Chapter Text
In August of 2007, Natalie had been crashing in the office of Lottie’s penthouse for so long that the curtain between crashing and living was beginning to thin. Of course, by then, it was too late to leave.
Natalie had become addicted to being a guest star in Lottie’s weird subchapter of Madeline, and the apartment lent a certain air of respectability to her drug dealing business. Never mind that it was technically Lottie’s parents’; whenever Natalie asked where they were, Lottie said something insane and possibly made up, like Monaco or the Hamptons.
Lottie seemed to like having Nat around more than she didn’t. She was putting her MFA from Columbia to good use working as a telephone psychic—the kind with a 1-800 number in late night infomercials—and spent her days sleeping and her nights shut up in her room saying things like I see great fortune in your future.
It was objectively funny. But, once, her commercial had come on at the liquor store while Natalie was buying as many airplane bottles of Jim Beam as ten crumpled dollars would buy her.
Psychic Solutions Hotline, it exclaimed, Call Today!
“That’s my best friend,” Natalie’d said to a bodega guy who definitely did not care, counting the last two dollars out in quarters and dimes on the counter, and realized only after she’d left the liquor store that it was because she was proud. Stupid but true.
When exactly she and Lottie had become best friends was one of the more interesting questions of Natalie’s life. Girlhood made those lines run so very thin they were, at times, invisible.
But somewhere around junior year, in between Jackie and Shauna and Jeff’s drama and the baby and all the other normal teen bullshit, they’d yolked to each other. They had a sort of yin and yang of shitty dads, shitty home lives. Lottie sat across from Nat at the lunch table and gave her rides in her dad’s Beemer, cruising all the way up to the front door of her trailer, not really seeming to care at all.
Drives home became something else. Sometimes they’d get ice cream together. Sometimes they’d ride down the shore to watch the sunrise. Once, they’d driven to make out point and split a wine cooler and watched the sun set listening to Mazzy Star and Natalie had thought, at the time, that it was better than any time she’d ever gone with a boy.
After graduation, things had fallen apart for Natalie more than they’d fallen together. She’d done an aborted semester at Rutgers and then had sort of just relaxed her body and gone with the current. She had tried so hard for so long to be a rock, steadfast and unchanged in the face of the rushing water. She needed to try being the pebble she actually was, if only for a while.
And so, by 2006, Natalie had done a stint at pretty much any job the human mind could conjure up, including catching bats and birds in people’s homes and call center operating. The one thing she hadn’t tried yet was kicking drugs—not all of them, of course, but the ones that were having a material negative impact on her life (cocaine and 75% of the downer family)—which was not going to happen anywhere in the state of New Jersey. A friend of a friend turned her on to a tree planting outfit operating for the season in a remote part of Oregon, and so she had packed her meager belongings and left on the first flight she could afford to Portland.
It was somewhat embarrassing to admit that Natalie’s only real friends in her adult life were from her high school varsity girl’s soccer team, but otherwise she’d have to cop to having no friends, so she held her head high and owned it. They’d more or less stuck around through Natalie’s sojourns, which was more than she could say for Kevyn or Travis or Rich, and they cared at least enough to write to her while she was in the big bad woods. She’d get a picture of Dillon, a five page missive from Misty, an invitation to Tai and Van’s civil union when she was home.
Lottie was the only person to ever send her a package, and it contained one thing; a mixed CD with all of the music, in Lottie’s opinion, that Natalie was missing during her self imposed exile to the Pacific Northwest. Natalie had popped it into her walkman within seconds of opening it, stinking and waiting in a camp store outside of Bend for the next available shower, and was both delighted and horrified to find that it contained Mariah Carey, Fall Out Boy, the Black Eyed Peas.
She listened to that CD until it skipped too much to be enjoyable. And, when she finished her stint, her first call on a pay phone outside of Union Station had been to Lottie.
“Did you get my CD?” Lottie said before Natalie even had a chance to say hello. Natalie grinned, leaned her shoulder against the phone enclosure. It was a warm day melting into a cool Oregon night and the sun was setting and Portland smelled like bonfires and ocean. She’d grown lean muscle over the summer and had acquired a tattoo, on her right bicep, a rose under which a banner read a rose in Portland blooms for you.
“Fuck you, I got your CD. I’ve had We Belong Together stuck in my head for six weeks.” Natalie paused. “How did you know it was me?”
“Who else is calling me from a pay phone at midnight?”
“It’s only nine here,” Natalie cradled the phone against her shoulder and picked at a cuticle. “So, uh, what’s going on?”
Lottie laughed, low and melodic, and the sound made Nat blush. “Nothing much, Nat, what’s going on out there?”
“Oh, you know, same old.”
“How many trees did you plant?”
“A million.”
“A million!” Lottie laughed again, delighted this time, and Natalie blushed deeper. “Wow, did they give you some kind of award?”
“Shut up.”
“The girls miss you. You missed Dillon’s 10th.”
“I sent him a present.” A little zine about Bigfoot sightings she’d picked up in Zigzag.
“The Bigfoot book? Yeah, he liked that. So did I.”
“So did you?” Natalie grinned and twirled the phone wire around a finger.
“I got too drunk and had to spend the night at the party. At Jackie and Shauna’s, I mean. I read it front to back at least twice.” She paused. “So when are you coming home, tree hugger?”
“About that,” Nat took the receiver again with one hand and passed the other over her forehead. She clenched her teeth together, biting the metaphysical bullet. Before she could open her mouth to speak, there was a pounding and the glass of the enclosure shook.
