Bedtime Eyes

by Amy Yamada

  Once, on my way back to the apartment, I got a cup of coffee from a vendor, hoping to soothe my jangled nerves. A fly landed on my hand and I brushed it away, but it kept coming back to annoy me. The vendor was crowded but for some reason the fly was only interested in me, vin-dictive, as if it knew all the things I had done. I felt as if it were black-mailing me or something, and that was just how I felt about Leroy.

  Leroy swore at me as he fucked me. He only used those words with me. He pulled my hair and dragged me around the room, sinking his 1 0 4

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  teeth into my skin, leaving bruises and bite marks all over my body I begged him to stop, but he just laughed scornfully, and when I couldn't take any more, I'd make a run for the door.

  But he was too quick for me. I'd have my hand on the knob, but he'd push me down to the floor and use his agile fingers to make me cry out in ecstasy. In my hazy half-consciousness I could see the shoes of the people walking down the hallway through a gap under the door. Once in a while, people would step on my hair as they walked by. Leroy noticed but didn't care, and just kept on screwing me.

  I was losing weight. I couldn't get any food down. D.C. tried his best to take care of me, but he couldn't cheer me up the way he used to.

  I became weaker as my feelings for Leroy began to consume me. I knew that even if he decided to piss in my mouth, I would have been happy to swallow every last drop. I was frantic, knowing I had to do something to get myself out of this. But once Leroy's body and mine were entwined, twisted and coiled like a rope, I gave up struggling to get free and started floating instead. Afterward I would pick my panties up off the floor and put them back on again with a resigned sigh, wondering why I had even bothered putting them on in the first place.

  I always wore black underwear when I went to see Leroy because I felt like I was in mourning. Or like a criminal trying to bury myself alive. I couldn't understand why I had to degrade myself like this. I just wanted his fingers to play sweet music on my body like they did on the piano keyboard; his eyes, his bad language, and his all-knowing tongue joining in as the backup band. When they did, the melody took over my senses and destroyed my reason like a drug. His fingers were made of fire, the flames licking and burning my heart until all that was left was ash. There was no longer any order to my life. I'd lost all my possessions and I'd become his prisoner. His ten fingers surrounded me like the bars of a cage and robbed me of the will to escape. I could see his fingers and they were well within my grasp, but I knew they would never be mine.

  T H E P I A N O P L A Y E R ' S F I N G E R S I I j Even though I did exactly as Leroy commanded, I began to wonder how I could get his fingers all to myself again. But I also had the feeling that if I managed to do it, his fingers would disappear altogether in their grief. As long as his fingers had any life, they would hold me in their powerful grip, forcing me to face my uselessness. It was to that extent that Leroy's fingers controlled me. I felt like a bear waiting to catch a salmon in a river in the snowfields; I could tell if it was his hand or not just by biting it. The salmon's bright, red eggs lay hidden between Leroy's fingers, but however much I begged, he would never let me have them.

  Once I imagined how Leroy would make love to other girls. The image was vivid in my mind; it was like watching a movie. His open-faced expression would tell her that he wanted to sleep with her, and she would give into the guileless little boy before her. He would escort her in a gentlemanly fashion to his bed. No matter how eager he was as he unlocked the door, he would take the time to set things up right. Once they were alone, the girl would pretend she wasn't interested, but she'd let him unzip her dress and then quickly give into him. But by the time she put her head on his shoulder to show him how she really felt, Leroy would no longer be paying attention—he would be staring into space and there would be a tired look in his eyes as if to say, What, again? and he would smile sarcastically to himself. And although he would stroke his fingers over her skin, lightly caressing her body, she would never experience the full extent of his talents.

  By now the girl would be feeling good, and she would moan softly to let him know, thinking that his fingers were nothing more than tools to give her pleasure. Then, when she was finally reaching ecstasy, Leroy would whisper lie after sweet lie in a low, husky voice, all the while knowing that he could have given her so much more pleasure if he had wanted to. He would feel frustrated with himself for holding back, but he would also be relieved that he had pulled it off.

