“What you’re describing sounds more like a switchblade,” the man said. “Not a hunting knife. A switchblade is more in the area of personal protection.”
“Oh, well, that’s what I want. Personal protection.”
He looked me over. I guess I didn’t look like the killer type.
“I could offer you Mace. A spray jar. Like perfume.”
Yes, I thought. That would certainly be good on a date. Mace, by Eve.
“No. I really want the knife.”
“I’m curious. Why that knife? With that handle?”
“It goes with an outfit.”
He looked puzzled.
“Switchblades are mostly for men.”
Don’t I know it, I thought, trying to erase the bloody picture from my mind.
I couldn’t think of any other clue. Any other way to track her down except to become her, a little. Enough to figure out who she was and what she had done. He led me back past the security guard, past a mannequin of a guy in a black leather mask, holding a rope, then past a rack of handcuffs.
“Hey, where are we, anyway?”
It looked like a sex shop, all of a sudden.
“Personal protection,” he repeated automatically.
I was stopped at the whips.
“Protection from what? Vampires?”
“I told you, it’s mostly for men, this part of the store. Here are the knives.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the fetish wear. Studded collars, latex bodysuits. It was this glimpse into the male mind. If you could even call it a mind. Everything was so simple. So spelled out. There was no maybe. No shades of do-I-want-this-ordon’t-I? which, for me, were the whole essence of sex. That tension. This wasn’t even black and white. It was just black. I guess the white was the outer world. Your beautiful bride’s white wedding dress. And meanwhile in your head you were whipping her with this flimsy-looking leather. I fingered it like I was at a sale. It was such bad quality, the workmanship.
“Where was this made?” I asked, looking for a label. “I mean you couldn’t really use this, could you? It would fall apart. Or the person would die laughing.”
“Miss?”
“Is that a dildo?”
He cleared his throat.
“It’s not very realistic,” I said.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course you would. Look, it’s like a leg of lamb.”
“I thought you wanted to see the knives.”
“I do, but—”
“Women don’t usually come back here.”
“They should.”
That’s what you need, I thought. A consultant. Maybe I could get them to hire me. Men really needed help. They were so ignorant.
“Here.”
The switchblades weren’t displayed as lovingly as the ones out front. But I saw mine instantly. The soft handle, the pinholes. For some reason it had stayed with me more than her face. Or instead of. You concentrate on things instead of people, I complained. It’s a form of avoidance, really. Things and sounds and smells. A sliver of soap. A foreign accent. A knife handle. Those you remember. But faces you shy away from. Your own most of all.
“So you wouldn’t happen to have a list of every person who bought this one, would you?”
“What?”
“I’m looking for a woman who had a knife like that.”
“I thought you said you wanted it for personal protection.”
“Well, I do. For personal protection against the kind of guy who attacks the kind of woman who would buy a knife like this. That makes sense, doesn’t it? See, at first I thought, well, I just assumed, it was his knife. But I’ve been going over it in my head and now I realize it was hers. It was hers all along. I saw it in her hand. I never saw it in his. So I’d like to know a little bit about who she is.”
“Listen, are you really interested in buying this item or not? Because if you’re just wasting my time here—”
“Of course I’m going to buy it.”
And I’ll take two of those dildos, I felt like adding.
They were so big they were like furniture. They could be part of my new decorating scheme. On either side of a roaring fireplace. Yes, in my penthouse apartment. Just wrap them up. Do you deliver?
But the knife was enough. It fit in my hand. This surge of power went through me. Back on the street, I held it, hidden, walking slowly, meeting everyone’s look. Practicing.
CHAPTER FIVE
When fall finally came, it was more to people’s faces than the trees. The summer sameness left them. I began to see different colors and shapes: small dark wrinkled purple, veiny red, big bland yellow. They weren’t just tossing manes of greenery anymore. They were all different, clattering past me, this human forest of hope and fear and a million other feelings that didn’t have names but found some matching part inside me. We’re so naked up there, I thought. Our face. The one part of our body we never cover.
