An Excerpted Scene from Zigzags

“I’m no longer in a moment of crisis. You’re just going to have to trust me on that,” she said. Her perfect chestnut hair waved in a lively arc across her forehead and instead of the riot of excitement I expected, there was a calm opening up in me.

“Anyway, I think you should come over later,” she said.

“Are you inviting me over for sex?” I asked, in what I hoped came off as teasing question and not the clarification it was.

Her eyebrows shot up at a sharp angle. “I’m sorry were you hoping for more, like sex and popcorn maybe?”

I laughed then, at myself mostly, but also at her for liking me and my mixed signals and my overinflated heart, which at times hung so close to my face it blocked my vision.

“You know what, you’re pretty awesome,” I said. I turned my head to the side so I could smell her hair, a cinnamon apricotish waft, for Richard and me, because that’s what always got us.

She turned her head and rested her chin on my shoulder. “Thanks. Ditto. Now, tell me something about you that is not about other people, just you.”

“What are you curious about?” I asked her.

“When’d you do this?” she asked, running her hand along the side of my head.

“That is going to take a while because when you ask about my hair, you’re asking for the overwrought story of my of coming of age,” I warned Zoe.

She laughed and lay down on her stomach. “Which is all I wanted to hear anyway.”

“It all began on a warm day in San Diego,” I began, “when I was visiting my friend Darin. He’d just finished his finals, I’d just finished a two-day marathon of Firefly in his living room—as well as the last of his macaroni and cheese. We challenged each other to go to the barber shop, right then, to kick off the summer with mohawks.”

To my great relief, Zoe didn’t make me tell the complete, linear story, which would have ended—as all of my most honest attempts did—in overcompensating lies. Zoe chimed in, and told me that she had shaved her head once, right before a big marching band performance, much to the shock and horror of her family and her school.

“It was a little extreme, a little too obviously a call for attention,” she said, bashfully. “But I was serious about it, and when people asked me why I’d done it, I’d shrug and go, ‘Why not?’ or—this is so embarrassing.” She squeezed my arm and winced. “I’d just say, ‘feminism.’” She gave me a cold hard stare, and I fell over laughing.

“I know.”

“It’s hard to argue against feminism,” I said.

“Well, that’s what I was banking on.”

We took our time getting home, and when we arrived at Zoe’s building the sun had begun to set. I followed her into the echoey apartment, and once I closed the door, it was nearly dark inside. I reached out to find my way in this unfamiliar space and found her back. She turned swiftly into me, and we unleashed the sort of greedy kissing that revealed how much we’d been pretending not to think about it.

“So,” she paused. “Before I get ahead of myself, you’re not just going to run out in the middle of this, are you?” She threw a smirk at me.

“Hey, I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I have this terrible affliction where I live most vividly in my head. I honestly just needed a little time to fantasize about you in a realistic way.”

Zoe considered this for a second. “Okay, so…?” She ran her fingers over her lips. “What happens first?”

“Well, this,” I said. “And then—” I motioned to her couch “—you’re sitting over there at your computer and you’re having trouble with your Internet connection.”

“That is your fantasy?” she asked. “Internet trouble?”

“Yes, well that’s the beginning anyway. I told you, I like to keep it reality-based and in the realm of my abilities. What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Zoe smiled and went over to the couch. She picked up her laptop and banged around on the keys. “Whew, I am having a really hard time downloading these important security documents?” She paused and looked at me. “Wait, are we reenacting a Mariah Carey video?

“Do you have water guns?” I asked excitedly.

It was a treat to spend the night with her. She was confident and silly, and there was no hesitancy. I had forgotten how the small things could floor me: the luxury of her hair sweeping against my body, the slightly bitter taste of her ear, or that serious shift when we were suddenly hurtling toward an orgasm and I knew I better not stop exactly what I was doing.

She kneed me awake the next morning, saying, “Surprise! I wake up early.” So I got up and we went for coffee at M. Henry. I knew the guy at the counter, who threw in some pastries for free, and we sat outside and made up dumb names for the baby strollers that went by.

“If you find any crabs, you know who to blame,” she said when I gathered my things to leave.

Her lightness relieved me, and I bounded down the steps waving at her as I went. I had been renewed. On my ride home, I sucked the air of a new day up through my nose. There was some music blowing out of an open car window at a stop sign, and I gave the guys inside an openmouthed thumbs up as I flew by. I was comforted to know that I could be moved like this. In a moderate way that was all zings and citrus bursts, and not something dark and horrible, like the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. I didn’t know why it was my point of comparison, but it seemed to embody the sense of imminent doom I usually felt at the possibility of genuine romance: that I was standing in a cobbled street living my life, when a molasses tank burst, and all I could do was stand there watching the sticky black waves of death come oozing slowly at me.

But this wasn’t that, not even close. “Not even a little, not even at all,” I sang cheerily. Which did, then, seem like I was taunting death, and while on a bicycle, so I decided to whistle instead.