“I don’t blame him,” Lorca said.
“Thank you,” I said, moving my boot around the snow of Baghdad until I hit on a glimmer of something. A penny. Lorca reached down for it.
“Lucky,” she said, and slipped it into my pocket.
Many minutes must have gone by because by the time we opened the door to go back inside, my hands were stinging, pulsing with cold—and the smell of something burning fumed all the way up the stairs.
“Oy!” I said.
“Oy!” repeated Lorca, more upset than I thought she’d be.
“I can’t believe I did that,” I said. Lorca was passing me, taking the stairs two at a time, the earflaps of her hat flopping against the sides of her head as she made her way down.
“It’s okay,” she yelled back. “Maybe we can salvage some of it.”
It took what felt like a month for me to get down those stairs, though I was moving with all my might. I just couldn’t bring myself to wait for the elevator.
In the end, we couldn’t salvage a thing. I found Lorca flicking off the skin and then the meat in black swaths like small dead bugs.
“This is terrible,” she was saying, still zipped up in her coat. She looked as though she was about to cry.
And me, I was useless, so bundled I could have smacked into a brick wall and been all right. Puddles leaked onto the floor beneath my boots, and for a brief moment, I considered my bladder.
“Hm,” Lorca said. She washed her hands and pursed her lips; she moved them from side to side. She began picking at them fiercely as she stared, just stared, at the fish. I wanted to beg her to stop. I’d messed this up horribly, been a poor teacher and so on. But there’d been a glimmer of hope that it wasn’t just about the masgouf. Now it was obvious that it was.
“I was going to make the masgouf for my mother tomorrow,” she said. “But I don’t know how it’s supposed to come out.”
I had nothing good to say.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s fine.”
I didn’t know if she was talking to herself or to me.
“I should probably go,” she said. “I can help you clean up first.”
“No,” I said. “This is nothing. I’m awfully sorry.”
I took off my hat. I needed to think of something or I would lose her.
“We can try again,” I offered. “Or we don’t have to.”
Lorca looked at me.
“You’re not sick of this?” she asked.
I actually laughed.
“Tomorrow?” I said. “I’ll get more fish.”
“Maybe we could butterfly together,” Lorca said. “I’d like to learn that for myself.”
“Of course,” I said. “There’s nothing to it.”
“Your mother’s birthday isn’t tomorrow, is it?” I asked. There was a buzzing in my chest. “Isn’t that why you wanted to make the masgouf?”
“Oh, no,” Lorca said, as if she’d forgotten. “It’s not tomorrow.”
“That’s a relief,” I said, because it was.
I
SAW HIM BEFORE
he saw me. Blot was waiting for me again outside Victoria’s on Thursday, alternating between a jumpy foot shuffle and tapping on the hood of a car, looking away from the building and out toward the street. He was anxious or excited or both. I took a deep breath before finding out.
“Hi,” I said. He swung around, threw his hands up like he’d been standing there forever.
“You!” he said. I held my breath.
“Hi,” I said again.
“I called them,” he said, racing to the steps, sticking out his half-gloved hand to help me down. My fingers went immediately clammy. My first thought was that he’d called my mother and Lou and that I was going to have a lot of explaining to do, although I wasn’t sure about what exactly.
“My parents,” he explained. “I called them after you called your dad yesterday. It got me thinking.”
“Oh,” I said, but it sounded more like
phew.
I put on both of my gloves before reaching for him, as if the cold were my concern. There was more snow than not on the street now. Little bits of pavement and metal and trees and car parts peeked out as if they were afraid of getting caught. But otherwise, white. Even Blot’s hat was coated in a thick layer that looked orangey in the streetlight, like a Creamsicle. I didn’t tell him so.
He helped me down the stairs and sort of directed me to face him. His hand was as strong as something marble. Then he let go. We were standing very close to each other, but it didn’t feel particularly intimate. It felt urgent. Necessary, more than romantic. Like things had to be said, and in this manner exactly. Maybe, it occurred to me, that was romance. I tried not to obsess about it and not to breathe too much in his face.
