The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

  Then there was a man named Jim, small, in his forties, with yellowish skin, a handsome jawline, a cleft chin, and rotten teeth. He wore a felt fedora and an old tweed coat. He didn’t drink the wine. ‘I’m sick,’ he explained to me in a breathy voice. ‘So you and me will be sober, okay, and we can watch all the rest of them fall apart.’ Jim was curious about me. ‘So … where do you go to school?’ I explained that I had dropped out, left home; I was on my own now. ‘Very cool,’ he said. ‘Very unusual. You didn’t run away. You left. I like the way you put that.’ His watery, green eyes were constantly focused on another part of the room as he spoke to me, which made him seem blind, though I was pretty sure he wasn’t. I asked him what his sickness was. He said he had diabetes. He’d already had to have a toe amputated. He removed his shoe, then his sock, and showed me a pale foot with a gap where the little toe was meant to be. ‘And there are other … side effects I won’t go into, which render me harmless,’ he said, his lips turned up in a rueful smile. He was weird, but I liked him.

  As the evening progressed, the heat from the radiators became so intense that people started taking off their cardigans, socks, stockings. Jim shed his coat and hat. His hair was very black. At one point, he leaned against the wall and left a smudge on it from the back of his head. The other guests were friends of Trish’s: a drab, sad-looking couple of women who lived in New Jersey, and an acne-ridden man named Eric, who made flamboyant gestures, got very drunk, and had to lie down in the office. I hoped he wouldn’t throw up in there. After the Boston cream pie, Kat shot up out of her seat. She was wearing a red, sleeveless dress that clung to her slender frame. ‘I say we go out on the town,’ she said, waving her long arms in the air like windmills, her cheeks flushed from the wine.

  She turned to Shelly. ‘You’d know where to go,’ she said, jutting one hip out.

  ‘I’m based in San Francisco now,’ said Shelly. ‘What do I know?’

  ‘The city hasn’t changed that much,’ said Kat.

  ‘What kind of an evening do you have in mind?’

  ‘Insane,’ Kat answered, winking at Aunt Trish.

  Trish shook her head, smiling. She had work the next day; she wasn’t going anyplace. She wanted to keep me home, too, but Kat insisted that I come along, with Jim as a chaperone.

  ‘It’s always handy to have a eunuch around,’ said Jim as he hung Trish’s parka over my bare shoulders.

  I was happy to be going out for once, but I felt bad for Aunt Trish. She seemed so nervous. But she couldn’t say no to Kat, not about anything. So we all tromped down the freezing street with our arms up, trying to flag down a cab. At last, two of them stopped for us and we divided ourselves up. The dreary women from New Jersey decided to get back on the PATH train, and the flamboyant man weaved his way uptown on foot. So I got into one cab with Jim, Kat, and Shelly. Shelly sat in the front. As we bounced downtown on no suspension, the chassis slamming the pavement with every pothole, Kat kept bursting into dance songs, punching her arms in the air like a boxer. Jim called out a few points of interest to me as we passed them: Fifth Avenue, the Flatiron Building, Union Square. We stopped on West Fourteenth Street, near the river. The street was deserted. The worn cobblestones shone with the light from a lone streetlamp. There was no sign of a club of any kind.

  As if remembering something, Shelly turned to look at me, then started rummaging through her purse and took out a lipstick. ‘We’ll have to age her up,’ she said, twisting up the shiny, red tube and applying some onto my mouth. Then she dragged my hair from its ponytail and ruffled it so it half-hid my face. ‘Look,’ she said to Kat. ‘It’s Veronica fuckin’ Lake.’ I felt Kat’s eyes on me then, and I stood still for an extra second, my eyes averted, so she could see me as this Veronica Lake whom I had not heard of but I knew was beautiful. She had to be, with a name like that. Shelly beckoned to us. We followed her down a short, dark stairway, through a graffiti-scrawled metal door, to a ticket booth. The man behind the fingerprint-dappled Plexiglas seemed happy to see Shelly. His gray hair was greased back into a neat ducktail, his pockmarked skin the color of putty.

  ‘Oh hi, Suzanne, where have you been?’ he asked her in a nasal baritone.

  ‘I’m based in San Francisco,’ said Shelly.

