by Hurt
look, stroked her hair, and said, "I think you'll be glad to know, I'm sterile. And I'm clean.
So don't be too worried, about the condom."
She didn't care. She didn't know if she was feeling brave. Or just indifferent.
Galen soaped up a washcloth and tentatively touched it to her shoulder. She was too tired to protest. Or she didn't mind. She didn't know anymore. Little by little he worked the cloth over her skin, his fingers gently working the muscles beneath, all down her arm, kneading her biceps and triceps, working down, massaging the smaller muscles in her forearms, the heel of her hand, her fingers, then back up, to her shoulders, all down her back, over her glutes, the backs of her thighs, her calves, her ankles. He turned her, then up again, washing her feet, her shins, her knees, her thighs, her hips, swirling gentle soapy circles over her belly, her ribs, her breasts, her chest, her throat.
He kissed her and she tasted the metallic tang of blood. His split lip. From her fist. That he was hurt made her want his kiss. For her it wasn't tenderness, closeness, at first. But then it was. His kiss, his embrace, the warmth of his body against hers seemed to fill all the places left hollow by her anger. His closeness, their togetherness soothed.
When they stopped and let go of each other, he had that slightly hurt look of deep feeling. Like love, but with him it was something else.
With his fingertips he traced the contours of her face, then drew his touch down her neck and over her breasts. Not foreplay. Just learning her. She watched him, felt him, let him. The symmetry of his movements fell apart as both hands converged to cup and caress the hurt breast. Holding it, he ran one fingertip over her scar, so lightly the damaged nerves barely sensed it.
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"Khalid's right. Your scar's pretty."
He gave her one of his reading looks.
"How does it feel, when I touch it?"
"Kind of numb. Kind of . . . strangely ticklish."
"It doesn't hurt?"
"Not your touch. There's a burning feeling, though, sometimes."
He bent, kissed the pink crescent of raised flesh, rose, and kissed her lips.
Galen gave her a robe—one of his or Khalid's that almost touched the floor—and she went with him to his room. Khalid was in bed, sitting up by a little lamp on the nightstand, reading Camus's L'Etranger. When they entered, he gave them a placid smile, and set his book down. It wasn't until she saw him again, and saw that smile of his that Vanka wondered what Khalid's role had really been in what had happened. It could wait, though.
She barely wondered at the strangeness of the situation, at the strangeness of her reaction to it, as Khalid turned on his side to welcome them both into the bed, with Galen slipping her robe from her shoulders and settling her between them, kissing and caressing her face as Khalid fit the front of his body to the back of hers, and curved his arm against Galen's where it draped over her waist. Like wolves in a den they slept, naked, huddled all together.
* * * *
"Vanka."
Tickles. A line traced by a fingertip down the back of her arm. That's what woke her. The memory of the voice saying her name came back to her after.
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She stirred and turned and looked. Galen smiled dozily down at her. Slowly, slowly, reading her, he brought his mouth to hers, gave a soft kiss. Then he went deeper, then surfaced again. Kissed her ear.
"All the times we've fucked, and we've never made love," he sighed, then nuzzled under her hair, against her neck.
"Where's Khalid?"
"In the shower. He takes long showers."
It wasn't that she was afraid of Galen, but there was something so poignant in his tender looks and touches, after the way they'd been the night before, she was actually trembling. He seemed to notice, to think of retreating, but she gave him an uncertain smile, touched a fuchsia welt she'd made by his left eye, and he came back to her, carefully, touching and kissing her as gently as she'd ever been touched by any man.
* * * *
“She is still asleep?”
The bathroom was thick with steam, Khalid looking like a ghost, like a dream there in the mist.
“Yes.”
"I thought you said she was the masochist."
"Come on, Khalid. You know I never mind getting roughed up a bit."
"Yes, but I should think you'd be a bit more careful with this asset," he said tenderly, gingerly touching a bruised swelling on Galen's cheek, then running the pad of his thumb over the cut in Galen's bottom lip.
"I trust you, Galen. As much as I trust myself."
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"Not absolutely, then?"
"Certainly not. But I think I know you well enough to know, when I hear what I heard last night, that I don't need to come running to rescue this woman you know. But you put me in a very bad position. I don't know her as I know you. I don't trust her as I trust you. If she believes, if she decided that you raped her, if she should file charges, I'll wish I hadn't been here last night. For your sake."
"There's no question of that, Khalid."
"You're sure you know her as well as you think?"
"Yes."
"You risk something—you risk a great deal—to play these games with her, the way we've played. But, knowing you as I do, I realize you've thought all of that through already. That you're willing to take this risk."
"Not willing. I need to."
"I understand, Galen. Obviously. And of course, the decision is yours. I can't prevent you from jeopardizing your life. Just please don't jeopardize mine."
Galen nodded. Khalid relented, smiled his closed-lip smile, and gave Galen a tender kiss.
"You know something?" Galen asked after.
"Hmmm?"
"She never cried. Not once. Not even a little."
* * * *
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Driving Vanka back to the hotel, a knot of anxiety twisted around in Galen's gut. It should have been Vanka. He'd expected it to be Vanka. But it was the thought of Khalid that made the knot tighten, winding around and around itself.
