Kian Burbank

Oliver & Naomi

1. 

He meets her for the first time again in Blue Cloud, an underground jazz bar in Lower Manhattan, flanked by the storefronts of an empty Duane Reade and a twenty-four hour deli glowing dingily in the corner. The bar is situated under one of those converted industrial buildings, housing a service elevator lifting men in different stages of disrepair to God-knows-where. Inside the bar, she is singing on stage. ‘That I’d be playing solitaire,’ she sings to the tune of It Never Entered My Mind, ‘uneasy in my easy chair’; then, she walks to the edge of the stage, an arm extended from the strap of her heavyset, starburst-skinned Gibson, addressing the air in front of her — when they look at one another, openly. Briefly, and with a perceptible interest, she squints her eyes, tilts her head.

Gentle blue light from the overhead fixtures haloes and limns her angular face. She is draped in a white silk slip, and her dark russet hair — wound around her ears — glints sharply in the undersea color of the bar. Oliver feels embarrassed in the scrutiny, wearing only a white t-shirt and pair of blue jeans, but the audience is more than diverse enough to allow for it.

“Oliver?” She asks afterward. Their set ended on an upbeat Brazilian MPB tune; Ed Motta’s Dondi. 

“Hi,” he says, “thought I’d recognized you.”

She holsters her hands on her hips, elbows jutted out, and shakes her head, unable to contain a smile. “Will you look at that?”

“I haven’t seen anyone emulate David T. Walker’s solo that well before.” Oliver grins.

“You, of all people, should know I was gonna kill it.” The woman says, “It’s Naomi now.”

“Or so I’ve heard. Naomi.” Oliver repeats, shaking her hand.

Before they ascend for her cigarette break, Naomi whisks her jean jacket from the hook backstage, and exchanges some brief words with Yvonne Galloway, the towheaded bartender serving chardonnay at $11 a glass. Then, she buttons her jacket, and leads them upstairs. Outside, exhaust whips their faces, and the service elevator slinks down in that guttural, fibrous sound of a machine pushed to its limits, thudding as it hits the ground and opens its metal criss-cross gates. 

“You play here now?” He asks, helping her light her cigarette. They’re leaning against the exposed brick walls beside the deli.

She nods and gives him an appreciative look. “Yeah. Every Friday. My band, Midnight Bureau, we’ve only started a couple months ago.”

“Sofia tells me you’re still studying at Tisch.”

“Mhm. Got a year left to go.” Naomi turns to him at quarter-profile. “You still talk to her?”

“Sometimes. Her boyfriend plays here too.” Oliver says, flapping a dismissive hand in the air. “I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen you once in all these years.”

“Figures.” She shrugs amusedly. “Are you still in Juilliard?”

He nods. “Taking a bit of a gap year to do some work, take commissions.”

They ditch the bar after she plays a few more songs, Laufey’s I Wish You Love to appeal to the young crowd, and Rose Royce’s Wishing on a Star that sounded like Midnight Bureau borrowed heavily from Maysa Leak’s arrangement of the song.

The twenty-four hour deli opens to a little jingle when they make their pit-stop there, immediately making a beeline to the rows of wall-chillers in the back. In the white light the freezers diffuse, Oliver and Naomi exchange long, open glances at one another. Oliver’s eyes crinkle warmly at the sight of her — at how much has changed, but also how much has endured in the years since: the warm almond-shade of her tan skin, how her face — gleaming rosy and pink as their stares linger a few seconds too long — is constellated with the same deep, tawny freckles; Oliver remembers the pattern, ribbony specks rippling from cheek to cheek, like fireworks cracking in the sky. She looks up at him and decides to survey him all the same. Soft brown curls pirouette around his cheeks, and he still has the same peaky nose, sharp blue eyes. She snorts in the silence, and walks to the counter with her can of beer.

On the way to Central Park, they reminisce about Pattaya. At the 6 line in the subway, an indie-pop band is playing music after the turnstiles; two women take turns singing the catchy riff, backed by a man strumming an acoustic guitar. The other man keeping the beat with a conga is wearing a cherry-red tank top that says ‘Pop Music is Unapologetically Queer’. 

