“Are you mad? I was looking for my night cream—we placed it in there when we packed up at Cresswell’s.”
“Sorry,” he muttered, unconvincingly.
“You know Wild’ll finance and embolden his entire factory of Policing, and you don’t even care. I should have known.” She looked at him. “Kafir*1.” She had begun crying.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not teaching you any more words,” she sobbed. “Why did I teach you any to begin with.”
Jack’s throat was dry as chalk. He felt his misery rising up, tugging at him, calling for him like a dog straining against a leash. “I’ll leave.” He said this as if she’d asked him to.
“ ’Course you will. That’s what you do. Run off. But know that if you leave now—if we don’t scamp together—if we don’t fight together—then we’re nothing.”
Her eyes went wide, pleading. It shatter’d him to turn away from them. But his misery was overtaking him—a master he didn’t know how to disobey.
So, then, his misery was not the dog; he was his misery’s dog.
Jack rolled the bottle back towards himself; put it in his sack. Lash’d it closed.
He had done that first. The thing with the bottle. Done that before he ask’d, “What do you mean ‘nothing’?”
That was a beat too long. An awfully regrettable beat too long.*2
*1 Wretch. Viz., The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, ed. Daniel O’Quinn (Broadview Press, 2008).
*2 While we’re on the topic of exes…
I remember waking up somewhere unfamiliar. This was before the Villa Papyri Lounge—the morning before that night.
I was on a purple velvet couch in a small cottage. I could see a kitchen beyond the end of the couch. To the right, a bathroom threshold. The house was a specific kind of quiet. I was alone. I was thirsty and my head hurt.
On my way to the sink I noticed a pair of chunky-heeled boots—knee-high, unmistakably femme—along with what I was agonized to realize was my self-help book. Dear God I had brought my self-help book with me to this—wherever I was—somewhere that had a femme in it, or had had one.
The Art of Shprukh-Psikhish, or: The Psychological Mastery of Panic Character, block lettering announced loudly from the counter. This was embarrassing. Whoever I had spent the night with also knew about my self-improvement project.
While I was running my head under the water, the door opened. It was her, my now-ex, and this was the first time I was seeing her. Or, the first time I remembered with any clarity, as the night before was not available to me for reasons of bourbon.
In the backlight from the cracked-open door, her brown hair shone. It was late autumn and it was getting on evening, so it seemed I had slept all day. The sun was setting over the zinnias that wreathed the walkway to the house. The red sky in the threshold lit the capillaries inside my eyes, and I looked out through a scrim of beating vessels.
“Nice to see you up,” she said, coming in and closing the door. I interpreted this as a comment on the terrifying rictus of pain I have been told my expression takes on when I’m asleep. I took it to mean: It is not so nice to see you sleeping.
“I’m up,” I agreed stupidly.
I liked the skeptical way she looked at me. I liked the way the air in the house felt with her in it.
It was obvious from how I was staring that I was attracted to her, and it occurred to me that we must have had a very nice time the night before from how my groin was lighting up and also how she was half-smiling and her body was a little bit melting towards me as she came into the kitchen.
We talked all that day. She argued with almost everything I said. Half the time she would start shaking her head before I had even begun a sentence. Why did this turn me on? Her certainty about my wrongness was married with a certainty about my potential to do better. She had some kind of grasp of the future—a ferocity to make it do what she wanted. You’ll help me plant jasmine along the path in the spring, she said, alarming me equally with her belief that I had ever managed not to kill a plant and with her conviction that we’d know each other beyond just that evening. She unnerved and relaxed me in equal, excruciating measure. She used one particular word that conjured forward a being I had not until that point imagined could ever exist. She called this being—amazingly enough—“us.”
At some point, after we had gone to the Villa Papyri Lounge, and I had eaten an inconsequential chicken cutlet, and she had disabused me of my notion that I was ever going to have children and replaced it with a revolutionary fervor that was equally a fervor to fuck the shit out of her, we went to my place and she sat on my grandmother’s desk and…you know the rest.
This is a disaster, I said, that next morning after we woke up.
We had been sent by fate or history to undo each other. If we could survive falling in love we would have everything we’d ever wanted, but it wasn’t at all clear either of us could survive this. It is a disaster. She nodded, smiled, and we fucked again. And this time it was the fuck you can never get away from.
I touched her then, and always, with devotion and gusto. I touched her everywhere and anywhere she permitted me to touch, and I did so tirelessly. This means nothing about my stamina, and everything about what she awakened. In that inimitably queer way, we found languages, words to bridge the gulf between our bodies. I described to her what I was doing to her, how I was coming inside her even when—for obvious reasons—I wasn’t exactly, well not in the way that other people mean. Every time I came, it was impossible and miraculously specific; it did not exist outside of her ability to summon it. And it could only be for her. She seemed to appreciate this approach, is all I will say, out of respect for our once-precious privacy. And it was beautiful. Our contact was an animal that came to life when we watered it with language.
Because of this language—this animal of us that exceeded us almost immediately; this animal that was cavorting and splashing at a horizon-line to which I could only aspire to catch up—she didn’t have to be as beautiful as she was. I would have loved her just as much even if she hadn’t been.
