Alice Close Your Eyes

by Averil Dean

  I move to Jack’s side, and see that the pages are filled with delicate sketches and notes for his work. Purses, mainly, and elegant satchels with attractive shaded folds in the center. I don’t remember seeing any of these items at the booth. They are his plans, the designs he’s not yet executed.

  Jack puts the pad back and I move to the window and part the curtains. There is nothing to see. The apartment faces the vast, blank side of another warehouse. Now I understand why the leather man is not worried about his privacy.

  Jack laughs softly behind me. He’s at the entertainment center.

  “An ass man,” he says, flipping over the DVD in his hands to see the back.

  “Can we go? If he comes back...”

  Jack replaces the DVD and looks at me.

  As at the leather man’s cart, I am aware of a sliding sensation, a frightening sense of moving from one place to another without taking a step.

  “Come here,” he says. And I do, as though he’s pulling me on a string, a step at a time, until I am in front of him. Though we’re alone, I feel the leather man in the room, watching, as if we are inside his mind by being in his home. We’re the voyeurs, Jack and I, but that’s not the way it feels.

  Jack tugs off my cap. At his request, I’m wearing the same outfit I had on the other day at the market: denim miniskirt, ankle-high tennis shoes, a T-shirt screen printed In-N-Out. He pulls me forward with one hand at the back of my head and I lift my face to him, but though my lips are parted he does not kiss them. He slides his hand to the top of my head and presses straight down. With his other hand, he’s unzipping his jeans.

  “Jack,” I whisper, because I don’t know another way to protest.

  “Do it,” he says.

  “Let’s go, we can do this at home. Or—”

  “Right now.”

  He puts his hand on my shoulder and pushes until I sink to my knees. He’s got his dick in his fist and gives himself a couple of firm strokes. I begin to tremble, my jaws locked together. He gathers a handful of my hair.

  “Open your mouth.”

  I obey out of submission more than desire. The scent of unfamiliarity is too strong here, and the knowledge of what we’re doing is too great to overcome; I can’t just blow my boyfriend in another man’s apartment. Jack seems to sense this and it pisses him off. He pulls me forward and presses into my throat. It’s too hard, too soon. I begin to gag and pull away.

  He hauls me up and pushes me ahead of him to the bed. He’s behind me, my hair still wrapped around his hand. I hear the hiss of the leather man’s belt, sliding through Jack’s belt loops.

  “Take these off,” he says, tugging at my underwear. I do what he says, though he has pulled me against him so tightly that I can’t bend down. I wriggle them to my knees and let them fall to the floor. His cock is rigid and warm, pressed upright at the small of my back.

  “You want to be quiet, now.” He reaches behind me and pulls up my skirt. “Bend over.”

  And I do, falling forward as he releases me, my hands flat against the mattress. With one foot, he kicks mine apart, spreads his hand over the small of my back to hold me in place.

  The belt lands with a sharp bite across my ass. I realize at once that this is not like any of the slaps or pinches he’s given me before. He wants it to hurt; he’s using everything he has. The leather tears at my skin like the teeth of an animal; the two halves of the belt fall as one with the snap of a whip.

  A gust of air precedes the next blow, a whisper of apology over the sting. I jump, breathless with the pain, but don’t make a sound.

  I don’t make a sound the whole time. I count, waiting, staring down at the leather man’s rumpled sheets. Each strike is like a step from land into water, from gravity to buoyancy. My body shifts from a stiff and unwilling resistance to a state of liquid, almost orgasmic obedience, and my mind becomes sluggish with the narcotic effect of the pain. The burn is so intense that it smears my consciousness into a low-frequency buzz. I stop flinching, close my eyes and wait.

  At number twenty-nine, he stops and runs his palm over my burning skin, tracing the ridged welts with his fingertips. My arms are trembling. A drop of fluid trickles down my thigh, and I can feel each downy hair in its path.

  “You think you deserve that? Look where you are.”

