This is the third story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here.
We’re on the rooftop with the boys. The boys are calling girls dogs, like, “She’s a dog, a total dog.” They don’t mean bitches. They just mean dogs. If they wanted to tell us that a girl was a bitch they would say, “She’s a bitch, a total bitch.” When the boys say something, they mean it. That’s why we like them. We’re not dogs. That’s why they like us. That’s why we’re on the rooftop.
The house has three floors. The ceilings are high. I know that if one of the boys fell off the rooftop he’d die. I know that none of the boys will fall off—not tonight, at least. Tonight, they’re not roughhousing or drinking tequila or annoying me. They’ve left the tennis rackets on the second floor, and they want to tell us about their trip to Greece. In Greece, the cigarettes are cheap. They filled an entire suitcase with little yellow boxes of George Karelias and Sons. They say we can smoke as many as we want. They’re proud. The cigarettes are so cheap. The boys are so proud. We laugh. Zoe laughs like Tinkerbell, the air whistling between the gaps in her teeth. She’s definitely not a dog.
I know we’re high up. I know our lives would be ruined if one of the boys fell, but tall plants are growing on the edge of the rooftop and I can’t see the cobblestones. If I could see that little cobblestoned street and the boys’ little Smart car, it would be easier to imagine them falling. It would be easier to remember that I’m in Paris. It would be easier to laugh like Zoe, like Tinkerbell, like a real girl, a girl who is not a dog.
I can’t see the Panthéon or the observatory or the park. I can see only the boys and their tanned stomachs and the scrapes they got from falling off the moped. We could be anywhere. We could be back in New York or near my house in L.A. or at some Airbnb in Berlin. I’d like to go to Berlin, to dance with the boys at Berghain, to eat knafeh with Zoe, to see the Reichstag or whatever, but the boys don’t want to go. Athens is the new Berlin. In Athens, the cigarettes are cheap. I thought Kraków was the new Berlin. The boys laugh and shake their heads. I can smell their wet-puppy-dog hair.
The sun is setting and the sky is so pink. Pink like the canopy bed I never got, like Kirby, like peonies, like the cheeks of a girl who the boys have just called a dog. I stand at the edge of the rooftop holding my phone just above the plants, trying to take a photo, trying not to drop it. The boys tell me that if I want something to post on Instagram they’ll text me a Greek sunset. I’m not going to post anything. It’s just for my grandma. They want me to show her a Greek sunset. All their grandmas are dead. In Greece, the sky gets even pinker, like, way pinker. The Greeks have four words for sunset. One for each of the boys. Tomorrow, they leave to work on their barbed-wire sculptures at some studio space in Normandy. Tonight, we’re in Paris, but all they want to talk about is Greece. They wish they could have stayed, stayed away from Paris, from Normandy, from Bennington and Bard, from the rooftop, from all this. Their moms have ovarian cancer. Their girlfriends are pregnant again. They’re sure to fail a class next semester. In Greece, none of that matters. In Greece, they sail on boats and make sketches of naked marble women and all sleep in one king-size bed. In Greece, they touch sculptures of gods. In Greece, they put their art-history education to good use. In Greece, they were happy. We want them to be happy. We let them tell us about the olives and the stray cats and the monks and the night they crashed the moped and the windmills and the dead dolphin and the economy. I want to ask them how many dogs they saw, but then again I don’t really care.
Dogs are girls who care. Girls who ask too many questions are dogs. Dogs comment on how high the ceilings are. Dogs want to know who this rooftop really belongs to. Dogs ask what your dads do for work. Dogs post sunsets on Instagram. Dogs throw up when they drink tequila. Dogs beg for games of rooftop tennis. Dogs ask where the Eiffel Tower is. Dogs wear too much perfume. Dogs stink. Dogs get mad when the boys kiss me or Zoe. Dogs don’t know how to keep it casual. Dogs whine. Dogs don’t want the boys to be happy. Dogs want to be held after sex, to be petted, to be taken care of. Dogs make a big deal when you get them pregnant. Dogs don’t know how to just take care of it while you’re with your boys in Greece. Dogs are too loud. Dogs get excited too fast. Dogs need you. Dogs just don’t get it. Dogs don’t get to hang out on the roof. It’s too high, they’re too wild, they might fall and then we’d have to catch them or something.