  ‘Welcome home. It’s Ladies’ Night! You’ve got one guy between the three of yous tonight? Ten dollars.’ Jim reached for his wallet, but Shelly slid a crisp folded bill under the window. To our right was a fringed plastic sheet, like the kind in car washes. Hazy purple light shone behind it. Loud music throbbed. We ducked our heads and passed through this fringed hymen. Upon emerging, I was amazed to see a middle-aged man wearing a fawn-colored turtleneck and glasses, naked from the waist down but for socks and running shoes. He had a drink in one hand, his half-risen penis in the other, and was masturbating halfheartedly, a bored expression on his face, while wandering around. ‘Keep your back to the wall,’ Jim suggested helpfully.

  Sidling toward the edge of the room, I saw that it was lined with books. I moved closer to glance at the titles. They were all pornographic: I Was a Teenage Sex Slave, Seven Amazing Fantasies Come True. Several people were clustered around the spotlit center of the room, watching a man with a bushy mustache pour hot wax on a bound, pale woman’s naked breasts. Her skin glowed in the light. A small, muscular fellow with a saddle strapped to his back trotted up to Shelly and greeted her effusively as Suzanne. Hand on hip, one leg thrust out, he asked her about a mutual friend, the leather of his tack creaking behind him. Shelly answered him with a slightly pompous affability; she was clearly a star of some kind in this netherworld. Meanwhile, Kat did a little solipsistic dance to the constant beat, occasionally throwing a few shadow punches. I tripped and fell, realizing too late that the bundle of dirty laundry I’d landed on was a scantily clad man chained to a metal pole. Jim hoisted me up with trembling arms as I apologized effusively. Just then, a petite woman being led on a leash by a skinny guy in a striped shirt came tottering up to Shelly, arms outstretched. We were all introduced. The girl had iron cuffs on her wrists, joined by a long chain. Her name was Renee; her boyfriend was Miles. Miles had a moist, boneless handshake. ‘Sit,’ he said to Renee. Renee sat down beside Shelly.

  ‘How have you been?’ she asked Shelly. ‘The last time I saw you was in Chicago, at the leather conference.’

  ‘Oh, God, that was wild.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re going this year,’ said Renee, widening her round, brown eyes and looking up at Miles complacently. ‘Miles has a new baby nephew and he’s being christened, so …’ She crossed her legs. I realized then that her ankles were also shackled. Renee looked up at Miles again. ‘Honey, could you get me a pop?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Miles. ‘Anyone else want anything?’ We shook our heads. He hesitated, holding the end of Renee’s leash, unsure of whom to entrust it to. Finally, he settled on Jim.

  ‘Will you hold this till I get back?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Jim, his serious face filled with submerged amusement.

  ‘Pippa, are you in school?’ asked Renee.

  ‘I’m studying at home,’ I said.

  ‘I never even graduated,’ she said.

  ‘When did you … start –’

  ‘Oh, this?’ she said, raising her bound wrists, the chain tinkling. ‘Um … we were both just kids, and one day we were making out in Miles’s garage and he tied me up and we just really liked it!’ Renee smiled, and deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She was so wholesome. Miles returned with a bottle of Dr Pepper and handed it to Renee, thanking Jim as he took back the leash.

  ‘That’s Stan and Lisa,’ Renee said to me, indicating the spotlit pair in the center of the room. ‘They are so cute, he always says he loves her after their show is over.’

  I surveyed the crowd clustered around Stan and Lisa. Among them, a very young, light-haired girl, about six months pregnant, had a collar and leash around her neck, but she was holding the handle of the leash herself. She had an intent
look on her luminous face as she watched Stan, who was now flicking a cat-o’-nine-tails onto the expanse of Lisa’s flesh, leaving little red stripes on her white skin. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pregnant girl. What was she doing here? Why was she holding her own leash?

  A stern ‘Sit!’ from Miles drew my attention away. To my surprise, Shelly and shackled Renee were now kissing! Miles let them make out for a few seconds, Renee half-standing to get a better purchase on Shelly, then he jerked back on her leash, forcing her to sit. Then it started up again.

  ‘I don’t think Trish would be too happy about you seeing this,’ said Jim.

  ‘Oh, this is where you draw the line?’ I asked. ‘Some chaperone.’

