I had a long knife for butchering beef off the bone, sharp enough to cut through fish scales and skin. I’ve never used it; I hate cutting into flesh. I held it in front of me and knelt in my kitchen. I watched him all night. He had a strong back, and I could see the outline of bones indenting his shirt.
He shuddered only once, a great heave that lifted his whole body into tension. I trembled the knife and closed my eyes. He was gone when I opened them.
* * *
Every night he was out there, whimpering when the sirens blazed past. Sometimes I only saw him for a few minutes before I blinked and he was gone, other times he was there all night, rocking, his hands around his head.
It was loud at night. I could hear the dim buzz of the lights, the automated bell of the convenience mart across the street banging when the doors open. The people laughing, sighing, talking down below. And the steady, impertinent jerk of the building, when everyone shut up for a second to wait and worry if something bigger was coming.
* * *
I had trouble sleeping at my apartment with him out there, so I asked Lizzy if I could spend the night with her. I didn’t tell her about the man. I didn’t think she would believe me, or worse, she’d want to come over and look. She didn’t mind, said she liked the company. It’s miserable to live with someone else sometimes, but even more miserable to live alone.
At night, I watched her undress down to her panties—striped blue boy boxers with ripped lace along the edges—and took pictures of her with her camera. She posed with her ass stretched out and her hair or her hands covering her breasts. Her hair was done in pigtails, long enough to almost touch the elastic blue band around her hips. She looked straight at the camera and smiled or pouted in turn. Sometimes, she asked me to only photograph her from the neck down.
After each click she bounced over and examined the photo and either pushed delete or handed it back to me. I took twenty pictures of her, and when we were done I helped her curl plastic wrap around her lower torso all the way down to her thighs. I waited outside the bathroom while she showered.
Once, when we were sharing horrible stories we had heard over drafts of thick beer—the girl with the twenty-pound colon, the guy who stuck the needle up his ass to see if he would get high quicker—Lizzy told me about the night she had been at a bar with a man she didn’t like. She entertained him on boring nights because he was generous with food and drink, because he had been a lieutenant or a sergeant in the military, and because he always had fresh-cut hair and a firm chin. He continued to buy her drinks but stopped himself after two, and when he drove her home he drove to his home first and asked her to come upstairs. It was next to the train tracks. She remembered the trains very clearly. Perhaps he was threatening, maybe sexy, but Lizzy went up and slurred and had her body banged into the fridge. She banged against it so hard it fell over and, laughing, they stood it upright before collapsing on the bed like rag dolls. He was rough, and she had bruises and a urinary tract infection that felt like hot steel when the last train cut through her head and woke her up. She dressed and asked him if he came, and he said no. She felt around inside her, around the burn, and felt satisfied with his answer. She refused a ride and sagged home.
After, instead of sex, she posted pictures of her body onto hard-to-find websites. Men, maybe women, she said it was hard to tell from their usernames, would send her electronic money, and she would mail the panties, carefully folded into Ziplocks. The people who bought them, I imagine, spread the bag’s lips apart real slow, like they were spreading her legs, and lifted her panties to their faces and inhaled, or maybe they put them on their tongues and rolled them about, like caviar, or wine.
She had started with shoes, but the money was in panties.
She was currently working on a special order for a man who believed she was nineteen and working her way through cosmetology school. For a thousand dollars she was wearing a single pair for two weeks and was not to take them off for anything; showering, her period, even to piss. She drew the line at shitting herself and said she cheated on the pissing part. She was going to pee on it the day she sent it. To cover the smell she doused her outer clothes with perfume.
It’s not that I don’t like sex with men, she said as I helped to remove the wet plastic paper. I do, I really do. It’s just that I haven’t been able to get it up, you know? This is safer. It’s cleaner. Just me dirtying myself.
I helped her replace the wet plastic paper with dry, wrapping it around her torso. We clambered onto her bed because she only had a couch piled with papers and books and the clothes she hadn’t bothered to carry to the Laundromat for weeks. She kept buying more clothes instead of taking them in.
She wore two pairs of baggy pants and a sports bra. I wore a long-sleeved shirt. It was hot in her apartment. I could hear the air conditioner thrumming, but it was half-hearted, weak against the heat.
You can take off your shirt, you know, she said.
I shook my head. I had not taken my shirt off in front of anyone for a long time, not even Lizzy. I could barely stand to look at myself without one on. She took off her bra.
Did I tell you the one about the girl with the birth control? she asked.
Maybe. Probably. Did it end poorly?
Always does.
Lizzy rolled onto her back and put her hand under her head. I could see the outline of her lips and the curve of her nipples in the low light. The blinds gently bounced against her open window. I rolled onto my stomach.
I guess her doctor didn’t tell her how to use the pills, so she goes into the pharmacy, after about a week, trying to get her prescription refilled. Are you sure you haven’t heard this one?
Sounds familiar. Tell it anyway.
The pharmacist looks through her file and tells her she shouldn’t be in so soon for a refill, but the girl says she’s out.
