by: Gauri Binup
“Mason Adler and Petra Nightingale.”
So simply it was said, and yet it had sealed her fate.
But how could the professor have known? The lecture hall for Introduction to Feminist Literature had always been rather big, after all, packed with surly first-year students who had no means of knowing yet how to work the registration system to secure a seat in the best classes. By this point halfway through the semester they had grown to bond over this shared experience—for instance, by seething about other first-years whose professors hadn’t assigned (and wouldn’t assign the whole term)a single paper. The latest matter her students had huddled against one another and groveled about mid-lesson was, as Dr. Rosenthal put it, dry lips as unfeeling as the rest of her, that it was “only fair” that everyone’s names be drawn for the final project. And because each and every drawn pair would be a matter of an efficient, airtight, equal-opportunity lottery, the system would be entirely impossible to lodge any individual complaint against.
But in her movement from classroom to dorm room, accompanied by Mason, Petra was very ready to lodge one.
She stared at her walls. Petra had tried very hard to remove any indication that the bedroom had come so pitifully grey, so full was it now of stuff. And all kinds of stuff, too, from band posters her parents would have never approved of to a cloud of individually strung-up keychains, each with its own Command hook. Covering a great deal of the wall was a stolen tarp inked with a demo woodblock print, obtained in a panic after she’d passed by another girl’s open dorm room and found that the Hokusai wave was not nearly as underground as she’d once believed it to be. When she’d first brought the Utamaro back from the print shop, bearing all the creases of her stealthy jog, she rejoiced at being able to display a piece featuring a hilariously ugly-looking man, big- and empty-foreheaded, in the company of just enough beautiful women to outnumber him. No matter how much he looks at that mirror, Petra thought, that idiot’ll never surpass the effortless beauty and blasé of the women surrounding him. Indeed, the women flock about him like vultures around prey that’s long since lost its chance to fight back, one sitting idly while the other uses, yes, uses, his hollow forehead like an armrest.
At times like these, when Petra desperately required some sort of grounding technique, the sorry sight brought her great joy and inner peace.
Then Mason’s insufferable voice cut through. “So, uh, are we gonna get started now, or…?”
“Right, yeah, let me just set the audio recording up.” Because of course Dr. Rosenthal needed front-row seats for one of the worst encounters in Petra’s life.
“So fucking dumb that we’re even doing this,” he muttered under his breath, but with too much volume for an aside.
“Maybe don’t cuss when we’re gonna send this thing to her.”
“No way her—or even the TAs—are actually gonna listen to all of these. You should just send them, like, white noise or something.”
“No. I need an A to pass this class.”
A snort, sharp and incisive enough to make Petra feel, for however brief a moment, as though she should be indicted by it. As though, despite her convictions to maintain a 4.0 GPA for her eventual, to-be-pristine law school application, she should suddenly wake up and laugh with him, closing the laptop with a “You’re right, what the hell is this all for anyway?” and playfully ushering him out of the room.
Petra hated herself for thinking that she could be manipulated so easily, even within the confines of her imagination. And so, in a swiftly calculated retribution, she gathered all her anger and packed it into a glare for Mason. To make things doubly delightful, she delivered this punishment from the high vantage point of her desk chair. Upon entering, he was sentenced to sit on the dirty, unswept floor by her feet. Where he belonged.
She started the recording, “Okay, it’s rolling.”
Mason thumbed through King Arthur’s Socks and Other Village Plays until he reached “ENIGMA.” On seeing the cast of characters, his face soured.
Oh, that’s right, Petra mused, puckering her lips, but only so that the recording wouldn’t pick up on her stifled giggle.
Petra had not been Dr. Rosenthal’s only victim of this particular project. If Petra had been upset about having to turn in an assignment branded with both their names side by side, then Mason had been forced to cope with something worse. Dr. Rosenthal, with that fickle sparkle in her eye, had called out those same names in the lecture hall and pointed at their raised hands, spindle finger knitting their yarns of fate together:
“The role of HE shall go to Petra, and the role of SHE shall go to Mason.”
