Spit

Frankie met Lucia in that summer of tombstoners and storms, when the tomato plants got blight and the bean plants fruited early. She lived in a small cluster of houses just north of Lulworth, where the news consisted only of tomato plants getting blight and bean plants fruiting early. She was sitting in the dirt tunnel beneath the beans, which by now had shriveled in the sun like exhumed fingers, when she called up Beach Ices and it all began.

I saw the ad, she said on the phone, getting ready to say she had no experience but a wealth of enthusiasm.

Well, it’s a case of needing a body in the room, a woman on the other end said.

Okay, Frankie said.

Okay, the woman repeated. So you can do it?

By the time Frankie cycled to Beach Ices the next morning, she was dripping right through her T-shirt, her scalp itchy and hot from the helmet. Beach Ices sat just beside the huge, sprawling car park, with chalky dust swirling perpetually in the air. The beach was popular, especially in the summer, partly because of the Cove’s unusual geography and Jurassic heritage, and partly because a Bollywood film had been shot nearby in 2010. At 8:30 a.m., few people were there yet, just some dog walkers and fishermen and shirtless guys dragging paddleboards across the sloped car park.

Frankie approached Beach Ices, clinging onto her bike, wiping the sweat off her forehead, and wondering what she should say. Behind the half-open counter, she could see a gorgeous, fat butch girl with a buzz cut wiping the surface down. Some radio music was coming from the back, a Spanish song that had been on the charts for ages, and the girl was singing along while she scrubbed. Frankie went over to the little hatch and squinted up.

Hi, hello, she said, and the girl looked at her, her nose ring catching in the light, and said,

We’re not open yet, and Frankie said,

I don’t want an ice cream, and the girl said,

Well, we’re quite literally an ice-cream shop, and Frankie said,

No, no, I mean I’m starting here, I’m working, and the girl said,

Oh. Well, come ’round the back, then.

The back was a place with lots of bins, concrete flooring, and an older woman sitting on a plastic chair smoking. She had blond hair pulled back in a bun, hard eyes, and a strappy top with a gingham apron around her waist.

Frankie? she said. Frankie nodded.

You didn’t tell me someone was starting today, the butch girl said. The older woman ignored her.

Put your bike down. I’m Ingrid, that’s Lucia. This is the shop.

This was pretty much the extent of Ingrid’s introductions. She dug out a crusty black apron from a cupboard, thrust it into Frankie’s arms, and said something about business in the village before disappearing.

Business in the village, mmhmm, Lucia said after she left. They were standing in the main room of the ice-cream parlor, a small, square space with big fridges, storage shelves, a crappy-looking coffee machine, and freezers full of ice cream. The air was thick and sweet, dazed flies wandering the expanse of it and coming to rest on sugary stains on the counter or humming around the radio.

What do you mean? Frankie said. She was slow to understand social dynamics, feeling that she was always floating somewhere, slightly abstracted from reality. This was what she had tried to explain to her old friendship group. They had been drunk one afternoon at Eleanor’s house, lazing in the back garden, their bodies loosening, trickling into the earth. Above them, the sky was fat with clouds, spewing an uncomfortable humidity that made moving feel laborious and dizzying. Passing around a strange mixture of peach schnapps, vodka, and orange juice, the girls had told one another secrets and fears while Frankie watched in woozy fascination. When they’d asked her to speak, she’d done so without thinking. You are all like baby birds, she said, eating mashed-up food from each other’s mouths.

Well, Lucia said, slumping against the counter, You’d think she were this prim-and-proper-type woman, right, what with the gingham apron and living in one of those cute rose-bushed cottages down the road, and moaning about the village not being what it used to be, but she gets it more than anyone. While I’m sweating my backside off scooping ice cream all day, she goes home or out back there and reclines while she scrolls through dating apps.

Oh? Frankie laughed.

She has a thing for these hulky Dorsetshire farmer guys, right, and I’ve seen her—she says some bullshit about trying out their cow’s milk for new ice cream, even though she buys the ice cream in, but really she’s off fucking in the back of tractors or amongst the wheat fields.

I’m sort of jealous, Frankie said.

You wanna fuck in the back of tractors?

Well, no, not specifically.

You’re jealous of people who fuck?

