The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

  I searched the streets around there, trying to find the club Shelly had taken us to. All I could remember was five steps down, a metal door. At last, I found it. The sweaty, sharp-eyed woman behind the Plexiglas booth looked up from her book. She didn’t know anything about the pregnant girl. She told me this was her first night of work here, and she couldn’t stand the fucking heat.

  I pushed the heavy plastic fringe aside, ducking my head, and emerged into the windowless library. The ceiling was very low. There was no music on. Purple and red lights flashed mutely. As I walked in, the few souls wandering around the room eyed me hungrily, like bored guests at a failing party, sizing up a new arrival. I wondered whether I was moving strangely. Music came on – a rigid beat. I walked into the back room, a kind of cave, also lined with paperbacks, and pierced with tiny cubicles. On a narrow stage, a middle-aged woman in a leather corset danced for a middle-aged man. The door of one of the cubicles swung open; a male figure emerged and walked away fast, head down. A light-haired, slender girl remained in the cubicle, her back to me, buttoning her blouse. I stood, waiting. She swiveled around and looked at me expectantly. She was young, but her face was puffy and slack. ‘I thought you might be someone else,’ I said, turning.

  Back in the main room, Lisa and Stan were setting up their act. Maybe the pregnant girl would be coming in later. She had loved Stan and Lisa. Remember how she had stood, transfixed, her wide eyes unblinking, her small hand grasping the handle of her leash, as though her owner had abandoned her? A spotlight came on, illuminating the pair. I walked up to them and stood just inside that pool of light, exactly where I had seen the pregnant girl standing. I was almost close enough to touch them. Others gathered around them, too, waiting for the performance to begin, eyes glazed, hungry and vacant.

  Lisa lay on the low bed. She was blindfolded with a band of black leather. Her bare belly was pale and flaccid, a concave hammock of flesh hung between two wide-set, mountainous hip bones. Her large breasts spread out across her chest. The skin around the nipples was crowded with marks. Some of them looked like cat scratches. Others were raised, like burns, or white, old scars. Stan tipped a metal beaker of molten wax, letting a fine thread of it dribble onto her skin, precise as an alchemist. As the wax hit her skin, Lisa flinched and turned her head to the side. I gawked with the others as the pool of wax turned white and hard. Later, when Stan knelt to untie her blindfold, Lisa looked up at him adoringly with unfocused sapphire eyes and mouthed, ‘I love you.’ I felt embarrassed to witness this sudden moment of intimacy. The other observers had melted away. I stood fast, unable to budge, flashing lights throbbing in my peripheral vision. Lisa sat up as if alone, heels together, legs flopping open, and started peeling dried wax off her tits. Stan looked up me curiously, then bent to unplug his hot plate.

  A man approached me then. He was narrow hipped, effeminate, with full lips and a halo of dark curls. The first three buttons of his tight, silky shirt were open and revealed a tawny, hairless chest.

  ‘Hey, you all right?’ he asked. I told him I was looking for someone. He had never seen the pregnant girl. I smiled and talked to him, feeling so charming as I moved really fast and jerked my arms around. All I can remember of our conversation is the effeminate man saying most people thought he was gay, but he was straight – with a twist. He said that several times. His name was Mandy. I don’t remember how it happened that I asked him to drive me to Connecticut, but there we were, at dawn, on Route 84 heading toward Danbury in his tangerine Camaro. Mandy told me about his life – how he was in auto sales with his father, how he had appeared in seven of his father’s commercials, starting from the age of three. I was barely listening. I was scared to see Suky.

  We stopped for a pee at a truck stop on the outskirts of Danbury. He took a little Chinese purse embroidered with a dragon out of his glove compartment, unzipped it, and held it open so I could see: white powder in a plastic bag. Feeling myself coming down slightly, I snorted a staggered white zigzag of powder off a glossy car sales brochure. As I sniffed the line through a dollar bill, felt the acidic, chemical kick in the back of my throat, I read: ‘200 dollars cash back with every new Nissan truck purchased!’

