22.
I land in Seattle, its buildings of varying shades of gray and glass, wet leaking down from their tops and staining, an omnipresent shield of clouds that feels straight out of a villain's backstory in a superhero movie, that unwavering evil, the stone-cold nature of the past. Despite this, I revel in my surroundings, the dewy wetness, the way little drops of water leak from the eaves in steady plops, the feeling of refuge inside clothing stores, the endless coffee shops, the crooning music of harmonized male voices, fingers on laptops clicking away steadily, the focus and the persistence. I meet Tanya three weeks after moving to the city, after settling down in an apartment I've rented off Craigslist, something small, a futon in a living room, rent due on Monday, leave it in an envelope, cash only dude.
She's placed in my path, her face on the dotted line, waiting, a tumult of hair, red lipstick, a serious yet playful expression almost as if she's taunting me, almost as if she's dangling her attention in front of me, a carrot on a stick. And if I only reach out to bite–
At this point in my life, I have had one other girlfriend. Sammi. She is synonymous with the sun. She takes my virginity in a parking lot without a condom. I pay for the emergency contraceptive with money I don't have, with cash I borrow from the pockets of friends turned strangers. She is back in the land of heat and sky, the endless blue, the dry air, the chapped lips, eggs frying on pavement, blasts of air conditioning like liquid ice. Her number in a phone long since forgotten on the side of a highway, somewhere in the redwoods of California forest, climbing and climbing and climbing into mountains. And now there is Tanya. She is nothing and everything. She is waiting here for me, leather jacket, pale hands, one tattoo on her left wrist, a star, stick and poke, done by a friend when she was way too high she tells me once, laughing with mocking self-deprecation.
She understands me in a fundamental way, though it is different, warped, almost as if a layer of varnish has aged on her story, the original intent of the artist hidden by years of soot clinging to the sticky protective film. But I see her for the first time this way. I do not know the artist's original intention. I see Tanya post-life, in retrospect. I see her result, not her work-in-progress. I don't think the film should be removed. I think it was there the whole time, that it cannot be scraped off and dissolved. I do not realize, when I meet her, that there is another Tanya beneath the surface. The original girl, the first draft, uncorrupted and true, her colors shining brighter and more vibrant than can ever be seen on surface level, that can only be unearthed by the finest, most conscientious and practiced conservator. But I am not a conservator, I am a visitor. I am a viewer without an audio guide. I am a boy.
She is friends with my new roommate, Craig. Craig is from Issaquah or Spokane or Snohomish. Towns named after Native Americans long forced out, their traces lingering only in language, a permanent mark turned jail cell like capturing a thumbprint before a trial. It is taken and it is seen as given. Craig is not of Native American descent. He is white, absurdly pale, most likely Irish or something similar, perhaps English, either the conqueror or the conquered. It is only ever one or the other. I try to picture him in the heat, under the uncompromising sun of Arizona. His skin turning as red as his hair until there is only one solid color of him from his very top to his very bottom. He is carefree and a stoner, not unlike most of the people I've met in my age group in this part of the country build for the automobile.
They think my name is Tucson. They think I am twenty-one. Technically, neither are true.
Tanya sits beneath a tree weeping sap, a sky weeping water. Sheltered beside the column of wood, a semi-circle of dry ground under the canopy of branches. She smokes a cigarette and she does so aggressively. It is the only way I can describe it. The snap of her thumb on the lighter, the flame dancing in her eyes. The hard inhale that steals half the ash in one go, crumbling to the dirt in the light breeze. She doesn't look at me, focused only on that cigarette. She smokes it down until it's only a nub, until the filter reveals no white, then tosses it over her shoulder, swallowed by the rain.
"Tanya, this is Tucson. Tucson, Tanya," Craig says, shrugging his shoulders effeminately.
"Tucson isn't a name, it's a place," she snaps, her incisor catching on her lower lip.
"It's both," I reply, digging my hands into my pockets, suddenly self-conscious. I realize it is because she is beautiful and it is hard to stand so close to something that burns as bright as she, even after years of practice baking beneath the sun.
"It's about the order of things," she says. "What came first? You or the place?"
"We're in Seattle. That was the name of a man before it was the name of a city but no one remembers the man," I reply, not quite answering her question. Between the man and the city, I know whose burden weighed heavier. The displaced people, their names all over this land, their humanity falling forgotten within it.
"I guess," she allows.
"Don't be a bitch, T," Craig interjects. "His name's Tucson so it's Tucson."
"Where you from, Tucson?" Tanya continues like he hasn't spoken. "Let me guess. Tucson?"
For the first time in my life, I wish my name to be John. Uncomplicated John. The face on the expired driver's license. Learner's permit gone sour. I don't know how to drive but I want to try.
"That's where I was most recently, yeah," I say, regretting the hole I've dug myself into. To my surprise, she doesn't laugh. Doesn't taunt or tease me as I expect her to do. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, long and wavy. There are three piercings, two in the lobe and one at the apex, a delicate silver ring. She shrugs and fishes in her pocket for another cigarette, takes out the pack and revealing its empty contents, coming up short.
