Page 14 of Riesling with My Roommate

In the early evenings, Sara spends at least an hour cooking. If she thinks I’m out of earshot, she plays music, gentle guitar-heavy songs with poetic lyrics. She dines outside.

After she’s gone to her room for the night, usually around eight or nine, the only signs of her are the neat stack of her stuff in the kitchen and the surplus of fresh produce in the fridge.

I know she’s trying to be a good roommate, but she’s almost too perfect at it.

That night, I draw a rabbit doing a yoga pose—the one that has the bunny’s legs stretched out behind it and the front legs pushing off the ground. Downward dog? I don’t know the fucking names of the poses.

Saturday, when I come out of my wing in the afternoon, the note reads:

So I’m cute and fluffy?

Is that flirting? The bunny is going to flirt with the big bad wolf?

Even a few days in, I know Sara is ridiculously wholesome. We have nothing in common. If she knew the real me, the one the rest of the world knows, she wouldn’t flirt with me. She’d know I’m not the kind of guy for her.

I used to attract a certain kind of woman: dark clothes, heavy makeup, piercings. But since the band took off, it seems like all kinds of women are interested in me.

But Sara doesn’t want to trade mushrooms for a roommate who makes her uncomfortable.

Sara is forbidden fruit. A very healthy one.

A lyric pops into my head, and I freeze, like if I scare it, it’ll disappear. My notepad is still on the kitchen counter, so I grab it and the pen. Instead of drawing a response to Sara’s note, I write a line down. It’s a riff on the big bad wolf motif, innocent victim, blood-red imagery—pomegranates? That takes me down a rabbit hole of a Persephone-Hades concept, and I walk on autopilot back to my studio before I lose the inspiration.

I forget to draw something for Sara, and the next day the note is utilitarian:

Need anything from the store?

Part of me is chastened, but the rest of me—a majority of me—just doesn’t fucking care because I may have written something worthwhile yesterday and halle-fucking-lelluh.

I draw a pizza, and when I wake up the next day and have my coffee and smoke, Sara’s not in the house and the car is gone from the driveway.

That night, there’s no note, but the freezer is full of the brand of frozen pizzas I like, so I write:

How much do I owe you?

There’s no response the next day, and I worry that I’ve insulted her. That might be projecting my own hurt. I thought our notes were funny, but maybe I insulted Sara with the rabbit thing.

This is why you don’t flirt with your roommate,I remind myself.You get butt-hurt over stupid shit.

I wake up on Wednesday extra grouchy. When I come into the great room, Sara’s laptop sits on the table, but she’s not there. Movement catches my eye, and I see her out on the back deck, pacing. She’s hunched over, holding her phone to one side of her head and the other hand covering the opposite ear as if she’s trying to hear someone in a crowded room.

I step out, concerned. Sara whirls around, and my heart plummets when I see that she’s got tears in her eyes. She’s not crying yet, but it’s incoming.

“I sent you the pictures,” she says. She’s quiet for a moment, listening, brows drawn together in concentration. “I can’t understand you.”

I gesture at the phone, and she says, “Hold on,” to whoever she’s talking to. Pressing the phone to her chest, she explains. “It’s that landlord. I’m trying to get my money back, but I can’t . . .”

“That fucker still pretending not to speak English? Give me the phone,” I say.

She lifts it to her ear. “Mr. Leitz? Hello? Argh! He hung up on me.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket. “What’s the number?”

Sara reads the digits out, and I dial.

“Hallo?” a gruff voice answers.

I speak in German. “I’m calling on behalf of Sara Wallace. You owe her the rent and deposit she paid on the apartment.”

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