  He tosses the belt down next to me. I hear the heavy flop of his jeans hitting the floor. I drop to my elbows, my nose enfolded in the leather man’s sheets.

  “Yes.” My voice sounds thick, drowsy.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he says. “I think so, too.”

  My legs are numb with exhaustion and relief, but I tilt my hips for him, offer my whipped ass like a prize. I feel connected to him, to both of them, to some primal part of myself I don’t understand, to the part of me that accepts and endures and seeks balance on the edge of a straight razor. The pain absolves me. Whatever I have done or will do is being made right, and for the moment I can say, It’s out of my hands.

  I sprawl over the leather man’s bed, my hands straight out to my sides, my cheek pressed to the mattress. Jack push-pulls me down the length of his cock, and groans when he hears me finally cry out.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  He slips a hand between my legs, circling, slapping at my clitoris.

  My body has gone slack, my strength of will swept away by the ineluctable rightness of being taken this way, with the scent of the leather man filling my mind. Softened by my lover, fucked in another man’s bed. The beating has made me pliant and acquiescent, delivered me to a place I never suspected I would want to see. Jack rides me faster and harder, charging down his own dark road––but I’ve become unbreakably soft, melting around him, until at the liquid-hot center of my body, my pleasure overflows. Heat floods my skin, bursts inside me like a balloon full of warm oil, pours into my limbs and makes them heavy, clumsy with the weight of my climax.

  I don’t make a sound.

  “Oh, good girl,” Jack says.

  He clasps a handful of my hair and cranks his hips until there is nothing left of him to take. He comes then, with a deep grunt and a hard shudder that shifts the bed under my cheek. The legs scrape along the concrete with a small, metallic shriek.

  He collapses on top of me, his warm, wide chest covering my back. His heartbeat hammers against my shoulder blade, rolling like a timpani, then gradually slowing as he softens inside me.

  My arms are still outstretched. Under the pillow, my fingers encounter something hard and heavy and cold. I don’t need to see it to know what I’ve found.

  * * *

  Before we leave, Jack says he has something to show me. He pulls me into the bathroom and flips on the light. My face is pale, my eyes huge and dark. He turns me gently by the shoulders to face him, kisses me lightly on the mouth. He slaps me, one solid crack, then moves behind me so we can watch as the outline of his fingers blooms on my cheek.

  I trace the shape with my thumb.

  I am a warrior. Or a child, misbehaving.

  * * *

  The night sky is growing pale as Jack guides the truck onto the ferry for the return trip home. My denim skirt feels rough against my welted skin. I rest my cheek against the cool glass window and close my eyes. The rocking motion soothes me.

  Jack wanted me to leave my underwear behind, in the leather man’s bed. But though I pretended to, after he turned away I wadded them up and shoved them into my pocket. If the leather man does come home with his date, I don’t want to fuck it up for them. So we left the apartment as we’d found it; the only thing we took away was a scrap of kidskin. I lay it in my palm and my palm in my lap, and caress the buttery surface with my thumb, thinking of the gun under the leather man’s pillow.

  I had no place to hide it tonight, no purse or satchel or heavy coat. Tomorrow while Jack’s at work, I�
��ll go back to the Holsum Lofts, upstairs to apartment 3B. I’ll be in and out of there in fifteen seconds.

  “Alice.”

  I open my eyes. Jack lays his hand over the top of the steering wheel and points at the car in front of us and one row to the right. The passenger is climbing into the driver’s side. I can’t see her well in the darkness, but from the way she’s turned around, backward in the reclined seat, it’s clear that the two occupants of the car are having sex. Her hand is clutching the headrest of the passenger’s seat, and she begins to move, a slow, rhythmic shadow within the shadows. Her bare breast dips in and out of the light as though she’s swimming, up and down, her throat arched. The windows gradually cloud over and her other hand appears, pressed flat to the glass like a starfish in the surf.

