“Stephen, I’m so cold and wet.”
“Do you want to take a shower?” I asked.
She nodded, turned away, and stared at the floor.
“I’ll get you a towel and start the water.”
She asked if I had anything warm she could wear and I told her yes I did I would look. I wanted to clean the bathroom, remove my hair from the sink and shower drain, de-mold the grout, replace the shower curtain. But there was no time for any of this. We were onto something. The bathroom filled with steam and I led her to the tub. Or rather she let me do so. She pushed me out the door and locked it behind me. The spatter against the bottom of the tub changed its rhythm as she stepped in and out beneath the showerhead. I pulled the blue flannel duvet over my unmade bed and pretended to sleep on the couch, discerned the orange light of the opening bathroom door. I wanted her hands on me without me having to move or ask, my nerve endings broadcasting the message that I needed her to act voluntarily. Because she wasn’t mine to take. She showed up here; she was hers to offer.
“I take it you don’t have a hair dryer?”
“Why’s that?” I asked with eyes closed.
“Because you’re balding.”
She stood over me, pushing her fingers through my thinning hair, cozied next to me on the couch, sat on her hands. Full of small disappointment, I stood and placed my hands on her wide, warm hips. She didn’t say no and she wouldn’t say no. She would let me take it. I pressed forward. She opened the towel. The space between her pointed breasts expansive and freckled with her true color, not this black deep red thing she co-opted from Soncha. I moved alongside her. Her long bellybutton juiced extra pink by the hot shower.
“Stephen?”
“Yes.”
“You sure this is what you want?”
I mumbled.
“Promise me.”
I promised and proceeded to persist. She puckered. She was a puckerer. I pushed my way in. She turned her head and closed her eyes and there it was. There we were. I needed this. Inside she was warm and ribbed like corrugated tin. The roof of her soft pink corrugated shed. It was rare for me when it was like this. I didn’t think. I put my hands around her neck. Between her neck and shoulders.
“Stephen?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing.”
I dug for it across the arm of the stain-resistant Raymore & Flannigan couch. The connection that apparently makes one feel the earth again beneath one’s feet. Something cracked. Now gulped for air. One, two, three, four last times. The swollen gills of a pink fish hoisted from the sea. More desperate with age. Infecting the host. She detached from me and I moved south along her white length. My nose between the capital Y of her now closed legs. She sat up.
“I want this instead.”
She lit an all-white American Spirit with a wooden match. That one for her, this one for me.
“You feel better now?” she asked, as if she had just lanced an abscess.
I told her yes.
“And don’t worry. I have an IUD. I won’t make that mistake again.”
I hadn’t thought of this, because I had placed the burden on her. She reentered the bathroom, locked the door, sprayed a small jet inside the toilet bowl, and doused herself clean with the porcelain cup atop the sink. I wanted to ask her what mistake but I knew what she meant. In the past I would have probed and dug until I uncovered the hidden thing, with a righteous fervor, as if I was taking confession. But there was no reason to do so now. Let a woman have her secrets. There’s a reason for it. Because it’s better that way. Outside the snow fell heavy and quiet. I felt off but didn’t know whether to talk or ignore it. The problem with talking in these situations is that it results in more talking, and when a woman asks you questions looking for answers about what it is you want to discuss and you can’t reply with any kind of clarity or honesty a woman will turn on you. Better to let it dissolve on its own accord.
Gregg’s lights blinked inside the heavy snow, amassed atop the plastic boughs, admonishing me to quit myself. Kath exited the bathroom wearing the towel and looked around the apartment. I feared she wanted to leave.
“It’s like a tomb in here, Stephen,” she said. “Did you find my warm clothes?”
I wrapped myself in an itchy wool blanket and pointed at the closet. Kath reached for the pair of sweatpants and thermal shirt I set aside for her and knocked over a cardboard box that tumbled Christmas ornaments to the floor. Little silver balls with handwritten-note filling, from Mei to me and me to Mei, for opening once a year, to cherish how far we’d traveled the road of life together. Another ornament lay chipped on the floor, of cartoon deer in love. “Mei” the doe in heels with long black eyelashes and “Stephen” the antlered buck wrapped in a red scarf. Embarrassed and goofy in love.