She turned her head. An irritated line of tree tenders had formed outside. “Nat, hurry it the fuck up.” The man at the front of the line said, and Natalie flipped him the finger.
“I’m finished when I’m finished, Ronnie, you pencil dick piece of shit.” She called, tilting the receiver away from her mouth.
“I don’t have a pencil dick!”
“Oh yes you do, I fuckin saw it. Fuck off before I call your wife to tell her about your girlfriend!” Natalie turned her head back and put the receiver back to her mouth. “Sorry about that.”
There was more quiet laughter in Lottie’s voice. “No, that’s—that’s okay.”
“So I was saying, I got this bud tending gig set up in Woodstock. But they’re not going to be ready for me until October, so. And you can say no or whatever. But there’s not much going on up here, and I figure if I sling from New York City for a couple months I can save up some money to get settled upstate. Did I say you can say no?”
“You haven’t asked me anything.” Lottie sounded like she knew exactly what Natalie was asking.
Natalie swallowed, “I guess I’m just wondering if I can stay with you for a few weeks. I can’t really pay you—right now, but I swear, give me a little while to get my feet under me, and—”
“Natalie.” Normally Nat hated it when Lottie did that—full Christian named her—but just then it felt appropriate. “Of course you can stay with me. I thought you’d never ask.”
*
Natalie had arrived in the lobby of Lottie’s Central Park high rise a week later feeling like the biggest idiot on planet earth. The doorman made her repeat Lottie’s full name five times before letting her up to the penthouse. She thought he might ask her for Lottie’s birthday or social security number or something. Humiliating.
To be fair, she’d shown up tan and lean in a white tank top and work pants with about 50 different pockets and loops to hold hammers. Natalie had cropped her hair into a sort of Joan of Arc chic before embarking for the summer to keep the guys’ sexual expectations at bay, and it had grown out somewhere between a bob and a shag, back to its hereditary flat brown. She looked like an Italian plumber.
She even hesitated before knocking on Lottie’s door. Fuck, maybe she should just go get a hostel or something. The tree planting gig paid pretty well and it would be a ding to her savings, yes, but still better than—
The door swung open before she could complete her thought, and there stood Lottie Mathews in the flesh. Natalie had expected her to look different, somehow, and was pleased to find her exactly the same as she’d left her. The same round face, dark eyes, full mouth.
She smiled when she saw Natalie and Natalie, to her shame, felt her body heat with it. When was the last time somebody had been happy to see her? Christ, how pathetic.
They’d been standing in silence for just a little longer than was normal before Natalie spoke. “So, uh, here I am.”
Lottie’s smile grew. “Natalie Scatorccio. Here you are.”
*
For about five minutes, Natalie had worried that it would be awkward between them. The ties that bound were strong, but the truth was that she and Lottie hadn’t spent more than an hour alone together in maybe three years. Nor had there ever been two people who existed on farther sides of the social strata.
Case and point, the baby grand piano in Lottie’s foyer. Natalie glued her eyes to it for a moment, hand gripping the strap of the duffel slung over her shoulder, before her attention caught on something else.
“Nice bling.”
“Oh, thanks,” Lottie unselfconsciously turned her ankle to show off the monitor strapped to it, blinking red. “I got caught shoplifting from Macy’s. It was almost grand larceny but I got a sweetheart deal because of, well, you know.” She gestured to her head as if that said everything and, truthfully, it did.
“Did you get anything good?”
“Not really.”
Natalie dropped her duffel on the floor. “Want to give me a tour?”
The place was like the fucking Romanov summer palace. Natalie figured there were about ten thousand worse places to weather out a house arrest than a three bedroom penthouse suite with a double sectional couch, flat screen TV, and gas range.
Natalie’s bedroom had a window that overlooked the park. When she gazed out of it, she could see all the people weaving through like ants. “I saw you looking at the piano,” she turned back to where Lottie lingered in the doorway, really absorbing her for the first time. Her velour tracksuit, which Natalie could probably not have afforded if she spent every red cent she’d been paid over the summer, paired well with the ankle monitor. “Do you play?”
“Oh, no,” Natalie laughed. “Jesus, have you forgotten everything about me, already, Matthews? Next you’re going to ask me if I ski.”
“Do you want to learn? I can teach you something easy.”
Natalie sucked her teeth. Considered her options. Probably it beat whatever the hell was on TV. “Sure,” she said, “why not.”
*
So Lottie taught her how to play Heart and Soul, the two of them crammed together on the piano bench. By the second week, they had quite the little show put together. They could have taken it on the road.
Natalie found herself in a strange sort of solidarity with Lottie’s house arrest. Lottie didn’t make her feel like she needed to hang around the apartment all day with her, but she did anyway. It wasn’t until the end of the first week, sitting on the piano bench next to Lottie and watching her play a piano piece much more complex than Heart and Soul, that she realized that there hadn’t been five consecutive minutes of awkwardness between them.
Lottie got her ankle monitor removed in late September and Natalie took her to the only place she could afford to celebrate, the pizza spot on the corner. They ate slices and Cokes sitting at a ketchup red laminate bench in the back.
“So this psychic thing,” Natalie said around a bite of pepperoni. Lottie reached out with a napkin to get a drip of grease from the corner of her mouth and she swatted it away. “What’s up with that?”
“A professor from Columbia set me up with it. It’s nothing, really. You just have to have enough charisma to sell people on it.”
“And a cool name, like Miss Cleo.”