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  In the end the girl would believe that she had experienced the ulti-mate in carnal pleasure, and she would be grateful to him, never knowing how much more had been possible.

  I accepted everything about Leroy. If he were mine, I would even have lapped up the last drop of his sweat. I'd been pissed off because I lost a fingernail when I buried it in D.C.'s shoulder, but if it were Leroy, I would have liked to smash my nails with a hammer, bury them in his flesh, and leave them there as evidence. My hair, on the other hand, was too transient for that—the strands tangled up in his fingers during sex were too easily removed.

  Leroy was living in an apartment he was subletting from one of his musician friends, and when I phoned he usually answered very curtly.

  Once, however, he was actually pleasant. He said he was too busy to go out, and he invited me to come over. I was surprised by his sudden, unexpected invitation, but he told me that it was okay because it wasn't his place anyway—typical Leroy—and he gave me the address.

  I rang the bell and heard his voice from the other side of the door.

  "Come in!"

  I opened the door timidly.

  It was a big, sparsely furnished room with a piano at one end.

  Leroy's suitcase was laid out on top of the bed, and sheet music was scattered all over the floor. Nothing else particularly caught my eye. He sat at the piano, and without looking up said, "Wait over there."

  I found an empty spot under the open window. Leroy had a pencil in his hand and was writing on the lined music paper. He tapped the keys intermittently with his index finger, concentrating hard, like a small child playing a difficult tune. I leaned my elbows on the bed, and with my chin in my hands, fixed my eyes on him.

  Once in a while he stopped writing altogether and put his cheek down against the keyboard, remaining there in perfect silence, his lips pursed thoughtfully, obviously not quite satisfied with what he had T H E P I A N O P L A Y E R ' S F I N G E R S I j I written. I had the urge to go over and put my arms around his neck and hold him, but then suddenly he would look up with a flash of inspiration and begin tapping the keys again, followed by furious notations.

  The sun was going down and a breeze blew in through the window, gently ruffling my hair. I had been soaked with perspiration when I walked in, but now it had dried and felt like part of my skin. I stayed where I sat behind him, staring at his back. Leroy had made the mistake of forgetting that I was there.

  Suddenly he struck his head on the keyboard and kept it there, motionless. He looked absolutely desperate.

  "Why...?" he whispered. "Shit! Shit! SH-I-I-I-T!"

  He banged his head again and again against the keyboard, strange, mutant chords belching out from the piano, echoing around the room.

  The keyboard was wet with his tears.

  I didn't know what to say. My mind was screaming, This is your chance! This is your chance to escape! Do it! Do it now! I knew that if I got up, went over, and put my hand on his shoulder and held his head in my arms, I would finally be able to escape the torture. All I needed to do was to say in a gentle voice, "Are you okay?" and he would fall into my arms, sobbing quietly on my chest, kissing me.

  My heart was pounding so loud I could hear it, and I found it difficult to breathe. My whole body tensed and I just sat there in the background, rooted to the spot.

  "Why can't I do it? Why? Why? Why?"

  Leroy's voice echoed in my head.

  The next thing I k
new, Leroy was back at the piano again. The room was getting dark and the only thing I could see was the eerie, blue-white hue of the sheet music scattered on the floor. I looked closer. Every single sheet of paper overflowed with Leroy's illegible handwriting.

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  He played with passion now, not just tapping at the keys with his index finger as he had before, but deftly conjuring the melody, both hands weaving across the keyboard, the piano giving voice to his new composition.

  I had missed my only chance to get away.

  When I got back to the apartment, D.C. was lying on the bed.

  I He jumped up when he saw me and poured me a glass of chocolate milk from the fridge.

  He stood by me, watching as I changed my clothes.

  "What's the matter with you?" I asked. "You're acting weird."

  "Ruiko. .." His voice was shaking. "Have you found someone else?"