There had been an eruption of laughter across the hall, then, with a particular upwelling among his bullish horde of frat guys. Mason had felt the chill of it all, at least, wincing at the raucous cackling in his ear and the smattering of hands crashing into his shoulders, miniature judges rushing to offer their own little gavel taps in assent to Dr. Rosenthal’s final verdict.
Serves him right for being a prick all semester, Petra had thought then, and thought still now.
Petra decided, in accordance with her plans for this evening, to rub it in. “It’s your line.”
Mason kept his face angled down towards the paper, and Petra found a private joy in the knowledge that he was glaring at the opening line. “I know.”
And then, like a third grader who’d been summoned against his will to read the next paragraph in the biology textbook for the class, he (or SHE, rather) began. “So that is what you think.”
Then Petra, with decidedly more precision befitting the role she’d been called to play, delivered her line. She hoped that Mason might wilt and decay, then follow suit and regrow into a better, stronger version of himself. “Yes. For us to live together any longer would be an obscene joke. Let’s end it while we still have some sanity and decency left.”
He did not. In the same monotone, he said, “Is that the best you can do in the way of sanity—” He stumbled over the word, much to Petra’s horror, despite the fact that it had left her own lips mere seconds ago. “—and decency—to talk like that?”
Petra became irritated, which worked well for her next line. “You’d like to cover it up with pretty words, wouldn’t you? Well, we’ve had enough of that. I feel as though my face were covered with spider webs. I want to brush them off and get clean again.
Mason sensed her irritation and bit back, which unfortunately also worked in his favor. “It’s not my fault you’ve got weak nerves. Why don’t you try to behave like a gentleman, instead of a hysterical”—the emphasis was his—“minor poet?”
“A gentleman, Helen, would have strangled you years ago.” This time, the emphasis was Petra’s. “It takes a man with crazy notions of freedom and generosity to be the fool that I’ve been.”
“I suppose you blame me for your— Okay, I can’t do this anymore.” Mason sighed and dropped the book unceremoniously back into his lap.
“What the hell?”
Without a beat, he snarked at her, “You really shouldn’t cuss when we’re gonna send this recording to our professor, dude.”
As if the previous blunder wasn’t enough, Petra then gave a girlish harrumph that disturbed her to her core. Well, this file was certainly destined for deletion now. She jabbed at the trackpad angrily, stopping the red line in its tracks. It had previously been tittering in proportion with the spectacle of their falling-out.
“Mason. This project is so. Fucking. Simple. It’s literally a five-minute play. Can you get your head out of your ass for one second and read your damn lines so we get this over with?”
“Woah, no need to get all feisty with me. Even if I do like a girl like that.”
Petra seethed. This was the thing that angered her the most: the way Mason looked down at everyone, even now, stationed as he was on the grimy floor. He seemed to think that every last person of the opposite sex was enraptured by his presence, as though being charmed by him was some fortuitous inevitability. And that word! GIRL. How incredibly demeaning.
“My God, Mason, would you just—!?”
But Petra never got to conclude her proclamation of condemnation, as Mason was mercifully rescued by the sound of his phone ringing.
Glancing at the caller ID, his smirk grew impossibly wider. “Gotta take this real quick.” Without waiting for Petra to respond, he turned his attention to: “Laney-baby! How’s it hanging?”
It seemed that it was Mason’s fate to receive condemnation in that moment anyway, because the next words out of the receiver were “Shut the fuck up, Mason!”
“What happened now, baby?”
“Cut that shit out already! Claire just heard from Dylan that you weren’t going to buy the fucking promise ring!”
“Well, I—”
“She told me you thought promise rings were a joke! And you said that just today! Did our conversation yesterday even mean anything to you, you sick fuck?”
