Veronica

by Mary Gaitskill

  “You mean porn?”

  “Sure, we do some porn. There’s more money for the girls

  that way. But we do seminude art, as well.” His eyes became more aggrieved. “Do you care what the other girls do?”

  I shrugged. Outside the window, electric music corkscrewed through the air. If he hadn’t insulted my boobs, I might’ve tried it out. But I just said bye and left.

  Like a cat in the dark, your whisker touched something the wrong way and you backed out. Except sometimes it was a trap baited with something so enticing, you pushed your face in anyway. Once when I was out with my basket, a short man with a square torso said, “Hey, hot shit—you should come work for me.” He bounced a rubber ball on the pavement, caught it, and bounced it again. “I’m a pimp.” His face was like lava turned into cold rock. But inside him, it was still running hot; you could smell it: pride, rage, and shame boiling and ready to spill out his cock and scald you. I stared in fear. He just laughed and bounced his ball; he knew that for somebody what he had was the perfect enticement. The street was full of these enticements, always somebody grabbing you or trying to get something, and us, the girls, proud of our refusals, and sometimes proud that we went ahead with it.

  Some of the kids I knew didn’t have parents, or didn’t know them, but most of us did, so barely in the past that it was like they were in the next room. I still felt their breath and the warmth of their bodies, but I so took it for granted, I didn’t know what I was feeling. I had walked out through the gauze veil of the song, not into killing and dying, but into colored lights, hunt and escape. But my parents were still there, like the wishing well and carousel, hidden in shimmering spots. “She’s going to make her way in the world,” said my mother. She stood at the counter, stirring a bright bowl with her brisk arm. She opened a book on her lap, and read a story about a wicked girl who fell down among evil creatures. My father wandered off into his music, but he came back in the cloudy barroom mirror to watch over me. I’ll be looking at the moon, but Fll be seeing—

  I’m finishing up the windows when John comes in, dripping wet and obviously thinking about everything that’s already gone wrong so far today.

  “Hey, Allie,” he says, and holds up the box of doughnuts he’s gotten from the grimy take-out store. I climb down from the ladder, making pain noises and exaggerating how hard it is. “Hey, John. How’s Lonnie?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Cried all night. Lonnie was up and down all night.”

  His wife, Lonnie, is a sweet, chunky woman with flabby arms. When she holds their baby, he plays with her flab and he loves it.

  John takes off his coat with angry jerks and sets down the doughnuts the same way. He moves like he’s being yelled at by invisible people whom he hates but whom he basically agrees with. He smooths his hair like somebody just yelled, “And look at that hair” Still smoothing, he turns around in a tight circle, sniffing the air, the contents of his whole head suddenly quivering on the end of his nose. Somebody must’ve just yelled something else. “Alison? Alison, have you been smoking in here?”

  “John—”

  “You have! Don’t bother to lie! Jesus! How many times do I have to tell you? If you want to kill yourself, do it at home! I know there’s no audience there, but it smells like a cheap motel in here, and the people who come here don’t want to smell that!”

  “It smells because I did the windows and tore up my arm.”

  “I’m not talking about your damn arm, which wouldn’t hurt if you’d even try to take care of it. I’m talking about smoking in my office, which I’ve—”

  “John. John?” A whine comes into my voice, like an animal showing its ass. “I always smoke one cigarette, one, because that’s what it takes to clean the windows. I’d smoke more, but I don’t because—”

  “Don’t run that number on me!” He is yelling now, but his eyes are sad and hard. “All I’m asking for is basic respect of my place! Respect and honesty and no bullshit manipulation!” Why is it like this? asks his voice. Why is it like this?

  “You don’t know.” I speak quietly, looking down. “You don’t know.” I’m humiliated. He’s angry. That way, we touch together. Tears come into my eyes. I look up; John looks away.

  “Just open the window,” he says. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  It really does hurt to open the window, but I don’t say anything. The bush outside is live and wet, a green lung for the sluicing wind and rain. John’s putting out doughnuts and coffee for us. The invisible people are looking away.