  When the ferry arrives with a bump at Vashon Island, she climbs off and returns to her seat. For a second our eyes meet and there is exchange, an understanding between us.

  Then she looks away.

  I feel Jack next to me, his eyes on my face.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The break-in is a turning point. We both understand now that we are willing to venture into dangerous territory. And with the realization comes a growing division between who we are in daily life and the alchemical reaction of us, together.

  Writing has never come more easily. I cover every horizontal surface with words, many of which are hot, usable, the fine-tuned distillation of what I learn from Jack. Previous struggles with scenes and character are magically resolved.

  The days when he is gone, the night when he’s asleep, I exist in a fugue state, though on the surface nothing has changed. I have coffee at the Beanery and chat with Midge. I send my drafts to Gus Shiroff and accept his suggestions for revision with none of my usual fury and fight. I am easy, languid, drifting around Vashon, noting the crumbling cement where the sidewalk ends, the spiked blades of grass bejeweled with dew, the flattened hair of the passersby and their pale, scrubbed faces, bland smiles, rows of teeth. I am only resting, taking a breather. Waiting for Jack.

  When we’re together, the two halves of me slide into focus like the image inside a camera lens. Everything is sharp, defined. Everything is fire or liquid pleasure: the crack of his hand or the deep thump of his dick at my cervix; his fingers tangled in my hair; the muscles in my neck and chest stretching as my arms are bound behind my back; the delicious pull of his belts around my ankles, spreading me apart. I see myself in a series of still images that slither through my mind as I move through the innocent town.

  Now when I step out of the bath and wipe away the foam that clings to my nipples and the curve of my hip, I uncover small bruises, ridged welts. I collect them, covet them like badges. I feel a sense of loss when they heal and disappear.

  * * *

  Tonight I’m back at the park, watching the gray house across the street. The lamplights in the windows beguile me. I want to see the inside and find out whether the girls are there, whether they’re okay, what they’re doing.

  The homes in this neighborhood are fairly close together, but I walk up the driveway in a straightforward way; if anyone sees me, they’ll assume I’ve been invited. As I near the front door, I turn and continue around the side of the house and silently through the gate to the backyard.

  A window is open at the back of the house. I hear the girls inside, and crouch under the window with my knees pressed to my chest, listening.

  Big sister’s voice is exasperated.

  “Put your arm through, Sarah,” she says.

  “Don’t like these jammies.” The smaller voice is muffled.

  “They’re your favorite.”

  “They too little,” Sarah says with the beginning of a whine in her voice.

  Big sister must hear it, too. A small scuffle ensues.

  “Let’s be quick,” she says. “Mommy’s putting Rugrats on. Do you want to watch it with me?”

  “Chucky!”

  I smile and lean my head back against the house. I used to watch that show with my mother, curled up on the couch in the living room of Nana’s trailer. Nana had the world’s tiniest TV, but the living room itself was so small that you were close enough to see the screen no matter where you sat. And my mom loved TV. She kept it turned on all the time, listening to the news or game shows or documentaries about the space program. She said TV kept her smart.

  “Imagine,” she would say. “When you see a star, you’re seeing the way it looked billions of years ago. Think how far away a star would have to be, if it takes a billion years for the light to reach us.” And together we would scan the night sky for the faintest star. She said it made her feel bigger to imagine that our bodies are made of stardust, that every molecule is ancient and comes from someplace far away.

  “We’re part of it all,” she’d say, looking up.

  About six months after Nana died, I came home from school and found the living room full of boxes. My mother was stacking the dishes between sheets of newspaper, her hair tied back in an old bandanna.

  “We’re moving out,” she said.

  “What?” My stomach dropped. She had told me about the move the week before, but many of my mother’s promises and predictions failed to materialize. I had hoped this was another possibility that wouldn’t come to pass.

  “Ray’s house.”

  “What, now?”

