In our tiny niche newspaper there were maps and charts and notes everywhere. It felt heroic to work in that shabby little place.
Kassandra hung up the phone more loudly than she had to and typed madly, slamming the last key. "Aaaand that should seal that quite nicely! The mayor is going to be between city hall and the rotunda between those two meetings and his secretary says he sometimes talks on the move. Everything else is ready in the story, so I'll text you the money-shot and once you get boss-man's approval. Can you link to it in social media?"
"Nah nah fuck links, trust me no one clicks the links anymore unless they're hate-reading political posts; let me make tiny versions of the article for every medium."
"Kay."
At about 210 words per minute we spoke faster than anyone else could understand. We had a shorthand, and could just bark facts at each other without context or grammar. But I guess that didn't matter now, as I was leaving. I got that hospital gig. I just had to get through this week, and the giddy excitement was fueling me as well as any cup of coffee. Kassandra ceremoniously brought over the zip drive I'd need and clicked it into my computer for me. The smell of cinnamon and sweat rushed at me as she arrived - for some reason she was always cinnamony. Saigon cinnamon, the kind you make curries with, and something under it... bananas?? What the heck was it, a moisturizer, a perfume? That couldn't just be her actual human scent, no one smelled good, humans are smelly...
She smiled and bounded back, gathering her papers and putting on her boots in a fwooshing hurry. Those brown knee-highs were magnificent, but that's not why I wished she'd just kept them on. She just had to take them off every time she sat down and just kind of gavotte these cute long slender feet around, one in the air as her leg snuggly slipped over her other knee, her ankle with its inexplicable white-girl star anklet tattoos (what did those mean??) swinging back and forth like a happy puppy's tail. In case that wasn't enough on sunny days when she cycled to work she made absolutely sure I couldn't stop thinking about her toes by wearing those ridiculous toe-shoes that everyone hates; and it was so wrong, so incorrect, so absurd that it somehow worked perfectly with those elegant floppy flowy blouses she wore and created a statement of someone both delicate and indefatigable. The floppy blouses and snuggle-me sweaters she wore screamed that she absolutely went on frequent white-girl finding-myself pilgrimages in fucking Japan or Scotland or something. Why are you so ridiculous and why do I want to lick your tummy so much.
Kassandra got a phone call as she was leaving, her brother asked their family to reschedule their Friday dinner. She was a little glum but invited me out for coffee. It was a loud café called "Kafka", filled with boyish philosophers.
As we walked I was telling her about dressing up as Kaylee last year at the Firefly convention, and how fun the hair was.
"I'm always Zoe. Zoe is the kind of woman I would be attracted to if I was a lesbian!" She giggled in what I guess what a punchline.
You're so bi. Or trans or... something. This was like the time she told me she wanted to switch genders with a partner for a day to experience orgasm the way men do. (We don't have boundaries with each other.) There was something going on there and I was not going to poke that bear. Nope, I'm not going there anymore: no more cliché "questioning" "just once to see" unexamined "straight" girls who want to try fooling around with a "girl" one time while awkwardly being all "am I doing this?" the whole time and then quit but then become attached but won't admit they're bi they just like to stealthily fuck and snuggle and make you their best friend... I was never doing that again and why do straight girls do this and no and no. Some of them don't want to hold the men in their lives to high standards so they give us the emotional labour of loving them without reciprocation; some of them don't want the label; and I wasn't going to be anyone's secret anymore and great now I'm literally thinking in Tegan and Sara lyrics.
Our conversations were always saucy like this... We always disturbed the 20-somethings around us with our cackles. They weren't used to hearing belly-laughs from young women. She probably got more than one raised eyebrow when she casually said she was so tired this morning she matched her lipstick to her new panties perfectly, before realizing she couldn't show her coordination off to anybody.
Eventually we were talking about our worst dates. I talked about the person who turned out to be really, really Catholic, and after making out with me in the park, hid in fear from the sudden rainstorm that hit us, convinced that God was really, really angry about what we had just done and was expressing discontent through weather. Kassan was now giving me her run-down. I can't remember all the details, I just remember her innocent face as she innocently said that she trolled a bad date by out-flirting a woman in a bar he tried to distract himself with, and her momentum just sort of continued as she noticed she was having better luck than him, and that they talked for an hour after he left, bored, and went home and laughed at the phone-number napkin the girl gave her, but felt "flattered and almost intrigued".
"Christ let me get this straight. You've noticing bisexual feelings, this is your last day being my co-worker, your evening plans are cancelled, and you're wearing new raspberry panties you're excited about."
"Um, yes? What do those have to do with each other?"
I downed my latte in a hair-thrown-back little flourish and plopped it loudly on the table. "Nothing." I might have unintentionally sounded angry.
We left the café and started walking.
I'm not doing this. This is a bad idea. I'mnotdoingthisI'mnotdoingthis "But that's just a passing feeling, you'd never do anything about it." Oh shut up.
"I dunno! I mean I'm single now! And my mother told me I probably need a one-night stand, she didn't exactly specify who with!" She giggled her punchline.
"Hah, good one."
"It's stupid, and I would have no idea unless I, like, kissed one first."
I don't know which of us was in that moment more of a ridiculous cliché.
"Yeah totally. And that's quite a niche type you chose there, tall and muscular and in brown leather, eh?"
"No, I think that just might terrify me. More like confident? Confidence is sexy."
"Yeah. Welp! Hope you meet that strange woman one day, WHO knows."
"Heh, no, no matter who or WHAT someone is, kissing a stranger sounds like simply an awful idea. More like a friend."
...Is she leading ME down the garden path I'm leading her down? No. No that's not her at all.
"But not too good a friend. Don't want to ruin an important friendship."
"Um, I think I could only ever let someone who knows me through and through put, um, THEIR hands on me. Y'know, like a partner in crime, like we are."
