orbiting amy meyerson I have all these scars I want to share with him. The diagonal line across my forearm from a cut during a game of Kick the Can; the circular indentation from the chicken pox; the zigzag across my upper thigh from rock climbing. I imagine him asking me why my knees are bruised or why my thumb is bandaged, but the cut on my thumb heals before I see him again. My mother shifts gears in her green sedan as my father talks to his secretary on his cell phone. It is parents’ weekend at my university, and we are going to a seafood restaurant in the gentrified outskirts of Hartford. There is an unmistakable line on our route where the row houses with chipped brown paint and broken railings become turn-of-the-century English Tudors with bay windows and rhododendrons. “So, honey, how’s everything in school? How are your” “Karen, shh. Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” my father says. “Sorry, dear.” My mother looks at me in the rearview mirror, and I smile at her. Our reservation is for 7:30, and it is 7:45. My mother drives at the speed limit, and my father never glances at the clock. I stare out the window at the circular driveways in front of the stone houses. The driveways are all empty, and the houses are dark. Finally, after four blocks, there is a light and a family is exposed. The flood lights above the front porch and the two wings of the white house illuminate a woman in a bathrobe, hand submerged into a lavender pocket, standing on the porch stairs above a younger boy. I can tell from the shape of his arms, defined yet lanky, that he is good looking and athletic. She violently shakes her index finger and he stares up at her. The beak of his backwards cap faces me as I speed by. In an instant, the image vanishes, and I am again staring at another block of homes with no lights and empty driveways. I turn my head to look out the back window, but I can only see a faint glow coming from the direction of the house. As we pull into the restaurant parking lot, I feel an inexplicable obligation to these people. I want to pinch the boy’s shoulders and tell him to respect his mother. I want to whisper into the mother’s ear that she has been too hard on him. It is as though I have witnessed, in the intimacy of their interaction, something illicit, something not meant for my eyes. If I were to drive past again, would they still be there? If I were to go back tomorrow and knock on their door, pretending to be from Cutco or Greenpeace, would that woman still be wearing a purple bathrobe? I met him at Judy’s. Thirty people were crammed into her single apartment. I saw him from across the room. He was wearing a mustard shirt and faded jeans. His curly brown hair concealed his forehead and looked wet, weighed down by sweat and oil. Our eyes met and I smiled as I looked away. I left the party feeling vacant. Conversations about rock bands and sitcoms, about how it was getting cold outside and soon our parents would mail us our winter coats. My fingertips tingled, and I pinched them until the blood started flowing again. I saw him the following day, walking across the field. He was wearing the same jeans and a black sweatshirt. As we passed he nodded at me, his thin lips creasing upward at the corners. We didn’t see each other again for three days. When he said hello, his voice engulfed me. He said his name, John, one syllable and biblical, but it sounded exotic, like the scientific name of nightshades. We met the following day at the local coffee shop, a confirmation that our interest in each other was not strictly sexual, although as he spoke I imagined what it would be like to kiss him, what it would be like when we were naked together and his bony arms encircled me. As we parted he said that he would see me soon, and I was certain that this was true. He had told me everything about himself. He was raised in Rye, New York, his mother taught high school English, and his father was an investment banker. He was the youngest of three. His sister used to put makeup on him as a child, and his brother taught him how to put an opponent in a headlock and showed him centerfolds from Hustler. I knew how he thought, when he would call, and that our next encounter would be in a more intimate setting, most likely his apartment. I found excuses to go back to my apartment the day I was sure he would call. Stressed by class deadlines, I needed to take an hour-long bubble bath; I forgot four books I needed on four separate occasions. I needed to check my messages, just in case my brother had called; I needed to change my shirt because the long-sleeved cotton blouse was too thin, and then even my wool sweater, the thickest thing I owned, wasn’t warm enough. He would call during the day, hoping to see me that night. If not during the day, then by seven, definitely seven. Although seven was dinnertime, so at eight-thirty, right after dinner. Yes, eight-thirty would be the perfect time. Ten was approaching late but not yet late. Eleven was too late, but