Sailor excerpt

An excerpt from an unpublished short story of mine

I’d never been out of this country, I still haven’t. Nowhere near Florida, where Sailor would soon return to. In this moment, I didn’t consider that. We were laid out on my faded sofa, her legs extended over my lap. I watched her from the corner of my eye, neither of us speaking. Just the stickiness of our legs connecting us, the clink of her glass as she raised it to her lips.

“Have you ever been in love, Chiara?” she asked.

It was the first time she’d used my name. My skin prickled, the hairs on my neck lifting. Chiara. I tried not to focus on it. She hadn’t moved at all, still staring up at the stone ceiling. I looked over at her, confused.

“Yes,” I said. “I love my boyfriend.”

She paused. “That’s nice. I suppose I love my boyfriend, too. But sometimes I believe I’m only capable of truly caring for children and women. They inspire specks of compassion within me, little rays of light and whatnot.”

I said nothing.

“I do look at my boyfriend and think what a tender soul. I would love to be your mother, his mother, I mean. But then I see hairs above his lip or some grease on his chin and I remember, oh– he’s not a soft, malleable thing. He’s a man, and he’ll never get greater than that.” 

She trailed off.

“I guess you think I’m awful,” she said. “A pervert or something.”

“No, I don’t think that.”

There was a stretch of silence before she spoke again. “Well, I think…I think I’ve just been reading too much poetry. I’ve confused myself.” Cicadas hummed around her words, the tide rolled in. “I worry that I steal all my thoughts from poets and movie stars, that I’ll never form my own ideas. Not ever.”

I leaned onto my forearm, watching her. “But you speak so nicely. You make me think. Even now, I’m thinking.”

Sailor smiled her disingenuous smile. “Oh, but I steal all my words. I mean— even now, I stole them. Didn’t  you hear? Didn’t you hear how I was unable to explain what I meant?” Her voice grew sharper. “I robbed them from Adrienne Rich and passed them off as my own,” she exhaled, her words slurring slightly. “I haven’t really thought in a long time. I’m just… this shell of a philosopher who escaped to Italy to find herself, and now here I am, pawning words with a girl I hardly know.”

She paused, lost in thought. I glanced down at the glass of milk, now half-empty. A bit of it had caught on her upper lip, leaving a thin, white line. I wanted to laugh but I didn’t.

Instead, I cleared my throat. “I’m not familiar with Adrienne Rich.”

Sailor glanced at me, her chest rising and falling quickly. “The only real love I’ve ever felt was for children and other women. Everything else was lust, pity, self-hatred, pity, lust.” Her eyes glinted. “That’s the quote. Though I do find it rings true to me. And I suppose that just says more about me than it does the men I surround myself with.”

At once oozing with narcissism and cripplingly unsure. Sailor, Sailor. Floating in and out of my life, arriving each morning with coffee and tangled hair. Laying upon my parents bed, reciting her recycled poetry to me, watching me change clothes.

“You have a very nice body,” she said, her eyes half-closed. I flushed, mumbled a thank-you.

She wanted to meet my boyfriend. I told her he’d gone off to Paris for an important internship. He was a painter, a good one. My room was overflowing with his work— splotchy reimaginings of Marie Antoinette and the Versailles gardens. I remember watching him paint them, how his hands trembled with his precision. Sailor picked at the thickly oiled canvases, tracing a finger over Marie’s distant face.

“He should be painting you,” She decided. “He’s been in France too long, that’s all. He’ll wake up, realize there’s a perfectly fine lady back home.”

She spent lots of time on ultimatums and compliments, her words laced with something I couldn’t place. She never looked me square in the face while flattering me.  Her gaze always wandered, head turned in some indefinite direction, as if the words were for someone else. They inspired, at first, a softness in me, but a coil of anger soon took its place. I didn’t want her words. I wanted her to stop— stop flattering, stop speaking, stop existing so loudly. I wanted things back the way they were, before she’d come into my life.

I normally wasn’t allowed at the topless beach, but Sailor insisted we go. There was an influx of tourist men, who laid on their towels with wolfish grins and thick sunglasses. Sailor untied her top and flung it into the sand. I recall the details of her chest as it was freed. A smattering of freckles on her sternum, the sharp curve of her waist, breasts pointing downward. She waited for me to undress, but I didn't move. I felt watched. I was watched.

“Come on, Chiara,” she said, lightly grabbing the ends of my hair and threading it through her fingers, tugging me towards her. 

I ducked away from her, stepping further inland. I felt stupid, uncomfortable. Sailor shrugged hard, releasing my hair and sprinting towards the water. She cried out in laughter as the ocean slapped her with its cold spray. She waved me into the water, begging me to join her. I remained there, on the beach with the men, as she bobbed in the water.