Nicotine by Nell Zink Page A

discovering the softness of breasts. Her clitoris grinding against Jazz’s with inept abandon, pleased to find it equally indestructible. The silkiness of their faces. Their sweet little teeth.
    Significant emotional asymmetry, however, had been introduced by her increasingly intense desire to involve Rob, who kept sitting there in the armchair. She remembers his staying for at least an hour, sometimes touching himself (he touched himself only once, but the movement caught her eye, and she naturally assumes it was part of a series), and that when she made eye contact, he got up and left. That’s what she likes remembering best. Not the sexual ecstasies before and after. Just that Rob got up and left—that maybe, possibly, he was a little bit jealous?
    â€œI take it you’re not in love,” Sorry says.
    â€œNot with Jazz.”
    Sorry nods and lights a cigarette. “So you want to come to Stayfree?”
    â€œAnd meet dykes? I don’t know.”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as a feminist dyke. Not anymore. Stayfree is feminist men and women such as you and I.”
    â€œI don’t know if I could eat much. But I could definitely stand to meet people. It’s not like I know anybody around here.” She tentatively touches the pack of cigarettes. She shakes her head.
    â€œGo upstairs,” Sorry suggests. “You can lie down in my room. I’ll call you when it’s time to get up.”
    Penny accepts the offer. As she relaxes, mounting the stairs, her head begins to throb.
    Instead of the bed, she picks a spot on the rug in the sun. She curls up with her head on a pink-and-gold meditation pillow. Through the open window she can hear the clank of Rob’s tinkering in the garage. After the minivan revs up and drives away, she sleeps.
    AROUND FIVE, HER PHONE RINGS with the promised wake-up call. She returns to the kitchen, where Sorry assigns her to help with their potluck dish, a lentil salad, by shelling every walnut in a very large bag—fully five pounds of walnuts.
    â€œWhere’d you get so many walnuts?” Penny asks, putting down the nutcracker to shake her aching hand.
    â€œI found them in the pantry. Probably from the trash at the co-op. It’s a miracle they’re not rancid. It would be a sad waste if they were. They did some study that if you eat a handful of nuts every day, it’s as healthy as jogging. You can skip the exercise and eat the nuts.”
    â€œSo shouldn’t we be rationing them, to eat a handful a day?”
    â€œDo I look to you like I believe in studies?” She taps an ash into a saucer next to the sink and returns to her task of grating carrots into a bowl. “Nuts are fat pills. I want them out of the house.”
    Laughing makes Penny shudder involuntarily. She works in pained silence. She doesn’t have the appetite to try one of the nuts.
    When Rob gets back from his outing, he comes into the kitchen.
    â€œHey, guys,” he says, clapping her on the shoulder. She sits up a bit to lengthen her contact with his hand, and he bends to kiss her neck. He shows them both a circular saw he found on a sidewalk in Hoboken. It lacks only a power cord.
    â€œGreat saw,” Penny says.
    â€œI might build a gazebo out back,” he says.
    They get him to taste the salad. He says it would be great if the walnuts weren’t rancid.
    â€œMaybe we should have tasted them,” Penny says. “But there will be other stuff to eat. Are you coming along?”
    â€œI don’t think so. People at Stayfree don’t really go for me. They think I’m a macho man.”
    â€œThat’s what I used to think, too. But haven’t they known you longer?”
    â€œThey never see me cuddling with a dude. I think that’s the problem.”
    â€œThey never see you cuddling with a woman who isn’t conventionally attractive,” Sorry says. “I’ve never seen you with a woman taller