Between Streets

J. Long

Sarah couldn’t blame the waitress for mixing up their orders at 2 A.M. They had ordered the same thing, only he had ordered his eggs with hot sauce. They were sitting in booths across from each other; the seats were low enough so that they could see each others’ faces as if they were sitting together. The man had thick shoulders and a flannel shirt on, dried mud smeared across the shirt’s buttons. A light pink scar, about a fourth of an inch wide, went from his right nostril to the bottom of his cheek. A fleck of mud was dried just above the start of the scar, right next to his nose bridge.
“We might as well acknowledge the fact that we’re facing each other,” he said as he stood and sat across from her in her booth. “I’m Guy, by the way. Guy Gene.”
She blinked slowly. “Sarah,” she said, shaking his hand.
He smelt of coffee, cigarettes, and dirt. Sarah took a sip of her lemon water, wondering why the waitress would seat him so close to her, even though there were plenty of empty seats in the restaurant.
“So, are you from around here?” he asked, leaning his arms on the table.
“Yup.”
The diner sat on the corner of East 18th Street and G Street; a busy enough intersection that at 2 A.M., you could watch specks of red, yellow, white and green flicker across the square. Her booth was the second from the back and next to a window that had a clear view of the entire street corner. She could sit in the booth and observe without worrying about others observing her.
He looked out the window. “The city life; you love it or you hate it.”
Sarah nodded. The waitress who mixed up their plates brought Guy his meal, another mug, and poured him coffee. He nodded. Sarah smiled at the waitress, showing as much gum as she could and lifted her eyebrows. Golda, Golda the Thursday night shift waitress, that was her name.
Guy sipped his coffee, pointed at Sarah’s name tag, and said, “Say, you work at City Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“In the front desk?”
“Housekeeper.”
“Oh. Nice concierge. Wonder if you cleaned my room.”
She did not remember seeing him or any other hotel guests. There was, however, the man who had opened the door full frontal to his naked body; the smell of sweat and chemical had rushed out of his room towards her. Sarah had seen his bare chest, turned her eyes to her cleaning cart, mumbled apologies, and proceeded to skip cleaning four rooms in order to avoid looking at the man. Jacob had done the same thing to her two years prior, for pure shock value, but what had really surprised her was how Jacob had managed to trash a suite room singlehandedly, what normally took an entire bachelor party to do, all for the sake of a practical joke.
She looked at Guy. Scruff on the chin, tan skin, hands with deep red creases. He could have been the nude guest, but she preferred not to think of it; best to avoid that sort of thing.
“I clean a lot of rooms,” she said, looking at the lemon garnish floating in her water.
They ate silently. Sarah had barely finished her eggs when Guy let out a sigh after finishing his entire plate: eggs, potatoes, and fruit bowl. She preferred to eat slow after a shift, look out the window, and unwind. Instead, she watched him.
“I’m only in the city for another day. Haven’t seen much of it though.”
“There isn’t much to see,” she said.
“I bet there is something. Don’t you have a favorite place?”
“Maybe.”
She thought of what Jacob would have said if she told him she wanted to show Guy around the city. Jacob would have told her that this was the type of man to stay away from, the kind that liked to find female trouble and exploit it. He was always saying things like that. Her friendships had slowly dwindled because she couldn’t find anyone who could fit Jacob’s idea of right.
“I guess I could show you.”
“That must be cold by now, anyway.”
She looked at her plate. This man, Guy, was the first person to have noticed her in over six months. She was used to doing things like this before Jacob: conversations on queer theory with strangers, following a group of friends to a concert for a ska band she had never heard of, karaoke at day fairs, impulsive things. What the hell, right? She would tell Golda on her way out what she was doing. Somebody would notice if she was gone. Maybe.
“Okay.”

