The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian Page A

department store?”
    Hazel sighed. “My ex-boyfriend. He’s having a hard time making the transition.”
    â€œHmm,” Brigitte said.
    â€œI’m not,” Hazel assured her.
    â€œOh,” Brigitte said. “That’s good.”
    Hazel smiled. She looked out the window at the tin shed, whose silver sides were reflecting moonlight. “Is Mary Louise safe with him?” she asked.
    â€œAbsolutely,” Brigitte said.
    â€œYou know him from the film program?”
    Brigitte nodded. “He introduced me to Shirley Mayer.”
    â€œWho’s she?” Hazel asked, and Brigitte told her about how Shirley Mayer wore jackets instead of bras, how she had been persecuted and would now get to keep her job forever.
    â€œBut she shouldn’t have done that,” Hazel said.
    â€œDone what?” Brigitte asked.
    â€œShown you her breasts.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Hazel shrugged. She said, “I shouldn’t have touched your shoulders that day in the department store, either.”
    â€œOh,” Brigitte said, gravely disappointed.
    â€œOr maybe I should have,” Hazel said. “I don’t know.”
    â€œIt seemed fine to me,” Brigitte said.
    â€œYou’re supposed to feel safe in a dressing room.”
    â€œI did feel safe.”
    â€œYou kept closing your eyes.”
    â€œI was safe,” Brigitte insisted.
    â€œIt’s just that you seem sort of impressionable.”
    â€œI’m thirty, for godssakes,” Brigitte told her. “I’m a nontraditional student.”
    Hazel nodded. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œShirley Mayer taught me who I am.”
    â€œSo you’re in love with her?”
    â€œI want to take care of her,” Brigitte corrected.
    â€œI see,” Hazel said. She stood up then and stretched her arms.
    Brigitte stood up, too. “Don’t leave yet,” she said.
    Hazel laughed. She moved toward Brigitte, tugged on the waistband of her jeans, and asked for a tour of the house.
    In the bedroom they kissed for a long time, first softly, politely—as if they were related—then more invasively. They were still standing after twenty minutes or so when Hazel complained of the heat and took off Brigitte’s shirt. Underneath was the plain white bra she had sold Brigitte a couple of months earlier, which she quickly pushed up instead of removing, pleasing Brigitte with her urgency.
    â€œDo you like it like this?” Hazel asked, taking off her own shirt now. “Without the dressing room?” She wore one of the violet lace bras from the department store, the kind that lifted little breasts. She took that off, too, and reached down to unbutton her jeans. “Do you like it without Shirley Mayer?” she whispered.
    â€œYes,” Brigitte said. She moved closer to Hazel now—much, much closer—and suddenly found herself possessed of a profound appreciation for moisture and fragrance, a refined sense of geography as it applied to those areas of the body women shared. And she felt, from Hazel’s reactions, that she had a knack for this sort of thing. For the first time in her life the generosity aspect of sex had ceased to feel like work to her. She thought she might go on forever.
    When at last Hazel insisted it was her turn to be generous, Brigitte lay back tentatively, but then asked Hazel to stop. It wasn’t because what Hazel was doing felt like nothing, she tried to explain, but rather, it was too much of something. The right thing. That which would have to be worked slowly into her system so as to trick her into thinking it had been there all along, as opposed to overwhelming her with the torrid fact of its long, unwarranted absence.

    In the morning Brigitte and Hazel were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and occasionally reaching inside each other’s shirts, when Raoul wandered in from the backyard. “Where’s Mary