So he took too much from her too quickly, gorged himself on the pain he had spared her, a mercy which she did not deserve. “Love me,” he urged, and shook her. But by now she could feel no more than he could, so he left her in the parking lot and went back home.
Tonight his wife was afraid of dying. She was not always so. Sometimes she approached death with a giddy sort of readiness that he found insubstantial, difficult to hold on to, and utterly unsatisfying, like spun sugar. At other times she seemed not to be aware at all that the end of her life was near.
But tonight she was profoundly frightened, and fear was among the sensations he savored most. He surrounded her with arms and legs, tongue and teeth, anxious for the fullness of her fear to descend upon them both, and when it would not come fast enough he found himself nibbling at her dry skin, licking every orifice for any available secretion. She’d been incontinent for years, and to allay any suspicions he had accepted the doctors’ prescriptions for catheters and adult diapers, but of course he would never apply such ugly contraptions to her flesh, insisting instead to clean her in his own way, and to keep her clean with his appetites, several times each day.
Tonight he lay in their marriage bed with her in his arms, waiting for her fear to ripen, and he reflected that, although it went without saying that he did not love her, he would indeed be sorry when she was gone.
Which was not to say that she was or ever had been enough for him. Nothing was ever enough, no one could keep him full. Strangers had provided him with some memorable experiences, however. Vivid enough that even in his long life they might make an impression he could dessert on. Just last week, was it, or last month:
“You don’t have to tell me you love me,” the man with the crooked teeth had assured him magnanimously.
“Maybe I will anyway,” he’d said with a borrowed feminine smile.
“You will,” the man had agreed, stroking his woman’s cheek, gliding a hand down under the lacy collar and pulling away the blouse, unhooking the satiny brassiere to expose his woman’s nipples.
He’d wrapped his female arms around the man, who had assumed, no doubt, that the scratches in his back were being made by long scarlet fingernails mining for passion when in fact the fingertips themselves were sharpening and lengthening as his famished body and soul realized the imminence of a meal. “Love me,” he’d begged the man in his breathy female voice, with his woman’s shortness of breath, and pushed himself into him until skin interpenetrated. Disoriented by his own paltry lust, the man had perhaps thought this some strange undergarment when actually it was a thin layer of his own skin peeling away. The man kissed, sucked, thrust, struggling to remove all real and imagined barriers between him and the object of his desire, all the while causing himself to bleed. Ultimately, it was pain which made the man’s erection rise, fear that thrust itself past his labia, lubricated by the man’s free-flowing blood as they writhed together. The man’s passionate desperation probed and scraped until tidal spasms of horror washed both their minds clean, so that they could feel nothing, for once again he had taken and used it all.
But he always came back to her, and she was always waiting for him, welcoming. Willing, eager, often frantic for him to siphon off the emotions that were too much for her and never enough for him.
“Hold me,” she pleaded now. Thinned and cracked with age, it was still the importuning and caressing voice that he had been hearing for what now seemed like such a long time but would reveal itself, once she had died, as only the most fleeting instant of his interminable existence. “Take it. Take the fear. Death is a natural part of life. Everybody dies. Everybody has always died. I don’t want to be afraid.”
Through her toothless kiss she spat in a hot stream into his throat the acrid roiling broth of her terror. Though she was more than willing, and he was expert, and their give-and-take had been the core of their marriage for more than eight decades, it took a deliciously long time for him to get it all. By the time they had both achieved a transitory calm, he was already not thinking much of her anymore but of his next foray.
Rather recently he’d discovered the accessible pleasures of hospital emergency rooms. Even the most commonplace passions were magnified within familes, and in an emergency room a family was opened and left bleeding, especially when one of its children was hurt or ill, dead or nearly so. He would go again tonight, when his wife was asleep. He could tell by the way she breathed against his shoulder that she was nearly asleep now, and his mouth began to water in anticipation of what this night was likely to bring.
“Noooo!” The mother wailed her denial. That sort of hysteria was filling, to be sure, but hard on the finer nerves if taken by mouth, so he’d developed a method of taking it in through the nostrils. He’d dallied pleasantly with images to describe the particular odor of frenzied despair: Vaguely, it smelled like a child’s soiled shirt, and also like the kind of sunlight that can be trapped only in a child’s hair.
He’d seen the teenage daughter, the older sister, hovering around the edges of the knot made by the rest of the family. She obviously wanted to be part of the high drama of grief, but—so typical of her age—could hot quite permit herself to join them. Her grief was tinged with embarrassment at her mother’s noise, with resentment over having lost the center of attention, with fear that her father might grieve himself insane.
Eventually the daughter detached herself from the palsied fist of pain which the other brother, sister, father, mother had become, and sought out a quiet dark corner. Where he waited, had been waiting for more than an hour.
“Everybody’s dying,” she said softly to the wall, as though she knew he was there. Her tongue played with sadness as though it were prey, a mouse that might escape the damp chamber of her mouth. Inhaling deeply, he immediately knew that her vagina was moist, and he stepped into her smell. He then allowed her to smell him. He heard her pulse quicken. He felt his spirit soar, then, and change.