maybe not. Most weeknights I do not come home until midnight. So after midnight was too late. I went to sleep at twelve-thirty with the cordless phone perched on the mantel above my head. I go to New York City about once a month. It’s an easy commute from Connecticut, only an hour and a half by train. I always expect to run into my grandfather, who lives uptown, or my best friend from high school, who goes to school in the city. I worry about seeing my two ex-boyfriends who graduated from my university last year, or my cousin who works on Wall Street. This time, I am in New York to hear Alice Walker read. I get off the train at Grand Central and see a boy with straight brown hair. He is forty feet away from me, and I’m certain that it’s Sam, who went to summer camp with me for seven years. I walk toward him, but once I’m within ten feet, I realize that his nose is much larger than Sam’s and that he’s several inches shorter. As I walk out onto 42nd Street, it’s as though all these people passing me, refusing to acknowledge me, caress me. They accept me as one of them. I make eye contact with a girl in periwinkle leg warmers and a short jean skirt. She has lime green eye shadow. She doesn’t smile, and looks away as she walks to the end of the block. I enter the subway to go downtown. A woman is pacing the platform. She clutches a black shopping bag with the chubby fingers of her left hand. She is one of those women who has fat ankles. The line of the calf falls straight to the foot, with no tapering, which forces her to wobble when she walks. Her beige overcoat is open, revealing a purple dress beneath. Her lips never stop moving. No noise escapes them, but they purse and gape in motions of sound. She drops her bag to the ground and screams, shutting her eyes. I want to walk over to her, put my hand on her back, and ask her if she is all right. I watch the people around us. The man in the grey suit looks at his Rolex every thirty seconds. The young Latina woman bends over to wipe ice cream off her daughter’s face. The two teenage girls pop their gum and discuss Friday night’s date. I keep staring at the woman as she tries to regulate her breathing, but I don’t move from my spot next to the trashcan. When I get back to school, my friends ask me how I enjoyed the reading, but all I can remember is this woman. Judy was having another one of her cocktail parties. Cosmopolitans were her specialty. Surely John would be there, he would have to be there. When I told Judy about the connection we’d made over cappuccino and black coffee, her face became grim. “Just be careful,” She said. “He’s unreliable. He’s a great friend, but he’s not a good person to date, he has a tendency to be fickle.” I nodded, pretending to take her advice. When I met him for coffee, we’d laughed until tears filled our eyes, so I knew that she was wrong. I saw him as soon as I entered the apartment. He was leaning against the far wall, facing a boy who had spiky, artificially black hair and was wearing black jeans and a fitted black t-shirt. I had seen them together before. As I started towards John, trying to walk casually, a tall girl with long blond hair and a curveless torso approached him. She tossed her hair and laughed, and he smiled at her, placing his hand on her shoulder. I drifted toward the other side of the room and kissed my friend Tom hello. I hugged him close and rubbed his shoulder as we spoke, periodically glancing at John as he continued talking to the blond waif. I laughed at Tom’s comments about his biology professor and the weather. I walked around the room greeting other friends, conscious that my back was to John. Had he noticed me? Why hadn’t he called? And who was this girl? Was he avoiding me, or was it a game? Had I laughed too hard at his jokes? Probed him too much about his family? Had I forced him to reveal some secret he had not wished to divulge so early? What had I done? When we met for coffee, I’d edited every thought before speaking, careful to portray myself as the compassionate listener and delicate thinker I knew he would adore. I’d used words like “quintessential” and “incipient,” insightful but not pretentious. My performance was impeccable. He must have known that a casual encounter at this party would be the perfect way for us to see each other again. Two glasses of wine and I’d go home with him in a minute. Although I’d go home with him without the wine. I’d been at the party for an hour when our eyes finally met. He had stopped talking to the blond several minutes before and was now walking toward me. Our conversation unfolded like a silk curtain. Soon I forgot there was anyone else in the room, and when I finally did look around, the number of people at the party had dropped from forty to ten. I followed him out the door onto the leafy sidewalk. The women at the gym stand naked, pinching their stomachs and thighs. “I don’t know where this came from. God, I used to be skinny.” “Well, I’ve been taking this Fat Burner, and it works, I mean it