by Sophie Jaff
I must have imagined it.
I must have ima—
The woman was naked. Naked, staring straight at me, her red hair hanging in dark wet clumps.
I probably just need sleep. I wish Andrea were awake. I wish I had someone with me. This is why I don’t want to be alone anymore. My vision trembles. My breath catches in my chest.
My phone lights up. I wipe my eyes and look. There’s a new message for me. I don’t recognize the number but I know whom it’s from. He’s sent me a message.
It’s short, six words. It should be a question but it’s not. He knows I’ll say yes.
There was no expression in her eyes. Her eyes were blank.
Her eyes were dead.
Don’t be stupid. You’ve had too much to drink. It’s those women you’ve been hearing about. The ones with their throats slit.
It’s probably a very elaborate prank, a very, very elaborate prank, or it could have been performance art—maybe I’ll read about it tomorrow. Just go to sleep. Don’t think about it now. Don’t indulge in this. Think about it tomorrow, like Scarlett O’Hara. Think about it when it’s daytime, when it’s light, not raining and dark. Maybe it will make a good scary story, maybe I won’t tell anyone ever, maybe I just thought I saw—
A naked woman standing in the rain. Red curving circles on her neck and down her side and above her breasts.
I’m cold. I take half of one of my little white pills. I really need to sleep. “Stop it,” I tell myself aloud. My voice sounds small and strained.
I get into bed as quickly as I can. I’m shivering even though it’s a warm night.
They were bleeding because they were cuts carved into her skin, just like on the other women they found.
Once in bed, I look at my phone, now charging on the bedside table. I look at the message again, the message from a man who watched me dress, an arrogant man, a man who clearly isn’t loyal to his friends. I don’t know how he got my number but he did. I think of David saying, “The guy’s a genius.”
I read his message again.
Sushi tomorrow at Otoro 9:00 pm
No question mark. It’s an order, not a question. It’s a presumption. Well, there’s no need to go. I shut my eyes and wait for the little white pill to work. The rain continues to fall. It falls on the streets, and the cars and the trees. Water streams and pools and whirls into the gutters. The rain continues on, late into the night.
Falling on no one at all.
The Maiden of Morwyn Castle | PART TWO
HEN THE WORD SPREAD OF THE Maiden’s wondrous brew, people came from miles around to taste her ale, and they came in such great numbers that she toiled both night and day. And as she stirred she sang a little song with the voice of a lark:
Now gold may turn beggars to servants, then masters,
And honey may sweeten a brew,
But I’d rather your kisses than all the king’s riches,
For there’s none so sweet as you.
And all the men were dazzled and proclaimed themselves to be in love and tried to win her favor, but she would laugh and make no promise to any of them, no matter what they said. The wives of the town grew weary and the young women sore of heart, for their menfolk no longer courted nor worked because they were always to be found at the tavern, giving posies and pretty compliments to the Maiden, who brewed and sang and looked so well, and then the men would fall, steeped in drink and fighting among themselves, into a noisy heated brawl.
And so the alewife who had been bested by the Maiden gathered the women of the town together and spoke to them, saying, “Perhaps she is a witch, for surely she has bewitched our men and made them her dogs.” All the women grew to hate her and wished her far away.
6
You have taken to riding public transport.
It is a thing you have not done for a long, long time, but then again you’ve only just woken up. You’ve been awakened and you’ve risen and you’re hungry to experience everything, the fumes, the smoke and perfumes, the bright and bitter scents. The taxis, and buses, and subways, the slick passing of the cards in the slots, the streets pulsing with people and their chariots of metal and steel, the meters ticking, the buildings, cathedrals arching and shooting into the sky, and the cups of hastily grabbed coffee, the bottles of water, the phones, the keyboards, and the billboards, and boards that people wear as they stand and hand others small pieces of paper—please buy, please buy, please buy—and the endless lights in a multitude of colors, the towering spikes that needle the clouds so that there is no need for stars, the restaurants and the bars and the endless people sitting on endless high seats and menus and waiters and bartenders tending to the girls in heels, business high and then higher at night, the dresses shorter, everyone listening to music or reading or pretending that they are not sitting next to a million strangers in love and out of love and between love and fear and failure and beyond all hope there’s hope.
