The night I learned the truth about Kevin I had stayed up painting. A dark canvas, full of blacks and muddy greens the colour of faded hedges and moss-encrusted tombstones. Kevin came home and showered, preparing to go out again.
When I came into the bedroom, he was changing. Quickly he reached to put his shirt on, but I saw it then, what had been added to the tattoo. Where before, inside the Celtic framework, he’d had the single horizontal bar, now a vertical one, exactly the same width and length, crossed the first.
Making it a plus sign.
The sign for positive.
I’d been holding my breath and I let it out. “Kevin, no.”
“I found out last week and had the tattoo finished.”
“But why?”
“So the others will know now that I’m one of them. That I have nothing left to fear any more.”
I remember walking up to him and staring at the tattoo, wanting to touch it, but afraid. As though what it symbolized would somehow rub off. But then I did touch him, I touched the plus sign and from there my hand closed around his biceps and slid up onto his shoulder, and I found myself caressing that splendid body, the body of my handsome husband whom I had never fucked. For the first time in so long, I wanted sex. From a man, a woman, from someone, anyone, but most of all, from Kevin, who had touched the face of death.
‘No, Natalie,” he said, pushing me away.
“I want to.”
I dropped to my knees and took his cock in my mouth – it was cool and dry, white and hard as marble. I wanted it inside me. I wanted his sickness, too, and his greed. Sexual greed, a bottomless neediness, demanding more and more and always more.
Something I came to New Orleans to try to fill.
“You please me, Natalie,” Lily says. “That’s why I don’t want you to come back here. I’d rather imagine you painting in some other garden, far away.”
“It’s too late for that,” I tell her. “My husband fucked himself to death. I want to understand what could possibly have driven him to make that choice.”
“You’ll get your chance.” The voice is Martin’s. He’s crept so stealthily through the vegetation that, until this moment, I didn’t see him at all. The clouds are crowding in so thickly, the sky so very close to dark.
Martin takes my arm as though to guide me. “Can you find your way home tonight?”
A strange question. The blind leading the sighted. I nod, tell him of course, and start walking the short distance between the Decatur Street garden and the apartment I’m renting on Dumaine Street.
To my surprise, however, I realize at once that his concern was not without foundation. The street lights have gone out – a power failure, I assume, probably brought about by too many air conditioners working at once during the day’s heat – and a dull haze seems to hang over the city. The damp, sweltering air is murky, sluggish, tinted with tones of sepia and purple. When something smooth and tickly soft brushes my forehead, I recoil, gasping and swatting at it with my hands, then realize it’s only the long tresses of the Spanish moss that overhangs the sidewalk. I pick up the pace – aware that beneath the fragrant hothouse surface lurk a plethora of dangers, that strolling alone on a darkening street courts mugging and worse – but night is coming on so rapidly that I trip on a tree root poking up out of the sidewalk and would go sprawling, easel and all, were it not for the wrought iron railing my fingers manage to curl around to catch myself in time.
I scarcely sleep at all that night, so excited am I by the prospect of being allowed inside what I now consider a secret sanctuary, the mint green home with its tangle of wisteria vines and ivy and eager, hungry human limbs. Before the sun is up, I’m on my way back to the garden, moving slowly in the pre-dawn darkness, stumbling now and then over the tree roots I don’t see.
In a few minutes, when the sun is up, I’ll start to paint. Meanwhile, I sit in the warm, plant-shrouded dark, forming images in my mind, waiting for the sun.
What I’ll paint, I’ve decided, isn’t from the garden, but something from my memory and my heart. Kevin’s face. His perfect body. Kevin when he was strong and straight and healthy, before the minus sign tattooed on his arm was changed into a plus.
I feel desire heat my skin and realize, then, that the heat isn’t coming from within me, but is beating down on me from outside. The sun is starting to come up. I feel its gentle singing on my face and its kiss, tinged with fire, on the backs of my arms. The sun is up, but the world is still dark. I can’t see my hand or my brush or the canvas a few feet in front of me.
