On the lower decks things become less luxurious, the gold and brown is replaced with standard white and blue plastic. You hear plates and cutlery placed on a galley table. The crew is there about to eat supper. You slip into one of the small bedrooms: a narrow space with a slim bed, everything in place except for a white T-shirt crumpled on the floor.
In the bathroom you pummel the toilet with pee. You aim the stream to hit the front side of the bowl so it makes less noise, at the same time grabbing the dark, wet face cloth at the sink to scour your face. You taste the salt in your pores come to life. A strange, alkaline odour fills your nostrils as you drop the cloth and lower the toilet seat, pulling a small makeup kit from the back of the toilet into your chest. The shower floor, still wet and giving off steam, is so enticing, you want to get in there and blast yourself with scalding water, but you reject it instantly. Too noisy. Instead you look for scissors in the kit, hands shaky, not finding anything but a nail clipper, and with that you begin ripping and breaking the tapes that encircle your body. They’ve become stiff, knotted with strings and covered in crap from Jablonsky’s closet-floor carpet. You only half unravel them, fraying the edges without actually managing to disentangle yourself. Drop that and move on. Panic chiselling away at you.
You prioritize: put on makeup, find clothes. You turn to the mirror for the first time, one hand in the makeup bag already feeling for the sequence of application: foundation, eyes, lips last. And you notice your favourite: British Red. Then what you see reflected back at you in the misty mirror turns your heart cold. Staying perfectly still, you start to cry.
You’ve transformed into everything a Playboy Bunny fears but strives to keep at bay. Wrinkles, pouches, white roots straight as an axe running up against your greasy blonde locks. Snot fills your system along with the flash flood of tears that pushes through you. “Christ!” you whisper as loud as you dare: not only have you slipped into the world of old women within a few days, but the cloth you just wiped your face with was covered in hair dye. “Old woman” and, on top of it, a clownish mask. Two precise lines run through the middle of each cheek where tears fall.
Once, in your girlfriend Denise, you saw how a Bunny had crossed over into that nebulous place where beauty of a saleable kind is lost forever. This odd shared thing: nobody likes to say they were a Bunny once they’re old. Bunnies don’t admit to what they once were. Because then ageing gets measured ruthlessly. So they all go invisible and change their names until you can’t find them anymore.
You get up off the floor and brusquely wash the black dye off your face. Which is pointless. Dye is dye; the question is, how long will it last? You swat at the bloody tapes that slap at your legs but they just fly around and chafe more. You are enraged with the irritation of it. The itch. Your inability to calm down enough to hold tight to one and carefully nibble your way through it with the small jaw of the nail clipper. Centimetre by centimetre until, again, you give up. Set your shoulders square, firm your mouth and smear foundation over the lot. You work quickly until it turns your face sludge-colour. Then add more to make an alien complexion. Followed by shimmering white, green, and gold eyeshadows brushed in bold strokes over your un-punched eyelid. It’s funny to you how the other fat, slitted eye matches the peacock eye. Twins, but sadly, one got all the looks. Both eyes are streaked by a waterfall of Pierrot tears. You dab here and there, and wind your hair, thick with salt, upwards on top of your head where it holds itself. As you are about to return to the punched eye, to approach it from another angle, you hear what is clearly the end of supper for the crew. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror: half-turned and listening, unrecognizable. But you’ve run out of time to feel sorry for yourself so you re-zip the makeup bag and slip out the door.
/ / /
And yet, hasn’t your body become more malleable and lithe? Able to go behind, around and under spaces, unseen? You feel like just another shadow. Your getaways are getting narrower but somehow you remain protected. Has the skin of the dolphin rubbed its myth onto you? Of kingliness, of resurrection? Of being able to be in two worlds at once? When you look in the mirror you see how the garish makeup makes you more crazy, more outsider. More inhuman. How quickly you get used to it, your new state, yet at the same time how quickly your future becomes less and less tangible. It gets away from you. It becomes difficult to see what drives you.
You crouch among the pipes and other metal things that make up the domain of the on-board engineer, not far from the crew rooms. You nestle yourself into a nest of rope. Young people are returning to their rooms and then going to each other’s rooms. You hear games and groping and snores.
Sluggish heat blows off the blocks of metal, you are sweating, and the hums and inner workings of the cruiser reverberate through you, like you and the ship are some great, slow fever.
You doze off then wake to things roaring up for the night. Laughter and bottles cracking. Upstairs, Jablonsky and her husband must be awake now, ready to begin their party all over again. How posh that would feel, to shake off the hangover with an early evening cocktail in the bath. You think of the life you made with the bastard. How much you want it all back now. You had a deal, and both of you knew that the quality of the love wouldn’t last, but that the game would sustain you both. And the money. By sharing one conscience you halved the guilt for what you did. Some nights in bed, you’d curled up together and the heat of your bodies erased everything, all the bad you’d ever done, and as this weight disappeared, as other possibilities looked like they might open up – that you would stop it all for good – your complicity was rekindled. Into the indulgent first sip of champagne, then the next glass, then, “Let’s have another.” Then, “Let’s go out on Coke-Bottle’s boat tonight, and stop at the Cavalia. All our friends will be there.”
You squeeze your pained eyes together, feeling all kinds of new thicknesses and creases, the animal-hoof smell of old makeup.
You get up and head back towards deck. As you pass into the inside of the boat your foot hits plush. The husband is there in his bathrobe, standing at the threshold of the bedroom. His short grey hair is messy on his head. He blocks your way out, stretching his arms up and then throwing his body down to touch his toes, making a giant growling sound. As he comes up you step out and into the lamplight and just stand there. The husband’s face is red and puffy. He rubs his eyes. He isn’t sure but he also isn’t afraid. You push out your tits and grind your feet firm into the lush carpet.
