Hot Little Hands by Abigail Ulman Read Free Book Online Page B

falsetto is so pretty. I close my eyes.
“Please take it slow, don’t get carried away. Let’s drive through the desert and get married today.”
    —
    After the set, we stand at the end of the bar, finishing the bottle, until the guy from Coed Dorm comes and screams at us to get our shit off the stage so they can play. I’m sloppy on my feet now and I drop my triangle wand as I’m shoving the percussion gear into my bag. I think about bending down to look for it in the half dark, but I need to use the bathroom, so I decide I’ll just play it with my house key from now on.
    When I get to the ladies’ room, there’s a line outside. “Hey,” says the girl in front of me. She’s wearing dangly earrings. “Great show.”
    “Hey, thanks,” I say. She smiles at me and I wonder if I should make out with her.
    “You’re pregnant, right?” says the girl in front of her. “You can go ahead of me.”
    “Oh, cheers.” I move to the front of the line and try the bathroom door. It’s locked. The girl who gave me her spot is wearing little black shorts and tall brown boots. I wonder if I should make out with
her.
    “Do you date anyone who works here?” I ask her. She looks confused.
    “The men’s room is free,” says a guy coming out of the men’s room. “You can use it.”
    The bathroom, like every public bathroom in this town, is disgusting. The floors are wet, the door handle is sticky, the graffiti isn’t funny, and there’s no toilet seat. I half sit, half stand, pull my dress up, clutch it in a bunch, and hope for the best.
    When I come out, the same guy is still standing there. He has blond floppy hair and wide-set blue eyes and he’s probably attractive but he’s not my type. Tan pants, lace-up Vans, a short-sleeved pale blue button-down shirt, and a big fat silver ring on his thumb.
    “I think your friend should go to the emergency room,” he says.
    “Who?” I look around until I see Lars sitting at the bar with a girl who waits tables at Suppenküche. She’s holding a handful of ice to his forehead and it’s dribbling down his face as it melts. He’s trying to catch the droplets with his tongue. “Look at those reflexes,” I say. “He’s fine.”
    “Are you really pregnant?” the guy asks.
    “Yep,” I say, “for a limited time only.”
    He holds his hand out and introduces himself as Anton. He asks what I’m doing in the States, and I say I’m doing a PhD in cinema studies, and we get into a conversation about Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson, and the difference between childish cinema and the cinema of childhood. Then my stomach rumbles and it takes me a minute to work out that it’s not alcohol or attraction or my unwanted pregnancy that’s doing it. I just haven’t eaten since breakfast.
    “Hey, where do you live?” I ask.
    “Just on Seventeenth. Whoa, are you okay?”
    I reach out and grab hold of the wall beside me. “Do you have any food there?”
    —
    His bike is an eight-speed with brakes and a brand name, and tires that wouldn’t look out of place on an army jeep. He rolls it between us as we walk. When we get to his building, he says it’s too heavy to carry up the stairs, and he takes his time locking it up in the downstairs hallway. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I say. “You could leave that thing lying out on the pavement all night and no one would take it.”
    He looks down at his bike and gives a small, sad shrug. “I’d take it,” he says.
    The apartment is standard San Francisco Victorian: a long narrow hallway with bedrooms and a bathroom coming off it, and a living room and a kitchen in the very back. Anton’s probably about twenty-four and I’m expecting ramen noodles or leftover Chinese takeaway, but what he brings out is a plate with five different cheeses on it, a bowl of hummus (“homemade,” he says), and crackers imported from Sweden. He sits opposite me and watches while I eat. “I’ve seen you before,” he says.