Honey(38)

“You’re always just so…cold with men. They’re in and then they’re out. On to the next. Bish, bash, bosh.” This is Ida’s favorite English phrase.

“You make me sound like a fucking sausage factory.”

“Sometimes you are.”

“I’m only letting you get away with this because you’re heartbroken.”

“Have you ever been heartbroken?”

Yrsa uncrosses and recrosses her legs. “No, but it doesn’t mean I’m not capable of love.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t capable of love, just that you’ve never loved anyone, so you don’t understand what I’m going through. God, it’s so hot.” Ida lies back, yogurt pot still in hand. “I think Serena might be regretting it, though.”

“Why?”

“Her Spotify. She’s got this playlist ‘Blue,’ and she’s been adding a lot of Fleetwood Mac to it.”

“Who does their processing on a public playlist?”

Ida sighs.

Yrsa tries to remember if she put deodorant on.

“Do you think you want a boyfriend?” Ida asks.

“Could be nice.”

“It is nice.” She stares blankly ahead.

“You gonna go back to dating men now?” Yrsa asks.

“You can’t ask me that. I fall in love with people, not genders.”

“Whatever.”

“You haven’t slept with a girl for ages,” Ida says.

“That was a phase.”

“It can’t be a phase.”

“There’s obviously no more yogurt in that pot.”

Ida sighs again.

“How did you know that you loved Serena?”

“Mmm, if I thought of her dying too much, I’d cry. And when I was with her I had this feeling like I wanted to eat her, or be inside her, like completely inside her, like in her blood.”

“Sounds really weird.”

Ida laughs. “No, it’s the best.” And she makes a sudden splurt-hiccup.

“Are you going to cry again?”

“No.” But she runs off.

Yrsa remembers she forgot to make ice, and the flat is empty of air. When she thinks too hard about things—love—or people—or the heart—she becomes overwhelmed by a particular feeling that is nothing.

Ida comes back into the room with a box of Kleenex. “You look existential.”

“Do you think it’s strange that I still haven’t heard anything from Nina?”

“You still haven’t?”

Yrsa shakes her head.

“I don’t think it’s strange.” Ida is standing next to the sofa.

“Yes you do.”

“No.”

“I can tell by your tone.”

“Okay, yes, maybe. I thought you guys were good friends.”

“Me too.”

“What does Skye say?”

“She’s always evasive about it.”

“I wouldn’t worry.”

Ida throws herself onto the sofa, and on top of Yrsa. They hug.

“I love you and that’s all that matters.” She squeezes Yrsa harder. “God, you’re so hot.” Ida peels off.

“It’s thirty degrees.”

“Do you want to go to Grantchester? Go swimming?”

“Can’t, need to do some things.” By “do some things” Yrsa means sit in a library and pretend to write her PhD.

“Boring. I’ll probably just lie here then and cry, if you’re busy.”

“Okay, sweetie.” Yrsa pinches Ida’s cheek.



* * *





The dynamic persists, the “woman” can only be defined against men the “man.”

Yrsa has been writing the same paragraph for two hours. She looks up, the same students sitting around her, the sky the same shade of blue. She’s in her college library and—unlike the Wren Library, which is just for show—this working library has low ceilings and narrow shelves.

When speaking of black women, however, the relational dynamic changes. It is against the needs of the world that she is defined. “[T]he hollow of the slave ship, the pest-house, the brothel, the cage, the surgeon’s laboratory, the prison, the cane field, the kitchen, the master’s bedroom—turn out to be exactly the same place and in all of them she is called Venus.”

Yrsa yawns. All she ever reads about is violence, exploitation, slavery, violence, rape, death. She pushes her laptop away. And what can she say for herself now? Not only is Mack not dead but he’s gained followers, she’s facilitated a misogynist. The sneezer sneezes again.

So, clearly she has two options: call it quits—admit that murdering people is perhaps trickier than it looks and not the way to do academia. Or, double down.

She picks up Hartman. “My effort to reconstruct the past is, as well, an attempt to describe obliquely the forms of violence licensed in the present, that is, the forms of death unleashed in the name of freedom, security, civilization, and God/the good (2008).” She puts down Hartman and shakes her water bottle. It needs refilling.

Standing, she heads for the fountain, located at the end of the politics shelves. While waiting for a girl before her she plays her usual library game of “who would I sleep with?” It’s slim pickings today as everyone looks to be eighteen. Her? No. Him? Too skinny. Him? It’s Damien, her supervisee.