Anise rides the train seven hours to her hometown–the one she hates–every week. Anise brings a different blonde woman up to the apartment her parents pay for every Friday night and sends them on their way Saturday morning, clutching their high heels and purses. Anise believes that in her previous life she was Marilyn Monroe. “She lived such a sad life, that’s why I need mine to be happy. I’ve never told anyone that but you,” Anise told me the first time she sat with me outside my apartment. Anise is an artist, a creature of unusual habits, which is what makes her so fun to watch.
On Friday’s when she gets off the train, Anise drags herself up the wooden steps of my apartment’s fire escape where I wait with two lukewarm cups of coffee I pick up after my nightshift at the hospital. Short bleached blonde hair emerges first, followed by the rest of her: plain t-shirt and pants slung low enough to show off the butterfly tramp stamp that I used to hate but has grown on me. Sometimes when I’m bored I trace butterflies onto my skin anywhere I can reach to see what a tattoo would look like there. Anise slumps down next to me and sucks on her vape, letting curls of watermelon mint settle into our hair and clothes. “How was your week?” I ask.
Anise sighs and leans back onto her elbows. “Same as usual. I went to the beach this time.”
“There’s a beach in your town?” Whenever Anise had spoken of where she came from I pictured one like mine. A small place with a population of less than one thousand, where football stadium lights could be seen from cornfields, December’s were spent hanging artificial Christmas trees with dusty ornaments, and kids too young to drive prowled the streets at night smoking stolen Black and Milds. Not the type of town you’d see on a postcard. Though, when you mentioned it to people, they’d envision pristine white churches and children’s playgrounds painted in primary colors. What they wouldn’t see was that the school’s didn’t have air conditioning and the heating was spotty too, the river was brown with mud and bony fish nipped toes, there was trash piled in the streets, and going out to eat meant ordering off of the dollar menu. My town was bleak with decay and the staleness of dreams that never came to fruition. I had escaped.
“Yeah, I love the beach,” she says as she breathes out watermelon.
“Do you live on the ocean?” I ask. Pastel beach homes with painted white shutters spring to mind.
“My parents do.”
“Oh.” I think about the time a friend stepped on a needle behind the gas station and had to be rushed to the hospital.
“I’m happy to get away from there on the weekends. I can be myself here. I’m free to just do whatever. No responsibilities,” Anise says.
I always shut the door on Anise gently, press my head against the door and listen to her footsteps echo all the way down. Wait until I can’t hear them anymore. I settle into the only chair in the small studio. A nice recliner, still stale and smokey from its last owner. I watch Anise walk up the steps to her apartment, a straight shot across from mine as my fingers trace the frayed fabric left from cigarette burns on the arms of the chair. I pick at the navy blue fabric with its flecks of green and orange, ripping and flicking pieces of it onto the floor as I watch Anise make herself breakfast, a loose term considering she eats one slice of toast with cream cheese, or a grapefruit, and then she begins her day, marked by the chaotic whims of not having anything to do. She paints with reckless abandon, flinging pink and red and purple over the floor, she eats what she desires, she lays on the couch and listens to music all day. And then suddenly it’s night and she begins the long process of getting ready to go out. She’ll do this the next three days until she has to catch the train to her hometown on Monday. An artist’s life, she told me. I watch her walk back and forth between her bathroom and couch, a mirror to my own. On the couch, she smokes and the smoke unfurls in the air and then dissipates. Anise leans her head back and her hair falls in a delicious way. I touch my own, the bouncy quality I crave entirely absent. The television flips on and Anise lays down on the couch. She doesn’t have a bed, instead, she has a couch next to an easel surrounded by brushes, paint, scrapers, notebooks. Once last spring she painted another woman’s chest in blue and her own in yellow and each went to the canvas, pressing their own body up against it until it became green. Another time she did the same to herself, alone, and with red. Afterwards she cried on her couch and never washed the paint off before she fell asleep.