They stood next to each other on a pathway that led to city hall. It was a blue and gray building, topped with a gold lined dome. The building glowed in the night, visible from two blocks away, the interior brightly lit and spotlights on the outside. Trees lined the pathway with strings of white lights hanging from their branches. Guy wore a large orange ski jacket and rubbed his black gloved hands together while Sarah was next to him in a sweater with her arms crossed. Guy exhaled into his gloves and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“It’s beautiful.”
Sarah nodded. She loved the way the dome looked when they had the Christmas lights up, when the gray fog behind the dome sparkled. Every time she smelled the wet concrete, she thought about how she and Jacob had stood outside of the building, drinking hot chocolate from cardboard cups, her head resting on his shoulder under a clear umbrella. Jacob had whispered to her that the rain was good luck to him, reminding her that it was raining the first time that they were together. She remembered taking in the smell of the city, the rain drying on sidewalk. She sighed.
“It really is,” she said, still looking at the hall. “I used to come here a lot.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She went to city hall repeatedly after Jacob had broken up with her, thinking that she would find him there, waiting for her. She gave up on that after a few months of standing on the pathway alone, after the long process of realizing that it was over.
She looked down at the walkway. “For—I don’t know. Stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Guy smiled. “Well, whatever it was, you’re here now.”
He rubbed his hands together and then pointed at the grass through the space between the trees. He walked over and lay down, jacket plastic against grass blades. His hands were at his sides, palms flat on the lawn. He turned his head towards her.
“Well, come on.”
She sat next to him. She was close to him, enough to see in the dark that his scar was smudged, that it was flaking like paint. He put his hands on top of one another on his stomach. His head was tilted.
“Who do you think is in there right now?”
“No one,” Sarah said. She lay down on her back. “Cleaning staff probably left an hour ago.”
“Someone has to be in there,” he said. “The mayor may be drinking scotch in the library.”
“There’s a library in there?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You live here.”
In the more than five years that Sarah had lived in the city, she had not been inside of city hall, nor had she talked to anyone who had. She had only come to the place in the last few years to stare at the building and wonder why she felt like she was sucking on metal every time she came here, why she felt like her skin was being pulled towards the ground every time she smelled wet concrete.
She turned her head to face him, feeling the grass prick her cheek. “That’s not something you ask every day.”
“Why not?” He dropped his chin and looked at her. “Any question is worth asking.”
His cheek was smooth where the scar had been. “Okay,” she paused, “Then what’s with the scar?”
He flinched. “Oh, this?” he said, putting his hand on his cheek. “This is nothing. You should have seen the other guy.”
“What are you trying to pull?”
He chuckled, tilted his head back as far as it would go. He put his hand on her arm. “The better question is why you want to know.”
She watched his mouth as he spoke; slightly open, lips chapped, steam evaporated before him. The corners of his mouth were cracked and red, surrounded by dry skin.
“I’m not sure,” she answered. She could smell the coffee on his breath over the dew on the grass.
“It’s fake, but you already knew that.”
“Yeah.”
He crossed his arms. “I could tell you I dress up for fun, and that would be the truth. But who would believe that? Who would believe a guy who sits across from you in a diner, opens a hotel door naked? I could tell you that I’m an actor. I could tell you some asshole cut my cheek with a pocketknife when I was in the seventh grade, but would you believe me?”
Sarah shrugged, looking at the dome. “The question is why you are asking,” she said in a deep voice, mocking him.
“You’re right.” He smiled and shifted on the grass. “I like to dress up. Masquerade. Be something I’m not.”
“Interesting,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “I think I believe you.”
He laughed.
“Good.”

Room two hundred and four was marked on Sarah’s hotel map as Due Out. She opened the door with her key card and held her breath. The lamplight in the back corner of the room was still on, dimly lighting the mahogany wall panel. The white Egyptian cotton bed sheets were in a pile at the foot of the bed, along with a few towels. The red and white comforter was folded neatly next to the pillows on the brown satin couch in front of the television. A white piece of paper was on the nightstand.
Sarah picked up the paper. It read:

S—
Meet me at the corner of 14th Street and E Street.
G.G.

That was about a twenty minute walk from the hotel. She looked at her hotel map. She wondered if he would even be there when she got off work. She crumpled the note and put it in her uniform pocket.
When she got off of work, she walked briskly, staring at the ground, stepping twice between each crack, wondering why she was going to meet him. She told herself that he probably wasn’t there anymore; she would walk to the corner, look around like she was in dire need of glasses, and he would make her feel like a fool—but she wanted to be wrong. She wanted to see him and what he would be dressed like, what he planned to go home as—wherever that was. If he did stand her up, she would only have three more blocks to walk to get to her apartment.
A car honked. She looked up and saw Guy, wearing a black suit, standing on an island in the middle of the street, holding his arms out in a tee shape, looking at the sky. A few drivers slowed down to look at him and a few of them honked their horns. Sarah went to the crosswalk and stepped onto the island. She crossed her arms.
“What are you doing?”
“I was waiting for you,” he said. His eyes were closed and he stood still. His face was clean and shaved, smooth. Sarah fidgeted.
“We’re in the middle of the road.”
“Does that matter?”
It was the same question Jacob had asked Sarah months ago. Sarah had asked Jacob why he was leaving her and he had replied, “Does that really matter? I’m still leaving you.” Sarah had watched Jacob walk away through blurred eyes until he was a nothing more than a speck. Looking at Guy, she couldn’t remember how long ago that was. She used to count the days since Jacob had left her, wondering if he would come back. She couldn’t remember the number anymore; she realized that she had stopped counting.
Guy looked at her. He blinked a few times and smiled. He put his hand out. “Join me, Sarah. I’m waiting for the rain.”
“But it’s not supposed to rain today.”
“It will,” he nodded. “I can feel it.”
She looked at his palm, at the deep red creases that looked like canyons in his skin, the same hands that she had seen the night before, ridden with calluses, white with dry skin on the web between his fingers; nothing had changed.
She touched his hand. He locked his fingers with hers, held their hands up and resumed his original position. Sarah kept her other arm covering her stomach and looked around the street. She saw a girl with black hair, probably eight years old, inside of a car, pressing her face against the window. The girl pointed at Sarah and said something that was muted by the car door. The stoplight turned green and the girl was gone.
Guy looked at Sarah. “Put out your hand,” he said as he nodded towards her. Sarah put her arm out straight. “Now close your eyes.” She did but opened them after a few seconds. “Can you feel the rain?” he asked.
“No.”
“Concentrate.”
Sarah scrunched her eyes and felt hard. Past the sounds of traffic, she could hear puddles splash in drains and doors to restaurants open and close. She felt the fog roll on her face and tasted the salt in the air. She could smell wet concrete and thought about the dome, about how she had shared that place with Guy. She felt a power pull through their connection and pass all the way through their hands to the other side of her. She squeezed Guy’s fingers.
“I think—I think I feel it.”