Everyone Knows How Much I Love You

by Kyle McCarthy

  “What?” he said, and then more defensively, “What?”

  I overturned my hands in supplication. Was he really going to make me say it? If I squinted, I could see the street sign for Albemarle Road.

  “Oh, come on. It’s fine. She never goes here.”

  Were they teasing me, testing me, was I supposed to act oblivious, was this an offer, or a joke? I thought again of that night reading Angela Carter’s fairy tale, the three of us in bed, the heave of my smoky desire and the ammonia of my panic.

  “Shall we?” Ian pushed open the gunmetal door.

  I bowed, fake courteous, and decided to let it go. Some people inhabit New York as if it were a series of sealed bubbles: you could stroll a few blocks from your ex-girlfriend’s apartment, and as long as you didn’t have plans to see her, you wouldn’t. People like this believe in the city’s anonymity, its density; they trust it the way a rock climber trusts the rope.

  * * *

  —

  Ian paid my admission fee, and we separated to change. I stripped amid beatifically obese older women and teenage girls furious with curling irons. I’d had to buy a bathing suit, and the one I’d found, amid December’s paltry offerings, was nautical and stupidly skimpy, the blue and white striped triangles held to my chest by a complex system of strings disguised as thick sailors’ ropes.

  We met again in the dim, echoey main hall, redolent of chlorine and fried pierogies. Nearly naked couples sat at white plastic tables, men and women alike draped with gold chains and felt hats, eating and drinking beers, sucking on orange slices, calling to their children who ran between the hot tub and the cold pool and pressed their little faces against the glass doors of the sauna, leaving ghostly imprints.

  Along the back wall there was a mural in faded acrylics of a Grecian garden, with squarish Greek gods reclining beside turquoise pools, as if to reflect back to us in amateur hands the Platonic ideal of what we were doing. To counterbalance this, a twelve-inch TV bolted to the wall blared a Russian Christmas music spectacular, with a leggy blonde in a sparkly gown and a chorus of children singing through falling snow.

  “It’s very…Russian,” I said, tucking my thin towel more tightly around my waist. In his orange trunks Ian seemed somehow even more massive.

  He grinned, delighted. “Isn’t it amazing? Let’s do the wet sauna first.”

  In the bright tiled room, thick with condensation, there were a few middle-aged men with their heads bowed over their tremendous bellies as if in great sorrow. We took our seats closest to the door, and Ian sighed deeply. Soon buds of sweat bloomed on his thighs, pearls that grew large and luminous before trickling away. My skin, pasty white, welled up tears.

  A man dumped a wooden bucket of water over the vent and a wall of steam enveloped us. Ian sat back, shiny sweat slicking him. His curls were slack and damp against his skull. Glistening rivulets ran over his stomach and puddled down to his shorts.

  I kept thinking we were going to talk but talking was impossible with all the sweating and sighing. The great Russian men sat like totems around us. The truth was that I hated saunas but I was determined not to flee before Ian did.

  “God.” The sigh came from the back of his throat. “I like you so much.” He opened his eyes and patted my thigh briskly, and then stood and pushed open the steamed glass door.

  I followed, my heart yammering. Out in the atrium, the chlorinated air now felt brisk. We eased into the cold pool, gasping. I crossed my arms over my chest. Ian did soft, slow breaststrokes in circles.

  Not until we had moved to the hot tub did he say, “So. You’re skipping town.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight, actually.”

  He laughed, as if at an old familiar joke. “So you’re just, like, leaving. You’re going to move away.”

  I nodded. “Pretty much. I got fired. Did I tell you that?” He curled his lips no. “Yeah, I got fired. So. There’s not really anything for me here.”

  With an indifference that broke my heart, he skimmed his arm along the water’s surface, watching the chlorinated bubbles cling to his puckered skin. “This city is too expensive anyway. You’re smart to get out.”

  The jets rumbled to life, kicking up a white frothy stew of bubbles. Ian slid over to one and let it throb against his neck, vacantly staring up at the ceiling. Somewhere, someone turned on a shower.