“Jesus this is depressing, Stephen. Why do you keep this stuff?”
The deer ornament landed in the trash can. She cracked open a little Christmas ball, scooped out the note, like the bloody red center of a cherry jubilee. I almost protested but didn’t.
“I love the way you tie your tie.”
Kath faux-barfed.
“Evil temptress, perform thy act of mercy,” I said, and all of it landed in the trash can. She dressed inside the towel and sat half-lotus on the couch, and from her oversize handbag removed a purple clutch with saffron stitching and a row of tiny mirrors. The small flame of her disposable Bic heated a chunk of hash and it crumbled and flaked in her licorice-manicured fingers. Like an English girl she rolled a spliff with two papers glued together to form a capital L. It was quarter to one.
“Stephen?”
“Yes?”
“You need to reach that point where you don’t care about Mei anymore. And only when you reach that point can you let go.”
“OK.”
I didn’t bother to tell her she had it all wrong.
“I think we need to perform open-heart surgery on you. It’s bleeding all over the place. I can help you. But you have to trust me.”
I didn’t know what she meant. I feared she was going to recommend bondage, submission, prescribe pain for me to feel again, walk on me wearing heels. That this was why men entered realms they avoided or feared or thought they abhorred, in order to feel again.
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She handed me the spliff like it was an exclamation mark.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t feel it.”
The taste of the smoke opened neurons and paths to people and places I hadn’t thought of in years. Relegated to the past. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Rooted deep in northern Michigan. Abandoned in Detroit, lost in Chicago, escaped to San Francisco, failing in Los Angeles, miscarrying in Westchester. No longer recognizable. Just a series of adjectives. Successful. Failure. Wealthy. Broke. Talented. Family. Ill. Divorced. Married. Infertile. Dreadlocked. Scandinavian. Londoner. Gone. Kath relit the spliff and walked around the apartment smoking. A hash ember fell from the tip and scorched the varnish of the pumpkin pine floor. She filled the kettle with water and the gas burner ignited with small clicks and she set the kettle on the blue flame. “Want to come with me to Philadelphia in a few weeks for my brother Benjamin’s fortieth birthday party?”
“OK,” I said, though I harbored doubts we would execute the plan, because she liked to announce grand plans, like going to India without a visa, despite the fact Philadelphia was only an hour by train. She pulled on the spliff and handed it to me. I took another drag and felt liquor hash dizzy and the need for a cigarette. We circled the coffee table holding lighters.
“Does your brother still have that goofy Om tattoo on his lower back?” I asked, aware I was taking a shot.
“Stephen.” She pulled me on the couch and took my hand and placed it in hers. “Be especially wary of dismissing everyone who’s not you, OK? Stop judging. It’s a bad habit.”
“OK.”
“You promise?�
�
“I promise.”
“And you’ll go to Philadelphia with me for Benjamin’s birthday party?”
“OK.”
“And we’ll have a good time?”
“OK.”
“You won’t be like all those other men who are always breaking their promises to me?”
I had nothing to say, looked at my hands.
“Hey Stephen,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I like you.”
“Really?”
“I’ve always liked you. And I think you’re super hot. And smart. And funny. And …”
The water boiled inside the green teapot. She felt warmer now and I couldn’t release her. The steam whistled as my Sputnik reentered her atmosphere. This was more like it. I hurried to pour and steep the tea but in doing so singed my thumb, for the briefest of moments stuck to the teapot, and I fumbled with the kitchen spigot, submerged it in running water. Kath looked confused. Now she got it. She inserted my thumb in her mouth and we looked at the blister. White and pellucid and the shape of Greenland.
“I want chicken tikka marsala,” Kath said. “And garlic naan.”
“OK,” I said, despite the fact it was now quarter after one.