I hear the sound of Martin’s cane clicking on the paving stones, then punching into the loamy earth.
His mouth finds mine. His tongue is avid, greedy, like my own. I’m too hungry for his touch to feel afraid just yet. That will come later, I suspect. Lovers and lovers later.
“Come inside the house with me,” he murmurs as his fingers brush my open and unseeing eyes.
The Afternoon of a Venetian Chambermaid
Andrew L. Wilson
On weekday mornings she drove over from Mestre into Venice in the thin, pale hours before dawn, parked in a garage in the Piazzale Roma, then walked a few streets and took the vaporetto n.1 to the San Marco landing. She used the service entrance to the Hotel Giorgione and changed into her uniform in a cramped room among other maids, most of them quite younger than she, who stood around in states of partial undress chattering as they puffed on cigarettes. At the Hotel Giorgione she made as much money as her husband made at his factory work, and much less than her grown up son was making dealing in shady exports. She was not yet worn out by the work.
She changed into her white shoes and straightened the hem of the starched pink uniform, then smoothed her black hair back and clipped it behind her neck. Like this, her face had a more severe expression than usual. She had a few white hairs which flashed in the dark, smoothly rounded shape of her swept-back hair, but these didn’t show when she put on the bonnet. Then all you saw were her searching, sad intelligent eyes and her smile. When she bent her head, you saw that her neck was as smooth as a girl’s.
The Hotel Giorgione rang in the mornings and afternoons with the voices of the tourists who came to stay there having been drawn by descriptions of it they’d read in novels, perhaps, or seen on television. At first, she was cowed by the sheer massiveness and beauty of the place – a 16th-century palazzo with wide, gleaming carpeted halls and vaulted ceilings on which the frescoes of another age had recently been restored to startling life. But she had quickly learned to keep her eyes on the job.
She loaded her cart with fresh towels and linens and with cleaning supplies. She took the freight elevator up to her floor and pushed the cart slowly down the hall to the end, looking for doors which showed the sign asking for the maid to please make up the room. Sometimes the tourists went out early, but sometimes too they stayed, at least the passionate couples on a romantic vacation did, in their rooms making love loudly all morning.
In the rooms that had to be made, she worked with a swift, ruthless efficiency she never showed in her own household. She had learned how to clean a w.c. in ten minutes flat. Most days, as she worked steadily, she was able to detach herself by remembering things that had nothing to do with the cleaning of hotel rooms.
That morning, as she stood in the hall with an armful of dirty sheets, about to stuff them into a laundry bag suspended by a hook to the rear of her cart, a large man stepped out of a room just in front of her. He looked at her and gave her a wide, pleasant smile. She smiled in return.
He said something in English. An American.
She shook her head. He beamed at her and said, Va bene, grazie.
What was this man thanking her for?
She smiled again but, as she did, she raised one hand to her face and touched the side of a cheek with her fingertips.
He looked at her, it seemed, with a sudden sharpness. Then he blinked and smiled again and, turning on his heel, strode off in shoes that squeaked down
the corridor to the elevators.
She stood there, holding with one arm the mass of soiled linens, her other arm raised – and she found herself blushing.
At first she thought, It’s easy to know why that happened, this man reminds you of your husband. But it wasn’t that. Then she thought that the feeling that had pierced through her probably had nothing to do with this man for himself but with what she had been thinking, or fantasizing, just as he stepped out into the hallway. She turned her mind back to try to recreate those thoughts, whatever they had been, but she could not. She shrugged theatrically to herself and dropped the sheets in the bag.
From the wide mouth of the laundry bag rose the smell of bodies and of spilled semen.
At noon she took her break. She walked to a small, narrow park nearby the hotel and sat on a bench under the yellowing plane trees. She hugged herself with one arm as she smoked a cigarette and watched the people strolling through the park. At one end was a large statue in sunlight of Garibaldi on a horse, his sword upraised.