  He reached out and touched the sailors’ rope slung over my shoulder. “Cute suit.”

  The noise of the banya, the wet thwack of flip-flops and echoing voices, receded. I dropped my gaze. “Thanks,” I muttered. Underwater, our legs touched. He slid his foot over mine. His old tricks. He leaned close and gently kissed my temple.

  Then he pushed himself up to the lip of the pool, swung his legs around, and walked away. “Be right back,” he called.

  I stared after him. How could he give himself so completely, then withdraw so easily? There was a lightness, an emotional agility to him, that I lacked. On the TV, more fake snow was falling.

  A girl and her boyfriend lowered themselves into the pool. “Aah, aah,” the girl said, flinching as the hot water lapped her thighs. “It feels nice,” the boy insisted, and they circled briefly before perching opposite me.

  When Ian returned he said there was a man who wanted to beat me.

  “What are you talking about?” Intrigue curled my gut.

  He pointed with his chin, and a man sitting at one of the plastic tables, whom I recognized from the steam room, nodded shyly. He was round and bald, with a white wool hat that gave him a courtly dignity.

  Around him—and everywhere—lay the limp green leaves of the birch branches.

  “Should I do it?” I whispered.

  “I would.”

  “Come with me?”

  “Obviously.”

  We approached the man in his pink chair. He nodded formally at Ian, and the three of us went off to the dry sauna. While the wet sauna had been bright and tiled, with silver vents, the dry sauna was darkly lined with cedar, reminiscent of hell, if hell were a cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan with the thermostat cranked to a hundred and twelve degrees.

  “Is your first time?” the man asked. Up close, the pink rolls of his belly were damp and gleaming.

  “Yeah.” Ian settled himself on the top riser—he seemed immune to the heat—and cupped his chin in his palm. Mischief gleamed in his eyes.

  “I will be gentle,” the man promised. “Not too hard. Is too hard, you tell me. Okay?”

  I said I would, and lay down on the middle bench, belly-down. As the man picked up the branch, I heard its feathery flutter. “You tell me, is too hard,” he repeated. I closed my eyes.

  Now, the sauna is hot. I know you know, but let me tell you: this heat cooks you. It has nothing to do with August, or the tropics. This is the kitchen’s heat. Either you fight it, or you go limp. I went limp.

  Crack, the branch came down and lingered on my scapula. “Is okay?” the man murmured above me, lost in steamy clouds. The leaves held the heat, making a glowing bloom on my back. Then, with a gentle suction, as if it yearned to linger, the branch—and the heat—lifted up. The patch of coolness left behind was divine. Smack! The leaves came down on my other shoulder blade, and again that warmth, again that cooling spot.

  Carefully the man worked his way down my back and over my legs, asking if I liked it. He gave a delighted laugh when I said yes, and pressed the birch branch firmly against my ass. “Is okay?” he whispered. I nodded, my eyes closed.

  My insides were baking. I was gloriously relaxed, as soft as a puddle of mush, and yet, when I thought about Ian watching me laid out, nearly naked, flogged by a fat Russian man, a delicious golden lead flooded my cunt.

  “Turn over,” the man said, and I did, offering him new territory: my breasts, my stomach, my t
highs. Not rushed, but methodical and thorough, he covered me with his wet, hot smacks. To finish he pressed the branch between my legs, like a seal. Stamping me. I couldn’t help it, I moaned.

  “Is okay,” he told me. We were done.

  I sat up. He disappeared, then returned carrying a wooden bucket brimming with dark water. “For the heart,” he declared, and, with much ceremony, dumped it over my head. Icy cold. I gasped, stifling a shriek. Both men chuckled.

  “Thank you.” Speaking felt strange, like becoming a person again.

  “You are very welcome. Very good for the heart,” he repeated. Then, with another courteous nod at Ian, almost a genuflection, he was gone.

  We stood there smiling. “What was that?” I whispered.

  “It was fucking hot, was what it was.”

