A love story.

Andrea and Gretch

Andrea had split her lip right down the middle at 11:00 PM in the yellowed bathroom of her apartment. The belt that held her up by her throat had pulled the rod and shower curtain into the bath. Andrea’s lip cracked open, beaded with blood, and stained her mouth with a coppery flavour. She unwrapped herself, pulled the strap of leather from her neck, placed the curtain and metal rod into the bathtub in a neat pile, and leaned over the sink. Andrea caught her stare in the mirror, found the pink welt around her throat and stroked it. It throbbed with blood underneath the skin, hummed with pain. The wound was a fresh reminder of the prolonged second where Andrea had floated by her neck and coughed out inaudible, dry gags. Her eyes were sullen, brown pools wet from her choked throat.

So Andrea took the electric razor that sat next to the sink and began to buzz at her scalp and shreds of dark hair frilled around the drain. By the time the basin was painted with black locks, Andrea’s scalp was sheared to the finest pinpricks of hair. Her jeans and t-shirt fell to the floor and Andrea took a blonde wig with squared-off bangs from the bathroom cabinet and pulled it over her head. A bra clipped between her shoulder blades and she shrugged into a red-pink dress that hugged her stomach and contorted with each roll of her abdomen. A makeup bag at the back of the bathroom’s medicine cabinet held two jelly half-spheres. She slid them down the front of her dress and nestled them in her bra to give the impression of C-cup breasts. A regulated amount of eyeliner, a subtle shade of pink lipstick, and foundation. Andrea straightened her hair, pursed her lips. She cleared her throat and hummed out a believable falsetto.

“I look good,” she said. “I look good.”

Goldilocks’ Bar thrummed with pink and purple brushstrokes of light that swathed the darkened corners. Andrea had never been inside before, only ever passed the neon, cursive sign and small groups of boys in fishnet thigh-highs smoking menthols at the entrance. The bar had always been a foreign object that throbbed with music at night, nestled between an apartment complex and a laundromat. Inside, the walls were lined with a mesh of barely-dressed bodies. Andrea tugged at the hem of her dress, pulled it towards her knees, and stirred the rum drink that sat in front of her at the bar. The proprietor of Goldilocks’ – aptly dressed in a curled, blonde wig – swabbed the rings of liquor from the wooden counter.

Two shots of white booze clacked down in front of Andrea, held between fingers painted with red, chipped nail polish.

“One for you and one for me,” the red-nail girl said. She turned a finger to her face, pointed out her grin. “Gretch.” Gretch’s front teeth were large, almost buck, so that they made her black-red mouth fall slightly agape and flash white. Her hair – bleached platinum with brown roots spreading outwards – she’d pushed back behind her ears. Black eyeliner underlined her dark, heavy-lidded eyes. A hobo-chic army jacket hung at her pale collar.

“Andrea,” said Andrea.

Gretch gasped and clutched at the fake tits in the front of Andrea’s dress. Andrea could smell cigarettes and a lilac scent on her, a twisted perfume that swirled around her head and intoxicated.

“You impostor!” Gretch said. She pulled away and slapped her hands down onto the bar. “You pull it off so well, though. It’s subtle, but shit. You didn’t go drag-queen crazy. You’re wearing flats too, oh my god. You’ve got an older sister, right?

“Two,” Andrea said.

“Your makeup… shit.” Gretch lifted the shots and passed one to Andrea.

“Andrea,” Gretch said, “here’s to women.” The two tipped back the glasses. The bitter ethanol flavour slid into Andrea’s stomach.

Gretch coughed. “I’ve lost my girl. So I’m here to celebrate.” Her dark lips split and flashed white again, the beam of her grin swimming in Andrea’s vision. There was a heat coming off of Gretch, an ashen sun that beamed down onto Andrea. Her pale face burned itself into Andrea’s vision.

“I could help celebrate,” Andrea said. Gretch’s smile cracked even wider.

The first girl Andrea ever noticed was at a family cabin the summer she turned twelve. The cottage, an hour drive from any town, had an arts-and-crafts charm to it. Family portraits lined the walls, the armchairs and couches blanketed in stitched quilts. The lake that frothed at the edge of the property grew thick with reeds and cattails. There was a dock tethered to the water, a stack of splintered logs slick with moss and rot that Andrea sat on. She slid her legs through the water, pulled along foamy wakes that rabbled at her calves. A cousin crawled up the wooden planks in a two-piece swimsuit, droplets freckled at her collarbone. She grinned at Andrea’s stare, pushed her dripping hair from her eyes and the sea-coloured fabric that clung to her skin. As she wrung lake water from her fishtail braid a beat of blood flooded Andrea’s body.

