A Calm and Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks

Author:Chelsea T. Hicks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press

Ever since she had kissed me, I’d stopped feeling like I could confide in her. The only reason I had tolerated the mention of a threesome anyway, long ago, was to avoid commitment. Now I was more locked in than ever and increasingly all I was wanting was to be free. The phone was dying, and still no text from B, whose phone “fell in water.” It sounded like a lie and even if it wasn’t, he was the type of careful person who didn’t drop anything, unless too drunk. Still, I did not have and couldn’t afford my own apartment. I was not in a place to be wanting threesomes; what I wanted was shelter. If B wanted careless sex, enabling, and on top of this, to get drunk and ignore me, I could choose to leave him, but the question was where would I stay? Ines was the only person I could think of, and now she demanded sexual compliance, too.

“Look up,” said the artist. She was pretty, with a round face like mine, brown-skinned but not tanned. Her face was properly roundish where mine was more oval.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“A small town in northeast Oklahoma,” I murmured, trying to keep my jaw from moving.

“You can talk,” she said, softening. “I do the lips last. Just keep still.”

She asked me what it was like, my small northeast Oklahoma town.

“Well, I lived in an apartment complex in our little downtown area, which is growing, because a TV food star has a restaurant there. It’s called The Rancher’s Home. Have you heard of it? She lives illegally on our land that some of her ancestors stole. Still, she gives jobs and coffee to the Indians in town, and her coffee’s good as the stuff we have around here. I fit in there, but I wanted a man. I am trying to see if I can fit in here.”

She put her brush in the green lip paint we were wearing. “Are you Native? I know the designer for this show is.”

“That’s how I got this job. He did some work on my rez once.”

I opened my language app to show her. “Ahai,” I read, and showed her our orthography. “This is our language.”

“That looks like some alien shit!” she said.

“It is. A saying goes, ‘We are stars.’”

I wanted to ask her if she was connected to any other nations, but before I could she sent me off to the gray area rug where the designer stood with the others. He came right up to me and I felt wordless and suddenly not there at all. I started thinking of groceries, of all things. I needed to—had forgotten to—get groceries. In front of me were the brown boots of the designer, and he was talking. The boots were the same as the ones B had worn out the door to the bachelor party. I had to cover my mouth and act like I was yawning because I couldn’t breathe.

“Are you ready?” he said.

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