I don’t know. Frankie turned away, pretending to wipe down the plastic ice-cream cover and wishing she hadn’t said anything. The truth was, she hadn’t fucked, and when she had tried, she’d felt like a limpet clinging to a rock, or a mewing lonely dog. Lucia, Frankie imagined, was above this desperation.

Hmm, Lucia said.

The day passed by with a feverish quality. The tourist season was in full swing, wailing red-faced children and indecisive families washing like swell waves to the Beach Ices door. Frankie stumbled around to Lucia’s command, sliding the ice-cream-fridge door back and forth, scooping honeycomb, black currant, and sorbet, saying, Oh, yes, locally sourced, just ’round the corner, really! And the slim women in straw hats would say, Oh, good, marvelous, you ought to check nowadays, what with, you know, and they’d point up to the sky, the sweating open mass of it, and Frankie would say, Ohh yes, adopting their solemnity, thinking of the ozone, squashing big balls of salted caramel into cones.

I fucking hate tourists, Lucia said in a moment of afternoon quiet. They sank down onto the plastic stools behind the counter, Lucia slurping from a can of Tango Orange, Frankie eating from a small tub of mint chocolate chip.

Why? Frankie said.

Why not?

Well, we wouldn’t have jobs otherwise.

People are idiots, Lucia said. Remember during lockdown when people went feral, driving 90 miles to get here and polluting the place and jumping off the rocks? They call that tombstoning, you know.

I remember that, Frankie said. She hadn’t thought about it since then. It seemed so long ago, patted over with new dirt. She tried to remember if anyone had died.

You’ll get sick of that soon, Lucia said, standing up and yawning.

Sick of what? Frankie said.

The ice cream, silly.

Oh. She watched Lucia begin to move around again. She was so unlike anyone Frankie knew, so much stranger and more familiar, with her piercings and opinions. She was only a year older than Frankie, 17 to Frankie’s 16, but she seemed already out there in the world. It made Frankie aware of herself in a way she hadn’t really bothered to be before.

I’m thinking of cutting my hair, she said suddenly.

Oh, yeah? Lucia glanced over at her.

At closing time, Ingrid returned. She didn’t ask how Frankie’s first day had been, just stood by the till chewing gum, counting out notes and coins. Frankie wondered if she really had been fucking in the wheat fields, or if Lucia was having her on. When Ingrid finished, she sectioned off two small piles, one for Lucia and one for Frankie. She handed them over, told them see you tomorrow, and that was that.

At home, Frankie’s family were all out or squirreled away, so she had nobody to tell about her first day. Instead, she made herself a cheese sandwich and thought anew about her family, in the way that meeting different people prompts you to rethink the ones you already know. Her parents were not in love, she knew, but rather lived together like two solitary cats grown used to tolerating the other in their space. Her father was a man who said often that he had chosen nothing in his life, that things had just unfolded, and that that was his lot. He ate sardines for breakfast, he drove to work at the insurance office, he tended to his beans and tomatoes, and he went to sleep.

Her mother was preoccupied with cleaning. Her own mother, who’d slept with her wedding dress laid in bed beside her, had died a slow and bitter death of lung cancer, leaving in her bungalow an obsessive amount of magazines, old documents, and cheap jewelry that took six months to clear. After that, Frankie’s mother assumed responsibility for breaking the cycle. This is an act of goddamn love, she would say, endlessly emptying and stripping things away, creating a bizarre skull of a house.

Meanwhile, Frankie’s brother existed in a computer world, a lonely spider extending from his thread, down for Pot Noodles and back up into the dark, drinking cans of fluorescent Monster and Irn-Bru. How Frankie could be a part of this family, she could not understand.

At some point, her mother got back from wherever she had been and whipped the empty cheese-sandwich plate from beneath Frankie’s chin.

Stop sitting on that little arse of yours, she said, and help me shift some old games from the garage.

The job at Beach Ices was, from the outside, a tedious one, but Frankie couldn’t help feeling excited to go in every morning. Frankie and Lucia were alone in the shop all day—Ingrid complained aggressively about the cost-of-living crisis and could she really be expected to have more than two workers on the books—and they fell into something of a routine together. In the mornings, Lucia walked over from where she lived with her aunt in the village, and Frankie sped over on her bike through the yellow oilseed-rape fields. While they prepared things for the day, they played the radio extra loud, and Lucia made them giant iced coffees stirred with milk and sugar. Frankie didn’t especially like coffee and the way it made her blood shiver, but she drank it because Lucia did.