Andrea followed her for the rest of the day. Her cousin wrapped her head in a towel, rolled her socks down to her ankles. The muscles in her calves rippled every time she took a step, hardened from swims at the local pool. The bright-blue nylon that curved like a wrinkled moon at her hips stretched and folded along her thigh. Andrea couldn’t look away.

Gretch leaned back against the bathroom stall door and pulled on the cigarette between her chipped fingernails. She let the smoke curl from her mouth then blew out, pushed the fumes that coiled at her nostrils towards the fluorescent light.

“First girl I ever noticed?” Gretch coughed into the crook of her arm. “Elementary school. Big blue eyes. We used to sit on the swings at recess and talk about… shit. Boys? Ironic, huh? Or, no. Coincidental.”

Gretch let a final puff of smoke escape her throat and swim up the marked up walls. Black penmanship adorned the stall, pictures of genitals and androgynous figures bent over tables dotted around Gretch and Andrea’s heads.

“Legs,” Gretch said. Andrea slid back on the toilet, parted her knees and Gretch flicked the bent and ashy filter into the urine-yellow water with a hiss. Gretch cleared her throat and the raspy purr echoed around the white-tile walls, chimed in with the faint throb of music from outside. She stretched against the corner of the stall, and her shirt lifted, pale belly gleamed underneath. Blue veins rippled underneath her translucent skin. Andrea curled over at her seat on the toilet and pulled at the end of her dress. Blood vibrated in her ears.

“Let’s get another drink,” Andrea said.

Gretch sighed, a hum that followed the stifled music. “Another drink.”

Gretch dropped her frayed coat onto the back of the chair and scooped her fingers under the black lace choker at her neck. Her finger curled through it, spun it around and around in a methodical twist.

“What time is it?” Gretch said. A digital clock ticked over the bar, a nuclear doomsday countdown that reflected red light onto the bottles of liquor underneath. 2:00 AM. “Shit. Shit, it’s late.”

Disco lights swirled around the bar and fell on the few stragglers that remained despite the hour: a man with hair pulled back past his forehead slurred something to a boy who nursed a gin and tonic, a pair of girls fawned over each other in a corner booth, and from across the bar a man with spacers that stretched his earlobes out eyed up Gretch.

“What was she like?” Andrea said. Gretch turned from her staring match with Spacers and lifted her eyebrows.

“Hm?”

“Your girl.”

“Oh. Yeah, her. I’m not mad,” Gretch said. “Really. I think things were gonna end no matter what. Only wish I’d been the one that dropped the guillotine.” The girl had been pretty, Gretch told Andrea. Skinny, long and dark hair that cupped her face, big eyes that bloomed under a perpetual frown. She had a tic, an impulse that made her stretch and scratch her throat, left dull-red claw marks at her neck.

“Like she was on coke.” Gretch laughed. “She wasn’t. Not all the time.” Gretch met her at Goldilocks’. She stirred a cocktail at the bar when Gretch stumbled over, spun out on ecstasy, and offered drinks. The girl scraped at her throat, a red Roman numeral down her skin, and nodded.

“You don’t meet ‘the one’ at a bar,” Gretch said. “You meet her through friends or at artisanal coffee shops with the copper espresso machines.” Gretch’s fingers tugged at the lace around her neck. Andrea leaned back and stroked her own throat. The pink rope of skin had faded, but the dull hint of pain still lurked beneath her flesh.

“She had this dumb lip ring.” Gretch tipped back her glass, grimaced. “Right in the middle of her bottom lip. You had to kiss the corners of her mouth. But she was fuckin’ pretty.”

Gretch sipped from her glass and scowled. “Tastes like gasoline.” Gretch’s face pinched up, retreated into her furrowed brow. She had an after-sex-esque glow to her presence: her forehead glistened with a film of sweat that strung her hair out into white twine, her eyes morose and shaded. The bar was muggy, a bottled up heat safe from the outside. Gretch sucked her bottom lip underneath her teeth, raking at the red skin.

A month ago, in the throes of a heated fight, Gretch’s girl put a kitchen knife between Gretch’s thumb and pointer finger, on her left hand.

“We were both high,” Gretch said. “That wasn’t the only problem. But it didn’t help.” The counter still dusted with white granules, the two shouted at one another, threw dishes on the floor. Gretch’s girl had grabbed the blade and thrust it at Gretch. The flesh flapped apart, spurted onto the kitchen counter.

