When Watched

by Leopoldine Core

  “So you never wish I was younger?”

  Peanut was startled by this question. “No,” she insisted, putting her hand on Frances’s flat chest. “I’m in love with you now. But sometimes I want to meet the other yous. Like, I want to hang out with you in 1970. I want to meet her.”

  “I love you from 1970. I love you from all points in my life,” Frances said, moving her knuckles over Peanut’s stomach. She wanted to stay awake forever, to never let go. Frances hated the vulnerable moment before sleep. She felt she might drop right into death.

  Peanut sat up, moonlight from the window pouring on her face and shoulders. She stroked the backs of Frances’s legs, saying “darling” again and again, all the while dwelling on thoughts of a world without her darling. It was hideous to contemplate.

  Peanut thought about time travel. How could she not? She thought about wormholes and machines from science fiction movies, all the magic that could save them. If only time were stretchy, she thought, then her sense of time could be sped up and Frances’s could be slowed down. She felt embarrassed thinking this way, but also entitled. Because everyone else had it wrong. The problem with their relationship wasn’t moral at all. It was biological. It came down to the bodies they happened to have and the looming fact of death.

  • • •

  In the morning Frances woke up before Peanut. She got dressed and brushed her teeth and stood before the bathroom mirror, staring at her face. The white overhead light was bad and she found her appearance a shock. Frances didn’t feel like the person she saw. She didn’t feel old. She had always identified herself with her body’s powers and saw that they were slipping away. So who was this other person? Frances considered the assembly line of existence and one thought looped in her mind. I’ll die too?

  Peanut walked in naked and sat on the toilet to pee.

  “I look like some rotting Keith Richards,” Frances said.

  “You are so vain.”

  “I know.” Frances poured oil from a skinny brown bottle into one hand and worked it through her hair. “You know what the worst thing about aging is?”

  “You’re always telling me what the worst thing about aging is. I’ve heard like sixty worst things.”

  “Well, in the moment it always seems like the worst thing.”

  “Okay, so tell me.”

  “Eyebrows. I keep looking at pictures of myself and thinking what’s wrong with my face? Oh, I have no eyebrows. And there’s nothing to be done! You know, straight women start to pencil them in but that looks really freakish.”

  Peanut flushed and stood up. “I have this weird dark hair on my stomach.” She pointed to her abdomen. “I pluck it and it grows back.”

  “Well I have, like, an eight-foot whisker coming out of my neck.”

  Peanut walked over to Frances, examining her. “It’s barely noticeable. And anyway that’s normal. It’s an aging thing. But I shouldn’t have stomach hairs.”

  “Well, you know, your friends have probably already told you this, but it’s contagious.”

  Peanut smiled and kissed Frances’s ear. “Darling, you’re completely hot,” she said and hugged her from behind, clasping both hands over her chest. “I chased you, remember?” she said. “You didn’t even like me.”

  Frances grinned. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like you. I just thought you were so young. I mean, you seemed like an absurd candidate for my love.”

  Peanut knelt on the floor and turned Frances toward her. She kissed her knees, then held them like apples and looked up triumphantly.

  Frances laid her hand on Peanut’s warm head. “Baby, you’re such a dirty opportunist.”

  • • •

  After checking out, Peanut and Frances asked an unfriendly man in the parking lot to take their photo. It turned out he was just European, which they later laughed about. He took five pictures, each at the wrong moment.

  “I look increasingly like a leprechaun,” Frances reflected as they scrolled through the pictures on her digital camera.

  “Well, I look pale and crazy. Like I’ve just been let out of an institution for a little sunlight.”

  The last photo was the worst. They exploded into a fit of laughter.

  “Jesus. I look like some gnomish version of Iggy Pop!” Frances cried.

  “You do! And look at me. I love how deliriously happy we look. Like we have no idea how ugly we are.”

  • • •

  They drove up dirt roads, past dilapidated farmhouses with brown chickens patrolling out front. As directed by Gail, Frances stopped at the last green shed and parked under a tree.

  They began walking and approached a dark barn with a beaming tin roof. Rusted farming implements lay sunken in the earth out front. Peanut pointed to a group of black-spotted pigs, lounging in the sun with drunken looks. She put her hand over the chicken wire and they came running, leaning their genital-soft snouts to her fingers. “Pigs are very smart,” Peanut said, stroking one on the face. “Smarter than dogs. And toddlers.”

  Frances stared at the pigs. “Maybe we could have one someday. And a horse,” she said. “Life doesn’t seem long enough.”

  “It isn’t,” Peanut smiled.

  They walked on, past staring goats. Over raised roots, green weeds shooting up around rocks. The two stopped at a dented aluminum mailbox on a wood post. They walked up the gravel drive and through a high metal gate.

  Barking dogs came bounding toward them. Gail stood from a plastic chair on the porch, waving. She wore a collared peach dress with square front pockets and a dirty beige visor. A barking spaniel leapt at her feet, nipping the hem of her dress. “Gladys!” she said sharply. “Cool your jets.”

  Peanut spotted Tony immediately among the pack, trotting their way. A bright fox with dark, wet Disney eyes, pink tongue out.

