“Now that’s really morbid. Even by your standards.”
“Ha! Well, I didn’t mean it literally. You know what I mean.”
“Let’s find out if I do.”
We made love for a while. I didn’t feel I was fucking a dead girl, yet there was a sense—a sense I would never acknowledge to her—of Rachel as being somehow far away from me, unknowable, some essential part of her closed even as we went at it as athletically as ever. And when we were finished, when she rolled to her side and vanished into a deep slumber, yes, there was a moment, looking at her little naked form curled up atop the sheets, that it seemed as if I were looking not at a live young woman but at a frail shade, someone with one foot here and one already poised to step into another world, a spirit world, a world of distant ghosts, her true home.
# # #
Something began to happen between us.
“Hit me,” she said one night in bed.
“What?”
“Hit me. When we’re fucking. I want to know what it feels like.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. Just hit me. Slap me in the face. Slap me in the face right when I’m coming. And turn the camera on. So I can watch later.”
“Why? I’m not going to do that.”
“I want you to.”
“No.”
“I just want to know what it feels like.”
“No.”
“Benja-me-me...”
“No.”
“Shit,” she said, turning away from me. “You’re no fun.”
# # #
Such moments—there were more than one—passed quickly. For the most part, Rachel continued to be the delightful companion she’d been since our relationship had begun; I’ve rarely laughed as much with anyone, thought admittedly some of it was gallows humor. She would read book after book about the Holocaust, sharing aloud particularly gruesome facts and stories, sometimes giggling as she read. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, particularly when she managed to get me giggling, too. I was aware that there was nothing funny about it, yet that, perhaps, was what made us laugh: our own reality was so inescapably different, so romantic, sexual, alive, that reading about such ghastly things seemed comical in comparison. We weren’t laughing at the victims, we were laughing at our own good fortune, the miraculous fate that put us here, where we were, when there were so many other times and places we might have been.
My school load was light during the summer, so we took quick trips here and there. Once we drove down to L.A.—Rachel finally made it—to see the punk band X playing at the Whiskey a-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip. Rachel had insisted that I listen to their records with her, and I had to admit the intensity, even the brilliance of what I heard. Songs like “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline” were revelations to me, musically and lyrically. I felt I finally understood what Rachel had been trying to do with the late, lamented Motherfuckers.
I understood better still during the show, when she and I were packed in with several hundred punks with black leather, green hair and Mohawks, all of them screaming the lyrics back at the band during every song, jumping onto the stage and then sky-surfing back off again into the raised hands of the audience. It was loud, rude, sweaty, raucous. I’d been to concerts over the years, Fleetwood Mac (Sherry’s favorite) and Pink Floyd, but nothing had prepared me for the raw quality of a punk show. It struck me that nowhere did I smell pot smoke—an unimaginable thing at most rock concerts. I pointed this out to Rachel.
“That’s because they’re all on speed!” she shouted in my ear, helpfully.
“Are you?” I shouted back.
“Shit no! I’m on acid!” And with that she marched to the front, near the bass player, and jumped up onto the stage, gave everyone a quick wave, and dived—literally dived, like a swimmer—into the crowd. I was terrified she’d be trampled, but all these rowdy drugged-out people caught her and placed her gently down.
“That was fun!” she shouted. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because I’m not on acid!” I shouted back. “And I’m not on speed!”
“You’re no fun, Benja-me-me!” she yelled, laughing.
But that was the only time we attended such an event. Mostly we were busy at home: as our rent ran out we had to search for another apartment, which we eventually found on East Sola Street, which at that time represented the closest thing Santa Barbara had to a “bad part of town.” It wasn’t bad, actually, but it was old and run-down, and our tiny apartment—one bedroom this time—had more than one cockroach flitting about when the lights were off. The stove and oven appeared to be from the 1950s. The carpet had old cigarette burns. But it was cheap, and our neighbors weren’t bums, simply low-end working people: fast-food employees, guys who worked at car washes or did day labor. Some college students, too. I missed our original apartment badly—it was palatial by the standards of our new one—yet we were at the age that such a diminution in living standards could be treated as a joke.
In truth, we had fun there. Rachel especially liked the lax rules on noise, which allowed her to blast the Ramones and the Clash and the Sex Pistols at whatever volume she wanted. (Luckily she needed quiet in order to write and have sex, as did I.) Neighbors would come by and stay for hours, drinking our beer or bringing their own. None of these people meant anything to either of us; it was just that kind of place, that’s all. A hangout. We went to their apartments just as casually to drink or smoke weed, listen to records, watch TV. (I discovered in this period that watching That’s Incredible! while high was an experience not to be missed.)
But amidst these drug-fueled and salacious adventures we worked too, especially late at night, after we’d had sex and after the various neighbors’ parties had quieted. At two or three in the morning we’d be scribbling away by the light of our two little lamps, munching crackers or potato chips and sharing a can of Orange Crush or Mountain Dew.
