Citi Bank Nicole Sellew
Women who accept things from men and don’t sleep with them are déclassé, says Penelope.
Déclassé, I say. That’s so right.
I look out the window. Everything shimmers in the rain. It’s December, but too warm for snow. We’ve made it over the bridge, and now we are somewhere else.
I’m nervous, Penelope says, blinking at me. The blue glitter on her eyelids is the same glitter they use in Euphoria. She says this whenever anyone compliments her. `
Don’t be nervous, I say. You’re beautiful.
We’re beautiful.
I look in the rear-view mirror. When I see myself reflected there, with Penelope, I really do feel beautiful. The blue glitter makes us both look like we’re crying.
~
The boys look out of place at the bar. And they aren’t boys. Alan was in a Taylor Swift music video before Taylor Swift was uncool, before I was even in middle school. He met Penelope when she was bent over a bar downtown, ordering a drink. Before she got sober. Your ass looks perfect in those jeans, he said to her. Or at least that’s what she told me.
We went to see a play in Connecticut, Alan says.
A musical, says Chris.
Penelope flutters her hands by her collarbone, adjusting her necklace, drawing attention to the curve of her throat. She has a collarbone so lovely that it doesn’t look real. It looks like a sculpture; only because it’s attached to her body do I know that it’s hers.
It was about corn, says Chris.
Corn, like… the food?
Yes.
I watch Chris register my existence.
Was it good? asks Penelope. She widens her eyes. I would have guessed that she was feigning interest, but the only way I can distinguish between her pretend interest and her real interest is when she tells me later, behind people’s backs, what she was really thinking.
Do you guys want drinks? asks Alan. He is always promising to cast Penelope in something. I imagine her in the play about corn, wearing a milkmaid dress and frowning at a distant horizon.
Yes, says Penelope.
What’s your sign? Chris asks me.
Cancer.
I’m a Capricorn! says Penelope. That’s why we get along so well. She puts a hand on my shoulder and digs her nails in. I like that feeling. I imagine her nails puncturing my skin, drawing blood, tethering me to her in this physical way.
Actually, says Chris, Cancers and Caps famously can’t stand each other.
I’m an actor, says Penelope. So I feel everything very intensely.
I’m an actor, says Chris. He doesn’t say anything about the intensity of his feelings.
Okay, says Alan. I have a million-dollar idea.
What is it?
A public bathroom, he said, but just for Citibank cardholders. And you swipe your Citibank card to get in.
That’s actually a genius idea, says Penelope.
Alan buys us drinks and defends the Western canon, Chris talks about Epstein, we all discuss the resurgence of Catholicism. Penelope tells the boys that I graduated from high school in 2023.
I like it when Penelope speaks for me. I wish, sometimes, that I could live inside her body, could experience the world the way she does: sparkling—literally sparkling, her body brushed with body glitter from a tub she keeps on her bedside table—the boys’ eyes following her.
Let’s have a cigarette, says Penelope. She grabs her cigarette case from her back pocket, then she grabs me. I am her little dog.
Outside, we immediately shrug off our coats. It is warm, at least sixty degrees, mist rising from the streets in pale sheets.
I don’t even know what the fuck is going on, Penelope says, lighting her cigarette. She takes a drag, then hands it to me. Or do you want your own?
Share, I say. And he loves you. He wants you. He pines for you; he yearns for you.
Penelope giggles. I give her back the cigarette and we walk halfway down the block. She stops in front of a shuttered storefront and props her foot on the metal grate. What are you going to do about Chris? she asks.
I shrug.
It could be cool to have sex with someone so much older, she says.
I think about being a kid at my parents’ Christmas parties, ogling the grown-ups through slats in the banister. Looking down the block, back toward the boys, I have the same feeling I had then. I’m still a child, eating tiny pigs in blankets from my parents’ ornate trays while adults in cocktail dresses and button-downs drink Prosecco. I don’t tell Penelope this. Instead, I dig my nails into her arm, the way she’d done earlier.
You’re okay, she says. Right?
I nod. Penelope is older than me, but I am a big girl, or at least I want to be. She lights another cigarette, takes one drag, then discards it, her heel grinding it into the glittering sidewalk.
Come on, she says.
The boys are hunched in the booth. From a distance, it is impossible to connect them with us. They are nothing like Penelope, or even me. They are old.
When I was younger, says Penelope, people used to think I had Tourette's.
The boys turn toward her, their bodies arcing.
That would make a great tight fifteen, says Chris. Misdiagnosed with Tourette’s.
We could go to another bar, says Alan. With music.
Yes, says Penelope. Yes!
