Page 74 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“OK,” he said. “Why—I mean, what do you want?”

“Nothing,” Radha answered, with the guileless good cheer that makes her so
dear to me. “Just saying hello. This is Gepetta.”
He smiled at me, and kept knitting. At first, second, or even third glance it
was difficult to pin down what made him so much avoided. Rowan’s physical
effect—godlike jawline, long-lashed eyes, umber skin, rakish quiff of hair—is
that of a lightning strike. In full sunlight the true color of his hair is revealed to
be navy blue, and when he scratches his head, as he sometimes does when he’s

thinking, his hair parts so that the two tiny corkscrews of bone at the front of his
skull are visible. Yes, horns. Not scary ones—I think these were intended as a
playful touch. The problem with Wayland is that he’s a puppet built to human
scale. Masterless and entirely alive. No matter how soft his skin appears to be he
is entirely wooden, and it is not known exactly what animates him—no clock

ticks in his chest. Rowan is male to me, since he moves and speaks with a grace
that reminds me of the boys and men of my Venetian youth. He’s female to
Myrna. For Radha and Gustav Rowan is both male and female. Perhaps we read
him along the lines of our attractions; perhaps it really is as arbitrary as that. He
just shrugs and says: “Take your pick. I’m mostly tree, though.” His fellow
students already had all those confusing hormone surges to deal with. So most of
them stayed away, though I’m sure they all dreamed of him, her, hir, zir, a body

with a tantalizing abundance of contours, this Rowan who is everything but
mostly tree. I’m sure Rowan Wayland was dreamed of nonstop.
—

AND HE’S AS EVASIVE as any Punchinello I’ve met. You ask him a question and
he somehow makes you answer it for him. Rowan and Radha never really moved

past what she called their “eye candy and eye candy appreciator” relationship. I
was the one the eye candy befriended. That surprised me. I remember Radha
introducing me to the ghost in her bedroom in anticipation of our knowing each
other, at least wanting to know each other because we spoke the same language.
But that ghost is a little too aloof for her own good.
Rowan Wayland, on the other hand, calls me “Gepetta, Empress of the
Moon.” Since neither of us needs sleep we take night buses, sharing earphones

and listening to knitting podcasts. If anyone else on the bus notices anything
about us they assume it’s because they’re drunk. I’ve been trying to find a way
to make him reveal how he came to be. In my own mind I’ve already compared
my condition with his and have decided that his condition is preferable. He