  Playfully I swatted him. He caught my arm and twisted it behind my back. From behind me he whispered, “You liked that, didn’t you?”

  I nodded, my head hitting his chest. He pressed against me, his dick nestling my ass crack. “You like being beaten,” he said into my ear, and then he was bending me over, and tugging aside my swimsuit; then he was squishing himself inside. I thought I might faint. Deeper into me, and faster, he fucked: I shivered with pleasure, and a black poppy bloomed in the center of my vision. His cock slammed my brain, scrambled my cells, while he incanted, “You like that, you like that,” and blackness swam before my eyes. I was glad to do this for him. Do this to him. Take away his speech: now only moans were coming from his mouth, sharp noises, and then he was coming, gurgling, so deep inside me that my elbows buckled and my forehead hit wood.

  In the sudden stillness there was only the sound of panting. Slowly I waddled forward until he slid out. Coyly I turned around. His face was a mottled red.

  “God, it’s hot,” he exclaimed, and half-rolled, half-collapsed onto the bench.

  “We should get out of here.” I giggled a little as I pulled my swimsuit back into place. “It’s a miracle no one came in. At least as far as I know.”

  He didn’t respond. I sat beside him and stroked his hair, rocking back and forth, feeling his cum pool in my bikini; everything was sweat, everything was cum, everything was water here in this room. The black poppies were constant now, dark flowers unfurling and exploding. It was so hot. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where do you want to go?” he mumbled, his eyes still closed.

  A vision: his clean apartment, a shower, those big towels, his white Christmas lights. “Your house.”

  “What?” He shuddered a little and pinched his temple.

  “Come on. Let’s go back to your place.”

  He sat up, shaking the sweat from his hair. Beneath the pink flush of his skin there was now a grayish hue. “I can’t tonight.” He wiped his eyes. “I’m busy.”

  My heart jigged. “You’re busy? You’ve got plans?”

  “Yeah,” he said shortly, using the tone he always used with me when I asked for too much. “I’ve got plans.”

  And then, all at once, I understood. It was obvious. “You’re going to her place, aren’t you?”

  He put his head in his hands. He was so wet and soggy and magnificent, a rumpled lion. “Look, Rose. I’m really happy to see you. It’s really nice.”

  “It’s nice? What we just did was nice?”

  He looked at me warily. “Yeah, it was nice. It’s a good thing.” He was turning the color of cardboard.

  “Do you feel okay?” My heart seemed to be pounding all over my body—my head, my chest, my hands.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He squeezed his temple again. “My head hurts, though. I should get going. I’m already late.”

  He stood, and there it was, hot tears sliding down my eyes, tears and sweat and cum in this room. “I just thought,” I pulled him back down to the bench, “I just thought that, when I heard you hadn’t gotten back together with her, I mean, since that always was the main obstacle with us, I mean the main reason we weren’t—” I couldn’t tell the difference on my face, what was sweat, what was tears.

  “Oh, honey,” he tightened a wet grip on my thigh, “that’s not the reason.” His voice was faint and airy.

  “It’s not?” He had only called me “honey” once before.

  “It’s not. And besides, Rose,” and he looked deep in my eyes, “I want you to know, I think Lacie and I are finding our way back to each other.”

  All I did, really the smallest thing, was shove him. Sure, hard, like his chest was a fire door and the building was in flames. Like I had to find my way out, hard, yes, both hands on his chest, and his legs swung out on the slick floor and he toppled over backward. Thunk went his head: very dramatic. Very dramatic of him to stay like that, to pretend he couldn’t move. His eyes rolled back in his head. He had already been sitting, I thought wildly. How dare he pretend I had hurt him?

  What an unbelievable joke, an unbelievably cowardly move, especially after he had taken me, fucked me in this room. It was so dumb. I stood over his prone body, shouting and shaking him, my pulse bellowing in my brain, and slowly it occurred to me that I should probably get some help. Act as if this dumb joke might be real.

