Before We Were Strangers: A Love Story

MATT

I killed time by rearranging my portfolio. At some point I knew I’d have to get out and make friends, but for the time being I was hoping to catch one person in particular, either on her way in or out. I’m not sure how obvious I was being by leaving my door cracked, but I didn’t care, especially when I finally heard Grace’s voice from the hall.

“Knock-knock.” I got up to put on a shirt but she pressed the door open with her index finger before I had time.

“Oh, sorry,” she said.

“No worries.” I opened the door all the way and smiled. “Hey, neighbor.”

She leaned against the doorjamb as her eyes fell from my face and traveled down my chest, to where my jeans hung below my boxers, and then further down to my black boots.

“I like your . . . boots.” She looked back up to my eyes. Her mouth was open very slightly.

“Thanks. Do you want to come in?”

She shook her head. “No, actually I came by to see if you wanted to get lunch. It’s free,” she said quickly, and before I had time to answer she added, “They’ll actually pay you.”

“What is this free-paying lunch place you speak of?” I quirked an eyebrow at her.

She laughed. “You just have to trust me. Come on, grab a shirt. Let’s go.”

I ran a hand through my hair, which was sticking up in every direction at the moment. Her eyes fell to my chest and arms again. It was hard for me to look away from her heart-shaped face, but I glanced down to see her hands fidgeting at her sides. She was wearing a black dress with flowers on it, tights, and little black boots. She rocked back on her heels a couple of times. She reminded me of a hummingbird, one of those people who are always moving, always fidgeting.

“Give me one second,” I said. “I need a belt.” I rummaged through my belongings on the floor but couldn’t find one. My jeans were practically hanging off at that point.

Grace plopped down on my bed and watched me. “No belt?”

“I can’t find it.”

She hopped up and went to a pile of my shoes near the closet. She yanked the laces out of one of my Converses and did the same to one of my Vans and knotted the ends together. “This should do.”

I took the shoelace belt from her and fed it through the loops.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

When I threw on my black Ramones T-shirt, she smiled appreciatively. “I like it. Ready?”

“Let’s hit it, G.”

We jogged down the three flights of stairs and Grace shoved open the glass doors to the building. Walking in front of me, she threw her arms open and looked up at the sky. “What a great fucking day!” She turned around and reached for my hand. “Come on, it’s this way!”

“Should I be worried? How far is it?”

“It’s about six blocks. And no, you shouldn’t be worried. You’re gonna feel good about this. Your heart will feel good, your wallet will feel good, and your tummy will feel good.”

I didn’t know anyone over the age of twelve who still used the word “tummy.” We walked along, shoulder to shoulder, taking in the warmth radiating from the concrete. “I heard you playing last night,” I told her.

She glanced at me nervously. “Was I too loud?”

“Not at all.”

“My friend Tati came over and practiced with me. She plays the violin. I hope it didn’t keep you up.”

“I liked it a lot, Grace,” I said, seriously. “How’d you learn to play?”

“I taught myself. My mom got me a cello from a garage sale when I was nine. We didn’t have much money, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now. There’re no frets on a cello so it requires a lot of ear training. I just listened to a ton of records and tried to re-create the sounds. I got a guitar after that and then a piano when I was twelve. In high school, my music teacher wrote me an insane letter of recommendation. That’s how I got in here. I struggled last year, though, and wasn’t sure if I’d stay.”

“Why?”

“I had no formal training outside of my high school orchestra, and this place is really competitive. I’m mostly trying to get good enough to be a studio musician.”

“What kind of music do you like to play?”

“I like to play everything. I really like rock and roll, but I like the classical stuff, too. Even though it’s a huge pain to lug around, I love the cello. I love how its texture can be growly or smooth. When I play the strings without a bow, it reminds me of skipping rocks, and I can’t help but picture those flat little pebbles against the still water.” I stopped. She walked a few feet ahead of me and then turned back. “What’s up?”

“That was a really beautiful way to put it, Grace. I’ve never thought about music that way.”

She sighed. “I just wish passion was enough.”

“There’s no right or wrong in art. My mom always said that.”

I detected a slight nod and then she gestured toward the street. “Come on, we have to cross.”

I was completely lost in New York and hadn’t gotten my bearings, or even figured out how to use the subway, so having Grace there lessened the frightening newness of the big city.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?”

She continued looking ahead but didn’t miss a beat. “No, I don’t date.”

