Necessary Distractions

Aunt Sandra, who they saw only between stints in rehab. She was the most attractive of all her siblings and could still turn heads in her sixties. She was permanently clean now. Fingers crossed.

Joe, her third cousin, who was once an unstoppable ball of energy -- climbing every tree and rolling down every hill in sight. Evidently, he met and married a German woman, Johanna, during his time stationed at Ramstein Air Base. She had done what his parents had long given up on -- making him a responsible adult. Johanna looked heavily pregnant.

Them and so many more. Her mind flipped through an album of memories. A highlight reel of her life rendered in vivid technicolour and all the people she had known and laughed with.

She sat at the cafe, the coffee having grown mildly tasteless without the company. Her sketchbook was filled with exaggerated versions of her family. Everyone she met became a piece of anime art captured on paper.

She wandered around the rest of the hospital. Doctors and nurses rushed from room to room. Some rooms had people with the patients, some with the patient all alone. None of them could match the number of people worried about J Henry Strand.

Maybe she missed Fatima's smile and laugh -- a stark contrast to the morose reality of a hospital. Maybe it was something she said or did or a vibe she gave off unknowingly.

"Get a hold of yourself. You've known her all of three days and you're already worried over what she thinks of you."

If only she could listen to that rationalization.

* *

Another day, another tense wait for her grandfather's passing. He had long ceded all his bodily functions to ventilators and bypass machines. Tubes ran in and out of his body. His pulse beeped steadily on the EKG but that was the only sound. His eyes remained closed and his expression remained calm, as if unaware of the maelstrom of worry coursing through all those around him.

"Hey, stranger."

Kylie looked up. A familiar headscarf-framed face looked back at her. Nerves were writ large on it.

"Here I was thinking you found a better coffee place."

"Never," said Fatima, visibly relieved. "The coffee there is better than sex."

"I'm sorry if I was prying before-" Kylie started, only to be dismissed by a wave of Fatima's hand.

"No, it was me. You were being polite, but I... didn't handle it well. What if I make it up to you with an extra caramel layered latte right now?"

"Sounds like exactly what I need."

Kylie excused herself and within ten minutes, they were at their table of choice awaiting their overly pretentious coffee of choice. She looked on at Fatima anxiously before her look was returned with a smile.

"I'm okay. I really am. You don't have to worry about me running off."

"I have a confession to make," Fatima said quietly. "I looked you up and it turns out you are one of the lead artists behind Salinger's Blade?"

"There's a name I haven't heard in a long time," Kylie replied. "I am. Rather I was."

"Why did you stop?" whined Fatima. "That is my brother's favourite anime. He begged me to try it and I got hooked as well."

"Always good to meet a fan."

"There hasn't been a new issue in almost three years now. You left it on a cliffhanger too."

"I've done other work since. Maybe some day I'll return to it."

"Please do," she beseeched. "I still check Crunchyroll obsessively in the hopes of a new chapter. You have no idea how much it would mean to me if you could continue the story."

"You remind me of a teenage girl who once approached me on the subway. She cried and accused me of being a monster, all because the schoolboy character she had a crush on turned out to be the villain."

"People get attached to characters if they are done well. It's normal, natural even."

She took out a copy of the manga first edition.

"Khalid, my brother, special ordered it all the way from Japan. That was how much it means to him. Can you autograph it, please?"

Kylie obligingly opened the blank last page of the issue.

"Your brother. Do you have a picture of him?"

Fatima unlocked her phone and scrolled to a picture of them both. Khalid looked much younger than her, barely into his teens when the picture was taken.

"One moment," she said and started scribbling. Her friend waited patiently and partook in her brew.

"Khalid is much younger than me. About a decade and a half. I am less of an older sister and more of a fun third parent. So when he asks for manga from half the world away, I buy it for him."

A few minutes went by. Kylie stole frequent glances at the picture on Fatima's screen. Finally, she finished and left an elaborate bit of calligraphy at the bottom.

"What do you think?" she asked, handing over her impression of brother and sister on a page.

"He'll love it. I can't wait to show it to him."

* *

Stuck at work today. Sorry, I can't make it.

At least this time she had a text message. Probably not the real reason why Fatima was away, but still something.