“And a cool name, like Miss Cleo.” Lottie confirmed solemnly.
Well, if anybody had the goods, it was Lottie. “Have you ever been right?”
“Oh, sure.” Lottie shrugged. She had her elbows propped on the table, a napkin clutched in one of her hands. “Honestly, sometimes I feel like, if I focus really hard, I can really do it.”
Natalie cocked an eyebrow. “What, see the future?”
“Yeah. It’s probably just breakthrough from my meds. But, hey, makes it believable.”
“Honestly, Lot, if you taught me to play the piano, I believe you can do anything, including see the future.” They smiled at each other and lapsed into comfortable silence. Natalie cleared her throat, then moved her eyes to stare down at her lap. “Listen. I don’t think I ever—well, I never properly—shit.” She laughed and looked at Lottie’s face, Lottie’s encouraging smile. Somehow it was easier to say this to her than away from her. “I suck at saying how I feel.”
“That’s okay.”
“What I’m trying to say, like an idiot, is thank you. Thank you for letting me stay, and for—well, all the rest of it. And, look, I swear I’ll be out of your hair in a week or two. The job upstate will be ready soon, and then—”
“Nat.” Lottie was still smiling, and it was wrinkling the corners of her eyes. She was, far and away, the nicest thing to look at in that entire pizza place, and perhaps on the whole city block. “I like having you here. I’ve, honestly—” She paused, as if debating how to press forward. “—well, I don’t get a lot of visitors. My parents are never here, and then the house arrest, and before that I wasn’t exactly the best with my meds. Sometimes it’s nice just to hear you walking around.”
At that, she blushed, as if she hadn’t meant to say it so plainly. Natalie blushed too. “So what you’re saying is that I’m better than nothing.”
“No.” Lottie laughed, like it was all so easy. “What I’m saying is that I like your company.”
*
One thing Natalie couldn’t quite figure was whether things had always been this…intense between them. Maybe in high school it had just been hard to tell, but as an adult with otherwise regulated hormones it was easier to identify the blips on the radar.
She was looking at Lottie in a way she hadn’t really looked at other women before. Longer, with more intention, although intention to do what Natalie hesitated to speculate. Lottie had always been something of a black box in the romance department and Natalie found herself spending a lot of time ruminating on what sorts of boys she dated in want of any evidence in one direction or the other.
Were they tall? Short? Mean? Funny? Who among them could give adequate consideration to Lottie’s blend of sophistication and total oddball strangeness? Natalie had to imagine none of them.
She initially chalked it up to a horny misfire. Within the family of downers that Natalie was trying to kick were men who couldn’t make her cum, which eliminated all of them. So by the time she arrived on Lottie’s doorstep, she hadn’t known the touch of another human being in months.
On top of that, in the woods, after she’d read through the John Grisham novel she’d bought used from a dry goods store in Sweet Home cover to cover, the only thing left were the Playboy magazines the guys brought up with them. And you try looking at those after a few hits of primo Oregon weed and not feeling a little gay.
But all it was, really, was an innocent misplaced crush that meant nothing. Lottie was the hot, straight Daddy Warbucks to Natalie’s Little Orphan Annie. It would refocus. Wear off. Natalie decided to herself that the math checked out, and ignored the fact that she had gotten a C in algebra.
*
In early fall, Natalie dreamed that she was back at Mt. Hood, laying on her bedroll, dirty magazine in her lap. The fire was dying beside her and the guys were asleep. Above her, a million twinkling stars.
She opened it and was surprised to find that the first picture was one of Lottie. She wasn’t naked—it was as if Natalie’s brain wouldn’t quite cross that line—but in her underwear, not even lingerie but her regular underwear, spread out amongst a velvet backdrop. A little tickle started to run up Natalie’s spine. She turned the page.
Lottie, Lottie, Lottie. Legs spread, on her knees, on her back. There was a centerfold. When she looked to the cover, there she was. Lottie.
On one page, there was an article with a headline. Do You Want to Know How to Please Lottie Matthews?
Natalie tried as hard as she could to read the words, but they were a blur. The warmth in her spine had spread into a wildfire, in her belly, between her legs. After a few futile attempts to read the words in the article, she pressed the magazine to her face and inhaled, stuffed a hand into her underwear to try and take the edge off.
“Tell me,” Natalie whispered in the dream. She was suddenly sure that the secret of the universe was between Lottie’s legs, in the hot cavern of her mouth. “Tell me, please, I want—I want—”
*
She woke, sweating and damp between her legs, in the middle of Lottie’s guest bed. She’d pulled her blankets over her face and had a hand in her underwear. Natalie thrashed free when she realized and then lay, panting and in shocked silence, in the middle of the bed. She stared at the ceiling. She considered whether a dream like that warranted a visit to a doctor to diagnose if there was something clinically wrong with her.
Finally, into the silence of the bedroom, she muttered: “I need to get laid.”
*
September slipped into October and Natalie’s move out deadline slipped by without either of them saying anything about it.
“I like your company,” Lottied’d said. Natalie liked her company, too. They played cards and Heart and Soul and ate together and watched pay per view movies on the couch. Her drug dealing business was then a going concern and Lottie did not mind the occasional ruffian buying a dime bag in the foyer. She’d picked up a couple shifts a month as a bouncer at a neighborhood bar for extra income.