  He smiled widely, and I could see he was missing a number of teeth on the side of his mouth. Miles checked his watch and stood up, leading Renee from her seat. She complimented me on my sundress, indenting her dimples with a smile. As they left, I saw that Kat had her boot on the prone, shackled man’s sooty head and was resting it there, conquering, immobile, like a Victorian hunter posing for a daguerreotype with his foot on a dead lion. Shelly, alone now, watched from her chair. The dead-eyed look those women gave each other intrigued and frightened me. Jim took my arm. I glanced back at the pregnant girl, but she was gone; Stan and Lisa had vanished. When I looked to Kat again, her eyes were clamped on me with an impersonal, scrutinizing stare. I returned her gaze too long, I knew – too long to be right, too long for Aunt Trish.

  That night, in the dark, awake under the covers on the lumpy couch in Kat’s room, I lay in wait for memories of my Mr Brown: his long, pale fingers, the rough tweed of his worn jacket that smelled of pipe tobacco when I pressed my nose in it, the round toes of his brogans, the dull rose gold of his wedding band as it glinted in the half-light. He was so dear, so kind, my Mr Brown. He always caressed me with tender longing, as if saying goodbye. He taught my hands and my mouth with a solemn air, an educator even in his pleasure. Once, he drove me all the way to the shore during Easter break, our only foray outside the world of his little study. It was a warm, cloudy day in April. There were three people on the pebbly beach: a heavy man in khaki shorts and a windbreaker; a small woman with frizzy, brown hair; and a tubby kid with a kite that wouldn’t quite lift off the ground, though it kept making little, hopeful hops into the air.

  Mr Brown and I pulled off our clothes. We both had on our bathing suits underneath. His was baggy green nylon. His legs were thin, the hair on them reddish. I was in my shiny blue swim team Speedo suit, the only one I owned. It made my chest look flat, which I resented. But Mr Brown knew better. We hobbled along for a while, the stones bruising our tender feet, until we came to a cluster of rocks, about fifty yards from where the people were. We sat and watched the gulls, creamy white, gliding against the ice-gray sky. He turned to me and said, ‘You know that sand is just very finely ground rock.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That must take forever.’

  ‘Millions of years,’ he said, letting some sand sift through his long, curled fingers. I put my forefinger in the elastic band of his swim trunks and watched his eyes glaze over, as they always did when desire infused him. He was sitting with his back to the beach. No one could see. I firmly stroked those nylon swim trunks until he closed his eyes in rapture. Oh, heaven.

  And when our days of tenderness were over, Mr Brown left me a virgin. Yes, after all that fuss, I lay on the couch in Aunt Trish’s apartment as whole as the day I was born. I had tried to make it otherwise. I was desperate for Mr Brown to fuck me, but he said that was a step too far. I wanted to marry him. I had it all worked out: we would live in a little house in Massachusetts, or someplace else in the liberal far north; he would get a job at one of the fancy boarding schools up there, and I would spend the day getting myself ready for him, softening my skin, brushing my hair, plucking my eyebrows. Every night, my beloved would return to me, and come close to dying of pleasure. Mr Brown chuckled sadly when I recounted my fantasy, lowering his eyelids so I could see the veins through the papery skin, and said, ‘Oh, my girl, no, you’re made for better things.’ That statement always made me feel lonely, because it implied an end to our affair but also because it hinted at some promise inside me that I was unaware of, like a tumor embedded in my flesh, making ready to bloom. I felt frightened of the future then, and huddled up against my lover’s hard chest, seeking some hint of feminine softness, some extra bit of flesh to hang on to. But there was none. Mr Brown’s body was stiff as a tree.

  Still wakeful on the night of the whips and chains, I mulled over my life so far. I was a botch. I could see no future. I had no plans. I saw no example I wished to follow. I didn’t want to be a nurse, or a stewardess, or a secretary; I didn’t want to work in the meatpacking district or be a housewife. I just wanted to prowl around. I walked the streets endlessly. Watching people. I had a ravening mind; I wanted I wanted I wanted. I wanted into people’s lives. I followed couples as they scurried down the street, carrying groceries and bunches of flowers, children tugging on their arms. I followed businessmen on their way from work. I followed elegantly dressed women who marched resolutely down the street and raised their hands for taxis. They were all bustling, all running, all rushing. Everyone in New York City seemed to have a purpose, except for me. I was driven by a need with no end, no goal. I was looking for love, I think, though that’s not what it felt like at the time. At the time I felt hard and cold as a knife in the snow.