They don’t make music as good these days, Lucia said one morning. It’s a tragedy.

You don’t like any of it?

I like some of it. I should have been an ’80s kid.

Why?

That’s just where I should have been. I’d have been an ’80s dyke.

Frankie thought about that. It was true, Lucia did seem like she was from a different time, but not in the way that Frankie felt misplaced. Lucia was other-timely in a deliberate, earthly way, whereas Frankie felt peculiarly like at any moment she might cease to exist on Earth at all, floating up through the ozone holes, far away from the strange luminescent fields and old rock.

You seem to know so many things about yourself for sure, Frankie said, sipping on her pint of coffee and stretching her hands across the countertop so they reached the light of the morning sun.

I guess so, Lucia said. Got Mimi to thank for that.

Mimi?

My aunt.

Oh, yeah.

She adopted me when I was 5. My parents couldn’t hack it or whatever, and Mimi really wanted a kid, but she’s trans, and it was all kinda tricky for her at the time. But anyway, Mimi’s great. She took women’s-studies classes at uni, which is like what gender studies used to be, and she ended up in this super political group, she was at Greenham Common and all of that.

Mmm, Frankie said. She didn’t know what Greenham Common was, but it sounded impressive.

What’s your family like? Lucia asked.

Oh, I don’t know. Not very interesting.

That’s just because you know them so well.

It occurred to Frankie that Lucia had a way of speaking like everything she said was gospel.

I’m not sure that I do know them so well, she said. She thought of the way they all drifted around the house together, and about how Eleanor had told Frankie that her mum gave her the creeps.

You should come and meet Mimi sometime, Lucia said. Frankie smiled.

Sure, I’d like that.

Out of nowhere, Ingrid appeared, snapping her fingers and chewing gum with her mouth wide open.

Quit chatting, girls! she said. There’s machines to clean.

It was around this time that Frankie noticed a pattern: Lucia had a number of annoying habits, but Frankie didn’t mind them. They were the kinds of things that if, say, her dad had done them, she would have been filled with disgust, like spitting on the floor in the yard out the back, and looking at Frankie like she was a fish in the wrong tank, and speaking in that assured, knowing way. But somehow, when Lucia did them, she still felt pulled toward her; she hungered for her. The whole thing was so bizarre, she thought. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Her mother had always told her that she approached people with too much gusto. Hold back a bit, Frankie, Christ, she would say, nobody wants you to tell them the last page before they’ve even started the book. The phrase had always puzzled her, but she supposed it had to do with the way she loved things. Like the teddy her granny gave her that she cuddled so ferociously that it disintegrated into threads, and the little girl in her preschool with buttermilk hair whom she took such a liking to that the girl’s mum accosted Frankie’s mother in the playground to say the whole business was getting darn weird and could Frankie’s mother please control her daughter.

Anyway, the thing about these habits of Lucia’s was that Frankie wanted Lucia to notice things about her as well. She wanted to seem interesting and cool in a queer, unbothered sort of way. She started reading classics like Orlando and watching videos of people analyzing them so she could recycle the same ideas. She stopped sulking under the bean plants in the evenings and instead looked up the artists Lucia spoke of when she moaned about wanting to leave the village and go to art school. And then, after she had saved up a chunk of money from Beach Ices, she took a bus to Portland on her day off to visit the hair-and-nail salon her mother liked.

The lights in the salon were neon white, and the women platinum blond and manicured. Frankie felt giddy; she looked at herself in the mirror, framed by raspberry expanding foam, and wondered about her changeability.

I want to cut my hair, she said to the hairdresser, looking at the dark nothingy length of it.

I’d hope so, the hairdresser said.

Good, Frankie said. I want it short.

When you say short?

Frankie showed the hairdresser a photo she’d found off the internet. The girl had a pixie mullet and an impeccable jawline.

While the hairdresser sliced her hair, Frankie listened to the nail-salon staff bicker, and breathed the coconut-and-shea-butter air and imagined how her new self would look next to Lucia. The falling strands encircled her like the tossed fur of a skinned rabbit.

God, you remind me of someone I used to know, the younger nail woman said, catching Frankie’s eye as she walked out the door.

