his waffle along its grid lines, “did you tell her about Bermuda? Mishti and I are going to Bermuda.”
“For Christmas,” said Mishti, dutifully, as if she hadn’t already told me. She didn’t touch the eggs in front of her, she wanted to watch our interaction closely, she wanted to ensure its success.
“I’ve heard.”
Carlo reached out across the table and took Mishti’s hand. He smiled so wide it was actually beautiful and luminous. He couldn’t wait to go to Bermuda with Mishti. He looked at her with eyes that said You’re hot and smart and he looked at me and said that he loved dolphins, and that there’s supposed to be an incredible aquarium.
“I want you to put all the textbooks away and relax,” he told her, holding her hand. “It’s going to be our real vacation.”
Mishti smiled a sincere and bashful smile because she has never been encouraged to relax in her entire overachieving life and finals are coming up and the truth is she’s exhausted.
We ate in silence for a little while then. Carlo finished his waffle. He broke the silence to say he loved it. “Great fucking waffle.” I finished my omelet and loved it too, but I never don’t love an egg, no matter what you do to it. “Love a motherfucking omelet!” I offered, to be a good sport, but then I felt very shy and sorry, and started thinking about Tom’s mother and my fucking his imaginary sister. Mishti didn’t eat. I wished she would take a bite but she was trying to think of something to say, something that would open Carlo up and reveal him to me.
I, in counter-loyalty, wanted Carlo to see that Mishti would never fully reveal herself to him, that the reflection of himself he saw in her was the excellent surface of a pool, a pool whose floor was irregular and too deep to see.
“Well, Joan’s distracted too,” I said, to remind him that he had been late, that Mishti and I talked about things he didn’t know.
Mishti straightened her neck and said, “You’re kidding.” I wasn’t sure how much she had understood. She looked over my head at nothing, as if looking out a window, and seemed overtaken by total disgust—I hadn’t included disgust as one of the reaction options, but Mishti no longer seemed to be breathing in or out.
A waiter passed behind our table and Carlo spun around and stopped him and asked for the check, simultaneously handing over his credit card. During the exchange Mishti whispered to me, “Who?” and I shrugged and told her, “Tom,” as if it weren’t a very big deal.
“But she’s . . .” Mishti was struggling with something I couldn’t identify. “But she’s so old,” Mishti concluded, a little too loudly. Carlo turned back around and faced us. Mishti kept talking: “Why would she be the one he wants?”
I hadn’t expected this particular grievance. I thought Mishti would mock you for cradle robbing, or mock Tom for ladder climbing, or mock sexual intercourse itself for being such a pathetic human activity, but she seemed utterly and specifically disappointed that Tom had chosen you. I’d never known Tom’s choices to matter to her at all, one way or another. Her disappointment gave your fucking a legitimacy I hadn’t previously given it.
She said, “The Joan epidemic! It was bad enough coming from you—you had to teach it to Tom? What’s wrong with both of you?”
I said, “Sloppy Cupid?”
Carlo’s phone, which had been lying face up beside his water glass, began to buzz and Barry’s pumpkin face filled up the screen. BARRY, it buzzed, BARRY. BARRY.
My eyes shot up at Mishti stupidly, instinctively, my very pupils repeating BARRY, BARRY at her.
Mishti gathered her entire soul in the pit of her stomach, I watched every light retreat from her eyes and relocate, she became a tough piece of rock inside herself and her flesh became irrelevant. She had nothing to hide. She hid herself. She squinted and looked like a superhero.
“Babe,” Carlo said to her, “Babe listen I gotta go.”
HONEY
She told Barry to put it between her breasts.
She felt its weight thunk down.
She wanted his heat.
He gave her his finger.
He denied her his fist.
He wanted her heaven.
She wanted it to take her whole body up.
She wanted to take everything.
She told him harder.
He tried.
He could make her come sometimes and sometimes he couldn’t wait.
He gave her everything.
She wanted control.
She took control.
She opened completely.
She took everything.
She told me it never hurt.
She told me he could be