Oliver is prattling on about the ‘stupid shit’ they used to get up to, bringing into her mind snapshots of all the petty bedeviling they did in school-trips. One particular night, they stood before a piercing studio at Walking Street, watched a woman getting her ears pierced from outside, and thought ‘that looks easy enough’ — so in the hotel bathroom, Maddie coils her hands around Naomi’s wrists, Oliver steers her by the shoulder and sits her on the thick lip of the bathtub, and Jamie dips the thumbtack in alcohol, the way they all saw it happen in the studio, before piercing it through her earlobe. They remember the incident differently. She remembers things going slightly awry, the iron-searing pain on her left ear, and then herself feeling faint as they all took turns depressing wads of toilet paper on her ear to stop the bleeding. Oliver remembers her looking confused, blood dribbling down her ear and soaking through her t-shirt, red soaking the stainless white. He remembers that, in the ensuing chaos, she looked at peace, safe and tranquil.

Under the lamp, on a bench in Central Park, their conversation comes to a halt when Naomi tamps her face into her palm, muffling a groan as she cringes at the memory.

“We had a lot of fun.” He smiles absently.

“You’re using fun very liberally here.” She finally looks up at him.

Silence descends between them. In the light of the street-lamp craned above them, Naomi is glaringly present, no longer the shadow, the whirlpool of uncertainty that’s eluded him for the years since.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “that I didn’t think to tell you about it.”

“I would have absolutely supported you.”

Naomi raises an eyebrow.

“And I wouldn’t have judged you at all.” He says, “If you told me then, if you told me now, no difference.”

“But you would have told your parents. And then they would have probably told mine.” She sighs, prying open her cigarette pack. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Now they know anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

Her vision begins to unsettle, objects before her eyes—the tall shrubs rustling amidst the copse of trees, the squirrel hurtling down the tree bark as it pockets acorn in its hands, the couple twinning with their black sweaters and cream-toned pants — all beginning to take an amorphous, swirly form.

“How’s Amanda?”

“In Cambridge, doing well,” says Oliver, “we’re all going home around Christmas, so I’ll get to see her soon.” 

“Home?”

“Indonesia.” He turns towards her. “You haven’t been in a while?”

“No, no. Not in a few years.” Naomi shakes her head. The image of her family develops a heartbeat in her mind, pulsing in and out, and they hardly make an effort to escape. Noticing her anxiety, Oliver forges on about his family instead. Philippe, his French father, is on holiday with his Indonesian mother, Zahra—the both of them displayed through Oliver’s phone screen as they took a selfie ascending the confusing weft of fluorescent, painted houses in a village in Busan. Naomi leans in to see the photo on his phone, and remarks, “that looks like Santorini.”

“Right?” He says. Eventually, the conversation peters out quietly, and her ear canals begin to ring. She explains her tinnitus as cursorily as possible, and asks if they could play music from his phone. Instead, he hands her one of his two earphones, and connects the long frayed cable to an adaptor holding two aux sockets. 

“You’re romantic.” Naomi quips. “How long did you wait to find someone to do this with?”

Oliver laughs and says, “For as long as I’ve waited for you.” 

2. 

A month later, they kiss one another for the first time. It’s after one of her shows, ‘Neo-soul night’ at a bar right off Chelsea Piers, and they were singing Jamie Cullum’s Mind Trick to end the set, the crowd na-na-na’ing along with the bridge. Midnight Bureau’s keyboardist, Wayne Yeoman, had a gig at Dizzy’s Club every Saturday, which meant she needed a replacement. For tonight, it was Oliver playing the keys, sharing musical camaraderie with Naomi’s bandmates.

Approaching midnight, they stumble in the cracked, dim stairway of her brownstone, and are unable to get their hands off each other. Naomi pushes his chest gently in their struggle upstairs, and asks, are you sure about this? Oliver kisses her cheek and says he’s never been more sure. In the bedroom, she sits him down on the mattress, and unzips his jeans, his legs dangling over the end of the bed. Oliver’s fingers scuff the paisley sheets anxiously. In the silence, he tries to be funny and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been good at this.”

She asks, “At what?”

“Sex.”

Naomi cracks a thoughtful, pensive smile, then kisses him sporadically, charting a long path down his body — from his bared chest, to his abdomen and middle, until she takes him by the mouth. This goes on for a few seconds before she pulls away, and says:

“I always tell guys to adopt a feminist perspective.” She clicks her tongue. “And it works every time.” 

They don’t address this until much later on. He’s kneading her shoulders down in place, admiring her bird-chested beauty from above. Then he leans into her, and moans right in her ear, the tickle of his breath barely lifting the fuzz off her neck.

“Fuck,” says Oliver, “does it not feel like I’m doing that?”

She shoots him a brief, quizzical look.

“Adopting a feminist perspective.” 

Naomi laughs, but it’s a non-condescending laugh.

