You taste just like I thought you would

The intimacy of brief encounters

The lights announcing the big house off Barham Drive twinkle, warm and inviting. There’s a faint scent of weed or maybe skunk. I hobble up the hilly driveway from where the Lyft dropped me off. I consider ringing the doorbell and stare at it for a while.

I study the antique knocker. I take a deep breath and decide to see if the door is unlocked. It is. Right—it is a party after all. I’m wearing a black asymmetrical dress and a silver jacket with long tassels. My feet already hurt in my tall ankle booties.

I walk through the empty foyer and living room and realize there’s a backhouse with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. That’s where everybody is hanging out. I need a drink first before I can handle the small talk. What have you been up to? What do you do? I don’t have canned responses today.

In the kitchen, I study my options. Bourbon, soda, absinthe, a refrigerator full of beer. I hate beer. No ice cubes. Ugh. I open a cabinet and shut it again.

“Looking for something?” a deep, slightly affected voice says.

I turn, my left hand with the broken fingernail still resting on a box of chocolate-flavored protein powder.

“Uhm, yes,” I say.

“Did you lose something?” he says.

“Ha, no. I was just wondering if there was some vodka or something,” I say, leaning back against the counter, propping myself up on my hands.

“I don’t think so,” he says, looking at me.

Then: silence.

I can’t quite tell what he’s looking at. My face, yes—but maybe more my chin. My lips? My lips feel dry. I feel suddenly thirsty. He just keeps staring, saying nothing. So I stare back.

I stare at his pale face, his powder-blue blazer, his mouth. His lips are perfect—so full and pink they look almost like a girl’s. Rosebud. Luscious. Vampire. Blood-sucking. Moon. Howling wolves.

I could bite his lower lip, taste its metallic earthiness. Ridiculous. I laugh out loud.

He laughs too.

“What?” he says.

“Blood and wolves,” I say.

“Good name for a band,” he says.

“Something gothy and ’80s?”

“Yes, but with an orchestra.”

“Too cliché,” I say.

“Huh,” he says.

I look at him again.
He looks at me.

Like locking antlers. We’re both… stags. I’m a female stag (??), and he is supposed to be fighting for my attention, and then he steps forward and takes my hand.

“You hurt yourself.”
“Yes.”
“No—I mean, you’re really hurt. Someone hurt you very badly.”

He lifts my hand toward his lips, and for a moment I think he’s going to lick the bandage, but he laughs again, drops it, and opens a cabinet for cups. Two small English teacups with a floral pattern. He grabs a bottle of Stoli and pours two large shots.

“Here you go,” he says. “For your lifetime of pain.”

He hands me a cup. I take it, about to drink the warm vodka, when he says, “No. You must look me in the eyes.”

So I do. He’s barely taller than me in heels. We’re almost the same height. Usually I find that unsexy. But his eyes—his eyes look like a cat’s, like instead of pupils he has vertical slits. What color are they? Violet. Like Liz Taylor. In fact, he sort of looks like Liz Taylor, for some reason.

Our cups clink.

“Cheers,” he says.
“Nastrovya,” I say.

I drink it down. Warm and sharp in my throat, but I don’t cough. He takes a small, delicate sip. What a wimp. Then he sets his cup down, steps toward me, and kisses me, sucking on my lower lip.

“You taste just like I thought you would.”

Then he saunters out of the kitchen toward the backhouse and the party and the fabulous people and David Bowie singing about Mars.