“You can just drop me at the corner.”
Without answering Vanka's suggestion, Galen drove on, up to the valet station, pocketing the receipt and coming around to take Vanka's arm. He only grinned in answer to her questioning look, and she let him get into the elevator with her. Even after last night, she was letting him play with her like this. That alone put the bulge in his shorts. For a second she hesitated when they got to her door, but he caught a faint smile as she slid the key card down the slot and went in, letting him in after her.
As the heavy door locked behind them, she looked up at him and went still.
Galen watched her, savoring the little thrill of her uncertainty as she waited, wondering what he would do. It was tempting—fuck, ridiculously tempting, all things considered—
to tell her to strip, to watch her peel off every article of clothing he'd torn from her body the night before, to push her to the edge once more, but in a different way. But, strangely, he wanted the other thing more.
Moving in close, warming at how she caught her breath when he touched her, Galen brushed his lips against her smooth, pale cheek, over the delicate little ridge of her ear, and said,
“I believe you promised me a screening.”
For a moment he thought he saw a filmy cloud of disappointment darken her composed expression, but the next second the light in her eyes brightened and he saw a smile he'd never seen before, with her—exuberant, irrepressible. Like a child's.
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He'd expected a movie. A short film. Something artsy, like one of the hundreds of arduous narratives he'd seen from countless nascent directors.
Vanka's film was something else. Split panels, alternately displaying contrasting images of women's bodies: on the left, a succession of startlingly visceral images, first of a woman's perfectly waxed cunt, labia parted by two fingers tipped with long acrylic nails, another cunt, the labia waxed, a neat patch of trimmed hair decorating
the pubic mound, slowly being penetrated by an enormous hot pink dildo, another cunt, again, waxed, shot from behind as it was penetrated alternately and repeatedly by the cock of a black man, then a white man; on the right, one continuous shot competing with all those on the left, a close-up of a woman giving birth. Then, on the left, pregnant belly after pregnant belly, bellies of every shade of skin, framed by jeans and saris and a dozen other articles suggestive of a dozen different cultures; on the right, keeping pace image for image, the sleek, gleaming bellies of strippers, fashion models. Then the screen broke into two horizontal planes, and above were taut, ripe breasts bouncing, shaking, being sucked, fucked, spattered with cum, and below, again racing, image against image, were images of women nursing infants.
“I take it you're not a fan of porn.” Right away he was sorry he'd said it. The piece had moved him. Aroused and disturbed and, somehow, frightened him. He just didn't know what to say.
“No, I guess not. But I'm not a fan of Andrea Dworkin, either.” She didn't sound defensive. Or dismissive.
“The juxtapositions are really provocative. It's a critique of the objectification of women?”
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“Somewhat. Actually, I have another piece that's more to that point. But I'll hold that in reserve for when I'm really desperate to seduce you.”
“Yes, well, you'd better hurry up and take me, now, before the aphrodisiatic properties of this last piece wear off.”
She popped the DVD out of her laptop drive and snapped it into its plastic case.
“Hey. Seriously. I want to know what was behind this piece. It's powerful. I'm just out of my depth here.”
“No, you're just afraid of bruising the delicate ego of the artist. Honestly, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if the thing made you sick to your stomach. The worst thing you could say to me is that it left you flat.”
“Definitely not that.”
“Well. Obviously I chose a pretty specific subject matter for the piece, but it's not really about critiquing the objectification of women. It's part of a series that's more of a critique of the artificiality of media representations, more broadly. The way people and relationships get depicted and consumed; it's so much about a fantasy; I have this sense that it has the net effect of leaving everyone desperately disappointed with what's real. Their bodies, their lovers' bodies. Their sex life, their sexuality. Love. Friendship. In the end, life is disappointing, when you hold it up beside the image of life we're offered by movies and jewelry commercials.”
“But . . .” He already wanted to take back what he hadn't even said yet.
“What?”
“I was going to say, that's what those things are for. Escapism. Real life gets dull, gets scary. Gets hard. The fantasies are there as a way of forgetting . . . I don't know, 117
that you just got laid off and the mortgage is due next week, or that your wife doesn't want to fuck you any more, or that your senior year in high school was as good as your life's ever going to get.”
“You've got a lot weighing you down, don't you?”
“Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but I didn't want to make you cry, telling you all my troubles,” he teased back.
“It's not that I don't think a bit of fantasy is a bad thing,” Vanka went on. “Of course, it's an important part of our lives, of human culture. Religion, art, literature, people have always need to create ideals, dream up heroes and adventures and love affairs bigger than any they'd experienced themselves. But in the days of Gilgamesh and Homer, it wasn't a twenty-four-seven media monsoon. People weren't inundated every minute of the day with commercials and billboards and songs and TV shows showing them a thousand versions of a life . . . god, not even better, but . . . bigger, prettier, sped up, every dull moment stripped away, to compare with theirs.” She paused. Smiled. “What? Oh, sure. Go ahead. Laugh at the earnest girl.”
“I'm not,” he laughed. “I'm not.” He kissed her, on impulse, pushed against her by a surge of sudden joy.