I reached my hand over to Lizzy’s stomach, that smooth expanse, the small curl of her belly from hamburgers and beer on weekend nights. I watched her face.
She’d been taking them all right, used them all up. She put one up her vagina every time she had sex with her boyfriend.
Christ, I said. I spread my fingers over her belly.
That tickles. No, don’t move; it’s all right. I don’t mind. So, the girl, yeah, she’s got a terrible yeast infection. And on top of it, surprise, she’s pregnant.
The small print is too small.
No kidding.
Lizzy put her hand on my back. I could give you a massage if you want, she asked. But this is nice, too. Your turn. Tell me one.
I haven’t got one. Haven’t been to work since the shooting.
Remember one.
I thought about that girl with her blue eyes. In our stories, we never really gave details, not about what the hump-dumps looked like, unless it was necessary.
There was this girl who came in during my rotations, I said. Near the end.
When you were working down on Lawrence?
Yeah, the small shop. She was getting her cocktail. Covered by insurance, thankfully. She was only sixteen.
How did she contract?
No idea. She had a baby, too.
I felt Lizzy’s hand stroke the side of my breast. I stilled.
Was she breastfeeding? Lizzy asked.
I think so. Yeah. Two cocktails.
I rolled onto my hip and shoulder.
You haven’t told me this one, Lizzy said.
No.
I touched her sweatpants with one hand and put my other near her mouth. She was smiling.
Go on, she said. Go on.
I felt the line of a scar on her belly, a line of reformed skin that never looks as pretty or feels like the original. Scars are too smooth to be like normal skin. They feel used, and so much better, like a small rebirth, a reformation, a testament to having experienced pain and triumphed.
Lizzy curved her hand on my hips. I closed my eyes and felt underneath the stretchy waistband on her lounge pants. The Saran Wrap was like her scar, so damn smooth. It wrinkled, quiet, but I heard it over the sound of the air conditioner, that weird unnatural smooth sound. I saw her hand moving under my shirt and went still. I removed my hand and rolled away.
Hey, she said. Hey.
I got up and put on my pants.
I can take it off, she said. He’ll never know.
Is it a guy?
Probably.
I reached around for my bag.
Are you leaving?
I’m out of cigarettes, I said.
Are you coming back?
Outside, I lit up one of the emergency cigs I kept in a plastic box in one of the thousands of zippers in my bag. I smoked all of them on the way back to my apartment, a good twenty blocks. I checked the balcony when I got back in. The man wasn’t there.
* * *
The earthquakes were getting worse. People with money or families out of state started a great migration to anywhere that would have them, but there were still many left behind. The hospital called and asked me to come in—we know you’re not over what happened, they said, but we need you. The ER is full. A lot of them just need to be patched up. You can do first aid.
I let it go to voicemail. I considered showering to leave my apartment but eventually just left and picked up a carton of cigarettes and a case of diet soda. Lizzy called twice and didn’t leave a message. I watched a lot of TV. Sitcoms. I couldn’t stomach the news. I couldn’t leave.
He was there when I came out of the bathroom after the sun went down. That bastard, I really wanted a cigarette. I considered sneaking downstairs, but being trapped on the elevator during an earthquake scared me. I hated stairs.
I picked up my boning knife and slowly opened the balcony door. He didn’t move. I slipped the knife out in front of me and felt my way to the other side.
You just stay there, I said. You’re trespassing. This is my balcony, so you don’t get to make any movement. You can stay, but don’t move.
I lit a cigarette and sat down. The muddy clouds were out, but even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have been able to see the stars, not with all our light.
The man looked at me. Even in the dark his eyes were obnoxiously blue. I pointed the knife at him. Hey, I said, don’t move.
He stared.
I butted my cigarette and lit another one.
I said, I guess it’s polite to thank you for saving my life. You didn’t have to, but thank you all the same.
He kept looking at me.
Do you want one? I asked. No, you don’t. People like you don’t smoke. One of the first people I saw cracked open was a smoker. Lungs were soot, all black. But that didn’t make me want to stop. It makes sense. You know the health symbol, the snake and the rod? I always thought the snake was poisonous, and a rod, well, how the fuck are you supposed to heal people with that? Healing means hurting first.
He watched me. I watched him. Around us, I could hear the noise of the city, like the ignorant buzz of cicadas flying, and falling, when they hit a halogen light.
* * *
I grew used to his presence but thought of him as nothing more than a curious spider, the kind I used to have in my bedroom as a child. They would form their detailed webs in the corners, and I was too scared to kill them or touch them and put them outside and save them, so I let them stay until they died on their own because nothing fell into their nets. Eventually my father would come in and squish them in bunched up toilet paper, because it was kinder, he said, to kill them quickly then to let them starve.
I still took my knife with me. In case.
* * *
Lizzy kept calling and hanging up. The hospital stopped calling. On the news, they had experts and politicians recommending that people move or stay, depending on the station. They went out to get the voice of the people on the streets: What do you think of this man? Do you think he’s really there to save us?
Man, said a teenager, the mic held up to his face. I don’t know. He kind of, he kind of seems like he has to, you know? Else why else would he be here? What’s he got to prove?