Kylie sat on the deck of her grandfather's boathouse in Sheepshead Bay. The deck at the back of the house went right to the water's edge. She had spent many afternoons of her childhood with her legs hanging off the edge, barely touching the water.

With the size and scale of the Strand relatives that had shown up, the hospital waiting room had proved to be woefully inadequate. Hence, the boathouse had to be hurriedly converted into a base camp along with several rooms at the Sofitel nearby. The Strands now awaited the inevitable demise of their patriarch in shifts at the hospital.

"Kylie?"

Her Aunt Gwen, technically J Henry's younger brother's daughter. She was well into her fifties, but it only showed on her face. Her body was statuesque, almost regal when she stood upright. Her bright sapphire eyes shone out of a mass of wrinkles. Tresses of silvery white hair came down to her shoulder.

"I haven't seen you since... I can't even remember the last time I saw you in person."

"Probably when Clinton was still getting blowjobs from his intern."

A statement like that would have raised an eyebrow from anyone else. Not from Gwen though.

"I just came from the hospital," she said, her pack a day habit evident in her voice. "I thought I was going to be too late, but Uncle Henry held out for me. He waited so I could say goodbye."

"Is he...?"

"Still hanging in there."

Gwen reached into her designer handbag and pulled out an elegant cigarette case. She took one and held out the case for Kylie.

"Trust me, it's the best stuff."

Kylie obliged by taking one. She held it out while Gwen took out an even more ornate lighter and lit both of them.

"You're doing well for yourself."

"I am," affirmed Gwen. "The magazine has the same number of page views as Vogue and the fashion brand is now a part of every major fashion week in the world. Paris, Milan, London... even New York this year. I'm even toying with the idea of getting into cosmetics."

"Well... if you're ever in Tokyo, give me a holler."

Kylie watched as she took a long drag of her cig and blew a thin stream of smoke out to sea. Her eyes followed the smoke gradually diffusing into thin air.

"Dad disowned me when I came out. Not Uncle Henry though."

Kylie nodded. The story was part of Strand family lore. Gwen coming out and admitting to being in love with a woman. Percy Strand not taking the news well at all. J Henry reading his own brother the riot act in front of all the assembled family members for his homophobia. It was the only time in recorded history that J Henry showed his Irish temper in front of his family.

"He didn't just accept me," Gwen went on. "He walked me down the aisle and played the piano at my wedding. I'd give up the company I've built over the last thirty years just to hear Uncle Henry play the piano one more time."

"I was barely a toddler at the time and was kept far away from the fireworks," said Kylie. "Dad filled me in on the details when I was old enough to understand."

"How is Annie doing?"

"Hell if I know," shrugged Gwen. "We split two years ago. She's a professor of Classical Literature in Geneva these days."

"You split?" Kylie asked, her jaw hanging open.

"Yeah. Because of the sex."

"Sex?"

"We were barely having it any more. I'm at work surrounded by glamorous fashion models wearing next to nothing all day. It takes all my self control not to jump them, but when I get back home, I have to lie next to my wife while she does the crossword? I didn't stand up to my Dad only to have my lady parts shrivel up like a prune later. I have needs too, you know."

Gwen made the most scandalous statements in the same monotone as a newsreader reporting traffic. She took out her phone and scrolled to a picture of herself with a stunning bombshell barely into her twenties.

"Margot. Icelandic father, French mother. She found us through a modelling agency. One look at her and I knew she was the one. I invited her to my apartment in the 16th arrondissement, and the rest as they say, is history. Her face is on every third billboard in Europe now and the likes of Dior, Versace and Gucci are falling over each other for her attention. I also have a pretty grad student who's doing her business major at the Sorbonne. I gave her an apartment she could never have afforded and she lets me stop by her new apartment once in a while."

Slack jaw. Eyes the diameter of dinner plates. Gwen had that effect on the uninitiated.

"Oh don't be a prude like the rest of them," she said playfully, offering Kylie a fresh cigarette. "You think rich, old men are the only ones entitled to trophy wives and mistresses?"

"This is all just... I mean, wow..."

A few more unintelligible strings of syllables came out of Kylie before she took a deep pull on her latest cigarette to calm her nerves and collect herself.

"Speaking of relationships with women... I see you are still firmly in the closet."

