Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  “Did he become a pirate?” Dark asked.

  “Plumber,” she said.

  “A hook is probably a good tool.”

  “He wore a hat that said, ‘Plumbers Have Bigger Tools.’ ”

  “In public?”

  “Everywhere,” she said. “He was a drunk, so it was often a bumpy ride, and by ‘bumpy’ I mean violent and vaguely pervy, but he could be good for a laugh once in a while. Before he became a plumber, he drove a truck for Frito-Lay. It didn’t have passenger seats, so I had to stand in the well and try to keep my balance while he tore around the neighborhood. Once, when I was about seven, we were stuck in traffic and a cement truck pulled up next to us. The tank was painted with swirling red and white stripes. I asked what was inside the tank. ‘Clowns,’ he said gravely. ‘That’s how clowns are made.’ Another time I pointed to the fuse box in our garage and asked him what the switches were for. He said they blew up the house, and to never touch them.”

  “Did you touch them?” Dark asked.

  “Twice,” she said. “And the cops came both times, and so I thought maybe that’s what the switches were actually for. They brought the cops to our house.”

  “Who was calling the cops?”

  “I think it may have been our Korean neighbor, Mr. Hwang. My father beat up my mother in the driveway once, because she was too drunk to get out of her car. It was her birthday. So, he pulled her out of the car with his good arm and kicked her toward the house, and I’m guessing the Hwangs watched the whole thing. I flipped one of the switches that night, and the cops showed up minutes later.

  “Anyway, I ate dinner at the Hwangs’ five nights out of seven. They got me into kimchi and fish cakes, which I still crave. The first time they served me rice, I asked for butter, salt, and pepper, and they laughed for thirty minutes. I introduced them to Ding Dongs. Their son, who was a teenager, asked me to watch him bathe once and while he was shampooing his hair, he admitted that he liked sticking golf tees up his ass.”

  “Your stories make my blood dance,” Dark said.

  “This weed is pretty good,” she said.

  “Would you stick a golf tee up my ass?”

  “I would, actually,” she said. “Take off your pants.”

  He unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall to the kitchen floor.

  “You give my boner a boner,” he said. “You fill out all the corners and edges.”

  The sex gave her a peculiar rush, as though his life—not hers—were flashing before her eyes. They liked to do it all over her apartment, but especially in the living room, while watching baking shows on PBS.

  “You give me such an appetite,” she said.

  “For coconut cake or my cock?”

  “To live,” she said.

  * * *

  ON THEIR FOURTH THURSDAY TOGETHER, she indulged his apron fetish and allowed him to film her cleaning her stove in an apron and nothing else. He zoomed in on her tits as she soaked the burner grates and knobs in soapy water, and then pulled back into a wide shot when she got on her knees to wipe down the walls of the oven.

  Housekeeping porn, he called it.

  “If you put these videos on the Internet, it’s over,” she said.

  He put the camera down. “I wonder how you’ll write our story.”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I probably won’t, honestly. Unless our story takes place in your house, which it can’t.”

  His mood seemed to darken later that night. He did a little yoga, which made her uncomfortable, and then stayed in the corpse pose for over an hour, staring at the timbers in the ceiling. She tried to rouse him with fresh mango and peanut butter tacos on homemade corn tortillas, but he remained still and sullen. Not even her hands and mouth would bring him out of it. She got into the corpse pose next to him and asked if she’d done something to piss him off.

  “Of course not,” he said, startled. “I’m sorry I’m distant. It’s the anniversary of Lucinda’s death.”

  The beams in the ceiling—long, rough-hewn, made of fir—seemed to swell slightly.

  “What kind of tree was it?” Mona asked.

  “Spruce,” he said. “A very tall, very rare black spruce. She fell forty feet.”

  Not the time to ask, obviously, but she wondered where he kept Lucinda’s hair. In a wooden box? Maybe she’d look for it the next time she cleaned his house. She wished she possessed a physical piece of Mr. Disgusting. His teeth, perhaps. She imagined a musical jewelry box containing his dentures, along with a tiny, twirling Mr. Disgusting figurine.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Dark asked.

