On the train, Kit sat by the window and remembered that she had offered Lucy’s body to Ned and to herself. She imagined telling Lucy this and pictured her repulsed response. Kit broke off a cube of chocolate and sank into a whirling rabbit hole of panic. She almost missed her stop, loading chocolate into her mouth with a fixed look of dread. She walked to Lucy’s apartment haltingly, pausing whenever the image of Lucy’s disgusted face reemerged in her mind.
Lucy arrived cheerily at the door, barefoot in a black-and-white-checked dress with triangle pockets. They sipped cans of beer on her bed and Kit rolled a joint, which proved tricky since her hands were clammy. She puffed on the loose roll and they talked. Because Kit was nervous, there was an odd theatricality to what should have been mundane chatter. Eventually a silence grew between them. Kit mopped her forehead with her sleeve. She crawled over to her bag and ate the last corner of chocolate, then blurted her proposal.
“And he wouldn’t touch us?” Lucy asked.
“No. But he will say really degrading things. I actually . . .” Kit stared into space. “I think I really hate this person.”
“Why? Because he doesn’t respect you?” Lucy said mockingly.
“No. Because he’s crazy.”
“Look,” Lucy said. “Crazy people have one tactic, to convince you that you’re crazy. So you can’t let them.”
Kit nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I even care. It’s the weirdest things that bother me about him. Like how he thinks dreams are meaningless.” She looked at Lucy. “He thinks his wife is stupid for analyzing them.”
“He’s probably just a rich guy who went to too much therapy. Those types are really against any sort of prodding of the brain.” In a mock-deranged male voice, Lucy said, “It means nothing. I kill women every night. It means nothing!”
Kit laughed. She considered telling Lucy about Ned’s dying daughter but quickly decided not to. She couldn’t bear to paint him as a tragic figure.
“If he’s paying us double, I’ll totally do it,” Lucy said and Kit smiled, dropping her head, letting hair fall in front of her eyes.
• • •
Later they lay in the dark, Curtis sprawled between them. “I feel weak and depressed from that chocolate,” Kit said. Lucy groaned softly, nearly asleep. She had hung Christmas lights on her fire escape and they cast a gem-like glow over the bed. Kit raised herself up on both elbows and studied Lucy. Her plump face in the colored light, wreathed with hair and shadows. Kit held her breath. It felt dangerous to watch such a beautiful person sleep. Lucy could wake at any moment, she thought, and there would be no mistaking the unflinching blaze in her eyes.
Kit lowered her head back onto the pillow. She felt slightly gleeful that Lucy was willing to touch her, even if it was for money. It seemed, somehow, like a far-off compliment. She closed her eyes and Lucy’s body beamed in her thoughts. She thought of other girls too. All the girls who’d turned her on wildly and never knew. She rolled onto her side, sweating. Her crotch thumped like a big, wet heart.
Curtis stirred, as if in response to Kit’s rising body temperature, the zinging nerves between her legs. He shimmied under the covers and stationed himself between Lucy’s feet.
• • •
In the morning Kit felt like a criminal. Lucy tromped around in her skimpy robe, Curtis following close behind.
“I made eggs,” Lucy said, gesturing toward the stove.
“Great,” Kit said, reaching a slender monkeyish arm out for her clothes, which were scattered by the bed, much in the manner of Lucy’s socks.
Lucy twisted a strand of gold hair around her pointer finger. “I used to think you didn’t eat. Cause you’re like, emaciated.”
“I know. I look exactly like my mom. She’s built like a broom.”
“My mom’s built like a refrigerator.”
“Oh come on.”
“She is.”
• • •
They were both sitting on the black couch when Ned scheduled their appointment for the following week. Sheila responded with a look of mild revulsion as she penciled it in. Kit pretended to ignore the look but took it to heart. Later on, she called the number on Ned’s business card, which in the right-hand corner had a cartoon tooth. It was smiling and had a set of its own teeth. She held the card with her thumb over the tooth while arranging for him to fork over the extra amount in cash. “If you screw us over in any way,” she said, “I won’t see you again.”
