by Dan Noble
This wasn’t a coincidence. I’d done my homework. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But this isn’t some kooky artist hogwash.”
“You’re wrong there: I never think the word hogwash.”
I smiled; giggled a little. How could it be that this bizarre, incrementally dangerous experience could also be fun? Because stories are not straight lines. I repeated this phrase aloud. And then went on: “They are unfolded, linked, and experienced on any number of conceptual connections. They work because the mind is literary. This is not a new concept in neuroscience. We are wired to understand and link complex thoughts and concepts, memories and impressions to make sense of our world from infancy. The mind works in stories.”
“The mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
He ordered another two beers. I could feel the alcohol loosening the story from my mind. “So don’t you think it’s possible that there are connections we haven’t made yet, simply because we don’t know how?”
“Sure.”
“You’re a man of many words.”
He smiled. People like it when they think you know them. Which is why he put his hand on the back of my neck and kissed me. It was thrilling in the way dream physicality is: indulging in the taboo—cheating in public in a town where your husband is in the paper every day! I shouldn’t! And I am ashamed to say it was this bit that excited me. I tried to reason around the possibility I could be so simply base, but I was hyperaware of where we were and what we were doing, and my skin prickled with this before our lips even met. This is behavior I would be disgusted with in another person. I was not me.
See? I said while I was writing that you can’t predict exactly what will happen: I was turned on. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. And this is the bit that interests me—it’s not a simple write X and Y happens. No, it’s a delicious, rich, brocade of neurobiology that you have to encounter in all its complexity. And it was working. I had to see how far I could take it.
I made it happen. I had done the same with Olivia, so now I could hate that last little bit of myself I hadn’t before. Freedom. Still, it is also true that I picked something easy to begin the test with. I’d known Micko was willing.
When our mouths parted, there was a moment of visual exchange—so close up in his liquid blue eyes—with no room for barriers. Is it real intimacy, the feeling this kind of looking imparts? Or is it an illusion, simply a product of physical proximity? Is there really any difference if the mind processes it the same? At the edge of that moment, just as my exhale completed, I was struck with the thought: imagine if this singular moment was not connected to any of those other particularities, if I were not trying to harness the power of the written word? Being locked in a moment, separate from any other, is a different kind of experiment—one that would surely end in failure, but the execution would be fantastic. Free in the true sense. I believe now that I had hoped this experiment would fail, so I could unburden myself of at least some of the guilt about Olivia—see what I’ve done! It is not possible to write something and magic it into reality. But here I was.
As a woman approaching her forties, there is no romance about groping a man in public. It is done behind closed doors, and this is precisely where we took ourselves once it got underway. On the way out, I don’t think I was recognized by anyone. Though a pinky-blonde woman in flared pants did look familiar to me, I don’t believe she was anyone who knew Gav. My mind imaged her at a register: Perhaps the pharmacy or supermarket? She could hardly be concerned with me. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice me at all.
Mick’s house was an old Queenslander, but not a nice one. It did not even have good bones, he said.
“Why would you pick a house like that?”
“To show I can make something out of nothing.” Perhaps, his look said, we are not as different as you think.
It was methodical, the way Mick removed my clothing—every single piece—and then pulled me to the sofa, where he laid me down and continued to kiss me in that way he had at the bar. Now it was the car ride that had increased the tension. I had watched the back of his head through his truck’s rear window as I followed him here and thought, I know the man whose head that is. I have just kissed him. I thought of the garden rose metaphor. What was so potent about this feeling? It had been only two sets of lips upon each other. I didn’t put too much stock in the similarities in my real and fictionalized reactions, because in the car, I got to thinking, this could be the power of suggestion. I needed a more concrete predictor test. Something Mick would do, something out of my head and hands. I thought over my passages. The words I put in his mouth.
“We shouldn’t, Erika darling,” he whispered into the apple of my cheek.
Some might say Micko and I would have had sex regardless of whether I wrote about it beforehand. But what about the way he twirled my hair, the way he said, “Erin, doll.” It is exceedingly similar to “Erika, darling,” is it not? The way he whispered not just in my ear, but on me, into my skin, “We shouldn’t.”
The act itself did not bring me to orgasm, but I trembled as I felt the tip of him part me. My eyes closed, and I did feel, for that moment, that I was disconnected from the rest of it—Olivia, Gav, the experiment, the guilt, everything. It was so simply satisfying and peaceful that I thought, after, perhaps I had overthought it. Maybe I could disconnect myself from everything and just be this. Was that hope? When it was over, he rolled over onto the floor, sighing profoundly. I giggled.
3
MICK
“This old clunker doesn’t even have good bones,” I said to her.
“Why would you pick a house like that?” she’d asked me.
It was slick, I thought, the way I said I wanted to show I could make something out of nothing. The truth was, it was cheap, and I knew I could do anything with a house—or with anything else, for that matter. I knew she would see it as a common link between us; obviously her romantic side got the better of her. She couldn’t help hoping, not that I could blame her. In fact, it’s what attracted me. If a woman could still be looking to pull through after what she’d been through, this was a woman of strength. I wouldn’t have bothered if I wasn’t attracted.
