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  Cassidy looked at the man’s hand on her shoulder. “Oh, what’s your ring?” she asked. She wanted to be kind to him, too. She’d become an expert at redirection, feigned interest, and nonjudgmental listening.

  “That there’s custom-made,” he bragged. “It’s silver. A girl touchin’ her coochie.”

  Cassidy swallowed hard and called to Simon. “You hear that, Simon? He has a custom ring of a girl touchin’ her coochie.” She imitated his accent and then felt bad, hoping her dance partner didn’t realize she was mocking him. Simon did a spit take with his beer, jumped down from his barstool, and scratched the back of his neck.

  “My turn, pretty lady,” he said, inserting his arm between Cassidy and the ringed man.

  Reluctantly, the Eagles fan stumbled back to his seat. “You like the Eagles?” he asked Michael. Michael laughed and patted him on the back. The man slid off his barstool once more and headed toward the jukebox.

  Cassidy and Simon danced ballroom style, one hand clasped, Simon’s grip firm and confident, until the bartender called out to them, asking if they wanted another drink. They both nodded vigorously, Simon releasing Cassidy’s hand to jog to the bar for the beers. Rather than continue dancing, they took their bottles to the wall and leaned against it, side by side.

  The song ended and another began, and though Cassidy didn’t recognize it, she had an idea whose back catalog it was from. She relaxed, feeling the familiar tingly warmth of alcohol.

  After a couple of slow swallows, Simon spoke. “Lindsey and I broke up,” he said. “I didn’t know when to bring it up. Didn’t feel like the right time at your dad’s thing, but . . . yeah.”

  “Oh man, I’m sorry, dude.”

  “It’s okay. I dunno. It’s fine. For both of us. I don’t think either of us really cared, so you know. That’s why it’s fine.”

  “I guess that’s probably better then.” Cassidy took a sip.

  “I think it was . . . we were the people left, so it made sense to be together, but yeah. I don’t think either of us really cared about each other romantically, and it didn’t make sense to do the long-distance thing when she left.”

  Cassidy nodded. They’d never quite seemed like they fit together, Lindsey with her preppy collared shirts and boat shoes, Simon with his torn jeans and band T-shirts. And while Simon’s family was rough to say the least, Lindsey’s was refined. She lived with her grandfather, who had been a sociology professor at Wesleyan, somewhat famous for his involvement in the civil rights movement. Simon, on the other hand, was the adult in his household. His mom and younger brother refused to act like the grown-ups they were. Even in high school, his mom depended on Simon’s income from his job at Burger King.

  “So, what have you been up to?” Simon asked, eager to change the subject.

  “I don’t know. Work is weird. Southern California kind of sucks.” It was a relief to say it aloud.

  “You’re still doing the—”

  “Yep,” Cassidy interrupted. She sipped her Yuengling. “How’s work for you?”

  “I actually got a grant too.”

  Cassidy turned her head to face Simon. “What kind of grant?”

  “They’re giving me some money for the cooperative farming thing I’ve been doing. To vary the crops and expand distribution.”

  “Simon, that’s amazing!”

  “Thanks.” Simon blushed.

  “How much is it? Can I ask that? Is that rude?”

  “A hundred thousand dollars.” Simon tried to suppress a smile.

  “Holy shit—what?” Cassidy stood up straight and opened her eyes wide. Simon grinned. “So what are you doing for it? What’s it for?”

  “We’ll be working to get healthy food out there on a larger scale. We want to create a replicable model.”

  “That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, dude,” Simon said.

  Cassidy swirled what was left of her beer in awkward ovals and watched it splash against the green sides. “You stayed and you’re making a difference. You’re doing something with your life. I ran away and all I have to show for it is a shitty apartment and the 1,253rd spot on a second-tier cam site.”

  “1,253rd? That’s pretty good! There are probably a ton of people on there.”

  Cassidy checked Simon’s face for a smirk, but he was wide-eyed and earnest. “Hey, what time is it?” she asked.

