Easy Lei

Rachael Green

Content warning: Attempted sexual assault.

“Hey! Remember me?” He asked. There was a vague familiarity but I’ve never been good with faces. “You used to sell me weed in high school.”

​I nodded. I did used to do that.

​“Right.” I said. “How’ve you been?” I asked, remembering you’re supposed to ask.

​“Oh, you know, living.” He was staring intently, like he was studying my face. 

I fidgeted with the book I’d set down on the table when he interrupted my reading. He didn’t ask how I was so I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. I knew that what I wanted to do was continue reading but I also knew that wasn’t right.

“I’m in town for a few days,” he said after a pause that I believed was too long. “Just visiting friends, making the rounds.” He continued. “I’m staying with a buddy of mine.” I nodded. It was a lot of information that I didn’t ask for and so didn’t know what to do with. “If you’re free, maybe you can stop by tonight. We’ll smoke up and watch cartoons like the old days.” I smiled at the reference to the old days which he took to mean agreement to the plan. “Great,” he said.

“I don’t smoke anymore.” I said.

“I’ll pick us up something to drink then.” He said. He was scribbling an address onto the front matter of my book. I was tapping my foot rapidly under the table because I did not like this but could not remember if it was one of the things I wasn’t supposed to get upset about. Soon, he was gone and I was able to get back to reading.

*​*​*​*​*

It wasn’t until that night, as I was driving to the address that it occurred to me that I didn’t know his name. I debated calling one of my friends from high school to figure out who he was or just taking the gamble that it wouldn’t become an issue. People use names surprisingly rarely for all the emphasis they put on knowing them. I decided to take the gamble. I wasn’t going to stay long anyway. I’d already formed my excuse for taking my leave after the second or third drink. I am house sitting this week and the dog needs a walk at 9 o’clock on the dot or else he shits all over the house. This is true. This dog is an excellent excuse, almost worth having to clean up his shit on the off chance I’m ever a few minutes late.

When he opens the door to let me in, I had expected music or, at least voices from atelevision. There was just silence, though. Inside, his friend sat on the couch, loading weed into the bowl of a pipe. The television was on but it had been muted. I tried not to notice it but muted televisions made me uncomfortable: the mouths moving but no sound coming out, scenes flashing one after the other without a narrative. Cartoons were even worse. The scenes changed so fast and the facial expressions were so fixed, the black dots that were their eyes told me nothing. At least when living people were on the screen, you could pick up context clues about what might have been going on but with cartoons, it was just a chaotic barrage of drawings when there was no narrative to thread them together. I knew I wasn’t supposed to notice but I did and they saw that I was staring at the television instead of at them like I was supposed to. “You like this show?” The friend asked. I nodded and looked around at the seating options for one that would allow me to not look directly at the screen. When I used to smoke, I wasn’t bothered as much by a muted television. I would make up my own narratives in my head. Sometimes, I would say them out loud and whoever was with me and was equally stoned would laugh and let me carry on. Sometimes, they’d mute a show on purpose so that I would narrate instead. I obliged. A mechanism for soothing my anxiety had become a party favor. I didn’t mind. 

“Take a seat wherever.” The guy I used to sell weed to in high school said, with a sweeping gesture of his arm as if he’d presented a kingdom to me. I chose a recliner and rotated it sideways toward the coffee table and the other occupants of the room. The television was only in my periphery now. This wasn’t ideal but I could work with it.

“My name’s Matt, by the way, since Ray didn’t both to introduce us.” The friend said. This was incredibly convenient. Matt and Ray. Matt and Ray. I repeated the names in my head, trying to pin them to their person. “Leilani.” I said, remembering in the middle of this process that that was my end of this transaction.

He held out the pipe he’d been packing toward me. I put a hand up. “No, thanks.” I said. Then, a few seconds later, I smiled, remembering that I should smile when saying no.

“She doesn’t smoke anymore.” Ray explained to Matt. “I’ll get you a beer.” He said to me. I nodded. Then, “thanks.” Then, a smile. Usually, I’m better at making these interactions seem less spasmodic but the television in my periphery is throwing me off more than I’d care to admit.

When Ray returned with the necks of three beers nestled between his fingers, he said, “Hey, didn’t you use to have a nickname in high school? What was it?” 

I stared at him. 

“Oh! That’s right! Easy Lei.” He chuckled. 

I nodded. I did used to be called that. I was never a fan of the name. 

“How’d you get a nickname like that?” He was grinning at me.

“Well, it started when my parents named me Leilani. Then, one day, a brilliant kid in my health class worked it out that Lei and lay were homophones. So here we are.”

Ray appeared dissatisfied with the answer but I didn’t know what he was expecting. “I heard a different story,” he said. 

“What do you do now that you’re out of the weed game?” Matt asked, ignoring the comment from Ray. I believe he was trying to change the subject and I was thankful. I tell him that I’m finishing up nursing school, that I plan to become a traveling nurse when I’m done. He shows interest and asks questions. I explain what a traveling nurse is, that I got the idea I could live on the road, write stories based on the places I went, the people I met. And whenever I got tired of the road, I could settle down wherever I wanted. They need nurses everywhere.

“Do you need another drink?” Ray asked, the first thing he’d said since I began talking. Had I gone on too long? Sometimes, when it’s a topic I like, I tend to talk too much, dominate the conversation and leave no room for anyone else. I studied each of their faces for signs that this is what I had done. Ray’s face showed marks of impatience or maybe irritation. Matt’s face seemed calmer. Though, he had the pipe to his lips and held a lighter in front of his face to light the bowl so it was hard to get a clear read. Since I couldn’t be sure, I said yes to the offer of another drink and, when Ray left, quickly finished off the half-full bottle that I’d been neglecting while talking about nursing.

