The Body in Question

by Jill Ciment

  Is this why she’s here, to remember being desired that badly? To feel her sexual power again?

  An erection in an octogenarian is less a manifestation of desire than a celebration of life and modern medicine.

  After sex, she can sense his need to talk, the postcoital sharing that lovers do.

  “Is this the first time you’ve slept with someone since you’ve been married?” he asks. His tone isn’t flirtatious. He sincerely wants to know if he is her first affair. As she suspected from his lovemaking, he is developing a tenderness for her, and that isn’t why she’s here.

  She strokes his face to put a salve on what she says next. “I don’t want to talk about my marriage, and I don’t want to know about your girlfriend.”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment,” he says, but his tone is light again.

  He gets it. She thinks he gets it.

  To change the subject, she asks, “What age were you when you decided to cut up bodies for a living?”

  “I’m not a serial killer,” he says, “I’m an anatomist.”

  “Did you own a Visible Man as a boy?”

  “Visible to whom?”

  “A see-through man with plastic organs?”

  “I didn’t want to be a doctor when I was a boy. I wanted to be a musician.”

  “What instrument?”

  “My voice.”

  “Were you a choirboy?”

  “My parents were both psychiatrists who believed that religion should be listed as a disorder in the DSM.”

  “Were you talented?”

  “I thought so.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Stage fright. My acne. The Talking Heads. I saw them in concert when I was fifteen.”

  C-2 saw them in concert when she was thirty. She is grateful that he chose a band she has heard of. Had he chosen a band that she didn’t know, she would have been prepared to lie.

  “About halfway through the concert,” F-17 continues, “Byrne began slapping his head each time he sang the refrain, same as it ever was. The knock on his skull gave his voice vibrato. It sounded as if these were his last words. I knew that no matter how much I practiced, no matter how many hours I trained, I would never be that creative, that uninhibited.”

  He sings in a near whisper, “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was,” and on the third chorus he slaps his forehead.

  She can’t see him do it in the dark, but she can hear how the slap changes his voice, from clarity to stupefaction, crediting the refrain with an illusion of profundity.

  “That was beautiful,” she says.

  “I can only perform like that because you can’t see me.”

  She imagines him at fifteen, the aspiring singer in the throes of acne. A drooping lid is hardly the equivalent of erupting pustules, but she has an idea of what it cost him.

  She touches his face again, reading the pitted skin like Braille. His lack of guile, and the leftover scars, and his precocious understanding of his own limitations cracks open her resolve to forbid herself feelings for him, a crack in the teacup that opens a lane to the land of the dead, according to Auden.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Saturday morning, the Prius pulls into the Econo Lodge parking lot. Her husband exits the car with a shopping bag.

  He shields his eyes against the low sun to search the parking lot for her, where they had agreed to meet. C-2 remains behind the blackout drapes in her room, waiting for the elderly man with the flyaway white hair to transmogrify into her husband.

  “Hey,” she calls to him from the second-story walkway, but he doesn’t appear to hear her over the interstate din. The open door of the Prius catches the sideways glare of the sun. He squints in every direction but hers until he finally spies her crossing the parking lot.

  “I thought maybe I had the wrong motel,” he says, hugging her.

  She walks him to the office so that he can register with the deputy.

  “I have to show ID to visit my wife?” he says, signing the form.

  As they pass the ice machine, he says, “Could they have chosen a more dreary motel?”

  Outside F-17’s door, her husband says, “I missed you so much.”

  She opens her door without a key.

  “We can’t lock the door?” he says.

  She starts to open the blackout drapes.

  “Leave them closed,” he says.

  They sit on the twin beds facing each other. The reading lamp is on. She notices a large bruise on his elbow.

  “Did you fall?”

  He looks at the bruise in surprise. “I must have banged my elbow during the night. Does it feel hot to you?” he asks, offering her the bruise.

  She gingerly touches it. “Does it hurt?”

  “You know you’re old when you look and feel like the morning after but there was no night before. I come bearing gifts,” he says.

  Using his sandaled foot, he slides the shopping bag closer and hands her the first surprise, a set of white, six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He fishes out a week’s supply of chocolate, trail mix, and power bars, and her swimsuit, waterproof iPod and earbuds, and her AquaJogger.

  Looking at her gifts, she fights the urge to confess. If she confessed, where would she position the camera? Behind her, so that only her husband’s face is in the frame? Or behind him?

  They strip the bed together, the one she sleeps on, not the one she uses as a table.

  They undress and get under the new sheets, but they don’t kiss. They talk. Conversation has always been their foreplay. She asks how his memoir is going.

  “Remember the time in Bamiyan? You went off to photograph the cliffs where Taliban blew up the Buddhas.”

  “I went off to photograph the unemployed people who had been the Buddhas’ caretakers.”

