“Holy shit,” she says. “I know. Taj called me.” She hugs me, tight and long. Then she pulls me inside and sits me on a couch. She makes tea, grabs a pen and binder and hands them to me. Hi. “Hi?” she says. She’s taken down the tower of her mother’s boxes and arranged them into a coffeetable and loveseat type setup in the corner of her living room. Her apartment is exactly the same layout as mine, which is why it’s so easy for her to linger there, maybe. Her eyes are brimming. “I don’t know what to say. What do you say to someone after something like that? I’m here, what can I do? You can tell me anything.” He didn’t touch me. “Good,” she whispers, closing her eyes for a moment. “But still. When I heard, I just, I—I thought you were going to die. It’s horrible. It’s the worst thing. What can I say?” I hate Taj, I write. I’m divorcing him. “Okay, don’t worry about that right now.” She reaches for my hands and gasps when she sees the bandage. “What happened?” Accident. She unwraps the bandage and brings me to the bathroom, washes the crooked cut from my index finger to my wrist, wraps it in a fresh bandage. She kisses it. She turns off the light and I follow her. I’ve never stayed in her apartment, the boxes were always right there in the entryway, but now I notice the crayon blue walls and the rainbow of book spines lining her shelves. I think about staying on her couch. She picks up the room, a sock here, a magazine there, her curls catching the lamplight and glowing orange. But there are the windows behind her, the dark outside. I feel like something ready to break. The fear hunts me. Its jaws are so wide. The world is an uninhabitable place sometimes. There is so little that makes it all worth it, but it is. It so is. It has to be. It must.
38 · The Woman with No Face