“Let me guess…third floor?”
“That’s the one.”
“So women’s health has merged with general medical?”
“So it seems.” He stands next to Grammy and punches the elevator button for the third floor. At the second floor the lift stops and oodles of people get on, pushing us against the back wall. Jonas quickly moves ahead of my grandma to keep her from being crushed in the throng of people.
I’ve been pressed into the back corner but I peer over the head of a woman to smile gratefully at Jonas for protecting my grandma. Once the doors open, we all spill out into the waiting area.
“Here, I’ll wait with Evelyn while you check her in. That will be quicker and easier on her. Then, when you’re done, I’ll head up to check myself in.”
“What, so you don’t have anything to do today?”
Why is he being so nice to me? Does he feel sorry for me now
?
“Sheesh, V, whatever I’ve got to do can wait. Your grandma’s needs are more important than mine. She’s like royalty.” He smiles at her.
“You’d better believe it.” She grins back at him. “Now, fetch my tiara.” They’ve always teased each other.
“Plus, she’s fed me enough dinners that I owe her, big-time.” He winks at Grammy.
“Thanks, Jonas.” I smile gratefully, thinking of all the meals we’ve shared together. When Grammy had an actual house, she used to cook for Jonas and me, our friends, her friends, whoever was in the neighborhood, whoever was in need. Jenner even came over a couple of times but her smart, sassy mouth collided with Grammy’s no-nonsense, straightforward sense of manners. Grammy chided her, Jenner bristled, and she never came back.
Once I’ve got Grammy checked in, Jonas goes to stand in line. I pick up a pair of well-used SkinScreen displayers and place them on my scalp. I adjust the volume and twirl a dial to focus the screen display on my forearm.
I scan the contents by running my fingers over my wrist. There’s a revised edition of a book called
Women’s Sexuality.
I glance over at my grandmother. Grammy struggles to stay awake. I idly flip through the pages. There are clinical drawings of penises and vaginas and black-and-white photos of men on top of women and women on top of men being projected onto my skin. The whole thing looks so clean-cut and sterile, it makes me laugh.
Grammy jerks and glances at my forearm. “What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Oh, this book makes it sound so wholesome. Sex, I mean.”
“Here, let me see.” She reaches for her purse and retrieves her reading glasses. “Well, that’s how the parts fit together. After you master that, the real fun begins.”
“Oh, and what’s that?” I ask, starting to feel nervous.
“Depends on what kind of partner you have.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She eyes me speculatively. “You
have
had sex before, right?”
I scoff. “What do you think?”
“You seem pretty savvy to me, Vienna. I’d say yes.” Her eyes drift shut.
I sigh.
You have no idea.
Grammy and I share a lot about a lot but my business is
my business.
Plus, this sex issue I’ve let out of the bag is nobody’s business but mine.
Yeah, right. Only now it’s mine and Jonas’s
.
I flip another display of the book by stroking my fingers across my tender skin and my eyes land on an article called “
Haven’t
Doesn’t Mean
Can’t
: On Women and Orgasm.” I quickly look up to make sure Jonas is nowhere near me. I spy him still standing in line. I turn so Grammy can’t see what I’m looking at, should she awaken from her doze. I read,
If a hypothetical woman and her partner only have intercourse for thirty seconds, without any other sexual touching, kissing or buildup—and with no focus on stimulating her in ways that are likely to lead to orgasm—then our hypothetical woman is unlikely to experience orgasm. That doesn’t mean she’s dysfunctional; it just means she and her partner are not doing much to produce orgasm.
“So now I’m a hypothetical,” I mutter.
“What did you say, dear?”
“Nothing, Grammy, resume your doze.” I continue reading:
Now we know that virtually any woman can climax–and indeed have multiple climaxes–if the circumstances of her life are right.
But the truth is “coming” isn't that easy if you're a woman. Nearly all men can come without difficulty, but women just aren't built that way.
That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It just means you need more practice
.
This one makes me burst out laughing. They have no idea how much “practice” I get, at least when I’m in my Headspace.
I lift my gaze.
My eyes track Jonas striding over to me, smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I say, pressing my hand over my forearm.
“What were you reading?”