Kit saw a number of men that week and avoided Lucy. She paid off one of her credit cards. She learned that Sheila designed clothes when a small green dress appeared on the arm of the black couch. Sheila asked in an oddly sweet tone if Kit would model it for her. She was smiling but a look of scorn remained in her eyes, pulsing dimly. “I need to see it on someone small,” she said.
The dress fit Kit remarkably well and she couldn’t help admiring it, but this only depressed her. It meant Sheila was something other than an asshole. She was an artist.
Kit bought herself a handsome leather-bound journal that day. She put an aqua mason jar full of sharpened pencils on the windowsill by her bed. Then she tried to write but couldn’t. Ragged stray thoughts circled in her mind. Kit didn’t want to sit alone with her life, with the memories of a hundred male voices. She didn’t want to fuss over how to describe their faces. Instead she walked around her apartment, smoking pot from a glass pipe with the stereo on. She played Nico, who sounded like a prostitute to her, used and woeful. These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do. And all the times I had the chance to.
In the morning Kit grabbed the leather journal and jotted down her dream, which felt remotely like a tribute to Ned’s wife. She wrote in a panic, the dream whirling and vanishing. It felt deeply important as she raced on, snatching bits of the fleeing dream. Then she set her pen down and read the frayed, mystical prose with satisfaction. It seemed to be proof of something. That she had an inside. I exist, she wrote and instantly felt foolish, scribbling over the words.
Next she stood at the stove brewing espresso in a small steel pot, then went straight back to bed and sipped from her mug, a brown-tone afghan up over her shoulders. She watched hours of reality TV, which felt sleazy. This is the pornography of our lives, she thought.
Kit wondered if Ned’s daughter was dead yet. She hated to think of him sobbing alongside a hospital bed with a little girl on it. What is the difference between me and her? she thought. Between a daughter and a whore? Possession, thought Kit. His daughter belongs to him.
But they were girls in the same sea, she felt. Both their values had been established in relation to Ned’s sperm. It was gold when his daughter was conceived. It had taken a long, holy swim to the womb. But with Kit, his sperm had just been trash, just some muck on her ass. It was a weirdly gratifying epiphany. I am the receptacle, she thought. His daughter is a deity.
• • •
Time passed crudely. Kit had several dreams of leaping out of windows and becoming a ghost. She didn’t believe in the afterlife but in her dreams it seemed so obvious. Even when she woke, it was true for a moment. Kit was deeply curious about death. We only know how to go from one place to another, she thought. How does it feel to go from one place to nowhere? Her thinking stopped at the point. She could only wonder. Death is the one thing you can’t write about, she thought.
On the day of their appointment with Ned, Kit woke in a sweat. She forgot her dream instantly, but felt certain it had been a nightmare. I was being chased, she thought. Kit hauled herself into the shower and then got high in the kitchen, waiting for her coffee to brew. She set her glass pipe down and called Lucy.
“What the fuck?” Lucy answered.
“Hi.”
“Hi? You’ve been ignoring me for days.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been really busy.”
“Whatev
er.”
They met on the street. Lucy in her tweed coat and a pair of oversized amber frames with rose-hued lenses, her bright hair blowing in the wind. Kit leaned up against a brick wall, squinting. She wore dark slacks and waxy brown combat boots. Lucy removed her sunglasses and they exchanged subtle looks of terror.
“Your eyes,” Kit said.
“What?”
“They’re so green.”
“Oh I know. I get startled in the mirror sometimes. Cause they change.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“The Irish thought they were fairies,” Lucy said nervously. “If they had a baby with green eyes, they thought that the fairies had come and swapped it with one of their own.” She nodded as if encouraging herself. “So they basically murdered their green-eyed babies—threw them down a well, hoping the fairies would return their human baby.”
“Scary.”
“I know.”
Upstairs they whipped past Sheila and headed straight for the bathroom. Kit changed into her same black uniform and Lucy removed her coat, revealing a silk camel-tone dress with opalescent buttons down the back. She beamed with anxiety. What was pink came soaring up to the surface of her face like a sunset.
