Of Horses

By Camille Pirtle

We can’t cook. That is our first attempt at endearment to the college girls at the bar. They flip their honey-blonde hair over their shoulders and consider us, shy looks on their faces. They have seen Americans before, but never quite like us. Two of us. Gray sweaters and glasses, brown belts from Abercrombie bought before the trip, twelve-seventy-five-each and no returns. Two girls that dress like boys. Big white fluoride grins. They don’t have that here. Not that we dislike their teeth—in fact, we are enchanted by them. They jut out at every angle, like rocks on a wharf of placid tongue, as one girl or another opens her mouth to ask us why we can’t cook, why we’re still at the bar at one-thirty instead of somewhere with a plate of warm food in our hands. I can feel the implicit criticism, and choose to ignore it. I expect Mia is unaware of this. She is fidgeting with the bottom of one of the girl’s blouses, passing its white fabric through her hands. The girl is letting her. Her motive here is unclear. We listen with our same dazed grins as the gaggle of them volley dishes from their country at us, asking if we’ve had them. We shake our heads. Where we come from, there is only McDonald’s, we say, and we laugh. They do too. They’re not all that taken with us, but they ask us to come back to their flat anyway. 

The drinking age is lower here, and we’ve been taking advantage of it. On the street, one of the girls sits on the ground, laughing, and I help her up on instinct. She takes this as flirtation and clutches onto my arm, but I extricate her long fingers from my bicep, latching them instead to her friend. There are six of us in total, and only one handroll, so Mia and I pass it back and forth. The girls ask us, what is the white smoke we are blowing at the sky? We don’t tell them. 

We enter the flat in the back, through overgrown garden, mudroom where we’re told to take off our shoes, long hallway where we can’t turn on a light for fear of waking a roommate,

then into bedroom with white sheets and books on the floor and mattress we all collapse on. Arms and legs splay, spread. Mia opens a window. They’re asking her questions, the girls, and she’s answering them. Her voice is low and slow. All four of them are looking at her. I take a long drag off the joint, then hold it out for Mia to take. She doesn’t notice me. She has turned the conversation back on the girls. One of them lives here, the other three in Bromley. We don’t know where that is. They say we should come visit. When I glance across the bed, Mia’s sleeve is up. She’s showing them the tattoo she got last week. A mustang. She is quick to tell them it’s not just any horse. 

I put out the handroll on a magazine. The filmy pages melt under me. 

Mia decides it’s time for us to go. They plead with her to stay. The drunkest one grabs her hand. Into it she presses a kiss. Mia’s pinky slips into her mouth. 

A dog barking in the distance, then sound extinguished. We will visit them in Bromley, the next day or the day after that. On the way out, Mia grips the sliding door as she slides her boots back on. A pink ghost of her thumb lingers on the glass. 

…

A polaroid sits on the table when I wake up. In it, I am asleep. One of my long legs is curled around a pillow, my mouth open. Over the thin strap of my white tank top one of my breasts has spilled, an avalanche of flesh recognizable only by pink nipple. My face is caught in a dream. 

Mia? She’s already up, standing against the dresser in bra and Bulls shorts. Her blonde hair looks almost white in the morning light. You took this while I was asleep? I ask, and her grin widens. 

Something to remember the trip by, she says brightly, you know, when your kids ask what their mom was up to the summer before college, you can tell them that not only was she in London, but she was in London without her clothes—and I swing at her with my hand and she dodges and in a flutter of movement she is dressed and we are eating and the incident is forgotten. We are performing the England version of old Illinois routine, the me-and-Mia show, originated over high school homework and stolen cigarettes from Kroger and shared crushes on women much too good for us, progressed in pickup truck rides and late-night beers and football games and all those other Americanisms, until we became ubiquitous, me-and-Mia, Mia-and-me, one face the same as the other. But to me it was always simpler than that. We were friends because we were the only ones who were us. Everyone else was them. 

…

The foreign people are easy to find here, in this foreign country. And find them we have, in any place we can. They come in all sizes, each new package delighting us. We’ve never seen an old Brit before! And here a British child. And a British cyclist, swooping by on two wheels. We are shrill by breakfast. 

The trip was Mia’s idea. Convince our parents that we’ve earned some post-grad recreation, further persuade them that the best way to do this is a five day trip to London, choose the plane tickets just expensive enough that they don’t feel encouraged to join but cheap enough to still afford, mollify their worries about two young girls in another nation across a vast sea—and there you have it. As I cross a cobbled street in the bright warmness of the day, I must admit to myself that I owe this to Mia, as much as I owe everything else. 

Preparations are made for Bromley, bodies showered and legs shaved and t-shirts carefully picked, quick lunch and trip to the station to buy train passes. In her waistband Mia slides a pack of Camels and her silver lighter. She stretches her long arms over her head, eyes flicking shut. I find myself watching her, and look away. 

