The Girl who Couldn't Come

by Comeau, Joey

  She’ll just say, “Thank you, no, I’m a lesbian. You shouldn’t be here. This makes no sense. I’m long dead.”

  The note was a better idea, I think. It’s taped to her jacket sleeve, a small green envelope with “Pat” written on the front. Inside there’s nothing. What do you say? I wanted to just write “1995” on a slip of paper. I wanted to write a passage from The Talented Mr. Ripley. I wanted to write, “I’m not so ugly. What does it matter? It’s just one night. Take me home.” I’m sleeping in a park nearby. I’ve got no money here.

  She’s talking with a customer, smiling, and I’m thinking I should walk over and ask, “Haven’t you ever wondered about the construction of a moral universe within the novel?” I’m thinking I could put my hand on her neck all easy, and say, “I’m at least as well-endowed as any woman. Give it a chance.”

  I thought being this close would let me see into her head a little better. It’s worse, really. The zits have sort of driven home that she’s a real person, more complex than the little snatches of interviews could possibly show. Before, I could believe I knew her, that I could see the passions that drove her characters, the fears that twisted the plots of her novels, but now I can see that’s bullshit. It’s written all over that side of her forehead.

  There’s a picture on the wall in my kitchen of Pat standing in a doorway, shadowed and naked, her skin perfect. My friends never want to have dinner over, it’s always, “Let’s eat out,” or “Come over for pizza,” and it’s because I stare. What an amazing picture. I should have tried to find out what day that was taken. I should have shown up then.

  The customer is still talking. He’s ugly, balding, and I swear to god if he touches her elbow once more I am going over there. She’s smiling even though I know that inside she’s hating him, wishing he would go away, imagining some death for him, some completely justifiable murder. Does he show up in a novel? I try to remember.

  Her hair looks nice. Maybe I should wait a few days to approach her, until the pimples have cleared up. It will distract me in bed. The customer looks over, meets my eyes. One of his ears is higher than the other, just a bit.

  “Excuse me,” he says, loud enough for everyone in the department to hear. “Is there something I can help you with?” Now I can see that he’s got a name tag on, too. How long have I been standing here watching? Has it been twenty minutes? An hour? Both of them are looking at me, expectantly. “Are you waiting to be served?” he says, and I nod, looking at her.

  She walks so strangely. I’ve never seen her move, her back up, her eyes on mine. Shit. Shit. Her name tag says, “Patricia,” and I want to reach out and wet my fingers in her eyes. It doesn’t feel right. She’s looking through me. I turn and start walking away. In my head I beg her not to say anything. I don’t want to hear her voice yet.

  On the bench outside I think, will I end up in her journals? If we go to bed, will she write me down in cruel honest description? In fifty years, will I be mentioned in a biography? Will I be a brief detour on the road trip they paint of her psychosexual development as an artist, or a fork in the road? Will she come? Will she want me to want her to come, or will she want me to play indifference? Will she want me to come?

  I find her later in the bar, drunk with her arm around a nervous looking girl from the university. The top button on her blouse is undone. I sit a few feet from them and I watch as the girl pulls free, as she looks around for her friends and takes off, drink in hand. Pat watches her walk away, bored.

  I take a deep breath. I stand.

  In bed she tells a dirty joke. She forgets my name. She touches me and laughs about my ridiculousness. I tell her, “I’ve always loved your novels,” and she laughs harder. In the end she comes, and doesn’t care if I do or not. I ask, if she wants me to come and she points off to the bathroom and says it’s none of her business what I do out of her bed. She says to clean up afterwards.

  I want to lay down and cuddle, but she’s having none of it. She’s pouring herself a drink and looking at me differently. I have no idea what she’s thinking. I say, “The individual has manifold shadows, all of which resemble him, and from time to time have equal claim to be the man himself,” and she just sits there drinking. Have I got my dates wrong? Maybe she doesn’t start reading Kierkegaard until ‘48 or ‘49. I start thinking that I should go, but this isn’t right. I haven’t come and I want to, I think it’s important to come.

  “Haven’t you got somewhere to be?” she says, sounding annoyed. I want to say something perfect, something that cuts to the root of who she is, but also makes her want to make love with me again. I’m stammering in the doorway, foolish in my underwear.

  “I... I like your cat,” I tell her, and we’re both dead quiet for almost a minute.

  And then she smiles.

  checkmate

  It’s only the second floor. With the right shoes, it wouldn’t hurt to fall from that height. Cassie crawls out the window and along the ledge to the computer room. It isn’t a very wide ledge, so she moves slowly. And when she gets close, she moves even slower.

  She can see Carl’s shoulders inside and she slows down because she doesn’t want him to hear her. Carl moved his computer near the window a week ago, to hide whatever he was doing. Cassie figures porn.

  She’s got nothing against him watching porn and hiding it. She likes the idea. Everybody should have their secrets. She also likes the idea of sneaking out the window and watching him. She’s going to masturbate on this ledge, watching Carl like a peeping tom.