“I accept your apology.”
I had climbed the tilting steps, knocked, held my breath, and was relieved when Horace, alone, opened the door. He wore old smeared pants and paint-spattered shoes. He didn’t look formal, for once. His expression was blank and confused. I tried picking up the conversation as if nothing had happened.
“You said you were sorry about her being here when we got back. Remember? And I’m sorry I got so mad at you.”
He looked at me.
My problem, I finally realized, wasn’t deep or mysterious at all. My problem was that I wanted sex in the morning, because it was my night, so it got twisted into ridiculous social encounters, while at night, their night, when everyone else was horny, I was just waking up and wanted to talk, wanted to do stuff, so other people’s lust came across as this incredibly rude behavior.
“You came from work?”
“Yes,” I lied.
I hadn’t been in a week, but I was wearing the outfit, stockings, hot pants, the leotard. I pretended I was just off work as my excuse for coming so early. The truth was, I couldn’t stand being alone anymore. I was afraid to go out, afraid people were watching me, which I knew wasn’t true, but couldn’t help feeling. Horace had been the answer before, when I panicked. He had a calming influence on me. So I got dressed up, as if I had been at the bar, and walked down. But also, part of me admitted, feeling stares from the occasional dog walker and early morning construction crew, I made myself look this way because apparently it was what men liked, and if I wanted a man I might as well try to be what he wants.
The room smelled of coffee. It was arranged differently. The big canvas was propped against the bookshelves. There were open jars on the floor, and brushes lying next to each, on an upturned lid.
“You’re working.”
He nodded.
The one chair was surrounded by equipment. He went back and slumped there. The overhead lights were on. The rays they gave out were thin in the sun. He had been working all night.
“It’s morning.” I went and turned them off. “Look.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he complained.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m stuck.”
He nodded at the painting. I saw his eyes start to focus on it again. To stop him, to save him from himself, I went over and sat on his lap, blocking his vision, the way he had done for me, that time on the sidewalk. His clothes were soft. Paint drops made stiff circles. All around them the fabric just fell away. They were play clothes. I remembered how on Sundays, after Service, we were allowed to change into something meant for getting dirty in, and run over the fields, run not as part of a game but just for the feel of it, in clothes like that, clothes our bodies shaped, instead of the other way around. I faced him, looking into his eyes. His hands automatically came up to hold me. Everything had this predestined quality to it, like it was meant to be. That’s how it felt, whenever we touched.
“What’s this?”
“Oh.”
I took out the knife.
Since I didn’t have a pocket, I had just stuffed it in the waistband of my skimpy shorts. I had a bag, but if someone came up and grabbed your bag, that’s when you’d want your knife, right? It wasn’t at all uncomfortable, the rubber handle. It made me feel like a gunslinger, walking down some dusty Main Street in a small town in the Wild West.
“Look. It’s really cool.”
I flicked out the blade.
His eyes got big. He reared up and almost dumped me on the floor.
“Horace! Be careful. What’s wrong?” I looked down at the blade. It was so shiny. “Oh, did you think I was going to ...?”
He was standing ten feet away from me. With his hands up. And then down. He couldn’t decide where to put them.
“It’s for personal protection,” I said. “I’m not going to use it. Look.” I pushed the point back in. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“What exactly is so amazing about it?”
“Well, the fact that it got you out of your blocked-artist-zombie-funk, for starters. Why didn’t you call? It’s been a long time. Didn’t you want to see me?”
“You told me not to.”
“If I told you to jump off a bridge would you do that, too?”
He stopped being scared and got puzzled.
“But you didn’t tell me to jump off a bridge.”
“Well, not calling me”—I tried working it out—“is like jumping off a bridge, for you.”
I had forgotten his being so serious. It was flattering, but I had to watch what I said. Worse, I had to listen to what I said.