really works. Lost seven pounds in a week.” “Are you serious?” These women come to the gym at 5:00 p.m. They finish their workout around 6:30 and regroup in the locker room, undressing and taking turns using the showers. I try to avoid these hours. I always feel uncomfortable changing in public areas; I’m intimidated by the exposed breasts of women I do not know. I like to go to the gym around noon because I have access to any machine, no wait. I enter the locker room, startled to see another woman. I survey her bare back. When she bends to untie her shoe, her skin looks heavy, weighed down by the fat deposits around her waist. Her body is shaped like a pear, and her kinky chin-length hair is entirely grey. She turns around and I look away before her eyes focus on me. I stand in my sports bra, rummaging through my locker, sweat dripping down my defined spine and rib cage. “I’m the only fat person at the gym.” “No.” I want to say something else to let her know that she shouldn’t think this way. Instead, it sounds like I’m disagreeing with her. “I always look, but there’s no one.” We stare at each other. I can think of nothing else to say, so I throw on my sweatshirt and leave. His apartment was silent and smelled of burnt toast. Dirty clothes clung to the bedroom floor as if they’d been super-glued there. His off-white sofa had beer stains and a tear where the stuffing was exposed. He apologized for the mess, but it was as I’d imagined. I couldn’t wait to show him my place sometime. The smell of pumpkin bread and cream cheese muffins would impress him; the Tibetan photograph above my bed, the Miro paintings. When we kissed there was none of the awkwardness of a first kiss; it was like a perfect find at a thrift shop, worn and comfy yet novel. Our bodies fit together like two halves of an orange forming a perfect sphere. We caressed each other until our eyes twitched. I ran the nail of my index finger down his spine, lightly scratching, and his hands spanned my back. As we slept, my back to him and his arms holding me close, he never moved. I awoke several times expecting him to be pressed against the far wall, a foot of space between us, but every time I could feel his warm breath on my shoulder blade. Tuesday is my favorite day of the week because it’s the day I get to see Olivia. It’s the day I leave behind all the critical essays and readings of Marx, all the dining hall food, all the Friday night dinners followed by Friday night drinking binges, all the exes and best friends who don’t like each other, all the brownnosers who sit in the front row of class and the potheads who sleep in the back. Olivia reminds me that the life of a nine-year-old is not as simple as I remember. She does not play house, and she does not let her mother pick out her clothing. She watches music videos and R-rated films and refuses the candy I offer her because she thinks she’s getting fat. But when I tickle her neck she still laughs, and tells me I’m being silly. She still introduces me to all the teachers at her elementary school. She is growing her hair long and wants to get a perm. She likes to take a strand of her hair and interweave it with mine and ask me if I can tell the difference. When I meet her today she is sitting with her math book open in front of her, pencil in hand. “We gotta do this quick, really quick,” she says without looking up at me. “Hey, what’s the rush?” “I have a secret to show you. Oh, it’s so great, you’re going to love it, you’re just going to love it. Don’t look outside. You’re not allowed to look outside. Promise, okay?” “Okay, I promise, but homework comes first. When you’re finished your work we’ll go see your surprise. But not if you rush.” “Okay, okay, I won’t rush.” When she’s done with her math, Olivia grabs my hand and pulls me out the classroom door. She does not put away her pencil case or put up her chair. Outside is a playground set made of plastic and red-painted metal. It looks like a space ship, not a children’s toy. There’s even a small rock-climbing wall on the side of the jungle gym, and an intercom system, not tin cans on a cord, but gardening spouts at each end of a pipe the size of a rain gutter. Olivia stands on one side of this device, and I can’t see anything but her glittery Converse. “Are you ready?” Her voice travels under the monkey bars and across the platform where the boy she has admitted to having a crush on sits, and into my ear. “For what?” “For the secret, silly. Come on. I’ll meet you in a minute by the slide.” I join her and she places her hand in mine, her red fingernails juxtaposed with my bitten, unpainted nails. “So we were playing hide-and-go-seek yesterday and Jimmie and me, we found this huge willow tree. Over there, there’s a path that goes through it. It’s so cool. You gotta see it.” “Okay.” We walk over to the willow tree and part the limbs that graze the ground. Inside, the limbs form a cocoon around us. “There was a path, I swear. I saw it yesterday, I just can’t find it. But it’s here, I know it’s