  A long time ago, John loved me. I never loved him, but I used his friendship, and the using became so comfortable for both of us that we started really being friends. When I lost my looks and had to go on disability, John pitied me and then looked down on me, but that just got fit into the friendship, too. What can’t get fit in is that sometimes even now John looks at me and sees a beautiful girl in a ruined face. It’s broken, with age and pain coming through the cracks, but it’s there, and it pisses him off. It pisses me off, too. When we have these fights and he hears crying and hurt in my voice, it’s a different version of that ruined beauty, except it’s not something he can see, so he can’t think ruined or beauty. He just feels it, like sex when it’s disgusting but you want it anyway. Like his baby plays with the flabby arms, not knowing they’re ugly. I can’t have a baby and we’re not going to fuck, but it’s still in my voice—sex and warm arms mixed with hurt and ugliness, so he can’t separate them. When that happens, it doesn’t matter that I’m not beautiful or even pretty, and he is confused and unhappy.

  I always had that, but I didn’t know it until now. It’s the reason somebody once thought I could be a model, the thing they kept trying to photograph and never did. When I was young, my beauty held it in a case that wouldn’t open. Then it broke open. Now that I’m almost fifty, it’s there, so much so that even John feels it without knowing what it is. It’s disgusting t| whore it out in a fight over cigarettes, but that’s life.

  One night on the street, a small man wearing a red suit boughifl a yellow rose from me. I remember the color of the rose * because I looked down at his feet and saw he had yellow socks jfl on. The rose matched his socks! He said he ran a modelingM agency and that I could be a model. He handed me a card with I gold lettering on it. I took it, but I kept staring at his eyes; his]® expression was like somebody giving his hand to an animal so it m could sniff, and holding back the other. He said, “Very niceJ’ He put the flower back in my basket and walked away like he 9 was tossing and catching a coin, like the pimp bouncing his * ball, except he didn’t have anything to bounce. The card said 1 “Carson Models, Gregory Carson.”

  Carson Models was up a staircase between store windows J full of cheap sassy clothes and glaring sun. I noticed a bag of] shocking pink fur with a smooth gold clasp, and then ran up the ? cool stairway. Gregory Carson was waiting for me with a pho- | tographer who had a large head and the eyes of a person looking from far away at terrible, beautiful things. He took my hand and looked at me. His name was John. He was the only other person there because it was Saturday; Gregory Carson had wanted me to come on a weekend so that he could give me his full attention.

  Gregory Carson said the same thing about my boobs as the fat man, but not right away. First, we drank wine while John set up his camera. Gregory paced, as if he could barely contain

  his excitement. He talked about how important a model’s personality was. He talked about sending me to Paris. When I asked what Paris was like, he cried, “You’re going to find out!” and leapt straight up and did a jig, like a chipmunk scrambling in the air. I glanced at John. He looked like a cardboard display of a friendly person. Gregory went into a comer and flicked a switch; music came on. It was a popular song with a hot liquid voice. “Ossifier,” it sang “Love’s desire. High and higher.”

  I didn’t know how to pose, but it didn’t matter; the music was like a big red flower you
could disappear into. The sweetness of it was a complicated burst of little tastes, but under that was a big broad muscle of sound. It was like the deep feeling of dick inside and the tiny sparkling feelings outside on the clit. Except it was also like when you’re in love and not thinking the words dick or clit. Gregory Carson watched ecstatically a tiny complicated thing looking for a big broad thing to hold him. “Doesn’t she remind you of Brandy G.?” he cried. “Do you remember her, John?” John said yes, he did, and Gregory leapt up and scrambled again. I pictured him tiny, scrambling on a giant clit. I giggled, and Gregory said, “That’s right! Have fun!”

