f r i c t i o n
/ˈfrikSH(ə)n/
noun
the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.
[X]
"Melanie! My sour-faced darling! How the hell are ya?" Nova, dressed in all black like a thousand midnights, envelops me in a tight hug. She attacks me with kisses and pecks, showers terms of endearments on my head like spring rain. She's still sweaty from the performance. Adrenaline radiates from her core in furnace-hot waves. That's how seriously Nova takes the cello. It's a sport. She competes with herself. She always wins.
Nova's world tour kicks off in her hometown of Richmond, RI, so of course, Cody, Jillian, and I drive out to celebrate her crowning achievement, watching from the best seats in the house.
I'll admit, I don't remember much of the score. I can't tell you a single piece she played. Something about the dark lights, the swelling orchestra, and the anonymity of the shoulders to the left and right of me created the perfect cocktail to dissociate and vacate the physical plane.
Only once the lights snap on and the audience thunders into applause do I return to my body and the pain it contains. An unpaid two-hour vacation.
"Oh, how good it is to see you, friend! With the race tomorrow, I was almost worried you wouldn't make it."
I squeeze Nova's petite frame tight. She could fit inside a teacup. The palm of my hand.
"Wouldn't miss it for anything."
"How'd we sound? Did we sound good?"
"Shouldn't you be backstage popping champagne with your pals?"
"My pals are all right here," Nova grins.
Jillian, who donned a Hillary Clinton-esque pantsuit for the occasion, holds a fake microphone to Nova.
"Casanova Chiara, you've absolutely astounded fans with your rendition of Shostakovich's most iconic movement tonight. You're on the cusp of stardom and critics hail you as the Yo-Yo Ma of Generation Z. Soon you'll be a household name, an international starlet. How does it feel?"
"It feels like I'm about to vomit, thanks for asking."
"Any words of advice for the little people left behind? A philosophy everyone of all ages should hear?"
Nova nods, sagely. "Get money, fuck bitches."
Jillian and Nova banter for a few minutes and I wait on the wings pretending to scroll through my phone. I know my place. My friendship with Jillian was founded on our mutual occupations as wives and mothers, and since I'm not actively pursuing either suddenly we have nothing in common beyond the friends we've made. Cody and Nova hold us together, and now that one half of our unit is leaving to play with the big dogs I'm not sure how much longer Jillian and I will associate. Jillian is the oldest of us, about ten years my senior, so she can be awfully totalitarian when she wants to be.
Cody, grasping an armful of fragrant roses, shudders when Nova comes near.
"Here," he thrusts the bouquet at her chest. "Our diva deserves the best. I had them rush-ordered so they'd be at prime freshness for you."
Nova blinks at him. And then at the flowers dampening her dress.
"Oh. Cody. Wow. You shouldn't have." She holds the roses how one might hold a crying child. "I'll be sure to add these to the others in my dressing room."
Cody lurches forward with pride. "You sounded magnificent up there. Your solo during the third piece was exquisite. I'm glad the director is finally recognizing your talent with a bow."
"Yeah, well, pretty soon it'll be me telling him how to run the show."
"And the orchestra will be much better for it. You're a genius."
I hope Nova will send us off with a thank you and a goodbye so I can wait for Stryker's bullet at home, alone, soaking my feet in my portable foot jacuzzi, but she has other ideas.
"Listen up, Mel. Big things are happening to me right now and I need your support. It's imperative. I pray I can count on you in this time of great upheaval," she takes my shoulder and smiles like a hungry alligator. "So I gotta spill. Girl-talk. Are you listening?"
"Is it another boy? It's another boy, isn't it?"
"Psh. No." Nova licks her purple lips and Cody's eyes track the subtle movement. "Boys are so last year. Boys wear knitted beanies and write crappy cigarette poetry about women they've wronged. Boys try to suckle at your breast to cope with their devastating mommy issues. When boys say 'I love you' it really means 'I'm going to waste a few months of your life and hang you out to dry.' I'm into Men now. Fully grown Men. With beards and mortgages and retirement plans. Real Men know how to take care of a lady. And my Man is here, in this building, right now!"
"Oh? Is he dreamy? Is he a skydiving astronaut who cooks, cleans, loves dogs and babies?"
"All that and then some, Jill."
"That's not a man, that's a headache waiting to happen." Jillian, the mother of a daughter Nova's age, is unconvinced. "How'd you meet this fella, anyhow?"
Nova bubbles with excitement. "I met him at a publicity event last week. You know, for the tour. It was a fundraising gala or something. And he was just so magnetizing. I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and he to I. It was like magic. I told him about my performance tonight not expecting much but he bought a ticket right there in front of me. And he showed up! He wants me. I know it."
"That's not what we're questioning here."