“I like to think it brought us closer, you know? When we sat in the emergency room, dead quiet, with a red towel pressed against my hand.” The scar between Gretch’s fingers was stark white against her pink palm. She closed up into a fist as soon as she noticed Andrea’s stare.

“When I was all stitched up she asked me if I still loved her.” Gretch tucked her white-ash locks back behind her ears. “I said yes. And I meant it. I did love her. She was the longest I lasted with someone. There were others before. But she stayed the longest. You ever been in love?”

“I might have thought I was,” Andrea said. “At some point.”

The longest Andrea managed to keep a girl around was in college. She and Andrea traded virginities, stained the grey carpet of Andrea’s dorm room with blood lined down the girl’s thighs. The girl had pointed at her legs, compared it to ink on rice paper.

“I really like you.” She panted, her cheeks damp with sweat, tears. Andrea combed the girl’s hair with her fingers and cupped her chin in her palms. The girl’s eyes dripped to the corners of her mouth and the room swam with the smell of chlorine. The fog of sex stained the window with a white blur.

The girl with rice paper thighs laid in Andrea’s bed, her limbs contorted around each other. Andrea crawled on the carpet, equally nude, and made an attempt to dab the stained floor to the default grey.

“How do you feel?” the girl said. She rolled to her side, her legs wrapped into a French braid. Her thighs brushed one another, and Andrea could almost hear the sound of paper scraped against paper. The girl twisted her arms around her head and let her hair fall around her eyes, her collar, her breasts.

“How do you feel?” The carpet was matted down where Andrea rubbed the wad of paper towels; a Rorschach test spattered over the floor. The red mark wouldn’t come out.

“I feel fine,” Andrea said. She tossed the pink towels aside and slid up next to the girl on the mattress. Andrea tucked herself into the fold of her naked body, found exact curves and bent to them. Ropes of the girl’s hair slipped over Andrea’s face, ivy vines grown over her eyes. It became Andrea’s own curls, the flesh between her legs and fuzz across her chest intangible for a second.

Gretch balled her hands back up, pushed them at her stomach, curled her back over the drink in front of her. Her dusky, swollen pupils glanced around the bar, tired and sleepless.

“We should leave,” she said. “Maybe we should leave.” She made no movement, sat still and flicked her eyes around the bar. Andrea followed her gaze. The pool table in the back, felt surface peeled into an uneven, bright-green landscape. The girls in the corner booth, now in a fervent embrace, hands dipped underneath fabric. Lights bounced off the surfaces of the bar and painted it like stained glass. The music had settled to a hum of synths. Gretch downed the dregs of her glass, slammed it back onto the tabletop with a scowl.

“Do you want to leave?” Andrea said.

The doors to Goldilocks’ swung open and pushed a tidal wave over Gretch and Andrea. Syringes pricked at Andrea’s nose and chin, her ears went rosy.

“It’s freezing!” Gretch threw her arms into a T, Jesus on the cross incarnate. “FUCK YOU!” Gretch’s scream bounced across the street. The block was grey and dead, gutters frozen over and a white slick painted the road.

“The streets are ours!” Gretch twirled down the sidewalk, a half-hearted ballerina. She retrieved her pack of cigarettes, crushed in her pocket, and lit one. Gretch leaned back, blew a volcano of smoke towards the sky.

“Fuck! Fuck.” Andrea caught up to Gretch. She leaned against Andrea’s shoulder, curled her hand at the collar of her jacket. They walked in the deaf silence, swayed alongside the road in a wavered line, the horizon a black sunset strip.

Gretch picked up the cigarette habit in high school following the lead of a boyfriend. They traded drags in the trails behind their high school, where the wind whipped away fumes and spread the stink of tobacco amongst the green ripples of trees.

“He was a year older than me and he was a he.” Gretch laughed. Her boots bumped into Andrea’s shins as the two walked, movements slurred along the concrete. “And he took my virginity. But that was… messy.”

Andrea had only smoked once. The summer she turned eighteen, at the family cabin by the lake. The cousin was there, seated by the water in the tall grass. She had traded in the neon bikini for a pair of sweats and a shawl. Her face didn’t hold the same leanness to it, chubby from college meals and days spent in front of a book or screen. Andrea found her between the fire pit and a patch of lake weed. She swiveled her head with a tensed, furrowed brow that fell into relief. She gestured Andrea over and offered a cigarette. Andrea agreed, took the half-crushed stick of paper and let the cousin light it. Andrea dragged from it and stumbled into a throaty cough.