“It’s sound advice.” He tilts his head, grinning. There is a melodic quality to his voice that arouses Naomi.

“Well,” she says, “then that’s up to you. Is this feminist enough for you, Oliver?”

“It is.” He says, “It’s been feminine forever.”

Naomi hums in an ironic tone. “Since last month?”

“Since school. The day I met you.”

They stop when Naomi pulls away suddenly. He leans out immediately, trying to catch his breath. She blinks for a moment, and then adjusts her forearms to prop herself halfway up.

“Do you really mean that?”

“If I knew you felt a certain way about me back then I would have made a move.” Oliver thumbs the contours of her face and nose, and her elfin chin–and smiles. “You’re a beautiful woman, Naomi, and that’s never changed. That’s as feminist as it gets for me.” 

She cups his face back, and her breath hitches. “Oh, Oliver.”

They lose themselves in one another’s eyes, ruefully at first, but a mirthful smile takes over Naomi anyway, and he shares her laugh. The two of them move with each other, bodies cresting and sinking, aching for more; Oliver feels her hard and drawn taut against his chest, almost-quivering. He twines his fingers playfully on her straight, flat-ironed hair, flaring out sharply against her clavicle.

After they finish, she winds herself into the crook of his body, kisses him deeply, and it is cathartic. He has tasted himself on other lips before, but on hers, it tastes much more like home.

3.

Amanda greets her at the outdoors foyer of the lavish resort the family booked in Bali, flashing a sharp-toothed smile at their arrival. Naomi, she beams, springing into her arms; it’s the first time she’s ever uttered her name. Oliver wheels Naomi’s chrome-coated luggage to the lobby and says sure, sure, I’m not here. Amanda pulls back a bit to raise her middle finger and stick her tongue out at him, Naomi laughing genially at the exchange between the two siblings.

“I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us.” Amanda says, turning back to her.

“Believe me,” says Oliver, “I had to hard-sell it to her.”

“The prospect of seeing you again made it a whole lot easier.” Naomi leans out of their embrace.

“Oh, you.” Amanda says. Their parents, Philippe and Zahra, alight the portly buggy-car arriving just before the lobby, and give Naomi their own greetings. Zahra is wearing a low-cut red dress, and Philippe is in his boring starfish-printed beach shorts. Naomi tamps her forehead down on the back side of Zahra’s palm and calls her tante — to which Philippe makes a sardonic show of asking why she didn’t give him the honor of being called ‘om’; they all laugh at the exchange, Naomi’s ears flaring red.

The five of them retreat to their villas shortly afterward; Philippe and Zahra take the adjacent villa, leaving the three of them to take the two-bedroom villa with a view of the ocean, sprawled out before a swimming pool. Amanda settles in the west wing of their shared villa, and the both of them unpack their luggages in the east wing. 

They spend their day on the beach. Naomi wears a skin-tight one-piece swimsuit throughout the day, and sun-bathes beside Amanda, who’s reading a book — John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality. Naomi is on page 174 of Blood Meridian. Before them, the waves lightly brush the coast, leaving behind a gentle breeze, the air allowing the scent of suntan lotion and Bintang beer to pass through. Amanda’s pale chestnut-brown hair tousles against the wind, and her light skin looks gilded in the setting sunlight.

“What is it about?” She asks. 

Amanda darts a look at her book, before giving Naomi her full attention. 

“Oh, it’s required reading for one of my classes. I’m focusing on gender in religion.” She smiles, waving the book in the air. “John Boswell, the author, was a Roman Catholic and scholar. He was also homosexual, and remained with his longtime partner of twenty years before they were eventually buried together.” 

Naomi smiles, tilting her head. “That’s unexpectedly sweet.” 

Amanda tilts her head, a brief flicker of doubt passing through her face. Then she asks, “Do you pray?” 

Naomi’s forehead crinkles deeply as she lingers on the question. “Pray?”

“Yeah.” She takes a deep wary breath, before shaking her head in an act of apparent contrition. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be intrusive.”

“No, that’s okay.” Naomi reassures, sitting up as well. She takes a moment to answer. “I personally don’t.”

Amanda darts a quick look at the shoreline. Sunset slants over the rich sand before them, where Philippe and Oliver have joined a game of beach volley. 

“The book makes the argument that early Christianity was more tolerant of homosexuality, as well as other expressions of queerness. It wasn’t always like this.” Amanda says, “I think queer people don’t have to accept this prevalent, nonsensical concept of a Church that excludes and condemns queerness. Even if that’s a concept we have to come face-to-face with everyday.” 