“And I want goat biryani,” she said.
“I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“And that’s why I ate pork tacos earlier tonight?”
She intuited my sensitivity. Her intuition was half-accurate but didn’t warrant mentioning.
“I was. I used to be a vegetarian, Stephen. Thank you for being so considerate. But I am no longer. Is that what you want me to say?”
I told her to fuck off. She smacked my ass. My phone continued to buzz. Three more messages from Fleeger. Saying we needed to talk. That we needed to talk two hours ago. Come on man write him back—it was important. Ten cigarette butts jammed the ashtray. The intercom buzzed and Kath handed me my robe while scrolling through Apple TV.
The Bengali who both managed the Indian restaurant and delivered its food walked toward me, oiled sable part, gripping plastic bags.
“Your food, sir,” he said.
He made me feel like a colonial master. That was his shtick and he worked it. Guaranteeing that his red velvet Indian restaurant in the West Village withstood the forces of commerce and fashion. Chicken tikka masala with a side of atavistic colonialism. But for the fact he was Bengali, and thus more inclined to be a poet than a sadhu, for the proper fee he would agree to play along: lungi, wooden beads, bindi, chillum, for Kath and Soncha to film.
“Sacred beads of Vishnu?” he offers her.
“Thank you,” Kath replies.
“Chillum to connect with Ram?”
“May we film your sadhuism from this angle?”
“You may film me from any angle you wish. Master has already paid.”
I paid him cash and Kath tickled me behind the door. He cocked his head to inquire just what the devil was going on here. The ten-dollar tip—on account of the snow—made him shy. I handed the plastic bags of food to Kath. She knotted the blanket at her chest like a sarong, positioned the plastic containers on the coffee table, and dumped the ashtray.
“I want wine,” she said.
I poured her a glass of merlot. She pouted.
“They forgot the raita.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
“But I want it.”
I bit my tongue and called the restaurant.
“No problem, sir.”
We began making love again. Another knock at the door. This time Gregg stood next to the Bengali, still holding his snow shovel.
“Stephen?” Gregg asked. “He said he has your raita?”
The Bengali handed me two plastic ramekins of raita. I thanked him and we nodded and he exited the building.
“Hi, Gregg,” I said.
He looked at my robe. The spring slammed the door shut and Gregg stood on the other side of the door tapping his plastic shovel against the ceramic floor tiles. Kath’s curved breasts swung inside the blanket sarong as she descended on the food. I handed her the raita and she held my hand while eating from the plate on her lap and then I handed her a torn piece of warm garlic naan.
“You’re such a good man, Stephen,” she said.
Small movements beneath the duvet, a kit of alighting pigeons, another chunk of spent hash scorched the floor. We lay naked beneath the blankets. Stroking and sleeping, waking to stroke again. I walked naked to the window. The snow had stopped and Gregg’s courtyard was dark and electric and white, the snow illuminated from within, like an incandescent South Pacific lagoon where the coral glows when you insert your toes into the sea. I wanted to move to Norway, live on a lake, build stone walls, raise mountain dogs in the European countryside with Kath.
My phone buzzed the nightstand. Another message from Fleeger. Telling me I let him down bro.
“Who was that?” Kath asked.
She didn’t have the right to ask that yet.
“Work.”
“Work or Robert?”
“Both,” I said. She snuggled into the pillow. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you marry him?”
She rolled onto her back. We should have remained under the blankets not asking each other questions.
“I told you I don’t want to talk about him.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Well you should know that. You’re not an idiot but you’re also an idiot. A real man would know that a woman doesn’t want to discuss her ex-husband while lying in bed with another man.”
She curled into a ball and pulled the blanket over her head and turned armadillo on me. I told her I was sorry. She didn’t reply. We lay in silence. How did this happen? Again I told her I was sorry, and again, forcing my arm around her shuttered waist. I wanted to tell her to fuck off, get out, but worried what would happen if I did. There were too many perils: snow, bicycle, ice, Fleeger. Against my better instincts I focused on appeasing her disappointment.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she replied. Still hiding beneath the covers.