There was plenty of cleaning work that day, many of the rooms having cleared out after the long holiday weekend. As she worked, she smelled the scent of her own body rising through the maid’s uniform. She remembered smelling herself like that as a girl – a thought that made her smile
She saw an image of herself swimming with her husband. He was thin then and had the body of a god. After their swim, they’d always go up into the dunes and make love. She remembered once, in a spasm of passion as her husband lunged in and out of her, licking her own shoulder, as if licking her own flesh were somehow no different than licking his.
Recalling that day made her wet between the legs. She shut and locked the door to the room, went into the toilet and, sitting on the curved edge of the bidet with her legs spread and her stockings rolled hastily down and her panties around her knees, masturbated swiftly. She bit the back of her hand as she rose up, up, up into her orgasm.
She was trembling as she hurriedly pulled up the panties and refastened the flesh-coloured stockings. She smelled her fingers – the smell of sex on them was pungent, like the smell of the lagoon around Venice. She patted her dress down front and back.
* * *
Who should be walking in the hall but the large man with the clear, pleasant smile? He was dressed in a suit and was holding a large bottle of mineral water. She swept a hand over her forehead to get off it a clinging strand of hair and smiled demurely at him.
Scusi signorina, he said.
She smiled at that. Signorina!
Signora, she said.
Ah, he said, Mi scusi, mi scusi. Signora, io voglio – He suddenly stopped and let his fluttering hand fall.
You can speak English, she told him. I speak some. From my school.
Ah, he said. He shook his head, smiling. Then he looked at her with the sharpness of this morning and said:
Please. I want to know your name.
She stared at him with her mouth open in an O.
My name? she said.
Yes. How do you say that in Italian? I knew but I’ve forgotten. I’m sorry.
Come si chiama?
That means?
It means: What are you called?
Ah.
He looked at her. He had blue eyes.
I am called Gabriella.
He held out a wide hand, which she shook. It was fleshy yet not unpleasant.
Mi chiamo, he said, stumbling a little and pursing his wet lips –
Buono, buono, she said with forced warmth, encouraging him.
Harold.
She beamed. He let go of her hand.
Piacere, she said. It means, With pleasure to meet you.
Ah, he said. Piacere, then.
Are you in Venice on some business? she asked. She was impressed to hear her own speech, realizing that her English was in fact very good, and the fact of her English being good gave her a kind of superiority over him, even though he was in a beautiful suit and she was wearing her slightly wrinkled maid’s uniform.
Yes, yes, he said, pursing his lips as if he were trying to speak his English the way that she spoke it.
Realizing all at once that the hand he had just shaken in his hard, firm grip was the same hand with which she had just finished masturbating herself on the bidet in the locked room, she laughed.
Well, she said to his enquiring look, I hope you have a good stay here.
I will. And thank you. Ciao.
Ciao.
He raised his hand and, waving slightly, passed by her as she stood there in the hall. Watching his back go, Gabriella felt a sadness that thrilled her body like pure elation.
The Dinner Party
Emma Kaufmann
When Stewart arrived at the dinner party with a life-sized mannequin tucked under his arm, Stella asked him if he would care to deposit it in the cloakroom where the rest of the guests had left their coats.
Igoring her, Stewart marched down the hall to the dining room. Stella scurried after him. The conversation stopped as he set the mannequin – dressed in a red satin evening gown, which was split to the thigh – next to the fireplace. All eyes were drawn to one of her legs, which jutted out from the slit. The guests held their breath as Stewart arranged her so that she balanced against the mantelpiece, then gave a collective gasp as the mannequin toppled to the floor. From her prone position, legs sticking up stiffly into the air, it was clear that she wasn’t wearing panties.
How to handle this? wondered Stella, as Stewart lifted the mannequin back to a standing position. She watched in amazement as her husband, Graham, walked over to Stewart and handed him two martinis.