“Nothing, it was nothing.”
“It looked like something.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It looks like something interesting.” His arm snakes out to grab my wrist.
I slam my hand on top of his. “Let it go, Jonas. It’s just a book. I was reading a book and I found something that was funny, alright?”
“Okay, alright, you’re sure touchy.”
“I have a right to be. I had an impulsive moment that I regret. Now I’m paying for it.”
He keeps his voice low, trying to be discreet. “Damn, Vienna, telling me a secret shouldn’t tweak you out that much. You’ve told me plenty of secrets over the years.” He rakes his hand through his dark wavy hair.
“You’re right, I’m being stupid.” I remove my hand from the skin display.
“I wouldn’t say stupid, but awfully edgy.” His eyes glance over to my arm. “
Women’s Sexuality,
huh?”
“Yes, now drop it.”
“Consider it dropped,” he says, putting both his palms in the air.
We sit in awkward silence.
“It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you,” he whispers.
“I said drop it,” I hiss.
“It’s normal.”
“It’s not normal. I’ve had enough sex in my life. It should have happened by now.”
“Not even with Elias?”
Elias used to work for Jonas. He had a hot body, was funny, kind. I dated him for about six months before we broke it off. We had sex a lot but I think he knew I was faking it. He told me one night I was frigid.
I told him he was an asshole. Besides, he wasn’t Jonas.
“No! Not your business! Now can we drop it?”
“Okay, okay,” he says and once again makes a gesture of surrender. “It’s dropped.”
“Okay,” I say, changing the screen display to something to do with medical advances using howler monkeys. I flip the screens without registering a word.
“But Vienna?”
“What?” I say, slapping my thigh with my hand. The SkinScreen makes a garbled screech in my ear. “Would you please, please, please drop it?”
“I was just going to ask you out to dinner. Jenner has her watercolor class tonight.”
“Oh.” I turn to look at him and am met with his sincere, open gaze. I’ve always liked that about him. He’s an honest man. But the gazes he’s giving me lately are, well…they’re different. “Will she get all pissy about it again, like she did a couple weeks ago?”
“Nah. We had a talk about how I get to have friends, she gets to have friends. Hell, she meets with her co-worker Brian every day for lunch. I’m the one who should be jealous.”
“Are you?”
“Not really. The guy’s a dick. If she wants him, she can have him.”
I nod my head. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”
“Feel like Italian? Luigi’s has managed to stay the course and they’re pretty much open every night.”
“Italian it is, then.”
A harried-looking nurse pops her head out from behind a swinging door. “Evelyn Peabody?”
“Over here,” I call and I gently shake Grammy’s shoulder.
Her eyes pop open and I help her to her feet and guide her to the back room for her yearly check-up, giving Jonas a small wave as we depart. “See you later,” I call out to him.
He nods, grins and laughs. “Oh, yeah.”
He’s got schemes in his head, I can tell. I just can’t tell what they are.
At Luigi’s later that evening, I scan around for signs of Jonas. I find him sitting in a dark, intimate corner booth. He’s staring at his hands as if they’re someone else’s.
“What’s going on?” I say, settling next to him.
He jerks, as if surprised, and brightens as he regards me. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks.” I felt like such a girl when I dressed tonight. I put on this outfit and that one, scrutinizing myself in the mirror before discarding garment after garment. I finally deemed my appearance complete, once I was dressed in greenish bronze see-through leggings, a white and black silk tunic with a slash of black leather going from my right hip to my left shoulder, and a sleeveless long black leather jacket. “Why do you look so gloomy?”
“Not gloomy anymore,” he says with a smile.
“You looked like you were contemplating having to choke kittens with your bare hands a second ago.”
He winces. “That bad, huh?”
“Uh huh. That bad.” He’s wearing a black jacket and a gold and black shirt that’s open at the top to reveal his dark chest hair. The man dresses casually during the day but, at night, he knows how to rock a good look. I’ve always appreciated the way he looks. My eyes wander over the face of my friend—the friend that I love. His dark hair is pushed back from his face. I love his dark blue eyes…his chiseled face…his chin…his full lips that usually curve into a smile when he’s around me. My gaze sweeps down his throat to his wide shoulders. I swallow, remembering that we’re just friends—good friends. Great friends. The
best
of friends. He’s the safest of the safe. He’s someone I can count on.