There is no movement for a long time, the smoke no longer curls towards the ceiling, and I think she’s fallen asleep. I check the time. It will be a few hours again before she wakes up and begins getting ready for the night. I get up from the chair, stretch, and then climb into bed. My eyes burn with overexposure but I can't sleep. The place is too empty, too quiet. I roll over to face the window and see Anise’s apartment. I don’t see her. Someone slams a door downstairs. Above, someone plays a video game featuring the sharp rattling of an AK-47. The blank walls shift in my peripheral vision, as if there are worms writhing under the paint but every time I look at them head on they stop moving. I could use some decor to cover them, but it’s all I can do to afford the rice and eggs I eat every night.
When I close my eyes, I’m in Anise’s apartment, among plants and orchids and books and trinkets. Whatever she lived like back at home, there was no way it could measure up to her apartment here. A real nouveau riche bohemian lifestyle, made all the more authentic because it’s on her parents' dime. When she’s not painting, she lays girls down–always on the couch and the breaths that fogged up the windows make the whole thing look like a dream. And I sit in mine, dark and empty and cold.
I jerk awake to find myself in darkness. I’d fallen asleep after all. My eyes burn as I rub them. My throat is sore and swollen from the dryness of the apartment air. My skin gooseflesh from the cold.
Anise is already up and moving on the other side of the complex. I jump out of bed and rush to the chair. Anise wears jeans, a leather jacket, and her hair slicked back into a chic bun. I can scarcely make out the glint of gold hoops dangling on her ears. I wonder where she got the jacket and how much it cost. Do I have anything like that? No. All I have is an army green bomber jacket, more than out of style. I rip at the cigarette burn holes.
Anise sits at her vanity and does her makeup before she goes out. Always, always, always she has on her fake eyelashes, darkens her brows, and wears some type of lip gloss. She’ll die with those fake eyelashes on. She grabs her purse, turns out her lights, and I watch her disappear through the front gates, letting it slam shut behind her. This is the worst part of the night. Emptiness settles over me, the same emptiness I get on Monday mornings when I know she’ll be gone for the week. I stare at the room around me. What should I do now? I pick at the hole in the chair and decide to wait. There are other people across the courtyard to watch, but they’re so dull. But she’ll be back. She always comes back.
Before I know it the hole in the chair has quadrupled in size.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
Anise takes her coffee with three creams and two sugars. Any more than that and she gets anxiety. I make sure to pour in exactly that, and stir fifteen times so that the sugar mixes in properly and doesn’t settle to the bottom. I wait at the hospital half an hour after my shift ends, and the coffee is still steaming by the time she reaches me.
“I’m so happy to be back,” she says as she sits next to me.
“Notice anything?” I ask her. I’m wearing the mascara she recommended, the same one she wears, and it’s made my lashes look longer and darker.
“Oh my god,” she exclaims. “You bought the mascara. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Yeah, it’s amazing,” I say.
“You should try the blush next. You could use some color in your cheeks.”
My smile falters for a moment. I take a deep breath. She liked the mascara.
“Were they out of the creamer I usually like? The coffee tastes different today,” she says.
“No. I made it how you like it,” I say.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
“What do you do on the train?” I ask Anise next Friday morning.
Anise frowns. “Nothing I guess. I think. I look out the window. I try to remember what it was like to be Marilyn.”
“What do you remember the most about her?” I ask, indulging her.
“Frustration,” Anise answers quickly. “Shards of happiness. But they were all punctuated by my frustration that I couldn’t get what I wanted. Too many men in the way.”
I cringe when she refers to Marilyn as “I”, because I don’t wholeheartedly believe in reincarnation but even if it is true, Anise is Anise now, who cares who she used to be?
“There was fear but there was also this strange feeling. Like I wasn’t there for most of it. This…dissociation. Sometimes I felt like it wasn’t the real me up there on stage. Like I couldn’t take credit for it.”
“How do you know that you were her though? Like for real.”