"Gwen!!" she gasped, instinctively looking around to see if anyone had joined them on the deck.

"Don't worry. It's just us gay lesbian homosexuals out here," Gwen laughed. "Am I still the only one who knows?"

"It's just something I don't advertise about myself," said Kylie, lowering her voice. "I asked you way back because I needed help understanding it."

"I'm glad you did, but there is only so much I can help you without turning this into an Incest story on Literotica."

Again, tone of a bored newsreader, content of the most salacious kind.

"I mean, I do have relationships. Some longer than others."

Taking another quick look around, Kylie scrolled to a picture on her phone of her and a Japanese woman wearing matching black fedoras.

"Her name is Sakura. Sakura Kurosawa. She works for FromSoftware, a major video game development company in Japan. We worked on adapting one of my manga for a game a few years ago."

"Go on. Don't skimp on the details now."

It was actually a relief to have someone to talk to about this.

"I don't know what her deal is. One day she's bringing me breakfast in bed, the next we're fighting tooth and nail in public over some imaginary grievance she has with me. In a few days, we patch things up and then it's only a matter of time until the cycle repeats."

"Sounds like a real drama queen."

"She likes attention. I mean, I love her and we get along well, in between fights, but God is she a lot of work."

"What does she want from you?"

"Some grand public gesture usually. Holding her hand in public. Letting her kiss me at work. Coming out to our friends who consist mostly of people I work with."

"I almost see her point," Gwen mused, blowing a ring of smoke from her lips. "But it's not up to her whether you come out or not. She can't make that decision for you."

"Exactly," said Kylie, louder than she had intended. "Once you're out, you're out. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle. Every time someone meets you or Googles you or even talks about you, this is the first thing in their minds. I don't want to be defined by a label."

"Even if that label is something I fought for my whole life?"

"I'm sorry... I didn't mean it like that."

"I'm kidding," laughed Gwen. "It's not the eighties any longer. You can come out as publicly as you want now and it barely raises an eyebrow. I marched, protested and picketed half my life so you can smash as many pussies as you want, and you choose to deny yourself that. I'll never understand you millennials."

Kylie looked down until she felt a bony finger on her chin. She looked up to see her dear Aunt almost at her face, a broad smile across her wrinkles.

"You'll figure it out, kiddo. I'm sure of it."

She smiled and planted a kiss on Kylie's forehead.

"I wish you would stop by Paris some time. I'd love to show you my new condo. You can see the Eiffel Tower, the Seine and the entire Champs-Élysées in the same view from my balcony."

"All this from the same woman who solemnly swore she would never go further east than 14th street."

There was a shared chuckle.

"Of course, I could never have seen that view if not for Uncle Henry. After my asshole Dad told me I was going to Hell, Uncle Henry came over and told me how brave I was. I was in a dark place and he helped me past it, bit by bit. Him and Aunt Fran gave me a place to stay after I was told not to come home ever again. He was more of a father to me than my actual father could ever hope to be."

"And yet he lies on the verge of death while Percy Strand lives on."

"Percy Strand lives all by himself in a retirement community in Winston-Salem. He will die a bitter, lonely old man and no one will even know for a few weeks until the smell bothers them. Uncle Henry will die surrounded by his family who love him and will mourn his passing. There is a difference."

Kylie took a deep breath and processed what she had just heard. Her aunt rummaged inside her cavernous handbag for a few minutes until she found two tiny bottles of wine.

"Here," she said, handing one over. "Let's make a toast."

Kylie took the miniature bottle and held it up to the dull red sunset over the horizon.

"To J Fucking Henry," they yelled in unison and drained their bottles in one gulp.

Gwen thought to ask about the four times Kylie's phone buzzed to let her know she had a text and why she made the strenuous effort to ignore them, but chose not to.

* *

"You're getting really good at this game of hide and seek."

"If it's any consolation, I really had a lot to do at work."

"I'll decide if it's any consolation when we meet."

"Tell me where you are and I'll pick you up."

Kylie said the address of the boathouse into the speaker and ended the call. It was calming to hear the self-assuredness in Fatima's voice. It was a distinct contrast to her own brand of neurotic over-analysing of everything she said.

Maybe Gwen was right. Maybe she should embrace the way she felt.