The mannequin, thought Stella – from her gazelle-like limbs to her parted mouth, that gave the impression that she was permanently poised on the verge of saying something witty – was the epitome of everything that Stella had strived for and failed to achieve during tortuous sessions at the gym. As Stella walked towards her husband, a wave of anxiety rising in her chest, she had the distinct impression that the mannequin’s eyes were following her.
She tugged at his shirtsleeve. “What on earth are we going to do?”
“Do?” said Graham, a tall man in the latter stages of baldness. “About what?” He speared an olive and plopped it into a glass.
“About Stewart. Don’t you think he’s behaving a little oddly?” She looked over to the mannequin’s martini glass, which Stewart had lodged between her fingers, where it remained untouched.
Graham chuckled. “Yes, quite amusing, isn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Stella, feeling a little faint. The mannequin was still looking at her, this time she was certain of it. Her head had twisted to the left, and her gaze was trained directly on Stella.
Stella walked backwards towards the kitchen, tugging her fitted black dress towards her knees, wishing she had worn something looser. She usually considered her legs to be her best –well really, only – feature and had worn the dress to show them off, but since the mannequin had appeared on the scene she was convinced that the tight dress only emphasized the world of difference between her hippo-sized backside and the mannequin’s slender haunches.
She shut the door behind her, took a gulp of air and began to stir the cassoulet, which was bubbling on the stove. What on earth, she thought, licking the spoon absentmindedly and setting it aside, had compelled her to put on a pair of black hold-up stockings this morning, as well as a rather provocative thong?
As she began to mix up a chocolate soufflé the question continued to niggle. It was hard for her to admit her motives to herself but, if she was honest, the donning of the outfit had been a practical response to Graham’s recent lack of sexual interest, and she was nothing if not practical, she thought as she whipped up the soufflé a little too vigorously. She could only hope that after the guests had left the sight of her saucy undergarments might bring forth some sort of response from him.
She poured the soufflé mix into individual serving dishes
and slid them into the oven, flushing as she thought of the mannequin’s eyes and the way they had followed her. She hadn’t felt this way since she was 14 and had had a crush on Miss Charlton, the gym mistress. Her insides felt all gooey as she put the soup tureen onto the hostess trolley and wheeled it into the dining room.
To her dismay, she saw that the only seat left at the dinner table was next to the mannequin, whose chin was now propped in her hand, her head turned expectantly towards the empty chair.
She could hear Stewart say to Graham, who sat beside him, “I’ve not known Carla long. It’s very much early days . . .” Graham was indulging Stewart, Stella noticed, nodding attentively as he talked.
Stella poured the soup into the bowls and put them in front of her guests. Because her friends had impeccable manners, no one had dared to ask Stewart directly why he was so insistent that this dummy – Carla, as he called her – was his girlfriend. But, mannequin or not, both the other men besides Stewart and her husband were transfixed by the perfect cream orbs that spilled out of Carla’s low-cut gown.
Not wishing to make a scene, she set a bowl in front of Carla. She would humour Stewart as if he were a child with an imaginary friend.
As she leaned over Carla to put a bowl beside Stewart she felt a hand brush the back of her leg, so that she almost dropped the soup into his lap. She looked at Stewart. Had he just touched her? No, it was impossible. He was still rambling on to Graham, “The thing about Carla is, she actually listens to me. Whereas with Dorothy – ” his ex-wife – “I could hardly get a word in edgeways . . .”
Stewart turned back to Carla and tied a napkin around her neck. As Stella sat down beside her she could scarcely believe her eyes as Stewart lifted her spoon, filled with cream of mushroom soup, to Carla’s lips and tilted it. Some of the soup ran into the hollow between her lips, the rest spilled over her chin.
“OK, darling,” he said, as if responding to an imaginary voice. “If you think you can handle it on your own.” He let the spoon sink back into the soup and turned back to his conversation with Graham.
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