Make Room for Love

Chapter 2

2

This was a bad idea. There was still time to back out. A shitty thing to do, since Mira needed a place to live, but Isabel hadn’t promised her anything.

She hadn’t opened the door to the spare room since Reina moved out. Aside from a few smears of paint on the wood floor, it was stripped bare. No half-finished painting on the easel, no canvases and supplies haphazardly stacked on shelves. Just Mira standing in the middle of the room.

Mira was pretty, if you liked mousy, shy girls. Tall, willowy, slightly hunched over like she was trying to be unnoticeable. Brown skin, big dark eyes, thick long lashes. Big hair in loose curls falling over her shoulders. She looked more comfortable in her sweater and wool skirt than in that clingy dress from last weekend. Not that Isabel had been looking.

At least, she’d tried not to look. She’d only wanted to keep this girl safe.

Mira slowly turned around, blinking. There was nothing to see. She was just thinking, like Isabel was. Maybe picturing all her things in the room.

Isabel didn’t want her here. It had been one thing to offer up her spare room when this scared girl had needed help. Isabel needed a roommate, and Mira needed a room. But seeing Mira here made it real: Isabel would be living with a stranger, in this apartment full of the worst memories of her life.

If Isabel wanted to back out, she’d have to say so now. Then she’d start working overtime again, and her bad knee would only get worse. But it would only be for a few months, and then she’d find a place she could afford on her own. She would survive.

“It’s a nice room,” Mira said.

Isabel shrugged. There was no need for Mira to be polite. “It’s not much. Let’s talk in the living room.”

Isabel had dusted all the furniture that morning, sneezing the whole time. The plants on the windowsill were half-dead, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

Mira walked by, and the faint scent of coconut shampoo trailed after her. It took a second for Isabel to place it: Her leather jacket had smelled like that, too, after Mira had returned it.

Mira sat on the edge of the couch, radiating anxiety. Isabel was going to have to get used to seeing that. She had collapsed on that couch when she’d gotten the phone call with the worst news of her life. Then she’d sat on that couch when Reina confessed that she was leaving, that she had been applying to artist residencies in secret, that she couldn’t take it anymore. That it wasn’t Isabel’s fault for being so shattered by grief. But whose fault was it, then?

Isabel didn’t miss her ex much these days. But she’d had a life once as a caring, supportive partner, as the second of three inseparable sisters. All that was gone now, and Isabel was left to rattle around the apartment alone.

Isabel blinked. The ghosts in her memories vanished. There was a real person sitting in front of her.

If Mira was already here, there was no harm in asking some questions. Isabel sat on the other side of the couch. Her knee throbbed, and she winced. “Let’s talk about what we’re looking for. I mentioned the important things. No loud noise after nine p.m. since I get up for work early. And I want the apartment to stay as clean as it is right now. I don’t cook much, so the kitchen’s mostly yours.”

“That’s all fine with me.” Mira was fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. Her nails were a pale pink. “Um, I’m a grad student, and I usually work until pretty late. I work mostly out of my office on campus, so you won’t have to deal with me being around except in the evenings. I cook a few times a week. And I might occasionally have a friend over.” She took a deep breath. “As for what I’m looking for, I guess I just want a quiet place to live, now that I’m by myself. I don’t need much else.”

Guilt gnawed at Isabel. She couldn’t just tell Mira to go away. The ex-boyfriend had been a real piece of work, and Mira had been afraid.

People had to look out for each other. If she didn’t want Mira to be in danger, she had to give Mira a place to live. And this shy mouse of a grad student wasn’t going to cause Isabel any problems. Even if she did, they’d both be out of here in a few months.

“Out of curiosity, what do you do for work that makes you wake up so early?” Mira asked.

“I’m a union electrician.” Isabel forced herself to smile. If they were going to be roommates, she’d have to get used to small talk.

“Oh, wow!” Mira hesitated. Isabel wasn’t surprised. A lot of people, including most of Reina’s artist friends, had no idea how to make conversation with a construction worker. “I read about the strike at the power plant that ended last month,” Mira continued. “I’m sorry it didn’t go the way you all wanted.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” Isabel had walked the picket lines for months, all through the sweltering summer, when she wasn’t working at her own job. The contract negotiations had still fallen through. She hadn’t expected Mira, of all people, to know that. “Is that related to what you study, or something?”

Mira smiled. She had a cute smile, the corners of her eyes crinkling. It was surprising to see her with an expression that wasn’t scared or anxious. “No, I’m a classicist. But the grad students at my university are organizing a union. We try to stay informed on the labor movement more broadly.”

Huh. “How’s that going? Are they trying to union-bust you?”

Mira let out a loud, ringing laugh that was surprisingly endearing. “Oh, yes. Absolutely. We do most of the teaching at the university and a lot of the research grunt work, and the university insists we’re not workers, we’re just students, and we should be grateful for the so-called training we get. The undergrads pay sixty thousand dollars a year to attend, and the university has a multi-billion-dollar endowment, but they won’t pay a living wage to those of us who are actually teaching the classes.”

That sounded about right. Mira sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on about it. It’s just that after five years of grad school, starting my sixth, I’m sick of it.”