Truthfully, Natalie had begun to look at Lottie with the sort of reverence that a dog might have for the woman who adopted it out of the kill shelter. This was the closest thing she’d had to a permanent situation in years, living with Lottie, being in Lottie’s orbit. And where would she have been if Lottie hadn’t taken her in? What would she have been doing? Adrift again with no tether.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t adrift, because Natalie had a Lottie, and that and that alone cast her fortunes apart from the other bums and burnouts and losers sticking to the hull of New York City.
So Natalie did not let minor details—like her sudden sexual fixation—spoil this turn in her circumstances. Two straight women could have a perfectly healthy platonic relationship in spite of a couple dirty dreams and lingering glances. When Natalie was less preoccupied, she’d find a boyfriend, and that would be that.
Except, she never became less preoccupied. And then one day, it had been six months since she’d moved in with Lottie. And then one day, it had been a year.
Natalie had not realized that the buckets she’d been carrying all this time had been overflowing until they started to spill over. They were full of the way she felt about Lottie, her dreams, the strange palpitations of her heart when she was near. They were full of the things she knew about Charlotte Matthews and even fuller of the things she didn’t.
Although she could not have imagined it to be true, not then, Natalie didn’t know everything about Lottie. She would learn most of it as that summer coasted into fall, piece by piece, and then, as the end drew nearer, all at once.
*
She should not have let Tony and Andrew come by and stay for samples, but unlike Lottie, Natalie couldn’t even fake being psychic.
“It’s part of being a small business owner.” She’d said, stirring some yogurt around with a spoon. In front of her, leaning against the kitchen sink, Lottie ate a peach right off the pit and let her robe slip down her shoulder. They were having something of a heatwave. She was not wearing anything underneath it. “I got new shit in and I need to get people to want to buy it.”
It was her house, so why shouldn’t she be eating sexy fruits scantily clad. Natalie had no issue with it, but maybe the issue was that she didn’t have an issue. Maybe the issue was that a drop of juice hit her right in her cleavage and Natalie watched with great interest.
When they’d played varsity soccer together, this sort of thing wasn’t so strange. In the locker room, the girls would stare and swat each other with towels and spank each other on the flanks like heifers preparing for a 4H auction. That’s what Nat chalked it up to then; a certain sororal closeness that kept her eyes glued to Lottie’s almost bare chest.
“If you say so,” said Lottie, brow raised. “I guess I’ve just never really been home when you have people over.”
“I get it,” Nat never in a million years would have been eating Yoplait except that Lottie asked her to, instead of having a protein shake for breakfast. She thought the chemicals were going to send Natalie to an early grave. She took a bite, still staring at her chest. Fuck, Lottie’s boyfriends were lucky. Did Lottie have even have boyfriends? At this point, Natalie wasn’t sure. Was that a normal thought to have? She was even less sure. She pushed her eyes back up to Lottie’s face. ”I swear to God and Jesus that I’ll be here with them the whole time. We’re just going to get stoned and watch Scooby Doo. And, hey,” she flashed Lottie a little smile, “I’ll buy you dinner after they pay me, how about that? Someplace nice, not Angelo’s.”
Lottie seemed satisfied by this. She finished her peach and dropped the pit in the kitchen trash and, regretfully, pulled up her robe. By then, Natalie was adrift thinking about her sitting across the table from her at some nice spot, face all freckled with candlelight, maybe in a nice dress.
This was the kind of thing that, in hindsight, should have tipped Natalie off that things were going south in ways she could not quite comprehend. But again, as she’d said. Not psychic. Not even particularly smart.
That night, Lottie had a live show, so Natalie made herself scarce and dragged herself down to the corner bar for a couple of beers.
She sat at the sticky bar and pulled the basket of peanuts toward her and nodded at Bruce, the steadfast bartender. He ambled over to her, towel thrown over his shoulder. “Usual?” He grunted, and Natalie nodded.
He poured her off a pint of Bud Lite and a shot of bottom shelf whiskey, liquid splashing onto the bar when he set them down in front of her. Then, Bruce took the TV remote from behind the register and turned to find the right channel. When he did, he took it off mute.
Lottie’s voice drifted across the bar, not too quiet, not too loud. The picture on the screen was just a fuzzy crystal ball on a purple cloth, with the text LIVE PSYCHIC READINGS - CALL IN NOW and the 1-800 number displayed beneath it. Lottie was talking to a woman about her financial problems.
“You know, if anybody asks me to put on the game…” Bruce said, raising his eyebrow. Natalie waved him off, eyes fixed on the TV as if she could see Lottie there.
“I got it, I got it.”
They lingered in silence for a moment. The bar wasn’t full—it never was, on Tuesdays—and it was quiet other than the occasional sound of pool balls clacking together in the background and Lottie’s hypnotizing voice.
“Are you looking for something?” Bruce said finally, regarding Natalie quizzically. She squinted at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you come in here every Tuesday and you make me put this on,” he gestured to the television, “so I figured you must be looking for some kind of psychic advice or something. Why don’t you call in yourself?”
Natalie considered this question, picked up her shot, and knocked it back without a wince. She licked the whiskey from her teeth. “Dunno,” she said, “Kind of feels like it would ruin the surprise.”
*
Tony and Andrew were a couple of good for nothing stoners that Natalie had met through Travis. They were rich, not quite Lottie-rich but up there, which meant that they were both not very discerning and willing to pay an incongruous amount of money to the quality of product they were receiving.
“Gotta say,” whistled Tony when she brought them into the foyer, “I never had a plug who had a baby grand in their foyer. I actually don’t think I’ve ever had a plug with a foyer.”