  “Dead boyfriend,” Mona said. “Junkie, tough guy, softie.”

  Crap, it was happening again. The fragments. Always a struggle to talk about Mr. Disgusting in complete sentences.

  “How old was he?” Dark asked.

  “My father’s age,” Mona said. “Lived in a residential hotel. Stole flowers for a living. Had a funny way of walking with his hands clasped behind his back. Loved to dance. His signature move: scratching behind his ear like a dog. His favorite food: cottage cheese, which he covered in black pepper and devoured by the quart. We were always on some wild goose chase or treasure hunt. He was a gentleman, but I could never bring him to, say, my cousin’s wedding or whatever. He didn’t mix well with others. He considered our relationship a grand romance worthy of literature.”

  “Sounds like you miss him,” Dark said.

  “I miss his voice,” Mona said. “He could say something like, ‘I’ll stuff your beaver for you, no charge,’ and I’d melt.”

  “Did his dick work?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Didn’t matter to me.”

  Dark made a noise in the back of his throat. She looked at his face and saw that his cheeks were damp. She pictured him marching around a tree in the sweltering heat, pulling against the ropes, waiting for his skin to break. Perhaps it was time she went out on a limb. Perhaps it was time she offered something new and untouched, something that would work as a salve. Not for her, but for him. The man had suffered as much as she had, and she knew she wasn’t likely to meet anyone like him again.

  “We haven’t known each other long, but I feel like I can be myself around you,” Dark said. “My authentic self. I think it’s because I’ve fallen for you—”

  “You can put it in my ass, if you want,” she said suddenly, and immediately started sweating.

  The thought of his ample cock up there terrified her.

  He laughed and turned to face her. “That’s the strangest reaction I’ve ever gotten to telling someone I’m in love with them.”

  Mona felt her face redden. “I wanted to make a flesh offering,” she said. “You know, to ease your suffering.”

  “You don’t need to suffer for me,” he said. “And you’ve already offered your flesh.”

  “I love you,” she said. “Which is ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re married?” she said.

  They did it on the floor. Afterward, they fell into a pleasant stupor that lasted the rest of the evening. He dozed off at one point and she discovered that he drooled in his sleep. She usually reserved just a tiny bit of disgust for whomever she was dating, especially when she pictured them as a baby or a geriatric, but she couldn’t find a thing about him to repulse her. He could have drooled all over her—it would not have mattered.

  “Who is he?” Terry asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Mona said.

  * * *

  HE STAYED AWAY WHEN SHE cleaned his house, but he left love notes for her. In the first two, he’d plagiarized Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and, strangely, Margaret Atwood. In the third, which he’d boldly taped to the mirror in the master bath, he’d written:

  My favorite M,

  I grow increasingly enamored of you with each passing day. Please stop taking that ridiculous course to reduce your accent—it drives me wild and is clearly the language of love.

  Of cou
rse she didn’t have an accent. She smiled and placed the note in the back pocket of her jeans. Then she reached for one of his dirty T-shirts in the hamper. She huffed on the T-shirt as she sprayed the shower walls with Scrubbing Bubbles.

  “I love foam cleaners,” she mumbled to Terry.

  “Whose T-shirt is that?” Terry asked innocently. “And why are you sniffing it?”

  “I’m working up to telling you about it,” Mona said slowly.

  “There you are,” Rose said from the doorway.

  Rose was wearing head-to-toe white rather than red, huge black sunglasses, and girl shoes. She looked stunning. Mona dropped the T-shirt and felt ashamed, as if she’d been caught with her hand down her pants. She hadn’t seen Rose in weeks, not since she started sleeping with her husband.

  “I’ve missed you,” Rose said. “I could smell you when I walked into the bedroom and it gave me such a lift.” She laughed.

  “So, I don’t smell like suicide anymore?” Mona asked.

  “You smell like you,” Rose said. “And like . . . sex, actually.”

  Mona stepped out of the shower. She watched Rose grope her way toward the toilet, and then lift her skirt and sit down. Mona noted the size of her ass—tiny—and felt like an ape suddenly.

  “Are you exhausted?” Rose asked. “You seem subdued.”

  “My arms are hanging lower to the earth,” Mona said.

