Fried Eggs

My lovers suffocate me,

Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Long before she turned out to be a plate of fried eggs, Sarah was a bagel. A toasted everything bagel with cream cheese and tomato. That’s still my standard order. I’ve gotten it in Baltimore, DC, and now Norfolk. And it’s not only the bagel itself, still warm from the toaster and wrapped in waxed paper, but the process too. The walk to the counter, the glance at the bins, the order that’s simple and confident. Through the whole process, she’s beside me, within, rolling her eyes at my jokes, holding my hand.

She was big on food. She loved the Philadelphia roll at the sushi place on Charles Street, was disconsolate for two full hours the time they were out of fresh salmon. I went out of my way to bring her the things she liked and smiled when I thought that her being an actor heightened her senses, made her more aware of what she ate and things like the way I stood when I was drunk (pelvis out and teetering backward). I remember once, after a silly fight about something I don’t remember, she made me a dinner of pasta with fresh mozzarella. The noodles were overdone, the wine was cheap, and the tomatoes cut so strangely that they fell apart on the plate before I could get them to my mouth. But I smiled and said it was good and she was none the wiser. She ate everything on her plate, joyous and drunk on the burgundy I poured from an enormous handled jug.

It seems now that I was happy all the time then. We made dates for vegetarian subs without yellow peppers and ate on the bench outside the theater building at school where Sarah spent all her time. We skipped classes so we could lay naked in my bed, our legs entangled and our arms wrapped around each other’s backs, lightly stroking, up and down.

One time I stopped by her place while her roommates were watching ER. I walked into the apartment and three girls pointed toward the hallway. “She’s in her room,” one said. None of them looked up from the television.

Sarah didn’t hear the door open, so I eased my way in and saw a pack of Newports on her desk. She didn’t smoke menthols. Didn’t smoke anything before she started bumming my Camels. I crept along, listening to Sarah talk to herself. She laughed at one of her jokes that only she knew about. Then she turned and saw me. I folded her small, hard frame in my arms as she hit me on the chest, half-kidding.

Then she did her impression for me. It was for a project in theater class. The guy she chose smoked Newports, and I found out that he had a bad lisp. Or maybe Sarah wanted the guy to have a lisp. I never asked, just sat on her bed with my back against the wall and watched, laughing when she laughed, the tendons in her neck flaring when she squealed and got one just right.

She had a squeaky bed that year, so we made love on the floor of her room that night while her roommates watched TV a few steps down the hall. We moved with great intent but slowly, very slowly. We touched each other’s fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, backs, and hips. My belt buckle didn’t make any noise when she let it fall to the floor. We breathed quietly, and when I locked my eyes on hers it was the quietest thing I’d ever done. We dropped some pillows on the floor, and I reached up to the bed for a quilt her grandmother had made. I draped it across my back. After a while I pulled it over our heads.

“This is just for us,” I whispered.

“I know,” she said.

I could just make out her eyes in the dim light, steely blue...