“It’s my roommate’s,” Nat replied tersely. She could tell within a few minutes of Tony and Andrew’s arrival that this was a bad idea, and was grateful that said roommate had shuttered herself away in her bedroom so as not to witness the matching polos and frosted tips of it all. On top of this, she didn’t like the idea that Tony was looking at the piano at which she and Lottie had sat and laughed and played together. His attention cheapened it, somehow. “Everything is set up in the living room.”
“You said we’d get free samples,” chimed Andrew, the meeker of the two. Natalie tried to remember their connection. Cousins, maybe? “Before we had to buy, right?”
Natalie turned her back to hide her eye roll. “Right. Come on.”
Natalie handed around the pill pieces like a sample person at Costco and the three of them melted back into the couch, the boys on either side, Natalie between them. The episode of Scooby Doo flickered across the television, making less and less sense as the drugs saturated her brain.
Time started to move like a slushy being poured into a cup, dense and slow and finite. For a little while, it was perfect. And then Lottie emerged.
She came padding out of her bedroom in a robe that hit her mid-thigh with a white tank top underneath. It was still god awful hot. Dark hair over one shoulder. She was playing with it absentmindedly while she avoided eye contact with any of the degenerates sitting on her couch.
Looking at Lottie with a head full of drugs made Natalie feel like something was unfurling inside of her. A flower opening.
“Sorry,” Lottie muttered as she floated by, “I just need a glass of water.”
Ruh-Roh! Said Scooby on the television. Nat’s eyes were following Lottie’s figure like they’d gotten glued there. Her hips, her skin, her legs. Holy Christ, those legs. She craned her head to keep looking when the lower half of Lottie’s body disappeared behind the kitchen island.
By the time she passed back through with her water in hand, Natalie’s body was hot and leaden and prickling beneath the skin. Lottie said nothing to the three of them as she wandered back down the hall, and the three of them said nothing until her door clicked shut behind her. Lottie’s body had sucked all the air out of the room.
“Jesus Louisus, Nat, was that your fuckin’ roommate? Holy shit,” said Tony. He had his hand to his forehead like he couldn’t process what he’d just seen. Like it had been a freak blimp accident that had just exploded in front of him and not a human woman walking in the sanctity of her own home.
The realization that Tony and Andrew had been looking at Lottie, not just Natalie, hit her like a splash of cold water to the face. She felt suddenly disgusting. “Tony, don’t be a fuckin pervert, man—”
“Hey beautiful!” Tony called down the hallway. Natalie reached over to try to clap a hand over his mouth, but he resisted her, “Come back out here and walk in front of me again, baby, I need it bad!”
“Dude, what the fuck?” Natalie punched him in the shoulder ineffectually. He rubbed at the spot and laughed, which made her angier. “Is this how you act in other people’s houses?”
“Relax, I was kidding.”
“Ha ha, very funny, asshole.”
“Not my fault your roommate’s hot as shit.”
“One more word out of you and I’m going to call your fuckin mother, man. Shut your mouth.”
Tony put his hands up in surrender, still smiling like an asshole. Natalie settled back into the couch with her arms crossed. Behind the pleasant haze of her high, she felt a rock forming in her stomach.
She tried not to think about their eyes on Lottie. It felt like an encroachment on Nat’s space.
They sat in silence. Tony was still looking down the hall like Lottie might actually reemerge. The eternal hope of the stupid, “I know you don’t swing that way, Nat, but goddamn. Even if I didn’t have a dick I wouldn’t let that stop me from—”
“Out!” Natalie barked, standing from the couch, “Both of you, out, right now.”
After she’d given them the bum’s rush, she shuffled to Lottie’s room and knocked meekly. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
“Come in.” Natalie pushed open the door and stood in the threshold, posture that of contrition. Lottie was sitting on her bed, a king-sized number with lush velvet drapings, and had a tarot spread in front of her. She eyed Natalie with something inscrutable.
“I am so sorry,” she blurted, shifting from foot to foot. “Those guys ended up being total fucking knuckleheads. I should have known. I kicked them out and nobody’ll ever—not past the foyer—”
“Nat,” Lottie interrupted her. “Your pupils look like dinner plates.”
“I’m sorry.” Natalie said again. She began to wring her hands, like a naughty schoolgirl in the principal’s office. Lottie’s impassive reaction to this was worse; it was like she was withholding absolution.
“I really don’t care. Men talk to me like that all the time.”
“Yeah, well, I care. I mean, they shouldn’t have even been looking at you. I should have told them that before they came. No looking at Lottie. Let alone talking about you.”
“Are you okay? You’re flushed.”
“Yeah,” Natalie stopped wringing her hands and scratched her cheek. Her heart was beating fast and slow at the same time.
“What were they saying about me?”
“Just that you’re hot. I mean, you do look hot, so. They’re disgusting, but I kind of get it. If I had less self control, I—” Natalie trailed off and considered what she was saying. Had she fallen and hit her head on the way to Lottie’s bedroom?
“You—” Lottie lifted a brow, “—would have cat called me?”
“I’m pretty stoned,” croaked Nat.
“I see,” Lottie turned back to her cards and cleared her throat. If Natalie wasn’t mistaken, there was a little flush of pink on her cheeks, as well. “If it had been you I might have actually come back out.”
Natalie’s heart stopped altogether as she tried to make sense of what Lottie had just said. Was it better or worse for her to reach past the drugs and understand what she meant by that? The words made sense separately, but were a mystery when pushed together. Her brain spun and then crashed out completely. “I need to go make a sandwich or something.” She said after she realized that she’d been standing in stunned silence for way, way too long. “They always make the sandwiches on Scooby Doo look so good. You know what I mean?”