  But, inside, Carl isn’t watching porn. He’s playing online chess. Instead of nude bodies twisted under harsh lighting, the screen is a grid of black and white pieces and a square of text where he’s chatting with his opponent.

  Cassie’s come all this way, though, and she can still pretend. She half-closes her eyes, so that the details fade out. She pictures pornography on the screen. She slides her hand down into the front of her pajamas, pushing under the elastic waistband of her panties. One of her legs sticks out over the edge.

  In her head it’s lesbian porn, the kind directed by men so that the girls are stuffed full of big fat dildos and they keep yelling things like, “I’m sorry I got an F, Daddy,” even though there are no men in sight. So, when Carl reaches forward to type again and she sees his cock, it takes a moment for Cassie to realize that she hasn’t imagined it.

  He types something quickly and then puts his hand down onto his lap again. The angle is shit, but she catches another glimpse of his penis sticking up. His pants are open at the fly, but not pulled down. He has his fist wrapped around the shaft. There’s no porn on the monitor, just the chat box. Cassie presses closer to the window, so she can read what’s on the screen. His opponent is named “Checkmate_girl16” and Carl’s online name is DOMINATOR.

  Checkmate_girl16: They’re pink. I borrowed them from my friend. Mine were ripped.

  DOMINATOR: you rip them? you fall?

  Checkmate_girl16: I don’t remember. I get too drunk on beer. I can’t keep track of what happened. Someone else ripped them.

  Checkmate_girl16: That was a stupid move. I should have moved my bishop. Can I take that back?

  DOMINATOR: maybe your boyfriend rip them? he rip them off and fuck you hard.

  Carl’s talking to a sixteen year old girl. Pervert! Cassie has a stupid grin on her face. DOMINATOR? She had no idea at all that he was into this. Was this what he thought about when they fucked? She moves her fingertips slowly underneath her, the back of her wrist presses into the ledge as she watches Carl and starts to grind against her own hand.

  She imagines Carl in one of those leather masks with a zipper on the mouth. Those are terrifying and silly at the same time. Imagining the mask on Carl startles her, though. She lets out a little gasp and pushes her fingers harder into herself. She slides them inside, then pulls them out, pressing them, wet, against her asshole before sliding them back into her cunt.

  She watches as Carl leans forward to type agai
n. It’s a long message, and Cassie imagines what he’s typing, the filthy things he’s promising to do to Checkmate_girl16. One of her fingers stays in her ass, now, almost to the first knuckle, pulling against the side, while her thumb strokes and touches the spot just above where her vagina opens for her other fingers. Her whole hand is moving. When Carl sits back from the keyboard, there is a new message on the screen. Cassie strains her neck to see. She wants to see the words, “Brutal,” and, “Rough,” and, “Fuck.”

  Checkmate_girl16: My boyfriend would be too shy to do that, I think. He’s only seventeen. I don’t remember who did it to me. Sometimes when I am drinking I end up in the country bar downtown, where they don’t ID me. I let men buy me drinks and take me in the bathroom. I love to feel them inside me.

  Carl isn’t DOMINATOR at all. Cassie’s hand starts moving again beneath her and, as she watches, another message appears on the screen, this one from Carl’s opponent.

  DOMINATOR: You are slut! Do you love to have cock in you? WHAT DO YOU DO FOR ME?

  Carl leans forward to respond.

  Checkmate_girl16: I don’t know. What would you do to ME if I was too drunk? Would you share me?

  She wants to reach out her hand and tap on the window, right then, but she crawls backward to their bedroom window instead. Is this what he does while she’s at work?

  The next day, Cassie buys a bottle of wine on the way home from work. She stops at a small store with a display wall covered in dildos. She picks one, veined with thick ridges. Modeled after a real cock, but not too large. The clerk helps her pick out a harness, explains how it fits.

  At home, Carl cooks dinner, and they eat and drink in silence. He has a second glass, and without asking Cassie pours him a third. After dinner, she leans down close and she puts her hand on his leg.

  “I want to fuck you,” she says. She kisses him roughly and pulls him into the bedroom, leaving the dishes on the table. Cassie pulls a pair of handcuffs out from under the pillow, and handcuffs Carl to the foot of the bed. She ties a blindfold around his eyes.

  She kisses the very back of his neck, and then pushes his face into the blankets. Then she pulls out the new dildo from under the bed. She warms it up in her hands while Carl sits there, waiting, hard.

  “Okay, he’s ready,” Cassie yells, like she’s yelling to someone in the hall. She gets up quietly and pulls the door open fast. Carl looks over at the door, still blindfolded, confused. Cassie sneaks back to where she was sitting beside the bed, and continues to talk as though someone is there. “You can be rough if you want,” Cassie says. “Just wear a condom.” She pulls his pants down and begins to finger lube into his ass. She slaps him, and then again.

  “Cassie?” Carl says, quietly. She doesn’t answer. She slides her finger into him a little deeper, and he lets out a low moan. She has the dildo in her harness now and she rolls a condom down over the length. When she grabs his hips, she grabs them hard, so he doesn’t recognize her touch. She puts the tip of her cock against his ass. Carl bites his lip as a stranger presses against him from behind.