Ned sat waiting on the black couch. He wore a gray felt hat with a top crease. As they approached, he removed the hat and bowed his head. Then a foolish smile came across his face. Ned seemed to be mocking the prospect of his own politeness. He was no gentleman and clearly found this hilarious.
Sheila led them to a large room with one mirrored wall and a creaky king bed. The three of them got naked and it all felt very clinical. The room was a bit cold. Ned seemed giddy. It was as if his depression had receded; he glittered temporarily while aroused. He stood alongside the bed and motioned to it until the girls climbed on. “You’re an odd couple,” he said, waving his finger at them. “One big and one skinny. But that must be part of the turn on.” He grinned. “Calm down. I’m kidding.”
A pained smile transformed Lucy’s face. She was posed like a mermaid on a rock, yellow hair half covering her breasts. Kit made a concerted effort not to stare.
Lucy’s kisses were muscular with no feeling behind them. She broke into breathy counterfeit moans and Kit cringed. Their teeth clicked. Kit felt a bit the way men must feel, she supposed, when they realize that the prostitute they’ve purchased is miserable to be near them. She wasn’t sure why she had expected it to be any other way. I’m just another creep who wants to touch her, she thought. A little creep hiding behind a bigger one.
• • •
Afterward the sky outside was a gray peach. They rode the train to Lucy’s apartment with amazed expressions. Once home, Lucy lit the candles by her bed. It was as if someone had died. Kit searched her face for disgust, but there was only hurt. Lucy sat on the floor beside Curtis, mechanically stroking his muscles.
They ordered Chinese food and stood in the kitchen, eating lo mein from take-out containers. Lucy’s glazed look of pain dissipated. She hummed and Kit hated her a little bit. For pretending to be unmarked by the last few hours. And by every other terrible hour of her life.
Curtis hopped madly at their ankles. His cries were comically bad, as if a blade were being driven into his body.
“Is he okay?” Kit asked.
“He’s fine,” Lucy said. “Those are the screams of a manipulator.” She scraped brown slop from a can into a little blue bowl and set it down on the floor. Curtis trotted over with a look of slack-jaw joy. He bent down to eat.
“He appears well behaved when he’s eating,” Kit said.
“Everyone does,” Lucy said.
Kit set her lo mein by the sink. “Am I your only friend?” she asked. “I don’t mean that in a bitchy way. I don’t have any others.”
Lucy stared at her. “In a way you are. I used to have a lot of friends.”
Kit had never had a lot of friends. But she’d had a few that she didn’t have now. Becoming a whore is like getting very sick, she thought. You don’t want people and they don’t want you. Only she did want people. A little.
“Ned’s daughter is dying of cancer,” Kit blurted.
“He told you that today?”
“No. Before. I should have told you. I just didn’t want you to feel sorry for him.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“Really?”
“I don’t feel anything for these people,” Lucy said dryly.
Kit reached into her bag and felt around. She wondered what Lucy did feel. Outside an ambulance wailed by, its twirling red lights passing over the ceiling. She lit a joint and stood with it burning between her fingers. “I don’t know why I get high,” she said. “My mind is so inherently trippy.”
“Maybe you should quit.”
“Maybe.” Kit let herself stare at Lucy. It was a quiet, burning stare. Her eyes blazed, pouring with feeling. Lucy continued to eat, as if she did not notice. But she did.
The Underside of Charm
Ava sat in bed with Gretchen, a woman she’d met the day before in an AA meeting. Gretchen had been sober for eight years and it was her bed, her story.
“The bigger fear was that I wouldn’t die,” she said with a glazed look, closely monitoring Ava’s responses. “It was sick, to manage and control this thing—drinking—like it was God. To prove that I was God over it.” Gretchen ran one hand over her tawny crew cut and sighed. It was a story she had told many times, a story she liked to tell. There was the version she told in AA meetings and the version she told to lovers, but both framed her as a macho street urchin, staggering through life swigging from a flask and having epiphanies. She had an aura of smugness, even as she strode across the room to open a window, she bore the expression of someone receiving a compliment and finding it to be absolutely true. Her face was broad and German, olive toned with a spattering of pale freckles. One of her eyes twitched occasionally, a consequence of abusing speed.
