I started feeling lightheaded, almost drunk. Black nothingness began filling my vision from the sides. “Best date ever,” I said woozily, holding my juice box up to her.
She smirked but there was compassion in her eyes. “Who said anything about a date?” I gave her a lethargic shrug. “Let’s make a deal. If you make it through this without passing out, I’ll let you take me on a real date,” she said, before everything faded to black.
Smelling salts work, apparently. My eyes opened to find a nurse who looked like Julia Roberts circa Mystic Pizza leaning over me. Her bushy eyebrows pinched together and her big hair bounced as she talked. “You okay, sweetie?”
I nodded. “I think so. Why are you upside down?”
She smiled. “The bed can be flipped so that if you pass out, we can get your feet elevated above your heart.”
I was totally out of it. “Thanks, baby. You saved me.”
“No problem, baby.” She chuckled.
I looked across the room to Grace, who seemed listless.
“You okay?” she asked quietly. I nodded.
After they removed the needle and loaded me up with sugary snacks, the nurse helped me stand. “You can stay as long as you need to,” she assured me.
“I’m all right. I’m just gonna sit with my friend over there.”
I shuffled over to Grace, who was beginning to look pale and tired. Sitting in the chair next to her bed, I noticed that goose bumps covered her arms and legs. Her dress was riding up on her thighs as she slumped against the headrest. She noticed my gaze and discreetly tugged the hem of her dress down.
“Hey,” I said as I looked above her and studied the machine of pinwheels and tubes. It looked like a Willy Wonka contraption.
“Hey yourself,” she said in a low voice.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired and cold.” She let her eyes close. I stood up and rubbed my hands up and down her arms.
With eyes just barely cracked, she shot me a tiny smile and whispered, “Thanks, Matt.”
When the nurse walked by, I quickly caught her attention. “Excuse me, nurse. She’s freezing and she seems kind of out of it.”
“That’s normal. I’ll get her a blanket,” she said, gesturing to a nearby chair.
I rushed over and grabbed it before the nurse even had time to turn around. I covered Grace all the way up to her neck and then tucked the blanket in at her sides so she was completely cocooned.
“Perfect,” I said. “A Grace burrito.”
She laughed silently and then closed her eyes.
I sat back down in the chair and watched my new friend. She didn’t wear much make-up, if any at all. Her lashes were long, her skin flawless, and she smelled of lilac and baby powder. In the short time I’d known her, I could tell that as savvy as she seemed about the world around her, there was a poignant fragility about her, a childlike innocence I had detected immediately. It came through her eyes and shy gestures.
Glancing around the room, I noticed a few homeless-
looking people and one grungy, obviously very inebriated man in the corner making a fuss over the fact that there were no more Oreo cookies left in the snack basket.
Resting my head back, I let my own eyes close, then drifted off into a light sleep, listening to the sound of the machine above me removing Grace’s platelets and then pumping the blood back into her body. I wondered how often she had done this for fifty dollars.
I don’t know how much time passed when I felt a delicate hand on my shoulder. “Matty, come on, let’s go.” I opened my eyes and looked up to find Grace, pink-cheeked and grinning from ear to ear. She handed me twenty-five bucks. “Sweet, huh?” She seemed back to normal and totally poised, with her small purse strung across her body. “Need a hand?” She reached out to me.
“Nope.” I popped out of the chair. “I feel like a million bucks.”
“You look about twenty-five short of a million.”
A strand of hair had fallen out of her hair tie. I reached to tuck it behind her ear but she flinched. “I was just going to . . .”
“Oh, sorry.” She leaned in, so I reached down again and this time she let me tuck her hair back.
“You smell good,” I said. She was mere inches from my face, looking up at me. Her eyes focused on my lips. I licked them and then leaned down an inch closer.
She looked away. “Ready?”
I didn’t feel rejected. Instead, her reservation piqued my interest even more. I was curious.
“Seems like there were a lot of druggies in there,” I said, once we were outside. “Do you think they use that blood?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
The sun was high in the sky, there were birds chirping, and Grace was standing stock still with her head down, her eyes trained on a line of ants heading toward a trashcan.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked.
She looked up. “Wanna get some weed and hang out in Washington Square?”
I laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Come on, druggy.” She yanked on my hand and we were off. A block down, she tried to pull her hand out of mine but I wouldn’t let her.
“You have tiny hands,” I said.
At the corner, as we waited for the crosswalk, she pried her hand away and held it up. “Yeah, but they’re boney and ugly.”
“I like them.” When the walking sign lit up, I grabbed her hand again and said, “Come on skeletor. Let’s go.”