Instead, I got a text asking where I was with the red curry and pad kee mao.
“Sorry,” I said when she opened the door. “I was enjoying the show.”
She glanced at the bow in her hand and shrugged. “Yeah, it is not where I want it yet. We’re not posting that one anytime soon,” she sighed.
Like a creepy dick, I Googled her last month. I didn’t know what compelled me to do it, but I was sitting in my office one afternoon, talking myself off the ledge from another futile argument with Shannon, and decided to look up Miss Desai. It was that, or start another filthy text conversation and I couldn’t walk around construction sites with an erection. Again. That was begging for trouble.
I expected to find her course syllabus, maybe a bio on the college website, and the standard social media fare.
I found a YouTube channel with two dozen clips, each boasting more than a half million hits. She played popular songs—Fall Out Boy, Tom Petty, Paramore, Muse, The Shins, Britney Spears, Hot Chelle Rae, The Who—and they were the most fucking incredible things I’d ever heard.
I watched every video, some more than once.
If I was anywhere near as talented as Tiel, I’d tell people about it every day. I’d tattoo the fucking URL on my forehead and announce it every time I walked into a room. It took some strategic questioning—and shots, shots always worked on Tiel—but she divulged the whole story.
It started with her posting a clip of a Panic! At the Disco track for critical feedback, hoping to get some advice on how to blend the sounds the ways she wanted them. Instead, she got requests for more songs.
Tiel kept improving the Panic! At the Disco tune, but posted others from her early morning studio sessions. She’d even started recording multiple tracks, each with her playing different instruments, and layering them into one like her own self-contained quartet. She rolled her eyes when I suggested she was an internet celebrity and the only virtuoso I’d ever met.
Being famous wasn’t her concern; she did it for the music.
Once inside her apartment, she rehashed her morning with one of her kid friends, and how his parents arranged a small recital at their JCC, but he wasn’t interested in playing. After some warm ups, he came around, but she sat beside him on the piano bench the entire time.
“That sounds like torture,” I said, unpacking the boxes on her coffee table. I gave the particle board structure a baleful glare and mentally cataloged the wood in my workshop. I could build better shit while I was sleepwalking. She needed some furniture that hadn’t been passed around grad school apartments for the past six presidencies.
“It’s not,” she said. She popped open two beers and carried them to the table. “If you don’t push every now and then, you don’t grow.”
She talked about the tonality problems she was having with the Rise Against song, and while I didn’t understand half of what she was saying, I liked listening to her while we ate. There were bridges and chord progressions hampering her progress, and her ongoing struggle to feel as competent with the cello as she did with the violin. She was honest about her weaknesses, and rarely hid behind them by overcompensating the way I did.
Intellect was always my cover. I’d yet to encounter a situation beyond high school where my vocabulary, my expertise, my extensive reading didn’t protect me. Smart was intimidating, and it kept people from noticing anything beyond big words, off-handed references to literary texts, and endless amounts of sustainable preservation research at the ready.
Clothes were my second line of defense. If I was swagged up, no one noticed the bulge from my glucose monitor. An eye-catching tie, a fancy pocket square, some trendy color combinations. They were the ideal distraction, and I was careful to cut slits in my pockets to allow the tubing to thread beneath my clothes and through to my device without risking exposure.
It wasn’t entirely self-preservation, though. I enjoyed shopping, and when I started pulling in respectable money, I liked building out my wardrobe with designer suits. It was true what they said about looking the part.
She pushed the empty container away and reached over, fingering the medical alert bracelets on my wrist and turning them over to read the engravings. She was quiet, and I hoped she wasn’t noticing how my pulse popped into warp speed when her fingers brushed over my skin.
It didn’t matter how many times in the past two months she reached for me. I still wasn’t used to it, but not because I couldn’t handle her touching me; it was because Icould,and that realization was still mind-blowing.
“How long have you been diabetic?”
“Since always,” I said.
“And this one?” She lifted the other bracelet. “You’re allergic toallantibiotics?”
“Pretty much. I prefer natural remedies anyway. You’d never believe what you can cure with some apple cider vinegar.” She gave me a sidelong glance clearly intended to communicate her distrust of my witch doctoring.
We settled in to watch a movie—The Social Network;her choice—and I kicked off my shoes, and draped her legs over my lap.
Within minutes of the movie starting, Tiel was talking. Shealwaysdid this. She’d ask where she knew an actor from; I’d spend ten minutes searching IMDb. She’d want to know whether a specific song was on the official soundtrack; I’d pull it up on Amazon. She’d realize she’d chattered through the first half of the film and was confused; I’d recap it for her. She’d see an actress with great tits and hypothesize whether I’d fuck her or why I wasn’t fucking someone like her in a coatroom at that moment; I’d ignore that entire commentary.
“You remind me of Mark Zuckerberg,” she said, glancing at my jeans and hoodie. “Your style is obviously very different.” She gestured to my feet. “I mean, those are some snazzy socks, young man, but you’re smart and really cerebral, and more socially awkward than most turtles.”
“Thanks?” I muttered.
“Don’t look so offended,” Tiel said.
She pulled me toward her until we were lying together on the sofa, her back against my chest and her ass to my crotch. I held my breath for a long moment, terrified that she’d feel the infusion site and glucose sensor under my shirt. They were on either side of my abdomen, and if she leaned in at a particular angle, she couldn’t miss them.
