Looker

by Laura Sims

  When I stop at the front garden gate, my pulse leaps, beating, to the back of my throat. Should I go to the basement door, as an intimate of the family would? Or up the front stoop to the official door like a servant, a stranger, a Jehovah’s Witness peddling her vision of the end? I peer into the basement window, more openly and intently than I’ve ever had the nerve to do before, at least in the light of day, and see them all there, the actress at the kitchen table holding the baby, the husband leaning on the counter, talking to a staff member, and the two girls busy in the play area. Everyone is there. I feel a little faint—when I’d played the scene in my mind, she alone would come to the door, make a darling O of surprise with her mouth, and then happily take the dish, ushering me in for a glass of wine with a backward nod of her head. Come in, come join me in my light-filled room. But this is a different scenario. Shockingly different, though I should have known. It’s a Saturday afternoon, post–block party. Of course they’re all together. My hands have begun to sweat. I imagine standing here until the dish slips from my hands to crack loudly on the slate tiles of their garden, sending bits of pink and white and green all over—it would be a loud, humiliating signature. She would know exactly who had come to her garden, and she’d shake her head sadly, maybe even angrily, at the sight, before sending a staff member out to clean it all up. No. I can’t let this pathetic vision take hold of me. Remember the party! Our warm conversation! Her thrilling touch on my arm! I close my eyes and when I open them, I see someone blur past the window toward the door. I straighten and clear my throat. Walk determinedly to the basement door. Just as I balance the loaded dish on one hand and reach for the buzzer with the other, the door behind the basement gate creaks open. A woman dressed in black yoga pants and a bright pink T-shirt, the one I’d seen chatting with the husband a moment ago, is standing there staring at me with a smile on her glossy lips and a frown in her eyes. “Can I help you?” she asks. I smile back. Widely. I see it catch in her eyes—I don’t look like a dangerous person, I look like a beautiful, nicely dressed friend of her employer’s, someone who has come for a nosh and a chat. “Hi,” I say breezily, “I’ve come with a dish for the family.” The woman cocks her head in what could be a friendly way. She’s young and attractive, with her thick black hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. I wonder what she does for the family. Is she one of the nannies? The actress’s personal assistant? Their housekeeper? “Oh, how nice,” she says, finally moving to open the gate. Relief swells in me and I start to chatter. “She and I spoke about it earlier at the block party—she was a big fan of my dish, so I thought I’d bring her some more. I had extra left from this morning,” I add quickly, knowing it would seem too weird to admit to having prepared it just for her. The woman smiles and continues to fumble with the lock. Finally the door swings open and . . . what does she do? She steps toward me, hands out, as if to take the dish from me. I shrink back with it against my chest then, shaking my head. “Oh no,” I say. “I have to give it to her myself.” The suspicious look returns to her eyes, along with a flicker of annoyance, and she steps back from me. “All right,” she says. “Let me check with her about it. Where do you live?” she asks, squinting at me. Like it’s any of her business, where I live! “Oh, just up the street. We talked at the block party earlier,” I tell her again. Heat rises to my cheeks but I try to remember to breathe, calm down and breathe. The woman nods and retreats through the door, closing and locking it behind her—so I won’t rush in and kill them all with my dish, I suppose. Ha! While I’m waiting, I try to hold my face in the calmest, friendliest, stillest pose possible. I am calm. I am friendly and sane. I’m your new neighborhood friend, remember? I’m certain she’ll come out next—after the staff person explains everything to her, she’ll smile and say, “Oh, it’s okay, I’ve got this,” and she’ll step outside to me, her hair and skin and white teeth gleaming in the light, and as she opens the gate she’ll laugh and say, Sorry! My staff can be overprotective sometimes, and she’ll usher me in to join the family gathering. So I wait, my skin prickling with the sensation of coming joy.

