When Kenji broke the news of his cancer diagnosis, Jasper had been hooking up with Helen for three months. That week, Jasper felt pulled back from some precipice he hadn’t known he was standing on. Kenji was his best friend, and Fiona was his girl, still. One day, he was certain, she’d be his wife. He had to stop seeing Helen. There was no romance between them, only the intoxicating fumes of mutual derision, which each accepted for erotic intrigue. Helen made no complaints when he ended things. He returned the copy of Cha’s poetry to her, unread.
The faint line of light under the bedroom door snapped black, and Jasper heard Fiona settle in, the comforter rustling. An image of Fiona’s bare legs, her inner thighs brushing softly against each other, passed through his mind. He missed her, and the missing was tinged with anger and shame. The beginning of a dream cast its net over him: Fiona straddling him on the futon, the gray outline of her body in the darkness of the living room. Her fingertips on his nipples, teasing. They hadn’t touched one another since somewhere near the end of April, when Fiona had found out about Helen, after everything was already over. Kenji’s fault, punk ass with that notebook. But Jasper couldn’t even be mad—dude was fighting cancer, right?
* * *
? ? ?
Jasper startled awake at four in the morning, the world still dark. The apartment was suffused with the smell of melted butter and hot sugar, as it was every morning, rising from the Italian bakery that occupied the ground floor. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, tried to float back to sleep, but felt suddenly chilled by the sensation of being watched.
“Fiona?” Jasper rubbed his eyes again. “You okay?” He sat up on the futon. A figure stood by the bedroom door.
“What if,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “What if Kenji doesn’t—”
“He’s doing so good,” Jasper said. “You can’t think like that.” He patted the space next to him. She stepped toward him on silent feet and sank down. After a moment, he put an arm around her.
“Are you crying?”
She shook her head and turned her face toward him, as if to prove she wasn’t, even though it was dark and he could barely see. He shifted, enough to close the small distance between their mouths. Fiona met him there.
They kissed a few times before he pulled the T-shirt over her head. Jasper cupped his right hand over her breast, found her nipple between his fingers, and pinched it, hard. She gave a small gasp. With his mouth on hers, Jasper moved his hand to her neck. Under his thumb he felt her pulse jumping. Her hands were tugging at his shorts. He pushed her down on the futon mattress. All of a sudden Jasper remembered how it was, the frenzied pleasure of sex with someone you loved and who you knew loved you back. He wanted to call her a bitch for how she’d been treating him. He fought the urge to say, I love you—
Jasper stayed silent and kept thrusting, the palm of his hand pressed against Fiona’s neck. He was only doing what she liked—to be brutalized, just a little. Made to acquiesce, pinned down, her vagina slapped and bruised. And afterward, he knew she liked to be held. He tightened his grip around her throat. She whimpered and moaned, writhing underneath him. They moved together in the dark, as one. They generated heat. The air seemed to buzz in Jasper’s ears, the sound of honeybees. He held his breath. He waited for her to come. In another minute, she arrived.
* * *
—
Friday morning, Jasper was dressed and downstairs before nine. Kenji’s surgery, scheduled for ten at Mount Sinai uptown. Outside, the vendors on Mulberry Street were setting up for the day. He strolled past a fruit stand piled high with lychees, clusters of longan, bright pink dragon fruit the size of his fist.
Earbuds in, an old DJ Shadow playlist cued up, he passed one stall after another on Canal Street selling junk souvenirs: miniature jade figurines, knotted red rope ornaments, novelty lighters and keychains, and those conical bamboo hats. Maybe they were all storefronts for illegitimate businesses. Knockoff designer handbags, miniature turtles, bootleg DVDs. Or something more sinister? Poor girls imported from China, some trained to work at massage parlors, jerking out perfunctory happy endings, others assigned to long hours crouched at the gnarled feet of hardened Manhattan women, scrubbing calluses and sawing off toenails.
He swiped through the turnstile at Lafayette, recalling the time he and Kenji had staggered into one of those shady massage parlors south of Canal with a neon-lit open sign. Three in the morning, they were both faded as hell, elbowing each other forward and knocking over shit in the small front room. An older woman who reminded Jasper too much of his mother ushered them into a dim hallway behind a red beaded curtain. In the end he had backed out. He smoked several cigarettes on the sidewalk while he waited; Kenji swayed out half an hour later, the red from all the tequila shots drained from his cheeks. He’d laughed, and thrown an arm around Jasper’s neck. “Goddamn. You’re a pussy, you know that?” Then he ran for the gutter and vomited into it, bent over with one hand pressed on the sidewalk.