“Just casual sex?” I grinned.

She blushed. “A lady never tells. What about you?”

“I had a girlfriend for a couple of years right out of high school but nothing serious since then. She’s engaged to my brother now, so my track record is pretty awesome.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Isn’t that weird? I mean, what happened?”

“She dumped me the week I declared my major. My dad, too.” I said the last part under my breath.

“Did you guys have a good relationship?”

“Monica’s dad and my dad are partners at the same law firm. We were kind of set up. I liked her at first but never really thought about a future with her. She wanted me to go into law but it wasn’t my thing. We had different interests. It was for the best. We broke up, and then two weeks later she was dating my brother. I never talked to him about it. There are plenty of asshole things I could have said, but I didn’t want to stoop to his level. He can have her.”

“Were you heartbroken?”

“Not at all. I guess that’s pretty telling. The hardest part for me is not laughing at the whole stupid thing when I’m around them. That’s another reason I had to get out of L.A. My brother just graduated from law school and likes to rub it in my face. It takes everything in me not to remind him that he’s going to have to live the rest of his life knowing I’ve fucked his wife.”

“Oh.” Grace looked shocked for a moment, and her cheeks flushed. I wasn’t sure if I offended her.

We walked in silence as I berated myself for being so blunt until Grace pointed up to a sign. “Here we are.”

“We’re having lunch at the New York Plasma Center?”

“Yep. So here’s the deal. For your first time you can only do plasma. Make sure you eat as many of the free pretzels and granola bars as you can and drink as much of the juice, too. Then you can hang out with me while I get my platelets sucked out.”

“Wait . . . huh?”

“Yeah, it takes, like, an hour to do the platelets, which really gives us time to feast. Then you’ll get twenty-five bucks and I’ll get fifty.”

I tried to process what she had just told me, but when she started laughing, I couldn’t help laughing, too.

“You think I’m crazy, huh?”

“No, I think this is a great idea. You’re a genius.”

She elbowed me playfully. “We’re gonna get along.”

Once we were inside the blood bank, everyone behind the counter recognized Grace and smiled or waved at us as we stood in line.

“You come here a lot?”

“That’s such an old pickup line, Matt. I think you need new material.”

“I’m really into girls with big platelets.”

“Much better. Now you have my attention. You’re in luck, because I’m really into guys named Matthew.”

“It’s Matthias, actually.”

“No shit?” She cocked her head to the side. “I’ve never heard that name before. Is it biblical?”

“Yep. It means God-like.”

“Stop.”

“No, I’m serious. It means God-like appendage.” It took her a second to comprehend what I was saying. I tried not to smile.

Her mouth opened in a perfect O. “You are . . .” She shook her head, and then seized my hand and pulled me toward the counter.

“What? What am I?”

“Shameless!” She turned her attention to the receptionist. “Hi, Jane. This is my friend, Matthias. He has excellent blood and he’d like to sell you some.”

“You came to the right place.” She gathered some forms from under the counter. “What’s your last name again, Grace?” she said as she riffled through a file.

“Starr.”

“That’s right, how could I forget? And you’re giving just plasma today, Matthias?”

“Yes. And it’s Matthias William Shore, if you need my full name.”

Grace looked at me sideways. “Well, Matthias William Shore, I’m Graceland Marie Starr. Delighted to make your acquaintance.” She held her hand out to shake mine.

I kissed the back of it. “Pleasure is all mine. Graceland, is it?”

She blushed. “My parents are Elvis fans.”

“Lovely name for a lovely lady.”

The woman behind the counter put an abrupt end to our courtly exchange. “Just blood, Grace, or platelets, too?”

“Today, I’ll be selling my enormous, lush platelets.” She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Are you turned on?”

I laughed. She could be brazen, but that didn’t mask her sweet, shy side. Something about her made me want to get to know her in every possible way.

After the forms were filled out and the blood checks done, they took us into a big room where there were ten other people getting their blood drawn. We lay across from each other on inclined beds. Grace watched me with a smile as they inserted a line into my arm. She was hooked up to a machine that took the blood from one arm, removed the platelets, and then returned the plasma to the other. I chomped on the pretzels and waited as my blood dribbled into the plastic bag. She held her juice in the air and said, “Cheers.”

I started feeling lightheaded, almost drunk. Black nothingness began filling my vision from the sides. “Best date ever,” I said woozily, holding my juice box up to her.