  While I wait (patiently, so patiently), that unforgettable scene in Morning’s First Light, one of the actress’s first films, comes to mind. She plays an abused young suburban housewife who has an affair with the soon-to-be-doomed pilot who lives next door. It’s the scene where the pilot first rings her doorbell late at night. The wife—the actress—comes to the door, while her drunken husband looms threateningly in the shadows behind her. Her green eyes glow bright against the creamy skin of her face, stunning the pilot and all of us sitting in our velvet multiplex chairs. We stare at her in disbelief and something almost like dread—that a creature of such transcendent grace and beauty . . .

  The same woman is back—the staff person. She’s cleared her throat. “Hi,” she says. My heart sinks and my face reddens as she starts to reach for the dish yet again. “I’ll take that for you—with thanks from the family!” she says perkily, with a sly smile lighting her face, like this is her entertainment for the day, this strange person showing up at her famous employer’s door with a dish of salad. Pasta salad! she’ll tell her friends, and they’ll laugh and shake their heads at the thought of such a fucking loser.

  I draw the dish back toward my chest involuntarily and stare at her. She draws her own hand back and tilts her head at me, the sly smile now frozen in place. “No,” I say firmly. She won’t laugh at me—no one will. Not her, not the actress, not even the actress’s baby. “I have to give it to her—to them—directly,” I say coldly. I see a flicker of fear in the woman’s eyes. She draws back, her hand on the gate in case she needs to slam it quickly, I suppose. “I’m sorry,” she says, almost politely. “That can’t happen tonight.” “Tonight?” I ask sharply. It is not nighttime; this woman is clearly delusional. “I could bring it by another time,” I say, careful to keep my voice from shaking. But the woman, the literal gatekeeper, shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry, I’ll take it from you now if you like, but there’s no other option.” Something in me—the socially programmed core of me—starts to relinquish the dish, starts to hand it over as if I were fine with this, as if I’d been planning to do this all along. She reaches her hands out—a little hesitantly, it seems, to take it from me. But five minutes after I’ve gone, I know she’ll chuckle over this whole scene with the family, telling them about the weird things I said, mimicking the expressions on my face and the desperate glint in my eyes. The husband will lean down and sniff the salad; he’ll shrug his shoulders as if to say, I’d eat it. The actress will roll her eyes. After a gentle nod from her—or maybe an imperial wave of her hand—the staff person will take the dish and dump my delicious, lovingly homemade salad into the trash. The actress, nonplussed, will continue sipping her wine from that infernally elegant glass.

  I jerk the dish back—just before the woman’s fingers touch it. I turn on my heel and walk right out of the garden. I’m almost certain she’s standing there the whole time, watching me go. Fuck them. Fuck her. Fuck the actress. FUCK YOU! I hear a voice scream inside of me—not Bernardo’s, mine.

  *

  When I wake, hours have passed. The apartment windows are dark. It must be nine? Ten? Midnight? I’ve no idea. I’m slumped by the door in my yellow dress, right where I landed on coming home, shaking with humiliation and rage. I sat there shaking and staring into space, longing for a cigarette but unable to move, and then, somehow, I must have fallen into a dead sleep. The glass dish full of orzo salad sits beside me, still neatly covered in plastic wrap. How could it remain so pristine? After everything that’s happened today? I wrap my hands around the edges of the dish and rise creakily to my feet. Every inch of me aches—especially my head. In the kitchen I slam the pasta dish down on the counter, hoping it will break. It does not. I splash water on my face and peer up at the clock. Three a.m. Jesus Christ, I’ve lost hours over this wretched day. Over this wretched salad! I take the dish and dump all of the pasta into the trash—just as I’d imagi
ned the actress’s staff member doing. How funny! If only I could laugh. I grit my teeth and start scrubbing the dish with the rough side of the sponge. I scour the whole thing, front and back, inside and out, in every curved corner, and lay it on the drying rack. It sits there gleaming under the light, so pure, so irreproachable and seemingly inviolable. A moment later, I snatch it from the tray and run to the door. Slide into espadrilles. Run outside and down the steps and down the dark, deserted street to number 202. I pause at the actress’s gate for just a moment. The house is dark, and even the outside lights are off. If there’s a security camera mounted somewhere, I’ve never seen it. I take a deep breath and open the gate, pad quietly across the flagstones, and stand in the exact center of their front garden. My hands are sweating where they grip the dish and the giddy feeling in my chest makes it hard to focus but finally I am ready: I close my eyes, raise the dish high, and let go.