  Simon looked at his phone. “Almost ten.”

  “Ah, I should get back. Noeli—”

  “Right. Are you two . . . ?”

  “No,” Cassidy said.

  They downed their drinks.

  As they walked out to the street, the cold air hit Cassidy’s lungs and she felt like she could breathe again. At night these streets were even more her streets, changes and all. They belonged to her. They walked back to Main Street, where Simon had parked in front of Thompson’s Pharmacy. Even before the new murals, Main Street had presented a sort of civilized facade. You could walk it and ignore the side alleys that led back toward the railroad tracks. As a kid, these side alleys had seemed dangerous to Cassidy, littered with empty single bottles of beer and the occasional drunk. She still probably wouldn’t go down one herself.

  Simon drove Cassidy back to the farm, the volume up on the tape that had been stuck in the Porsche’s cassette deck since high school—the Ramones’ Greatest Hits. Leaning back in her seat, Cassidy breathed deeply. Simon slowed carefully before each turn, then accelerated just the right amount. High beams on, Cassidy’s gaze fell again on the empty cornfields by Turkey Run, the antique mall, and Mt. Lebanon Church. The familiar sights seemed more vivid under the harsh light. Had she ever really looked closely at them? Simon clicked the lights to low when they got to the long driveway, and Cassidy could feel the presence of every other being in the dark—a thousand eyes that seemed to watch them.

  Simon stopped in front of the house. “See you later, bud.”

  “See you.” Cassidy opened the door and jumped out. She stood on the porch, shivering, and watched him turn around. Simon waited, making sure she got in all right, so she waved goodbye and opened the door as quietly as she could.

  Inside, the house was still. Their tea mugs, left on the table from that afternoon, were surrounded by cards, flowers, and trays of cookies.

  The flowers brought a lump to Cassidy’s throat. Her dad would have hated them. It was something they shared, their distaste for cut flowers. The bullfrog in the pond let out a loud uuuurp and Cassidy wiped her tears and tiptoed upstairs. Quietly, she passed the closed door of her parents’ room and peeked her head into her own. The neon-painted walls were subdued in the dark. A Tegan and Sara poster smiled creepily. It looked preposterous and completely out of tune with her life. Her dresser and desk were dark outlines along the walls, which led to the twin bed where Noeli was already asleep. Cassidy lay down on the zigzag rug, which she’d spread on the one-layer wooden floor in high school in an attempt to soundproof her room, so that her parents couldn’t hear every move she made from the kitchen below.

  She gazed at her friend, still and small in sleep. One day, her body would get old and die. One day, Cassidy’s own body would get old and die. How could people find bodies sexy? They were so fragile.

  Paloma

  Paloma tried to imagine sleeping with someone else. She’d been casual about sex once, a lifetime ago. Her last fling had been with Jan, her boss at the university, a short red-haired man with round gold-rimmed glasses, who dressed in oversized corduroy jackets and baggy pleated slacks.

  Ken had woken her that morning with a phone call.

  “Ahoj.” He’d said it ironically, like the word was a joke between them.

  “Ken?”

  “Paloma, I can’t stop thinking about you. Let’s get married.”

  If Paloma had had a drink, she would have spit it. Instead
she stammered, “I’ve g-got to go.”

  “Don’t hang up on me,” Ken begged. “I know I’m an old man to you. And I know you think I’m immature. But I want to be a father. I have to be a father. All of this, it’s nothing if I don’t have a family. I thought I sensed something of that in you, too. Was I right?”

  She considered his question. She hadn’t planned to see Ken after their first night. Their continued affair was one of convenience. But did he understand her desire to assimilate more than she did herself? Paloma wanted to be part of this place. Was it nothing more than the human desire to settle, to find a mate, to procreate? Maybe, at least partly.

  “Paloma?” Ken asked again. “Can we talk about it?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I, uh. Let’s get a drink.” They made plans to meet back at Radost that evening.