  There was a picture of a stocky man on the brochure. He was standing beside a red truck. He had a mustache, and Mandy’s full lips. Mandy’s dad, no doubt, smiling up at me. I felt a little sorry for the guy, given what I was using his face for. I knew the cocaine was a mistake as I snorted it. Combined with all the amphetamines I had taken in the last two days, it clamped down on my mind like a set of iron teeth. Every noise sounded like danger to me. My chauffeur’s profile, with its aquiline nose and plump mouth, seemed malign. I imagined him cutting me into lamb-chop-size chunks and tossing them gaily out the window all the way to Suky’s house. At every stoplight I imagined opening the door and escaping.

  We drove up to the Delton Green at twenty to seven. ‘I’ve done a lot of crazy things,’ said Mandy. ‘But this takes the cake. You said your father is a minister?’ I nodded. ‘Yup. This takes the fuckin’ cake.’ He made ready to get out. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Do you mind waiting for a little, um, and then I’ll … come get you … if …’ He turned up the radio and sank down in the seat, nodding with a louche expression. Wondering what I had promised him, I walked to the side door of the house. The first birds were singing. The air smelled sweet and clean. I picked up the hollow plastic rock beside the welcome mat, ripped the silver key off its Velcro square, turned it in the lock.

  The house was quiet and warm. I walked into the kitchen. The clock was ticking. It sounded so loud. The house smelled yeasty, sugary, as it always had. I was suddenly very hungry. I looked in the bread bin. There were three cinnamon donuts in there. I took one and bit into it, crunched the sandy sugar between my teeth. It felt so good to be home. Such a relief. I heard a sound on the stairs. I turned. The decline in her appearance was shocking. Her pale skin was luminous, almost translucent, the skin around her eyes dark, her red hair lank and stringy. She had lost weight. She started to scream, then she put her hand to her mouth and wept.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a high school graduate, Mommy,’ I said. My voice sounded completely foreign to me. I must have been talking very loud. ‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘Your father.’ I whispered now, expanding on how well I had done on the test, exaggerating my results, believing myself instantly. She hugged me. I just let her, at first, my arms dangling at my sides. After a while, though, I put my arms around her and pressed her to me. She felt so fragile, like a bird.

  We embraced for a long time. Then I made her put her feet on my feet. She was sort of giggling, embarrassed, but I insisted she do it, just the way I had put my feet over hers when I was little. And we danced. Her face was so close to mine. I could see the new wrinkles around her eyes. The flesh over her eye sockets was sinking. Her breath was minty. She was looking up at me with deep affection – our old intimacy, as if we were the only two people in the world, as if we were newlyweds. I glanced at the clock. A few seconds to seven. Almost time for her first dose. She never missed it. The minute hand thumped into place beneath the twelve. Seven o’clock. She gently began to release her hold on me. A spike of anger went through me then. I held my arms rigid. She put her hand on my forearm, pushing me away a little. ‘Okay, honey,’ she said.

  ‘You have an appointment?’ I asked. She must have seen murder in my face, because she looked frightened.

  ‘Let me go,’ she said in her squeaky drawl.

  Then I put my face close to hers. ‘Look in my eyes,’ I said. ‘You see anything?’ She was struggling to get out of my grip now; I had her by the shoulders, I was moving her to the wall, I didn’t know what I was going to do to her, but I hated her so much, I wanted to kill her. ‘I’m like you now, Suky, see? I’m fucking high like you wish you were right now, you little junkie!’

  Her face twisted into a grimace of rage and indignation. She bared her teeth, spit formed on the edges of her mouth, her
eyes narrowed, she called me a liar, a runaway, an addict. She actually looked like she was turning into an animal. It was terrifying. She wanted her dose. I had her pinned to the wall. She was hissing, ‘Get out get out get out get out!’ Her bones felt so flimsy I could have snapped them. I took a fistful of her hair, held her head back. Her eyes widened, scared, expectant. I had no idea what to do next. So I kissed her, on the mouth. Passed my hand over her nipples. I felt like I was slashing her throat with a knife. Looking back on it, it seems overdramatic, but at seventeen, a blizzard of coke and speed racing through my head, I thought I was saying it all: I was telling my mother that she had treated me like a lover and a baby, a possession, but not a person, never a person. I think she got the message. Anyway, she started screaming. She was just screaming and screaming, and Des thundered downstairs in his brown robe, growling like a grizzly. That was my signal. I ran straight into Mandy’s Camaro, tears streaming down my face, wiping my mouth like there was shit on it.