I could tell she would like me being in control, and I was right. I was aroused at removing, carefully, each piece of her clothing. She didn’t go in for that ridiculous dress-up stuff. They were real, her undergarments; I am a woman, and I don’t need to do anything special for you to understand that, her bra and panties said. And she was a woman, in the truest sense. When she was naked, I didn’t think I could wait another second, but I made myself as I laid her down on the sofa and finally resumed the kiss I’d begun at the bar. It was incredible, the feeling of now allowing her to continue, giving the permission I’d held back all that time. And she was into it. Turned on, trembling and tensing. But there was something else, a kind of fascination, a surprise at it all. She probably hadn’t had sex in years. There was no false show in her action, no playing out a role.
I had memorized the pages on her dresser, and I referred to them now. But not too close, not exactly; just enough to make her think, “Has it worked? Have I forced fate to instigate real events through the fiction I’ve written?”
“We shouldn’t, Erin, doll,” I whispered into the bone of her cheek. You could say I was playing a role, but it didn’t feel that way.
That did it. She grabbed my head, pulled me to her, kissed like she knew magic was happening. And it did feel like magic—all the layers of history, tension, meaning, feeling, coming together in a perfectly paced crescendo—these perspectives I’d never considered before. I whispered not in her ear, but like the way she’d described in her prose, into her skin, “I don’t think we should.” Even I could feel how powerful the effect.
After, she was beautiful, lying there with her arm draped over her head, my mother’s knitted blanket barely covering her chest. I’d orchestrated everything perfectly. Too perfectly. Perhaps I should change tack, I tho
ught. Despite everything, I was fond of her. That day I watched her tapping at her notebook computer, her eyes focused somewhere deep inside, I knew I had to get to that place she’d reached, see it for myself.
And so I left her wanting. I could have made the sex last longer, but I didn’t. She’d see the possibilities and want more. That was better. I could feel her shaking when I entered her, and I almost came right then, but I knew how to stop myself—thinking of cleaning up the horse shit and that. I watched her when she closed her eyes. She was lovely. I felt for her with all her losses—the girl. I remember that day. It was terrible, all the sirens and the military guys everywhere. They thought it was terrorism at first, of course. I’d sat on my rickety, newly scraped porch, with my hunting rifle. I would protect our army families if I had to. I knew what they sacrificed for us. A little fucking girl; savages is what they are. Only they weren’t. It was we who were the savages—a girl sacrificed for a half-hour pizza delivery guarantee. Fuck. A fucking marketing drone! I’d seen that girl—one of those bikes with the handle shooting out the back so Mom could hold it while the girl thought she was in charge. So much thought for such a simple thing. That’s the kind of mother she was. I don’t want to think of it anymore now. Sure as hell, she doesn’t either. I’d made the woman giggle. Better work than any rifle could do.
4
ERIN
It was a Tuesday when I first thought Gav had cottoned on. Normally, he had cereal for breakfast, any old kind we had. But on Tuesday, he rifled through the containers I’d pulled out and asked, “Don’t you ever want anything else? Must get sick of the same thing over and over.”
I was on edge all day. Surprisingly, this did not affect my writing. When I sat down, my mind wandered for ninety seconds or so, but I soon solidified the character Erika based on a study I’d read about many years ago. I couldn’t even remember where I’d seen it, but the gist of the investigation was a character profile for creative people, which showed common traits, including these that stand out in my memory: self-confidence, attraction to complexity, and risk-taking. I had Erika stumble upon the study and find inspiration in this sketch of herself, as a writer, and before I knew it, the study thread had overlapped with the write-into-action experiment thread, and things got interesting. Here, we found legitimacy—to a degree our imaginations could accept—in the route Erika had taken in this half decade after her daughter’s death. And then she went one step further: she had to raise the stakes. I could tell from the way the writing was going, in order to take the story to the next level. But what could she do? I had her ask the question herself, while she drove distractedly up a windy road at the edge of town. All of a sudden the sun lowered to a blinding angle that blanked out the world. That was what she needed, something bigger than sex, something as powerful as what had happened to Olivia, to achieve some more lasting satisfaction. The answer came to her first, instinctively, but she batted it away. She was not capable of murder. Erika tried to gather other ideas—ask Mick to do something dangerous, arrange a meeting in which Gav and Mick would run into each other, risk going to a military hangout with him. But none had the stickiness of the first one. No. Again her mind tickled at the aesthetic beauty of the symmetry. A full circle—death, rebirth, death again. Simultaneously, the rush of the muse took over—shards of detail piled up in just the perfect formation: he lived alone, the act could easily be written off as a building accident. She couldn’t. Could she?
