Women. Chloe Caldwell

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      It is the night before New Year’s Eve. Finn has just returned from visiting her family in Florida for the holidays and when she got back, her girlfriend left to visit her own. This leaves Finn and me alone in the city with no plans for the weekend. After some Facebook messaging, she drives over to where I am house sitting. I have changed into a blue and white baseball shirt and gold hoop earrings. I don’t know what to wear, and want to look tomboyish, not super girly. I don’t know what Finn likes. And, apparently, I care.

      When she arrives, the energy between us is palpable. I offer her a drink and we both sort of pace around each other, making observations about the apartment. She sees the self-help book Women’s Moods on my bed, picks it up, studies the cover and before chucking it back down, jokes, I know everything in here, whatchu wanna know? (It would turn out she actually didn’t know everything in there. Neither of us knew how volatile my moods would become.)

      We finish our beers, leave the apartment and walk to the bar. It is a cold night. I wear an enormous winter coat, Finn has on only a hooded sweatshirt. At the bar she orders a beer sample platter for us to share. I say, I never go out and drink with anyone anymore, and she says, Neither do I! She reaches across the table and begins going through my wallet. She sees tons of unnecessary business cards and says, Jeez, dude. She takes out a New York Public Library card I have, and says, This is the coolest thing you have. Emboldened by the beers, after an hour or so, I tell Finn that I don’t understand how lesbians have sex. Dildo? I ask. Vibrator? Fingering? Humping? She shrugs, clearly amused. It’s different for everyone, she says. It’s different every time.

      Finn gets a rise out of engaging with strangers and I love watching her do it. People sometimes approach her when we’re out, telling her she looks like someone they know. She is charming and can hold conversations. We meet a guy with weed cookies and convince him to give us a couple, which we quickly eat. We meet a guy who stutters. (Who meets a stutterer? we ask ourselves, laughing for weeks after.) Like in that book about animals, Unlikely Friendships, we are an unlikely pair, and when the stutterer asks us how we know each other, one of us says, We’re cousins, and he believes us. When we return to my apartment, we sit on the couch and roll a joint with a page from a book since we don’t have rolling papers. Finn walks around the room commenting on the books on the shelves. She is hard on books, making snobby, but humorous, comments. We lie in bed together, stoned from the cookies. The bed is against a brick wall and I begin to imagine we are alone in a different city together. Let’s pretend we’re in Paris or Brooklyn, I say. Finn gives me her sweatshirt to wear that night. I fall asleep in it. Later, she wakes me to retrieve it, smoothing her hand over my temples, kissing my forehead, before leaving.

      The next night, New Year’s Eve, she emails and asks what I’m doing. I probably won’t want to do something but will, she says. I’m the opposite, probably will want to do something but won’t, I reply. I’ve been invited to a party of an acquaintance, so I ask Finn if she wants to go with me. She says yes, and picks me up. I went to the hair salon that day and paid too much money for highlights. My hair is blonder than usual. The hair is good, Finn says to me, flashing her white teeth, It’ll turn heads. The party is low-key, almost boring, and Finn and I plant ourselves in the living room, mainly socializing with each other. I am sitting across from Finn on the couch, and she is in a chair. She pats her lap and points to my feet. I move them into her lap, as though this is the most natural thing for me to do, and Finn works them with her hands nonchalantly, as though this is nothing new either. Later, a guy at the party mistakes us for a couple. Neither of us minds, we laugh, possibly it’s what we were after.

      After midnight Finn asks do I want a ride home or do I want to sleep over and I say, sleep over. When we get to her bedroom, she asks do I want shorts or pants to sleep in, and I say, pants. She lends me a T-shirt that says I Don’t Do Drugs I Am Drugs, on it. I am on the inside of the bed near the window. Finn is standing near the dresser and she says, You’re in my bed! She sounds bewildered, triumphant, amused. (She would speak with this exact intonation two more times, when we weren’t just friends anymore, when we were beginning to fuck, to fall in love: You answered the door in a towel! and You sat on my lap!) And though we’re just friends, she puts her arms around me, asking, Is this okay? I tell her it’s okay. We say goodnight. I can’t sleep, I say, a few moments later. I know, me either, she laughs, tell me a story. I cannot think of anything interesting, and I mumble and slur in a drunken stupor until I fall asleep.

      We wake in the same position we fell asleep in. I move the curtain from the window to check the weather. The sun surprises me. Sun! The sun is out! I start saying that sort of thing. Finn stands in the doorway, watching me. I think it’s cute when people are excited about the sun, she says. Instead of going to change in the bathroom, I change out of her shirt and back into my dress while still in her bed. I feel self-conscious though, and aware of it, wondering if it is too intimate an act. While Finn is in the bathroom, I look around the apartment. Everything is in its right place. Knick-knacks and what look like expensive Japanese paintings on the walls. I wonder which one of them – Finn or her girlfriend – is the lover of Japanese art. I see no photos of her girlfriend, though I try not to look. I let my eyes be lazy. As we walk out of her apartment building, Finn mentions that she isn’t going to tell her girlfriend that I slept over, because she wouldn’t understand. Okay. Right, I say. Besides, nothing happened. What is there to tell? I understand and yet I don’t understand.

      While Finn drives us downtown, we sing along with the radio. She tells me it’s the first time in a decade she hasn’t taken a shower before work and I say something like, Man, you gotta loosen up. She smiles. In this moment I remember noticing myself affecting her habits, in what could be considered either a negative or positive way. We park and decide we want to grab coffees to bring to work. It is one of those days that feels fake or cinematic, because parking is free and the streets are dead. I feel like I’m on a movie set. My mom calls my cell phone. I answer, telling her I’m with Finn. Finn and I are both smiling and laughing. (Later Finn told me I looked beautiful that day, with sun on my newly lightened hair. She said my eyes lit up when my mom called.) We order our coffees and Finn insists on buying mine. We hug before we go our separate ways. A couple weeks later Finn emails me a song, says it reminds her a little of us. The lyrics are about waking up hungover with someone, about watching them get dressed as you block the sun from your face.