“So my not calling you is like committing suicide?” He frowned.
“It’s just something my mother used to say. About jumping off bridges. Which was funny, because in Iowa there were no bridges. So actually it sounded kind of exciting. Not jumping off a bridge, but just being on a bridge that you could jump off, if you weren’t careful. Where there was even the possibility.”
The good thing was it forced you to be honest. To be bold, even. To say what you meant.
He was still staring at the knife.
“You know what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“You’re my bridge,” I said, putting it away.
He approached me slowly, as if I was some kind of dangerous animal, which I liked, and steadied me, the way he had done before, outside the train. I moved closer. He was looking for the bottom of my leotard. He kept digging deeper.
“Wait, there’s a snap.”
I wanted to do it myself, but he stopped me.
His hand rested between my legs. I swear I felt the subway start up again. We had been at a station this whole time, stuck, and now the train was slowly coming to life. I couldn’t breathe. His fingers found the snap and undid it. There was this release of tension, revealing about a million times more and different tension underneath. I managed to swallow. Once. He gathered the sides and pulled them up. I raised my arms. Everything went black. Oh my God, I’m passing out, I thought, then realized it was the fabric, this scratchy synthetic, pausing, bunching, until finally it gathered enough energy to pop over my head and tomorrow came. He took off the rest of my clothes. My knife fell to the floor. I heard it bounce, gently, and saw where it landed. I didn’t want to forget it. I wasn’t lost in some romantic mist. I was thinking. I was thinking fifty times faster than normal, more brilliantly than I had ever thought before, about everything in the world, everything I normally didn’t have time to think about, because what was happening now didn’t need thought. His shirt smelled of sweat. I fell against it, found one of the buttons, and ripped it out with my teeth.
“Let me just put away the paints.”
“Sure,” I mumbled.
I had this button in my mouth. I got it out and held it in my hand. Marron had his soap, but I had this. It was more of a talisman. It came from closer to his heart. My voodoo was stronger than hers. He started screwing each lid back onto its jar. I could see he liked even this, the cleaning-up part of painting. He did it so carefully. I didn’t mind waiting. Not when I knew what was going to happen. I could ask him anything now.
“Where did you grow up?”
“Japan, mostly.”
“Japan!”
“My father worked for an aid agency. He was based in Tokyo. He used to fly around Asia a lot.”
“What was that like?”
“We lived in a house for Americans. It was very big. It had a yard, which was unusual. They don’t have any room at all, most of them.”
I looked at him again. There was something Japanese about him. How he held back. His inner quiet. He was gathering up the brushes now.
“Did you like it there?”
“I loved it. I really got into the culture. How it all fit. There’s this answer for everything. The right way to do something. Of course, you never question what it is you have to do. That’s determined for you. You just have to learn how to do it. So even though it’s complicated, it’s easy. It’s all technique.”
He stopped, on his way to the sink, and looked at the painting again. I was getting cold. But he kept talking.
“The first girlfriend I had was Japanese. She was the daughter of my calligraphy teacher. That’s like handwriting, but different. It’s more of an art form.”
“I know what calligraphy is.”
“You do?”
“I read a book about it.”
“I never know what you know and what you don’t.”
I know everything, I wanted to tell him, except what’s in your head. And soon I’ll know that, too.
“Anyway, when we made love, I actually saw it as this character we were forming together. Our bodies. This word picture. Brushstrokes. Do you think you could wait just one minute?”
He didn’t listen for my answer. He knelt back down to open up some paint.
“What happened?”
“When?”
“To you and that girl.”
“Nothing. That’s it.”
“Did you break her heart?”
“I didn’t break anyone’s heart.” He sounded sad about it, like he wished he had. “It’s when I decided to go to art school.”
“Marron says you won some prize. That you’re going to Europe, next.”