Yet she was very, very beautiful. I loved everything about the way she looked, but I loved in particular, and immediately, that little extra right by her belly button area, that extra that meant she lived comfortably with desire—for sex, for food—that extra that made her whole torso kind of genital-y to me, that extra that was just: woman. Her hair. Good god. Let us not speak of her hair. When she was feeling particularly contrary she’d threaten to shave it off, make mention of her younger years as a punk, and she didn’t see why she couldn’t pull off that look again. Which would send me into a cascade of begging her not to.
She wore the appearance of a permanent small sneer that was the result of an upper lip that was beautifully full enough to look as if it was always on the verge of turning up. She wore jeans that were tighter than anything I ever saw on the faculty at the University.
Looking at my ex was like that rare experience of taking a dodgeball hit straight to the gut. Let me just perish in this vacuum of air while looking at this woman, this astonishing beauty, I thought, that first afternoon. And never stopped thinking.
Things deepened.
My ex was a professor at a nearby college. A better one than where I taught. She was a scholar of a much more exciting and important field of study than my own, which explained why—until our first night together, following a karaoke party for a mutual friend that I still remember very little of—I had not met her previously. She was something of an autodidact, but it was more than that. She seized things that shouldn’t go together and orchestrated intellectual car crashes with them. She created kaleidoscopic results—a flock of butterflies, a string of Christmas-colored lights floating out of a pile of wreckage—in ways that other people in her field could not do. She was much smarter than I was, and ha
d a greater capacity for concentration. She had infinite patience for learning things; she had a hunger about this—yes, the knowledge itself, but also its eventual ruination. Every bit of knowledge she gleaned was a weapon she would use on another bit of knowledge. I was not inclined to do battle with someone of her eminence, but we were together and so battle was inevitable.
But then to tell you the truth I think I liked the battle a little. She upped my game, let’s say. My ex and I fucked a lot and argued a lot and started marking up each other’s writing a lot and then, because of the latter, fucking a lot some more. And, without getting into too much detail about this part I can barely stand to have lost, I’ll add that she was secretly very sweet, and handled my now-dead bitch of a mother in ways inimitable and frankly soothing. It warmed a cockle of my heart that I didn’t even know I had or needed. Maybe—to recall something I said earlier—she saw me in all my historicity too. Fuck.
Anyway, we were fucking and reading and writing and she was also healing this part of me I can’t discuss, and somewhere in there I forgot about my Shprukh-Psikhish—the book that was supposed to help me with my anxiety situation.
By “situation” I mean that for as long as I can recall, my daily life has been orchestrated almost entirely around the number three. As a martial-arts film buff, I would have preferred a cool wuxia-style motto. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or, Once a promise leaves the mouth, even four horses cannot capture it again. If only.
Instead, my motto is something like: One two three (silent sound clucked against the back of the throat), three two one; one two three (silent cluck), three two one.
This unit of silent clucking and counting is repeated in sets of three, three times in a row, until whatever it was that gave rise to the need to count—vanity, aspirations towards happiness, presumptions about living to see another day, etc.—is “erased.”
The only thing—and I’m sure you could anticipate this—that made the counting go away was fucking. In an erotic situation, my breath would slow and a tremendous calm and clarity would come over me. I could command things in ways that had seemed just seconds before unimaginable. And I would stop counting.
I think I thought that if I fucked her enough I might be cured of counting for good.
PART
III
1.
Crashing through the doorway of the George and Vulture in Lombard Street, near morning, Hell-and-Fury was chanting an old John Skelton rhyme.
Let none the outward Vulture fear. No Vulture hosts inhabit here. If too well-used you deem ye then, Take your revenge and come again.
The rest of the gang tumbl’d in behind—Wild; thick, stupid Fireblood; sleek Henry Davis; and ruddy Daniel Flanders—giving off a collective raspy laugh—Come again!—as they crowded in, anticipating an evening of salted mackerel, buttered oysters, and, afterwards, the doxies upstairs at Garamond Belle’s school of Venus*1.
At the table, they called over each other, howl’d about the Provenance of the polar-bear and the red-throated hawk. Even the cruelest rogue, at times, finds himself fascinated by a beast. The tavern was Humid with men in coats, and the fizz rising from pints of ale.
Wild was agitated, crimson-faced over some business concern. He pull’d a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his cheeks and neck, produced a small ledger-book from his coat and began penning in the night’s accounts and tabulating the next set of thefts. Fireblood and Flanders compet’d to flag down the barmaid.
“Gentlemen.” Wild’s voice was strain’d. Droplets of perspiration fell from his temples. “Ever since my inventory of Product was taken from the Lighthouse Authority, and the loss of my co-confector Evans, our entire project has been in Arrears. And none of you has intensified much your hunt for Sheppard who made off with my Property.” He said Property through gritted teeth.
“Didn’t you interview him yourself? At Newgate, some time back?” nagged Fireblood.
“He escap’d, I think”—this from Flanders, foolishly.
