“Mm?” Lee's eyes are firmly shut, body limp. She tends to do that when he touches her hair like that. It's relaxing, better when he brushes it for her. “Mm-hmm.”
She barely remembers that, actually. He'd asked a lot of questions. That's what Lee remembers most, the constant talking, and her English not quite good enough to entirely keep up, though she had tried. She remembers an impression more than the specifics: a certain violent intensity, but underneath that, the kind of completely un-selfconscious earnestness you only come across a handful of times in your life. The complete opposite of all her pretentious artist friends, and he'd talked to her like he wasn't assuming she was stupid, either. So she'd let him walk her home and said he could come around sometime if he wanted.
But, yes, he would have asked, and she still doesn't know how to answer that question really. It must be a no, because she's not only interested in men and she's not sure she counts as one anyway. It's strange, in California she's hardly thought about it at all — it's not just how she's perceived but how she perceives herself, and in New York every outfit is a strategic decision to specifically put something on that may not necessarily feel correct at the time, like putting on a costume. She has a lot of friends like that, for whom dressing as a woman is part of an alter-ego they can put away and set aside, but for Lee, and people like her, it's not a persona. In New York she often feels like she's being forced to wear a costume.
— whatever it is is part of her in a way that she can't compartmentalise or set aside, it's something she has to confront every time looks at herself naked. No matter who Lee sees, she's going to be some kind of queer, and pretending to be a full-time woman in New York is leagues better than being a miserable full-time man in Tel Aviv. She's never thought Michael was deliberately avoiding the subject. It's not like she's chomping at the bit to talk about it much either.
She doesn't have any answers.
She turns her head into his chest, breathing in sweat and cotton and the strong lingering medicinal scent of the sunscreen that has repeatedly failed to do its job. “Mmf,” she repeats for very important emphasis.