  “The cleaning lady used to put the lid down,” Rose said. “I’m glad you don’t do that. I hope you don’t mind that I’m peeing in front of you.”

  “Your piss smells like champagne,” Mona said.

  Rose laughed. “I bet you look pretty today.”

  Mona glanced at herself in the mirror. Too much eyeliner, as usual, and her hair was falling out of its braid. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re being modest,” Rose said. “Philip told me.”

  Philip. What a ridiculous name. She would never call him Philip.

  “He’s exaggerating,” Mona said. “Or trying to make you jealous.”

  “I’m not prone to jealousy,” Rose said, “which is why we’re still together.”

  Rose finished peeing, dabbed her probably dainty vagina with too much toilet paper, and stood up. She didn’t flush. Now she was standing too close, as well as blocking the exit. Mona wondered if this was a Rose thing, or if blind people everywhere were standing in the wrong place.

  “Who picks out your clothes?” Mona asked.

  “Chloe,” Rose said. “And Philip sometimes, when he’s in the mood.”

  “Do you see other people, too?” Mona asked. Was it rude to use the verb “see”?

  “Philip and I don’t have the same needs,” Rose said. “He craves intimacy. And intensity.”

  “What do you crave?” Mona asked.

  Rose removed her sunglasses. Her eyes were puffy, as if she’d been sobbing for two hours. “Solitude, I guess,” she said. “And stability.”

  So, you don’t have an open marriage, Mona thought. But your husband does.

  “I want him to have the best possible time,” Rose said. “We’ve both suffered a lot, and I want our marriage to last forever, and I’m self-aware enough to know that there are certain things I can’t give him.”

  “You mean, like, sexually?” Mona asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no. We have a fulfilling sex life,” Rose said, and put her sunglasses back on. “We always connected in that way. He’s so intuitive and generous and just, well, gifted.”

  Why was the bathroom floor moving?

  “The room is spinning,” Terry whispered. “Hold on.”

  Mona stepped toward the open window and put her hand on the sill. There, there, cookie.

  “Philip has a hole in him,” Rose said.

  Mona focused on the holes in the window screen. “How big of a hole?” she managed to ask.

  “The size of Lucinda,” she said. “Plus, he hates his mother and calls her a cunt. And he drinks too much.”

  Outside, a clear plastic bag was blowing across the yard, and Mona thought fondly of the exit bag. Perhaps it was time to rent a helium tank for her “birthday party.” Maybe Dark would find her body and chew off some of her hair. She missed him terribly.

  “I still love him,” Rose said.

  “Am I the only other?”

  “You’re the only one nearby,” Rose said. “He has someone he sees in Alaska, and I think he might have a girlfriend in Albuquerque—a waitress—but he may have ended that.”

  A waitress? In Albuquerque? She pictured a young woman in a white apron taking his order. Had he used the same line on her? The way you wear that apron makes me want to crush granite with my teeth.

  “I never got his attraction to her, though,” Rose said. “You, I get. You’re my all-time favorite. In fact, I’m a little pissed off because I feel like he stole you from me. But I guess he found you first, technically.” She smiled.

  I am not a dog, Mona thought. I am not Dinner.

  “You’re not Dinner,” Terry repeated.

  I’m not dinner, either, Mona thought. I am a side of potatoes.

  * * *

  SHE WAITED FOR ROSE TO leave before systematically searching every inch of the master bedroom. Not sure what she was hunting for exactly, or what she hoped to find. Physical evidence of their lovemaking? Love notes for the waitress? Her hands shook as she went through the trash. No used condoms, but so what, and nothing interesting in the nightstand drawers. She pulled the duvet off their mattress and noted grease stains here and there on the sheets. No apparent come. She figured the grease was lube or massage oil, but then she found an empty carton of lo mein on Dark’s side of the bed, along with a pair of Rose’s underpants.

  “Terry,” Mona said. “Do you think couples who eat in bed have fulfilling sex lives?”

  “Depends,” Terry said. “What kind of food?”

  “Chinese.”

  “I’m sorry, but yes,” Terry said quietly.