here.” I look at Olivia. A line of her belly is exposed where her jeans are buttoned; the button is about to burst and her stomach hangs over the waistband. I look down and see her Converse resting on an old mattress with a bloodstain. It’ a single, and the dirty sides blend into the ground. The corner of a blanket made of plaid and solid patches pokes out from beneath. There is no pillow. Olivia turns around in circles; her feet never leave the mattress. I feel immobilized by this mattress; it terrifies me. Seven summers ago, when I was fourteen, I was in Montreal with my family and some friends. I snuck outside with Clara to smoke a cigarette in the alley behind the restaurant. Clara was seventeen and wore dark red lipstick. It was the first time I’d tried smoking, but I didn’t reveal this to her. We sat on a torn couch next to the kitchen door. I was coughing when a man approached us. His entire face was covered in hair. “Get out of here,” he said. “That’s my home you’re sitting on.” I had no idea what he was talking about. How could a beat-up couch behind a cheap Chinese restaurant be his home? “I swear it was here, it was, it really was.” Olivia’s nasal voice pulls me back into the present. She takes a step and stands at the head of the mattress. Her eyes stare straight ahead, looking for the path. “I believe you.” I take her hand and guide her until both her feet are on the ground. She doesn’t stumble. I’m afraid she’s going to ask me why there is a mattress underneath this willow tree and who it belongs to. I have no answers. But she doesn’t trip as she walks off the mattress and I am relieved. When I think about him, I smile until my cheeks hurt. I try to remember what color his eyes are. I remind myself to notice when I see him again, but I always forget. When I shut my eyes, I try to outline the shape of his face, to hear the way he laughs. I can remember exactly how my brother looks, or my astronomy professor, but not him. When I left his apartment that morning, he told me that we would see each other again the next weekend. He kissed me goodbye with an open mouth, though I hadn’t brushed my teeth, and I was certain that he’d call. I go to Colorado to visit my friend Charlie, who moved to Aspen after we graduated high school. In Colorado they sell guns at Walmart and Rite Aid. The corner drugstore sells bullets and hunting apparel. When Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff of Aspen, his poster had two rifles forming an X in the center. He has been said to shoot at loitering teenagers. Off to smoke a joint during lunch break or have a romantic interlude with a friend’s significant other, high school students in Aspen run the risk of profuse bleeding and nerve damage. One time Mr. Thompson even shot his caretaker, mistaking her for a possum. He was not elected sheriff, but the Walmart still sells him guns. As Charlie and I drive west from Aspen on Route 82, towards Grand Junction and the part of the Roaring Fork with whitewater pockets, we pass a section of ten-foot pine trees along a bend between El Jebel and Red Mountain. Everywhere else, the trees are towering aspens. We’re doing eighty, which everyone does on Route 82, and it takes a half-second to go by. “Did you see that house?” Charlie says, pointing towards the wooded area to the right. His eyes widen and his hands clench the steering wheel. “I don’t think so.” “Okay, we’re turning around, you’ve gotta see this thing. It’s crazy, fucking nuts.” I try to persuade him to keep driving because we’re late to meet his friends on the river, but my efforts fail. He exits the highway a mile ahead, only to turn around, exit again, and reenter the highway in the direction we were already going. “Make sure you pay attention now.” “Okay, okay.” “I’m serious.” “What’s the big deal?” “It’s just like the coolest thing in Colorado. The blue house is legendary.” “Sounds great.” I put the soles of my feet against the dashboard and hug my knees to my orange bathing suit. “Hey, fuck you, I wouldn’t be showing this to you if I didn’t think it was so cool. See, this guy who owns the blue house was married to this woman, this stewardess, and she was having an affair with a pilot. A few years back she left the guy for the pilot, and I guess it pissed him off pretty bad. So he,” “Understandably.” “Yeah, well, the two of them fly over this house all the time, so the guy decides to do a little something in honor of the affair. A final fuck you.” “And?” “Look, it’s coming up over here, on the right.” He sweeps a long arm across my body, pointing. His other arm holds the wheel, and I see the individual veins on the back of his arm. The house rests on the riverbed. I can see the roof through a clearing in the trees. It is baby blue except along the edges where the wood is revealed. There are white clouds painted on the blue roof, surrounding a peach center. “Did you see it?” His eyes widen even more, and I fear that his eyeballs might pop out of their sockets. I want to reach over and push them