I told her I know how it feels to have a man inside you. I know how to fuck and to be fucked, how the pain and the release can make you dance in place. Hop-step and dip. My name is Jesse. My mother’s name. See how easily I open? See how deep the cuts run? I’ve had a man from the inside, under the skin, deep, deep inside me.

“Why are you telling me this, Jesse?”

“Because I have to, I don’t know.”

She said she liked it when I called her Rooms. We exercised and danced together until our sweat ran in streams on the floor of her apartment. With Rooms I found other spaces to touch, other windows to look from. But there was one locked door. Metro had the key, and he was dead.

“Why did you come to me in the first place, Jesse, if you felt so sure about Metro? About yourself?”

“I had to know.”

“Know what?”

“If they took everything from me when they killed him.”

“You’re very strong there, and beautiful.”

“I mean inside, Rooms. My feelings inside.”

“You’ll find different feelings, maybe.”

“You think so?”

“Here,” she said, stretching her thighs. “Here.”

Ruella

Ruella

Well, I thought, why not come right out and let him know you’re interested? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like planting a seed or warming up before a dance. But that’s not all I said. I told him my real name, Ruella McPhee, and he still called me Rooms. Don’t ask me why. I was a place to come to, fine, I accepted that. But English isn’t the only language I know. How else could I pretend to be a foreigner and get such attentive customer service in those Fifth Avenue shops on payday? Cardinal High was good for something practical besides typing class. So I told Jesse, “Rue is the French word for ‘street.’ That means I’m going somewhere.” Then he said something smart like, “Metro runs underground, gets under the skin, too.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said, with my eyes arched.

That made him blush.

“And ella is Spanish for ‘she.’ So I’m a woman going somewhere. Bet you can’t even say it, huh? Eh-yah.”

“Fast travel,” he said. “Caroom-boom-clack, caroom-boom-clack. “

“Not on my train, pretty poppa,” I hollered. “I need me an easy rider.”

That shut him up, but after a minute he grinned like he’d caught me in my own mess. “Then we’ll make it nice and easy.”

“Clickety-clack?” I asked.

“Eh-yah.”

Chile, my legs like to fall out from under me. But I didn’t tell him that.