I never should have opened the door for her tonight. Should have questioned the motive and the genuineness of what she said and did from the first moment beneath the table. I had been weak. Failed to ask myself and answer whether this was what I wanted and needed. A net positive. Potentially constructive and supportive and good. She hadn’t chosen me. She showed up here drunk—for a screw and some naan. I left her in bed sulking, replenished my glands with a cold bottle of beer, sat in the gray miasma of smog that still hovered above the couch, and crawled back in bed. She curled up next to me and put her hand on my chest and in that moment the trap was sprung. The small, injured mammal released.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I kissed her forehead and we fell asleep.
I awoke in Kath’s mouth. She worked me harder. Sorrel gray roots parted black. I grabbed her skull with both hands and she gagged me deeper and then exited the bed with her mouth closed and turned the squeaky faucets and entered the shower. This time the door remained open. I told her I was going to the store to buy breakfast.
“Get me an avocado,” she said behind the shower curtain with a face full of water.
I typed a reply to Fleeger. Thought about it and thought about it. One of those rare moments when you convince yourself that exhaustion equals a sick day and you act upon it. I informed him I would be in tomorrow. That I was sick, snowed in, snowed under with a stomach thing, fucking curry. His hammerhead thumbs were no use to him now on this post-blizzard morning of pseudo-cuckoldry. As I exited the apartment building I confirmed for myself that he knew nothing about me and Kath. Gritty sodium kernels crunched beneath my feet. Kath’s bicycle buried beneath a mound of Gregg’s diligent snow removal, an empty bottle of Georgi vodka deposited in her metal basket.
My phone buzzed the newswire and I scrolled it with m
y blister. The coronal mass ejection still wreaking havoc. A container ship grounding off Sicily due to a malfunctioning navigational system. The successful launch of a Chinese rocket carrying a satellite to monitor shifts in solar magnetism. Standing applause by the PRC standing committee. Black suits and brilliantined hair. While waiting for the light to change I broke through a puddle of ice with my heel. Wooden crates and frozen cardboard boxes piled on the Manhattan sidewalk. I overpowered the broken pneumatic door and entered the deep-fried-smelling Gristedes, where a giant sluggish Haitian watched me as he fastened price tags to the bottom of tin cans. The butcher, crisp in delicatessen whites, also watched me while dolloping mayonnaise salads Iwo Jimaed with neon-orange prices. I grabbed a dozen eggs and an avocado and a twelve-pack of Budweiser and queued, pondering the deeper meaning of the Shop Rite brand personal lubricant display next to the cash register.
“Get the fuck off me, man,” a brown woman yelled near the mechanical exit, swinging a skinny arm at the Korean store manager as the pneumatic door opened and closed, detecting movement, unsure what to do, the woman now kneeling. A jailhouse arrow tattooed to the manager’s forearm exercising his merchant’s right to detain her. From deep within her coat pockets he extracted a box of condoms, a spool of wound tape, and a tube of Vaseline intensive care. She sobbed at his feet. I dropped the beer and the groceries on the conveyor belt.
“How much for her stuff?” I asked the girl behind the register. She looked at the manager.
“Eighteen dollars,” he said.
I nodded that I would pay. Handed the girl a hundred-dollar bill to ring up the sale. The manager rolled his upper lip inside his lower lip and raised his hand from the woman. She sprung from his grasp without the gauze, the Vaseline, the condoms, all of it abandoned on the floor, now running past the store windows: ***SEDETSIRG*** !!!WON ELAS NO, 94.6$ MAH DELIOB, 99.3$ YRD ADANAC. Like some distraught alien trapped in the city with no chance to return home, accursed by the angry god she had offended.
“They’re yours now,” the manager said, double-bagging her items and handing them to me, in a bag separate from the avocado, beer, and eggs, which I appreciated.
All the Beautiful People We Once Knew Page 11
