Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  He didn’t understand the expression. He had taken both my hands in one of his, and raised them together, high over my head.

  “Ahead of yourself? How can you be ahead of where you already are? It makes no sense.”

  “Never mind. What are you doing?”

  We had rotated, somehow, without getting up, so we were lengthwise on the couch.

  “Wrists and ankles,” he explained, letting me in on this big secret, instructing me. “Weak links in the body’s chain of bones. Try to move.”

  “Viktor—”

  “You can’t, can you?” All his weight was on top, but he wasn’t really pressing, just lying there. My arms were stretched out of their sockets. My feet were apart, nailed. And his one hand was still free. But he went on as if we were having a normal conversation. “So, you are broke. Broken.”

  His fingers found the top button of my jeans.

  “Stop,” I said, except it came out so small, so weak-sounding. A plea. I tried to move. “Viktor, let go.”

  He undid the top button, and all this panic flowed out.

  “In a minute, I’m going to scream.”

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  On League Night, every lane was in use. I remembered the thunder in the old building on the edge of the cornfields. Arhat Bowlerama. I had wanted the sound, the smells, the deep vibrations in the pit of my stomach, all my senses, to overwhelm me, to take me someplace. I was thirteen. Take me where? I didn’t know. His hand snaked inside my panties. I arched my back and as soon as I did I knew that was exactly what he wanted. All his muscles came to life. Before, he hadn’t even been trying. Now I saw how much stronger he was than me. We struggled for a minute, then, once it was clear to both of us that I couldn’t do anything, he let go, took my pants on either side, and yanked so hard they were down around my ankles, binding me. Then he took my shirt and did the same thing, pulling it over my head.

  I was too scared to make a sound.

  “I don’t like it when you bring other men around. Not even men. Boys.”

  “I promise never to—”

  “Think of how nice it would be. A proper marriage. Think of all the things you would never have to worry about again. How to get money. Where to live. Whom to love. I can give you all that. Far more than any pretty-boy painter. But first you have to give up your will, Eve.”

  “My what?”

  “Think of sex as a game, a competition, where we stack up our resolve, our determination, against each other, and the winner takes all. Tonight, when I do to you what you have been begging me to do for months, all your will will pass over to me. And you will be happy. For the first time ever.”

  “I never said yes.”

  He leaned down and whispered, his tongue licking the sentences into my ear:

  “I told you before, a woman agrees with her body, not with words. Now for God’s sake give in to your desires. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  His knee was between my thighs. I was struggling to maintain boundaries, where I began and where he ended. His shirt was still on, but the hairs were crowding around his open collar, dying to get out, climbing over each other, eager to cover me, colonize my smooth skin. I was choking on his after-shave.

  “Get off,” I managed to say, one last time.

  “Or what?”

  His teeth had that taunting, I-win grin.

  I laid the knife handle flat against where his stomach curved out and released the catch.

  I don’t know how I did it. My hand had worked free. He was leaning on a shirtsleeve instead of my wrist. And my pants, when he pulled them down, it had fallen out of the pocket and stayed on the couch. I squeezed the soft rubber the way I had a hundred times before, just a nervous tic, like checking for your keys, practicing, practicing for this very emergency, and the blade came shooting out. It might have actually cut him, just a little, because he gave this cry and was off me in a second.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!”

  “Please don’t swear.”

  My knife was the only clean, pointy thing in the whole room. It glittered.

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “A store,” I said. It seemed like a funny question. “It’s for personal protection.”

  “You are so unromantic,” he complained. “Why do you always feel the need to ruin these tender moments?”

  “Tender moments?”

  “It is the last time I propose marriage to you.”

  “That wasn’t a marriage proposal. You were trying to rape me!”

  “Marriage. Rape. As I said before, you people make such arbitrary distinctions. And only when it is in your self-interest to do so. Why not say I was offering you a job? Just as I did before. I thought that was why you came here.” He pulled up his pants. “Why not say I was taking pity on you?”

  “Being someone’s wife is not a job.”

  “It is the most likely one you are going to get. Believe me, your prospects were far brighter the first time we met than they are now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You are not as innocent,” he said sullenly.

  I didn’t know if that was an insult or not. I mean, what was the opposite of innocent? Guilty?

  “How’s my passport coming along?”

  “Your passport? You think I am still going to get you a passport?”

  “Why not?” I looked at the couch, the only witness. There wasn’t even bedding to be mussed up. It was like it never happened. Except there was this hair stuck between my teeth. I tried pushing it with my tongue but it wouldn’t budge. It was jammed in. “We can still get married, can’t we?”

  That made him mad all over again.

  “You tried to mutilate me!”

  “Yeah? Well, you tried to get me pregnant!”

  “Listen to us,” he muttered. “We are practically husband and wife already. In terms of argumentation.”

  “You need me.”

  He looked up.

  “For that green card thing. I mean, especially if they’re going to kick you out.”

  “But, correct me if I am wrong, you need me too, I think.”