Via his own and her desire and shadow and lament, he willed buttons and fasteners to fade, fabric and elastic to dissolve. As he pressed against her he momentarily permitted her to see him, encouraged her youthful fantasies and her senses engorged by shock to create the bare-skinned youth of him, the long and impossibly thick black hair that became a creature all its own, and the dark penis down there in the shadows, because she wanted only a glimpse.
At that moment she began to weep, not so much a child’s cry as the cry of a child departing, and the depth of it actually surprised him, made him gasp. He was quickly engulfed in this young woman’s exploding emotions, gliding into the turmoil of her, feeling himself alive in the orgiastic brevity of his taking, taking, until she was irrevocably emptied and he, however fleetingly, was filled.
When he returned to their marriage bed he found his wife still asleep. Comatose. Her withered face looked blank, stripped. Perhaps she was dead. He held his breath to listen for hers. He peered at her, laid his ear against her hollow chest. She was not dead.
He slid his arm from under her shoulders and crept out of their room, out of their house. He would leave her for a while, and then he would return to take whatever else she had for him in the last hours of her life.
This time in another emergency room he waited afterwards, and was gratified that he had thought to do so. Numbly, this other teenaged girl rejoined her family, her body spent, her eyes glazed. They would think perhaps that sorrow had overtaken her, and after a few hours there would be speculation that drugs were the cause, and the passions so exhibited would have been as nectar to him, and only after days or months had passed would they suspect that something was dangerously amiss. That she had given away her ability to feel.
The parents’ despair would then be doubled. They would brood over how they had considered the adolescent daughter selfish. They would berate themselves for not understanding how desperately attached she’d been to her little brother, how fervently attached she was to them. They would try their best to reach her, then, but she
would be beyond them.
At still another emergency room vigil it was the father he determined to stalk and court. The father welcomed him, grasped him in a savage embrace, wanted to kill him. The father’s rage was a sweet surprise that lasted well into the morning hours, and so he was late getting home.
This time his wife did not respond to him at all when, already wincing from the pangs which he had learned to term “hunger,” he presented himself at her bedside. Her eyes, nostrils, mouth gaped, but it was obvious that she neither saw, smelled, nor tasted him. Her fingers clawed, but she was not touching him.
He knew her, though. She was his mate, his wife, his companion for this stretch of his endless life. Since she’d been a headstrong beauty of fifteen, renowned for her intensity and reputed to be untamable, she had belonged to him. She had loved him beyond all others. She had given him everything she had, countless times, and replenished herself in order to give him more. She would not fail him now. He knew how to take what was his.
He pulled her to him. Her body and mind were flaccid, but she was not dead, for he could feel her heartbeat and her faint rattling breath. He kissed her, bit into her, but she gave him nothing.
He entered her. At the surface and for many layers under the surface there was nothing—no fear, no pain, no passion, no love for him.
Trembling with hunger and with the anticipation of an even greater hunger—starvation, famine—to come, he thrust deeper into her with nails and teeth and penis. So deep, distant and all but closed to him, was something. Joy, he thought. Profound peace. But he could not reach it.
She died in his arms. Reluctant to let her go, he lay there for a few minutes with the emptied body. “More,” he pleaded. He stroked the creviced face. “I am not finished with you. I have not had enough. I need more.” He lifted her in his arms and shook her. Her head lolled back across his forearm but her throat was motionless, did not pulse. Her lips hung slack but did not part for him. She had given him all she had, and it was not nearly sufficient.
Eventually he sighed and rose. Wearily he prepared himself to go out again, wondering whether he would find another mate as good for him as she had been. As he shut and locked the door of their home behind him, it came to him that he had loved her. He was shocked and—for a few, brief astonishing moments—full.
* * *
In This Soul of a Woman
by Charles de Lint
If I were a man, I can’t imagine it would have turned out this way. I will say no more except what I have in my mind and that is that you will find the spirit of Caesar in this soul of a woman.
—from the letters of Artemisia Gentileschi
(1593-c. 1652)
1
“Eddie wants to see you.”
“What’s he want?” Nita asked. “Another blowjob?”
“Probably. I think he’s tired of the new girl.”
“Well, fuck Eddie. And fuck you, too.”
“Christ, Nita. You on the rag or what? I’m just passing along a message.”
Nita didn’t turn to look at Jennifer. She stared instead at her reflection in the mirror, trying to find even one familiar feature under the makeup. Even her eyes were wrong, surrounded by a thick crust of black eye shadow, the irises hidden behind tinted red contacts. From beyond the dressing room came the thumping bass line of whatever David Lee Roth song Candy used in her act. That meant she had ten minutes before she was up again. Lilith, Mistress of the Night. Black leather and lace over Gothic-pale skin, the only spots of colour being the red of her eyes, her lips, and the lining of her cape. Nita’s gaze dropped from her reflection to the nine-foot-long whip that lay coiled like a snake on the table in front of her.
“Fuck this,” she said.