  It hits the ground with a spectacular crack. Better, and louder, even, than I’d imagined it would be. Panicked, I drop down into a crouch and feel across the slate with my hands. I scoop up several large pieces, crush them to my chest, and run.

  Lights must be going on at the actress’s house. They must be! As I run home I imagine her, standing groggily at the upstairs window, peering down into the darkness, trying to see who or what it was. I’ll go take a look, her husband says. The baby has woken from the sound. He starts with small, low sobs that build as the actress stands at the window, transfixed. She shivers, hears his increasingly desperate cries, and goes to him at last, shushing him and holding his head against her breast. She will soothe him with milk, in the rocking chair, and she will not worry about the threatening sound. Nothing can touch us, not here, not anywhere, she will tell him. Over and over again, until her head starts to nod in time with the pulse and flow of warm milk.

  When I reach my front door, I turn and look down the street. No sign that anyone has woken—no lights have gone on outside or inside the house, as far as I can see. How is that possible? How could they not have been woken by that terrible noise? I stare into the darkness, with my sliced and burning hands still pressing the shards to my chest, feeling my former giddiness fade and shrink to nothing and then—there! The garden light goes on! I’ve done it! I race upstairs and lock the apartment door behind me. Lean against it, breathing heavily. Laughter bubbles up out of me, shaking me from the inside out. I want to shout, I’m rich! I’m rich! Like I’ve made off with bags of loot instead of the broken pieces of a good glass dish. Somehow, though, I do feel rich—absurdly so. I let it fill all the nooks and crannies where my rage once dwelled, let it glow inside and warm me. Then I place the shards carefully in a brown paper shopping bag and set it against the extra room’s duct tape wall. Cat has been sitting there expectantly, as if waiting for this offering. Here it is, little one. This is for you.

  When I’ve finally calmed down, I clean my hands at the sink. They sting like hell. I bandage the worst parts and sit down to look at my phone. Bernardo’s text is still there. I’m almost surprised to see it. That FUCK YOU was not erased by the “fuck you” I just delivered down the block—I thought that it might be, but I find that I don’t really care either way.

  Cat lies with me all night long, draped over my feet, warming me. I stay in bed until 11 a.m. Wake up still feeling rich, and high. The feeling stays, humming through me, all day long—like new love.

  *

  There it is, glinting in the sun like an artifact from a lost civilization or an errant god: a sizeable, vaguely triangular glass shard, leaning against the gate at number 202. The rest of the garden has been swept clear, so it can’t be a careless oversight. The actress put it there as a sign to me, to say I know who you are. Stay away from me. I smart at the imagined words. But maybe I’ve read this wrong, and the shard says, I know who you are and I understand your frustration at what happened yesterday. I was wrong. You were right. Let’s be friends. Either way, it’s intended for me and I must have it. My bandaged fingers itch to grab it. I do a quick pass by her house, stoop gracefully to grab the glass without cutting myself, and keep walking, all the way around the block and back to my own house, in case anyone’s watching.

  At home I place the shard in the bag with the others. Cat sits beside it, purring contentedly.

  *

  I have to read the e-mail twice before I understand its meaning:

  Dear Professor:

  I am writing to inform you that I have contacted your department chair about the inappropriate nature of our relationship. After you expressed displeasure with my academic performance, I felt coerced into having sex with you in order to improve my grade. I have filed a formal complaint with the university’s Office of Student Affairs. I have also been withdrawn from your class.

  Bernardo

  From the top of the mountain, I have been flung down. I lie at the bottom, sick to my stomach. I write only three words to Bernardo: Are you serious? He doesn’t respond.

  Is he bluffing? Is he insane? Has he really done this thing? If he has, my department chair will chuckle to his drunken, slovenly self and then picture the whole scenario as he masturbates in his reclining leather office chair. And then he will fire me—even though I’ve only done what he himself has done a thousand times, with a thousand young women.

