Illustration by Bella Aldrete
In his apartment, Elise sat at the kitchen table while Ackley mixed the drinks. Elise crossed her legs and clasped her hands. It was all neat, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom with the white sheets. The only sign of a personality was the Patagonia backpack on the entryway hook above the pair of Chacos pressed against the wall. There was a dog, too, an expensive pure-bred dog with soft, short, curly hair named Annabelle. Sometimes Annabelle would lick Elise’s hand. Elise tried to engage with the dog as much as possible, assuming approval from the dog meant approval from Ackley as well.
“This is all good,” Aunt Georgette said the next evening at the round garden table in Westchester, drinking a gin and tonic, extending and admiring the wrist on which her gold, diamond-set watch rested delicately. Aunt Georgette pushed her hair behind her ears to display the large, golden, obelisk earrings with precious gems in the middle. Aunt Georgette listened to Elise with shrewd eyes and a pleated upper lip, sipping her drink.
“You want to engage with the dog to show you care, but not too much because you want him, not the dog, to be the focus.”
Aunt Georgette had told Elise that ladies sat with their legs crossed and did not fidget with their hands. She never went so far as to talk of crude things such as aspirins and knees, but it was always implied with Aunt Georgette. She sat now, at the table, the evening after Elise’s dinner, with her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands folded delicately over the glass that held her drink. She folded herself very small, an elegant smallness, a feminine body that took up very little space but punctuated what space it did with female grace and goodness.
The previous night, Ackley took down two mason jars from a shelf and poured two parts cranberry juice, two parts tonic water, and four parts Beefeater gin into each jar. He took three mint leaves for each drink, muddled them in a cup, and placed them, with ice, into the mason jars. He took two quarters of a lime, crushed them between his palm and the counter and dropped them into the drinks. He took a spoon and stirred everything together, handing one of the mason jars to Elise.
Elise took a sip. Strong. She took another sip. He was barefoot, in a t shirt and blue jeans. He had come downstairs to let her in like this. Elise had waited five minutes outside for him, sweating in the humidity so that her white shirt stuck to her breasts and her jeans grew damp, her hair began to frizz. He came down with the dog, he had to take the dog out, and so Elise waited too as Annabelle peed on the grass. He had grown a full beard and Elise could not see his face, could not decide whether he was handsome or not, but he had piercing grey eyes that looked haunted, or wild, or sad.
He held all the doors and let Elise lead the way up to the apartment where she waited until he invited her in. Ackley had invited her to stay the night, but Elise had said no thank you, she didn’t like spending the night on the first date.
“All very good,” Aunt Georgette replied, “you want to be careful with yourself.”
Over the mixed cocktail, to make conversation, Elise told Ackley “I used to babysit for this family on the Upper East Side, they were in the liquor import business.”
“The liquor import business is fascinating,” Ackley said, as he chopped herbs. He was proficient in the kitchen, Elise was surprised. And she was surprised that he would know anything about importing liquor. He didn’t look like he would know about those sorts of things at all. He chopped the herbs finely and tossed them with a gloved hand in a small bowl. He sprinkled the herbs over carrots and potatoes that he had chopped into medallions before Elise’s arrival.
“Every Wednesday afternoon, I would put the son in his squash whites and walk him to the Union Club for his squash lesson, but he would always lock himself in the bathroom and scream that he didn’t want to go, so I would have to coax him out. I always told him he was so lucky to get to play squash at the Union Club, do you know what the Union Club is?”
“Yes, I know what the Union Club is.”
“That’s a silly conversation,” Aunt Georgette said. Elise was just trying to fill the space. “Never just try to fill the space,” Aunt Georgette said, “but at least he knows what the Union Club is.”
He knew what the Union Club was, and it had piqued her interest. Something about this confirmation of knowledge, the understanding of specific codes on Ackley’s part made her suddenly feel safer and more open around him. She did not need to tell Aunt Georgette.
Not knowing what to discuss next, she continued along the line of this family she babysat for. Elise explained how one night the father told her that if she needed a dress for any occasion, he would take her to Chanel. She pronounced Chanel with a hard ‘ch’ like choo choo train, the way the father had.
Aunt Georgette glared at her. Stupid. “This was the moment he lost interest in you.”
Elise wasn’t sure. It had seemed funny at the time, but all of those years of French to purposefully mispronounce Chanel over dinner with some strange boy seemed like a waste. It wasn’t a big deal, of course, just a stupid blunder, dumb, really. He may not have even noticed. Or, he may have taken it the way Elise took the little cues he dropped and stashed them in her inventory of who Ackley was and whether she wanted to see him again.
“What do you do, then?” Elise asked.
“Good, shift the topic,” the ice in Aunt Georgette’s glass clinked, her bracelets jangled as she lifted the glass to her mouth, she slurped the drink. “Turn the conversation to him.”
“Well,” Ackley said, as he placed the potatoes and carrots into the oven, “I actually took a year and a half off of school to go out west and work as a ski instructor.”
Of course, the beard, the bare feet, the Patagonia and Chacos in the entryway, this made sense.