Oh, how you love this city!
You love public transport because anyone can take it and everyone does, from the claustrophobic man with his summer place in the Hamptons to the woman who has nothing but a row of scars up each of her thin arms. You love how, for a brief moment, you are all together traveling to somewhere else. You enjoy the feeling of transitory impermanence. How, in these moments, people make the place that they are occupying, theirs.
You think about when you first met your Ride.
You came in the night. You came in the dark, under the door, through the window. You came to him as he lay in bed, lay in the thin place between wakefulness and sleep. Why him? Why you?
Because. Because the wind blew, because the ancient cogs clicked into place, because the moon covered its face and the spray from the sea turned red and something stirred deep in the dust of the universe.
You drifted in, finer than smoke, thinner than mist. He breathed in, he breathed out. You leaned over, tasted his skin, his drops of sweat, tasted the wine he had drunk, the grease and the salt of the burger he had eaten. You looked at him asleep. An innocent. Your Ride had not known suffering or hunger or thirst or pain.
You studied the bridge of his nose, the tuck of his chin, the nape of his neck exposed, the soft lobe of his ear. The warm, sleeping lines of him. Your Ride, the body that will hold you while you do your work to keep the world safe.
He smelled like umber, the color of a day well done. He sighed a faint scent of toothpaste and the deeper primal wet of his mouth. He sighed and then he inhaled you in.
He breathed you into his diaphragm, into his muscles, his cartilage, ligaments, tendons, soaked you in through his skin—his nerves and blood vessels sang, oil glands and sweat glands rang—into his follicles and his fat, down and deep within his protein filaments, and into his liver and his stomach with its gastric folds and acid juices, bile black, intestines, gallbladder, deeper, deeper into the lobes and creases and jelly of his brain itself, and deeper, still deeper to the core, the very core of him of you—
—are first an embryo, curled small and pink, the size of a thumb, a seahorse floating in the dark sea of your mother’s womb, forming, growing, being born with a wail. The shock of bright sharp light into the world, fat cheeks to be kissed, screaming your parents out of sleep, or laughing with delight, your first uneasy steps growing surer until you run around, fall down, cry, pull yourself up, start again, your fine hair growing darker, your limbs longer. Learning how to ride a bike, a skateboard, to ski, moving fast, talking, drawing, musical instruments, spraying Lego pieces over the floor, taller now. At school, shy at first, then raising your hand, answering a question, Me, me! Knock knock. Orange you glad I didn’t say knock knock? Ketchup, burgers, Fourth of July, fireworks from the beach, swimming at camp, pillow fights, real fights, making up, reading, weird feelings, wet dreams, daydreams, some pot, first job scooping ice cream, up to the elbow in cold sticky messes. Down by the dock, drinking, drunk, beer, throwing up, your head hurts, a girl’s small breasts, fumbling at the strap. Competitive swimming,
the sharp smell of the pool, the echoing, pushing through the water, muscles tighten, broad shoulders, good but not great, good enough, September, tests, mostly good, better in class, knowing the answer, hunting with Dad, hard to talk, the smell of turning leaves, Halloween. College pamphlets smooth and shiny, school, the campus benevolent, wide, brick, and friends to talk and sprawl with, the future spread ahead as green as the grass you lie upon, and life inevitably pushing on like the strokes you take in the water—
—your heart beat, your pulse pulsed, your blood circulated, hormones repaired muscles, testosterone was secreted, neurons gave orders, food was digested, sweat and semen, saliva and swallow, you took control of each beat and tick and pull and flow and stop and start. You became, You become, and . . .
You Are.