Is she hot? Frankie said without meaning to.

Back at home, her family were all in, lurking about the kitchen. Christ, her mother said when she walked through the door. Oh dear, her father said, and stared at her. Her brother didn’t look up, and said nothing.

Well, fuck you all, Frankie thought as she pushed past them, thudding up the stairs and lying flat on her bed.

The next day at work, Lucia did a double take when Frankie arrived, stopping whatever she’d been doing before and looking Frankie up and down.

Well, shit, she said. You followed through.

Uh-huh.

Frankie did a small spin.

I like it.

Lucia’s eyes lingered. Perhaps it was just her new-hair bravado, but after that, Frankie thought, something was different. The hot, salty air was beginning to thicken with the coming rain, and the customers were rude, tired, and sweating but between them, something was tender and changed.

On her lunch break, Frankie didn’t sit out in the concrete yard as usual but instead went for a walk along the gray, stony beach, the shrieking kids and dogs fading into a discarded backdrop. Frankie loved the beach. She loved the constant movement of the water and the sticky air, and she loved to see the layers of earthly time squashed up against one another in the Purbeck Monocline. A folding, suffocating, gorgeous grave. She wished that Lucia wasn’t so desperate to leave for bigger places so that they might lie upon the folds and layers together. She scrambled over the bigger rocks to the cliff edge and touched the warm, hard stone.

In the mid-afternoon, back at Beach Ices, the rain came closer, crawling and heaving over their heads.

Do you smell that? Lucia said, reaching out and holding on to Frankie’s forearm as the first drops began to fall.

Uh-huh, Frankie said, the feeling of Lucia’s hand on her skin making her afraid to move. They stood like that, Lucia holding tight, Frankie silent and still, waiting, waiting, waiting, that change in the air, the warmth, the huge expanse of deep-gray sky, and then, like water pushed off a slick, showered body, the rain smashed against the ceiling of their little ice-cream hut. Lucia’s hand squeezed harder, and the smell of the hot, dry ground turned wet, those heavy, sweet earth smells seeping into the air, and Frankie looked over at Lucia, at the way she smiled at the spitting storm, the shrapnel of sideways washes freckling her face, and she wanted to reach out and pull her lips close, to feel the joining of their breath, but she just stood there smiling, looking at the rain and Lucia and how the parched ground became suddenly soupy—thirsting, wettening, drinking.

Why don’t you wait it out at mine tonight? Lucia said.

Lucia’s house was almost exactly like Frankie had imagined. The colors inside were of somewhere else: oranges, purples, yellows. The walls were lined with books, and the corners were filled with plants. A ’60s cabinet stood where a TV might have been, stacked with old records and a turntable. From the kitchen, Lucia’s aunt Mimi appeared, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Her face was all smiles, her hair short and curly, and she wore big blue dungarees and gold hoops in her ears.

This is Frankie from work, Lucia said.

Oh, glorious! Mimi said, reaching in to hug Frankie, smelling of spices and citrusy perfume. My friend Rohit’s here for dinner tonight, can we tempt you to join us?

An older guy followed from the kitchen. He had kind eyes, a flowing iridescent shirt, and a thin chain around his neck. He nodded and smiled at Frankie and Lucia.

I would love that, Frankie said. She stood in her dampened T-shirt and jeans with the crusty apron around her waist looking around at them all, at this world within her world, and she grinned perhaps more than was necessary.

Outside, the rain got heavier and harder, and inside, Rohit put on a Nina Simone record and poured them all cold glasses of beer.

I’ll give you all things to chop, Mimi said, and handed out vegetables, herbs, fat garlic cloves, and ginger. We’re making a Thai red curry.

They cooked and chatted, smells of lemongrass and frying shallots in the air, rain sliding down the glass in the darkening sky. Frankie asked how Mimi and Rohit had met, and they told an elaborate story about a sandwich bar in Istanbul. Is it true? she asked Lucia, and they all laughed in a deep, throaty way. They spoke about Mimi’s work teaching pottery and what to do on Lucia’s 18th at the end of the month and Rohit’s friend Nora whose wife had dementia. Frankie had never heard of a queer person being old enough to have dementia, and she had never heard of lives like this.

