Taboo 1 -1980- Page

He is twenty-three. He wears a leather jacket that isn’t broken in, just broken. He says things like “You’re not like the others” and means it, for about six hours. His car’s tape deck plays The Clash, then Springsteen, then nothing but static and the hiss of tape winding.

Outside, a car passes. She listens for the Buick’s idle. Nothing.

She walks home under streetlights that buzz like flies. Her house is dark except for the kitchen light, where her father sits reading the newspaper, the headline announcing something about hostages and interest rates. He doesn’t look up. Taboo 1 -1980-

The rain stops. The clock on the dashboard says 11:47. She has fifteen minutes to become the girl who walks through the front door, the one who never left the library. She practices the face in the rearview mirror—innocent, tired, vaguely annoyed by homework. It fits like a borrowed coat.

“How was school?”

She nods. That’s the second taboo: the agreement to return.

She closes her eyes. The rain begins again. He is twenty-three

The year turns. 1981 is coming. The eighties will harden into shoulder pads and cocaine and fear. But tonight, it is still 1980—a hinge, a crack in the door, a girl holding a match she hasn’t struck yet.

The year is a hinge. On one side, the shag-carpet seventies still hum in the basement, a lava lamp pulsing like a slow heart. On the other, the eighties haven’t yet sharpened their edges; MTV is a rumor, the Berlin Wall still stands, and AIDS is a whisper without a name. His car’s tape deck plays The Clash, then

She climbs the stairs. In her room, she presses her palm to the wall, where on the other side her parents sleep in separate beds. She can hear the low murmur of the television—Johnny Carson, maybe. Laughter. Then silence.