  By the time we got back to New York, I was curled up in a ball, staring out the window. Understandably, Mandy was sick of me. He dropped me at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, saying, ‘You’re a downer, man,’ and he was off to Jersey, where the girls are sunny. I walked to the subway and got back to Jim’s apartment just as he and Olla were getting up. They were relieved to see me. They asked no questions. We all had coffee and shortbread cookies, and Olla tenderly laid out one of her pretty sundresses for me to wear when I woke. She put it out on a chair, where I could see it, to cheer me up. I lay my head on her lap as she stroked my forehead. I could feel the soft pillow of her bosom on my ear. I slept and slept, and when I opened my eyes, it seems to me now, it was three years later, I was twenty and living on Orchard Street.

  A Brief Catalog of Sins

  I remember the years after I kissed Suky in fragmented clusters, as though seen on a TV with rotten reception. I can flip through the channels as often as I like, but no narrative coheres. All I can glimpse is fixes I got myself into. Not how, not why. I see a young Finnish actor lying beside me, so thin, like a boy, except for his phallus, which stands wavering nobly. I see his girlfriend, Oxanna, sitting beside me in a restaurant as the boy hands us each a bunch of roses. I see myself on the street being slapped by a woman with short black hair and a livid face. I see myself lying on a table. A man wearing a wedding ring is standing between my open legs (somewhere in here I must have lost my virginity). And, like snowy static, I see pills – pink pills, white pills, blue pills – falling across the screen. Okay, I understand, of course, I took every pill I could get my hands on, no wonder I can’t remember anything. Wait, I can see an ashtray littered with cigarette butts on a coffee table. A man – Sergei – clamps a cigarette between his thick, sensual lips, lights up, and inhales deeply, with real enjoyment, his bulging, black eyes open wide. I see the man’s wife, Amelia, also Russian. She is blonde, very thin, exhausted looking. I work for these people. I teach their daughter English. Her name is Anya. Sergei is glowering, emphatic. The skin on his arms is very smooth, tawny, and hairless. His body is of an almost comical shape – potbelly, short, muscular legs. He is a Trotskyite and a cellist. He plays for me. Dense, dark waves of music rise from beneath his fingers. I find the sound powerful, melancholy, hypnotic. Sometimes I spend the night here so I don’t have to go all the way downtown on the subway. On these occasions, Sergei reads out loud to me from ‘The Revolution Betrayed’. I see myself kneeling in front of the couch, Sergei’s penis in my mouth, while his wife and daughter sleep next door. How much worse can this get?

  At around this time, the images become so flimsy, I can’t make them out. I see my hands bound together at the back. I strain to catch a glimpse of myself, I worry, what the hell am I doing now? Then a clear color image quickens: I see people holding plastic cups filled with wine, talking. I see myself in lace-up leather boots, white-blonde hair, a muddy coat. My skin is pale, there are circles under my eyes. I am here with friends, ah yes, now it is all coming clear, I see better now, wait, now I’m inside the screen, I am standing next to myself, I can’t believe how real this all is, I can hear the voices – it’s an art opening. These are the people I used to serve margaritas to at El Corazón! Remember? The ones with paint on their hands. What are they doing here? My boyfriend, Craig, the skinny one with the poker face, is standing beside his painting, a hyperrealistic rendering of a sink filled with dirty dishes. There is a red dot beside it. Our friends cluster around us. Jed, a very tall, part-Sioux sculptor from Nebraska City, his heavy work boots spread wide, checked woolen jacket flapping open, congratu lates Craig. ‘You are one lucky fuck, man, Gigi Lee is a major collector.’ Jed looks over at a very beautiful woman in her forties with a nearly impossibly large bust and tiny waist, wearing a cat suit, her long black hair falling to her waist. Her lovely face is surprisingly tired looking, and her voluptuous mouth droops at the corners, as though it has been borrowed from someone else. Jed the Sioux now puts his hand on the small of my back. Have I got it wrong? Is Jed my boyfriend? Terry, the short young woman from El Corazón, with a soft, exposed midriff, chunky high heels, and a cartoonish, glossy red mouth, says, ‘She’s an heiress.’ Now the beauty in the cat suit walks over to the ratty little clump of us and looks up at Craig with an impish smile.