I changed the channel. This time, it was a woman with a pressed suit and pulled back hair. She was sitting next to an anchorwoman who looked the same, hair and suit, except the other was blond.
Hysteria, really. A red herring created by the media to keep us from talking about the real issues. Unemployment is the highest it’s been in years, and with the earthquakes creating serious questions about our infrastructure, the politicos must have prayed for such a man to come along and confuse voters, to save them from the excuse to have to talk about what we elected them to discuss.
Have you seen this man? the blond asked.
Only pictures.
And what do you think of him?
He’s handsome, certainly.
* * *
Lizzy left me a voicemail:
Why aren’t you answering? Are you OK? I’m really worried about you. I have to talk to you, please; it’s about that miracle guy. Do you believe in him? I didn’t, I didn’t, and I was wrong, I was so wrong.
She coughed for a second.
I jumped. I mean, jumped, she said. From the roof of my apartment building. I don’t know what I was thinking. I lost this little girl on the table. She was seven, Jesus, just fucking seven years old. And I kept thinking how unfair it was, how useless I was. Why haven’t you been returning my calls? I thought I was OK, you know? It wasn’t serious.
And I, I just jumped. I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to get some air and then I thought about it and I didn’t stop thinking about it. I jumped. I thought I was going to be some broken dumpty on the sidewalk, and they’d declare me dead and forget me in the morgue. But he caught me. He came out of nowhere. He can fly, Jesus, did you know he could fly? I really think he can save us. I really do.
She repeated my name over and over until it sounded strange and unfamiliar to me.
I dialed her number but ended the call before it connected.
* * *
He was out on my balcony. I lit up and offered him one, but he didn’t respond. He huddled with his arms over his knees and his face smashed against his arms and watched.
Thank you, I said. You saved a friend of mine.
He moved his shoulders up, the barest of shrugs, but it was something, and for some reason it made me happy.
Take off your shirt, I told him on a whim.
He didn’t move.
My hands were shaking, but I managed to get my shirt over my head. I didn’t look at him but I knew he was staring at my breasts, and not in the way a man stares at a woman’s breasts, because no one who had seen mine looks at them in that way. Your eyes remind me of this girl I once saw, I told him. She had horrible eyes. Yours are nice.
His arms dropped to his sides, and he moved closer to me. To get a better look.
Once, I told him, much the way Lizzy and I would tell one another stories. Once, there was a young girl who needed medicine because she was very ill. I imagine men like you don’t get ill.
She asked me for her prescription. I didn’t remember her, though I bet I’d filled it for her before. HIV-positive, stage three, so there were a lot of pills, a lot of checking in the computer to make sure that she was on time, that we weren’t overdosing her, that we got everything right. You can’t trust people to keep track of all of it on their own. She was supposed to pick up two prescriptions, and the computer said she always picked up two. One for her, and one for her baby.
I took a long drag.
I asked her, with a row of people waiting behind her, why she wasn’t getting the medicine for her baby. I expected her to tell me that the baby had died, or was being cared for by someone else. I
was prepared to be embarrassed for asking. She said, she looked at me in the eye and said that she stopped dosing her baby. She wanted to see what would happen to her if she stopped taking them.
I inhaled and exhaled.
I almost dropped my cigarette when he touched me, gently, like he was scared of me or scared I would move or yell. His fingers brushed the scar between my breasts, that long white and thick puckered line.
Accident, I said. I was on a bike and a car hit me. They had to crack open my chest.
Take off your shirt, I told him. Just take it off.
He lifted his hands up and kept them there, so I pulled the shirt over his head.
Don’t move, I told him. I want to see something.
My father’s boning knife was sharp enough to cut my finger when I ran my fingers along the edges, so I knew I wouldn’t have to press deep. I put it to his chest, below his nipple, and ran it across. When there was no mark, I did it again, harder.
I bet you’re jealous that you can’t have a scar like mine.
I was angry at him, not because he touched me, not because he saved Lizzy and me and so many others and allowed all this madness to keep going on, but because he was distant, unable to tear or break, and all those miracles and acts of bravery he performed weren’t really anything special.
I told him to put his shirt back on and he did.
He took the cigarette out of my mouth and put it in his own and breathed in. He coughed. It was such an unremarkable human sound, that weakness, that recognizable part of me that was ugly and yet, because he was nothing like me, I clung to it. I started crying in that way I didn’t know you could cry, when all the water runs out of your eyes and you don’t make a sound, but you can’t stop either.
Thank you, I told him. Thank you.
I was grateful to him and sick for it.
* * *
When you cough your body goes through three phases; the inhalation, where you voluntarily take a breath against the scratches in your throat, knowing full well that what comes next will hurt, but there will be a sick pleasurable release as well. Then you force the air against your vocal cords, your glottis, and it spreads apart like thighs. When it opens, the air releases out your mouth, something violent, a quick noise, a harsh scratch. It is instant relief, for a few seconds, before the back of your throat tickles again.
Magic for Unlucky Girls Page 2