My lips twitch. "Whatever happened to Garrett? Your last fling? A few month ago he was your one and only. I think 'future bae' was the phrase you used. Excessively."
"Ew. Melanie, I love you but sometimes you ask the dumbest questions. Anyways, my Man found me backstage before the show and guess what? He brought me perfume!"
"No!"
"Yes! He clocked Sara Eros on me at the gala and thought this new fragrance would complement my natural scents better."
Nova holds her wrist up to my nose. "Behold! The power of pheromones and black currants."
Her Man was right. Her wrist smells great.
Silent beside us, Cody watches his colony of wilting roses drip on the floor.
"Okay, and what exactly is my role in all of this?" I ask.
"He's a documentarian from PBS. Wait, no, it's actually A&E. Or is it Buzzfeed? Whatever, nevermind, what matters is he's currently working on his latest feature film and he's decided to focus the whole piece on me!"
"Wow. Really?"
"Don't sound so surprised. My presence carries very well on camera. But I need you by my side to hype up my better qualities. Be my wing-woman. Convince him I'm not a hot mess so he'll think I'm not absolutely insane, and then by the time we're married with two kids it'll be too late."
"This can only end horribly."
"It won't. You're not even lying. It's just creative storytelling. I swear I haven't felt so strongly about anyone ever in my life. He's the one."
Jillian shakes her greying head. "I'm not sure if I should admire the man or pity him."
Nova balls her fists, pert nose reddening. "You guys don't know him like I do. You'll understand what I mean when you meet him. Then you'll see. He's downright magnetic. I really think he might be my soulmate. Our soulmarks are just written in invisible ink."
"Sure, Nova. We'll add Knox to the discarded boyfriend pile as soon as you're done with him."
"Bugger!" Nova shoves us aside in a panic. "Shhh, he's coming over! Act natural!"
Jillian spins in the opposite direction and squats halfway. Cody nonchalantly leans against the banister Al Capone-style. My hands automatically snap to finger-guns by my sides, legs spread like a gun-slinging sheriff.
"You three are the worst," Nova spits in mortification.
The crowd parts and from the well-dressed forest approaches a tall man in a velvet coat.
"Oh," I gasp.
Nova's right. He's definitely a far cry from her previous boy-toys.
He's also very... not white.
Nova's unrelenting fetish for white guys is a running gag between the four of us, one I could never fully participate in because I actually married one. Brock might've been my soulmate, but personally, I was always attracted to political Ho Chi Minh types. The Che Guevaras. Growing up I never had the connections to actually hook up with these boys, so instead I had to settle for lesser iterations. A firefighter. A construction manager. An infantry captain. On the borderline between blue collar and a bachelor degree. My exes are all action figures you'd find in a children's toy catalog.
Meanwhile, Nova's excuses for her poor taste are invalidated by her equally poor choices. She isn't soulmarked and prefers it that way. Casanova lives up to her namesake and she doesn't take any prisoners. Ensnared by her quirky kinks and her kinky quirks, her victims can't get enough of her. She fits perfectly into their notions of the Ideal Chinese Woman, body type and all, a venus fly trap with twice as much bite. I don't know how she can stand it. Men yelling "Ling-Ling" and "Kung-Pao chicken" at me ever since I was old enough to understand the male gaze didn't exactly endear me the oriental fetishization Nova soaks in like a sponge.
"I'm like catnip to these busters," she told me once over sake. She drug her long list of lovers behind her like a severed head. "They want to roll around in me. Inhale me. They think I'm rare as if there isn't an entire subcontinent of women who look and think just like me. They're all adorable fools. Beautiful idiots. If my soulmark manifested with any of them I think I'd shoot myself."
Cody is also unmarked but I never heard of him bringing a girl home as long as I've known him. Selling real estate to rich college students keeps him busy and I almost envy his assurance in life without a soulmate. Jillian and I originally bonded over being the only two soulmarked wives in the group but clearly, that's not evidence for a healthy relationship because Jillian's mate, Lawrence, loves her to pieces without reservation while mine thinks I'm seconds away from lighting his house on fire with him inside, so.
Anyways, the tall, non-white man stops a few feet away from us and Nova latches onto his muscled forearm. She shyly pushes her raven locks behind her pearl-adorned ear. She has completely lost her mind.
"Oh, hi Knox! I was just telling my friends all about you. Guys, say hello to the next Michael Moore."
"But only thrice as pretentious." Knox winks behind his red-tinted glasses. The frames resemble the kind Ozzy Osbourne or John Lennon would wear. The lenses are so thick I can't tell if they're prescription or just an arty affect assumed by a man without much substance besides his "daring" fashion statements.