Lottie blinked once. Shook her head as if clearing it. Then, she fixed her with an indulgent look and put her cards down, “I’ll make you one. Come on.”
“Lot, you don’t have to.”
Lottie had already slid from her bed and was moving to the doorway. “Come on. Pip pip.”
“Pip pip? I’m not a dog, Lot.” Natalie followed her all the same.
Lottie fixed them sandwiches at the kitchen island and Natalie watched this with a familiar canine devotion. She made herself one and Natalie two. When she was done, she considered them together on their plate.
“Do you want me to stack them together like a Scooby Doo sandwich?”
Natalie regarded her seriously. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re the most perfect woman on planet earth?”
She couldn’t tell if the pink on Lottie’s cheeks was new or leftover from the bedroom.
After they’d eaten, they settled on opposite ends of the couch. If it had been you, maybe I would have come back out. What the hell was Natalie supposed to do with that?
“Do you want to keep watching Scooby Doo?” She asked, and Lottie eyed her askance.
“Not all of us are high right now.“ She turned on the television and started to flick through the channel guide. The space between them felt near and far all at once. “I kind of want to watch something where somebody gets hacked apart. It looks like we only missed the first twenty minutes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Lot, if we watch that you‘re gonna have to hold my hand or something. Otherwise I might, you know, freak out.”
You’re gonna have to hold my hand or something? Now Natalie had well and truly lost the plot. She was shocked when, instead of laughing the comment off and putting on something nicer, Lottie turned the channel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and opened her arm in invitation.
She wasn’t looking at Natalie. Natalie was trying to use x-ray vision on her. On screen, a chainsaw revved.
Well, she’d asked for it. Natalie had many flaws, but being a coward wasn’t one of them. As cool as she could, she scooted over until she was on the other chaise with Lottie and slotted her body against her side and under her arm.
Lottie kept staring at the screen. This was a far cry from holding hands, but Natalie was too busy fixating on when the last time she’d been hugged was to care. Between that and the drugs, she couldn’t tell if she was acting normal or not.
“Are you—” Lottie began, and Natalie winced. She could feel her own stiffness. Not normal, then.
“Sorry, I’m just—not used to this. It’s good, but I’m not used to it. Gimme a second.” She squirmed for a second, which pressed her body against Lottie’s and added a third problem to her roster. Lottie felt as good as she looked. But the thought made her body slacken in search of touch. She pressed her cheek to Lottie’s shoulder and exhaled. “Fuck, man. This is awesome.”
She’d meant to think it, but instead she’d said it out loud. Lottie’s body trembled with laughter. Then, Nat felt her hand at her shoulder. A thumb made its way under the arm of her t-shirt and began to stroke her skin.
Almost immediately, Natalie’s eyelids drooped. This must be how snakes felt after eating a large meal and then finding a hot rock to rest on; total Nirvana.
Please god, she thought as she drifted off, if you love me at all, not the fucking Playboy dream again.
*
Though not about Playboy, Natalie dreamed indeed. She dreamed that she was alone sitting on the couch in the darkness of the apartment. The television was still on; it was still playing Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“Lottie,” she called, then again, like a suffering animal, “Baby, please. I need it. I need it.”
Lottie’s bedroom door clicked open. Natalie’s eyes flew open. She sat up on the chaise.
“Where am I?”
“In our apartment?” At the kitchen island, Lottie turned. She was dressed for the day; flowing pants, a slightly cropped shirt that exposed a strip of tan stomach, sunglasses perched on her head. Natalie still had sandwich crumbs on her t-shirt. She squinted against the sun. “You look like you just slept for 14 hours.”
“Did I?” Natalie croaked.
“Well, yes.” Lottie flashed her a somewhat terse smile. Fuck, Natalie thought, was I talking in my sleep? “I’m heading out. I might be gone until late. I have some errands and then I’m meeting a friend for drinks.”
“Oh. Okay.” Natalie sat up further and rubbed the sleep from her face. “Yeah, I’m picking up a shift at the bar tonight. I probably won’t be home until like four or so.”
Lottie hummed. “I’m guessing those guys didn’t buy from you last night.”
“Not after I protected your honor.” Natalie said, leaving out the part where she’d wanted to call out to Lottie so bad she’d dreamed about it.
“Protected my honor?” Lottie looked amused by this. She spun her keys around her index finger and caught them in her palm. “My hero.”
“All in a day's work, m’lady,” Natalie tilted her head. “It’s all good, though. The business will survive. I think I’m making some inroads with the maintenance guys, actually. We’ve been smoking out by the trash cans every so often.”
“Nat,” Lottie frowned. “I don’t like that. I feel like they’re going to find your body in pieces in the Hudson river.”
“Jesus, you sound like the foreman of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Could you twirl that oil baron mustache any harder?” Lottie’s face flattened for a moment before smoothing out again, which was her version of flying into a fit of uncontrollable rage, “They’re, like, twelve. Lest you forget that your best friend and squatter is a no good piece of shit drug dealer.”
Lottie rolled her eyes. “The only thing that you said that you actually are is a drug dealer. But, point taken. Just be careful.”
“Aye, aye boss.” Natalie threw her a salute. “See you tomorrow morning.”
It started to rain around six in the evening. Natalie had been out, had smoked with the maintenance kids, had played a little Nintendo, but the weather sucked the wind out of her sails and she skulked home around ten.