Matt instinctively tried to pass the pipe to me again before remembering on his own that I didn’t smoke. I was busy trying to think of something to ask to move the conversation away from myself or my interests so that I wouldn’t talk too much, when Ray came back with just the one beer for me. I thanked him and smiled all in one action and was pleased with myself for getting it right this time.

Matt held the pipe out to Ray who took it and smoked. They passed it back and forth between each other while the three of us talked. As a rhythm settled in, it became easier to get my part right. I remembered my follow up questions, my facial expressions. I adequately edited down my responses to key points to avoid running on. I began to swell with pride at how well I was doing. Even Ray no longer seemed irritated.

Toward the end of my third beer, I prepared my excuse about the dog. After delivering it, Ray said, “Have a cigarette with me first before you go.” I agreed to this compromise. It was manageable. I followed him out to the backyard. He took two cigarettes out of his pack, stuck one in his mouth and handed the other to me. He lit his and then moved closer to me to light mine. I would have preferred to light my own. The hand-eye coordination was easier when it was both my eyes and my hands rather than my eyes and his hands. Eventually, though, the tip of the cigarette had a satisfactory cherry and he pocketed the lighter.

“Easy Lei,” he said and chuckled to himself.

“Nobody really calls me that anymore,” I said.

“No?” He hadn’t moved away after lighting my cigarette. I didn’t like the closeness, as if an ionosphere orbited him and was brushing up against my own. You could feel it but you couldn’t quite feel it. It made my skin crawl. I stepped back out of his ionosphere.

“You know, I had a bit of a crush on you in school,” he said. I searched for something to say to that. It was hard to find responses when they weren’t questions. He stepped closer, wrapping his sphere back around me. “But you always had this stand-offish vibe. Made me too scared to ask you out.” I nodded. People said that about me a lot. I’ve spent hours in front of mirrors trying to figure out what about my expression or posture looked “stand-offish” and whatever it is, I can’t see it or else I’m not doing it in the mirror and it only happens when other people are around, in which case, I’ll never be able to see it. 

He took a long drag off his cigarette and exhaled into my face. I frowned impulsively and he laughed. “You’re just the same as you were in high school,” he said, “Just as hot, too.” He continued. “Only now, I’m not intimidated by it.”

I knew that I’d been quiet too long but he just kept going on and he wasn’t phrasing anything as questions, and he was standing so close that it was hard to think of a suitable response. Suddenly, he backed away. He sat down on a chair near us on the porch. “Take a seat.” He said.

“Where?” I asked. There was only one chair and he was in it.

He smiled and then shot a hand out, squeezing my thigh. “You can sit here with me.” He said and started pulling hard at my thigh to bring me closer to him.

Had I invited this? I don’t remember flirting, but I think sometimes I get my polite facial expressions wrong and they read as suggestive—or else, men just tend to assume politeness is an invitation. Either way, this was a misunderstanding and I was trying to work out a nice way to say so when Ray’s other hand clutched my hip and pulled my whole body down onto his lap. I fell awkwardly onto him and as I tried to pull myself back up, he rearranged me so that I was straddling him. 

“I’ve got to go.” I said. “The dog’s going to shit on the carpet.” I tried to stand up but he had a hand pressed so firmly on top of my thigh that I couldn’t get up. His other hand was massaging my breast and his tongue was stuck in my ear. The tongue was the worst of it, soft and wet like a slug inching toward my brain.

“I can’t.” I said. What had I said? What face did I make? Was there some subtext to the offer of a cigarette that I hadn’t picked up on? I pulled myself with all my strength but my body didn’t budge. He had me pinned to him.

“Uh, Ray.” A voice said from a few feet away. Matt had come out to the back porch. I looked at him, hoping that my face said I didn’t want to be there. “Leilani, are you okay?” Matt seemed uncertain what to do. I tried again to wiggle free. “Ray, stop.” I said.

“Ray, I don’t think she’s into it.” Matt said. “I think you need to stop.”

“For fuck’s sake, stop.” I said. I bent and twisted and arched, weaving my body through and away from his arms until I could get my elbow angled in front of his face and then I slammed it, hard as I could, into his eye. Ray instinctively clutched at his face with one hand. I used this opportunity to elbow him again in the other eye. He grunted. It wasn’t enough to really hurt him but enough for the hand that remained on my thigh to let up just enough that I could pull away. I clattered to the ground from the force of my attempt to break free and then scrambled toward the door behind Matt. Inside, I picked myself up and left without a word.

*​*​*​*​*

As soon as I opened the front door of the house I was watching, I stepped into a pile of dog shit that had been deposited in the entry way. The dog ran up, wagging his tail and jumping up and down in his own mess in frantic delight at my return. He was going to track it all over the house. “Shit.” I said and closed the door without going inside. I sat down on the top step of the front porch, lit a cigarette, and pulled out my phone to google, “How to remove dog shit from carpeting.”

In the middle of my research, a Facebook message bubble pops up. It’s Ray.

“I don’t appreciate you acting weird tonight,” it says. “You made me out to be the bad guy when I know you knew full well what was going on.” I began scraping my shoe against the edge of a lower step to try and get the shit off because the smell of it had begun wafting up. 

“I would have treated you like a queen,” the message continued. “But instead you always chose assholes who treated you like shit.” I inhaled the last drag of the cigarette. “Sorry, but I don’t think we can be friends anymore.” The message concluded. I stubbed the cigarette out in the dog shit that had transferred from the sole of my shoe onto the porch step and headed inside to start cleaning the carpet.