  Knight

  One time I followed this guy. His hair was a tangled web of blond curls that fell to hunched, narrow shoulders. He made me think of a cattail reed. It was wickedly cold, but all he was wearing was a pin-striped suit and a cashmere scarf. Sneakers. I walked out of work, saw him pass me by, and followed him all the way from Orchard Street to Twenty-third and First. He ducked into a coffee shop. I walked in behind him. He sat at the counter. I sat beside him. He ordered pea soup. I asked for hot chocolate. I looked at his face. He was older than I thought. At least twenty-five. His nose was red. He felt my stare, turned. His face was pale, with a high forehead and Nordic features, like a knight, it seemed to me. He looked right at me and shivered. ‘Freezing,’ he said, blowing into his cupped hands.

  ‘You’re not wearing enough,’ I said.

  ‘I thought I’d be straight in a cab,’ he said. ‘I always forget they change shifts this time of day.’ His eyes passed over my body. ‘You’re all bundled up.’

  ‘I always walk home from work,’ I said.

  His soup came, then my cocoa. We ignored each other for a few moments.

  ‘What’s your job?’ he asked. ‘If you don’t mind –’

  ‘I wait tables,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a tough job.’

  ‘Have you ever –?’

  ‘No.’

  I knew we would walk to his place. I wasn’t thinking about making love; he was going to be my boyfriend, that was all. I was already imagining our apartment. It would have those round, paper globe shades on all the lights, and shelves filled with books. He was clearly a reader. So, after he finished his soup, said goodbye politely, and walked out, my cheeks burned with humiliation and loss.

  Kitty

  I knew Kat was no good for Aunt Trish, I saw she was playing her, but I was drawn to her in spite of myself. I guess I figured she was bad like me. Good people like Aunt Trish filled me with anxiety because I knew one day they would see I was just a destructive little fucker. Kat bought me clothes, tight jeans and floaty tops, platform shoes and huge hoop earrings. I was flattered by her attention. When Aunt Trish saw me in my new getups, she would click her tongue and blush, but she wouldn’t say a word against Kat. All she’d say was ‘You better not wear that when you go back home to visit.’ That was her way of saying I better visit. My father called every few days to see how I was doing, and then Suky would get on the line. I missed her terribly, but when I heard that drug in her voice, I felt violence rising up in me. My voice went dead; I was abrupt, rude, horrible to her.
Then I would hang up and cry, sob into my pillow, ‘I was mean, I was mean,’ and Trish would stroke my head until I fell asleep.

  Kat always looked unrecognizable when she went to work in a cheap skirt suit and pumps, her thick hair teased to high heaven, lips slippery with gloss, eyelids iridescent blue. She looked like she was in drag. But one morning, after Trish left, as I washed the breakfast dishes, sponged down the table, swept the floor, Kat stood observing me in her dressing robe, her arms folded. I felt self-conscious and a little alarmed. Ever since the night at the club, when she had set her foot on that shackled man’s head and stared at Shelly, I had known she was a little bit dangerous. That novel she was writing – I had read it, of course. It was full of sex. That’s pretty much all it was. It was a book about a young woman named Kitty, and her adventures with other women. Kitty went prowling around hunting for pleasure. When she saw a girl she liked, she pounced. It didn’t matter if her prey was a married woman of fifty or a child of twelve. Kitty always got her girl. I read the latest installment every night when I went to bed. It made such an impression on me that I committed one passage of her prose to heart:

  Kitty looked at Mrs Washington. Though no longer young, she had smoky black eyes and a long neck, her breasts were full, her hair lustrous. There was no way Kitty was going to spend one more night as a guest in this woman’s country estate without slipping a finger in her pussy.

  Kat made sense to me once I started reading her novel. I had seen part of a porn film once; two of my brothers, the Dim Twins, took me into New Haven to buy Christmas presents for the rest of the family. We each had our savings in our pockets – in our godly family, you were expected to save your allowance all year to buy presents for your siblings. Once we stepped off the train, Rob and Griffin, both thirteen, took me by the hand and said we were watching a movie and then buying the presents. I was eight. We got into the theater only because we were short enough to creep by the booth without the ticket collector seeing us. My brothers had bought me a lollipop to keep me occupied, and I, in my innocence, sat licking the thing as the opening credits came up.