The sick fuck in question began to scramble. “Laney, look, it’s just not worth it! I looked at the link you sent, and that ring was like over a hundred dollars! I already buy you so much food and jewelry and stuff, man. I’m starting to think you just want me for my—”
And then Mason’s words, flopping about like fish, caught onto the hooks in Petra’s shell-shocked gaze, thrashing for a moment before just as quickly dying out. By then, he’d said enough for Laney (his girlfriend? fling?) to infer the rest.
“Oh my God, Claire was so right about you. It’s not about the money, or the physical ring, or whatever the fuck you think is so useless. It’s about our future, Mason. Don’t you care about…?” But Laney’s screeching had turned into background noise as Petra and Mason regarded one another, privately.
They remained in a standstill, one that from an outsider’s point of view might look entirely too intimate for how much hostility had grown between them mere minutes ago. Mason’s hand grabbed at his jaw, as though finding reassurance in tracing its curvature, in the fact that he was still made of the kind of flesh which clings to bone.
At this gesture a thought slithered into Petra’s head, that they made for a funhouse-mirror rendition of the woodblock print plastered across her wall: Mason, with his big and empty head, pupils blooming wide enough to absorb the reflection of the phone in his hand, as two admittedly not-as-demure women swarmed around him. Petra, whose gaze seemed to drape all over him like the swishing sleeve of an ancient Japanese garment, like a stiff, stolen tarp which creases hideously at the prospect of experiencing anything new and therefore uncomfortable.
Mason’s big eyes peered up again, glinting with foreign emotion.
Then, cradling the receiver to his left jowl and snatching up his things, he bolted out of Petra’s room, slamming the door so loudly that her decor-lined walls began to shudder and seize. It was as though she were sitting inside someone’s pulsing lungs.
Caught up in the aftershock, she stared blankly at the door, unable to conjure up even a single curse to hurl after him.
ᐧ 𓅳 ᐧ
Petra wanted nothing more than to let their first one-on-one encounter also be their last. Unfortunately, the humid air of awkwardness that left a phantom residue on their psyche whenever they crossed paths on their way to finding seats in class was no excuse for neglecting their project. With the final submission date upon her, she realized she had no choice but to brave it all. She would stay after the lecture and ask Mason to swing by so they could record something, quickly, and get it over with.
A quick five-minute meeting, a professional affair. No small talk. And maybe no ringers, either, just to be safe.
Just as strips of paper are riddled with holes to produce the same tune for a music-box ballerina every time, Petra recited this spiel in her head with extra force, determined to deliver it exactly as rehearsed.
As she approached Mason in the bustle of everyone leaving, he’d only shoulder-checked her and walked past. Apparently, this had been an indication to follow, because he soon looked back at her expectantly.
Petra’s internal mechanism jammed. Somewhere in the machinery of her brain, a gear slipped and the whole contraption was set alight. “What?”
“My place. To record?”
And just like that, the ballerina was sent spinning again, spinning until it brought her here, dizzy and in Mason’s room.
It was… well, it was very boring. Mason lived in one of the off-campus apartment buildings next to his frat house, because he couldn’t afford the dues to live in it. Not being able to afford things seemed to be a recurring theme, judging by his bedroom. In lieu of a bed he owned a futon-like mattress. There was no blanket, but there was, oddly enough, a weirdly beautiful bedside (now futonside, she supposed) lamp. For how tasteful yet out of place it seemed, Petra ventured a guess that this might have been a gift from Laney. However, this lamp did little to liven the space. If anything, it only cast light on the glaring problems: namely, the complete lack of other furniture, and the white, white walls. Where the hell does he study? Petra thought, and it was then that she realized that maybe Mason had long been acquainted with getting work done on disgusting floors.
Petra was so preoccupied with this assault on her vision that she’d let her guard down for all other senses. As Mason began to pull out the book of plays from his backpack, Petra finally had it in her to say something:
“What is that smell?”
“Oh, I, uh,” Mason began, sheepishly, “You can still smell it? I totally thought the Febreeze would hide that. My bad, let me actually just, uh…”
He stepped towards the closet and opened it, and out tumbled what must have been a month’s worth of takeout food, judging by the aging mold that had developed a crust of its own and the now ten-times-more pungent stench.