When she arrived, there was a message on the machine from the bar. It was slow because of the weather. No need for a bouncer that night.
There was evidence all over the apartment that Lottie had returned, changed, and left again. A glass in the sink, a few dresses laid out on her bed. Natalie followed this trail until she realized how creepy it was, and then decided to enjoy her night in with a bowl of Lucky Charms.
She was halfway through her snack, sat at the kitchen island, when she heard the sound of footsteps, then female voices outside the front door. There was Lottie’s, then a woman’s voice that she couldn’t place. A key scraped around the lock.
Probably Lottie and her friend coming home drunk from the bar. Natalie stuffed another spoonful of cereal into her mouth and heard the sound of the door opening and two women giggling in the foyer, then stumbling footsteps. She knitted her brow. She wasn’t sure the last time was that she’d seen Lottie properly drunk, and realized belatedly that she hadn’t asked who this friend was.
Not that it was any of Nat’s business. Lottie could have friends without telling her. Anyway, this woman was probably perfectly nice. When they came into the kitchen, she’d—
Lottie rounded the corner, her back to Natalie. The first thing that Natalie noticed was that she had indeed changed into what may have been called a little black dress and a fur shrug that was sloping off her shoulders. The second was that Lottie’s friend’s hand was on her ass, groping, and pushing up the hem of said little black dress so that skin and a sliver of black lace was exposed.
Natalie’s mouth opened and a little bit of milk dribbled onto her chin. She noticed, third and somewhat redundant to the rest of it, that Lottie and her friend were rather ferociously making out. Lottie pulled away with a breathless laugh and began to remove her shrug all the way. To Natalie’s horror, her friend’s eyes turned to the kitchen island, and to her.
On top of the milk dribble on her chin, Natalie was in a Slayer hoodie and boxers. The friend’s eyes widened and she took half a step back.
Lottie paused with the shrug at her elbows. “Carlie, what’re you—”
“Uh, Charlotte, I think you have—”
“Hey, Lot. Sorry for interrupting.”
Lottie spun around and Natalie saw her face go cherry red immediately upon seeing her. Natalie almost never saw Lottie ruffled and tried not to get too hung up on how good she looked like this. Lipstick smeared, cheeks red. Clothes askew. Lottie shoved the hem of her dress down and the shoulder of her shrug up.
Behind her, her friend—nay, her date—looked quietly befuddled. She had a dark bob and angular features and wasn’t not pretty, Natalie thought, but would have seemed much prettier if she hadn’t just had her tongue in the mouth of the object of Natalie’s recent and intense fixation.
“Nat,” Lottie said, smoothing down her hair. “I thought you said you were working tonight.”
“They called me off. Weather.” So, this was the kind of man Lottie liked to date, Natalie thought. A well-put together woman. Her brain churned. The three of them stood for a moment, eyes darting between each other.
Lottie cleared her throat and it seemed to occur to her that somebody needed to say something. “Carlie, this is my—this is Nat. Nat, this is Carlie.”
“What’s up.” Nat said, and raised a hand in greeting. She wiped the milk from her chin with the other.
“Hey.” Said Carlie, and they all stood together in a moment, then two moments, of strained silence. “Well, I should—”
“No, no, don’t let me—I can go into my bedroom and put in my headphones, it’s really no big deal.”
“I think that’s for the best. I’ll call you, Carlie.” Lottie turned around and put a hand to Carlie’s chest, and Nat felt herself frown when she imagined the placating smile that she must be giving her. The placating smile that she usually reserved for Natalie.
After showing Carlie out the front door, Lottie swept back into the kitchen, studiously avoiding contact with Natalie. She removed her shrug and laid it on a stool, went to the fridge, dug around for a moment.
Natalie stared into her cereal milk, but all she could see was the reflection of Lottie’s left asscheek.
“How was your night?” Lottie said into the fridge.
“Oh, fine.” Natalie replied. “A little warm for fur, isn’t it?”
“It’s faux. Don’t get any ideas about red paint.”
“Hm. Okay.” Natalie nodded, then sucked in a breath. “So, you’re a lesbian, though?”
Lottie straightened and shut the fridge door, then turned back to Natalie. She had a bottle of water in her hand. “Don’t be reductive, Nat, I could be bisexual.”
“…are you bisexual?”
Lottie looked at her like she was stupid. “No, I’m a lesbian.” Then she cracked the top of the water and took a long sip.
“Was that your girlfriend?”
“Carlie’s not my girlfriend.”
“Okay.” Natalie nodded, then waited for something, anything else. She’d known Lottie since before she had boobs, and never even an inkling of this. And that did not look like a first time encounter.
“Just say what you’re thinking.”
“Well, I just—” Natalie paused. “—I didn’t know.”
“I figured one of the other girls would have let it slip by now.”
Natalie’s brow pinched and, in spite of herself, a little well of hurt opened in her stomach. Other people knew?
“Um, okay. They didn’t.”
“Okay, so. Now you know. Is it a big deal, or something?”
“That feels a little uncalled for.” To be fair, her only experience with lesbians outside of her friends was sweeps week on the CW. But that didn’t make Natalie a homophobe or anything. She wasn’t used to this kind of rough demeanor from Lottie, of all people. She floundered as she tried to figure out how to respond to it. “Are you, like, pissed that I found out or something? I’m having some trouble reading you right now, Matthews.”
Lottie took a deep breath and shook her head once, eyes closed. When she opened them again, her face was softer. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch. It’s just been a weird night, and I got a little too drunk.”