She smirked, but there was compassion in her eyes. “Who said anything about a date?” I gave her a lethargic shrug. “Let’s make a deal. If you make it through this without passing out, I’ll let you take me on a real date,” she said, before everything faded to black.

Smelling salts work, apparently. My eyes opened to find a nurse who looked like Julia Roberts circa Mystic Pizza leaning over me. Her bushy eyebrows pinched together and her big hair bounced as she talked. “You okay, sweetie?”

I nodded. “I think so. Why are you upside down?”

She smiled. “The bed can be flipped so that if you pass out, we can get your feet elevated above your heart.”

I was totally out of it. “Thanks, baby. You saved me.”

“No problem, baby.” She chuckled.

I looked across the room to Grace, who seemed listless.

“You okay?” she asked quietly. I nodded.

After they removed the needle and loaded me up with sugary snacks, the nurse helped me stand. “You can stay as long as you need to,” she assured me.

“I’m all right. I’m just gonna sit with my friend over there.”

I shuffled over to Grace, who was beginning to look pale and tired. Sitting in the chair next to her bed, I noticed that goose bumps covered her arms and legs. Her dress was riding up on her thighs as she slumped against the headrest. She noticed my gaze and discreetly tugged the hem of her dress down.

“Hey,” I said as I looked above her and studied the machine of pinwheels and tubes. It looked like a Willy Wonka contraption.

“Hey yourself,” she said in a low voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired and cold.” She let her eyes close. I stood up and rubbed my hands up and down her arms.

With eyes just barely cracked, she shot me a tiny smile and whispered, “Thanks, Matt.”

When the nurse walked by, I quickly caught her attention. “Excuse me, nurse. She’s freezing and she seems kind of out of it.”

“That’s normal. I’ll get her a blanket,” she said, gesturing to a nearby chair.

I rushed over and grabbed it before the nurse even had time to turn around. I covered Grace all the way up to her neck and then tucked the blanket in at her sides so she was completely cocooned.

“Perfect,” I said. “A Grace burrito.”

She laughed silently and then closed her eyes.

I sat back down in the chair and watched my new friend. She didn’t wear much makeup, if any at all. Her lashes were long, her skin flawless, and she smelled of lilac and baby powder. In the short time I’d known her, I could tell that as savvy as she seemed about the world around her, there was a poignant fragility about her, a childlike innocence I had detected immediately. It came through her eyes and shy gestures.

Glancing around the room, I noticed a few homeless-looking people and one grungy, obviously very inebriated man in the corner making a fuss over the fact that there were no more Oreo cookies left in the snack basket.

Resting my head back, I let my own eyes close, then drifted off into a light sleep, listening to the sound of the machine above me removing Grace’s platelets and then pumping the blood back into her body. I wondered how often she had done this for fifty dollars.

I don’t know how much time passed when I felt a delicate hand on my shoulder. “Matty, come on, let’s go.” I opened my eyes and looked up to find Grace, pink-cheeked and grinning from ear to ear. She handed me twenty-five bucks. “Sweet, huh?” She seemed back to normal and totally poised, with her small purse strung across her body. “Need a hand?” She reached out to me.

“Nope.” I popped out of the chair. “I feel like a million bucks.”

“You look about twenty-five short of a million.”

A strand of hair had fallen out of her hair tie. I reached to tuck it behind her ear but she flinched. “I was just going to . . .”

“Oh, sorry.” She leaned in, so I reached down again, and this time she let me tuck her hair back.

“You smell good,” I said. She was mere inches from my face, looking up at me. Her eyes focused on my lips. I licked them and then leaned down an inch closer.

She looked away. “Ready?”

I didn’t feel rejected. Instead, her reservation piqued my interest even more. I was curious.

“Seems like there were a lot of druggies in there,” I said, once we were outside. “Do you think they use that blood?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

The sun was high in the sky, there were birds chirping, and Grace was standing stock still with her head down, her eyes trained on a line of ants heading toward a trashcan.

“What do you want to do now?” I asked.

She looked up. “Wanna get some weed and hang out in Washington Square?”

I laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Come on, druggy.” She yanked on my hand and we were off. A block down, she tried to pull her hand out of mine but I wouldn’t let her.

“You have tiny hands,” I said.

At the corner, as we waited for the crosswalk, she pried her hand away and held it up. “Yeah, but they’re bony and ugly.”

“I like them.” When the walking sign lit up, I grabbed her hand again and said, “Come on skeletor. Let’s go.”