  “And I went to the prison made of mud. Anyway, I ditched the warden and got lost and stumbled across a cell with a tiny hole. I looked through it and saw a young girl, maybe thirteen years old, lying in a heap facing the door but with a totally blank stare and nothing else in the cell with her but a blanket and a cot. No sink, toilet, or anything to distract her. I freaked out and got my interpreter and the warden and asked what she was in jail for. He explained that her father had brought her there because she ran away with her boyfriend and their families caught them and then they ran away again. I asked why she had no water and why she was kept so isolated—wasn’t that cruel? He said yes, he felt very bad for her, but there were no female prison guards, so they had to keep her isolated like this without much human contact until a female police officer came by twice a day. He wished they had a female prison guard to take care of her.”

  “Just write it exactly as you told me,” C-2 says.

  Only an hour remains of the visit. It is time to make love. The familiar domesticity takes over. Each gets up for a last urination.

  They kiss and touch, but he doesn’t get hard. “I feel like I’m on the clock,” he says. “You know I want you,” he says. “I can hear people talking outside. The bed is too narrow. These sheets are too slick. I think the words ‘conjugal visit’ did me in.”

  She waves goodbye to him from the second-story walkway. If she had her camera, what would she focus on? The splayed fingers flattened against the Prius’s window in a parting gesture, or the pink updrafts and mile-high purple thunderheads rumbling over the Prius with a tiny starfish in the window?

  * * *

  · · ·

  C-2 has said many forgettable things about photography during the occasional lectures she gives at art schools and universities, but she will never regret saying this: Art is a conversation.

  In her twenties, when she photographed rock stars and socialites for Interview magazine, she thought the conversation w
as supposed to be witty, and sexy, and hilarious, and beautiful, above all else, beautiful, the kind of beauty that inspires adoration.

  When she met her husband and became a photojournalist, the conversation turned to ethics, and beauty was no longer supposed to inspire love: it was an agent for goodness.

  When that conversation became only righteous noise, she started photographing animals, relishing caws, hoots, and bellowing. It took a few months, but she finally learned to distinguish what the bellowing meant. Animals have their own conversation.

  Lately, she has been taking pictures without her camera. Blinking instead of clicking. Why does she need to provide proof of what she sees? Lately, she has begun to suspect that the conversation—the wit and the dogma—was all in her head, like a person who talks to God and to whom God talks back.

  She leans against the railing. Far from city lights, the night sky is both beautiful and sublime. During her lectures, she explains the difference between the beautiful and the sublime this way: The stars are beautiful—diamonds, twinkles, something you can wish upon. The space in between the stars is the sublime—cold, black, and infinite, something that inspires awe and fear.

  She envisions her elderly husband waving goodbye from the Prius this afternoon. Does that image inspire love, something she can wish upon—or awe and fear that the most difficult part of her life is just beginning?

  At breakfast, a Sunday brunch catered by IHOP, the ex-military reads a message to the jury from the judge. The court is treating the ladies, and the gentlemen if they would care to join them, to a manicure and a pedicure this afternoon.

  “They’ll pay for a pedicure and not our drinks?” says the alternate, reaching for the maple syrup.

  “Will they pay for a bikini wax?” asks Cornrows.

  “Did you know you can get an STD from a bikini wax?” the church lady says.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” F-17 says.

  “It is if the waxer double dips,” the church lady says.

  “Show of hands for the pedicures,” the ex-military says.

  Everyone but F-17 and C-2 enthusiastically raise their hands.

  “Have fun,” C-2 says. “I think I’ll take a swim instead.”

  She puts on her bathing suit, the black tank that her husband brought her yesterday, grabs the AquaJogger, but not the waterproof earbuds and swim-pod (she wants to hear F-17 coming, if he comes), and heads to the shaded pool. The sun will not reach it for another hour.

  She is very aware that the bulky sky-blue flotation belt ages her. At least the pool is in the shade. At least she isn’t a middle-aged Florida matron in an AquaJogger wearing zinc block, sunglasses, and a sun hat.

  C-2 normally enters a pool by the steps or the ladder, but today she plunges in—she needs the silence and compression of water, the few seconds where nothing above the surface matters. When she comes up for air, she clips on her flotation belt and begins running. Suspended in the deep end, she runs as fast as she can. The water resists her, defies her: the sensation is like trying to catch a train in a dream. If she were on dry land, she would be running a six-minute mile.

  He arrives with his towel and goggles and beautiful feet.

  “Do you have an injury?” he asks.

  The question confuses her until she realizes that he thinks the exercise is therapeutic.

  “I deep-water-run by choice,” she says. “There is a great lesson in running as fast as you can and not getting anywhere.”

  The ex-military, who lost the rock-paper-scissors wager to his partner and had to stay behind to keep an eye on them, sits upright on a chaise lounge less than ten feet away.

  “You should have brought your bathing suit,” C-2 calls to their guard. “At least take off your shoes and put your feet in the water.”

  “I wish,” the deputy says.

  “Will my swimming laps disturb you?” F-17 asks her.

  “When you are running nowhere, nobody gets in your way,” she says.

  As he passes her on his first lap, a leisurely warm-up crawl, his hand purposely brushes against her thigh on the downstroke. On his way back, hand and thigh meet up again. Back and forth, hand and thigh. She only slows her stride when his fingers reach her.