“You get into a college?” the cousin said. “Or you gonna take a break?” Her face was part sunken in white and part shadow. The light spilled from the back porch of the cabin caught her portrait like a prison spotlight.

“No,” Andrea said. “Just waiting.” The smoke curled around the cousin’s head became an added dimension to her bust: a frame, an outline, the backdrop of a black lake seen through foggy glass.

“That’s what I would have done,” the cousin said. “If I was that age again.” She was centuries past the plastered-hair siren in a two piece swimsuit, when she pulled herself from the water. The sun had sashayed off her skin then, illuminated her like a figure engulfed in an inferno. Now, the night that heaved with crickets and the hushed swish of lake swallowed her up, and she became no more than a half-seen face in the black.

“Thanks for the smoke,” Andrea said. She snuffed the cigarette and trudged back towards the cabin.

“Here,” Gretch said. She and Andrea ducked into an alleyway, collapsed against the chipped stucco, and Gretch produced a plastic flask of vodka. Gretch sipped, chased the liquor with a breath of smoke and passed the bottle across the alley to Andrea. Booze burned its way down Andrea’s throat, pooled in her belly. The alleyway sucked whatever white noise emanated from the city and forced it through the back path like a canyon river. Wind whistled to the hum of power lines, the offbeat drum of traffic from a nearby bridge. Gretch huffed smoke that haloed around her crown of white.

“I think my dad was gay,” Gretch said. She stared at the wall above Andrea’s head, squinted at whatever imperfection she inspected. She swayed on her heels, took the flask back from Andrea.

“He was odd. Queer.” Gretch laughed. “He’d take off on weekends. Mom didn’t have much to say about it, I think she knew what he would do. When he went into the city.” Plastic bottle tipped up.

“Anyways. Mom found him in the garage when I was fifteen. He’d stuffed rags under the door and turned on the car, then fell asleep in the front seat with the puke-green Dodge Caravan running.” Gretch crushed her cigarette under her heel, kicked it towards Andrea.

“Yeah. Straight as a curveball.” Gretch let her arms hang at her sides, tapped the flask against the wall behind her.

Andrea pushed herself from the stucco and stepped closer to Gretch, their hips pressed together, and she fit her mouth against Gretch’s lips. The taste of ethanol and fumes of nicotine bit at Andrea’s tongue and nose. She cupped Gretch’s face in her palms, pushed her bleached-white hair from her ears, and ran her thumbs along Gretch’s cheekbones.

“Shit.” Gretch dollied back from Andrea, twisted her head away. “Shit, Andrea. I’m sorry.” Gretch’s face was warped into an unrecognizable expression: worry, fear, hate? Her blackened gaze whirled at Andrea’s eyes, a sense of shame emanated from her glassy irises. Andrea dropped her hold from Gretch’s chin. The cold stabbed at Andrea’s face, chewed at her lip. The ink sky sucked the heat from her body and was quickly replaced with the hot wash of shame that pooled in her head.

“I’m sorry,” Andrea said. “About your dad. About…” A flash of white spotlighted the pair as a car sped past the alleyway. Andrea stared down at her shoes, muddied with brown snow.

The shower curtain was still in the bathtub, folded in its neat pile. Andrea met the face in the mirror and leaned into the staring contest. Her lips had faded to a dull pink, dried and chipped from the cold, her eyeliner wiped away in places. She caught her false scalp and pulled it down from her head, the blonde fibres trailed along her skin until Andrea’s scalp, dotted with sheared hair, was bared. The wig went into the bathtub. Andrea pulled the dress down next, slipped down her shoulder, down her waist, legs, until it was crumpled at her ankles. Bathtub. She unclipped the lacy, stuffed bra and rolled her panties down her thighs. The underwear joined the pile in the tub.

Andrea bent her thin, peach-coloured frame over the sink. Her hands found her face and felt the ripple of skin above the back of her neck, the faded rash around her throat. The cartilage of her ears and nose bent between her thumb and fingers, her bottom lip sprang into place as it was pulled. Her shoulders were crooked, her torso twisted at an odd proportion where the abdomen swelled into a flat chest. The belly of her stomach peaked and dipped, her breath rolled the skin like a swollen wave.

Andrea’s eyes were peeled grapes sunken into her skull. They were copper bricks marred by bottomless, black divots. They were wet pools of brown that caught her gaze and stared and stared and stared.