"Welcome to Seattle," she says. "Got a cigarette?"
x
"Can we talk outside?" I ask. Bella sits before me, Angela across from her. I've known Angela for a few years, five give or take. We've never had a real conversation. I only know her as I know Mike, one of Esme's employees. She takes them on and keeps them on, surprising for a food service job. It's because she treats them so well, with care and compassion. They never want to leave. It's a trait I once related to fervently.
There is a milkiness to Bella's eyes, almost like she hasn't slept. Hasn't eaten. There's a tinge in my gut, memories of a harder time when food was scarce then plentiful then scarce again. When splitting a sandwich was a necessity, not a decision. Bella's half goes untouched before her, one bite taken out, crumbs on the plate. Angela eyes me warily. I wonder how much she truly knows, how much she's seen. If she was there for Esme when I left the first time, the vow I took to never exert such pain again, not to someone like Esme, someone who is kind and pure and different, someone who is other not in a dangerous way, but in a compassionate way. The curious, foreign type who gives and sacrifices and asks nothing in return.
"I want to know who she is," Bella replies, still twisted around, facing me. Her fingers clutch the back of the chair tightly. I don't understand where this has come from, who told her about the piece of myself I purposefully withheld, the locked away part of me, the key's hiding place long forgotten.
"Fine, but can we do it outside?" I try again. My throat is dry and I coach myself down, remind myself to cool off. Bella is young and married. She hasn't told me of her life, not even in the slightest. I know nothing about the face on the dotted line, the woman put in my path, the one whose lips are scarred into my memory, the feel and the taste of them, her hands wrapped around my neck and digging into my collar, the snip of the scissors as the blades cut through my overly long hair. On impulse, I reach my hand out and brush her fingers, the tendons taut where they're clenched. Her hand relaxes and she sighs, a long breath out through her nose.
"I'll be right back," Bella mutters, throwing an apologetic glance Angela's way. She trails me outside of the sandwich shop and it has begun to rain. We're stuck under the eave, dodging pedestrians as they weave in and out of stores, moving quickly to escape the falling rain themselves. "Who is she?" she asks again.
"Who told you about her?" I challenge. I picture Esme, Carlisle. My conversation with him earlier, his warnings to be gentle, to treat Bella with care, to not fall into the past, to repeat my mistakes. Esme's reproachful look. I only want what's best for the both of you. I remember how hard it was… the last time. On all of us. Before me, Bella scowls. She takes a half step back, arms crossed.
"No one told me of her. You especially," she snaps back, digs a hand into her pocket and unearths a photograph, shoves it into my chest. "I found this."
I look at the photo, a rush of memory so potent it's tangible, the moment the flash went off, my brain thick and hazy, a mixture of whiskey and something more, a drug slipped into my palm, an escape. The curve of Tanya's nose in profile, how it seemed to shapeshift in front of my eyes, the spots in my vision after the picture was taken, false stars illuminating my view, interlocking constellations. I suck in a breath and hold it.
"Where did you find this?" I ask, my voice softer than I expect. Bella clocks this and relaxes her stance minutely, aggression blending into compassion into concern.
"In my dresser," she says, then corrects herself. "Your old dresser. It was stuck in the crack."
"Hm," I reply noncommittally, brushing my finger over the silken film. The beginning of the end, a series of dominos placed in a line. Just one flick of the pointer finger and they all fell, ending in the destruction of pieces I hadn't even known I'd placed. I was unprepared for Tanya and all that came after. I tear my eyes away from the photo, meet Bella's. Her face has transformed into something open and raw. The face on the milk carton, a girl whose heart is needlessly breaking. I clutch her to me tightly, feel her stiff against my chest. Hold her to me, remembering the feel of it, memorizing it. I am struck again by the need to trap her, to keep her, to grasp so tightly I leave a tattoo on her skin. Possessiveness turned violent. I force myself to relax my grip. I have always held on too strong.
"Who is she?" Bella whispers, looking up, her face speckled with rain, freckles across the bridge of her nose, brown eyes unfathomable.
"She is the past, that's all. I promise."
"Why did you hide her?" she asks, her hands twisting in the bottom of my jacket. "I thought you told me everything."
"Not everything," I reply. "I told you the important things. Will you do the same?"
She looks down then up again, swallows, the dam building up brick by brick. I expect a refusal, a denial. I fear she will ask more questions about Tanya, ones I won't know how to answer, that'll show me for who I am, all of my other names, the other people who inhabited this skin. The weak ones, the cold ones, the hungry ones, the dependent ones. The broken ones. I don't know if I'm ready to unleash the torrent, not now or ever. I want her to know me for me after the varnish has aged, the artist's false intent. She takes a deep breath to speak.
"I will," she says. I'll try."
x
i do have a loose outline that i'm following but every time i go to write the chapter there's other stuff i want to say! thank you for being patient with me, i know the pace of this story has been slower than most. i'm getting lost in the prose but i'm working on it. i still can't respond to reviews (thanks so much ffn trash website), but know i read them and am so appreciative.