His face had this unguarded quality, like a sleeper’s, but with his eyes open instead of shut. Oh, bring it over here, I tried sending by mental telepathy. I have a place for your beautiful face. Several places, actually. I even knew what order I wanted him to visit them in. It shocked me. He made me feel so sexually alive. He crystallized my desires. Made them achingly real. I’d never thought about exactly what I’d wanted until now. I just thought I’d like a guy, or to make love. Horace was the first man who seemed created especially for me, for my needs. Every part of him answered some urge of mine. Urges I didn’t even know I had until I met him.
“She says you got a travel grant. Where are you going?”
“Tuscany.”
Tuscany? That wasn’t a country either, was it? Like Mingrelia. Like Westphalia. Why couldn’t these people talk about normal places, the kind you found on maps?
“When do you start?”
“Sometime after my show.”
“So you’re leaving the city.”
“I guess. I hadn’t really thought of it that way.” He put down one brush and picked up another. “Talking to you just now, I think I figured out a way to get going on this again.”
“Great.”
“It’s really a kind of American ideogram.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You help me out, Eve. You always do. I don’t know what it is about you.”
There was this poster that was really popular then. It was of a girl lying naked on her side with this snake on top of her, coiling along the curves of her hips and shoulders. I decided to take matters into my own hands, to be that snake. Because that’s what Eve did, basically, if you thought about it. She accepted the snake-in-her. Adam didn’t. He just ate fruit and got fat and watched
TV. Besides, I was freezing.
“Hey,” he said.
I reached around his waist. My hands were icy. He jumped. My fingers met at the small of his back. I had this fantasy I could lift him, but I couldn’t. Still it was thrilling to try, to feel my muscles test themselves against this resistance.
“You’re like a boa constrictor.” He smiled, condescending, still holding his brush, not taking me seriously. That was the push I needed.
“Want me to swallow you?” I asked.
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That’s what it said in The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I had bought an old, cracked copy for a dollar. The trifle recipe was from there, the faded cover and crumbling pages. I was past all that now. Anyway, what could a lady named “Fannie Farmer” possibly know about the way to a man’s heart? I undid his belt. The soft fabric fell. I didn’t need a cookbook anymore.
Dear Mother,
I just gave a man a blow job and now I’m pretending to be asleep instead of letting him make love to me. Why? I don’t know. I guess because I’m not as “liberated” as you. I wonder just exactly how much sex you really had. You talked about it so much, or referred to it, at least. Maybe I was just picking up on all these comments because they were what I wanted to hear, althoughat the time I remember how much I didn’t want to hear. How I wanted to hold my hands flat over my ears and scream, “Shut up!” You were always droppingthese hints, like there was this central mystery you were dying to let me in on. And I’m still resisting, even though you’re not here and I am. Even though the mystery, whatever it is, is inside me, now. But I still don’t want to know. Part of me. I want . . . What do I want, Mother?
“You can do it to me while I’m asleep,” I murmured.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would be nice.”
“Nice for who?”
I didn’t answer. I found this cave between his arm and side, and burrowed.
“I’ll wait,” he whispered gently, stroking my hair.
Yeah, you’ll wait, I answered silently, disapproving, like his being nice was a character flaw, which it was. He should have shaken my eyes open, spread me out on the thin mattress, and taken me. I meant to tell him that, but I had done such a good job of pretending to be asleep that I almost was. My mouth was the mouth of a cat, with that false, curved animal smile. I wanted claws, so I could scratch, really scratch him and leave marks. Make an impression. He was so hard to reach. Of course, it was my fault, not his. He didn’t realize what a bad person I was. I had already gotten what I wanted. I had had my way with him. That’s how it felt. I didn’t want to make love, yet. I wanted to stretch everything out, because when we got to the end, I didn’t know where that was. Maybe no place. I didn’t know if there was anything to us besides the buildup. That’s what was so terrifying. I ran my hand along his flat, smooth side with this feeling of ownership. He was mine. He was money in the bank.
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