  But when I stepped outside the sauna my legs buckled, and darkness swam over me. I sank down, my back against the tiled wall. Better to cool down first, I decided. Just calm my heart for a minute. In the cold plunge pool I doggy paddled around, feeling sore and used between the legs. With curiosity I watched the pale hairs on my arm stand up.

  With curiosity, too, I watched the hot-tub boy and girl go into the sauna. I waited. I skimmed my hand along the surface of the water. Finally it came, and it was almost funny, her shriek. Even from outside the room I heard it.

  Three months after Ian’s death, Portia sold my book, and a year later it came out: a modest commercial success, but with mixed reviews. Some called it beautifully honest; others, troubling. Many decried the narrator’s morals, calling her self-delusional, a narcissist, emotionally blind. We’re all blind, I wanted to protest. We’re all masters of denial. But I kept my peace. I didn’t write any huffy letters to the editor, didn’t publish a personal essay snidely suggesting misogyny had played a role in the reception of my book. I accepted the debut prize nomination, and was then gracious when I lost; I celebrated when the film rights sold, and agreed that yes, someone else should write the screenplay. I was obedient and cooperative in all respects.

  For publishing a novel had indeed changed my life: it had cured me of the desire to write. At great cost, I had gotten down on paper the shame of my childhood; I had killed it dead, and now it seemed nothing would ever be so interesting again. Somewhere deep inside me, I felt it: I was done.

  Lacie, as you’ve probably guessed, is the gallerist Lucinda Salt. She got her start when she inherited Ian’s art—or rather, his parents gifted it to her, all the sculptures and paintings, all the textiles and paper works. Apparently they had always wanted him to go to law school. Or maybe they just didn’t know how lucrative death can be for an artist.

  A few years after the accident, I found a press release online, announcing a retrospective of Ian’s work. Instantly, I knew I would go. I was living in Boston at the time, making minimum wage at a bookstore, but BoltBus was cheap and my curiosity was too much.

  The gallery, I was given to understand, was known as smart, tough, boundary-pushing, though it was so small—tucked away on a side street, down a half-flight of stairs—that I almost missed it. A sheet at the front desk informed me that the model homes in the show were not homes at all but depictions of the artist’s brain, that in these sculptures the artist had been wrestling with the fate that had waited, suspended, in his blood vessels, the mortality under which we all live.

  Funny, to catch the moment the story changed. To see the lie as it clicked into place. I was sure Ian knew nothing of the aneurysm that had, ultimately,
killed him. He was a creature of pleasure, fundamentally; his art was about speculation and fantasy. He wasn’t morbid. He just hadn’t left the sauna in time. But in the hands of a curator, his death had become poetic. His art, his entire life, now led up to it.

  And I had been excised from it. No one had ever connected me to the sauna, no one had ever realized that Ian had been pushed. But still, it astonished me how much it hurt to see myself excluded from the myth.

  Across the thin-planked pinewood floor, perhaps two dozen people were scattered. Ian’s sculptures hung suspended from the ceiling, slowly turning. I barely glanced at them, so astonished was I by the oil paintings. Big and gloppy, maybe six of them, in loud, electric blues and greens, and even though all the color dazzled, I narrowed in on her portrait right away.

  He had done her in pink and gray, with a nasty neon yellow at the edge. He had painted her on her back; he had painted her—I knew, because I recognized her duvet, even as an abstracted smear—on her bed. Her expression was guarded, her beauty ambiguous: her face wavering, her nose too long, her cheeks flushed. He had painted her exactly as I had seen her. He had captured the flickering inconstant quality to her beauty that I loved.

  God, I missed him.

  So struck was I by her painted gaze that it took me a moment to see the second Lacie. But then the sea of expensive eyeglasses shifted, and she came into view.

  She had on kitten heels and a full pleated skirt. Intently she talked to an older man, her hand motions vigorous. I stood to one side, watching. There was something different about her, something beyond the heels and tidy chignon. She was sharper. Cleaner. As if loss had brought her into focus.

  For a long time she didn’t see me, though the older man kept looking over. I think my gaze unsettled him. Finally she turned. Our eyes met. She got very upright and pale.