  Paloma had to get some air. She left the kolej in a daze and wandered the city, stopping occasionally to lie on a bench or touch a centuries-old building, but she could not absorb the city and its spirit as fully as she desired. How do I make you part of my body? she asked the city, but the city was as silent and brooding as she. Finally, like a homing pigeon, she found herself in the place she knew best—the fakulty, where Jan was busy grading.

  “Enough work,” he said when he saw Paloma. “Time for lunch?”

  Paloma nodded. “That would be nice.” Jan locked the office and the two walked side by side to a small pub and each ordered a beer and a plate of utopenci.

  “This dish means literally ‘drowned man,’” Jan had said before taking a bite of his pickled sausage.

  Paloma loved his accent, the way he, like other native Czech speakers, approached English words, accenting the first syllable no matter what. She felt almost guilty for robbing her students of this charm when they started using correct pronunciation and sentence structure. “You’d think a dish with that name would be covered in sauce.”

  “Is not about dish. Is about creator.”

  Paloma was confused. Czechs were not a religious people. “The creator?” she asked.

  “Yes. Created in Beroun.” Jan swallowed. “Was very popular at his pub, but one day? Drowned.” Jan shrugged, as if this was not so uncommon for a pub owner in Beroun. “Drowned man. Is still very popular.” Paloma took a bite of her own utopenci, feeling the soft sausage and the crisp onions melting together in her mouth. Only a Czech dish could be morbid, pungent, and sexual all at once.

  When they’d finished their drowned men, Jan raised his studious face to Paloma’s and brushed the hair from her eyes.

  “You need to blow off steam, yes?” he asked. “Why you came to office on weekend. It is . . .” He paused, thinking of the phrase in English. “No string attached. No puppets.” They both laughed, Jan at his own joke, and Paloma at how Czech it was. It was that essential Czechness that put her over the edge. She kissed him and they took the metro back to the fakulty.

  Even drunk and near naked, his red hair standing out sharply against his thin pale thighs, Jan was conscientious, moving student files carefully aside, not pushing or tossing them. This, too, was very Czech, and Paloma felt her chest grow hot with desire as she watched him prepare their makeshift lovers’ bed on the floor of the office amid stacks of papers and textbooks. His conscientiousness gave way quickly, then, to an intensity—a passion. He whispered, half Czech, half English, hot and breathy in her ear, and it was those sounds, the dry seriousness tinted at the edges with an absurd humor—those sounds rather than any physical sensations that brought her to climax. It was less a night with Jan and more a night with what he represented—a stubborn intellectualism; an everyday revolution; a humble, soft-spoken heroism; a connection to a place and a history.

  Now, like then, sleeping with someone would be about place. Paloma didn’t want to fuck West Virginia. But this loneliness—she didn’t want that, either. At that moment her cell phone rang, the screen lighting up with the name of her friend Margaret, as if Paloma had summoned her.

  “Hello?” Paloma answered.

  “I wanted to check in . . . and also to talk about something.”

  Cassidy

  The sun was already high in the sky when Cassidy woke, bright light pouring through the curtainless windows. Cassidy grimaced and peeled herself from the rug, putting a hand to her face to feel the imprint it had left on her cheek. She stood and peered out at the bare tree branches. As a child, she’d loved how her room felt like a tree house. Cassidy’s tongue stuck to the top of her mouth and she felt the slightest bit dizzy. She hadn’t even had much alcohol. She must be dehydrated. The thought of water made her queasy, but she knew it was what she needed. Her phone said ten thirty. She was still on California time.

  Her room felt small in the light and she was surprised at how close her head was to the ceiling. She padded softly across the rug and stopped at the shelf of knickknacks by the door, picking them up, one at a time—a miniature ceramic bear that Simon had given her once for her birthday, a painted wood thimble of her grandmother’s. Grandma Jane had tried to teach her to sew, but Cassidy had gotten frustrated and given up. Still, Grandma Jane had let her keep the thimble. “You might come back to it someday,” she’d said. “You never know.”

