Authors: Darcey Steinke
I was touched at this naive advice and told him how once my mother had come into my room in the middle of the night and said that sex was messy, that sperm ran down your legs. He stared, thinking I was crazy, hoping I would leave.
“You must go,” he said. “I cannot help you.” I felt a little sorry for him, just half an hour ago he'd married.
“I'll go if you tell me about the first time with Bell.”
He flushed. “That's private.”
“If you tell me I'll leave,” I said.
“It was in school,” he said.
“And?”
“You'll definitely go?”
I nodded.
He put his hand on his forehead and stared into the gray TV. Everything around him was straight angles; the bed, the nightstand, the chair by the wall. This was hard for him. “I don't remember why but we were the only ones. Bell came over to my desk and asked me to stand. He rubbed his pencil longways back and forth over my penis. Then we snuck out and into the bathroom. He showed me how we could lock ourselves in the stall and balance on the toilet so nobody could see our feet. He put his palms against the wall and let me take him from behind.”
The thought of them suspended—hands, legs, their heads at odds but balanced—reminded me of an atom, of the three-dimensional models I saw in school. And that moment
was
Bell's first lightning bolt of life, connected even now to his every molecule.
I stood. “I'll be leaving now if you'll kiss me?” He leaned back as if the thought disgusted him, but then he looked at me and said, “You're really on your way out?”
I nodded and his hot mouth was suddenly over mine. I didn't like his teeth, sharp like a rat and his thin lips seemed like they had bones. He pressed his scaly tongue into my mouth. I slipped my hand over his pants, felt his cock tightening, bowing, as Bell had said, to the left. Happy people are the cruelest, I thought. This was the cock Bell wanted in his mouth, up his ass. Kevin stopped kissing me and brushed my hand away from his pants.
“You can't tell where you stop and other people start,” he said. “That's a dangerous quality to have.”
C h a p t e r
T w e l v e
T
HE DESERT SUNRISE FILLED MY HEAD. THE LIGHT STALKING ME
, a sunrise as certain as the end of the world. Mid-afternoon I arrived, parked the car on Polk Street and dropped the keys through the rental office mail slot. Walking up the shady side of Bush I felt like my head was filled with fiberglass. I wanted to see Bell and the futon. I planned to sleep so long and deeply that when I woke, it would be as if from a past life.
Traffic was light on Bush, a rumpled couple just out of bed passed me, and a homeless man checked trash bins for aluminum cans. Like dream fractals, everything echoed my mood: the pattern in the sidewalk, shapes in the clouds, an image in a stranger's eye. Maybe it was the patina of guilt. I'd done something dishonest in going to Kevin's wedding and I wanted to tell Bell. On the corner of Taylor I paused at the light, took in the used-book store and the fire station across from Bell's apartment.
Someone grabbed my arm, and I jumped, turned to see the little man, his eyes bulging under thick glasses.
“I've been looking for you everywhere.”
“I've been busy,” I said blankly, hoping callousness might send him away.
“I know,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Bell doesn't answer the door.”
“He's probably wandered off.”
The little man shook his head. “I would have seen him.”
He was worried. I could see it in his runny eggish eyes, the way he looked spasmodically to Bell's door.
“Do you love him?”
“It's more than we both understand.”
“Have you fucked him?” I asked.
“He wouldn't after I told him, as a child, I put my teddy bear in the oven.”
It was the kind of bad omen that would make perfect sense to Bell.
“What I can't figure,” he said, his face pinched with curiosity, “is what's so special about you? You see, Bell thinks it's much more exciting with men, he feels like a little boy. With women, he's painting a picture, idolizes the image, falls for it, like one falls for a character in a novel.” The little man paused, flipped his head to Bell's building. “Let me tell you your future.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
The little man hunched his shoulders and turned. “Mark my word. I'm never wrong.” He ran down Taylor Street, staying close to the building like a rat.
The sun reflected like fire on the top windows of Bell's building and the bricks turned a peachy pink color. My key slid open the door. The foyer was dark, smelling faintly of roses and garlic. The worn Victorian atmosphere was so appealing after the antiseptic rawness of L.A. There was Indian music coming from the other end of Bell's floor and someone had left a bunch of bags near the garbage chute.
“Bell,” I said, as my key met with the lock and the dead bolt gave. I called his name again, pushed the door open and walked down the hall, passed the bathroom door and the telephone table. The couch, jade plant, even the futon seemed miniaturized, like going back to a childhood home. Standing there, I could tell he wasn't home and hadn't been all day. The bed was made. His calico scallop shells were arranged by size on the windowsill. His altar in order, postcards of cathedrals, glass candle holders. He'd swept, left a pile of dirt, dust balls, hair, lint and pennies. There were no dirty glasses in the sink and he'd put the silverware away in their proper compartments. Even the splattered spaghetti sauce had been wiped from the tiles over the stove.