The dressing room smelled of cigarettes and beer and cheap perfume, which just about summed up her life. She swept her arm across the top of the table and sent everything flying. Whip and makeup containers. A glass, half-full of whiskey. Cigarettes, lighter, and the ashtray with butts spilling out of it. A small bottle filled with uppers. The crash of breaking glass was loud in the confined quarters of the dressing room.
Jennifer shook her head. “I’m not cleaning that shit up,” she said.
Nita looked up from the mess she’d made. The rush of utter freedom she’d felt clearing the tabletop had vanished almost as quickly as it had come.
“So who asked you to?” she asked.
Jennifer pulled a chair over from one of the other tables and sat down beside her. “You want to talk about it?”
Nita bit back a sharp retort. Jennifer wasn’t her friend—she didn’t have any friends—but unlike 99.9 percent of the world, Jennifer had always treated her decently. Nita looked away, wishing she hadn’t sent her shot of whiskey flying off the table with everything else.
“Last time I was up, my ex’s old man was in the audience,” she said.
“So?”
“So the only way I could keep my visitation rights with Amanda was by promising I’d get a straight job.”
Jennifer nodded, understanding. “The old bad influence line.”
“Like she’s old enough to know or even care what her old lady does for a living.” Nita was really missing that drink now. “It’s so fucking unfair. I mean, it’s okay for this freak to come into a strip joint with his buddies and have himself a good time, but my working here’s the bad influence. Like we even want to be here.”
“I don’t mind that much,” Jennifer said. “It beats hooking.”
“You know what I mean. He’s going to run straight to a judge and have them pull my visiting rights.”
“That sucks,” Jennifer agreed. She leaned forward and gave Nita a quick hug. “But you gotta hang in there, Nita. At least we’ve got jobs.”
“I know.”
“And you’d better go see Eddie or maybe you won’t even have that.”
Nita shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t even go out on the stage again tonight.”
“But…” Jennifer began, then she sighed. “Never mind. We’ll figure out a way to cover for you.”
“And Eddie?”
Jennifer stood up and tugged down on the hem of her miniskirt. “That’s one you’re going to owe me, girl.”
2
When Nita stepped out the back door of Chic Cheeks in her street clothes, all that remained of her stage persona was the shock of jet black hair that fell halfway down her back in a cascade of natural curls. She was wearing faded blue jeans that were tucked into cowboy boots. The jeans had a hole in the left knee through which showed the black fabric of her body stocking. On top of it was a checked flannel shirt, buttoned halfway up, the tails hanging loose. Her purse was a small khaki knapsack that she’d picked up at the Army Surplus over on Yoors Street. Her stage makeup was washed off except for a hint of eyeshadow and a dab of lipstick.
She knew she looked about as different from Lilith in her leathers and lace as could be imagined, so Nita was surprised to be recognized when she stepped out into the alleyway behind the club.
“Lilith?”
Nita paused to light a cigarette, studying the woman through a wreath of blue-grey smoke. The stranger was dressed the way Nita knew the club’s customers imagined the dancers dressed offstage: short, spike-heeled boots; black stockings and miniskirt; a jean vest open enough to show more than a hint of a black lace bra. She wore less makeup than Nita had on at the moment, but then her fine-boned features didn’t need it. Her hair was so blond it was almost white. It was cut punky and seemed to glow in the light cast from a nearby streetlamp.
“Who wants to know?” Nita finally asked.
“Does it matter?”
Nita shrugged and took another drag from her cigarette.
“I saw you dancing,” the woman went on. “You’re really something.”
Now she got it. “Look,” Nita said. “I don’t date customers and—no offense—but I don’t swing your way. You should go back inside and ask for Candy. She’s always looki
ng to make a little something on the side and I don’t think she much cares what you’ve got between your legs, just so long as you can pay.”
“I’m not looking for a hooker.”
“So what are you looking for?”
“Someone to talk to. I recognized a kindred soul in you.”
The way she said it made Nita sigh. She’d heard this about a hundred times before.
“Everybody thinks we’re dancing just for them,” she said, “but you know, we’re not even thinking about you sitting out there. We’re just trying to get through the night.”
“So you don’t feel a thing?”
“Okay, so maybe I get a little buzz from the attention, but it doesn’t mean I want to fuck you.”
“I told you. That’s not what I’m looking for.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Nita ground her cigarette out under the heel of her boot. “You just want to talk. Well, you picked the wrong person. I’m not having a good night and, to tell you the truth, I’m not all that interesting anyway. All the guys figure women with my job are going to be special—you know, real exotic or something—but as soon as you go out on a date with somebody they figure out pretty quick that we’re just as boring and fucked up as anybody else.”
“But when you’re on the stage,” the woman said. “It’s different then, isn’t it? You feed on what they give you.”
Nita gave her an odd look. “What’re you getting at?”
“Why don’t we go for a drink somewhere and talk about it?” the woman said. She looked around the alleyway. “There’s got to be better places than this to have a conversation.”
Nita hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do. Where did you have in mind?”
“Why don’t we simply walk until we happen upon a place that appeals to us?”
Nita lit another cigarette before she fell in step with the woman.
Love in Vein Page 23