“There are some things in life that a person just knows,” Anise said. She hits her vape and we wait for the sun to peak over the roof of the next door building, sipping our coffees in silence. No, I don’t believe her theory that she used to be Marilyn Monroe. But the world is such a hard place, it's not fair that we shouldn’t get to try again. In my next life, maybe I could be a rabbit, or a serial killer, or Walt Disney. Maybe time doesn’t go in linear order and souls bounce all over the place no matter where—or when— they began. Maybe we can be other people. I want to ask Anise what she thinks but she’s texting a mile a minute.
“Anise.”
“What?”
“I feel like you’re ignoring me.”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” she says. “I’m texting someone about going out later and I’m nervous. Wait– you should come so it’s not awkward.”
“I could come,” I say, perking up, my entire mood lifted.
Anise stands to go. “I’ll let you know for sure later,” she says in that distant, dreamy voice of hers.
Excitement bursts in me. I don’t go back inside until her footsteps clear the stairs and my coffee is long gone. The invitation is unexpected and yet, it was what I’d been hoping for. What will I wear tonight? Something casual but not too casual. I need to be cool so she’ll ask me to hang out again. I almost feel bad for the other girl, who will have no idea what our inside jokes mean or the subconscious messages that will pass between us just by sharing a look. If anything, it will be awkward for her.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
Nighttime. Across the way is the warm glow of Anise’s apartment. She’s back and in the kitchen pouring white wine into two glasses. Strange. Aise told me she can’t stand white. A woman sits on the couch. I’m still in my leather pants and crop top, my jacket hangs on the front door knob. My phone sits beside me untouched all night. I watch as they consume the entire bottle. I’m doing something I shouldn’t as they face each other on the couch. Scissors in my hand, I begin cutting large portions of my hair. Chop. Chop. Chunks of it fall to the floor, others onto the chair and get caught between the cushions. Anise leans in towards the woman and I freeze, the jaw of the scissors clamped onto a section of hair, but not yet cutting. I stare at them until my eyes burn as they kiss. Anise’s hand snakes around to grab the girl’s hair and they lower down onto the couch, then the floor to where I can’t see. Chop. Chop. Chop. Anise stands up, naked. The girl wraps a blanket around her as she follows Anise to the bedroom, and she turns out the light. The only sound comes from the metallic slice of the scissors.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
“Wow, look at your hair.” Anise is wide eyed when she takes the coffee out of my
hand, still steaming, extra cream this time. “What did you do?”
I fidget. “I was bored, I guess. Wanted something new.”
“Yeah, it’s new. Did you get in a fight with the hairstylist?”
“I did it myself.”
Anise nods slowly and takes a seat next to me.
“So what happened the other night?”
“What other night?” Anise rolls her vape between her hands and the plastic clicks against all the rings on her fingers.
“Last weekend. You invited me out and then I never heard from you.” My heart is in my throat as I say this, choking me.
“Oooh. That. Yeah we kind of hit it off and then I thought it would be weird to invite you out of the blue. We can go out some other time.”
“Okay,” I mumble. “How’s the coffee?”
“Fine.”
“How was your train ride?”
“Alright.”
“Do anything exciting this week?”
“Not really.”
A weight presses on my chest. I’m grasping at anything to say at all, clawing at thin air. “I thought you only liked red wine.”
Anise frowns as she mulls over the comment. “What makes you say that?”
Panic clenches me as suddenly and painfully as fangs. “I don’t know.”
“No, what made you say that?”
“I-I was thinking about our conversation a while ago and I was in the store and I wanted to try a new wine and I was thinking about which one to get and I remembered you said you like red.”
Anise sets her coffee down and stuffs the vape in her pocket. “I actually have to go back to my place. I’m really busy today.”
“Wait–” I start, but she’s already heading down the stairs.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
Anise doesn’t come up the following Friday. Her coffee sits untouched until I finally throw it away. I wait.
I wait.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
When she doesn’t come the Friday after that, I get sick of the waiting. I pace my apartment, running my hands through the hair I have left. What did I do to upset her? She can’t drop me like I don’t exist. Ghosting me. How can she? I can stand it no longer. I have two coffees in hand as I walk across the small courtyard and up the fire escape. “Where have you been? I ask the minute she opens the door.