Don't be mental. It will bring the unforgiving glare of a spotlight and so much more attention than you can handle.

Kylie sighed, acknowledging the truth in what the little voice said. But she missed her new friend. She missed the way she moved strands of hair and tucked them behind her ear. She missed the glint in her eyes when she laughed. She missed the way she could talk to her for the first time and yet feel like they had known each other for years.

She wrestled with her thoughts for a few more minutes before she got another call.

"Come outside."

She looked out the front gate to see a rider on a bike waiting. Curiously, she approached, noticing the rider wearing a black leather jacket atop a Ducati.

"Impressed?" Fatima asked, lifting the visor of her helmet.

"My mother warned me once not to get onto the back of a motorcycle."

"I won't tell her if you won't," she replied, lowering her tone to a conspiratorial whisper. "Your act of rebellion will be our little secret."

"Seriously though," grinned Kylie. "You look like a bad guy's henchman in an action movie."

"Funny you say that. I just chased Tom Cruise around Brooklyn on my way here."

"No way," Kylie grinned. "Those guys survive like ten seconds of any chase scene before meeting their inevitable, yet spectacularly creative, deaths."

"A moment of silence for all the motorcycle borne assailants who have met their ends in action movies over the years."

They barely got through the moment without giggling. Kylie got behind Fatima and held onto the rear end of her seat.

"And now... we fly."

* *

The bike came to a screeching halt. Kylie had a death grip on the back of her seat with one hand, the other similarly wound around Fatima.

"Cutting. Off. Circulation."

"You deserve it," said Kylie with a playful punch to her arm.

Fatima lifted her visor and led the way out of the parking garage to the apartment lobby. Her companion trailed behind, smoothing out her shirt. The receptionist and the doorman waved in recognition as they entered an elevator.

"It has been years since I've been on Columbus Avenue. It's changed a lot from what I remember."

Fatima took off her helmet and tucked it under her arm. She shook her head and threw her hair back with a shrug. They had barely gone up a few floors when she became aware of the stare Kylie had fixed on her. It was almost as if the intensity was somehow magnified through her glasses.

"It's not polite to stare."

"Sorry. It's just the first time I've seen your hair loose."

"You didn't seriously expect me to wear a headscarf under my helmet."

Fatima's raven black hair was silky smooth. Not even the most expensive salon in Hollywood could give hair her natural lustre.

"May I?"

Kylie reached out and ran her fingers through the hair. It ran through her fingers almost like fluid. She moved her fingers along the length of her hair, revelling in the velvety feel before finally clutching a fistful in her hand.

Fatima's eyes jerked open in shock until she found herself mere inches away from Kylie. So close she could make out each irregular fleck and see her own reflection in her eyes. So close she could feel her hot breath on her face. So close she could see her lips tremble, trying desperately to suppress the words trying to burst forth.

... And then she waited while the elevator rose. Waited with her hair firmly in another's hand. Kylie second-guessed herself. This was so unlike her, yet this was something she wanted to do... she needed to do... and yet all the voices of self-doubt reared their heads in unison to mock her valiant effort.

Oh fuck! Did I misread the whole thing? Maybe she invited me up here to talk more about manga? Fuck! Fuck! Am I trying to kiss a straight woman?

"Fucking finally," Fatima whispered, quelling her doubts. "Don't lose your nerve now."

Just as Kylie leaned forwards, they were interrupted by a musical ding. To their mutual horror, the metal doors slid open showing an elderly woman with a broad smile.

"Mrs Ohanian," said Fatima, hurriedly separating herself from Kylie. "Nice to see you walking on your own again."

"Fatima, sweetie," she said. "How are you doing?"

"As well as I can."

"All of us are praying for Khalid. I was at the Armenian Church at the corner of West 77th for my niece's wedding last week and I made sure each of my grandchildren lit a candle for him."

"Thank you, Mrs Ohanian. I appreciate it."

"Such a good boy. He helped carry my groceries up to my apartment a few times."

They went up in relative silence until the elevator dinged again to inform them that Mrs Ohanian had reached her destination.

"One more thing, Fatima, dear," she said. "My eyesight is not nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is. So, I am extremely sorry for interrupting whatever you and your lovely lady friend were doing. Please continue once I'm out."