  Cassidy was amazed at how these trinkets retained their power—how holding each one could produce the same physical sensation in her belly that it had for years. She picked up an arrowhead she’d found on a walk with her dad. “I used to find these when I walked these woods with Grandaddy,” he’d told her. If it was sharp enough, she would let it draw blood, she thought now, poking the point into her finger before putting it back in its place. The last time she’d held it, her dad was alive.

  Downstairs, Paloma was awake and Cassidy watched her from the stairs as she watered each of her plants—tall aloe vera and spindly spiders—with a small terra-cotta pot. She walked briskly from one to the next, no nonsense. Paloma was not the kind of person to stop and chat with a plant.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Cassidy said from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Oh!” Paloma turned and smiled. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?” Cassidy nodded. “Do you want some tea?” She nodded again.

  Paloma set the watering pot on the coffee table and wiped her hands on her high-waisted jeans. These, too, were more practical than stylish. Paloma didn’t care that high-waisted pants were trendy. Cassidy doubted she even knew. Paloma wore and did what she liked. Cassidy followed her into the kitchen.

  The teakettle set, Paloma sat at the long table and placed one hand on top of the other on its surface. Cassidy sat across from her, her own hands in her lap.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Paloma said, crossing her legs and pursing her lips. Cassidy gritted her teeth. “Talks” with her mother were never fun. They always involved some advice or suggestion Paloma meant as well-meaning but came across instead as criticism. “It’s nice to finally meet Noeli.”

  Cassidy sighed. She knew this was where this was going.

  “I know I’ll make it out to see you in California at some point. I just wish you had picked the Bay Area. Southern California is such a joke.”

  Cassidy ran her tongue over her front teeth.

  “Okay.” Paloma sighed. “Cassidy . . .”

  She was going to ask if she was dating Noeli, give her the talk for the millionth time about how she would love Cassidy no matter what. Paloma had been trying to get her to come out since eighth grade, when she mentioned casually that she hoped Cassidy was a lesbian because the sex talk would be easier. But Cassidy didn’t want to discuss her sexuality any more now than she had then, especially not the fact that it had all taken place on camera. Paloma was less open-minded than she thought herself to be.

  “I’m leaving the farm,” Paloma cut into her thoughts.

  Cassidy bit her cheek and let out a small yelp. She’d expected this, but so soon?

&
nbsp; Paloma nodded sadly, as if it were something she couldn’t help.

  “I’m moving in with Margaret. She called last night. Hank is leaving early for college. Jean and May might join us next year when their kids leave.”

  “Wait. You’re leaving the farm but you’re staying in Buckhannon?” This, she hadn’t expected.

  “Yes. You can have it if you want. Your dad would have wanted you to have it.”

  “You want me to move back?” Cassidy asked with a laugh that came out as a snort.

  “If you want to.” Paloma stood to get the tea, and then set two steaming mugs on the table in front of the still silent Cassidy.

  “You, of all people, think I should move back to West Virginia? I thought you hated it here. I thought you wanted me to leave, to get out.”

  The wind outside blew a spiral of leaves into the air and the spoons jangled.

  “I did want you to leave,” Paloma said. “I wanted you to experience something else. I didn’t want this to be the only kind of place you knew. But this is a nice place to come back to.”

  “Is it? Or would it just make you feel less guilty than selling off land that’s been in the family for generations so you can have an extended sleepover with your weird girlfriends?”

  “I hated some things, you’re right. I hated the food. I hated the racism, the ignorance, the intolerance. It was a big change, coming here from Prague.”

  “And you hated Daddy.” Cassidy snorted again and a headache crept across her eyebrows.

  “Cassidy, I’ve been lonely for so long. I was never in love with your father, but I didn’t hate him.” Paloma paused and Cassidy gaped at her, a look of disgust on her face. Paloma sighed but maintained eye contact.

  “But why did you stay? If you didn’t love Daddy.” The words were bitter and Cassidy wanted to unsay them. What kind of monster told their grieving daughter that she didn’t love her father? How dare she make Cassidy repeat it? She pushed her mug away and folded her arms.