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Things aren't the same anymore. You're always so nice to me these day "

  "Does that bother you?"

  I pulled my earrings out irritably and bunched my hair up at the back so he could unzip my dress. I often let him unzip me, but it was completely different from how Leroy did it.

  I began to wonder if I had left any clues that he might have picked up on. We hadn't made love recently, but that was because I found it difficult to hurt D.C. right after being hurt myself by Leroy. And after being in bed with Leroy, D.C. made love too gently.

  "I'm just tired, that's all."

  "You have scratches on your back."

  "I bumped into something, okay? It was an accident."

  "Do you really think I'm that stupid?" he yelled, throwing me down on the bed. "You're always completely exhausted when you get home and all you do is sit there, staring into space with tears in your eyes. You used to be so selfish and vain—and so happy. But now look at you!

  You'd never have let me push you around like this before. What's got into you?!"

  "Sometimes I like being pushed around—you've just never noticed it before."

  D.C. began to cry, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand.

  "Ruiko..."

  He brushed one of his tears from my lip.

  "I can smell him on you."

  I lay still on the bed. Although he was crying, I didn't feel annoyed with him the way I had before—this time I felt sorry for him. He couldn't get what he wanted. But then, neither could I, so I understood how he felt. D.C. wanted my heart in the same way that I wanted Leroy s fingers, so I could sympathize with him because I knew how hard it was to be in love with something you just couldn't have.

  I stroked his face gently, and gave up trying to deceive him. We were both in the same boat now.

  "I didn't think you'd notice. I never imagined you'd be able to smell him."

  "Are you going to leave me?"

  I had no response to that.

  "Oh god, I know you are. You'll dump me like you dumped Leroy Jones," he sobbed.

  Like Leroy Jones.

  / know how you feel, D.C. But what D.C. still didn't know was that it was Leroy who was the cause of all our misery, the root of all our prob-T H E P I A N O P L A Y E R ' S F I N G E R S I j I lems and for the first time I realized just how stupid I had been. And now we were both in pain, hurting in exactly the same way that Leroy had been hurt all that time ago.

  I felt as though D.C. and I were gradually turning into the same kind of people, the kind of people I used to despise.

  "Show me your hand, D.C."

  He stretched out a big, innocent hand and I gently wrapped both of mine around it. His skin was shining; it looked as though it might melt and dissolve into my own. It could never make my blood churn like Leroy's hands did. Lifting it to my lips, I kissed it gently. D.C. flinched in surprise and pulled away from me.

  "Let me hold it a little longer...." I pleaded.

  But D.C.'s hands didn't stick to me the way that Leroy's did. They just seemed to rest on my skin, gauging my temperature. I closed my eyes at the futility of it all. We were both in the same sad, leaky boat.

  'I love you, Ruiko. I really love you," he whispered over and over, knowing it wouldn't make any difference.

  D.C. and I lay awake, huddled together, motionless. I had never seen him so quiet before, and when my eyes finally became accustomed to the darkness, I could see his dark, worried eyes staring back at me. But he did n't hate me. He stroked his hand softly over my skin as if he were gently caressing velvet, and somehow he seemed to know that we were both suffering from the same pain.

  "I could die happy like this," I told him.

  D.C. just smiled.

  The white bedsheets gradually turned a dark, dusty blue and before dawn, as the night air coming in through the window began to get cooler, I greedily embraced sleep, grateful at last for the opportunity to abandon conscious thought and forget everything.

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  The next morning I woke to find that D.C. had already made coffee and was reading the newspaper. He drew up a chair for me and poured me a cup, and throughout breakfast he said nothing about what had happened the night before. He was carefully sticking to our usual morning routine. He seemed to have decided to ignore the problem, for the moment at least.

  It was the first night I had slept well in quite some time, and I had dark circles under my eyes as a result. Holding my cup in both hands, I sipped my coffee. D.C. turned his attention back to the newspaper, but I knew he was only looking at the sports pages and the music column, so I didn't bother to ask him what was new.