  “Yeah. I can’t afford the payments here. We need to get out before we’re kicked out. We’re going to Ray’s.”

  “But we don’t even know him.”

  She tucked back a strand of hair and wiped her forehead. The newspaper ink left streaks like charcoal across her skin, and her breath was tight and dry in her throat. She wouldn’t look at me. She sat down in Nana’s chair and puffed her inhaler, shook it, tossed it on the floor and started rummaging in her purse. Her hands were shaking.

  I took the purse, found a fresh inhaler in the corner at the bottom and handed it to her.

  “You don’t know him,” she said between puffs. “I’ve been dating him for five months.”

  I felt my throat close up. I looked around the room, at the shabby green carpet, the cracked linoleum counters, the beaded curtain in the doorway that I used to drape across my head to pretend I was an Egyptian princess. Through the beads I could see Nana’s bed, covered with stacks of folded clothes, and through another door, my bed, covered with the lavender blanket she’d bought me years ago. My face filled with tears, burning my eyes and nose, so that the boxes seemed to be reflections shimmering on the surface of a pond.

  My mother resumed her packing with uncharacteristic efficiency—folding clothes, filling boxes, loading them into Ray’s pickup truck. When she’d finished, she loaded me in, too, and we left. Just like that. I turned to look back and saw Nana’s forlorn yellow trailer swallowed up by the pines, disappearing around a bend in the road.

  And we came here, to the gray house on Cooper Street.

  The backyard looks different than when I lived here with my mother. Someone has been making an effort. The junk has been cleared away, and there’s a line of potted plants from the nursery, still in their black plastic pots. Some are already in the ground, and there are two shovels propped against the fence, as though the work is still in progress. A young tree has been planted in the center of the yard, its limbs reaching up to the pale gray sky.

  I sink to the ground, my back to the house, leaves prickling my right cheek.

  If I close my eyes, I can almost hear my mother’s voice. I was here, in this very spot, the night she died. Same shrubs, same wall at my back. She was angry at Ray. Her voice floated out like cigarette ash, weightless and dry, scattering in the air.

  “All you ever want...spend half your time stoned...I thought...I thought...we could be...”

  And Ray’s voice. Deeper, irritated, every w
ord clear: “This is my house. You’re under my roof—and your kid, too. You’re not gonna tell me what I can and can’t do in my house.”

  “...always need to remind me...I thought...”

  “I don’t give a shit what you thought. I made it clear. So you can think what you want, I don’t give a fuck.”

  My mother, sobbing, her voice rising an octave: “You wish I was dead!”

  “You know what? You’re right, you crazy bitch.”

  There was a loud thump, something heavy hitting an inside wall. Glass breaking. A door slammed at the other end of the house.

  I crept in through the back door, into my room, into bed. And listened to my mother cry.

  No one is crying now, no one’s fighting. The girls leave the room and I move farther along the back wall, past the back door to the last window before the corner, the master bedroom window. It’s covered with a curtain, but when I press my face to the glass, I can see a bit of the bedroom through a chink in the middle. My nose is level to the dresser and I’m seeing the back side of it. Behind the lamp and a ceramic basket is a small dish with a lump of white powder and a glass pipe.

  From the window at the other end of the house comes the cartoon theme song and the familiar voices of the Rugrats characters:

  “Tommy, I got a problem....”

  * * *

  Later I drive to the Roadhouse Bar and Grill, where Ray used to work. Someone’s left a couple of plastic chairs by the back door, next to an old coffee can full of cigarette butts and rainwater. Beyond that is a wide alley and a parking lot, and a row of weed-skirted warehouses striped with rust. Several men have come and gone over the past hour since I got here. I stare straight ahead and don’t acknowledge them. I keep smoking, waiting.

  An oily breeze slides through the alley, and from the parking lot I hear a female voice rise over the rumble of a motorcycle engine: Come on back, honey, come on back inside. A chill sweeps up my body. I shiver and hug myself through my coat.