It is one of my favorites. “Thank you.”
“I miss you,” she says, tearing apart the pastry she bought herself. “But I am really glad you aren’t going to go back to being Mom’s personal bank account. I mean, after you paid for the trip and she didn’t even ask you to come with us.”
“I didn’t pay for the trip.”
“What do you mean? She said you did.”
“ShethoughtI would.”
Tearing the pastry into even smaller pieces, Anne asks, “What does that mean?
“I think I need to clarify some things.” I tell her about the mortgage and the car and everything else that happened on Earth, and she looks madder and madder.
“She’s going to lose the house?”
“Probably.”
Cursing under her breath and tapping the side of the cup with her nail, she says, “I’m not going to lie to you. I also need money, but I’m not here to ask you to give it to me.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot and your job…” She leans forward. “Is it a sex thing?”
I take the moment required to chew my bite before I say, “It is.”
“I want in.”
It makes me laugh a little. Not at her, but at the memory of those words in so many other instances. My friends and I decided to go to Coney Island, just to see if it was as boring as other friends had said. Anne wanted in.
A cousin and I had gotten our own cabin at a family reunion in upstate… Anne had wanted in.
“You don’t really know what I do. Jumping in feet first isn’t the best way to approach something like this.”
“You wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t safe.” She takes a deep breath and looks at me like she’s practiced this. “That’s one constant Ihave always had in my life. You are safe. I’ve known that since I was three. Hell, it’s what I wrote my college admission essay on.”
“Safe is a relative thing with this.”
“Wait… are you okay?” She scoots forward, her voice even lower. “No one’s forcing you to do things, right?”
“No, no one’s forcing me.” This time, I do laugh, imagining what Phantom would do if someone was.
“Okay, then why is it not an immediate yes? You’re not harboring some weird puritanical hang ups are you? Because you’ve always been super open-minded.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you to do what I do. Heaven knows it’s better than if you were going to do it here.”
“Wait, you don’t do it in New York?” Her spine straightens.
“God, no.”
“Where do you do it?”
“You would not believe me if I told you.”
“Sheboygan?”
“What?”
Anne shrugs. “You said I wouldn’t believe you, so I picked a place so random, it couldn’t be right. Is it right?”
