You know you wish you were me Read online

  But then doubt crept in and Hana took Olivia’s gave over the tops of nearby buildings as a sign she wasn’t at all interested.

  To try and distract herself she watched two homeless people in the parking lot across from the street from her building. Their cardboard shelters were tattered and they were standing next to them as if they were neighbors in the suburbs, chatting over the fence after mowing their lawns. She thought about an alternate reality. She would be an artist. If she was an artist she would create something inspired by the homeless people who stay in her neighborhood.

  She could interview them and tell everyone their stories, humanize them so that no one could never just walk past a homeless person again without empathizing. Then she thought of Ronald Regan and how he didn’t care about people. He didn’t care about domestic policy. She kicked the wall.

  She was so tired. She thought about telling Olivia about the fight she had been in a few weeks before. She was alone at a punk show. She had punched a skinhead kid for calling her a name she won’t repeat. He couldn’t have been more than 17, but she punched him so hard that his eyes rolled back in his head and then she ran.

  The feeling of Olivia’s hand on hers brought her out of the memory. It was not something about herself that she was ready to bring to the moment anyway. She looked down to make sure it was Olivia’s hand and followed it up her beautifully contoured arms to her long neck and finally her gorgeous, smiling face. Olivia moved her hand up Hana’s forearm and caressed it.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” Olivia said, looking sleepily into Hana’s eyes. For a moment Hana was heartbroken at the thought that maybe the whole experience, everything that was happening at that moment could be excused by too much wine. She was stiff, waiting for Olivia’s next move. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Four years. Four and a half years,” Hana stammered and was embarrassed.

  Olivia leaned in to Hana and rested her head on her chest.

  “I can hear your heart,” Olivia said.

  Hana was frozen, except for her heart, which was beating so fast she was afraid it would betray her by revealing her desperation. She managed to put her arms around Olivia awkwardly, in an attempt to appear relaxed. She took a deep breathe and the scent of Olivia reminded Hana of girls in the locker room in high school – hair spray and lacy bras. She smiled.

  Then she remembered Manny’s arms. Thick and sweaty. Had she gone into them or had he put them around her?

  Olivia sighed and released herself from the hug. Hana wanted to ask her what she was thinking. What did that hug mean? Was she sad? Did she like her? She hoped it meant she liked her.

  “We should clean up” Hana said instead.

  Olivia looked over at the chairs and wine glasses and nodded. “Can I hang out at your place till Templeton comes home?”

  They had lounged in Hana’s apartment and talked until late. She told Olivia about her mom how Hana had moved to LA to find her roots, which made her laugh, because they only thing she had discovered was that she loved Japanese food.

  Hana knew she was sinking into deep infatuation. She was talking about herself without feeling stupid and without having to pay the person who was listening.

  Olivia was clean, intelligent, funny and big, metaphorically. Hana was the bigger woman in size, something she never forgets to note, but it was Olivia’s confidence and her voice, everything about her made her expand and fill space no matter where she was.

  When Templeton got home, the two women parted with a quick hug. Hana tried to say something meaningful and funny, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out, so she just gave a little awkward wave with her fingers as she shut the door.

  She was wired, but felt like bed was the best place for her. So she lay down and tried to relax. But leftover drugs and a strong current of lust were running through her body. Also the desire to see Olivia again as soon as possible had her scheming reasons to visit Templeton’s apartment. Maybe she could wait in front of the building in the morning and act surprised when Olivia appeared.

  She closed her eyes and tried to relax, replaying images of Olivia in that beautiful orange light. Her elegant neck as she laughed. Templeton’s comment about the photograph. Maybe that was code.

  The last thing Hana thought about before she fell asleep was Olivia’s stories of the surfer girl. Maybe Olivia had been showing off. It was almost like a challenge to Hana. See if you can top this. Or maybe Olivia was just being honest. Maybe she had decided she liked Hana and she was telling her the dirtiest stories first to test her, to see if she would stick around to find out the real stuff, which Hana thought she would.

