Page 54 of Throwing Shade
Tatiana shot me a So? look and marched out from behind the bar to a banquette. She swatted at the other patrons as if they were mosquitos. “Move.”
A sharp-featured woman glared at Tatiana. “Really, and who are you? The Queen of England?” Her mousier friend whispered in her ear, and the first woman paled. “Apologies,” she said, not making eye contact, and they scattered.
Vikram intercepted them with soothing words, finding them new seating.
Tatiana slid into the padded booth with a grunt. “Sit.”
The leather cracked under my butt. “I get the feeling there’s more to your friendliness than my knowing Laurent. Are you my fairy godmother?” I joked.
“Bubeleh, please.” Tatiana downed half her martini. “I’m not big on the whole God thing.”
“Do you not believe at all?”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s less a question of belief and more that the entire Jewish patriarchy labelled Lilith a demon because she wouldn’t do missionary with Adam. I always thought that was so unfair. As should you, being one of her descendants.”
Had my jaw been able to unhinge, it would have hit the floor. I slid over, ready to make a break, but Tatiana raised an eyebrow, and I stayed put, resolved to brazen it out. “How did you know?”
“I’m the city’s leading bonne vivant and a very famous artiste. People love to tell me the latest on dit,” Tatiana said in a snooty tone, and then cackled. “I’m delighted one of you finally showed up here. Ohrists get so boring. There’s such a wide range of ways we can manipulate light and life energy, thanks to ohr, and we end up with so many shifters. Oy vey.” She drank some more of her dirty martini. “The men are the worst. Wolves, bears, blah blah blah. They all have the exact same equipment and insist on showing it off like we’re going to be dazzled. Fangs, claws, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
I traced a finger through the condensation of my latest cranberry and soda. I really had to pee but I clenched my bladder until we finished our conversation. “Shifting seems pretty exciting.”
Tatiana ate the other olive from her martini glass. “Anything seems exciting at first. That’s how they suck you in. Then thirty years have gone by and your arms are tired from the same old flagellation games and there’s no passion anymore.”
“Okaaay.” I remembered the basics of what my parents had taught me, but I had questions and no one to ask. Hiding my head in the sand and not using my powers wouldn’t keep me safe. “How much do you know about Banim Shovavim?”
“Live as long as I have and you pick up just enough about too much,” she said. For a moment, her wrinkles grew more pronounced, her eyes rheumy with age, but maybe it was the light, because they quickly resumed their clear sparkle. “What do you want to know?”
I crunched on a piece of ice. “We’re descended from Lilith and Adam, but there’s a whole story about how three angels killed all her kids, so where did we come from?”
“They killed the first passel.” She snapped her fingers and a passing server handed her a pencil. Tatiana unfolded a paper napkin and began to sketch.
“After Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, Adam went looking for Lilith, because he couldn’t resist the bad girls.” Her simple line drawing took form, the minimalist illustration imbued with a kinetic energy.
Two naked bodies coupled on a hilltop with a vigorous athleticism bordering on downright contortionist when Tatiana drew the woman bracing her arms on a pillow with her ass in the air in a wheelbarrow position. Her partner held her legs and impaled her from behind.
“According to the oral tradition that I learned,” Tatiana said, “Lilith had a thing for day drinking and bad decisions, and long story short, Lilith and Adam schtupped like bunnies.”
“You did not learn that story at Hebrew school,” I said, crowding her to get a better view, as under Tatiana’s playful skill, the bodies gleamed with sweat.
Tatiana snickered. “It was a decidedly more ribald retelling.” She erased the woman and redrew her, still impaled but in plank position in mid-air.
“No amount of crunches would get me that core strength.” I patted my much softer belly. “Actually, that doesn’t even look enjoyable.”
Tatiana added lines to indicate the jiggle of the young woman’s boobs. “Don’t knock it till you try it,” she said in her New York accent and turned the woman’s face into her own.
“Fuck me.” I pressed my cool drink against my forehead.
“Don’t be a prude, Miriam.” Tatiana tapped her finger against her martini glass and Vikram lumbered over with a new drink for her. The fact that she knew my name was hardly surprising.
“I am sex positive.” I weakly raised a fist. “Sisters are doing it for themselves. Ladies of all ages have needs.” Don’t make me see the grandma sex again. “How about you give me the synopsis?”
The gist of it was that Lilith and Adam produced a bunch of new kids known as Banim Shovavim, the rebellious or wayward children, who had their own type of magic. This time, Lilith hid her offspring so the angels couldn’t find them.
“Adam had magic?” I said. “I kind of assumed it was all from Lilith.”
“Try living nine hundred years without it,” Tatiana said, dryly. “So, what are your specific powers?”
After Eli came out of the closet, I’d spent a lot of time in therapy unpacking my complicated emotions around secrets. Both our romantic and sex life had been good, hadn’t it? What I’d come to realize was that the truth had masked the secret that Eli was bisexual, but preferred men. His love and attraction to me had been real, just not the full truth. Eventually, therapy allowed me to be honest that I’d willfully blinded myself to certain things because I’d so desperately craved the normalcy of a loving nuclear family.