  Mona picked up Rose’s lacy thong and let it dangle from her pinkie for a few seconds before bringing it toward her face.

  “Don’t do it,” Terry said.

  Rose smelled like geraniums and a very specific spice Mona rarely used. Cardamom?

  “Jamaican allspice,” Terry said.

  Mona dropped the underwear and peered under the bed. She pulled out a large hatbox. Inside, half a dozen worn, spiral-bound notebooks. She plucked out a red one and opened it. Judging from the large, looped cursive, the heart doodles, and the abundance of exclamation points, it was the diary of a girl just shy of her eleventh birthday. It seemed to be written in code.

  Dear Diary,

  I give last night a 3 out of 10. I waited two whole hours for [crown symbol], who came in at eleven o’clock and sat in the chair and read a chapter from The Count of Monte Cristo & I felt like I was floating & that thing started happening with [rose symbol]. I wanted [heart symbol] like last week, but it didn’t happen. My chins [shins?] hurt real bad & [crown symbol] rubbed them and I got tears on my shirt. [Crown symbol] kept touching [rose symbol] but there was no [ice-cream cone symbol]. Maybe tonight if Mom goes to the movies with her friend. Anyways, when I woke up this morning there was a SPIDER IN MY BED!!!

  There was no key or legend, of course, but Mona’s own [heart symbol] felt weak and heavy, because the diary clearly belonged to Rose, and [crown symbol] was clearly Rose’s father, and [ice-cream cone symbol] was clearly not ice cream. Rose clearly didn’t know—had never known—what was good for her, and probably still didn’t, which was why she let her husband bone the cleaning lady, along with a waitress in Albuquerque, and who knew how many other women in aprons.

  Mona leafed through a second notebook. Rose’s handwriting appeared adult sized and she’d dropped most of the code—only the crown remained. She described her longing for crown’s body, particularly his hands and fingers, and the wetness between her legs when she fantasized about him. Her descriptions were overwrought, romantic, and, shamefully, a lit
tle arousing. In one entry, she’d been grounded for breaking curfew and was waiting for him in bed. Eventually, he came in and sat on the chair, and she begged and pleaded and bared herself, but he refused to touch her, and that was her punishment: not being molested.

  On the last page of the notebook, there was only this: “Marilyn Monroe died on a Saturday night. Her, of all people, alone on a Saturday. Imagine that.”

  Now Mona had tears on her own shirt. There were more on the way. She replaced the notebook, climbed into the closet, and cried into the sleeve of Dark’s jacket. She pictured Rose in her childhood bed, waiting to be crowned, as it were, and then blind, counting her way around town. The counting made Mona cry harder than the crowning.

  She canceled her next two dates with Dark. She would’ve canceled the following week’s housekeeping visit, too, but she needed the money and didn’t want to disappoint Rose, whom she felt was largely innocent in all of this.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER, HER FIRST impulse was to dip into the box of notebooks again. As she was lifting the bed’s dust ruffle, Dark jumped out of the closet, scaring the shit out of her.

  She screamed, which only made him laugh. He opened his arms, apparently expecting an embrace. She swung at his chin and missed. He caught her by the wrists, and she fought and kicked, but when his pencil-shavings smell drifted into her nostrils, she felt her arms weaken. He wrestled her to the floor, where they did some grappling. The next thing she knew he’d ripped her favorite pants and put himself inside her.

  The sex felt like an opiate nod. Random, unfamiliar images flickered behind her lids, accompanied by that feeling of forgetting something, and then falling, and falling again. Dark’s hand was gripping her apron, using it as leverage, but she was clinging to a large, swinging chandelier, looking down at a roomful of faces. His dry hand squeezed her thigh. Jeremy Irons offered her a cigarette. She looked for a light in her purse and found a barf bag from Japan Airlines. Dark’s hand covered her mouth. She fell off some scaffolding and landed on Mr. Disgusting. A man on a sidewalk spoke Spanish to her—not Henry Miller, but the guy that played him in the movie, or maybe it was Sam Elliott—and then she was sitting at a vanity. Dark’s hand was around her throat, squeezing. She didn’t recognize her face in the mirror. Dark pulled out and let loose on her bunched-up apron.