Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis

Author:Dylan Landis [Landis, Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61695-453-6
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

TWO TRUTHS

Late-summer Sunday, two years after college: Leah runs into Rainey Royal outside a coffee shop called Eat Here Now. “Friend or foe?” says Leah, delighted with how jocular this sounds, which makes her realize she is still afraid of Rainey.

She watches nervously as Rainey arranges herself against a parking meter. Rainey’s whole body seems to smile at Leah with perfect white teeth.

Does she remember upending Leah’s purse over the toilet? Or pressing a square of paper onto her tongue and calling it blotter, so Leah stuck a finger down her own throat?

“Friend!” says Rainey. Smile so cocky, voice so velvety—Leah wants to be in her thrall again.

But she has to be at work ten minutes ago; mice are waiting to be injected, though God knows they’re in no rush. They’re doing Bad Science in the lab this summer, worse than last year. This is where she’s worked since she graduated from Amherst. Leah always knows the time, but she looks at her watch. “I’m late.”

Rainey catches Leah’s wrist. Her grip feels hot, cool, alarming. Leah wonders if she can get her to touch the other wrist, balance her out. “Nice watch,” says Rainey. Surely she sees it’s just a man’s Timex. “Was it your father’s? Am I right?” Leah feels herself smiling at the glittering sidewalk. “It radiates dadness. Smart gentle dadness. Same with my father’s watch,” says Rainey, and Leah feels herself studied as if for small cues. “I can always tell what emanates from a thing,” says Rainey. “I work with objects that belonged to the dead.”

“That is so romantic. Objects of the dead. I’m jealous,” says Leah. Of all the kids from Urban Day, only Rainey could claim something like that. Leah remembers the things she made in art from handwritten scraps and her grandmother’s dancing shoes and bits of cloth, while all Leah could draw were lines as straight and clean as her own spine. How did Rainey know things, she wanted to ask. How did she make things? What was it like living in that Raquel Welch body and having a father who flirted with his daughter’s friends? Back when Leah had no boyfriends—not that she has boyfriends now—Howard Royal would look at her like she was standing naked on some shell.

“My job is so gross I can’t even tell you. Good-bye,” Leah sings out, and starts to wheel away—this is meant to be funny.

Rainey hangs on to her wrist. “C’mon, let’s do breakfast. I want to hear about your life.” Leah shakes her head. Half of her wants her wrist back, and half of her wants Rainey to hold it all morning. She sniffs. Rainey smells like roses. That hair, too, past her waist, untrimmed, the way it gleams and swings. And that thrown-together gypsy look, as if Rainey somehow lived out of that enormous army pack, scavenging gold hoops and silky scarves from its pockets.

Rainey tips her head and smiles. “Please?” With her free hand she starts to toy with one of the many zippers on Leah’s lucky leather jacket.

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