It had been three months since Ava’s last drink, a vulnerable time. Many warned against dating but she found herself completely pulled to Gretchen: her ease, her obscene self-confidence.
“Do you believe in God?” Ava asked.
“I do.”
“And you feel really sure?”
Gretchen paused, tipping her head to one side. “There will always be periods of unknowing. But I think you should let go at that point.”
“What do you mean let go?”
“Don’t arm yourself with belief,” Gretchen instructed. “Say I don’t know. Throw your hands up. Meet people there.”
Ava nodded. “So you go to church and everything?”
“I do,” Gretchen said. “Really I go to be alone. It’s one of the only private places left in the world right now.”
Ava nodded. This seemed entirely true. “I like to pray,” she said. “Maybe because it’s so unpleasant.” She began to fidget and looked down at her fingers. “It feels like some humiliating sex act. Like giving a gross guy a blow job.”
“Well,” Gretchen grinned, “it’s no coincidence you’re on your knees.”
Ava smiled embarrassedly. Pink hues flooded to her cheeks. Since getting sober, she felt skinned, tender as a teenager.
“My parents were atheists,” Gretchen said. “And it never made any sense to me. Why put so much effort into slaying something?” She eyed Ava, who appeared captivated. “I’ve always loved to pray. I feel like something hears my attempts. Not just to be good, but to be clear.” She assumed a serious expression. “I got to a point where I knew I was gonna die. I remember thinking, I’ve got nothing. All I could do was pray for help.” Gretchen brushed some imaginary crumbs off the bed. “I gambled too,” she admitted with a distinct note of pleasure. “Actually, I probably gambled more than I drank. It’s like drinking but it’s all blackout,” she reflected. “You’re falling right away.”
&nb
sp; Ava looked past Gretchen and noticed a squirrel on the fire escape, peering from the other side of the glass. She pointed. “Look!”
“Oh yeah.” Gretchen smiled broadly. Her teeth were white and sharky. “He used to put walnuts under my pillow. I think I didn’t have a screen.”
“No he didn’t.”
“He did,” Gretchen said, smiling, addicted to her own charm. “The first time I saw him, he looked into my eyes so directly. I’m sure I had a hangover. It was like I was in a cartoon with him and he was the dominant species.”
Ava laughed and Gretchen touched her leg. She looked up with a thrill that somewhat resembled terror. Gretchen was calm as a cat, her gaze steady and electric.
They pounced and the two made out athletically, wide-mouthed and groping. For dinner, they had eaten roast beef and vegetables, an oniony dish, and Ava hoped her mouth wasn’t the onionier mouth. They stopped kissing and looked at each other.
“Do I have really bad breath?” Ava asked, a laugh in her voice.
“I think we both do.” Gretchen grinned. “We could brush our teeth.”
“I don’t have a toothbrush.”
“I have a new one you could use. Still in the package.”
They brushed their teeth, hip to hip, and spat green foam into the sink. Both wiped their mouths, smiling. They returned to the bed and resumed kissing. The kissing became a laugh.
“I still taste onion,” Gretchen said.
“But mint too.”
“Yeah, it’s like a little mint messenger carrying an onion.”
They laughed heartily and smashed their mouths back together, tugging out of their clothes. Heat came off Ava in great waves, while Gretchen’s energy remained cool and mechanistic. A pure chill.
• • •
Later it rained. It was a violent fall rain, knocking tree branches to the pavement out front. The two lay naked with the lights on, Ava half under a sheet, Gretchen fully exposed, legs crossed, a pillow behind her back. She got up and removed the screen to close the window. Rain pelted the glass. A clap of thunder lit the room and Ava pulled the sheet up over her breasts.
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