…

The apartment in Bromley turns out to be a parent’s house that two of the girls, apparently sisters, still live in. They re-introduce themselves: Daphne and Cleo. Their faces are similar, but Daphne is brunette and Cleo blonde. We’re in the foyer, unlacing our shoes. Rap plays from tinny speakers. Their other friends from the bar are in the dark living room, drinking beers with a couple guys I don’t recognize. Cleo pushes a can into my hand, and pops it open for me. It makes a loud hiss. She smiles at me with her teeth. 

Later, on the leather couch, the conversation loops drunkenly to sex. Stories of deflowerment are shared, first times in first places: Cleo’s at a houseparty to an Irish boy, Daphne with a classmate after school, Mia at fourteen with a ranch-hand from the next town over. You know, she’s never had her first, Mia says, pointing at me. The girls express surprise amongst themselves that I’m still a virgin. This fact excites them as much as it embarrasses me. Now why would you say that? I ask, turning to Mia with a frown. 

Her voice drops. It’ll help you, trust me. They’ll want you more now. 

I don’t need help, I mumble, but I’m not sure if this is true. I take another sip of the beer in my hand, but its flavor now is acidic, sending a chill through me. Mia turns back to Daphne, finding her belt loop and pulling her closer by it.

Back home, while Mia cycled through a consistent collection of girls, desiring and obtaining and forgetting them, I was always alone. I would listen to her stories of crushes and dates and kisses and sex, but I would be only that, a listener, with no urge to participate in any of it, to find something for myself. It was enough that I was there, that I was her friend. And yet with each day I got older and remained untouched, my stress increased, cold sweats in bed while I worried that maybe it would never happen for me, that I would die just as alone I was now. Often, looking over at Mia, at her long body sprawled in my bed as we smoked, or her face lit up by a movie we watched together, I would find myself desperate, considering the weight of my own virginity and the huge, terrible love I had for her, waiting for the two to combine to a single urge. But they didn’t, and now they never will. I watch Daphne trace the horse on Mia’s arm with a finger, and imagine that instead it is my hand progressing into the warm pasture of her hair, my lips brushing hers, that it is me rising from the couch and disappearing into the bedroom with her. But that is not the friend I’m meant to have, and not the one I want. 

…

In the kitchen, Cleo corners me. Her scent is sickening and sweet, like hair products. She laces herself around my shoulders, looking up at me. Up close, her makeup is cakey, her curls flat and frizzy. I think briefly about going home, how badly I wish to be back in my bedroom, back in adolescence. But I cannot return.. Even in America, I am now an adult, trapped by various considerations. Cleo leans closer to me, her violet lipstick catching fading light from outside. 

You know, the night is so short. And we’re both so drunk. 

I’m not drunk, I say, and I try to mean it. 

Oh. I would’ve thought you were. 

A moment of silence lapses as I ponder this description of me, until she leans in closer, the purple sandwich of her lips approaching. I can tell you really want to kiss me, she says. Not really, I reply, but she kisses me anyway, three tight presses against my face and then it is over and I can breathe again. She stumbles away from me and I think to follow her but she melds back into the clump of her friends and I’ve lost her. I want to talk to Mia about this. I need to talk to Mia about this. But she is still in that dark room, somebody else accessing parts of her I will never know. 

A yell comes from behind me, sounding at first like song. I turn, and the sudden motion catches me with dizziness, vision blurring. I am drunk, drunker than I thought. I see a flurry of bodies on the floor, and hear accented voices layered and repeated. And then I see Mia, face to face with some guy who’s shouting about his girlfriend as his friends try to hold him back. It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about Daphne. Tears spring to my eyes as he raises his fists, but this is just a childish impulse, nothing more than fear. 

And then I smell hair, blonde, American hair that is real enough to clutch in my hands, and Mia is back in my arms, lip burst with longing, red blood on swollen red mouth. She looks over at me with her brown eyes. I hate her then, but if nothing else, friendship is loving and hating someone, pushing them away and watching them come back. We need to go, she says, and when she speaks, I notice that underneath the pink her teeth are chipped, her perfect, dazing smile ruined. And we are back on the street, running and screaming in the warm night, laughing as only girls can. 

…

At the station, we hide in the bathroom in case Daphne’s boyfriend has decided to follow us. Mia keeps repeating the story of him walking in on her and Daphne, punctuating her words with shrill laughs. A shiver grips her shoulders. It eventually occurs to me that she is afraid. 

We wait by the tracks for the midnight train. There are other passengers further down the platform, but their shapes are small in our vision, little black dots on a background of blue sky. I consider telling Mia about kissing Cleo, but I ultimately decline. It’s not the most interesting event of the night, not even close. 

I’m going to miss you, I tell her. 

What? 

In college. I’m going to miss you. I’ve never had a friend like you. 

She considers this, and nods. Do you have a cigarette? she asks. I must have lost my lighter. You know, in the fight. 

I sink my hand into my pocket. 

…

And back to our nativeness, back in the place where we have our past. In America, we separate. August comes and we go off to different colleges. At first, we’ll stay in touch, call every week and write letters. But that will fall off—it always does. And then Mia will be only memory. In later years, when I think of her face, I’ll always picture it with a ring of blood by the mouth, those two cracks in her smile. I’ll think of us in London. 

But that was another country, and we were other people there.