I took the long way home, weaving through the twilit streets of Greenpoint, absorbing the aftereffects of the inexplicable feeling that had seized me in the church, running over the entire day’s events in my mind.
I might have thought I’d imagined it, the tingle on my hand where my skin had touched Rachel’s, except that she seemed to have noticed it too. I remembered the startled look on her face, the way she’d looked from her hand to my own and then back again. You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything.
As I walked, the memory of that feeling combined with other memories—certain curves of her body, seen in the dim light of my dorm room seven years before. As I drew closer and closer to home, these musings called up a certain state of bodily alertness, of specific hunger.
When I got into the apartment and saw Zoe standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, with her back to me—her blond hair cascading down her back, nearly grazing the waist of the booty shorts she wore as pajamas—I felt inspired to do something I hadn’t done before: to initiate.
If Zoe had heard me come in, she didn’t show it. Sometimes she acted like this, fake nonchalant, ignoring my presence. She probably knew that it thickened the erotic brew to make me wait.
Tonight, though, I couldn’t. I came up behind her, pulled the pot out of her hand, turned off the faucet, then reached around and cupped her breasts. She gave a sharp intake of breath—from surprise or arousal or both, I wasn’t sure. I left my hands on her breasts for a moment and then trailed one downward, sliding it between her legs. She didn’t move.
I’d faintly expected some teasing comment, some gentle mockery of my libido, a light dismissive laugh—“What’s gotten into you tonight, tiger?” But she didn’t say anything. She just waited, calm yet tense, her body alerted to mine the way two animals become alert when they stun each other in a clearing. For the first time, she awaited my move. I did too. I honestly didn’t know what I’d do next. I only knew that for now I had to stand here, to wait, to make her wait.
Ever so slowly, I increased the pressure. She grew slick beneath my hand, and her breathing quickened. But still I didn’t move.
Finally Zoe whispered something, so softly I almost couldn’t make it out:
“Tell me her name.”
“What?”
“Tell me her name,” she said again, louder.
I turned her around and kissed her roughly on the mouth.
* * *
That night, I had a strange dream. I almost never dream—or at least remember dreaming—so this fact was unsettling in and of itself. In the dream, I woke up in bed, but it was Rachel next to me, rather than Zoe. She was curled up on her side, facing away from me, the way she always used to sleep. Her hair was splayed out on the pillow behind her, leaving the downy skin of her neck exposed; her body faintly glowed in the moonlight pouring through the stained-glass window.
I reached out to touch her. But as soon as my hand made contact with her skin, she dissolved into a quivering black mass that then exploded into a cloud of baby bats.
The little black-winged creatures started flying around the room, shrieking like crows. Somehow, this was both terrifying and arousing. As they flew, my body started to tingle all over—the way my hand had tingled when I’d touched Rachel’s arm earlier that day. My arousal was connected directly to the bats’ flight patterns; it was as if they were attached to me by invisible energetic cords, and so the chaotic zigzags and circles they made in the air pulled something toward the surface of my body, just below the skin—something quivering and mobile, that wanted to escape into the room’s swirl of bodies. If this happened, I knew, I would die—the flesh container called Mark Samuels would cease to exist. And yet this burst of entropic flight was what my body wanted. The dark pulse inside me, the tingle on the surface of my skin—they wanted to meet, to turn me inside out.
Suddenly, one of the bats drew closer, hovering in place just a few inches from my face. His eyes were dark beads, his skin shadowy and translucent, his muscles straining and clutching to keep his wings in motion. The bat regarded me with a frank, humanlike gaze; then he opened his mouth and spoke.
“Desire never dies,” said the bat. “It only changes form.” Then he flew into my mouth.
The sound of my own voice woke me up: I was yelling, trying to expel the baby bat from my throat. I could feel his body in there: the rough mammalian squirm against my throat’s slick walls, the pinching movements of his wings as he tried to force himself inside me.
I stopped yelling, raised my hands to my throat. I swallowed a couple of times, to prove that I could. I was soaked in sweat, and my heart was still pounding. I could still hear the bats’ shrieks, see the blur of their bodies, feel the vibration of their wingbeats trembling through the air. I could still feel the tingle on the surface of my skin and the dark roiling beneath. Desire never dies.
Had it all been a dream? The sex I’d initiated with Zoe? My meeting with Rachel? No—there was Zoe’s underwear on the floor where I’d pulled it off last night. There were her shorts hanging over the edge of the bed frame. And when I closed my eyes, I could see Rachel’s face so clearly. I could still feel that fizzy aftereffect of our touch. I could see her walking away. You don’t know anything.
* * *
I didn’t go back to the library. Actually, I did pass the building once, a few days later. But I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. Approaching the building, I saw Rachel through the window, and stopped in my tracks. It was already dark outside, and the inside was lit up with a yellow glow, like a stage. She sat there in profile, hands folded on her desk, frowning as if thinking very hard about something.