“Oh my God. And all of that was crammed in next to your dirty laundry, too?”
“Can you give a guy some credit for trying to clean up around here?”
“Mason, this looks nothing like cleaning up! Where are your trash bags?”
“Uh, in the kitchen, by the—”
Petra returned with them before he’d finished. In a sparse household, things were easy to find.
“Thanks for helping me with this, Petra, I—”
And though Petra gave herself a moment to marvel at the fact that Mason did in fact know her name (she’d really believed he might have forgotten it), her tone remained firm and unforgiving.
“Oh, I’m not helping,” she announced, throwing the box of trash bags in his direction. “You’re cleaning this up because I don’t want to work in a place with active biohazards.”
“Right.” Mason slumped.
With everything Mason picked up afterwards, Petra seemed to remember another ornament to add to her tirade.
“Was this your plan all along, Mason?” She gestured at a slimy fork. “You knew I needed us to finish this project. Were you planning on holding me hostage with this”—Mason found a solid brick of ramen—“until we could finish it?” And then, in a crude imitation of Mason’s voice: “Uh oh, Petra! Guess I don’t know how to cook food or clean dishes or do my laundry. But you can help me right, Petra, you can just do everything for me, right? Don’t you want an A, Petra?”
Mason only wiped the sweat from his brow in response.
“Your girlfriend was right, Mason! Or whatever Laney was! God, I didn’t even want to talk about this, but all I can think about right now”—Mason peered at an empty bottle of cough syrup—“is that she seriously dodged a bullet with you. Does she even know that you live like this? Well, you two are definitely broken up, so it doesn’t even matter anymore, thank God. This is crazy! I was going to invite you—she nudged a container of chunky sludge aside with her foot—“to my place anyway, but you wanted me to see this, huh? You wanted me to help with this, huh? You just can’t do anything without a woman doing it for you, huh?”
By then, Mason had finally filled the bag with his garbage. He looked up, and whatever pensive face he’d been wearing had taken on a sardonic edge.
“Must be every woman’s dream to yell at a man like this, huh?”
He headed outside to the trash room on his floor.
Possessed by a cruel and twisted kind of déjà vu from their last encounter, Petra rushed after him. “What the hell did you mean by that, Mason? You, you, self-deprecating, little—”
“I wasn’t being self-deprecating!”
“You just want to play the victim so badly. How long were you waiting to talk back to me—?”
“Holy hell, all you and Laney and every woman ever does is complain! Always chirping in my goddamn ear! ‘Mason, do this, Mason do that.’ And then afterwards, it’s ‘Mason, you don’t do anything right!’”
His final words were punctuated by the sound of the trash bag entering the garbage chute, thudding against its sides before landing with a great thump in the dumpster below.
They continued to bark at each other, feral and snarling. As they rounded the final corner toward the apartment, they ran into another frat guy unlocking the neighboring door.
He smiled in recognition. “Mace! New girl already? Not that I’d expect anything else from your—”
But this poor, unsuspecting man didn’t know that Mason and Petra were fresh from a fight. Their ire still simmering, they erupted in unison:
“SHE’S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!”
“I’M A LESBIAN!”
Without waiting for a response, Petra strong-armed them both back into Mason’s apartment.
They stood behind the door, heaving in unison. There was the faint click of Mason’s neighboring frat brother entering his own apartment, then silence. Something about a heated argument ending so abruptly—
In sync, they collapsed into fits of laughter.
They grabbed their stomachs and slapped their open palms against the walls. Petra shed a tear or two. Mason wheezed over his own wheezes.
They giggled their way through the entryway, which blended into the kitchen and living room, and then into Mason’s bedroom.
Sprawled out on his floor, they gathered their bearings.
“Fuck,” Mason sighed, still smiling, “Are you, though?”
“Am I what?” Petra volleyed back, speaking up at the stars they weren’t gazing at, under Mason’s ceiling, indistinguishably dingy from the floor.