“Funny.”

She let me hold her hand the rest of the way.

We stopped by Senior House so I could get my camera. Grace grabbed a blanket and the skinniest joint I had ever seen. On our way out, Daria, our RA, stopped us as we passed the registration desk. “Where are you two headed?”

“The park,” Grace said. “What are you doing here?”

Daria popped the last bit of a fish stick into her mouth. “Lots of people movin’ in today. I’m just gonna keep getting bugged. I might as well sit here. By the way, I wanted to talk to you, Grace. The cello-playing at night can get pretty loud. It was okay for the first few days, when no one was here, but . . .”

“I don’t mind and I’m right next door,” I interrupted.

Grace turned around and shook her head at me. “Don’t. It’s okay. I’ll keep it down, Daria.”

We turned and left the building. “Daria looks like a man, huh? Like David Bowie or something?”

She scrunched her face up. “Yeah, but David Bowie looks like a woman.”

“True. Maybe you should learn some Bowie songs to keep Daria happy.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

At the park, she laid the blanket down near a big sycamore tree and sat with her back against the trunk. I lay on my stomach, facing her. I watched as she lit the joint, inhaled, and passed it over to me. “Do you think we’ll get busted here, out in the open?”

“No, I come here all the time.”

“Alone?”

“A bunch of people from the music department hang out here.” She took a long hit and then looked up, startled, and coughed a puff of smoke out. “Oh shit.”

“What?” I turned around to see a man in his early to midthirties coming toward us. He was dressed in khakis and had a severely receding hairline. “Who’s that?” I asked, grabbing the joint and stubbing it out.

“That’s Dan—I mean, Professor Pornsake. One of my music teachers.”

“You call him Dan?”

“He told me to. I don’t think he likes his last name.”

“Understandably.”

She nervously brushed grass from her lap and sat up straight. I turned on my side, propped my head on my hand, and looked up at Grace’s face. She was high as a kite on just the small amount we had smoked. Her eyes were narrow, red slits, and she was grinning maniacally.

I started to laugh. “Oh my god, you’re super stoned.”

She made an attempt at a serious face, “Don’t start!” she said, mock-scolding me. We both lost it and fell into a fit of silent, hysterical laughter.

“Grace!” Dan called out as we struggled to pull it together. “What a pleasure seeing you here.” He had a bushy mustache that moved dramatically when he talked. I fixated on it and didn’t realize that Grace had introduced me.

“Matthias?” She nudged me.

“Oh, sorry, nice to meet you, professor.” I leaned up and shook his hand.

He smiled strangely at me. “So, how’d you two meet?”

“He lives next door to me at Senior House,” Grace said.

“Oh.” There was something in his expression that made me think he was disappointed.

“Well, I’ll let you two get back to whatever it is you were doing.” He looked directly at Grace. “Make sure you stay out of trouble.”

Grace seemed far away, lost in thought as she stared at him walking away.

“He has a thing for you, huh?” I moved up on the blanket.

“I don’t know, but I can’t mess up here. I’m on thin ice already.” I pulled off a string that was hanging from the bottom of her dress. “Thanks,” she said, looking dazed.

“You’re welcome.” I blinked a few times and then yawned.

She patted her lap. “You wanna lay your head?” I rolled onto my back and laid my head on her thighs. She leaned against the tree again and relaxed before mindlessly running her hands through my hair. “Fast friends,” she said lazily.

“Yeah. I like you. You’re kinda weird.”

“I was gonna say that about you, I swear.”

“Did someone break your heart? Is that why you don’t date? Please tell me you don’t have a thing for Pornsake?”

She laughed as she dug around for the joint. “Why? Would that make you jealous?”

“Jealous? No, it’s your life. I mean, if you want to be kissing that guy and potentially ingesting any food item lost in that absurd mustache, be my guest.”

“Ha-ha. There’s nothing going on with Pornsake . . . and gross! And no, I didn’t get my heart broken. I just have to stay focused on school to keep my grades up.”

I knew there had to be something more than the fact that Grace wanted to stay focused, but I didn’t push her. We had only just met, yet she had spent the whole day with me and part of the day before not focused on music, so I knew there was another reason. I might have thought she wasn’t into me and didn’t want to send mixed signals, but I saw the way she looked me up and down and the places that her eyes would land.

I took my camera, turned it around to face us, and then clicked the shutter three times.