As they all sat down to eat, she thought of her family. They would not understand a night like this. They would think that it really was just what it was, dinner and a few drinks; they would not understand what a bizarre and delicious thing it all was, to sit here and slurp up hot, spicy broth with lime juice and coconut, to listen to the warm chatter of people who don’t know you but somehow know you better than your own family. She heard words not as meaning but as rhythms, the gentle tune of it.

At the end of the night, she was full and happy, her stomach warm, her jaw sore from laughing. As they stacked things into the dishwasher, Lucia pulled Frankie aside and put a hand on her upper arm.

Do you wanna stay? she said. It’s still going out there.

They looked out at the heavy washes tearing through the sky, lit up by fairy lights and the glow of other houses. Frankie turned back to look at Lucia. Her cheeks were reddened, and her eyes sheened.

Okay, she said.

Lucia’s room was full of rugs and art positioned in a way that looked both meticulous and chaotic. Frankie hadn’t anticipated how intimate it would feel walking in. Lucia was not just Lucia from work, but someone with a night-light plugged into her wall and used mugs left scattered across the surfaces.

I like it, Frankie said, sitting down on the bed, thinking how real Lucia seemed, and how strange it was that she had ever been just a fantasy at all. Lucia pottered about, switching on a lamp, putting things away into cupboards, stacking the mugs into a corner. Frankie almost wanted to say, Hey, stop, I like your mess, I like imagining the way you’ve moved about.

If it’s okay with you, Lucia said, plumping the pillows up, half-looking at Frankie, you can just sleep in my bed with me? We don’t have an air bed or anything.

Oh, of course, Frankie said. Thank you.

Lucia dug around in the drawers and pulled out a big black T-shirt. She tossed it over to Frankie.

If you want something to wear to bed, she said.

Frankie thanked her and held on to the T-shirt. She wasn’t sure if she was meant to get changed now. In the corner, Lucia turned away and started shrugging off her jeans and putting bed shorts on, and then the same with her T-shirt. Frankie tried not to look, but the sight made something in her open wide, like the gentle movement of the earth for a seed to push through, up through rock. The soft curves of Lucia’s body folded upon themselves as she bent, taking off one T-shirt, pulling on another. Frankie did the same with her own, and they moved like that, turned away from each other, barely breathing.

In bed, they lay quietly side by side.

I hope tonight was okay for you, Lucia said.

It was pretty much my happiest night, Frankie replied.

Really?

Yeah.

Outside, the wind grew angry, while the centimeters between them grew hot and fraught. They looked at each other, Lucia’s warm dark eyes, her flushed cheeks, Frankie’s nervous disposition, her anxious wanting gaze. The feel of Lucia staring filled Frankie with a strange kind of dread, the fear that she might spoil this sweet thing with her hunger, that she had gotten things wrong in an awful, heavy kind of way. She couldn’t bear to keep looking and turned her head back to face the ceiling and the smudged blue tack marks where glow-in-the-dark stars used to be.

Goodnight, Frankie, Lucia said softly.

Goodnight, Frankie whispered, and then she just lay there in the dark, so alive with the feeling of Lucia’s closeness that she couldn’t sleep. For hours she lay there, afraid to move, listening to the persistent rain, thinking about the old Frankie who hung about the bean plants and got ostracized from group chats, and of the new Frankie who was lying here in Lucia’s bed, in Lucia’s T-shirt, with Lucia right there beside her. What a world it was, she thought, where a summer thunderstorm could suddenly have her on the inside of this house. For so much of her life, she had been watching people join up and pair off, sharing a togetherness that she didn’t belong to. She looked at the shape of Lucia next to her and felt that she knew something real.

In the early morning, drifting in and out of an almost-sleep, she began to hear birds outside—the waking seagulls, the house sparrows. The sound of the rain was gone. Beside her, Lucia shuffled about, her breathing light.

Are you awake? Frankie whispered, and Lucia rolled over and nodded.

Can’t sleep, she said, rubbing her eyes, yawning.

I think the storm is over, Frankie said.

Oh, yeah? Lucia looked over toward the window.

It’s almost sunrise, I think. What would you say, maybe, to going for a walk?

I could be persuaded, Lucia said, smiling.