  Hana awoke to knocking. She wanted to ignore it, but the persistence was alarming as was the volume to her sore head. It was eight in the morning and she had not had enough sleep. She flopped back down, then a woman’s voice seeped through the wall, calling her name. It was Olivia.

  Hana shuffled herself out of bed as fast as she could. She put on a sweatshirt and looked at her face in the mirror. She had sleep creases down the left side of her face and bloodshot eyes. Fuck it, she thought as she reached to open the door.

  “I need a favor,” Olivia said. Her face was tense and her eyes were opened very wide. She looked like she had had four cups of coffee already.

  She rushed past Hana, sat on the couch and emptied her bag out onto the coffee table. Hana looked at the pile of stuff then watched as Olivia pulled a small jar out of her shirt.

  “OK, this is sperm and I would like you to help me,” she said very fast as she cupped the little container.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Put it in me,” she was moving the container back and forth toward her crotch.

  “Put it in you?”

  “Yeah,” she looked around the room. “After I, um, have an orgasm.”

  “Are you kidding?” Hana laughed in disbelief.

  “Templeton and I want to have a baby. No, I mean I want to have a baby and Templeton is helping.”

  “Then why are you asking me?”

  “It was an idea,” Olivia shrugged her shoulders.

  “But, it’s his. Why don’t you get him to do it?”

  “No way! No.”

  “Ok, can we stop?” Hana stood up. “Do you want a coffee or something?”

  “No, this stuff has a time limit. I already spent about five minutes outside your door working up the courage to knock and then another minute knocking and now it’s been over a minute since I’ve been in here. What is that, like ten minutes? I have to do it as soon as I can,” Olivia stood up quickly, still holding the jar in one hand.

  “Never mind, this is too fucking weird. I’m sorry,” she said as she tried to put latex gloves, a plastic syringe, keys, change and random papers from the pile back into her bag with her free hand.

  “No, wait, just give me a second to think,” Hana’s instinct was to tell Olivia to get out because she was ruining an infatuation that had been perfect to that point. But she was attracted to her and wanted to spend time with her and doing this would be some good leverage toward making that happen.

  She watched Olivia wait for her answer, biting her bottom lip. Hana liked seeing her vulnerable and this made her want to help her, to make her happy. Even if fulfilling her request was against her better judgment.

  “OK, I’ll do it.”

  Hana hastily made the bed while Olivia sucked the gluey stuff out of the container with the syringe and handed it to Hana. The smell made her want to gag. She had never seen or been close to the stuff before and she held it as far away from her face as possible.

  Olivia walked to the side of the bed and took her jeans and underwear off naturally, as if she’d been undressing in front of Hana for years. She rolled the clothes up. “I have to have my ass elevated,” she said as she placed the roll on the bed then she got onto the bed and positioned herself on top of the roll.

  Hana breathed in quickly at the sight of Olivia’s most intimate places. She fe
lt a familiar tingling and laughed quietly. Just ten minutes before, she was sound asleep where Olivia was laying, half naked.

  “What?” Olivia looked embarrassed for the first time.

  “I’m sorry,” Hana took a deep breath. “Let’s go.” Hana followed Olivia’s instructions carefully, inserting the syringe as Olivia touched herself.

  Hana had to look away from Olivia’s body. She was confused by this surreal situation. They weren’t having sex, but something sexual was happening. She was simulating intercourse with this woman. She was penetrating her and she was getting excited, but it wasn’t a sexual excitement. It was clinical, almost like she was either going to pass or fail this thing.

  “Ok, I’m almost there,” Olivia said, a little breathless.

  Hana looked at Olivia’s face as she got closer. Her eyes were closed and she moved her lips as if she were speaking silently. Then Hana felt the syringe move with the contractions of Olivia’s orgasm.