  I tried holding on to my anger, but couldn’t. It was always like this with Viktor.

  “Crystal was right.”

  He got this alarmed expression.

  “Crystal? What did she tell you?”

  “It’s all about past lives. You remind me of someone, of a time and a place. I can’t separate it all out, but that’s why it will never work with us. Why it shouldn’t work. You’re more about where I came from than where I want to be going.”

  “What on earth are you doing to your mouth?”

  “There’s this hair.”

  I was trying to pick it out with my knife. He came over.

  “Stop. You could hurt yourself. Please.”

  He made me bare my teeth and then very gently reached in.

  “It is not that way for me.” He was concentrating. “You remind me of no one. Or rather of someone I desired before I had any notion she could exist. For me, you were, what is it called? A dream come true.”

  I felt him grasp the hair between two fingers and tug. He could be so delicate, when he wanted.

  “I try explaining this to you a thousand times, but it always comes out wrong. I thought, perhaps”—he nodded, embarrassed, toward the couch—“if I demonstrated physically, since you laugh so much at my words, my poor English, it would make more sense.”

  No, not when he wanted. That was the problem. He could only be nice in spite of himself. I always ended up wanting him after he was finished wanting me. And he never sensed that. Even though we were standing as close as two people can stand without touching, he was deaf to what my body was saying now. He pulled the hair out and showed it to me.

  “I don’t laugh at your words,” I said.

  “Of course we should not marry. The whole idea is ludicrous. I am sorry I ever brought it up.”

  “V
iktor—”

  “No, it is for the best. It is my fault. I had the stupid notion it could be more.”

  “More than what?”

  He turned away.

  “I hoped you could save me.”

  Well, this certainly isn’t love, I thought, looking at his back. It was more like a sickness. What I wanted to do now was what I had almost killed him for trying just a few minutes before. It was all my fault. That was the feeling I had, even though I knew it wasn’t true. He had been so totally in the wrong. But he was the one hurt. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. He sat back down at his desk and pretended he was busy, that I was dismissed. He was back to being a jerk, or trying to be. He nodded at my snow globe.

  “Don’t forget your Big Apple.”

  A cold wind came and blew everything down. I had never been in weather like that before. I was shot in one direction, spun around a corner, knocked sideways by another blast, not dead leaves but this city mix of grit, paper, cardboard cups, and out-of-control pigeons. Still, it was the same as trees being stripped: a bareness, revealed. The streets channeled and funneled it all. When I finally got to the gallery I was messed up, my hair and clothes, but my cheeks were glowing and my eyes were shining. I had been so worried, setting off, about what to say, how to act. By the end, all those fears were blown clean out of my head. I was just happy to be here. It was getting dark early. I remembered last time, lazily wandering up the street in what still felt like summer, looking at the invitation, not sure, even when I got there, that I was actually going in. Now, I tilted into this incredible resistance, full of purpose, even though I didn’t know what exactly my purpose was.

  “Eve!”

  The building had a wide terrace of steps before you got to each door. People were sitting along them like bleachers, passing bottles of beer, smoking cigarettes. They all seemed to know each other. An older woman sat apart. She was the one who had called. She patted the space next to her.

  “Come sit with me first.”

  The wind was whipping her hair. It was Nora.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Reliving my youth.”

  She passed me her cigarette. It wasn’t the regular kind. It was hand-rolled, and pink.

  “Don’t let that go out.”

  I took a puff and coughed.

  “You’re supposed to hold it in.”

  I gave it back. She moved closer, right up against me. She was huddled inside an enormous winter coat. She slipped her arms out of the sleeves and put it around me, too, sheltering us. It was that heavy blue cloth kind, with a big collar and anchors on the buttons. I was in my jumpsuit.

  “Is that all you’re wearing?”

  “I don’t get cold.”

  She sucked at the pink cigarette. I watched her, how she held it in her lungs instead of letting go. She tried handing it to me, but I shook my head.

  “What’s the matter?” Her voice came out in this cloud of green. “You won’t get high with me? You wanted to, before. At work.”

  “Before, you were smoking tobacco.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Her hand kept holding it out. “I’ve been up there, honey. I’ve seen what you’re going to see. And believe me, you need this.”

  Fall had blown away the last shreds of her youth. But somehow that made her even more haunting, her eyes, this gray-blue distance in them, the way her face was stamped on, slightly crooked, at an angle. This is what’s left, I thought, once all the surface stuff is gone, the things you think are so important at the time, this is the essence, what lies underneath, driving you. I watched the tight circle of paper flare as I breathed in. Almost immediately I wanted to cough, but somehow I mastered the urge and sat there, motionless, my lungs inflated like a hot-air balloon. She took it back from me.

  “What do you mean, you don’t get cold? You were freezing a minute ago, walking down the street. You just want to look good.”

  “So?” I found I could talk, by moving my lips and thinking what I wanted to say out loud. I didn’t need air. It was highly overrated, breathing. “What’s wrong with wanting to look good?”

