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“How long have you known Thor?”
“We met after the blackout.”
“Really?”
“Yes indeed.” Dizzee gives her his hand as she sits on the coffee table before him, legs crossed, a Lama of Cutex and Rimmel.
“That’s crazy.”
“Why?”
“You look at each other like you’ve spent a lifetime together.”
Dizzee watches as she begins to paint his every other nail blue. “Maybe we have, somewhere, in another galaxy.”
She smiles at that, and Dizzee loses himself in her ministrations, her hands cool on his hot skin. He watches the spreading nail polish, suspects it’s a match for Krylon’s Gloss Ocean Blue, and wonders why he’s never thought to borrow Yolanda’s lacquer. His hands are his tools, cans of paint just the medium through which he directs his soul. To color his hands is a brilliant idea–why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?
Thor returns from smoking off of the fire escape to sit behind Dizzee on the couch, his weight sinking the cushions. “That’s a nice color.”
“Gloss Ocean Blue.”
Thor grins, hands Dizzee a glass of cool water he’d poured from the tap. “You should drink a little.”
The girl is almost meditative as she paints Dizzee’s smallest nail. “Down that real quick, then we’ll have something better.”
“Okay.”
Dizzee can’t recall the girl’s name, can’t recall if she ever gave it in the first place. He’d found Thor the moment he entered the party, like a satellite pulled to Jupiter, unable to escape such a strong field of dazzling gravity. She’d come over a minute later when they exchanged books.
Had she introduced herself? Had Thor mentioned her name over the music? It is, to Dizzee’s dismay, too late to ask for her name. She’s Thor’s Friend–but she’s his friend as well, surely. So to Dizzee she’s Beautiful Girl, beautiful in soul and spirit, kind when she pushed him gently, told him it was okay for boys to kiss boys. Dizzee may have never met a girl more beautiful, so she is, now and forever–even when he does re-learn the name her mother gave her–Beautiful Girl.
Zeke would be disappointed in his lackluster words, Dizzee decides.
Beautiful Girl roots through her shoebox, grabs a red bottle of lacquer, red like Krylon Gloss Red Pepper.
“You’re very good at painting nails,” Dizzee says, inspecting his free hand.
Beautiful Girl grins, stroking cool polish onto Dizzee’s nail in an even coat. “I’ve had lots of practice.”
“Yolanda always messes up her right hand.”
“Yolanda–is that your girlfriend?”
“His sister,” Thor says, just over Dizzee’s shoulder.
“Ah, yeah–the one on the record? That beat was hot.” Delicately, Beautiful Girl sets Dizzee’s hand on his knee, picks up the other with half-naked nails and begins to paint. “She’s gonna be famous, with a voice like that.”
“Everyone deserves to hear that record, to become free people,” Dizzee mumbles, entranced by the red creeping over his nail beds, the fingers running up and down his back. His night has been red and blue lights, hands and fingers. And lips and teeth and breath and everything nice that goes in tandem with those lovely things.
“You’ll be famous too.” A broad palm traces up Dizzee’s back, smooths over denim and buttons to squeeze his shoulder. “Everyone’s gonna see your work in art galleries someday.”
“Rich old assholes will fight to buy your canvases,” Beautiful Girl coos, though she sounds sincere underneath.
Dizzee hums; he still doesn’t believe them. A bunch of white kids probably know better about Manhattan art galleries, but he figures he knows better about demarcation lines and the cost of paint.
“All done! But don’t smudge them, they have to dry for like ten minutes.” Beautiful Girl spins the polish cap back into place.
“Thank you.” Dizzee leans back into the curve of Thor’s side, his barrel chest, Thor’s arm wrapping around his shoulders. He studies the red and blue, their shine and gloss, feels the final superhero pill spider webs slipping from his mind. “Thank you for inviting me to your home,” he says, to both of them.
“I enjoy your company,” Beautiful Girl smiles, and Dizzee thinks she understands.
Thor’s arm squeezes tighter. “Thanks for coming.”
“What color should I paint Thor’s toes?”
“Royal Purple,” Dizzee says in a heartbeat. Behind him Thor laughs, his chest shaking Dizzee, Dizzee smiling as Thor props his bare feet up on the coffee table. “The rarity and cost of purple dyes reserved it for families of esteem and wealth. It would suit the son of Odin.”