  The sun has entered the deep end. Under the surface, the light creates spectral patterns of wavy luminescence. Above the water, the sun is brutish.

  One of the pleasures of deep-water running is that she can close her eyes. Only with her eyes shut is C-2 released from the ceaseless dictate to find the right image. She can’t locate him by his splashes alone, and the anticipation of his touch is what she runs toward.

  When she finally opens her eyes again, the world incrementally develops before her, from overexposure to pastels to brassy color, like an old-fashioned Polaroid. She unclips the electric-blue belt, tosses it onto the deck, and swims to the shallow-end steps. She towels off, collects her belt, waves a general goodbye, and strolls up to her room, all the while trying to ascertain, without turning around, if F-17 will be following.

  She peers out from behind her blackout drapes. F-17 is trapped in a conversation with the deputy, who has finally taken off his shoes and socks and is dipping his feet in the pool. Why oh why did she have to suggest that he soak his feet? Now he is going to sit there all day.

  When she looks out the drapes again, less than five minutes later, F-17 has left the pool area, but the deputy has not. He sits soaking his feet with an unobstructed view of the second-story walkway connecting F-17’s room to hers. She hears a door close, and a second later, a single rap on their shared wall.

  She taps back.

  Two sharp knocks respond.

  It takes a few rounds, but she thinks she finally understands the pattern. Her room has the better view of the pool. One tap means No, don’t come over, the deputy is still watching. Two taps mean Yes, the deputy is gone. A simple but adequate binary language.

  An hour later, the deputy is still soaking his feet and their tapping has become babble.

  The voices of the returning jury silence them. The next knock C-2 hears is on her door. Cornrows is rounding up an audience.

  “Come check out our pedicures,” she says, ushering F-17 and C-2 to the lobby. Beside the front desk, the other jurors are modeling their newly painted toenails for the ex-military who had to stay behind and the old Indian woman who appears to man the front desk ceaselessly.

  The church lady’s toenails are conventional red. The schoolteacher flashes a glint of gold. The chemical engineer’s nails are clear lacquer, Cornrows’s powder blue. The alternate hikes up his pants and waves his toes, his maroon nails pointing in every direction.

  “We’re all going to play Trivial Pursuit before dinner,” Cornrows informs the new arrivals.

  C-2 tries to bow out, but Cornrows pouts. “You never want to join in. Come on, it’s more fun with more people.”

  At the long folding table off the lobby, the six of them divide into three teams—Cornrows and the church lady, the schoolteacher and the alternate, and F-17 and C-2. The chemical engineer has excused herself to take a nap.

  The die lands on yellow, F-17 and C-2’s team color.

  The first question is read by the deputy: “Who painted the Mona Lisa? A. Van Gogh. B. Michelangelo. C. Da Vinci?”

  Ostensibly to discuss their answer in private, the yellow team retreats to the farthest corner of the lobby.

  Out of earshot, F-17 says, “I’ll be there as soon as everyone goes to sleep.”

  “Yes,” C-2 says, but she finds herself emphatically shaking her head no, as if to pantomime a heated argument about who painted the Mona Lisa.

  The church lady theatrically coughs. The others are impatiently waiting for their answer.

  “Time’s up,” the deputy calls to them. “Who painted the Mona Lisa?”

  “Da
Vinci,” C-2 says.

  Team blue is up next.

  “How many colored balls are there in billiards?”

  The alternate and the schoolteacher confer.

  “Fifteen,” the alternate says.

  Next is green.

  “What religion was Adolf Hitler?”

  The church lady and Cornrows confer.

  “Mormon?” guess the ladies.

  “Catholic,” the deputy corrects them.

  The yellow team is up again. “Which nail grows fastest? A. Pinky. B. Middle. C. Thumb.”

  F-17 and C-2 retire to their corner.

  “Why did you shake your head no? Should I come or not?” he asks.

  Why must he ask?

  “Time’s up!”

  “Middle finger!” F-17 yells across the room.

  “I’ll come to you,” she whispers.

  Her husband’s sheets are still on her bed.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Just after midnight, she steps outside to see if the deputy is around, and if the other jurors have all retired. The lights are out in every other room. Shutting the door quietly behind her, she reaches for F-17’s doorknob when she spies the alternate less than twenty feet away. He stands next to the ice machine, sucking on a cube, wearing only his boxer shorts, barefoot, his lacquered toenails ten tiny moons refracting the overhead spotlight. Moths swoop around him.

  She jerks back her hand. He flashes her a licentious grin.

  “I guess I have the wrong door,” she says, idiotically.

  Back in the room, her pulse is banging so loudly that she isn’t sure whether or not she hears the single rap on the shared wall. She is too shaken to dare answer it.

  Before breakfast the next morning, lighting her cigarette in the parking lot, he says, “I waited all night for you.”

  “We’ve been seen,” she says. “Last night, outside your door.”

  “Who?”

  “The creepy alternate.”

  Cornrows finds them in the parking lot.

  “Can I bum a cigarette?” she asks.