  So I did. It was like the first time I made a sex noise, and instead of being embarrassing, it was great. It was like being with people I didn’t know and making them stop so I could go in a store and buy chocolate milk, instead of worrying they would think I was a baby or a pig—and it tasted great It was like eating pudding forever, or driving in your car forever, or feeling the dick you love forever, right before he sticks it in. Far away, my dad was playing songs for men who thought he was crazy. I was going to be a model and make money walking around inside songs everybody knew.

  Then Gregory said he had to see me naked. “We aren’t taking any more pictures,” he said. “No one ever shoots you nude. I have to look at you because I’m the agent.” He went to turn the music off, and suddenly John was in the room. He looked at me so hard, it was like a meaty head zoomed out of

  his cardboard body. His eyes were different: There was no BS about beautiful and terrible things. He was saying something-^ what was it? The music shut off. “All righty!” said Gregory 1 John’s head got pulled back into the cardboard. He smiled and S said he hoped he’d see me again. Gregory walked him to the door. When he came back, I was naked. The stereo was still | making an electrical buzz. The big broad thing had sucked the music back inside it.

  Gregory looked at me. “You’re five pounds overweight,*^ he said gently. “And your breasts aren’t that good.” He touched! my cheek with the back of his hand. “But right now, that doesn’t | matter.” Ossifier’s bright red voice sang in my head: Don’t hesitate | ’cause the world seems cold. “Alison,” said Gregory Carson, “I’d like you to tell me about the first grade.” He said “first grade” like it | was something wonderful to eat, something he hadn’t had for a| long time. He looked like he might jump up and dance on the clit again. I looked down and felt my face frown. In the first J grade, Miss Field was my teacher. She taught me how to write | in big black letters. Ossifier stopped singing. Miss Field sat at her desk and folded her hands. A terrible feeling came over me.

  I felt like she was there, getting sucked into the electrical buzz. I didn’t want her to be there. I didn’t want her to be eaten.

  Gregory reached out and took a tear out of my eye right as it fell. He put it in his mouth. He was tasting the terrible feeling and his eyes were full of pity. He had come to the deep liver place, where I was still a child attached to my family. He recognized it and he respected it, a little. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say.” He reached down and held me between the legs. Here it was. Ossifier. Miss Field floated in a bright, distant oval. He watched my face as he rubbed me with his hand. He didn’t care if he was a pig or a baby. The chocolate milk was delicious. His face came close and his one eye grew giant. Miss Field’s bright oval winked shut and she was gone. Gregory Carson’s eye said, After you, baby! and then we got sucked into the electrical buzz together.

  One night at work, Veronica asked me how I got into modeling, and I said, “By fucking a nobody catalog agent who grabbed my crotch.” I said it with disdain—like I didn’t have to be embarrassed or make up something nice, because Veronica was nobody—like why should I care if an ant could see up my dress? Except I didn’t notice my disdain; it was habitual by then. She noticed it, though. The arched eyebrows shot up and the lined, prissy face zinged out an expression sharp and hard as a bee sting. This ugly little woman had a sting! I would’ve stung back, but I was suddenly abashed by her buzzing ugliness. But then her expression became many expressions, and when she talked, her voice was kind.

  “Every pretty girl has a story like that, hon,” she said. “I had that prettiness, too. I have those stories.”

  I looked at her and my face must’ve said, Like what?

  “I once had an affair with a man I worked with. It was a dull job doing market research—-I had to do something. Anyway, it was toward the end of the relationship, not much excitement left, when he remarked that he’d never had anal sex. I said, ‘Really? I’ll do it with you.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said, ‘Certainly!’ Like I was performing a public service.

  “Well, he was ecstatic. He told me later that during an office party he related this event to one of his friends from a visiting organization and that the guy insisted on knowing who I was. He pointed me out—discreetly, he assured me—and, according to him, the guy said, ‘Why, she’s cute!’ Amazed apparendy that I didn’t look like some desperate slut, but I was quite flattered.” “You were?”

  “Yes! The only time I was not flattered was a year or so later. It was during the Christmas party, after we had broken up; each department was nominating people for best smile, best legs, best ass, and so forth. I asked him if he’d nominated my ass and he said no. I sulked for the rest of the night.”