She purses her lips and holds up a bottle. “I have Lilac. That cool?”
“It’s cool.” Thor wiggles his toes at her. “No one’s gonna see it anyway once I put my boots back on.”
Dizzee sips on his water until it’s gone, feels the rise and fall of Thor’s chest as they talk about how shitty it was that the original Penn Station was knocked down in the 60s and they’d never been able to see it. He watches Beautiful Girl paint Thor’s toes a less-than-Royal Purple, finds his existence in the universe to be peaceful and pleasant at this very moment, and takes it all in from the frays in Thor’s jeans to the cat napping on the fire escape.
Dizzee could see to Brooklyn, to London, to Mars and Saturn and beyond in that moment, and chose to watch a young woman painting a young man’s toes lilac.
When she’s finished, Beautiful Girl excuses herself to the kitchenette. She stands on her tiptoes to reach a high cabinet, grabs a bottle of dark gold. “Stole it from my dad,” Beautiful Girl says with a wink, and though Dizzee has not known her long he gets the sense her father is not a Beautiful Person and he should not feel horribly for sharing in this treasure.
“Let’s go drink it on the roof!”
Dizzee finds his arms stuffed with blankets, Thor’s with pillows and a radio. She ushers them out of her tiny apartment with a bottle of Crown Royal, three empty Welch’s jam jars, and a bag of weed Dizzee doubts they’ll actually need. They follow her up the fire escape, cool air washing over faces and through hair as they climb up, up, up into the stars.
When he steps over bricks and onto the roof Dizzee realizes the stars are fake, just Christmas lights–summer solstice lights?–strung up around wires and laundry lines, but no less beautiful than the Milky Way herself.
They make a nest of blankets and pillows, Thor plugging in the radio as Beautiful Girl pours Crown Royal into the jars. She hands Bugs Bunny to Dizzee, Foghorn Leghorn to Thor, and keeps Porky for herself. The radio shuffles between static and Gloria Gaynor, and they laugh and talk and curse the summer sky when tiny drops fall from the nighttime clouds. It’s not so bad as to drive them back into the apartment, they decide, and they stay in their nest, their galaxy of blankets and pillows. The drizzle drops fall into Crown Royal, dilute it, poison it, make it all the better.
Dizzee finds himself sluggish when Thor pulls a thick marker from his jean pocket, from under Beautiful Girl’s cheek where she’s fallen asleep. The clouds have moved on, the barest hint of dawn’s light creeping over their nest.
“We should have brought our books up with us,” Dizzee laments.
Thor glances up from where he’s tucked a lock of brown hair behind a pale ear, looks through lashes like he’s maybe looked at Dizzee a thousand, million times before. “You wanna do a piece?”
“Yeah, but, nah, not up here–don’t want her to get in trouble.”
“Do one on me.”
Dizzee’s fingers itch and twitch. “Really?”
“Sure.” Thor smiles, hands him the marker, a dark and royal purple.
“This shit doesn’t wash off easy,” Dizzee says, certain Thor knows.
“That’s fine.” He turns his arm over. “Do whatever you want.”
With reverence Dizzee takes the arm–the arm of a god, a prince–and knows what to craft from the start. He holds the marker cap in his teeth and angles Thor’s skin to the lights, looping letters as gracefully as his mother sews her stitches, as smooth as his father’s voice when he hums in the morning hours. He writes with love, with a hammering heart. Dizzee decides on all capital letters, decides to be unsubtle on an unsubtle night, and with firm resolve swears that there will be more unsubtle nights like these.
Dizzee caps the marker and blows once over the ink, amazed when Thor shudders. From an artistic standpoint it is not his finest piece, Dizzee knows, he’d maybe rushed it just to see it done, something he hasn’t indulged in since he first picked up a bag of Krylon years ago. But he feels it is, perhaps, his most important piece, if not his most stunning canvas.
THE
ENTIRE
UNIVERSE
IS WITHIN
YOU.
“What do you think?”
Thor leans forward and presses his lips to Dizzee’s, and the universe moves between them both.