I’d read enough old novels to know that I was slowly drifting into what would once have been called a “dissolute” life. I was clearly drinking too much, smoking too much pot. But I was having too much fun to worry about it.
“Do you think,” she asked one night, mock-serious, “that we’ll look back on this years from now and think these were the best years of our lives?”
“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “I hope not. It’s great, but I hope it’s not all downhill from here.”
“Do you see a future?”
“A future?”
“Yeah. For us.”
“Well...everybody has a future.”
“Except dead people.”
“Well, except dead people.”
8
Something began to happen between us.
“Rachel?”
“Mm.”
“Are you okay?”
“Mm.”
“Are you? Rachel?”
“...I’m okay. Let me sleep.”
“You don’t look very good. Did you take something?”
“...Always take something.”
“C’mon. Get up.”
“Uh-uh. Leave me alone.”
“Open your eyes.”
“Leave me alone. I’m okay...just some pills.”
“What kind of pills?”
“Sleeping pills. The ones in the medicine cabinet.”
“We have sleeping pills?”
“...Peter’s.”
“How many did you take?”
“I dunno...Not many.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Don’t want to...sleepy.”
“Rachel, you look sick. You’re too pale.”
“Shut up. Lemme sleep.”
“If you can’t get up I’m going to call 911.”
“Lemme sleep.”
“Come on. It’s up or the paramedics are coming. Your choice.”
“Fuck off.”
“Okay. I’m going to call now.”
“Wait. I’ll get up. Jesus. I just want to fucking sleep.”
“I’ll help you.”
“’S okay.”
“There. You’re sitting up. Can you stand?”
“Don’t want to.”
“Can you? Can you get to the bathroom?”
“Mm.”
“Hold your head up. Come on.”
“Bastard. I just wanna sleep.”
“Up. Come on. Good. Hey, you opened your eyes. Good job.”
“I’m okay, Benja-me-me...me-me...me-me-me.”
“Come on. Time to take a cold shower. Drink some water. Wake up.”
“I’m awake, I’m awake. Why do you want me awake? Middle of the night...”
“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“...Early.”
“You had the breakfast shift today. You were supposed to be in at seven.”
“Really?”
“I covered for you. I left you alone this morning and went in. I just thought you were sleepy.”
“I am.”
“Shit, Rachel. Sleeping pills? How long has this been going on?”
“Not long. I need ’em to sleep. Too much speed.”
“Stop taking speed and you won’t need sleeping pills.”
“Smart ass.”
“And since when have you been taking so much speed? I thought you just took it now and then...”
“I’m up. I’m up, okay?”
“Okay.”
# # #
She started missing work more often. Sometimes I could cover for her, but since we frequently had the same schedule, I couldn’t always. She slept a lot, did a lot of drugs—some I knew about (pot, speed, LSD), some I no doubt didn’t. At times I would come home to find her in rather mysterious conversations on the phone with people I didn’t seem to quite know, though at least twice that I recall she was talking to Peter and crying.
I could see she was falling apart, but didn’t have any idea how to deal with it. She would rally; she still had many good days, when she was bright and focused, when she would go to work on time and do well, when she was ready for writing and love at the end of the day.
“You really need to send out your poems,” I said, trying to encourage her. “I’m going to do it, if you don’t. I’ll type up some of your best ones and send them to a good literary journal. See if I don’t.”
“Ha! You don’t have the balls.”
“My balls have slapped against your privates often enough that you should know I do.”
“You have a point. I dunno. They’re not ready. They’re not as good as you think they are.”
“They’re good.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll get around to it someday. And if they take one we’re going to have a party like you’ve never seen.”
“Well...maybe you need to slow down on the partying, Rachel.”
“Oh, don’t be a poopy drawers.”
“I’m not. It’s just...”
“Jesus Christ, Benja-me-me, I come from the High Plains of fucking North Dakota. I lived there! For eighteen years! I feel like—like I have to make up for lost time, you know? Like it’s time to live.”
“That’s what I want, too. For you to live.”
“Shit. Stop worrying. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Have you noticed the rings under your eyes?”
“So I’m a raccoon. What of it?”
“Rachel...”
“I just need more sleep, that’s all. Really. That’s all it is. Sleep.”
# # #
Once I dreamed we were having sex when she became nauseous and threw up on both of us. I woke to find vomit all over the bed and Rachel next to me, unconscious.
# # #
“I never knew.”
“What?”
“What you told the doctor. That you once tried to kill yourself.”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t do a very good job. That was back in Fargo. Feels like a million years ago.” She held up her left wrist. “You can hardly make them out now, but there are two little white scars—see?”
“Yes. You’re right, they’re almost invisible. I never noticed them.”
“I didn’t slice deep enough.”
“Jesus, Rachel.”
