. "I have to wake up early in the morning and don't want to wake you."

    I nod. He puts on his pants. "Church," he adds.
    In the morning I take the subway to the nice stores. The dress has a split at the base of the zipper and I wonder if it was like that all along. I'm worried the store won't take it back. But the saleswoman doesn't notice. She doesn't notice the split, or that the dress has been worn, or my anxious face.

    "Sign here," she says, "for your refund."

    When I leave the store I feel like I've just won the money. It's in my pocket, heavy and thick. I stop by a drop-in hair salon and pay forty dollars, with tip, to get my blond-streaked hair dyed a dull shade of brown.

    "If you don't want to be alone," the therapist says, "maybe there are some girls you can spend the night with? Or who can stay with you at your place?"

    "There isn't anyone," I say. "You're sure?"
    "My best friend Sarah lives in Ireland. My sisters in England. Other than them, there's no one really. People I grew up with are in California. My college friends mostly moved to Providence or D.C.—I'm the only one who moved to New York. That was just in September and all the women I've met here tell me I shouldn't have been in the park."

    "Well, I was just wondering, because you hear lots of stories." "About what?"

    "About date rape," she says.

    "Yes," I say, "you do hear all these stories," and I realize that's part of the problem. They're always the same story—rape, date rape, mugging, angry ex-boyfriend seeking revenge. No one knows what to do with a story like mine.

    "It just seems …" she says, and sighs. "What?"
    "It seems like there are too many men. I can't keep them straight."

    She looks at my chest. I've deliberately worn an extra-large sweatshirt that says nothing. "I just wonder," she says, "if maybe they're taking advantage of you, of your situation."
    I look out the window at the students in red or blue or black jackets walking across the thinly snow-covered campus.

    "I didn't seek him out," I say. She looks up from her notebook. "I didn't seek any of them out."
    "Can you elaborate on that?" she says.

    "It's all nonspecific, this affection, this longing." "Excuse me?"
    "Nothing is personal," I say. "Not who you want to die with or who you want to love. It's all nonspecific."

    Tom calls me five times an hour and I don't pick up the phone. He starts ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night and the doorman won't let him up. On the intercom I tell him I'm scared.

    "Of what?" he says. "I don't know," I say.
    "Will you let me in?" he says. "I need to talk to you."

    I listen but say nothing. I've heard the rumors that the doormen, all four of them, think Tom is the one who held a gun to my head because no one believes that someone I don't know would do this. But rumors and miscalculations are comforting to me now because I know that the doorman on duty is watching him, waiting for him to step out of line.

    "I know you're not spending the night at Theresa's mom's house," Tom says. "Congratulations," I say.
    The ROTC boy calls me from a bar, where he's drinking with teammates after a hockey game. "I've got tacks in my face for you," he yells into the phone. I look at the clock. It's after midnight.

    "What?" I say.

    "Some of them are yellow, but most are red, I think." "What?"
    "Hey Tice," he calls out to someone else. "What color are the tacks?" I hear yelling, music, a game on TV, a cheer.
    "Tice says there're some blue ones too." "In your face?" I say.
    "Yeah."

    "How many total?"

    "Like twenty. There's one inside my nose." "But why?"
    "Because," he says, shouting, it seems, more at me than into the phone, "I wanted to show my devotion to you."

    "Can you put Tice on the phone?" I say. "I need to ask him something." "Sure," he says.