Naomi notices the Freudian slip.

“There’s queerness everywhere — you can make an analogy that it’s sort of like ancient Christian celibacy.”

When Zahra asks about her time in Cambridge at dinner, Amanda eschews any conversation of what her term paper is about, refusing to budge on the matter. Instead, they badger Oliver and Naomi on their music. The sea is dark and dimly lit as they sit in the Thai restaurant nestled into the tall cliff overlooking the beach.

“Oliver tells us you’ve been writing your own songs.” Zahra beams.

“Oh,” Naomi says, “it’s just a thing I do on the side. Nothing serious.”

Philippe interjects by pointing noncommittally at Oliver, and saying, “You should try and produce her work. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I want to.” Oliver says, snapping a piece of kerupuk cracker in half after dipping it gently in a small clay cup of sambal sauce. “She’s the one procrastinating.”

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready, okay? How about that?” Naomi relents. They share a curt glance at one another, Oliver wearing somewhat of a sly, impish grin, bobbing his head in mock indignation. Naomi snorts at the display.

They revert to Bahasa Indonesia for a moment when Zahra asks, “How are your parents, Naomi?” Oliver narrows his eyes at his mother, who gives him an apologetic look. Naomi scoffs and flaps her hand in the air to dismiss Oliver, giving Zahra her full attention.

“I think they’re doing very well. I still keep in touch with Gita. She makes sure all is good with them, keeps me updated and all, although I think that to some degree — ” she makes a sheepish, sarcastic smile, raising her hands in surrender, “ — she shares their disapproval at how things have turned out.”

Oliver raises his hand in a thumbs-down motion, saying boo, tomatoes tomatoes. Naomi sheathes her ensuing smile and laughter under the cover of her palm, and they catch each other’s eyes for a moment. She doesn’t know that he hasn’t been able to take her off his mind, doesn’t know that at this exact moment, he’s thinking she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid his eyes on. This irritates Oliver greatly, that she’ll never see herself through his eyes. Naomi adjusts the neck strap of her corn-yellow crochet dress and returns to the conversation

. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that with us.” Amanda smiles. “You’re wanted, here.” 

4.

The morning of that Friday in Bandung, Oliver wakes up to Naomi on the grand piano. She’s playing an original tune, alternating between a BbMaj9 and an Fmaj7. The pre-chorus takes on a different progression of its own, before returning to the same two chords for the chorus. Her voice is high and lilting, cruising gently through the melody of the verse, like velvet-soft petals pirouetting through the clear air. When she ends on the home-chord, Naomi looks up at him, and asks, so?

“Are you kidding me? It’s catchy, it’s moving. It’s beautiful.” He breathes. “Take that to the studio? Please?”

Naomi stares at her feet, smiling nervously. She looks up and eventually caves in. “Let’s do it.”

Oliver beams, and heaps her off the tufted piano stool into his arms, planting kisses everywhere across her face. Naomi laughs, saying get off of me, you!

“You’re gonna be big!” 

A bleary and jaded Amanda exits her room then, rubbing her under eyes, soft and puffy. “What are we celebrating?”

“Naomi’s song peaking at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.” Oliver says immediately.

“Afraid we’re a tad bit too early for that.” Naomi snorts.

Amanda brings an entirely separate topic when she complains and says, “I’m hungry.”

Oliver pulls away from their embrace. “Should I order us something?” 

“No.” Amanda says, “Cook us ceplok telor or something. In the meantime Naomi, you have to show me what I’ve been missing out on.”

Oliver gives a mock salute to the both of them and says, “On it ladies.” He disappears into the kitchen shortly afterward. Their family home is filled with life and revelry in the day throughout, music and laughter thronging through the hall-runners, Philippe and Zahra dancing delicately, softly on the shearling rug of the living room as Naomi plays an old Indonesian pop song on the piano. Amanda is sprawled on the upholstered couch with her fingers tucked between the last remaining pages of John Boswell, and Oliver prepares the table, setting their floral-patterned plates across the white doily. The house, which Zahra’s family has owned since the 80s, smells like a proper, loving home.

In the evening, they head to an underground bar in Jalan Braga, where a live jazz band is manning the small, cramped stage. Oliver and Naomi take the easternmost bar-table, and order two pints of vodka tonic. Naomi looks divine under the dim overheads, wearing a see-through lavender-purple top, under which her white ribbed tank-top is visible. Oliver is wearing a black denim jacket buttoned almost the whole way through. The band is segueing from a standard to Lee Ritenour’s Is It You. In the same vein of Ritenour asking his lady friend if it truly is her, Oliver asks what they are. Naomi flinches at the question, and coils loose locks of her hair behind her ear, a rush of anxiety and cold gripping her from the neck-up. Tilting her head, she says, “This conversation, now?”

