Read A Year Straight for Free Online Page B

on his shiny new Vespa, approaching me very slowly, wobbling like Bambi on ice. I could tell he didn’t know how to drive it, but in the tradition of poor discernment, I hopped on the back and strapped on my helmet. I grew up riding on Vespas in Italy. I knew what it felt like to ride with my cousin Marco, a seasoned driver, at the helm, and riding with the lawyer was not it. Just when I was about to suggest he drop me off at the nearest subway station, we hit a patch of wet leaves and crashed. The bike slid out from under us and landed on my leg, burning a hole right through my pants and through my skin as well. I screamed. He strained to pull the scooter up off me, and I hopped to the sidewalk to inspect my leg. The muffler had burned his first initial into my calf. The lesbian gods were angry.
    â€œIt’s just the first layer of skin,” he consoled.
    You would think getting burned on my first date with a man would have scared me off, but I am a very stubborn person with a high threshold for pain. Besides, when I told Megan about it, she didn’t seem adequately phased.
    â€œBut he was kind of a jerk about it.” I said, trying to get her to understand.
    â€œElena,” she put her hand on my shoulder and gave me a look of condolence. “If you want to go out with men, you have to lower your expectations.”
    â€œThat might be the worst advice I’ve ever heard.”

    THE LAWYER AND I had been dating for a couple of weeks when he invited me upstate for the weekend. I accepted the offer, hiding my excitement. I took it as a turning point. Until then, there wasn’t much opportunity to talk, having spent most of our time in bed on the few nights he left the office before midnight. It was lights out and clothes off. And in the morning we took the subway together during rush hour; hardly the chance to chat. I was looking forward to us getting to know one another.
    On the train to Hudson, I made little comments here and there about the pretty scenery passing by the train window, but he didn’t take the bait. Instead, he nodded and continued reading the Wall Street Journal and sipping his coffee in silence. Accustomed to the chatter of women, I fidgeted in my seat in discomfort. I searched my bag, not looking for anything in particular except perhaps some understanding of the foreign species seated next to me. I’d always heard, “Men don’t talk,” but was it meant that literally? I noticed my squirming bothered him, so I did it more.
    His friends greeted us at the train station in their Toyota Prius. They were a cool couple, a graphic designer and an environmental engineer, hence the hybrid car. The lawyer suddenly appeared to have plenty to say, updating his friends on his work woes and recent obscure music discoveries. We headed to their house and dropped off our bags. They were staying down the street with some friends in order to give us
the place to ourselves. We freshened up and joined them for a feast of Mexican food.
    â€œMy friends and I made tamales from scratch the other day,” I said, reaching for more salsa, surprised to feel so nervous around new people. “They really take forever. My friend grew up making them with her m—”
    â€œ Th-am-alez. That’s how you say it. I had the best th-am-ale z in Co-lombia, ” the lawyer interrupted, annunciating dramatically. I sat with my mouth gaping open, the last words of my sentence suspended in midair. It was the first of what would turn out to be many interruptions that weekend as he and his friends talked about Noam Chomsky and meditation and art. For the lack of talking the lawyer did on the train, he made up for it with his friends. I felt small and stupid and unseen. It had been awhile since I’d felt so insecure. I recalled feeling that way when I was younger, around guys I wanted to impress, walking on eggshells, trying to say the right savvy, intelligent thing. I wasn’t