I took a pillow from the bed and ducked into the closet, sat on Bell's summer bucks, leaned against the side wall. From here I could see the vault of light retreating out the window. When I thought of what Kevin had said, that I couldn't tell the difference between myself and others, I knew he was right. It was a quality my mother had, Madison and Pig too. Most women ended in blurs and fragments, but that wasn't really a bad thing. I remembered how Kevin's jaw clicked and as he stepped away from me I was certain he would hit me. He didn't know that you slept with your lover's past and future lovers and those lovers’ lovers. My hand on his dick angered him because he realized in the midst of the simplicity of his wedding, the clarity of his union, that life was hopelessly complicated.
Bell only wandered when he was depressed. He would complain about the vague unhappiness of life. He was sad he wasn't famous. Though he told me, once you knew you could be famous, it didn't matter if you were. Bell knew not to complain, everyone loves a martyr. I thought of happy endings, how novelists usually flinched. To admit your characters are doomed means you are too.
The familiar smell of our clothes made me sleepy, it was dark and I could still hear the Indian music, a sitar drawing me toward sleep, it was an anxious lonely sleep. I was walking south of Market toward the Bay Bridge, paper blew against a chain-link fence and I realized how empty the city seemed. I stuck my thumb out, pressed my hips forward, saw a car ahead I knew would stop for me. The man behind the wheel reminded me of someone, though I couldn't remember who. He asked me how far I was going, but I didn't answer. I saw myself in his sunglasses, transparent, held together only by his gaze.
* * *
W
HEN I WOKE IT WAS DARK, THE HOTEL HUNTINGTON'S LIGHT
dammed at the curtains. I crawled over shoes, through Bell's cashmere coat and curled up under the comforter. With my knees touching my chin I drifted down, then heard the sound of water dripping. Not to porcelain like a leaky faucet, but falling into other water. Plup. Plup. Plup. Bell must have come in while I was asleep and drawn himself a bath. I pressed my ear against the wall, listening for his breath, or the classical tape—the
Jupiter
Symphony or some boys’ choir. Nothing. I sat up. Should I wait for him to come to bed? Pretend to talk in my sleep? It's been two weeks since I dyed my hair. I stood and walked on my tiptoes down the hall. There was light coming from under the door, bright as a laser. “Bell,” I said, “I know you're in there.” He didn't answer. Maybe he'd found out I was at the wedding? Maybe Kevin had called? “I want to talk to you.” Still no answer. He pissed me off, using his silence to emasculate me, make me feel vulnerable. “I touched Kevin's dick,” I said. Plup. Plup. No swish of water, no long fed-up sigh.
I put my hand on the knob and pushed the door, letting it creak open. There was Bell's head tipped back over the edge of the tub. He must be drunk. I saw the red water, how Bell's right arm floated palm up, how he'd sliced his arm from elbow to hand, the open skin evocative as a mouth. The other arm hung over the tub's edge, blood streaked his hand, congealed in a puddle fed by his fingertips. He was strangely beautiful with pale white skin, blue eyes, purple lips, and on his cheeks a soft spot of pink rouge. I felt weak, nauseated, then so hot I took off my sweater. My ears began ringing, sweat rose under my clothes. I leaned over the toilet and puked. Yellow bile that swirled in the bowl, the bitter taste of lead.
I screamed. My vocal cords quivered and stung. Louder so the sitar stopped, so the sound swallowed me, Bell, the apartment, the block. I used to kiss his lower stomach, the warm hair around his cock. I'd put an ear to his skin and hear liquid sloshing in his bladder, his heart beating. His body was proof of
life
to me.
I leaned against the sink, turned the glass knob until cold water beat from the faucet. I let the water wash over my wrist, then put my head under, wet the hair at the back of my neck until I got chills. There were blank spots where I stared at the water swirling around the drain, the hair curling on the porcelain, and remembered my first morning with Bell, how I wrapped a sheet around me and came into this room and how my pee was warm, stinging from sex. I squeezed in between the toilet and the wall. The room reeked of bile and blood. I could tell by his wrinkled skin that he had done this last night, about the time Kevin said his vows. Bell's head was turned slightly toward me, so I could see only one eye. As a child he had learned that remoteness drew people to him, but this had proven dangerous. The tile was cool on my spine and I looked into his unyielding eye. He wasn't meant to be a groom, or a father, or even a son. He was meant to be dead. And in death he was mine. He used to tell me that a person who reads all day, then watches the sunset is just as valuable as a person who interacts with the world, but he didn't believe it and God knows this world doesn't either.
My life fans out like a string of paper dolls. I am malleable, chameleonlike. Each life eats the last until I'm a Russian doll, containing ten women of decreasing size.
Across the desert, the midlands, creeping back into the South. To Virginia where you can feel the water in the pages of a book and the light rain makes the leaves tender as skin. I will plant a rose garden and I will wait in that garden for the flick of the snake's tongue that will change me again.
On the tub's shiny faucet, the distorted image of my face floated above the toilet. Watching Bell's unblinking eye I brought my hand to my mouth, kissed the palm deeply, wet tongue against the ridges of my lifeline.
If he died for my sins, I am grateful.