When, Genny? When did you know?—I am not entirely sure I do.
Genny's hand landed upon a shoulder as hard as a polished stone. At first touch, one might have thought no flesh existed there at all, but instead hot, solid earth. Every one of the young woman's muscles had been drawn into tightness, a defensiveness that might as well have forged iron from sinew. Genny’s touch, however, enchanted that stiffness. Gloria lowered her shoulder against the touch, a silent plea for support, or simple happiness for the other woman's presence. "I sometimes wonder if my expectations of you are — are unkind," she finally said, hiding the spilled wine with her palm. "You've always been and will always be one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. I sometimes presume you understand
things—" as if one word could encompass all the abstractions and mysteries of the world, "—better and more readily than I ever shall.
"I shouldn't — expect you — to have—" Words came in breaths and beats, "—such an answer. It comforts me that you don't." Her lone hand appeared over Genny's, wine-damp and yet still warm. It covered Genny's knuckles. "I confused it for homesickness at first. Your words sprang off the page at me in Razasan, and unlike letters from anyone else, I heard you speak them. I saw your mouth, and I imagined that
way you talk: cool as a breeze and sure and certain, yet hesitant to be the loudest or most knowledgable, as if ready at any moment to — to defer to someone else more knowing. The way one shoulder turns up, and the other droops down.
"And the way sometimes you hide behind a little strip of hair," she said. And then—
"How your eyebrows lift when — when you talk, as if always looking
up at others. As if you aren't already the tallest soul in the room."
Swallowing, now. But not trembling. Shoulders softening. Poise easing.
"Or the way—" her laugh comes on a breath, "—your fingernails, you couldn't get all the ink off the beds of them, and you'd wipe them and wipe them. Have you ever noticed it? Like it was some kind of shame to be so smart that you could write so quickly, so efficiently, and with such sense that you couldn't help but be sloppy with the ink." Not once has she turned. But she didn't need to. She but tilted her chin, stared down at the overfilled cups of wine, and refused to let Genny's hand go. "I like all of those parts of you so much, I'd fear my fondness—" using Genny's word rather than her own, "—might be uninvited. I try and try to measure and quantify and understand it in words fit for writing or dictating, but every time I do, they become vaporous. They slip between my fingers, and all that is left is
feeling.
"And sometimes I get very frightened of feeling."
Because feelings, impulse, drive, instinct, were these not the failures of her past and present? Were they not the most dangerous reagents in the concoctions of her every choice? Losing rigidity, almost melting, Gloria leaned back and touched her back to Genny's chest, buoyed herself against the arm that connected them, and let herself draw in a long and uninterrupted breath.
Didn't realize that she whispered a near-silent repetition, as if speaking to the wine: "Stay here with you," said she, "and be safe."
Didn't realize that her muscles unwound, and it was the first time in months she knew relaxation.
"I don't think it was going to be very good wine," she said, smiling.