Wild’s eyes narrow’d. He sat back. Stabb’d a piece of roast duck. Then he grinned an awful grin. “Since you two are clearly the brains of this operation, I must entrust you with a most important task. At the next prisoner-hanging”—brought the duck to his mouth—“you two will attend and retrieve the body before the magistrates do.” He point’d his tarnished fork at them.
“A body?” sputter’d Fireblood, choking on his ale. “How’re we s’posed to make off with a dead body?”
“Steal it in the mayhem and outcry,” Wild said between chews.
“Steal it?!” Fireblood was spitting gobs of phlegm and ale.
“Hangings are so thick with centinels,” scowled Flanders. “Centinels under orders to claim the body themselves.”
Wild smiled. “You’ll do it.” He wiped his lips with his handkerchief.
Hell-and-Fury felt a chill of fear and Excitement. His thin nose twitch’d in his long face. Wild meant to set them up for arrest. Fireblood and Flanders were as good as dead.
Hell-and-Fury shovel’d in oysters and butter, and silently thanked the lord that he’d somehow eluded this fate for the time being.
Davis was onto it, too. His mouth work’d a bit of salted beef. His eyes had an empty sheen. He was doing the math like Hell-and-Fury was doing the math.
When Wild rose to drain his bladder in the George and Vulture’s yard—waving Fireblood and Flanders back with him to “plan” the job (as well, much to their misfortune, to witness his prick releasing its lengthy stream)—Davis lean’d across the table.
“If Wild’s getting rid of Fireblood and Flanders, that’ll leave just meself, yerself, and Scotty Pool for whatever big fobs*2 Wild is aiming at.”
Hell-and-Fury quaked at the thought of a big, Secret fob. It was unlike Wild to be so guarded about something that—as he himself bragg’d—would so Enrich and Importantize him. Must be something awful, to tell the truth.
“Aye.” Hell-and-Fury wiped his finger along his tin plate, scooping up butter and oyster-juices. “Them two don’t like the work. Don’t take to it naturally.” He licked his finger and forc’d a smile as oil collected at the ends of his stubby mustache.
*1 Brothel house
*2 A job; a cheat, or a trick
2.
Bess stared at the morning’s broadside edition in bed. She’d spent the evening getting extraordinarily Soused with Jenny, making a number of proclamations as to Jack’s Foolishness and Anglo self-absorption, and then falling into a deep slumber on top of Jenny’s coverlets.
She’d woken at dawn and return’d to her rooms—Did not wash or dress. The narrowness of Jack’s perspective was alarming. How could she have been so wrong about him—how could she have given herself over. She’d held her mouth as open for him as she could—nuzzl’d every part of him—his armpits, his sprouting beard scruff, his—Something. She’d slept in his arms— But the worst was that she’d told him about the Fens. Conjured her long-lost home together. Described her parents, and had taught him her father’s words—the ones he’d taught her own mother. She’d let him make the Sounds of her home together with her.
And now he had that home—that lost part of her—inside him. And he was gone.
That was truly the very worst part.
She turn’d and vomit’d into her chamber pot. Shoved it away in frustration and misery. Vomit spilled on the floor. She did not wipe it up. She realized she was sobbing—trying to un-hear him saying her father’s words, her private words. Together they had revived her vanish’d family—made them breathe again in the present. Why had she given him this part of herself?
After some time, she reached back onto the bed for the broadside. Ripp’d out a page and scrubb’d at the soiled floor with it.
Something in the crumpled, stained paper caught her eye.
W A N T E D : women searchers in every
parish to inspect places known to be plaguey. These women are charged with determining, to the best of their ability, whether those dead have died of infection or other Causes. Places to be searched include all small merchant shops and quarantined deadships. Note: merchants contracting goods on deadships will be recompensed lost interest on the product by the London Mint. In order to receive Compensation, all merchandise must be properly insured in advance of the voyage. Accordingly, all merchants are requested to file for insurance of their goods with Edward Lloyd’s Underwriters, Ltd., located in Lombard Street under the Blue Plaque. For those traders engaging in the transportation of persons—whether African slaves or English felons and servants—Lloyd’s newly offers an insurance against death by plague at the rate of 10 guinea per head.
The stairs at Dennison’s rose at a steep savage pitch. Jenny’s rooms were above Bess’s, in the very back of the house, lodged high in the eaves. Bess knock’d hard. The door clang’d open and Jenny stood partway behind, her eyes Hollow with lack of sleep and red along the lower lids, the uppers bruis’d-looking and blue. Jenny appear’d more pale than usual, cloaked in a heavy satin robe that soaked up what dim Light there was in the hall.
A pick’d-over chicken carcass sat on the scratched side table, and the brocade cushions on Jenny’s daybed were strewn on the floor. She’d had a job. Bess could see just what sort it had been, too. Convivial. Long. They had eaten afterwards. Jenny hadn’t rushed to pick up after him.
Bess ran her hands through her hair in the manner of someone shaking out a cramp. “I need your sharping*1 arts.”
Jenny smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.” She exhaled. Bess felt it across her face. The bitter froth of semen recently swallowed, mix’d with the brine of roast chicken.
“You know I’m the best sharper,” Jenny drawled. “But you were too moon-eyed over little Jack Sheppard to notice.”
Confessions of the Fox Page 24