  She drew on her cigarette, blew out. “Of course, you’re I lot prettier than I was—you’d have won the contest hands down!” She laughed. “But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don’t have to do that anymore, / don’t have to do that anymore. It’s my show now.” She said these words as if she were a movie star walking past me while I gaped.

  “I wasn’t trying to please anyone,” I said uncertainly. “No?” She stubbed out her cigarette in a bright yellow ashtray. “What were you trying to do?”

  Imagine ten pictures of this conversation. In nine of them, she’s the fool and I’m the person who has something. But in the tenth, I’m the fool and it’s her show now. For just a second, that’s the picture I saw.

  Fucking Gregory Carson was like falling down the rabbit hole and seeing things flying by without knowing what they meant. Except I was the rabbit hole at the same time, and he was stuffing things down it like crazy, just throwing everything in, like he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. And I could take it all. I was on my back and he on his knees; he grabbed my ankles and spread my legs up over my head until my pelvis split all the way open. I pushed myself off the floor with both hands and rose up to face him. His small chest swelled as he reared above me; his stomach stuck out like a proud drum and I could feel his asshole alight and tingling on the end of his spine. His face looked like he was saying, Remember this when they’re taking your picture. Remember this. Like he was stuffing me full of him so that any picture of me would be a picture of him, too, because people who looked would see him staring out of my eyes.

  When it was over, I went down the stairs like I was sliding down a chute and came out the other end of the rabbit hole.

  On the street, it was business as usual. There was no secret language of little complicated things. The fog had come in and the store windows had gone dull. It was cold and I was hungry.

  I found a diner, where I had a piece of blueberry pie with two creamers poured over it, then tea with sugar. Across from me, a meager girl with raw bare legs was crying against a big older woman in a rough coat. Flares kept going off in my body, rushes of strange, blank sensation, like bursts of electricity. Gregory Carson had given me cab fare, but I kept it and took the bus. It soothed me to sit with so many people and to rock with the movement of the bus creaking up hill after hill. The flaring subsided and my body quieted; with listless wonder, I realized that the song had not really said “ossifier.” It had said “hearts of fire,” which I thought was not as good.

  I called Carson Models twice after that, but nobody called me back. Then a woman with an accusing voice call
ed and told me I had a go-see South of Market. I asked if I could talk to Mr. Carson and she said he was busy. Would I go or not? she asked.

  I went and sat on a long stairway with a line of other girls. We rolled up the stairs on our bottoms like a caterpillar moving along in sections, each section a girl stuck to another girl. The one in front of me rocked back and forth, whispering, “Shit! Fuck! Shit! Fuck!” The one behind me held her pretty chin in her hand and read a paperback that had a screaming woman raised off the cover in bright colors. At the top of the stairs was a large room with two men in it. They wore beautiful clothes and they whirred like little machines that somebody wound up every day.

  “Where’s your book?” asked one.

  “Book?” Confusedly, I glanced at the girl with the paperback.

  The whirring stopped. A human head popped out a litde shuttered hole in his mechanical head and glared at me in disgust.

  “She’s one of Gregory’s,” whispered the other.

  “Oh.” He mildly rolled his eyes and withdrew back into the mechanical head. The whirring continued. “Walk a little; then turn to face me,” he said.

  I walked a foot and he said, “Thank you. Next!”

  The next week when a roommate yelled up the stairs that “somebody model agency” was on the phone, I said, “Tell them to fuck off!” and he did, loudly.

  Weeks passed; it got cold and the park emptied. The smell of flowers was gone and by itself the pot was a thin and ragged wrap. Even in the dark, you noticed garbage. You saw shadows running out of the corner of your eye. Gangs of bikers came, huge men with a feeling of piled-up corpses inside them. One of them had a puppy with a dirty rope around its neck. Its eyes were full of misery, and when I petted it, it felt dead inside. It was like it had been killed while it was still alive. The guy holding the rope smiled maliciously. Very slowly, I turned and walked out of the park.