They threw on jumpers and jeans from Lucia’s closet and crept from the house. The air was fresh with fallen rain, the sky fading into blue. The beach was deserted except for seabirds and chunks of driftwood. The pebbles were wet and shiny, the cove rippling and pulsing in and out. They walked all the way along the beach and sat beneath the Purbeck Monocline, the stones soaking through them as they looked out toward the sea. So tired and drunk off spending all this time with Lucia, Frankie shuffled up close to her and dropped her head on her shoulder. Lucia rested her head down too, closing a small place of warmth between their necks.

Even though I barely slept, Lucia said, I’m happy you stayed over.

You didn’t? I was lying there awake too.

Goddamnit.

Goddamnit?

Such a waste.

A waste of what?

Of time.

Lucia lifted her head up, and Frankie did too, turning to look at Lucia. They inhaled and exhaled in trembling time. I am so afraid, Frankie thought, I am so afraid of being wrong, I am so afraid of smothering you, I am so afraid I am so afraid, and then Lucia put a hand on the back of Frankie’s neck, her fingers curling around her nape, and she leaned in to kiss her, her lips soft and alive against Frankie’s, and they kissed like that for long minutes. Their hands found new places of rest and touch, the dizzy energy of their bodies carving an earthy lust in the wet layers of sand and stone.

Lucia moved so that she was almost on top of Frankie, scooping an arm underneath her, warming her goose-bumped skin. She was panting and gorgeous, her body above Frankie’s a wide and beautiful darkness obscuring the half-nighted sky, and above them, the Purbeck Monocline, that monstrously beautiful folding of rock, the layers pressing down upon one another, stone limbs and bodies bending and curving into one another, 30 million years old.

It’s not enough to touch you, Frankie thought, I want to swallow you, I want you inside of me, and she looked up at Lucia, no longer thinking but desiring, and said, Will you spit in my mouth, will you please spit in my mouth? And Lucia looked back, her nose almost touching Frankie’s, and then she did, the wet pearl of her saliva falling from her lips into Frankie’s, and Frankie lay there and swallowed, this piece of Lucia inside of her mouth, inside of her body.

Thank you, she said, and Lucia looked at her strangely. She shuffled so that she was no longer on top of Frankie, and in a moment, Frankie felt both newly made and pricked with dread.

Why did you want me to do that? Lucia said.

I don’t know.

Did you get it from porn?

No! Frankie moved slightly, her body in a carved-out indent in the stones.

Sorry, Lucia said. She looked straight ahead, away from Frankie and toward the sea. She rubbed her eyes. I’m not judging you, she said.

Okay.

I just don’t know if I’m ready for this. I’m leaving soon.

I know.

We work together.

I know.

Lucia turned around to look at her. Her face was a beautiful thing. In a strange way, Frankie felt that the tides were drawing out, pulling and exposing so that the debris of the ocean floor was lying there in the sun.

It’s for the best, right? Lucia said. You’re younger than me.

Okay.

Lucia stood up, hovering awkwardly above Frankie.

I’m gonna walk back, she said. Are you gonna come?

I’m gonna stay here.

Okay. Lucia stayed looking at her for a moment, and then she turned, the sound of her feet a steady, fading pattern. In the stones, Frankie lay back and looked up at the sky, fat tears sliding from her cheeks and into the earth. As the day opened, the sky turned deep orange and then eventually blue, the tide stretched farther down the shoreline, and the new light bore witness to the wreckage of the storm.

At the end of summer, Lucia moved on, finally leaving the village as she had wanted and starting art school in Bournemouth. Ingrid replaced her with a surfer girl, Emily, and strangely enough, Frankie wasn’t sad. She would scroll through the photos of Lucia online, see her new haircuts and friends gathered round her, and instead of moping like the old Frankie might have, the new Frankie just smiled. The new Frankie showed Emily how to run an ice-cream shop; the new Frankie was resident dyke in Lulworth, and lounged across the counter looking bored. And still, sometimes, while she was sitting in the concrete yard eating lunch, or putting on her apron, she thought she heard Lucia singing along to the radio, the memory of it now distant, paling. In those tiny flashes, while Emily chattered beside her, Frankie would think about the way Lucia’s spit had felt sliding down her throat. How Frankie had seemed to grow from Lucia’s body, forming from her spit and DNA, and how their pleasure, for that small August moment, had altered the shape of that perfect pebbled cove, and although the tide had come in and smoothed it all over, Frankie’s body had been made new, jagged and crystalline in the rising sun.