  I’ve heard nothing by the late afternoon, when it’s time to head to class. I manage to dress myself with my trembling, injured hands. Professor T, come back to me, I think desperately. I can’t even conjure her image, though—she’s left me for good. And the actress herself? Even she—who can’t be the paragon of virtue her onetime character was—even she would turn away from me now, pariah-to-be of the English department, creepy female predator of the classroom. I’m left alone to calm myself. If Bernardo is in class, I decide, this has all been merely a cry for attention. I’ll soothe him and fuck him and all will be well. But if he isn’t there . . . I try not to think about that. On the subway, I stare at the wizened face of a woman across the way until she looks up so abruptly, with such a hard gleam in her eye, that I drop my gaze.

  When I first walk into class, I scan the room, looking for him. He isn’t there. Everyone else is, though—and staring intently at me. Some of them stare at my bandaged hands, too, but no one asks about them. That would be Bernardo’s role, if he were here. I feel terribly shaky for the first five minutes, but as I begin to walk them through Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” I regain solid ground. I’m fortified by the brisk, blithe tone of the villanelle’s refrain: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” My students are fortified by it, too, I can tell—they’re fooled by it, in fact. They think, At last! We’re reading a happy poem! But by the end, when Bishop has walked us firmly to the edge of the abyss, into which her mother, her former homes, and finally, her former beloved have all been unceremoniously tipped, the mood has shifted. Chloe looks as if she’s on the verge of tears, and Devon looks angry. Only Simon seems totally unaffected. “Why does she say that?” Joanne asks, frowning. “Say what?” I ask, even though I already know. “That it’s easy to lose, that it isn’t a disaster, when she clearly doesn’t mean it.” “Oh,” I say softly, “because it’s far more powerful to say it this way, isn’t it? To say it lightly. It’s like a gut-punch. A verbal gut-punch.” I’m looking down at the floor as I speak, to hide the tears filling my eyes. I have no idea how Joanne responds, if she responds at all.

  *

  The next day passes, and the next, without hearing from my department chair. Without hearing from Bernardo. I’ve become more and more certain that Bernardo was bluffing. Wouldn’t I have heard from my chair by now, if he hadn’t been? If I don’t hear by tomorrow, then I’ll know I’m right. At some point Bernardo will send me his blackmail demands and I’ll meet them. Whatever they are—more secret rendezvous, an automatic A in the class—I’ll grant them, in the name of self-preservation. I can’t lose my job or what’s left of my life over this ludicrousness.

  I’m out for a long
walk, glancing sideways at the actress’s house as I pass by. I haven’t seen her in days. If she saw me, would she shrink back in fear? Or would she look at me blankly, with no sign of recognition? Of the two, her blankness would be worse. It would mean that nothing that has passed between us—not the warm conversation, not the glass dish incident—has meant anything to her.

  On my way home, I step over the manila envelope Nathan shoved at me on the day of the block party, just as I’ve done every day since then. But when I reach the stairs today, I pause and turn to retrieve it. Upstairs, I light a match and hold the envelope over the sink to set it on fire. I let the whole thing burn to ash and then wash what’s left down the drain. At the end, I pour myself a huge glass of red wine and stand at the window with a cigarette. One gulp of wine, one drag on the cigarette. Repeat. Until the glass is empty and I’ve smoked the cigarette down to a nub.

  The manila envelope has similarly burned down to nothing. Or it was always nothing; it never existed at all.

  Maybe it’s the act of making one unwanted thing disappear that makes another appear: when I check my e-mail, there’s a message from my department chair. Saying nothing, only that he’d like to meet. Just that:

  I’d like to meet with you tomorrow. What time are you available?

  After the initial, deep stab of fear, I feel something like relief. And calm. It has happened after all—the worst has happened. Which makes me laugh aloud—the worst?—the worst happened weeks ago. This is only a minuscule sidebar, an afterthought. I can handle it. I will handle it. I will handle my department chair, and Bernardo, and wipe my dirty hands on my jeans and be done.