“What better time to ask myself if it’s you than now?” Oliver throws a brief glance at the band — the singer repeating, is it you?

Naomi fills her lungs to steady herself. “Well, I enjoy this. Whatever we are.” 

“I can tell.” He props his face on his hand, reveling in her reticence. In sight of him finding amusement at this, Naomi swats his arm with her hand, and Oliver says ow, okay.

“You start the conversation, then.”

Oliver chuckles with light abandon. He holds her hands on the beermat, and says, “I think we should make it official.”

Naomi blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah, to hell with it.” Oliver says, “Oliver and Naomi, boyfriend and girlfriend. Versus the entire world. We’d be unstoppable.”

“Well, it’s an enticing idea, for sure. I’m not saying no.” Naomi says, “But jumping the gun isn’t exactly my thing, and you have a lot to think about.”

“Like what?”

She narrows her eyes at him, tilting her head. “Your family.”

“I don’t think they mind.”

Her sights fall on their hands.

“Hey,” says Oliver, trying to find her eyes, “I’m serious.”

“I know,” says Naomi, “It’s just, I don’t do well with families. You know this. And I don’t mean to make this about mine, but I’ve been a wave of question marks for most of my life, even before I started hormones. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with all of this. I don’t want any of that barreling your way.” 

Oliver makes a face like he just tasted something sour. “You really believe this is gonna hurt us?”

“Oliver, we’re in Indonesia. We’re Indonesians.” She says exasperatedly, “I feel like there’s a target behind my back every second I walk here. I can’t even feel safe in my own home. Can’t feel safe in New York. Dad threatened to kill me the same week he went to umrah. Aren’t we all supposed to be kind and respectful?” 

They linger on this point in a brief moment of silence, Naomi catching her breath as she frowns ruefully.

“I want you guys to like me. I want to let go for once, fall on my back and be caught.” She sighs. “And I don’t want that to change.” 

Oliver squeezes her hands, and a tingling desire to pull him in and coalesce almost overtakes her. He tucks her hair behind her ear, and nudges her chin upward so they look at one another, and she sees his unwavering, cornflower-blue eyes. 

“I don’t care what comes our way. They don’t. I don’t. I want it all.” Oliver says, “I get to date my best friend, who’s also my high school sweetheart, now? I mean — ” 

He cocks his head up to look at the small interior of the bar, lined with men and women in their separate intimate bubbles of conversation. “Fuck, now that I think about it what’s the term for it? Friends to lovers? How do they market books on TikTok now?”

Naomi bites her lip. “I believe in our case, it’s friends to strangers to friends to lovers.”

“Yeah, well that. I want to be with my best friend everyday.” Oliver returns to her gaze, shrugging. “So what if there’s baggage cannoning our way at top speed? We can take it head on.”

“What if there’s a literal baggage of suitcases cannoning your way at top speed?” 

Oliver shrugs. “A few broken bones wouldn’t ever stop me from getting to you.”

“That sounds like a threat.” Naomi chuckles.

He whispers, “Watch out, then.”

Naomi takes the ensuing peace to watch the band end their set to go for a cigarette break. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend.” Naomi says, “And — ”

He kisses her lips before she could continue. Naomi blinks when he pulls away and says, “You were saying?”

The overhead speakers begin to play Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out, and Naomi perks up to remark, “Oh they’re playing the Chic mix of the song.”

“The what mix?”

“The Chic mix. Diana practically threw out the mix Rodgers came up with for the song.” Says Naomi, “Says that she thinks it sounds too much like Chic. So, she took it to Motown. That’s the one we hear everywhere. Listen, you hear the added bar there? And the horns in the verse? How full and dense and jubilant it all sounds? This is the original Chic mix!”

“You’re kidding.” Oliver says in disbelief, his mouth gaped open as he listens closely.

They argue on this point a little further. Naomi makes a point to say she prefers the Motown mix, that the instruments don’t drown and muddle her voice out as much. She jokes that the best thing Rodgers has done so far in his illustrious career is Le Sserafim’s UNFORGIVEN. Oliver finds this statement exceedingly blasphemous. He prefers Chic all the way through, but when the jazz band ascends the stage and continues their set, they forget the conversation altogether.