Now you ride the bus, which is agonizingly slow. It grunts and heaves and strains and wheezes like an old, old woman trying to get up. Older people ride the bus too, old ladies, old men. They have more time on their old hands; they have more time because they have hardly any time left. They must wonder why an attractive, elegant man like you, a man in his prime, is riding the bus. You look like you could step onto a private jet. You have done so in the past and will do so again if you have a meeting and the fancy takes you.
But right now you’re riding the bus because it amuses you. It’s relaxing in a strange way. You can think better here.
It’s fairly late and the bus is almost empty. It’s been raining and you gaze at those hunkering down and walking fast outside, the ones who don’t have an umbrella. It’s nice to be in the bus, which is warm, and comforting, and sheltered from the rain.
The passengers who remain are also staring out of the rain-streaked windows but they are not as contented as you. They know that when they get home there will still be meals to prepare, and families to deal with, and they are tired, bone tired, and the rain will make everything that much harder. And it’s still only Tuesday.
The woman one seat up is dying for a drink. You can see this by the way her shoulders curve and her mouth is set in a grim line and her eyes are so thirsty. She’s thinking about the womblike warmth of her favorite bar. The one she promised her girlfriend she wouldn’t go to anymore. The one where nobody knows her name, which is why it’s her favorite. She’s thinking about what it would be like to get off two stops early just to grab a quick one. Just to get her through the night. She’s supposing she might have to have vodka because it doesn’t smell as much, but what she really wants is a golden glass of bourbon. Just thinking about it makes her sweat. And you can smell this.
Addiction is metallic; it sounds like a million pinball machines. It tastes like the last crumbs at the bottom of the packet, of salt- and sugar-stained fingers, it smells like a damp shoulder pressed up close in a crowd, it feels like dew-formed droplets sliding down your fingers, it crawls like the itch in the small of your back.
You lean back and close your eyes but the smell is growing fainter; the woman has gotten off the bus, two stops early.
You smile.
There are only three passengers left, a man and two women. They have both seen you, already noticed you. You’re noticeable. A handsome, single, no-wedding-ring man on a bus. It’s a little unusual but it works. Maybe you just wanted to get out of the rain. Maybe you like to “experience life” and “all the city has to offer.”
You do.
The girls are separated by two seats—two seats and twelve years, you would guess. One is in her early twenties. She is very pretty, like a piece of expensive fruit. Her hair is a glossy nut brown, a chestnut brown, and she wears lipstick, shiny like seeds and pink like the inside of a pomegranate, on her lips, which pout a little. She looks squeaky clean and juicy bright.
She’s on the third day of her menses. You can smell it. Old blood filled with old eggs has a darker scent. She’s horny, which has a purple note. As she empties, she wants to be filled up. She wants to be fucked without protection.
Her boyfriend will never do such a thing. He’s a nice Jewish boy. He would be horrified by the very unclean thought.
She knows you’re looking. Her excitement is electric blue. It smells like fresh-cut grass, it soars like the hallelujahs of a gospel choir, it growls like a motorbike.
You smile briefly at the excited, juicy, fruity, squeaky-clean berry of a girl before turning your attention to the other one.
You don’t need her color yet.
The other one has already seen you. She saw the pretty girl and saw you and had not allowed herself to hope. All her life she’s been the other one, the friend. Not ugly, not unattractive, just the one who always has the slightly prettier friend. Her personality does not sparkle; she is not witty, not funny, not quirky. She is in fact “nice,” which is the bell that tolls social death. All her friends are getting married. Her friends are having babies. She’s happy for them. She’s fine. She stares out the window at the rain and the spreading darkness and thinks about walking the five flights up to her small room. It’s less rent for a smaller room. And of dinner, which will be leftovers, and if, hopefully, her roommate is out, she can sprawl a little in front of the television. Watch some complete garbage. Watch people whose lives are so much worse than hers. People she doesn’t have to be happy for.
