People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman Read Free Book Online

"How do you know it was Cherifa who stopped her?"
     
    Molly answered leaning against the wet, white tiles.   She chose her words carefully, their hair and skin smelling of sweat and hot chlorine.
     
    "If you love someone very much and they want to destroy you, that is enough to destroy you."
     
    "Yes it is," she said.   "It certainly is."
     
    That was their first communication.   Both women had been, at least once, destroyed.
     
    Gestures and snippets of their courtship stood out more clearly than complete conversations.   One night, on the way home from somewhere, Kate stopped suddenly to take Molly's face in her hand and draw flaming red lipstick on her mouth with the other.
     
    "I don't understand how you can live on three days of work a week."
     
    "I can," Molly said.   "I have a rent-controlled apartment.   I don't buy anything.   I don't eat out."
     
    "Okay, you don't go to the opera, but a person cannot survive taking tickets at a movie theater part-time, not in the consumer age.
     
    "I'm not a consumer.   Look, I don't have a stereo so I don't buy records or cassettes.   I buy regular food like eggs.   I don't have to pay for organic quinoa.   I buy books on the street.   Yesterday I found The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter for fifty cents.   I obviously don't buy clothes."' But Kate was so convinced that Molly needed a higher standard of living that she started finding her bartending jobs at gallery openings and various private parties, where she could make salary and tips and take home leftover Brie at the end of the night.
     
    It wasn't long before Molly was employed as a servant for one of Spiros's parties.   Kate came and stood very close to her a few times and Molly poured, wiped and stared at Kate while she danced.   She watched Kate move, and after some wine, Kate began to move for her.
     
    She came closer still and then left with her husband.   That was Molly's first sharp sensation of unjust abandonment.   She wondered sincerely for the rest of the night if Kate always wanted to leave at precisely the same moment he did.   Or was it that no moment was worth experiencing once he was absent from it?   Yet, at the same time she felt a certain exhilaration because that was such a beautiful way to communicate with another person, watching her dance.
     
    Kate had called the next evening.   They had chatted.   She called again the night after that.   They chatted again.   She called the third night, which was the Fourth of July.   The fireworks started at twenty after nine, but Molly had stayed inside her hot apartment because she knew that Kate would call her.
     
    "What are you doing?"
     
    Molly waited a breath before answering.
     
    "Come over," she said.
     
    Molly didn't change her clothes.   She was short and sweaty and hot.
     
    Her shirt was too small and her shorts were baggy.   She stank.   Kate stood in the doorway and after two shy moments they placed their lips dryly on each other's mouths.   Kate was tall.   She had red eyelashes and wore a shirt with beige tongues on it.   They sat on the roof while things were exploding.   Molly was so happy she couldn't speak.   She couldn't explain anything or answer any questions.   She didn't want to talk.   She wanted to be really romantic.
     
    "Can I kiss you?"   she said.   "Let's kiss."
     
    Kate was sitting then.   Molly was standing, so she held Kate's head in her hands and kissed her.   Kate laughed then, putting her long arms around Molly's shoulders, and said, "You're fresh."
     
    "Then she said, "This is a strange night.   There are pinwheels of firecrackers, spinning and spitting with bursts of gunfire.   Emotions explode on a night like this."
     
    Molly had never been called fresh before.   It was a completely new word.   What did it mean?   She kissed Kate's neck, running her fingers back and forth over the bristles of Kate's haircut.   She loved her.
     
    Kate was a boy.   She was shy and looked