  “OK, now. Not too fast,” she said lifting her head to watch, analyzing Hana’s technique. Hana noticed her hand shaking a little as she pushed the syringe down and released the stuff as slowly as she could. When the plastic couldn’t go in any further, she let go and stood up, trying to relax as she watched Olivia take out the empty syringe, twist her body around, lift her legs and placed her feet flat on the wall.

  “This is supposed to help those little fuckers get to my egg faster. Are you going somewhere?”

  “To wash my hands,” Hana said.

  “Sexy.” Olivia laughed softly.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “A cigarette,” Olivia laughed her animal laugh again and Hana laughed as well.

  Two days after the insemination Hana was back at work with Manny. She wanted badly for him to ask her if she had met anyone, but he was quiet, except for whistling along to songs on the radio and swearing when he spilled some jam. Hana had tried to help him clean it up, but he motioned her away.

  She waited another fifteen minutes for him to forget about the jam before she raised the subject herself.

  “You want to hear something crazy?”

  He turned his head quickly towards her, so she could see his left eye and his nose. He raised his eyebrows and she took it as a signal to start her story.

  When she got to the part with the syringe, Manny turned his whole body toward her and folded his arms.

  “So I did it.”

  “You fell for that?” Manny let out a little hiss and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “That chick wants something from you?” Manny raised his arms and shoved toward the sky with both hands.

  “Like what?”

  “Shit, who knows,” he said looking away from her. He took a deep breath.

  Hana thought about Manny’s daughters and how he said he wanted to see them, but their mother wouldn’t let him. She wondered what exactly happened. He had told her it was messed up, but he hadn’t said what exactly it was.

  She couldn’t imagine being protected from a parent who wanted to see her. For her, it was the opposite, it was like her mother was being protected from her.

  “You’re an idiot, you know. This chick, you think she likes you? She’s just using you.”

  “Shut up,” Hana rolls dough over on the table a little harder. She is hurt. Why would he say that? Maybe he does remember what happened between them, whatever it was.

  “But, shit, if you like her, go for it,” Manny smiled then and Hana felt like he might be happy for her.

  “I don’t know – what if there’s a baby, too?”

  Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. Baby, baby, baby. It was all Hana had thought about since that morning. Baby. Diapers. Throw up. Shit.

  She knew nothing about kids. How was she going to date a woman with a baby?

  Who was she kidding? Manny was right. She couldn’t even feed herself properly anymore. She couldn’t really cook. She didn’t understand what a child needed.

  “A baby, man, that’s just one more thing to love,” he said and turned around back to his dainty pastries and Hana watched his marked arms move in graceful patterns back and forth and wished it was easy with him all of the time.

  “Do you think I should call her?”

  “I’m not the right person to ask,” he said as he waved flour onto the wide wooden bench.

  Hana opened her mouth to disagree. To make him feel better. As if she could make him feel anything. She doesn’t want him to think she is childish, like a schoolgirl gossiping with her friends. He liked silence at work. Hana liked his silence. It’s why they both liked their job. They kept their hands moving through the dough, tired but strong together in the early morning hours.

  She hoped, maybe one day if he trusted her he would tell her more about Rose. Hana tried to picture her. She had a little to go on from the weathered tattoo on his right forearm. Big dark hair, sad eyes. All Hana really knew was that she was dead. Something the manager slipped into conversation when she had been there a couple of weeks.

  “Has Manny told you about his dead wife yet? That’s a doozy?”

  Hana knew immediately where she stood with that guy, quietly at her bread station, not telling him anything about her personal life. If he was so loose with painful details of the lives of her coworkers how would he handle the information that she may have just gotten a complete stranger pregnant?

  No, she liked their morning routine. Silence, the radio playing oldies, like the ones her father listened to in the garage when she was growing up. She enjoyed those times too. It was the only time they spent together, and they would sing the old songs and she watched him mend copper pipes or fill up the tires of her bike. They both knew she could do it herself, but her dad seemed to like helping her out and she never liked to get in the way of him and something he liked doing.