Isabel gave her a smile. A real one, this time. “You don’t have to convince me. I’m not on your bosses’ side.”

Mira’s posture loosened up. Isabel was relieved, too. There was no point to Mira feeling like she was being interrogated. “They’re trying to squeeze more work out of us, and it’s bad for the undergrads, too. I can’t teach Latin to forty students and do a thorough job of grading all their papers every week. And it makes me furious when the administration tells us that we’re trying to shirk our duties, or that we’re going to compromise the undergrads’ education if we unionize. The university couldn’t function if we all stopped teaching—if we stopped leading recitations and grading homework and exams and having office hours. They know that”—Mira made a gesture for emphasis, making her curls bounce—“which is why they’re afraid of us.”

Mira’s eyes were bright. She’d turned into a different person. But she wasn’t—that fiery core had been there all along. Why had this woman been with a boyfriend like that ? Isabel would never know. “Well, I respect that. And if you ever go on strike and we’re working on your campus, we’re not going to cross the picket line.”

“Thank you.” Mira looked down for a moment, her self-consciousness returning. “We have a long way to go. We’re going to start asking people to sign union cards soon, to show they want the union to represent them. And once we get enough people to sign cards, we’ll have an election to force the university to recognize us and bargain with us.” She took a breath. “I think we can win. But it’ll be a lot of work, on top of all the teaching and other work we have to do. And, of course, our own research. The supposed reason why I’m in grad school in the first place.”

Mira paused and looked at Isabel, as though gauging Isabel’s reaction, with those big, brown eyes. Desire pierced Isabel like a lightning bolt.

Mira wasn’t just pretty. When she was animated, she was beautiful. In this dreary apartment, everything about her stood in sharp relief: the striking planes of her face, the rich plum lipstick playing up the curve of her mouth, the way her nearly black curls turned red and gold where they caught the afternoon light.

And the conviction in her voice, and the fire in her eyes. Mira wasn’t as timid as she’d seemed, and it was driving Isabel wild.

Apparently Isabel’s interest in women was reawakening after the months she’d spent alone. It wasn’t personal, and it didn’t mean anything. She hadn’t so much as flirted with anyone since Reina left. Of course the first attractive woman to cross her path would light her up like this.

Never mind that she’d seen plenty of beautiful women at the club, all dressed to impress. None of them had set Isabel on fire like this grad student in a cute little sweater talking about labor organizing in Isabel’s living room.

It didn’t matter. She was here to find a roommate, not a replacement for her ex. “Well, uh, good luck.” She winced. Was that really the best she could come up with? “So you said you study Classics? Like, Ancient Rome?” Mira nodded. “What’s your research about?”

“Oh, well, I study Greek and Latin poetry. Um, my dissertation is about Latin lyric poetry—you know, Horace and Catullus—and its relationship to the earlier Greek models. I don’t know if you’re familiar…” Mira trailed off. Isabel shook her head, eager to hear more.

“Oh.” Mira looked at her lap. A ringlet of dark hair fell over her face. “Well, never mind. I don’t want to bore you.”

That stung a little. Not for any real reason. Maybe Isabel wouldn’t understand, anyway. But she was good with languages. She spoke better Cantonese than either of her sisters ever had, and her Spanish was decent, too.

She’d gotten too comfortable with Mira. Was she really this starved for conversation? Mira didn’t have to talk to her, and she didn’t have to talk to Mira. They didn’t have to be friends. “Well, let me know if you want to take the room,” she said, more stiffly than she’d intended.

“Right,” Mira said. Isabel stood, and Mira scrambled to stand, too. “Um, actually, I’ve decided that I do want the room. If that’s okay.”

“Sure.” There was no backing out now. She had a roommate. Just for a few months, and then she could go back to being alone.

Mira was queasy from the drive as she rang the doorbell to her new building—three stories tall, like its neighbors on the block, with a humble laundromat on the first floor. Isabel opened the door, wearing a gray sweatshirt, jeans, and slippers.

Seeing Isabel in her soft-looking house clothes was disarming. Although Isabel herself didn’t look soft, and she didn’t smile.

“Hi,” Mira said. Would Isabel ever become less intimidating? “This is my friend Frankie. Frankie, this is Isabel, my, uh, roommate.”

“Nice to meet you!” Frankie said. Isabel gave her a nod, and they sized each other up in the way that butches did, at least in Mira’s limited experience. Although the two of them couldn’t have been more different. They were both Chinese—so Mira surmised, from the paperwork that had read Isabel Wong . But Frankie was grinning, short-haired, and half a foot shorter.

“Here are your keys,” Isabel said, handing them to Mira. “You got anything else in the car?”

Between the three of them—mostly Isabel and Frankie—they made quick work of carrying Mira’s clothes, books, plastic dresser, new twin-size mattress, and pile of used bed-frame parts up two flights of stairs and into Mira’s new room. “Let me know if you need anything,” Isabel said.

Without waiting for a response, she went back to her own room and shut the door. Her room shared a wall with Mira’s, but it may as well have been a continent away.

Mira and Frankie exchanged a look. “You weren’t kidding about her being the strong, silent type,” Frankie said quietly.

