Free Nevada by Imogen Binnie

who’s looking for a book on some kind of airplane piloting, except he can barely walk or speak clearly enough to hear. He probably shouldn’t be flying planes, so it’s lucky that there’s no way in hell this book is in the store. Mostly, he probably wants somebody to talk to, and Maria needs something to occupy her mind, so they traipse all over the store, up and down stairs, slowly because he leans on a cane, looking for this book they don’t have. It is like a Beckett play or something. It would be great if this were a Hans Christian Anderson story and he was a magic fairy grandfather, tapped her in the face with his cane at the end of this adventure and then, ping, she knew what the fuck was going on with Steph, but it doesn’t happen.
    He comes in every two months or so. Maria kind of loves him, actually, even though nobody else in the store wants anything to do with him. He is always looking for a book that nobody’s ever heard of, without an ISBN , which isn’t even on the rare book sites online. Maria humors him for forty-five minutes and then he gives her some weird Italian candy or, for some reason, a crumbly old biscotti. They’ve been doing this for as long as she’s been at the store, which is awkward, because he seems not to have noticed that she transitioned. He still calls her by a name that nobody else in the world is allowed to call her. He will stomp into the store, she will be wearing a dress and showing cleavage, and he will yell, Mister Griffiths! Who knows why it’s charming instead of infuriating, but it’s kind of nice.
    So they walk around. It’s nice to have a pattern to fall into when you just found out that your girlfriend, who is not a practical joke person, just totally faked you out about boning your half-annoying, half-amazing coworker.
    After Maria’s old man friend leaves, time stops and she can’t think of anything to do with her hands. She texts Steph: Lunch?
    Steph texts back very quickly: Totally. Burritos?
    Of course.

17.
    Right after college, Maria tried to be an adult. She stumbled into a job at an insurance company. At the time she wasn’t presenting as queer at all, she wouldn’t even have known how. She painted her nails sometimes though, this otherwise normal bro, with like, shaggy hair and coral nails. People would actually ask what was wrong with her, too. Why would you do that, they’d ask, and then she’d try to imply that it was because she liked rocknroll or something.
    So, when she gets to Burritoville, Steph’s already there, with her spiky hair and pinstripe slacks. It’s kind of a funny combination—all of a sudden she is this power lesbian. She’s been dressing this way for a while now but Maria hasn’t stepped back and noticed until now. She looks like a stranger, like someone from another department at that long-gone insurance company in Pennsylvania.
    Maria sits down across from Steph at the table. Steph’s face isn’t giving anything away, but the fact that neither of them is being affectionate certainly is. They’ve been dating for years. They’ve been greeting each other with kisses for a long time.
    Hey, Maria says.
    Hey, Steph says back.
    Nobody says anything for a minute and then Steph is like, I didn’t fuck Kieran.
    I heard, Maria says.
    That fucker, Steph says.
    Maria goes, I didn’t even know that you knew him, past, like, y’know, Oh I recognize you, or whatever.
    Yeah, Steph says. We met on Myspace, started hanging out. You and I don’t talk, Maria, so I didn’t get to tell you that we’d been hanging out.
    She’s points her fork at Maria but not in an unkind way.
    It would be so awkward for Maria to get up and order food right now.
    She can feel herself shutting off. Already. What the fuck, defense mechanisms, just once it would be cool to be able to stay present when something happens, but nope. It’s like now Maria is watching Steph from a distance. From above. Astral bodies.
    We’ve hung out a few times, Steph