  "Leroy Jones is doing a special concert."

  I was only interested in seeing Leroy alone. "So what?"

  "It says that it's a farewell concert. He's going back to the States to make a new album."

  "Going back?"

  I looked over at D.C., the cup gripped tightly in my hands.

  "You're kidding, right? Why does he have to go back to the States?

  "Well, I suppose that when you're in as much demand as he is, it's not easy to take a long vacation like this. He probably has no reason to stay here any longer. I don't think Japanese people like jazz that much."

  "/ like it!" I said angrily.

  "So you're still interested in him? I didn't think you cared about guys once you'd dumped them."

  D.C.'s voice faded to a murmur in the background. Leroy was about to disappear. But he couldn't go yet! I hadn't got what I needed from him. All he had done was take, take, take from me, and he hadn't given anything in return. Bristling with fear, I desperately tried to think what I should do next.

  T H E P I A N O P L A Y E R ' S F I N G E R S I j I D.C. tried to slip his hand inside my bathrobe.

  "Cut it out!" I slapped at his hand in irritation.

  But D.C. didn't stop. He tore off my robe, kissed me all over, then carried me back into the bedroom to make love to me. I didn't try to stop him. I just let him do what he wanted. My mind was occupied with far more pressing matters. How could I stop Leroy from leaving me? How-could I keep him within reach?

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  C H A P T E R T W E L V E

  I showed up at Leroy's apartment uninvited. He opened the door, and I when he saw it was me he had a defenseless look on his face, and I was obviously angry at being caught off guard. But I looked so pale and nervous that he invited me in anyway.

  The room was much messier than last time, and there was a stale odor in the air, as if he had been sleeping and just woke up. The sheet music was all gathered together in a pile now, but in its place, his dirty underwear and crumpled shirts lay strewn around the room. In the ashtray was a mountain of cigarette butts, and on the bed the blankets were piled high like the whipped-cream topping on a dessert. A tangled mess of bedsheets was screwed up suspiciously and thrown over them.

  Leroy handed me a glass of white wine. I suppose I must have looked quite ill, but the cool aroma of the wine seemed to neutralize the stuf
finess in the air. He sat on the piano stool, wearing nothing but a navy blue bathrobe, and looked me over as he thoughtfully stroked the stubble on his chin. It was obvious that he hadn't taken a shower that morning, and I was flustered by his unkempt appearance; I imagined a film of dried sweat covering his body.

  Neither of us spoke. Leroy went over to the record player and chose a

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  record to play. It was only when he had turned his back that I was abl to find my voice again.

  "You're going back to the States?"

  Bud Powell started playing, but Leroy said nothing.

  "I hear you're going back to the States," I repeated.

  "You gonna miss me?"

  I slapped him hard across the face instead of saying, Yes, I am. Leroy grinned. But it was more of a smirk than a smile. You fucker!

  I flew at him in a fury, my arms flailing, but he dodged me nimbly and I ended up in a heap on the floor, lying on my back. I looked up at him.

  His foot was resting on my stomach and he was looking down at me.

  "You just don't understand, do you?" he sneered coldly, the heel of his bare foot pressed hard into my stomach.

  His foot was big, cold, and heavy. It was like being tortured with a brick, and I was scared of what he might do if I struggled so I kept very still.

  Leroy pulled my skirt up with his foot and pushed his toes inside my flimsy panties. His big toe buried itself into my soft pussy lips and I moaned loudly. Then, pushing harder, it sank deep inside me.

  "I'll light your fire, all right," he said viciously, "just like you told me to in the park that night."

  Christ, I hated him.

  Then, removing his foot from my underwear, he brought it up to my face and thrust his big toe forcefully into my mouth. It was warm and wet, and tasting myself on his toe, I felt a sense of betrayal, almost as though I'd been forced to reveal a precious secret.

  "You must feel pretty frustrated that you can't get the same kind of satisfaction from your mouth that you can from your pussy."