My roommate told me I could take her name.
Borrow it, she said, because the room had only been advertised for one.
I called the maintenance man. I told him that the dishwasher had broken, that the kitchen floor had transfigured into a thin film of suds that we (I, I corrected myself) had taken to skating through on pots and pans. He said okay, he’d be right up.
Here’s the thing: it didn’t feel like lying. Her name felt no stranger than my own. I tried it a few times in the mirror, for fun: MelanieMelanieMelanie I said, and my mouth made so many attractive shapes when I did. You could see the glint of my teeth like lamps and the red pull of my lips as they opened. When the buzzer went I unlatched the door and said it again: Melanie, the name filling my whole mouth. I weighed it on my tongue: heavy, like coins.
The maintenance man and I had sex on the sudsy floor. I kept my mouth shut when he kissed me, felt the coins of her—my—name rattle inside of me like the pots and pans I made a soap angel among. I felt my body reflected in the bubbles below, large and clownish, felt suddenly his weight pressing down on me. Felt, too, the heat as he spoke into the dark corners of my neck.
Melanie, he said, and the coins clamored inside of me.
Melanie.