She is very surprised when you smile at her. She sees your reflection in the window. She can’t believe you haven’t gone for that gorgeous twenty-something. Someone who could get married and have a baby tomorrow, someone with her whole twenty-something life ahead of her, but no, this handsome man is smiling at her. Almost as if he sees past the twenty-something-year-old and is looking for more.
She doesn’t look at you again. That would be too much. She doesn’t shift, but straightens a little, her mother’s voice in her head, Sit up! Don’t hunch over like that! And then hunching down again because it’s too much, sitting up to attention like this.
Don’t blow this, she’s telling herself. Calm down. He’s probably not even looking at you anyway.
Her hand goes subtly to her hair just to see what she’s dealing with—it tends to frizz when the weather is wet.
You love watching her. It’s endearing.
Insecurity is lavender. It tastes like eyedrops at the back of your throat. It squeaks like the first notes of a piano recital. It feels like a too-large bra, too-tight pants—why isn’t anyone looking at me, why is everyone looking at me? I don’t, I can’t, I wish, I’m not, I haven’t, I couldn’t, I want.
The bus stops and the twenty-something gets off. She passes you one last long look as if to say, You don’t know what you’re missing, and pushes out into the rain.
She doesn’t know what she’s missing.
When the man gets off, an old woman gets on. She wears a long dark coat despite the weather, and a multitude of scarves and shawls. It takes this human bundle of wet cloth forever to find her card. She mutters to herself, her hands shake a little, and when her eyes roll like old milky marbles, you see she’s blind. Eventually the bus driver has had enough. He tells her harshly but kindly, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” because it’s petty change from an old blind lady, and what does he care if it’s his last shift anyway?
She rasps something out that might be “thank you” and might be “fuck you”; the voice is ragged and rusted down. She sways and stumbles and totters like an ancient pirate tapping to a seat and drops her head.
Her eyelids twitch and her swollen, liver-spotted hands twist in her lap.
The nice girl looks at her, even though she doesn’t want to, then looks away. She thinks what all women secretly think, and fear.
That could be me.
If she doesn’t find someone, if she doesn’t love someone, if someone doesn’t hold her in the dark and ask how her day is, if someone doesn’t tell her it’s going to be okay, she’ll turn into this woman, this blind old madwoman with food stains on her endless shawls. Or maybe she’ll just shrivel up and die; her chest, hollowed out by loneliness, will cave in.
> Suffering is a deep and spoiled black. It smells of unopened rooms; it smells of sour wine. It weeps like a woman in the last stall of the bathroom. It sounds like a tree falling, it echoes in barren parking lots. It tastes of dust. It looks like a single faded sonogram kept in the back of a cupboard.
This is where you come in. Maybe you’ll come to one seat nearer, just one seat, though, so as not to invade her space, and lean in. Your eyes will fix on her, and your smile will be one of embarrassed charm as you ask:
“Excuse me, but is this the bus to . . . ?”
You will ask if the bus is going in the opposite direction.
She’ll have to tell you apologetically that it’s not.
You’ll be comically annoyed with yourself. “I can’t believe it!” you’ll say but your eyes will twinkle and she’ll know that you’re laughing at yourself.
Because you have a great sense of humor. Because you’re easygoing. Because even though it’s late on a rainy Tuesday night, you’re always ready for an adventure. You’re spontaneous like that because you’re warm and funny and perfect.
“Killer.”
The words come in a slow, thick croak as if from a great toad. The girl gives a little jump and you look up.
The old woman is staring straight at you with her blind eyes. Her face is an ancient wreckage, lost to gravity and the ages. You look around at the nearly empty bus, then at the nice girl. The nice girl seems horrified, so you look back toward the old hag. You’re pleasant, if somewhat astonished.
“Ender of Life.”
“What?” you ask. “Who, me?”
“Yes. You. Evil. Spirit.” That low growl has no business coming from a human throat.
“Hey now,” you say, “settle down.” You’re firm but still good-humored because you’re kind and patient. The girl should understand that you don’t take the old woman’s mad ramblings seriously.