“I stared at the phone for forty-five minutes,” he said, “before I could even pick it up and dial. And then when I did, I was so nervous that I couldn’t speak, and my mom’s saying, ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ And I’m trying to tell her it’s me but I can’t.”
I thought about my father. About those calls we used to get maybe once or twice a week when no one would say anything. All you could hear was trees rustling or maybe just phone fuzz. And I’d whisper, “Dad,” so he’d know that I knew that it was him. Dad. Dad. So he’d feel less lonely. Then he’d hang up.
“And then what?” I said.
“Well, then finally I said something. And my mom wasn’t not nice. She was fine, which isn’t all that surprising. I haven’t been the greatest to them either. I haven’t called in over a year. Which is not a decent thing to do to one’s mother.”
His voice had gotten very stern, grown-up.
“Noted,” I said.
Being this close to him was overwhelming—because of me, because I had no sense of what I looked like, smelled like, but because of him too. He was giddy and I wanted to match his mood, not overdo it and not underdo it either. A smile had replaced his usual expression, and it was as though everything—his mouth, eyebrows, dimples even—was teetering around trying to accommodate it. I wanted to ask him what he’d done, why his parents didn’t want him at home. But I didn’t believe it was his fault, and I didn’t know how to phrase it to get that across so he’d know that I wasn’t blaming him for anything. I wanted him to think I understood it, whatever it was.
“I haven’t told you the best part yet,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I said. I shook my shoulders a bit to get them ready too.
“Greta’s here,” he said. His sister.
“Where?” I said.
“In New York,” he said. “Somewhere. Probably midtown. My parents didn’t come this year, but my sister came with my aunt and uncle. They brought all the cousins for a couple of days to see that show and ice-skate and shop and I don’t know what else.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, wishing for something more descriptive. “Brilliant,” I tried. My mother’s word. It sounded dumb, but he wasn’t listening.
“They’re going to Radio City tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “But my mother promised she’d ask my aunt and uncle to drop off Greta with me afterward, so we could have some time. Just us two.”
It didn’t feel strange to me that his parents trusted him with her. And some part of me liked them for that. It seemed like good parenting to know, intuitively, the lines that one’s child would never cross—and that Blot, no matter what, no matter what they were angry with him for, would never do anything to hurt his sister, even if he hadn’t called home in over a year.
“I think my mother was relieved,” he said. “To know that I’m okay. And that I still want to see Greta. Maybe my parents thought I’d forgotten all about her, which I haven’t. Obviously.”
For some reason, I felt flattered that he was okay. As if it had anything at all to do with me.
He started walking, first a few steps ahead of me and then backward, looking at me with his hands clasped behind him.
“It’s so good. It’s so so good,” he said.
I remembered what a sour mood I’d been in just a few moments earlier. Victoria and I had ruined the masgouf, which meant that we’d have to try again before I could make it for my mother. The days were getting away from me, and I was afraid that if I didn’t do something soon, I would lose my chance and be sent off to boarding school forever. It occurred to me that I might smell like burned fish skin. I tried to sniff my arm without him noticing.
“Hydrant!” I said and Blot turned around just quick enough to keep himself from tripping over it.
“She could be anywhere in the city,” he said.
I stopped, turned around. Looked up and down. Did a spin.
“She’s not on this street,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Nine thousand four hundred and eighteen streets left to go.”
I was only the tiniest bit envious. Not enough to ruin anything. Just enough to make me ache a little. His enthusiasm, his love for her, was so huge. So so huge. It endured years and a long distance—all the way to Maryland. I wanted some of that for myself. I imagined it made a person feel toasty to always know that someone was out there, radiating support. My father, warm as he could be, deferred to my mother on everything. Whenever I’d asked him to visit, he’d said, “Oh, honey, did you ask your mother?” As if I should have known better. So it didn’t matter if he was radiating ever because my mother got right in the middle, blocking.
“I had to tell you,” he said. “I figured you’d be here. Sorry to stalk.”
I bit my cheeks so I didn’t smile too hard.
“It’s okay,” I said. “What will you do together?”
“I’ve been saving these books,” he said. “Four of them. I was going to send them but now I can give them to her. Face to face.” He made fists with his hands and shook them like he’d just scored a goal.