5
IRENE
The first thing I’ll say is this: Gav loved me. I’m not saying he didn’t love her, too, because I believe he did. It’s just that in their case, there are some things you can’t go back from. It started when he came into the BWS Liquors. We’d just had a flat screen installed to play ads and sport, but the girls and I turned it to MKR because I was right into it. Why shouldn’t ordinary people get a chance at showing the world they’re just as good as Famous So-and-So with an ass so big she should be hiding it, not wearing shiny Lycra to put it on display? We had opinions about MKR’s cast; we didn’t like those city girls—the one with the crazy hair and the other one; we liked the ones from Mount Isa. Good country ladies who cared about family and roots.
He came in wanting a chilled bottle of a specific Sav Blanc—not the under-$15 bottles either. I went in back to see if I could find it in the chiller, and I did, and when I turned around, he was in there with me. He must have thought I meant for him to follow, and when he saw my surprise, we both laughed at the misunderstanding, as he clearly wasn’t creepy. That was when I noticed his eyes. They were blue like lots of people’s around here, but they weren’t anything special—not extra bright or deep or brilliant. It wasn’t the color that struck me, it was the effect—like they were closed. Sure, they were open in the sense that he wasn’t asleep, but they didn’t say, have a chat with me, or I’m a happy person, or even, I’m an angry person. They said nothing and forbade you from looking any further.
After the laugh, I looked away, like I imagined most people did. But I couldn’t help myself from turning back. Surely there was some giveaway. I was a people person, that was what everyone said about me, and I didn’t like this impenetrable quality.
I think that was what surprised him, because normally, people must see that look and say, all right, not trying that again. But not me. He looked right at me, with that Teflon gaze (unique words that produce an exact image in the mind, metaphors, he once explained, are the keys to articulation; where had he learned this?), like a dare, it seemed to me. I dare you to say something. But what? That was where I was stuck.
“Here it is,” I said, holding up the bottle, as if it wasn’t obvious from the label.
“There it is,” he said, and led us back to the storefront. I watched his walk, and it struck me as strong. Not that he was flexing his arms and pushing his chest out like a bodybuilder. It had more to do with a heft—not fat or bulky—but solid, something you’d hold onto in a storm. But there was an angle to his posture that said, this is a secret about me. By the time we made it to the register, I knew I would have to find out what that secret was. Yes, man in fatigues, yes, I accept your dare.
6
ERIN
There was one little detail that kept niggling at the back of Erika’s mind, whingeing in the melodic way Oanna used to do as she soothed herself to sleep, reminding me, I’m still here, don’t forget about me. It was that woman I’d seen the first night I’d spent at the pub with Mick. Surely, she wasn’t paying much attention to me; if she did recognize me, it was probably in the same vague way I was trying to place her. But. If there were a murder investigation, she might remember Erika, and consequentially me, with Rick/Mick, and it wouldn’t be difficult to put it together from there. I couldn’t believe how quickly words like murder investigation had normalized themselves in my brain, swimming around with get milk and where are the car keys? It had taken time, but the unreality had transformed to taboo, a dirty secret, and then bravado, and finally, exhilaration and suspense: Would I? And so I made it my mission to work out who she was. This, I thought, was important to working out how to deal with the complication.
Erika parked across from the pub, on the ocean side, and watched for her. If she came, it wouldn’t be difficult to spot her. She had that pale pinky-blonde hair that was striking, and she wore hers long. So she looked out for that. As Erika did so, she tried to place where she’d seen her, but nothing shook loose. The sun was setting, and it struck her again, this idea of beauty being so close, but incapable of penetrating. Erika forced herself to look away from the spreading orange glow on the water, the liquid shape of the wind on its surface. Its beauty felt like Oanna dying again every time she looked.
The next day, when I looked over that bit, two things struck me. One, a tiny, but unsettling detail: I didn’t like Oanna for the daughter character; I changed it to Olena. Two, Erika can look at the effect the sun’s exit makes; she should look. And she should be able to let beauty penetrate. She should find a
way. It felt vital, if she was going to these extremes, that she should.
And so, that next evening, at dusk, I rewrote: when Erika went to the pub to look for the girl with the pinky-blonde hair, she couldn’t help but catch a peripheral view of the out-of-sight sun’s setting rays, as they drenched the water’s surface in color. Before she knew it she’d been watching for five minutes. Something akin to calm settled over her. She felt it mostly in her limbs, which had relaxed, dropped, nearly liquid as the ocean, and it was the most comfortable she’d been in a long while. She could feel the knots and pressure releasing in her shoulder and ankle joints. She turned away. For three days, Erika did this, at different times, in hopes of catching the girl.
When I later followed in Erika’s footsteps, a similar feeling came over me on my third try, after I too had located the pinky-blonde girl and took a minute to see the sun lowering itself over the water. But after a minute, I snapped abruptly out of relaxation. No, I told myself. This was merely the power of suggestion. I had not found pleasure in this sunset, this death reminder, this memento mori. I looked away and made my posture rigid again. Some things should not be changed.
But I’d found her. She was walking in, the way she had for Erika. She wasn’t wearing exactly the same thing—her boots were different, more beat up; there was a gash in the toe I could see from there—and her T-shirt had a triangular logo I couldn’t make out, rather than a retro rock band name.