  Gail shook hands with them. She looked wind-beaten and suspicious. Frances recognized her hands from the photograph on Petfinder.com.

  Tony began rolling on the grass and Peanut knelt, following him with her hand. He lay submissively for a moment, accepting a stroke, the sun in his orange hair. Then the dog stood on his skinny hind legs and licked her fingers ecstatically.

  Gail stared at them. A wide grin spread across her face. “He’s cuter than in pictures, huh?” she said. He was. Peanut rubbed his rabbit-soft chest in awe, his heart beating so close to the surface.

  Gail warned that Tony would cry for a few days and they nodded, their eyes fixed on the animal. “I like pictures,” Gail said. “Send pictures of him.” She handed Peanut a record of Tony’s vaccines and a ziplock bag full of brown kibble, then a little blue harness and leash.

  Peanut gave Gail a check and lifted the puppy up into her arms. “Oh my God,” she said, beaming. It was the gentlest weight, like a small bag of flour.

  Frances stroked the dog’s face with one finger. “I know.”

  In the car Peanut held the dog with both hands and wanted to write. Black birds flitted by and she let herself forget the poem growing in her mind, which felt wonderfully wasteful, almost decadent. What kind of radio is a bird? How do they know where to go? Peanut grasped the dog in a tranquil daze.

  “You look like you just gave birth,” said Frances.

  “I feel like I did.”

  Frances glanced at Tony. “He seems like a serious little guy.”

  “He does.”

  “What fine career could he have where no one would notice he was a dog?”

  “Shrink?”

  They laughed and laughed.

  “He could have an assistant explain all of his intentions,” said Frances.

  “He wants you to take him for a walk,” Peanut joked.

  • • •

  They passed long, low humps of grass, gray trucks like a train of elephants. And a green sign that read HISTORIC TREE NURSERIES, EXIT 41, with no ex
planation. Both thought of what this might mean. Peanut pictured people kneeling to water rows of tiny baby trees. Frances thought of dioramas of people planting trees in the past. The dog began to cry. It sounded like he was being burned with cigarettes. Then he rolled onto his back and looked up distrustfully, his bright white chest thrust forward like Christ. “Chihuahua on a cross,” Peanut cooed in a mockingly piteous voice.

  “That sounds like a band name.”

  “We should claim to be in that band. Like when people think you’re my mom, we should say no, we’re bandmates.”

  “That’s so great.” Frances cocked her head in thought. “Because I really hate making a point of saying you’re my girlfriend. People always wind up looking ugly when they try to make a point.” She took one hand off the wheel to touch Peanut’s leg. “Our first album could be called Frantic Licks.”

  Peanut roared with laughter. “You know, darling, you look a little like a dog. Because you are kind of always smiling. And you smell like a dog. In a good way.”

  “I think I was a dog.”

  “No, you are a dog.” Peanut looked out at the wide road, the white light beaming on car tops. She patted Tony. “You don’t really believe in reincarnation, do you?”

  “Well, not really but it’s very appealing. I sort of entertain it, with past lives and stuff. Like, my mind slips into it metaphorically. You never think about having other lives?”

  “No.”

  “So you think people die and then just return to static.”

  “No, they return to nothing.”

  • • •

  They passed lush green farms, black cows in profile on the crest of a hill, a dead deer arranged with its bottom facing the road. Tony’s cries were reduced to a croaking whimper and then, in grim acceptance, he tucked his snout between Peanut’s knees.

  They weren’t at all hungry but figured they should eat. Frances took the next exit and pulled over. They sat on a skinny plot of grass in the shadow of a taco chain. Tony peed reluctantly, tugging at his leash.

  Frances bought nachos and they ate cross-legged on the grass, holding the cardboard boats up in front of their mouths, away from Tony.

  “He has the build of a piglet,” said Frances.

  “A pig in a fox costume.”

  “A very clever pig who didn’t want to die.”

  The dog stood on his back legs with a desperate expression, begging for all the things he smelled. “Look at him,” Peanut said, smiling.

  “Dogs are so more apparently animal than us that we get to laugh at their desires,” Frances declared. Peanut agreed. They wiped their mouths and held each other. They looked down at the dog, their tiny witness. He lay stomach-up in the grass.

  Frances stroked his throat. It occurred to her that she could die around the same time he did. The thought was a shock and then felt sort of funny. She smiled at the animal, the little measure of his life. A nano life that matches the end of me, she thought.

  Frances put her hand on Peanut’s shin. They both looked down at the hand and then, sensing that people were staring, Frances withdrew it and looked up.

  They were surrounded by teenagers with benign, captivated expressions. Wives grabbed their husbands by the arm, pointing gleefully. A little boy stepped forward and shyly asked to pet the dog.

  Never before had the two been so tenderly observed. They looked at each other and then back at their audience, alarmed. Strangers stood patiently, all lit up, beside a single gnarly tree. Tony tilted his head, ears erect. He studied the crowd and they crept forward. Everyone wanted to touch him. Everyone beamingly asked, “What kind of dog is that?” instead of “What the fuck are you?”

