“Looking for someone Tim wanted to set you up with?” I ask. I’m rusty at flirting, but this should be an easy layup.
He snorts. “No, I just thought there’d be someone at the table here who’s, like, bald and stuff. Tim told me to be nice to the girl with cancer because she doesn’t have a lot of friends.”
The birds die, reality shooting them down with a BB gun. My vision tunnels, a dull throb erupting in my chest. My mouth is dry and itchy. Am I having a heart attack?
“Wow, you’re an asshole,” Calliope says from my other side.
“What do you—” Recognition lights Steve’s eyes. “Ohhhh.” His mouth opens, winding up to say something possibly disastrous. He will earn an immediate spot on my shit list if he goes with something like,you’re so strong, orthat’s so sad. Where do people get off telling someone else their life is sad? If he even thinks the words,everything happens for a reason, I’ll know, and I’ll give him a reason.
What, you ask, should he say? I don’t know. It’s a know-it-when-you-hear-it kind of thing.
“I’m so sorry,” he coos, like he’s talking to his grandma or an elderly tabby. Well, I guess I’ve heard worse.
I squeeze my napkin in a tight fist in my lap. “It’s fine,” I say with utterly manufactured cheeriness. “I’m fine.”
“So you’re in remission?” Calliope asks, ostensibly to ease the tension.
I nod. “Cancer free for a year.”
“Congrats,” Calliope says with a soft smile. “That’s amazing.” I’ve never understood why people think undergoing cancer treatment is ‘amazing.’ I would have literally traded anything not to do it. I fought it every step of the way. My happiest moments are when I temporarily forget that it happened. The moments where it feels like if I look down, I’ll see my God-given cleavage, my nipples (may their memory be a blessing), and maybe even the bright red shock of period blood. You never appreciate things like bleeding through your underwear until your oncologist shuts off your ovaries.
I look between them both. “I’m doing great!” I add, not sounding at all defensive.
“So…” Calliope continues, “You’re a writer too?”
I wobble my head. “Not yet, really. I’m—it’s been—things were…delayed. But I’m working on it.” I exhale a tense breath.
“What do you write? I’m a big reader. Maybe it’s my cup of tea.”
“It’s a literary sci-fi retelling ofThe Secret Garden.” I pat the salad dressing from my mouth with an organza napkin.
“I like sci-fi! LikeDune?”
Decades of a genre’s evolution, and for most people sci-fi will still be reduced to one book. “Kinda, yeah.”
“When is it coming out?” Calliope continues, an innocent smile on her face, unaware of the fact that she’s wielding a mace with these questions.
“It’s not—I haven’t found a home for it yet. I’m just making some tweaks before I query it.” I need to divert the conversation away from my floundering writing career. “What about you? I don’t think Penelope’s ever mentioned a sister. What do you do?”
“I’m a tattoo artist,” Calliope says. “And that tracks. In Penelope-land, she’s an only child. We’re half sisters—I’m a little older—from our mom’s first marriage.”
“Tattooing—that’s,” I break off, scanning the ink covering her arms, “that’s cool.”
I turn back to Steve, trying to make this disastrous three-way conversation into something successful. “What about you? What are you going to do once you’re done with your PhD?”
“PhD?” Steve’s nose wrinkles. “I’m doing my MBA.”
My fork misses a strawberry with a clang, almost cracking the salad plate. A large red flag is flapping in the ocean breeze of my Monterey vision. When Grant and I broke up a mere three weeks after my second surgery, I decided that anyone remotely close to the realm of business was suspect on sight. How can you trust someone so firmly attached to the teat of capitalism? I need a humanitarian. An intellectual. An artisanal carpenter.
“Oh.” I set down my fork before I hurt myself or destroy any property. “Nice,” I add, remembering I still need to be polite.
“So, for the cancer, what did you…What was the treatment?” Steve waves his fork around, trying to pantomime his question.
I watch him, hackles raised. “I had a bilateral mastectomy.”
He nods as if he’s following this. “Is that like implants?”
My silicone boobs are 100% implants, but his question still rubs me the wrong way. “Is a mastectomy and reconstruction like getting a boob job?”