“What do you mean?” she asks, putting a hand on her hip and letting the other prop her against the door frame. My eyebrows draw together in a frown as she takes the coffee from me and indulges in a long, slow sip.
“What have you been up to lately?” I ask, my voice edging up an octave.
“Same old. You know.” Anise checks her nails, picks at one with chipping polish and blows it away. “I went out with a few people, found someone new I might be kind of into.”
“Into?”
“Yeah, she's a barista. I stayed at her place this week instead of going home for the weekend. Did you go out?”
Terror grips me. I shake my head, letting my newly blunt hair fall from behind my ears.
“No? You should.”
“Yes,” I say. “ I should.”
Anise has a smile plastered on her face that doesn’t break. Sweat prickles the back of my neck and I can feel the moment slipping between my fingers.
“Well, thanks for the coffee,” she says and starts to move away from the door.
“S-so you didn’t go home this week?” I stammer.
“No,” Anise says with mild annoyance.
“Oh, cool. You spent it with someone?”
“Yeah.” Anise taps her fingernails on the doorframe.
“Did you tell her you think you might be Marilyn Monroe reincarnate?” I half-laugh as I say it, the fear of her telling someone else the secret only I know choking me.
“We talked about a lot of things.”
“Like what?” I tried to smile.
“Like how I think I might need new curtains.” The smile is still spread on her lips but the glint in her eyes has grown sharp. “Thanks for the coffee.” She takes it out of my hands and for a moment I feel her fingertips on mine, like ice. Like electricity. Anise steps back and shuts the door and all I can smell is the watermelon that was on her breath.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
The rest of the day is foggy. My breaths come in shallow pools that barely raise my belly. Cold seeps up through the floor and I wrap myself in a blanket. I get up for work and when I come back I lay down again, waiting for the warm lights from across the way to light up my ceiling. But they never come. My fears fill the entire space like smoke from a fire. I’m choking on them and Anise still has her shades pulled and I’m silently begging to catch a glimpse of her. The shades are a middle finger, a shameful reminder that I’d tried to peek under the covers, look through a crack in the door. My cheeks burn red even though I’m alone. She’d found out. She’d known.
By Friday morning at nine I know she’s truly gone. The apartment across the way feels dead and empty, the way a body does in a casket. The shell is there but the essence is not. That’s just the way it is.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
I wake, unsure if I’ve slept at all. There may have been bouts of sleep, the way your body does it when you’re sick, fits of sleep that aren’t sleep at all, only your brain burning off its fever. My brain was back on though, waiting to hear footsteps climbing the stairs. The familiar cadence of our Friday morning routine. I hear nothing. My heart skips a beat when I hear my neighbor leaving his apartment and loping down the stairs. Here’s the excruciating nothingness again. A little girl waiting by the telephone for it to ring, but no one is calling. I don’t get out of bed for the rest of the day. Or the day after that. Or the next. I don’t know what was going on across the apartment complex but I imagine it in sharp flashes. Wet, red, lucid images. Things I will never see again. If I had been invited in… But there it is: I had never been invited in. I imagined two eyes–daggers–staring at me from her apartment, she had known all along what she was doing to me. She had known that it was almost enough to peak inside, to be invited halfway in.
I can’t be halfway anymore.
The light turns on, a pink glow around the fringes of the closed shade. She’s back.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫
On Saturday I get out of bed no longer than to pee or eat until nighttime. I know where Anise goes on Saturday’s. I sit in a dark corner of my own apartment, where I figure she can’t see in and wait for her to leave. She exits wearing a leather jacket and heels, her hair in tight curls that bounce when she slams the front gate. I put on my bomber jacket, spritz on the singular perfume I have, and wait thirty minutes before walking out the door.I have to apologize. And she’ll just have to understand.