  When people left, new strangers appeared. Some stood at an arm’s length and they were radiant, waiting for their pleasure. They seemed to be touching the dog even before their hands had landed. Tony offered his underside and stared up seductively. He had an appetite for everyone. The dog was littleness itself and this was his power. People weighed him in their hands. They pointed out his smallness repeatedly, almost to the point of chanting, as if Peanut and Frances were in denial of the dog’s size and needed to be convinced. “He’s a tiny baby!” a young girl blurted.

  This is what it means, Peanut and Frances realized, to be the keepers of something beautiful. This is what it means to become other people. They thought about what they had been when they stood next to each other. Freaks, strutting their base interests. But now, next to the dog, they lost their queerness, if only for a moment. “We’re sort of like Elvis’s family,” Frances whispered. “The trash these people are willing to put up with to get to the king.” Tony shot them a long look, as if in agreement, and stepped out into an area of sunlight. He was more aware of his beauty than any creature they had ever met. Everyone crawled around him. They sat in the sun, fondling his warm velvet head. And he shined.

  Chubby Minutes

  She sees him at the grocery store. He doesn’t see her. He is with his daughter. He is putting green apples in a bag.

  She grabs a pear and pretends to examine it. She puts it down. She walks over to the melons and stares abstractedly, her heart hammering. She looks up and he’s smiling at her. His smile is warm. Instantly she feels weak and excited. He is walking toward her now.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi,” he says. He’s standing right in front of her. She’s looking down.

  He is divorced now so technically it’s possible that they could date. Or just have sex, she thinks. She can’t think about him without thinking about sex. And so she is afraid to look into his eyes, afraid he will know and be disgusted. A man likes a woman to be ambivalent, she articulates in her mind. And she has never been ambivalent about who she wants to fuck. She has always been sure and she thinks that certainly there is nothing uglier than this, a woman who is sure.

  They both ask how the other is and both say, “Good.” Clearly both are lying.

  She tries to control her face. “I don’t know how to pick melons,” she says.

  “You’ve gotta look for the pecks,” he says.

  “The what?”

  “The pecks,” he repeats. “Birds go for the sweeter ones.”

  This makes her blush. What he said feels lewd, filthy. But it isn’t filthy, she thinks. It’s me. I’m filthy.

  She looks down at the little girl, who must be seven by now. It is a knowing face. A face that knows she is filthy. “Hi, Becky,” she says to the child, who says nothing.

  “She’s a little shy,” he says, patting the girl on the head. But shy is the wrong word. Becky looks suspicious. Little girls know everything, she thinks.

  “Well,” he smiles again. “It was nice running into you.”

  “Yeah.” She cannot believe their encounter is over. She hates the politeness of her life. He walks away.

  She shops impatiently. She cannot bear the fact of time. How it keeps passing. How she has to wait to pay for cans of soup, to have sex.

  She wants the man to know what she knows, that she wants him. And somehow she feels that he already does. She has fantasized so heavily and for so long that she feels her fantasies hold a kind of penetrative power. It’s as if my daydreams have hacked into his, she thinks, her eyes shining. She feels certain that she has appeared in his thoughts. She has been naked in his thoughts and this same naked body has returned at particular hours of the day. Possibly we are having the same fantasies at the same exact moments, she thinks, which makes all the dullness between them in public seem coy and silly.

  She walks to her apartment and passes a couple. All she hears the man say is “There are two types of people,” and instantly she hates him.

  On her stoop there is a group of drunk teenagers smoking cigarettes. “You can’t sit here,” she announces, clutching her brown bag of groceries. “You have to leave.”

  One woman says “Cunt,”
under her breath. Another says “Bitch,” loudly. They all leave and she puts her key in the lock. I used to smoke cigarettes, she thinks, moving into the building. I used to be a teenager. Now I’m a Bitch and a Cunt.

  Upstairs she gives herself an orgasm. The sun is setting. The window is open wide. Red light pours over the room. She rolls onto her side and imagines the man and his daughter eating dinner. She thinks that she would be happy just to fuck him once. She thinks that it isn’t true what people say about men, how they are dying to fuck all the time. She thinks that men are in fact a little prudish, hard to get in the sack.

  She reflects, though, that she wouldn’t be happy to fuck him just once. She loves this man. And if they fucked she would say it. Almost against her will, she would say, “I love you.” She pictures him saying it back. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Then his face disintegrates.

  She grows anxious. She thinks of all the pressures assigned to a person who is loved. She thinks that certainly if he loved her, it would be because he didn’t really know her. It would be because she was hiding certain hideous qualities. And it would only be a certain amount of time before these qualities surfaced. Soon he would know that she couldn’t drive. He would also know that even while walking or riding her bike, she often had no idea where she was going. He would know that she couldn’t give directions to tourists. He would make fun of me, she thinks and cries a little.

  He would also discover that she had no urge for cleanliness, that in fact she must force herself to clean her apartment. That when she does not force herself, the kitchen quickly gets filthy, with mice walking idly across the counter, like it is their home. And the truth is that she doesn’t really mind it this way. If I never had anyone over, she thinks, it would always be filthy. She is amazed by people who clean compulsively. These people happily call themselves freaks and she hates them for it. Because she knows who the real freak is: the slob.