back into his head. “Yes, I saw it.” “Isn’t it great? The fucking bird, he flipped them the fucking bird.” “What?” “Yeah, the middle finger, it’s a little farewell gift for them every time they fly over his house. Isn’t that great? I think that’s just great.” “Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed because I don’t find the roof as noteworthy as he does, but Charlie isn’t listening to me. “I’d really like to meet that guy. I’d like to shake his hand and say fine work, I respect that. That’s what I’d like to do.” I make a mental list of all the things I must tell him. That I have been in love four times; that I run three miles a day; that I read contemporary fiction and watch foreign films; that I usually listen to rock music but it’s always sixties folk when I feel subdued and lonely; that my parents wanted me to go to an Ivy League school but I needed to make my own decision; that I am the friend everyone goes to when they have a problem. It was Thursday and he hadn’t called. I was supposed to meet a friend at the bar for margaritas, but I convinced her to come to my place and drink wine with me. Because I already had the wine, we could save the ten dollars for another night. She left at one in the morning and the telephone never interrupted us. She told me about her love life and I told her about mine. She was in love, and this time it was for real, this time it was perfect, he was perfect. He bought her flowers when he hadn’t seen her in a week and left songs he recorded especially for her on her answering machine. I said I thought I might be approaching love as well. Usually I kept these feelings secret, because telling a friend forced me to believe them; it made them real. I admitted that he hadn’t called, that I was confused. She assured me that I would see him this weekend; based on everything I’d told her, he couldn’t wait to see me. She thought he was probably waiting to call until his excitement had calmed. I didn’t tell her about the girl I saw him flirting with or about Judy’s admonitions, for it would be impossible for me to feel as I did if he didn’t feel the same way. On Friday evening, I didn’t make dinner plans. I only had tentative plans for later. I sat at my kitchen table eating leftover beans and drinking a bottle of wine I’d saved to share with him. The phone rang and my body tensed, but it was only my mother. It rang again, and it was the friend I planned to see that evening. She was the kind of girl who had never had a lover, who saw love as an inevitable series of anxieties and pains over something as easy to avoid as eating red meat. I couldn’t tell her that I was waiting for him to call. I didn’t want to be waiting for him. I knew that the moment I left he would call, but then I remembered that it was more intriguing to be unavailable. I reached for my corduroy coat and the green scarf my mother knitted when she was my age, and went to meet my friend. When I returned home after an evening of trying not to think about him, I knew that there would be a message from him. When the answering machine blinked 2, I was even more certain. One message was from my mother: why hadn’t I called her back, was I all right? The other from my father: why haven’t you called your mother, she’s concerned. I try to pretend that I don’t think about him. That I don’t need to be with him in order to have a good time. I tell myself the continuous lie that friends come first. On Sunday night I am too shocked to feel sad that I didn’t see him that weekend. I feel a dull slap across the back of my head, like a reprimanded child. I pick up the phone to call Judy, but I hear her voice in my head: I told you so and it’s probably for the best. It’s not for the best, but then I remind myself what she had said. How could the boy she described be the same boy I’d lain naked with? The same boy who’d told me over and over again that he wanted to see me? I put down the phone. I lift the receiver again and return my mother’s call. I opened myself to him and failed. I cannot understand. My attention never faltered when he spoke. I watched his eyes to gauge his level of interest in whatever I said. If his eyes wandered, I changed the subject; if they clouded, I asked him a question about himself. I performed perfectly, and I am still alone. The days are growing shorter. By dinnertime I can’t see my next-door neighbor’s house. I eat alone, for in the company of others I’ll say things that I don’t even want to think. Regret makes the hollows of my knees burn. I cannot believe that I said, out loud, in front of another person, that I thought I was falling in love. It amazes me that I am unable to keep quiet. I was rejected, and all of my friends will know. I can be strong and never speak his name again. I can find someone new. I can pretend that I am happy to be alone. I can be alone. I can pass his house without turning my head. I can pretend that it is just another house. I can go on pretending until there is no pause in my breath, until I can just pass.