Everything about her posture—the spine so straight it could have been pulled from above on invisible wire, the light way her hands rested on the table, her ankles delicately crossed beneath her chair—suggested a person trying very hard to hold herself together. There was a tension to her, like the tension of a ballerina or acrobat, someone who constantly battled invisible downward-pulling forces. I didn’t understand her—I never had—but I felt her. It made my heart ache. I turned around and walked home.
That night, sitting across the table from Zoe as we shared takeout Indian, I said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you consider yourself a…witch? Or…I don’t know the proper term. I don’t know what you ‘identify’ as.” I made air quotes.
She laughed. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just—I don’t understand it, a lot of the stuff you do. Like, can you…talk to spirits? Or anything like that?”
She leaned back in her chair and regarded me coolly, with a faintly amused smile. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff,” she said.
“I don’t,” I said. “Or, well—I mean, personally, I have no reason to. I’m agnostic. I’m sort of…asking for a friend.”
“Which friend?”
“To be honest, she’s my ex. I just ran into her in the neighborhood. She works at the library, I guess. We ended up getting a drink, and I mentioned that you had some background in occult stuff or whatever, and she seemed interested. I guess she knows someone who died recently, and that’s why.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Your ex, huh?”
“Not my ex-fiancée. This is my ex-girlfriend from college. Rachel.”
“Rachel. Rachel.” She repeated the name to herself, as if testing out how it sounded. Then she nodded. “So you met Rachel, you got a drink, and she asked you if you knew any psychics?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, it didn’t exactly happen like that.”
She laughed. “Of course not.” She shook her head from side to side, a gesture that I’d come to read as You’re hopeless. “Let me guess: you guys were just catching up, talking about relationships and stuff, and all of a sudden she mentioned her dead friend and got all vulnerable and wounded.”
I didn’t say anything, but my face must have given me away
.
Zoe laughed. “You’re so cute, Mark,” she said. “You really had no idea what she was doing?”
“She was doing something?”
This, apparently, was the funniest thing Zoe had ever heard. She laughed even harder, doubling over and hooting, then finally murmuring “Oh my God, oh my God” while slowing her breath, just as she did after an orgasm.
Often, in the moments when we weren’t actively having sex, I got the feeling that I was the butt of some private joke for Zoe, that she enjoyed a constant low-level amusement at my relative prudery. But she’d never actually laughed at me before, not out loud.
“Are we done here?” I said.
“Listen,” she said, still catching her breath. “Listen, let me explain something to you. Girls like this? I mean, girls who act all helpless around their ex-boyfriends who are clearly still in love with them and ask for recommendations for a psychic—”
“But I’m not—she wasn’t—”
“Shh. Just lean back and appreciate it for a second.”
“Appreciate what?”
“How expertly she’s seduced you.” She shrugged. “But anyway, sure, I’ll play along. If she wants to come talk to me about her dead friend, I’m game. Or I’m happy to give you an excuse to bring her over. Sounds interesting.”
“You think that’s what I’m really asking you to do? To help me get my ex into bed? Give me a little credit, Zoe.”
“But I bet that’s what you really want.”
“Well—” I felt my face turn red.
“I knew it,” she said. She slapped the surface of the table and giggled. “Markie has a girrrrrlfriend!”
“God, Zoe, what are we, in sixth grade?”
“I’m just having fun.”
“What about you?” I said.
“What about me?”
“What’s your game?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you want to help me hook up with Rachel? So that once I’ve brought her here you can scare her away?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “I don’t scare anybody.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Why bother? Look, I’m going to bed.”
She shrugged. “Fine. But if you want, Markie, I’ll be your wingwoman. I won’t fuck anything up for you. Scout’s honor.” She sat up straight and held two fingers up in the Scout’s pledge position, then separated them into a V and thrust her tongue between them. I rolled my eyes, and she collapsed into giggles.
“Forget about it,” I said. “This whole thing is too weird.”
“What thing?”
“This,” I said. “Everything. You. Rachel. Brooklyn. All of it.”
“Listen,” she said, getting up. She pulled her bag off the back of her chair, extracted her wallet, and rummaged around for something. “Ah. Yes. Here it is.” She held out a business card. “Take it.”
The card read,
DR. B MOON
METAPHYSICAL ACUPUNCTURE
Underneath was an address on Thirty-Second Street.
“Metaphysical acupuncture?” I asked.
Zoe shrugged. “Dr. Moon is kind of my guru,” she said. “You can pass this on to your friend if you want. And then she can ask me about it when she comes over.”
“If she comes over.”
“Right. If.” She winked.
“Anyway, uh, thanks, I guess. Good night.”
“Night,” she said with a languid shrug. She plopped back into the chair, took another sip of her tea.
But when I paused by my bedroom door and turned back to look at her, her arms were folded and she was staring into space, her brow furrowed. I had never seen Zoe look like this—look worried—before.
* * *
I wasn’t yet sure what to do about Rachel—whether or not I should try to see her again. But one thing was certain: in the week that followed, she became an invisible yet palpable presence in my shared life with Zoe, hovering constantly at its edges. We never mentioned her again, but something was different. Our interactions took on that charge that can only come from triangulation, from the loom of an outside presence. We were always aware of Rachel—the way that you might live a mile inland and still faintly smell the ocean, taste its salt beneath your covers, or on your skin.