It's hard to immediately place Knox's ethnicity. In a police lineup, I would probably describe him as a mildly pleasing shade of light-brown. Square jaw. Curly hair that goes swoosh at the top. I get it - race isn't always so (heh) black and white. My Cuban-American father soulmarked with my pure Thai mother during an overseas research trip despite neither sharing a common language. Daddy Felix Cruz's original intent was to conduct an ethnography on ladyboy culture and wound up falling in love with a local drag queen's sister. My mother. Sue Maleenon.
Nova used to call me Krathong Tong with Smoked Pickles. Simultaneously too Thai and too Cuban. Not enough American.
"Pleasure to meet you," Jillian and Knox shake hands. "I was worried you were a fever dream of Nova's overactive imagination."
"Jill!"
"Still real last time I checked." Knox laughs and it unsettles me more than I like to admit. My stomach churns at the sound. Perhaps calling Knox tall was an understatement. He towers over Cody. Recognizing this literal shortcoming, Cody almost takes a step back before thinking better of it and standing his ground.
"You must be Cody Barssurom. Nova said you were in real estate? I'd love to pick your brain about property my friend has in Monaco if you're up for a coffee sometime."
"Sure," Cody's voice is sugary-sweet. "Any friend of Nova's is a friend of mine. Especially one with such good taste in floral fragrances."
"Ah," Knox rubs the back of his head, bashful. "When you grow up around classy women you tend to pick up a few things."
I still haven't spoken. My knee-jerk reaction is to deflect attention away from myself, slip away, dash inside my car, and speed the hell home. Knox's gaze pierces me, floating dark and sharp over his disarming smile. Like two black sharks swimming across a neon coral reef. It's a gaze that'll drag you underneath dark currents by the ankle. Pull you below the riptide. Take you apart.
Suddenly shy, I shield my face with Nova's roses and cough a hello.
"Melanie Enderby. Break out NASCAR driver. It's an honor."
"Why? Have I done anything particularly honorable in my career?"
"It's not often you see Asian women succeed in competitive racing. Some NASCAR purists are of the untrue opinion that you can't drive."
"You mean 'racists.'"
"In so many words."
"I haven't crashed yet, have I?"
"No," Knox grins again, and it's almost too much. "You haven't."
"There have been some close calls though," This is coming from Cody, the only friend who bothers to show up to my races. "There are other drivers who aren't nearly as lucky."
"If I die in a fiery hell ball mid-race just bury me in my car. Use the few grand you'd buy the coffin with for the booze fund instead. The mourners will thank you."
All three of them laugh. Except for Knox. Instead, he looks mildly disturbed. I've become increasingly skilled at masking my very real emotions with very fake humor, so my dark jokes are usually received as good-natured self-deprecation. But if my closest friends can't distinguish between a legitimate cry for help and convenient irony then how can he?
"Of course, don't forget to live stream the funeral service so my sponsors can post it on their website. My contract is still valid even in the afterlife."
I try to smooth the rift over with a lighter joke, but it's already too late. After such a stiff first impression it's unlikely he'll trust a word I say for his Nova documentary. Perhaps it's for the best. I'll be dead before he can complete it anyways.
We exit the performance hall in a cluster. Jillian and Knox discuss the essence of good reporting while Nova and I study Knox from the back (I am significantly more covert about it, though. Nova is downright ogling his firm ass.) We are not all so lighthearted. Cody is a brick wall beside us, glaring at the ground with his hands in his pockets.
(weird.)
I might be sick. My skin is flushed. My heart is cartwheeling against my ribcage. My soulmark aches with pressure. We turn the corner back to our cars and I can't help but feel Unfinished. There's a distinct lack of resolution to this random encounter. The universe dropped a glass from the heavens and it hasn't shattered against the earth yet. The sun lingers on the horizon, neither setting nor rising. Right about now the sky should be crashing around our heads. Where's the thunder? The lightning?
The sense of incompletion is frustrating.
I must be allergic to Nova's roses. That's the only plausible explanation
Nova drags me over to Knox's motorcycle by my sleeve and plops me in front of it. It's a Kamikaze 2-18 Beast Model, the bike an action anti-hero would drive. Knox swings his long leg over the seat like he's saddling a horse and revs the engine.
"If you want a humanizing angle in my bio, be sure to hit up Melanie for neat stories about my formative years. She's known me the longest. Get to know her," Says Nova. "She's an asset."
"Yeah," Knox's canine tooth clips his bottom lip. Wolfish. "I'll be sure to do that."
"I can help as well," Cody jumps in. "I've been to almost all of Nova's concerts."
"But Melanie in particular," she urges. "She's seen the best of my personal shenanigans, so I think she'll give you the most honest account. Right, Melanie?"
Seconds before his motorcycle booms out of the lot, I catch Knox's mercury eyes shadowed behind his demon-red glasses.
My chest sears with an unnameable heat.
Roses.
It's the damn roses.
"...Right."