No Reservations is extra crowded tonight. People are so jammed together that servers can’t even elbow their way through to drop off espresso martinis. I sit at the end of the bar under a tv that is turned off. In my little corner I can see everyone and about a quarter of them look like they might shortly be Anise’s prey. I order a vodka cran, I think Anise told me once that she liked them. I drink three more before the room starts to get hazy and wait for Anise to walk in. People come in and out of the bar while I sit waiting. My bladder feels like a balloon about to pop. I sigh. The bathroom is all the way over there and I’ll lose my seat by the time I get back. I take one last look around, making sure I’m not missing her, before heading to the bathroom. There’s a line outside of the bathroom. I’m the third girl deep and I press up against the green wallpaper, looking into the little slot in the wall where the dishwasher is eating a sandwich instead of washing the dishes. Plates with caked on ranch dressing and mounds of crusted food sit stacked in grimy water. A burning sensation rises in my esophagus as I look at it, the vodka attempting an escape.
Two girls are hogging the same stall. And the other is also taken. While I wait, I check what I look like in the mirror. The girls in the stall behind me will hit me with the door if they ever decide to exit. They giggle but I can’t hear them well over the flushing toilet. I lean closer to the droplet stained mirror. I haven’t worn makeup in years. My skin has seen better days. I at least put my hair in a clip, but my eyes have a sunkenness to them. I turn away and go into the now vacated second stall. A sour smell hangs in the air. The pink stain on the rim could be puke or lipgloss or period blood. I hover over the toilet and listen to the girls in the next stall. Instead of giggling, one or both gag. I pull up my underwear but stand there, listening. “Don’t bite my finger,” one girl says, her voice slurry.
“I won’t. Stick it in more.”
“Here,” the first girl says.
The second girl starts coughing. “Keep trying.” Silence. Then a heavy gush hits the toilet. More rough coughing. “Thanks,” she said after a round of weak spitting. “Feel lots better.”
“Cool, let's go.”
“Wait, it’s coming back.”
I close the lid on the toilet and sit down. I wish I’d brought my drink with me. I wonder how long the girl behind me in line will wait before she comes in and kicks one of us out. I pull out the vape I bought on the way here and stick it between my lips.
“You’re kinda pretty even when you’re throwing up,” the first girl says.
“Shut up,” the second girl half-whispered. She spits. My own mouth fills with sympathy saliva, a coppery liquid.
“I don’t know you, but I want to know everything about you, you know? Does that make sense?” The second girl says nothing, the silence proof that she’s hanging on for dear life. “I want you to know about me too. Most people don’t, you know? Sometimes you can know someone for an entire lifetime and then one day you don’t.”
“Mhmm,” the puker mutters.
I can’t help it, I grin. It feels good hearing someone else have a bad time.
“You wanna know something crazy about me? Oh, let me hold your hair. Sorry.” The second girl pukes again, as if her body is trying to expel a demon. “I don’t tell a lot of people this, so you can’t say anything to anyone else.”
I shift in my seat.
“I think,” the girl says and then laughs. “I think I was Marilyn Monroe in a past life.”
The second girl's reaction is to dry heave. I’m frozen, clutching the watermelon flavored vape.
“Yeah. I really think I was. I have all these memories that come up when I’m doing something like washing the dishes, or riding the train. I see all these cameras and lights, and it’s hot, like being in a tanning bed. It has to be memories of being at the movie studio. I have a need to be in the spotlight too, you know? I even have a stalker like Marilyn did. Isn’t that crazy? You know, I’ve never told anyone that before.”
The bathroom door flings open. “Other people have to go too!” a girl yells. “Get out,” says another. When no one opens their stall door they begin pounding. I prop my legs against the door so they can’t get through. With each hammer on the door my legs shake but my knees are locked. I take a huge hit off my vape. “Fuck off,” I yell the same time Anise tells them the same thing. “My friend is puking in here,” she adds.
The girls don’t let up. They yell obscenities and shake and pound on the stall door. I sit on the toilet and wait. I’m good at waiting. “Seriously, my friend is puking. I can't leave. And whoever is smoking that watermelon shit, you’re making her sicker.”
I close my eyes, and pretend I’m on a train heading far, far away.