The balance of power had shifted. I no longer waited dumbly on the couch for Zoe’s periodic assaults. Now, instead, we did nothing for long stretches of time—orbiting each other, skirting the charged field that lay between us—and then, when the tension threatened to boil over, one of us would attack. She would come up behind me and leap onto my back, attaching her mouth to my neck like a jackal or a vampire, or I would step into the shower after her and yank her wet rope of hair into my fist.
Meanwhile, I managed to stick to my schedule—to continue going through the motions at work, to prep for the GRE—but I couldn’t shake my restlessness. Even the genial puppet show I’d always done for the younger kids at the zoo took a dark turn. Edgar the Elephant (played by me), a talk show host who interviewed various members of the animal kingdom, started to go off script: sassing his guests (“So how’s it feel to be the third-fastest runner in the animal kingdom? I mean, that’s what every athlete hopes for, right? A bronze medal?”) or interrupting them to tickle them or insult their morphological traits (“So, Lizzie, I hear you have a cloaca. What’s that like?”). Sometimes he didn’t ask any questions at all, just went off on ranty monologues about ivory poachers. My colleagues, playing Edgar’s guests, gamely attempted responses to his increasingly off-kilter presence, often struggling through their own laughter. The show got less and less educational each time, but the more inappropriate Edgar became, the more the kids loved him, so nobody gave me a problem about it. I was practically the most senior person in the department by then anyway.
To make matters worse, it seemed as though that month all the zoo animals were doing it, everywhere and all the time, conspicuously.
I became more aware than ever of the ridiculous equipment Mother Nature had bestowed on her creations for the purpose of fucking. Not only the flamboyant signals of sexual availability—the peacocks with their impractical plumage—but the plumbing itself. The tapir had a penis nearly the length of his body; sometimes, when it was semiflaccid, he stepped on it by accident while padding around his pen. This didn’t seem to bother him. Odd, how a penis could sometimes be a barely noticed encumbrance, and other times could become the captain of one’s existence.
The classroom where we conducted our educational activities at the zoo bordered the silverback pen, or “habitat,” as we euphemistically called it, separated only by a giant floor-to-ceiling window. When this window was uncovered, we could look directly in on the gorilla family: Bud; Marie; their babies, Stella and Josephine; and a few aunts and uncles.
It was a wonderful moment, usually right after we’d distributed the kids’ afternoon snacks on the first day of a program, when someone slowly drew back the curtain for the first time. The children would gasp, then abandon their carrot sticks and flock to the window, suddenly face-to-face with a family of gorillas. They pressed their little hands and noses up against the glass, and Bud and company hammed it up in return: wrestling, doing somersaults, occasionally even coming up to the window and pressing their hands to the children’s, prison visit–style. To anyone watching, it was eerily obvious how close our species actually were: the children’s faces were suddenly the faces of primates, the gorillas’ eyes undeniably protohuman. You had the profound sense that they knew us, perhaps as well as we knew them. Or better.
But one day that week, a kid shrieked, dropped his juice box, and yelled, “What are they doing?!”
You can guess what they were doing. We had to run over and close the curtain, as quickly as we could, while putting on a DVD of The Lorax to distract the kids, pretending that this had somehow been the plan all along.
It seemed kind of stupid, our frantic effort to conceal this part
of nature from our nature curriculum, but I could imagine the kind of phone calls we’d get from concerned parents otherwise—parents who wanted to keep their children in some sort of preoedipal Eden despite the fact that they lived in the world’s most libidinous city, where no one could stay innocent for long.
* * *
It happened with Rachel, in the end, like everything else that happened after I moved to Brooklyn: inexplicably, independently of my conscious will, seemingly by magic.
It had been a particularly exhausting day. I’d done a snake demo, explained the difference between reptiles and amphibians at least four times, helped a kid out of his urine-soaked clothes after he got overexcited at the prairie dog exhibit, wiped multiple snotty noses. I’d performed Edgar the Elephant twice, and both times I got the sense that I was actually beginning to make people uneasy: when I came out from behind the puppet theater, most kids were still laughing, but several wore the distinct look of holding back tears.
At the end of the day, after our staff meeting, my boss, Cathy Horn, pulled me aside. “Can I talk to you?” she asked.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I mean in my office.”
Cathy Horn—who none of us could bring ourselves to call by anything other than her full name—was a herpetologist by training, and her office was plastered with lizard photos the way some teenage girls’ bedrooms sport wall-to-wall images of Brad Pitt or Justin Bieber. I mean literally wall-to-wall. She especially had a thing for photos where the reptiles stared directly at the camera; to sit in her office was to confront hundreds of yellow lizard eyes, all at once. Including Cathy Horn’s. She did look a bit reptilian herself: small dense body, wide flat head, permanent slouch, a kind of squinting blink.
The Regrets Page 14