“Hey,” she smiled, “that’s all in the past. Now shut up and fuck me.”
9
“The Burning Girl”
by Benjamin Fall
When she came, he no longer remembered. It seemed they had been together every day and night of their lives, since time itself began; but dimly, softly in the distant chambers of his mind he recalled growing up: boyhood, school: softly, dimly. None of it made any difference now. Not since she’d come.
She: in bed now, lips twitching in shallow sleep. Her face sweat-slick, hair greasy and splayed across the pillow like strands of rotting rope. She was naked, with only a damp sheet partly covering her; but no one, walking into the room now, would particularly notice her nudity.
Instead they would see her scars. Up and down her cheeks in vertical lines, across her neck in black blotches, down her shoulders and breasts and arms and hands in angry blue and black flame-patterns—scars were everywhere on her body, some old and time-hardened, others fresh and raw and still oozing sticky translucent liquid.
She was waking now, kicking at the sheets and moaning. He watched her eyelids flutter. He knew better than to try to apply ointments or damp cloths to her body; they only, she said, made it worse. Instead he simply waited as the fluttering became more rapid, then slowed. At last her eyes opened.
“I’m so hot,” she whispered.
It was what she always said. The room was cool.
He held a glass of water to her cracked lips. She swallowed. An odd, unpleasant odor emanated from her, part perspiration, part urine, part...what?
Burning flesh, he knew. That was it. It was impossible, but she smelled as if her flesh were burning at this moment, in front of him. He had been aware of it before but it had never been as strong as this and he had never been able to identify it. Now he could. He looked at her.
“Better?” he asked, placing the water glass on the table beside them.
“A little.” She sat up, grunting painfully. “Could you turn on the air conditioner?”
“It’s already on. And the fan.”
“Oh.” She scowled. “Okay.”
She’d had scars, of course, when he first met her—whenever that had been. He’d noticed them first on her hands, thin gray pencil lines which snaked around her palms and fingers. There were lines on her face, too—so pale as to be hardly noticeable. The first time they’d gone to bed together he’d seen the other scars too. But they were light as well, nothing like they were now. She’d been self-conscious about them: “Do I look too awful?” she’d asked. Of course he’d said she was beautiful. And she was, in a strange way. Like, he thought, a Greek statue, broken, in ruins, yet hauntingly graceful and true.
“Robert?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
For a long moment he said nothing.
“Do you?” she said.
“I love you.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it, Robin.”
Robert and Robin: too cute for words.
“Are they worse today?” she asked.
He looked at her shoulders and breasts. “It’s hard to tell.”
But they were worse every day. They both knew that. What was different now was the smell, the terrible, acrid smell of burning which filled the room.
“I’m so hot,” she said.
He picked up an old newspaper from the floor and fanned her gently with it.
“Will you go out today?” she asked.
“I have to. There’s no food.”
She looked at him. “Please don’t be gone long.”
# # #
Being out in the world, among people, was unreal now. It was if they—all those anonymous others—were automatons, or rather holograms: illusions. He felt a
s if they were all underwater, as if the world itself were, and he somehow glided through it untouched, unaffected. He bought oranges, apples, bread, different types of drinks. The paper sack felt strange in his hands, like putty or clay, as he carried it back to the apartment. When he arrived he found her asleep again, grinding her teeth, head moving slowly back and forth, hands clenched into fists, balling up the sheets and pulling at them.
# # #
“Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Are they worse today?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
“Be honest.”
“It’s hard to tell.”
He listened to the air conditioner humming, felt the gentle swooping wind of the overhead fan on his face.
“I’m so hot,” she said.
# # #
It had started not long after she’d moved in—whenever that was. He’d taken the scarred girl in and they lived as a normal couple for a time. They made love, ordered Chinese takeout, went to movies. When he went to work in the morning she would stay home and sometimes, on her good days, she made a meal for them in the evening. (She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could throw together simple ingredients well enough.) He never asked her about the scars, assuming she would tell him when she was ready. But she was never ready.
She did say other things. She told him about growing up in the High Plains, about losing her parents, about her dead sister, about the relatives she lived with throughout her adolescence; and about kicking across the country alone, aimlessly, imagining that someday she would arrive in Hollywood and “be discovered.”
“But nobody discovered me, Robert,” she’d said once, wanly, “until you did.”
It had taken some time for him to realize that her scars were gradually becoming worse.
There was no explanation for it. She’d gone to doctors—or she said that she had—who looked at her quizzically and gave her some basic medicines for burns. And she did have a few old prescription bottles in the bathroom, half-filled with pills she never took. Not long after they’d moved in together she’d begun to have long weeping bouts, awful long howlings. He would hold her, comfort her, quiet her. But they always came back. She seemed to him to be in some kind of pain he could never understand, never even theoretically comprehend: such hurt, such loss, such breakage.
Lullaby for the Rain Girl Page 22