  “But you let me know what happens with this crazy chick, she may be the one,” with this he let out a laugh that sounded like sandpaper on metal. “Man I have heard some crazy shit before…”

  Hana let herself laugh, glad that she didn’t feel hurt when he made fun of her and excited as she remembered Olivia’s feet flat against the wall of her bedroom.

  She watched as the sunlight danced in clouds of flour between her and Manny. Her back was straight and she was smiling. She imagined herself on the edge of a cliff looking out over a huge ocean. It was comforting because she knew she was safe. If she jumped, the water was not far below and it was warm. She knew she was supposed to jump and swim and feel the pleasure of the water soak deep into her body and hold her in its warmth. Turning around and going back the way she came was not an option.

  Days later, Hana was outside her front door digging for her keys in her backpack when Templeton whistled from his front door, one story above her head. He was in a silver satin robe and plaid pajama bottoms.

  “Can I bring some coffee down?”

  “Sure, can you give me a minute?” Hana said as she put the key into the bolt of her front door. She looked around the apartment. She was nervous, something she had not had the chance to be with Olivia days before. Her well worn A Woman’s Body book was still on the coffee table. She brought it out after Olivia had left, awkwardly after lying in Hana’s bed for a couple of hours. They had talked, mostly about all of the research Olivia had done into getting pregnant. Fertility signs to watch for, which sperms make a boy and which ones make a girl. She asked Hana if she had ever thought about having a baby. Hana hadn’t. She was lying on her bed, looking at her ceiling, which she did most days. She had never thought about having a baby.

  “Well, you’re still young,” Olivia had said.

  Olivia left Hana with what she had probably intended to be a kiss on the cheek, but turned out to be more of a soft graze. Her hair tickling Hana’s lips and making her heart beat quickly. Hana closed the door behind Olivia and did that thing she’s seen in romantic comedy films, where the infatuated character shuts the door and turns around with both hands still touching th
e wood, slides down the door, sits on the floor, looks up to the sky and sighs. It was a genuine feeling. She was glad to have gotten rid of Olivia so she could have the moment. It felt good. She was tempted to go to the bathroom and practice asking Olivia out in the mirror, but laughed out loud at the thought.

  She put the book away in her bedroom, picked up some bits and pieces off the floor and put out the little she had in the way of snacks, on the coffee table.

  Templeton knocked on her door minutes later. He had changed out of the pajama bottoms and into cut off jeans, but the robe remained. Hana liked it and thought he probably had more glamour than she ever would.

  “Hey, I like your place. Mine is so rectangular, yours is flat and square, like a house. Mine feels like and elevator shaft.”

  “Really, I didn’t realize they were so different.”

  “Oh yeah, you’re lucky, you have doors and rooms. I have a studio. What do you pay? Never mind, don’t answer that. I’m rude sometimes.”

  Hana took the french press Templeton was holding and put it on the coffee table where she had laid out some french bread and cheese as well as individual creamers.

  “Oh my god, chez manifique,” Templeton said as he sat down on the couch and picked up one of the creamers and lipped the words I love these.

  “Me too,” she smiled.

  “Where do you buy them?” he said as he tore the top off of one and sniffed it as if it were a glass of wine.

  “I don’t. I work at the French Bakery. They give us the cheese when it’s old, and the rest, well, I bake the french sticks. I have a big bag and I work in back, so, you know,” Hana folded her arms. She wasn’t sure why she was telling this guy that she stole from work. Was it to impress him? After all he was the best friend of the woman she’d squirted his semen into the day before and in a weird detached way, that meant they had been intimate.

  “It’s my perk,” she justified.

  “And mine,” Templeton said as he motioned toward the bread, a request for permission to start.

  “Oh yeah, help yourself. The cheese is ok, it’s just the manager doesn’t sell it if it’s past the use by date.”