Chris looks at me. I look at Penelope. We all stand up. The table littered with half-drunk Diet Cokes. My fingers sticky with aspartame. We edge out of the booth, my hips awkwardly bumping the table.
Sent from above, says Chris, making room for me to move past him.
I flinch.
Your shirt.
Oh, I say. It’s not mine. I gesture ahead, toward Penelope, who is already opening the door as she throws her head back to laugh at something Alan has whispered in her ear.
Outside, Outside, I offer Chris a cigarette. He accepts. Penelope and Alan walk ahead of us, their voices indistinguishable from each other. I light Chris’ cigarette for him.
Once I spent the night in that police station, Chris says, nodding at a brick building crusted with dying vines.
Penelope runs up to me, panting and glimmering. We’re leaving, she says.
Chris kicks at something on the ground.
Will you be okay?
I nod, glancing at Chris.
You can get home okay?
Yes, I say. Yeah.
Okay. Penelope is still breathless. Alan waits for her halfway down the block, in front of a bar with glowing windows. Love you, she says, and then she runs away.
What’s your plan? asks Chris.
I blink at him like a fish.
You’d be welcome to come over, he says. If you want.
Chris is an actor. Chris is a Cancer. Chris is from the Midwest. Chris met Alan in a Muay Thai class. Chris doesn’t believe in organized religion. Chris just got out of a long-term relationship with a woman he loved but did not want to have children with.
I listen and tug at the cross around my neck. I tug, I tug, and it pops off its chain.
Oh, I say, looking at the silver cross in my palm. It’s so small there, like it signifies nothing.
It doesn’t mean anything, says Chris.
It means Jesus.
No, he says. That it fell off.
~
We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, he says, in his bedroom. Can I give you head?
I blink up at him, big eyes like a doe, like a bug, like a baby.
Sex, at its best, is a way for someone to pay attention to me. But when Chris gives me head, I can tell he is just giving head. I am not sure if he finds me beautiful. Certainly not the way I find Penelope beautiful, with tender shock at the delicate fact of her existence.
I really want to make you come, he says.
I am overly aware of the sound of my own breath. I try not to think about anything, to empty myself out like a vessel, an offering to Chris. He starts to fuck me, but not all the way. He’s tentative. I can still hear the performative gasping of my own breath. I am still wearing Penelope’s shirt, but now it is crumpled awkwardly, caught on my chest. SENT FROM ABOVE in glimmering rhinestones, except now it reads as something else, something incomprehensible.
What do you like? he asks. What do you want?
I have no answer for him. I like what you like, I want what you want.
You’re being so coy, he says. I’m literally inside you.
I inhale, but say nothing.
I’m an actor, he says. I take direction well.
Please, I say. Please.
I haven’t had sex in a long time, he says. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, I reply. Reflexively.
This is good, he says, breathy, like Penelope when she ran up to me to tell me she was leaving. It’s strange—I’m not thinking about her and Alan, not at all.
I let Chris come inside me.
Wait, he says. I’ll be back.
He leaves and I am alone in his bedroom, the star chart and the post-it note on the wall that says BREATHE. I breathe.
Chris comes back with whiskey and a towel.
This is good whiskey, he says. Expensive whiskey.
He dabs at the inside of my thighs. Gentle, reverent.
He brings me out to the fire escape, where it’s quiet. Streetlight soft and orange. A garbage truck rumbles by. I drink Chris’ whiskey, but I don’t like it. I still have come on my legs, and the night air is cold. The weather has turned. Chris begins to talk, again, about his ex-girlfriend, his friends who have babies. My teeth chatter.
I should have just had kids with her, he says. I really loved her. Now she lives with someone else, in Colorado.
Chris puts his whiskey above my head, on the metal of the fire escape. He kisses me. He tastes like nail polish remover.
I’m sorry for telling you all this, he says.
I drum my fingers on his temple. It’s soft, like any temple. Doesn’t seem so old.
He brushes my hair out of my face and I look down into the street, where I can see everything very clearly. Earlier, Chris had asked for one of my sexual fantasies. Now, I think about telling Chris that it is my strongest fantasy to lie in a clean bed, alone, somewhere where the light is white and clear.
My face tingles where Chris touched it. Down in the street, a couple is walking. They hear us, or sense us, and they look up. They see us, but they don’t wave. In the beam of their joined gaze, I don’t feel real; I feel like a girl in a parable. The lesson, though, is not clear to me. I lean my head back on the fire escape, watching as the couple in the street watch me.
Do you remember my name?
I pretend to think about it. Chris, I say.
Nicole Sellew was born in 1999. She is the author of the novel Lover Girl and the forthcoming Victim. She lives in New York City.