“Lesbian.”
“God, I wish! I’ve only sworn off all men.”
“Sworn off all men? The fuck does that mean?”
“Like, I’d never date a guy. It’s a promise I made to myself in high school after I saw all my friends get dumped.”
Mason grinned in his usual annoying way, but there was something richer in his gleam. “That’s so stupid. High school relationships don’t even mean anything, anyway.”
“I’m just telling you the truth. You should feel lucky I’m so honest tonight.”
There was a beat of silence then. Two. Petra folded her hands demurely over her chest, like a queen waiting to be placed in a bejeweled casket. As if he’d needed to maintain a distinction of gendered physicality at all times, Mason brought his arms behind his head.
Then he spoke as though their conversation had never paused. “Well, if we’re in the mood for being honest, I’ll confess something too.”
Petra waited until the silence grew too long. “Well…?” She turned her head and found that in the interim he’d gone very red.
Mason spat it out. “I’m…really confused about the poster in your room.”
“Huh?”
“The Utamaro painting?”
The name of an ancient Japanese artist was the last thing she’d expected to hear coming out of Mason’s mouth today, or any day. Still, she clung to what little she could. “It’s a woodblock print.”
“Okay, whatever. Same deal. I Googled it—don’t even ask me how long that took, Chirst—because I thought it was just so, so freaky. I’ve never seen anything like that before. And I found it, and—look, it’s Fukusuke and two courtesans, right? Like, girls who would do anything for that guy, because he brings good luck or whatever? But, with the way you’ve been yelling at me, and now with the whole ‘swearing off men’ thing you told me, that just doesn’t seem like something you’d vibe with at all. I was just sort of wondering, you know, about that. I guess. Like if it means something to you, or…” Mason’s voice petered out.
Now it was Petra’s turn to blush. “I, uh. Well, I didn’t know about any of that. I actually sort of thought it was kind of, uh, well. I actually thought it was women making fun of the guy, because he was so ugly. Um—”
Mason looked to be surprised by his own laugh, stuttering its way out of him. “Are you kidding me? I figured you’d be more serious about the things you buy.”
“I am!” And then it was Petra’s turn to confess again, if only to defend herself with a technicality, “I stole that thing, anyway.”
“Really?” Mason turned towards Petra, too, appreciating her with new eyes.
“Yeah.”
More silence. It was as though every exchange was another piece of clothing hung out to dry on a clothesline between them.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“Damn, and I thought hearing you say ‘Utamaro’ was crazy.”
Mason laughed, relieving more tension. “Seriously, I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t want to make it look like I wanted you to clean my room or anything. I just knew you wanted to do this project and today was the last day, and I thought it would be fair to record in my room because I probably pissed you off in your room, and—”
Petra’s smile bloomed all throughout this monologue. “I get it.”
“And, just, after you had to watch Laney break up with me in real time, and then today? I was so…ugh. I really thought the Febreeze would hide the smell, dude.”
“I know, Mason.”
“It didn’t.”
“I know, Mason. God, you’re such a guy.”
“The kind you’d never date, right?” He dangled the bait with the air of someone setting up a joke.
Petra bit at it: “Yes.”
“Just to be clear, this is because you swore off all men? Or because you’re a lesbian?”
“There it is.”
“I’m just trying to understand!”
Petra noted that by now, they were wearing matching grins. “Let’s get to that recording already.”
ᐧ 𓅳 ᐧ
“Mace! Mace! Over here, idiot!” Petra flailed her arms to signal Mason over. It might have been appropriate behavior for an air traffic controller, but in front of other respectable coffee shop patrons who might have thus far presumed her to be a member of their kind, she was acting like a fool.
“I see you! Chill out, man.” Mason crashed into the table she’d saved for them. As he settled, throwing his bag underneath his chair, he continued to chirp at her. “An iced coffee? In January? You really are a freak.”
“I bet you ordered hot chocolate like a little kid.”