  She goes slowly and they still have to stop a few times for more lube. Cassie is still playing the part, slapping him hard, pretending to be a man, using Carl like a common whore. He writhes underneath her, and he yanks at the handcuffs and when they are done he says, really quietly, “Oh, Cassie, this was nice.”

  this is math

  The man sits on Rose’s couch too easily. He’s used to making strange living rooms his home. She clears her throat and turns to the door.

  “In here,” she says.

  She’s not going to be intimidated by his notepad filled with numbers. There’s nothing to numbers, no substance. It’s all one through ten. She can count and she knows better than to be scared of some man who counts for a living.

  He gets up and joins her at the table.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” he tells her. “We’ll just go over your expenses. Do you have your receipts?” He has a degree in accounting, she guesses, which he probably thinks is math. It isn’t. The word counting is right there, inside it. They all think that counting is math.

  Rose never got higher than a C- in high school math and that was good enough for the school boards and good enough for her. It wasn’t math, either. He probably got an A. The first time she ever saw math, real math, was in that used bookstore, when she opened an old book and let her breath catch inside of her. The symbols were a maze on the page, an incantation. It was a coded message that sent electricity through her whole body and she put her own meaning into it, right there.

  She stands up and motions for him to do the same.

  “They’re in my closet.” she says and she meets his eyes in a way she knows looks good. In the closet, she pulls out the box of receipts, which is right on top. Then she pulls out the dirty magazines, one by one, setting them beside the door of the closet. He eyes them, but doesn’t say anything. She moves slower, making her gestures more pronounced, exaggerated, like the plot points in a dirty movie. When she reaches the math book, the book of exercises, her fingers brush against the embossed cover. She turns and makes a pout and in a small voice, she says, “Do you know much about math?”

  He smiles.

  “I did my graduate studies in number theory,” he says. It’s unexpected, and there’s suddenly a cold spot in her stomach, but she makes herself smile. “I like to think I’m pretty good.” he says.

  Rose pulls the book out, where he can see it.

  “Then maybe you can help me,” she says. She opens the book to the middle, and takes a marker from her pocket. She passes it to him, letting her fingers linger on his, and then pulls her hand away.

  She rolls up her sleeve and there is an equation written there, in black. It’s a series of symbols and numbers. There are Roman and Greek letters, all together, strung along a line that begins on the inside of her elbow. It is from a random page in the book. She has no idea what it means.

  “That’s not quite what I studied,” he says, and she knows that this is the smile that he considers his charming smile. This is the one he pulls out in bars, or when he’s being introduced to women he knows are single. She smiles back and touches the top button of her blouse with her other hand.

  “If you can solve this one, there are more.” she says and he looks again at the equation. He looks at it more seriously this time, taking her hand to hold the arm steady. She knows the answer, symbol for symbol, but has no idea what it means. She knows what it means to her. It’s the first in a series of locks, lines of defense.

  This is how it works. He’ll struggle with the first question, but solve it. He’ll solve the second and third, too. But they never make it past the fourth, and she sleeps with them anyway, because she feels bad. Because she’s worried that nobody can make it past the fourth, or the fifth.

  He reaches out for the book, but she shakes her head no and holds it closer to herself. He has a tight grin on his face.

  “It’s been a while,” he says and she nods. There are symbols there that she’d never even seen in high school math and the farther beneath her clothes he gets, the less like counting the math would become. Eventually it would be nothing but magic to him and he would give up.

  Only, he doesn’t give up. He solves the first equation, writing the answer onto her palm, the soft tip of the marker moving with fast confidence. She pulls up the other sleeve, and he does it again, faster this time. He’s smiling now and she undoes the front of her blouse.

  “I hope you don’t think this is going to make me any easier on your taxes,” he laughs.

  There are five equations on her chest, all drawn carefully with the black marker. She doesn’t even have to look down to know that he’s writing out the answers properly, symbol for symbol, perfect. His handwriting is like hers and he draws the symbols with the same care.

  When he’s done, he looks up from where he is knelt before her belly, and she nods. He undoes the first button of her jeans and begins to pull t
he zipper down.

  “Give me the marker,” she says. With both hands free, he pulls her pants to the ground and her legs are naked and unmarked. He reaches for the waistband of her panties, but Rose shakes her head.

  She takes the cap off the marker and she begins to draw symbols on her legs, down one and up the other. This isn’t an equation from the book, but one that just pours out of her. She’s drawing from instinct, from her heart, and when she’s done she passes the marker to the man. If he can’t solve this one, there won’t be any pity sex. She won’t send him home with a consolation prize. This isn’t counting anymore and he can’t just turn to his calculator for the answer. This is math.

  the green belt

  I’m wearing the green belt because he can undo it with one hand. I’m wearing my black jeans because I can climb fences in them. Maybe I already did. I don’t remember. I have a cut running from my wrist up around the outside of my arm to the elbow. It isn’t deep, but there’s dirt in it. It stings. It looks like a streak of black marker, precise.