Mira smiled, then stopped smiling as she surveyed the room. She had a suitcase of clothes, two boxes of books, and an unassembled bed. There was nothing like seeing your worldly possessions all in one place to make you question your entire life.

In her two-plus years of living with Dylan, his apartment had never become hers. All the expensive furniture had been his. She had been just another nice thing that he owned.

“You look like you’re thinking too much,” Frankie said. “You want me to tell you what we’re growing on the farm this month?”

“Yes, please,” Mira said. She learned all about the end of the growing season at Frankie’s rooftop farm as they puzzled over putting the used bed frame together—without instructions, it took the better part of an hour. Finally, they unrolled the foam mattress from the box and made the bed.

It was sinking in: This was Mira’s new home. She had the uncomfortable sense of regressing to an earlier stage of life. Frankie and Vivian lived like grown adults; Mira was single, starting over, and sleeping in a twin bed for the first time since college. Adrift and lost.

She hung up a few dresses and blouses in the tiny closet and put her other clothes in the flimsy plastic drawers, gratefully letting Frankie do most of the talking. Once she was done, she sat on her new bed, suddenly exhausted.

“You okay?” Frankie said. “Need a break?”

“Yeah. I think I can take care of the rest myself.”

Frankie sat down and put an arm around her. “You sure?”

Mira leaned against her friend. “Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks a lot, Frankie. I really appreciate it.”

Frankie squeezed her. “You know you can call me and Vivian any time, okay? We’re here for you. And we’re so proud of you.”

Frankie and Vivian were basically her lesbian moms. Vivian was the first trans woman Mira had met in New York City, back when Mira had turned up, painfully shy, at a support group for Asian trans women that Vivian was running at the time. She and Frankie lived together in their apartment full of plants, watching over Mira, letting her cry on their shoulders. They’d taken care of her after her surgeries. They’d hated Dylan from the beginning.

Mira had mixed feelings. She loved Vivian and Frankie, and she would trust them with her life. But she was twenty-seven years old, and maybe she shouldn’t need her friends to hover over her all the time.

Mira’s parents in Chicago loved her too, in their own way. They were eighty percent there in understanding her, which wasn’t terrible. But the matter of why she’d had to run from Dylan—and why she’d stayed for so long—was firmly in the other twenty percent. They couldn’t understand all the compromises she’d been forced to make, and she didn’t want to face their pity.

“Thanks,” she said to Frankie. She needed to be alone for a while.

They hugged each other goodbye at the door. “Those plants are in bad shape,” Frankie said, looking at the windowsill. “Text me some close-up photos. I bet we can bring them back to life. And keep us updated, okay?”

With Frankie gone, Mira returned to her room. The boxes of books took up too much of what little space she had, and they were too tall to fit under the bed. She struggled as she pushed one of them against the wall. How could a few dozen books be so heavy?

She’d been stubborn in bringing them with her. But her books had been among the few things in Dylan’s apartment that had truly been hers. They’d reminded her that she was a person with her own intellectual ambitions, not just Dylan’s girlfriend. Even if Dylan hadn’t wanted to make space on his own shelves, and they’d gone under the bed.

Now she was alone in her own room with her own books. She was finally free, and she’d never let herself be trapped again. But whatever comfort she took in that was drowned out by her fear. This was her home now, a cramped room in a near-stranger’s apartment in an unknown neighborhood. What now?

She sighed. One thing at a time , Vivian had told her. There had been a half-empty bookshelf in the living room. It wasn’t nearly big enough, but maybe Isabel would let her put a few books there.

Mira returned to the living room. It was spacious and full of sunlight, with a comfortable couch that Mira had sat on, a similarly well-worn armchair, and a coffee table made of what looked like real wood instead of particleboard. At the other end of the apartment was a tidy kitchen, separated from the living room only by a small dining table.

The apartment wasn’t slick and curated like Dylan’s, but it didn’t look lived-in, either. The blanket and throw pillows on the couch seemed undisturbed since Mira’s first visit. There was something chilly about the apartment, even if it wasn’t nearly as forbidding as Isabel herself.

Maybe Mira would get used to having dinner at the table and curling up on the couch with a book, and the apartment would eventually feel cozy and warm—but would she have time to get used to it? She would be leaving in a few months. And she couldn’t imagine Isabel doing any of those mundane, domestic things herself.

Mira went to the bookshelf. There were a few dozen hard sci-fi paperbacks she didn’t recognize, alongside the classics by Le Guin and Butler. A framed photo sat on the top shelf. She picked it up.

In the middle of the photo was a woman in a wedding dress, looking so much like Isabel that Mira thought it was her for a moment. But Isabel was in the photo too, wearing a dark suit and a pink tie with her long hair loose, and another younger woman with the same family resemblance wearing a dress in the same shade of pink. They all had their arms around each other in a line, radiantly happy.

Mira couldn’t look away. Isabel was grinning, and so full of joy she was almost unrecognizable. She looked a decade younger.

There were soft footsteps behind her. Mira turned. Isabel was going back into her room; she must have seen Mira looking at the photo. All Mira saw was a blur of dark hair before Isabel shut the door.