“Well, now I don’t feel like telling you what I got. And maybe it was a really cool coffee order, too. Now you’re missing out, Petra.”
“You needn’t say any more.” A line from their play, delivered harshly as per her memory of the parenthetical cues.
Mason’s grin withered away at the edges. “Hey, I hope you’re not still mad about that, by the way.”
Petra let out a sigh. Last fall, she and Mason had submitted their final project for Introduction to Feminist Literature. Twice. The first time, Petra had accidentally submitted their very first recording, in which they’d barely performed the play at all. She’d been appalled to have received an immediate zero the next morning, with the grader’s attached remarks: “Audio file too short. Won’t open this.” After negotiating with the TA, Petra had been able to submit their actual recording, which had turned out surprisingly well. (They’d suddenly gotten much better at theatrics—many thanks to Mason’s neighbor.)
In the meantime, while waiting for their grade, Mason and Petra had gotten into the habit of texting, even hanging out on occasion. It was in these conversations that they’d begun making “ENIGMA” references to each other, interjecting with different lines at will, finally able to get a kick out of the pretentious activities only college-educated students could partake in.
A few weeks ago, just as they were settling into winter break, they received a project grade which Petra would’ve been proud of… if only they hadn’t been docked points for lateness. Thus, Petra finished the first semester of her freshmen year of college with four As and one aggravating, easily avoidable A-minus.
While they were both staying home with their families, Mason had been on the end of several FaceTimes which had stretched into several hours, the subject of which oscillated between cursing Dr. Rosenthal’s bloodline and how unsightly a 3-point-anything would look on a résumé.
He seemed to be expecting the start of a similar diatribe now, if the way he was bracing himself was any indicator.
“I’m over it,” Petra said as a placating half-truth, “Really. It was my fault anyway. I just called you to catch up before classes started. New semester, new us, right?”
“Right,” Mason parroted back, and perhaps he could really mean it. While he was nowhere near perfect, he was becoming more human to Petra with every conversation. By the look of them now, still amicable beyond all doubts, the sentiment was mutual.
Their friendship was a strange thing for outsiders to understand. The frat house thought Mason was playing the long game, and that Petra was due to fall into his arms any second. Petra’s own friends, dismissive of all Greek life, didn’t understand why Petra would ever willingly associate with a frat guy.
And indeed, they were not the kind of friends who would be inclined to invite each other to their birthday parties or mark each other’s names down as trusted contacts for their parents. They had a more nebulous thing, something which serendipitously worked just for them. Neither were in the interest of stopping a good thing. So they let it go.
“Look,” Petra started, “I’ll prove it with my New Year’s resolution.”
“And what’s that?”
Petra pulled out her phone, open to a fresh account on Hinge.
“Woah, Petra, are you joking? But I thought you had sworn never to—”
“Yeah, well, I also swore I’d have a 4.0 by the time I graduated.” Petra pointedly ignored Mason’s little “I knew you were still mad.” “So, I figured, why not go crazy and date a man?”
“I guess that’s sort of the spirit? Though I think the guy you date might end up going even crazier.” Mason snickered, then snatched up Petra’s phone. “You should let me make your profile.”
“No way in hell! First of all, I already know you’re going to make it a big joke and say I’m—”
“Only interested in seeing the ladies, of course. I gotchu. Already marked it down for ya.”
“I don’t like lying to women, Mason. Unlike a certain someone at this table.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Me? A liar? And lying to a woman? I’ll have you know I actually love women. In fact, I took Intro to Feminist Lit and got an A-minus, which is the highest grade I got all last semester. You think I’d lie to you, Ms. Nightingale?”
The barista called out over the sea of customers, the shout rolling toward them in a wave that foamed over their tiny table. “Hot chocolate for Mason?”
A grin took over Petra’s face. “I think you would, Mr. Adler!”
Author’s Note: In addition to Kitagawa Utamaro’s Fukusuke and Two Courtesans, I also draw upon Floyd Dell’s “ENIGMA.” Both are quite nice.
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