“That’s okay.” Natalie pushed some cereal around in her bowl. “And, you know, by the way. You can have girls over whenever you want. This is your apartment. I can make myself scarce so they don’t have to come face to face with the troll of the penthouse.”
“You’re not a troll.”
“Are there a lot, though?” Natalie continued, undaunted. She’d barely heard what Lottie had just said. “Like, are you a player, or something?”
“You’re pushing it.”
“I just want to know how often I can expect to get sexiled!”
Lottie never answered the question, and Natalie tried to pretend that the ambiguity and the omission didn’t bother her. Tried and tried, and still failed. Story of her life.
*
The next day, Lottie left to get groceries, and Natalie seized the opportunity to call Van on the kitchen landline. She sat on the floor, picking at a nail while it rang.
“Heyo, Lottie, what’s up?”
“Van,” said Nat. “Did you know that Lottie Matthews is a lesbian?”
A long, pregnant pause. “Who is this?”
“An intruder. I’m robbing Lottie’s apartment and found something very interesting in her sock drawer. It’s Nat, you donut. Who else would it be?”
Another long pause, and then a muffled shout that sounded something like Tai, she knows! “Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker with Tai.”
Tai’s affable voice: “Hey, Nat.”
Natalie wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “So you both did know.”
“Well…”
“Did everyone know?” There was a protracted moment of silence. Natalie felt her stomach fall into her ass. “Okay, wow. So this is beginning to seem like a secret that was being kept only from me.”
“I don’t think anybody was keeping a secret from you, man,” Van’s voice sounded not very certain. ”You’re just not always on the map, you know? Maybe it just never came up.”
“Okay, so, I’ve been back on the map for like a year though. How long have you known?” These silences were beginning to feel aggressive. “Oh my God, you guys!”
“Not that long, I just—well, she had that girlfriend at Columbia, right, Tai? The one with the stupid name?”
“Oh fuck. Yeah. Lulu or something?”
“No, it was stupider. Oh! Lacey. Lacey Pembroke.”
That little well of hurt became a cavern. “So, years. She’s been out and you’ve known for years.”
“Maybe you should talk to her, Nat.” Tai said, her voice gentler. “She’s the only person who would know why she hasn’t told you.”
“I’m getting a pretty strong feeling that you guys have some sort of idea.”
“We can only speculate,” replied Van, sagely. “And I would hesitate to even do that.” She paused. “You okay, Scatorccio?”
Natalie was definitely not okay, for many, many reasons that she could not articulate in that moment. “I don’t really know how to answer that question.”
“Lottie loves you, man.” Van, reassuring as ever. “Whatever she’s been thinking, it’s about her, not you.” Natalie picked at some lint on her pants and tried to internalize those words. She only half succeeded.
“So you think she’s done it a lot?” Natalie sniffed. “With girls, I mean.”
This time, Van didn’t hesitate. “You have eyes and you’ve looked at Lottie with them. Do you think she’s done it a lot?”
“Oh, man.” Said Nat. She started chewing on her nail again.
“Just, whatever this is, I would try to button it up before Dillon’s big day. You know how Jackie and Shauna get when there’s tension at their parties.”
“Fuck, when is that again?”
“Next week.”
“Next week?”
“Next week, and it’s kind of high stakes. Did you hear that Jeff moved into the garden shed?”
“No, he didn’t,” Natalie hissed, “The shed?”
“The shed,” Van confirmed gravely. “I guess because he’s Dillon’s dad. And Callie’s—well, I shan’t speculate.”
“Next week. Fuck. I haven’t gotten him a gift yet.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“I don’t know. What do eleven year old boys like? I’ll get him a Pokémon, or something.”
“I already got him a Pokemon.” Tai said.
Natalie slapped an open palm against the ground. “Fuck, Taissa! Goddamnit. Now I’ve got nothing. His parents are in a weird throuple and I’ve got nothing.”
“Nat,” Tai began. “Go ahead and say ‘throuple’ as many times as you need to get it out of your system now so you don’t say it in front of Jackie. If Jackie hears the word ‘throuple’ at this party there are going to be casualties.”
“Okay. Fuck. Throuple, throuple, throuple, throuple. Throuple. Okay, there, yeah. I think that’s it.”
*
Natalie didn't talk to Lottie about it, though. At least not the next day. Just as she’d learned from her father, she took the hurt and confusion and packed it inside of herself until it was more recognizable as a dull ache than a human emotion. And when she stood across from Lottie at the breakfast bar the next day, what she said was:
“I’ll be out late tonight, by the way.”
“Oh?” Lottie was at one of the stools, blearily sipping a cup of coffee. “Another shift at the bar?”
“Ah, no, friend of a friend is having a house show in Chelsea. There’ll be a bunch of loser guys there. I thought, you know, it’s been over a year. Probably time to try and get back on the horse.”
Lottie looked up at her and Natalie thought, in flashes, of Lottie opening the door to her apartment for the first time, Lottie’s ankle bracelet, Lottie across from her at Angelo’s. All at once she’d never been less sure of where the current was taking her, or if it was the right direction. If she was going to land or being pulled out to a vast, bottomless ocean.
Give me that piece of you that knows what other people are thinking, she thought desperately, staring into Lottie’s inscrutable face, give me the piece of you that might be able to see the future.
“Well.” Said Lottie, taking another sip of her coffee. “Sounds fun. Good luck, Nat.”
Yeah. Except Natalie had never in her life felt less lucky.