  “You’d look good no matter what you wore, at your age.” She brushed ash off my leg. “He’s there.”

  “Well, of course. It’s his Opening.”

  “So is she.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know her name.”

  I nodded. Marron.

  “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  I let my breath go right in her face. I hadn’t meant to. She blinked and coughed. We laughed.

  “So what do you think?” She posed for me, struck an attitude, without really moving. “No makeup. Well, hardly any. And I stopped dying my hair.”

  That’s what it was, I saw now. All this gray.

  “You look great.”

  “And I got a job in an office. Can you believe it?”

  “Viktor attacked me, I think.”

  “You think?”

  She shook the joint impatiently, for me to take it from her again.

  “Well, I thought he attacked me. He acted more like it was another marriage proposal, but when I said no, he took it back. So I guess the wedding’s off.”

  You can’t flee the Devil, I remembered. You have to sleep with him. No, that wasn’t right, was it?

  “Eve.”

  I grabbed it and inhaled, then started talking while not letting my breath out, talking in that high, tucked-up voice.

  “I mean, who is the Devil? That’s the big question, isn’t it? It’s almost like he descends on men and possesses them for short periods of time. And then, just when you think you know who he is, he flies away and they’re this normal guy again, the one you started out liking. But by then it’s too late, because you’ve turned around and he’s right behind you, fluttering over your shoulder like a bat, waiting to take over whoever’s nice to you next.”

  “Have you ever gotten stoned before?”

  “And you know what else I’ve begun to doubt? This whole idea of winning. When you win, when you come out on top, what do you exactly feel? Nothing! I mean maybe you’re happy, but you’re not thinking, you’re not actually learning from life. At least I’m not. And then, right after, there’s this incredible letdown, like you were fooled, like you didn’t really win at all. But when you lose, that’s something you take with you, that becomes part of your experience. So really you haven’t lost anything. What do you mean ‘stoned’? You mean like the woman who committed adultery? John 8:5?”

  “Did you really want to get married?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought it might be fun. I like the dress, that part of it. Walking down the aisle. Plus I needed the documentation. Viktor could make me a real person.”

  “What about him? The guy upstairs?”

  “Horace? He could make me a woman,” I heard myself say, and then was so shocked and embarrassed I tried explaining it away. “I mean, not that I’m not a woman already. But he could give me the illusion of being a woman that would actually make me feel more like what I already am, apparently. Does that make sense?”

  “I wouldn’t be in any rush.”

  “To get married?”

  “To be a woman.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You are one. I don’t know what I am. It’s like I keep waiting for someone to tell me. Or maybe tell me that I’m not. That I’m a new species, instead. That would explain a lot.”

  She put out the joint.

  “No more for you.”

  We were each holding up a side of her coat. Together, they formed the door of a tent. I dropped mine, stuck my head out, and saw the sun had broken through. The wind was still blowing, but the last rays had slid beneath the clouds and, with this slicing angle, made everything realer than real.

  “Look,” I said, except there was nothing to see, just gilded trash, floating frozen in the sky, my hand, the way my five fingers were cut from one sheet of smooth, soft, fresh pie dough rolled out
by my mother. Suddenly everything felt so hopeless.

  “What should I do, Nora?”

  I wasn’t even going to tell her about the third man in my life, a middle-aged, wife-beating, crooked policeman who wanted to dress me up like his daughter. The funny thing was, he really cared. More than the others. I knew it. The wind found the place where his lips had kissed mine. And where his hand had hit my cheek. I touched to see if they felt any different.

  “Don’t ask me for advice. My life’s a disaster.” She shivered. “I’m just the opposite of you. I’m cold all the time. You should know, though . . .”

  “Know what?”

  I could see she was weighing in her mind whether I really should know or not. Whatever it was. People came out, walked past us, laughing. We watched. They seemed so young, even though they were older than me. I was seeing them through Nora’s eyes.

  “You should know there’s other stuff going on,” she finally said. “Other people. That no decision is entirely yours to make.”

  “He doesn’t love her.”

  She gave me this puzzled look, then took back her coat and buttoned it up, snuggling into it.

  “Whose is that?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, whose is it? It’s mine.”

  “It’s so big.”

  “It used to be someone else’s.” She took out a cheap plastic compact and examined herself. “I still find stuff in the pockets.”

  “You were talking about Horace, right? He doesn’t love her. That girl. Marron. Is that who you meant?”

  “God, I look like shit. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I was eating up her face, I was so hungry. You must have been beautiful once, I wanted to tell her. I can see the traces. She powdered parts of her forehead, then her nose. My eyes had forgotten how to blink. I saw deep into her.

  “How did you even know this was happening? That it was tonight?”

  “From that postcard he was passing around at the bar. I remember things.” She made it sound like a problem, a curse. “Besides, I like art. Don’t you?”

  “Not especially.”

  She got this sly smile, putting away the makeup. She looked more like herself now. Her old self.

  “You’ll like this art. Go see.”