I did the same thing. Solidarity. Score.
“We’ll probably go to the coffee shop next to the bookstore,” he said. “I’m supposed to work anyway. Someone’s going to cover for me, but it won’t be the worst idea to show my face at the beginning and end of the shift.”
“Right,” I said. “Great idea.”
I wished I had something more important to say. Something that would make him feel proud that he’d told me, justified. I wanted to ask him why he’d waited so long to call his parents, and if he thought of Greta, wanted to be in touch. But I didn’t ask him any of those things. I thought of how I got in my own way constantly. I couldn’t even ask my mother a simple question.
“Gret-idea” is what I said. “
Greta
and
idea
.”
It just came out. I was an idiot.
“Genius,” he said. “I’m going to tell her. She’ll love it.”
He paused. “Unless she’s too old now. For that.”
“She’s younger than me,” I said. “Isn’t she? And I love it.”
“Okay,” he said. He held out his hand, palm up, and like a genius, I understood. I mimed putting the gret-idea there. He closed his fist and put it into his pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. I nodded.
“And you?” he said.
I didn’t want to tell him about the masgouf, not even that Victoria and I had tried to make it, because it meant that the quest for masgouf was one step closer to over. And the quest was still our thing—mine and Blot’s. So I told him we’d made some salmon and that we’d burned it horribly.
“Nothing worse,” he said, shaking his head gravely.
I was careful not to give too many details, afraid he’d figure out that I was lying, and then we’d really have nothing to talk about. I asked him to tell me more about his sister so I could listen to his voice.
“When she was a baby,” he said, “she used to call me Blah because she couldn’t say Blot. Like, blah-blah-blah. It’s humbling to be called that. Take it from me.”
I had been right, kind of.
“But why is your name Blot?” I said.
He pointed to me and smirked.
“Million-dollar question,” he said.
He stopped just in front of me so we were face to face and unwrapped his scarf from his neck. He unzipped his coat. For some reason, I felt like I should look away, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. Getting undressed seemed so private. He wore a thick navy sweater in a tight knit and he pulled the neck of it all the way to one side and shimmied it down his arm as far as he could. Below that, an old T-shirt with a ripped collar, thin as phyllo. He pulled that down too. He pulled down more. There, on his chest, just below his collarbone and off center, he had a birthmark, purple and flat and the size of a portobello cap. He moved into the light.
“See it?” he said. Suddenly, he was covered in goose bumps. After a second, they went away.
I nodded.
“I see it,” I said.
My fingers tingled, wanting to touch it; I wanted to close my eyes and press on it as if on a secret door. My throat went dry and metallic.
Mine,
I thought.
I want to show you mine.
My wrists, my stomach, my feet, behind my knees. But he was looking down at his chest, his chin pushed into his neck. His shoulder was square and firm as an ice cube. The top muscle in his arm flickered and made me blink, self-conscious. I took a step back and looked past him so the wanting would fade. He shrugged his shoulder to redress himself, and zipped up his coat.
“I was born with it,” he said. “My mother said that from the first time I caught sight of it in the mirror, I couldn’t leave it alone. I’d take a towel, blanket, tissue, newspaper, rock, anything, whatever, and blot it. Blot blot blot on it, as if it were a stain. She said it must have been an instinct somehow—that it shouldn’t be there. She didn’t ever remember blotting anything for me to learn from. I just wanted it out, she said. Off.”
He sighed, shrugged, starting walking again, as if it were nothing.
“The name stuck,” he said.
If I’d stared too intently at his arm, it didn’t seem to bother him. I wanted to stare at it again. It was whiter than mine, his shoulder. His skin thinner, tighter, like something in an ad for perfume. I realized that my hands were in fists.
“What’s your real name?” I said.
He laughed.
“Logan,” he said.
Logan and Lorca are almost the same,
I thought, and it felt like that was important somehow.
“I never say my real name out loud. I only write it. And that’s normally only when I’m in trouble.”
“Logan’s good,” I said.
He shrugged.
I told myself to stay quiet, hoping he’d say more.