  ‘I love my painting.’ She has a thick Italian accent.

  Craig clears his throat. ‘I’m … glad you bought it.’

  ‘I am Gigi Lee.’

  ‘I know. Nice to meet you.’ Craig shakes her hand stiffly.

  ‘You like to paint from the sea?’ she asks.

  ‘I usually paint in the studio,’ says Craig. ‘From photographs.’

  ‘You must come to our house at the sea, you could make a beautiful painting of it,’ says Gigi. Then, turning to acknowledge the rest of us, ‘You must all come this weekend. Stay the night!’ Craig introduces each of us. Gigi nods at us all, her tiny nose pulling itself in like a turtle seeking its shell. ‘Herb!’ she calls. An older man walks out of the crowd. He must be in his fifties. Swarthy, with deep creases in his skin, a crooked nose, and clear blue eyes, he has an open, amused expression on his face. ‘I want them all to come to the party,’ Gigi says, opening her arms.

  ‘The more the merrier,’ says Herb drily, teasing.

  ‘It is this weekend. You can come? There is a bus if you have no car.’

  ‘I have a car,’ says Craig. I nod. Craig has hit a vein of gold, a big commission. And the prospect of free food and drink is something none of us will pass up.

  *

  We are all in Craig’s car, a vast vanilla 1967 Riviera convertible with crimson upholstery. The car used to belong to Craig’s deceased aunt Ginny. I am beginning to remember that Terry, the girl with the smirking red mouth, and I sleep with either poker-faced Craig, Jed the elegant Sioux sculptor, or ornery Calvin, the chunky abstract painter. Don’t get me wrong; this is not a free love situation. It’s a rotation. Each of us is the girlfriend of one or another of these three guys at any given time. Occasionally, a third girl is brought into the group from outside, but usually it’s just Terry and I, so one of the guys is single for a while and becomes neutered, essentially another female, hanging out with us girls and whining about his loveless status, until a pregnant lull in the conversation when one of us is alone with him. Eyes lock, and away we go; he’s a man again. Now it’s someone else’s turn to be single. We have managed this game of musical genitalia for over a year without much jealousy, our friendships intact. But all that is about to change, for me anyway. As I lean my head back on Aunt Ginny’s red leather seat, the wind in my mouth, I have no idea that I am driving straight out of one life and into another.

  Their house was right by the sea; Gigi had told us that much in her vague directions. We drove slowly beside the long hedge that hid the big houses, looking for their name. At last we found it: ‘Lee,’ painted in light blue script on a white mailbox. We turned in to the gravel driveway and drove toward the strangest building I had
ever seen. It was a huge glass box with one metal wall. Inside the box was a small, old-fashioned yellow cottage with a red door – a house in a house. It was the middle of the afternoon; there were several cars parked in the driveway. As we approached the Lee home, we could see white leather couches in the outer, modern part of the dwelling. We knocked on the tall metal door of the outer shell. A doleful looking, middle-aged man answered. His shirt was half-untucked. He ushered us in with some sort of Eastern European accent, asked us mournfully if we would like some iced tea. We said yes. He took it like bad news and disappeared. A small, dark, smiling woman in a light green uniform bustled in carrying a tray of glasses filled with amber liquid. The Eastern European man picked up a couple of our bags and made for the stairs.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Craig.

  ‘We’ll get ’em,’ said Calvin. The man stayed them with a raised hand. ‘Please,’ he said. He had a way about him that made it hard to tell if he was kidding, as though someone had dared him to pretend to be the butler for the afternoon. ‘Mr and Mrs Lee are on the beach with the other guests,’ he said, gesturing to a set of French doors that looked onto the sea. ‘Mrs Lee says, come down if you like, or relax up here. Whatever you prefer.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said ornery Calvin, grabbing a handful of salted peanuts from a large clamshell on the coffee table and looking up at a ten-foot abstract painting on the landing. ‘Fucking Dieter Carlson,’ he snarled through a mouthful of nuts. ‘He’s everywhere. And he can’t even paint.’