She looked lit up, expectant, as he touched her just-kissed bottom lip. The way she looked at him—her green eyes fixed on his eyes, hopeful, nervous—made him think, at times, of a lean, hungry animal. Something seeking and unsated. But then something in her seemed to retreat, and the heat in her look dimmed.
“I hate to turn you out,” she said, but really, I should get some work done.
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“All right.” He swiped up his keys and wallet, dropping them into his pockets.
Then he kissed her, working to put the hunger back into her, and he went, warmed at the last moment to see that unsated look as she closed the door.
* * * *
When her phone rang, her belly fluttered and clenched as the idea of Galen's voice hummed through her. And then there was that cold, shrinking feeling that came with all the other guesses. The display offered a number, not a name. She gambled.
“Vanka Klimov.”
“Hello, Vanka. It's Khalid.”
“Hello, Khalid.”
“I hope you do not mind that I've called.”
She laughed. More delicate about calling than fucking.
“He doesn't know I'm ringing. After last night, I wanted to . . .”
She waited, but he never finished. In the silence a bitter rage swelled up.
"Just what did you think last night was about, Khalid?"
"A question like that has many, many answers. Or else a very complicated one."
"Try this, then. What did you think was going on, out in the living room, while you were lounging in that bed, poring over your French existentialism?"
"You want to know if I was laying there reading while I imagined Galen was raping you?"
Silently, she stared him down.
"I trust Galen, Vanka. That . . . deeply. Perhaps you cannot trust his judgment.
But you can trust his . . . his intent. He would never deliberately harm you. Except to 119
please you. Or, rather, to give you what you need." He paused for a while, then added,
“I'm sure you've noticed. He's very intuitive Are you getting what you need?"
She left his question unanswered, even in her head.
"Vanka."
She straightened out of the chair she'd just sunk onto.
"You do understand, don't you Vanka?"
"Understand what?" she asked, her brain trying to hurriedly predict what she was supposed to understand. That Galen was taken? That Khalid had tolerated their little dalliance, but she wasn't to expect some long, torrid romance?
"What Galen's doing. That he's testing you. Or . . ." he paused to find the word he wanted," . . . better, maybe, he's . . . sounding you. Finding your limits. Pushing, pushing. Every time you come back, he sees he can go further with you. He thinks that's what you want him for. You see? If you go back to him again . . ."
"Yes?"
"Just don't take it lightly. He'll take it as a kind of consent from you."
"A consent to what?"
"A consent to whatever it is he thinks you need."
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Chapter Four
Vanka took one last look at the clear blue L.A. sky, one last breath of outside air, almost relishing the taste of dust and traffic, then forced herself through the double glass doors, into the hospital. Even before she reached the mammoth bank of stainless-steel elevator doors, gleaming with promises of lofty heights, barium milkshakes, bleeping monitors, scalpels, and whirring sarcophagi, the faint hum and soul-sucking glow of the fluorescents and the sad decor of the lobby were sapping her strength.
Doctor Greel's waiting area had the same fluorescent-tinged array of furniture mocking all considerations of aesthetics and comfort in the universal and ever-repugnant combination of salmon, hunter green, oak, and brass brought together in hotels, office buildings, and doctor's offices across the nation like some elaborate practical joke carried out by the wealthy few on the majority of the populace.
Greel's office was a small-scale, distorte
d replica of the horrors of the lobby, with just two of the inelegantly configured arm chairs in oak upholstered in faded orange-pink, with one of the oak side tables overgrown into a large desk buried under piles of file folders instead of aging issues of Vogue, People, and Better Housekeeping.
Vanka wondered if the look on Greel's face was genuine or contrived concern and sympathy, as the words cancer, BRCA2, DCIS, PET scan, tamoxifan, and chemotherapy riding out on waves of sound from Greel's vocal chords, tongue, and lips, swelled and washed over her, leaving her cold. Weighed down.
* * * *
The kid had probably lied. But he looked like a sweet, gawky virgin, and that was the important thing. Actually, he seemed nervous. Almost afraid. She felt bad.
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Finally, after shooting her a final, fretful glance, his eyes honed in on the top button of her blouse, and his fingers painstakingly worked it through its little buttonhole.
She could hear his heavy, excited breathing as he moved on to the second button, then the third, then the fourth. Her blouse hung suggestively open, the flesh down the center of her torso bare. He still didn't seem to believe that he was supposed to do what she'd told him, and he looked up a final time as if to ask yet again. She smiled her permission down to him, hoping she wouldn't have to speak, relieved when the smile seemed persuasive enough, and his shaking hands gingerly slid her blouse from her shoulders and down her arms.
"They're so pretty."
It was a lame line, and he said it as if he thought he was supposed to. But he sounded aroused, too. He sat there, looking at them for a long time. Gazing at her chest. Taking in the her colors and contours. Then he focused on one breast. The unhurt one. All her pale skin. The little freckle near her armpit. Her aureole. Her nipple.
Then his eyes scanned left, and his finger brushed faintly against her skin, just under the scar.
"What's this?" he asked tentatively.