“I was in Vail, and then in the summers, I worked doing trail maintenance.”
“I grew up skiing there,” Elise said.
“Do you like coffee and pepper?”
“Yes,” Elise said.
“That’s what I seasoned the steak with.”
Pepper made Elise’s mouth sore. When she was younger, she had developed ulcers under her tongue from pepper.
Ackley placed the steak on a pan and seared it on one side, then he flipped it onto the other.
“How do you like your steak?” Ackley asked.
“Hm,” Elise thought for a moment and said, “medium rare.”
“Is rare alright?”
“Yes.”
“And how was it?” Aunt Georgette asked.
Ackley sliced the steak into strips and portioned the potatoes and carrots. He put napkins on the table along with forks and knives. Elise asked if he needed any help, but he declined. She put the napkin in her lap and sliced the steak. The meat was red, almost purple in the center, and the force Elise used to cut through it pushed a potato off of her plate. When Ackley wasn’t looking, she tried to place the potato back where it belonged the way Aunt Georgette might. Aunt Georgette would never let a potato roll off her plate. The meat tasted like iron, like blood, and the pepper made her mouth numb. Nothing too horrible. She couldn’t be bothered to complain.
She imagined him in a tent. She imagined him kneeling on a forest floor, his hands working, twisting the tent pegs into the ground.
“What have you been doing over the summer?” Ackley asked.
“Tennis,” Elise replied, wiping her mouth. Was there sauce around her lips? Were there stains on her face? Was there meat stuck in her teeth? Tennis? She kept rubbing her tongue over her teeth to make sure. “Yes, tennis.”
“Tennis?”
“I’m terrible, but it’s fun. I play with my aunt, in Westchester, and we had to play during gym in high school.”
“Nice. Where did you go?”
“Country Day. And you?”
“St. Paul’s.”
Elise stopped chewing.
So, this boy, with all his rugged, mountain-man presumptions, was a product of a Northeastern prep school.
“I played tennis there, actually. I was the captain my senior year.”
He looked under the table to check on the dog, who was curled up at Elise’s feet, beneath the window.
“You must have felt foolish then,” Aunt Georgette laughed coldly. “What with your amateur tennis game. You were probably so proud, playing your Aunt at tennis from time to time at the local court in Westchester.”
Elise ate everything on her plate, but Ackley left remainders of food. She should have eaten slower. She didn’t have to eat all of the bloody, pepper-covered steak. She stared at the plate and started to finish her drink which she didn’t need, either.
“Were your words slurring?”
She felt tipsy in a way that she knew Ackley was not. She began to talk in a more unafraid manner, telling Ackley about school, what she was studying, who she didn’t like, that family on the Upper East Side, all the liquor they gave her. Liquor, and then secret societies that she did not belong to, did Ackley belong to any, who asked things like that, why did it matter, what was she saying?
“Loose.”
Yes, loose.
Now it was Ackley who responded reservedly. When Elise finished the drink, she did not know what to do with herself, so she stood up and began to clear the dishes. She walked to the sink and placed her plate into it. She grabbed the side to keep steady. The plate hit the stainless steel loudly. She grabbed a sponge and began cleaning the plate.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Ackley said.
Elise continued cleaning.
“Thank you,” Ackley said.
She walked back to the table to grab the cutlery. She washed the cutlery.
She walked back to the table to grab her glass. The glass slipped through her fingers and fell into the sink. She jumped. She picked it up (the thing was unbroken, thank God) and finished washing it, putting everything on the drying rack.
“You can stay the night if you’d like,” Ackley said.
Elise wanted to stay the night.
“You didn’t stay the night, did you?”
No, of course not.
“Good.”
Aunt Georgette smiled a mean smile. “Because you know, at this point, he probably just thought you were some silly girl. He’d have slept with anybody, probably. How does that make you feel?”
Elise imagined Ackley’s body next to her own on the neat bed with the white sheets. His fingers rimming around the waist of her jeans, slipping down. His fingers undoing the button and zipper so that they could go deeper. The beard and then the lips against her neck.
“I have to go home,” Elise said.
“I’ll walk you out.”
“Oh, you don’t have to.”
“I have to take Anabelle out.”
“Oh, ok.”
Elise waited while Ackley called the dog, leashed her, slipped the Chacos on. She was a very beautiful dog. She waited for Ackley and then bounded out the door before him. Elise could hear the gentle cadence of her paws down the stairs. Ackley looked after her, chased her as she trotted towards the door. Elise followed both of them.
The evening was humid. Elise felt her shirt and jeans sticking to her body again.
“Thank you,” Elise said, “it was delicious.”
“Of course, any time,” Ackley replied.
Ackley turned to follow Anabelle, and Elise turned the opposite way to walk home.
She texted Ackley the next day to thank him and to see if he wanted to do anything again, sometime. He never replied.
“And that was that.” Aunt Georgette said. And that was that.
“Tell me again,” Aunt Georgette said. “I want to hear it all again, but slower this time.” So, Elise started from the beginning, but slower this time.
Elizabeth (she/her/hers) is a Junior at Barnard College studying English and French. She can run very far but not very fast. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.