Five Girlfriends

“Coming?” she asked, as if it were obvious. He thought, What the hell is this?

Milo first saw the girl and the boy from his third-floor kitchen window. It was November in upstate New York, already cold as a motherfucker. They lived in different apartments in the same shabby Victorian, catercorner to his, rimmed with the same unkempt hedges. She wore a red French beret absurdly mismatched with her imitation raccoon coat and a hiker’s backpack stuffed with God knows what. College kids.

He watched the boy grab her, spin her, kiss her on the mouth. Her head lolled backward, bodies pressed together. A beautiful face. The boy was a hand shorter than her and out of her league. But who was he to judge? He wasn’t much to look at even when he was their age.

Then it was late winter, with the streets still lined with filthy rutted heaps of old snow. Everybody in town was exhausted waiting for spring.

Things had changed. The girl and the boy came home at odd hours, sometimes separately, sometimes together. Sometimes she didn’t come home at all. The boy parked his jalopy—a scrappy yellow Toyota, no rear bumper—and disappeared down the side alley to the basement.

Milo passed the basement window on the way to the corner bodega. Once, he caught a glimpse of the boy at a desk in a corner of the room, working next to an electric heater, an Army cot along one wall. He’s in the doghouse, Milo thought.

He really saw the girl for the first time in May, on the first warm day. She rounded the corner in full jog, wearing a high school track top and shorts—more thrift store crap working hard to look hip. That’s the difference between us and them, Milo thought. Townies looked forward to the day they didn’t have to wear that kind of shit anymore

He watched through his binocs as she stopped in front of her house, bent over panting. Her legs made him think of gazelles. So you’re beautiful all over, he thought, sipping coffee and smoking.

Later that week, they both reached for corn flakes at the bodega at the same time. “Sorry,” Milo said, suddenly embarrassed, thinking: She saw me with the binoculars. She said, “I saw you cutting the lawn yesterday.” Oh no. He had been working shirtless that day. She must have seen his belly hanging out.

She became chatty as they walked side by side toward home, an arm’s length apart. At the corner she turned. “Coming?” she asked, as if it were obvious.

He thought, What the hell is this? She saw this in his eyes and said, “Don’t make me twist your arm.” He winced at the sharp edge in her voice. It occurred to him she hadn’t asked his name.

“Uh, sorry.” He followed her into the thrift store jungle of her apartment. The place was just like his: a single large room, kitchenette, fold-out couch-bed, and a small bathroom in back.

They drank red table wine with a goat on the label and kissed briefly before undressing. She lay naked on the bed except for her knee-high leggings, hugging her bare breasts as if waiting for a gynecological exam. He sat on the edge of the bed unwrapping a condom.

Then there was creaking from the porch. Milo jerked toward the sound, then back to her. She was grabbing for the sheet. Milo bundled his clothes and sprinted to the bathroom.

The boy came through the door with a bag of takeout food for two. Milo thought: What is with these two? “You whore, you lousy whore,” the boy said what seemed like five times.

Milo dressed fast and then slipped out the back, across the street, up to his apartment. He thought: back door man, like in the blues song.

Months later, Robby, his buddy from around the block, told him the girl cheated on the boy with five guys—one for each girl the boy had dated before he met her.

Before she met him? “She was the jealous type,” Robby said. “She was just crazy with it.”