A waiter hustles up to the table. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I eye him for a second. He’s a study in angles, opposites, and art. His hair has some sort of product in it that allows him to curve and shape it. It pierces the air in spikes on the right and flows down to his shoulder on the left, like a glam actress from the early nineteen hundreds. His face has been made up Greta-Garbo-Hollywood style on the side with the spiky hair, and modern Nuevo Imagina on the Garbo side. There’s this trend flowing around called Nuevo—it’s Nuevo this and Nuevo that and it seems to mean “whatever the fuck I want it to be.”
A slight smile curves his lips. There’s a row of tiny, tiny diamonds along the top left lip. I’ll bet they’ve been affixed with a perma-product. Those babies are going nowhere until he wants them to—and until he applies a generous amount of solvent to his skin. “Well?” His shoulder goes up and down in a quick, practiced gesture.
“Sorry. I was just admiring the scene.”
He twirls in a circle. “Admire away.” His eyes flick to the room and back to me. “But do it fast. This place is jammed tonight as usual.”
“What are you having, Jonas?”
“Mezzaluna, on the rocks.”
“Vodka, huh?”
“You got it.”
I cock my head at him for a second. I’ve never known him to drink anything more than a beer or a glass of wine. “I’ll just have a beer,” I say to our exotic waiter. “What do you have on tap that’s cool and amber?”
“I’ve got just the thing,” he says, smiling mysteriously. “Let me surprise you.”
“Surprise away.” As he hustles off, I turn to Jonas. “Okay, now’s your chance.”
“To do what? Watch you getting off on someone who’s mastered Nuevo Imagina fashion? Any fool can do that.”
A small smile creeps up my face. “Jealous?”
“No!” he says quickly. “Of a gender bender? Hardly.”
“Good. I was thinking more you could even the playing field by telling me what’s bothering you.”
“Even the playing field as in that topic we’re not talking about? I spill because you spilled?”
“One and the same. And yes. You spill next. Take the heat off of me.” I smile.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just had words with Jenner before I left.”
“What kind of words?”
“Sharp and angry words. The kind that slice and dice.”
“Who stabbed first?”
“She did. She told me I haven’t been paying enough attention to her.”
“Haven’t you?”
“I always pay the same amount of attention to Jenner. How can you not? She demands it.”
“Yeah, but is it ever unasked-for, spontaneous bursts of affection?” I pick up a fork and twirl it between my fingers.
He blows his breath out between pursed lips. “Not for a long time.”
“Well, I’m no expert in LTRs but I know they can go up and down—sometimes easy, sometimes work.”
“Ours is all work. It’s like a construction project. Not only that, it’s so damn fragile that I have to wear gloves and whisper all the time. Some days I get it right and she’s kind. Some days I don’t and she’s a bitch. I just never know what’s going to set her off.”
“You’re such a good guy, Jonas. I hate to see you getting yanked around by her. I feel protective of you, like a lioness.”
“That makes me think I’m a child, V. Not what I was going for tonight.”
“Sorry. You know I’m as loyal a friend as there is.”
He flashes me a grateful expression. “That I do. We’ve been friends a long time. How’s the counseling job going, by the way? Is this the kind of thing you do with your clients? Get them to leak their innermost thoughts?”
“Oh, sure,” I say, a little too quickly. “Exactly right. You got it.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“Six months.” I scan for our waiter.
“It beats the last job, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Come on waiter dude, come on
!
“Selling clothes to the rich and entitled wasn’t my cup of tea. I had a bad attitude. Good thing I quit first or else I’d have been fired.”
“You make good money doing what you do?”
“You could say that.”
I’ve already pulled six figures.
“I manage.”
“Tell me again—where’d you get the training to do that kind of thing? Don’t you have to have a degree or something?”
I’ve been so vague with details, Jonas seems to have endless question whenever we see each other. It’s getting harder and harder to keep the secret. Plus, I can never remember what I told him last time. “Oh, you know.” I wave my hand breezily in the air. “You can get any degree you want via contextual computing platforms.”