“What the . . . ?” He throws up his hands, turning his head in both directions as if looking for someone other than you. You cough loudly. Your head lowers just a hint but you avoid looking down at yourself. Then he smiles, puts his hands on his hips, squints at you, as if he is seeing against the limits of his own eyes. Satisfied at having come to some sort of conclusion finally, he shifts his weight from one leg to the other.
“How did you get on my boat?” he asks, easing back onto a chair. Then laughs, as if the question were simply protocol. He calls out amicably to his wife. “Jablonsky?”
Do you stay, or take off? You think you hear the word “unbelievable” muttered under this breath. But he’s amused. Your eyes lock, his with a taunting glint, and despite the threat of Jablonsky appearing at any moment, you slowly lower yourself to the floor. The tapes crunch around your bum. The polyester points of the rug tickle your skin. You know, from your Bunny days, that if you put yourself at his feet, so to speak, your chances to manipulate him later are better; that, for a man, a woman getting down lower than him, while holding his eyes, reminds him of the thrilling hint of a blow job. So you fall to your knees. His mouth opens a crack and you see he’s caught his breath. He opens his legs an invisible hint and puts his hand towards your head but then doesn’t touch you.
Instead, he puts his hands on either side of his head, runs his fingers through his hair. The nails are short and manicured. You stay still. Hold his eyes. This is your only chance. You are a taboo that he is still considering. He ha
sn’t called the crew, no, just Jablonsky. Did she tell him about having seen you in the waters last night?
The carpet seems to give off its own heat, residue from the sunlit day. Now he is looking you up and down, his brow strained, furrowed with pleasure. You wonder if he won’t chuckle soon at what you’ve gotten up to. You recognize him, but just barely; you wish you could remember his name so that you could begin to say something. He holds out his hand. Very suddenly. You don’t know what to do. You don’t think he means to do this. It’s an unconscious impulse. In this small uncertain moment before Jablonsky comes, as the warmth of the night encloses the ship, you reach out one blackened, dirty arm toward him, just to test what another body from your world might do, if it would accept you again. Then you hear the shush of the carpet and the instep of Jablonsky coming near. Your arm lowers a little. He laughs again, his face snaps back to its husband-self, as if to say, I had you there for a second, didn’t I? This form of betrayal is so familiar you wince.
“I thought so,” Jablonsky says, and picks up your hand that is still hung there, rejected, and you bathe in the aura of her gardenia perfume. She is dressed in a suit and her hair is combed. She helps you up, leads you to a small eating table, ignores that you’re still locked in the husband’s unwavering gaze. The husband dismisses you by getting up and following her. His game with you is now over. When she turns, she says your name out loud. Her accent makes it feel foreign, and all you can do is try to grasp at her features now that they are not the black hole anymore, but a mixture of peach-coloured skin pockets and wrinkles, the good kind, and you feel confused when, in the next breath, she repeats this name, yours you suppose, ending with:
“You can’t stay here.” And pushes an envelope across the table. Money, you know instantly. And her voice. It was her. Both on the telephone that day on the lowlands, and then again, on the sailboat. You want to run to her. The room is electric, nothing is as it once was.
Her composure is unflinching in the face of the husband, who now, grinning wildly, leans back so you see his belly. You don’t trust him. You return to the authority of Jablonsky’s seriousness as the dead weight of the boat under you cruises vaguely in the direction of Miami.
“Money,” she says. “And you’ll have to get a new identity obviously. You know all about that, I’m sure.” You place both hands on the paper packet, their filthiness against its pristine surface fascinating you. The shapely nails with all those chips – they betray the integrity of name that she had spoken out loud. They are swollen beyond recognition. You see how they are starting to shake as you fold one on top of the other, one on top of the other. A new identity, yes, you see now that that is possible.
“But I don’t want to leave the island . . .” Your voice is out of practice. Jablonsky ignores what you say.
“In some remote parts of Florida. I know there are places you could go.”
I don’t want to leave, you think.
“What happened to your face, anyhow?” And you remember. Laugh loudly at the ridiculousness of it all. A betrayal so complete it isn’t worthy of consideration. How she won’t see that all of this is false and that you deserve to be where she sits now all pristine and pricked up? She says your name again, as if trying to placate something growing in you. And you feel your status waning and you want to shred these blasted nails and all this fucking impossible tape, and a great distance widens between you-as-Pierrot and you-as-this-old-name she keeps repeating, as if to ask:
“Are you really there somewhere underneath it all?”
Pretend to swim your way to Florida, you think, to a new life, but really just turn heel once out of sight and come back to your island with the cash.
“No fucking way, Jablonsky.” It comes as a whisper. It may not have been words but just thoughts. You stand up, suddenly furious. You push the envelope back at her. The husband gets up. “Now, now,” he says, putting his arms on you. At first it’s an echo of that hand he held out to you like a lover or a friend, but then he is wrapping those short, meaty arms around you. You feel how they are covered in grey hair, there is a certain kind of pressure and anxiety in his touch and then you feel his hands try to touch your tits, furtively so Jablonsky won’t notice. You find your own hands under the angles of his arms and untangle yourself from his grasp, backing away.
“Take the money. Please just take it,” says Jablonsky, and you take it from her. She has seen everything. She teeters in what you see are short pumps, half the heel buried.
“We cannot know you anymore. You know that.” You turn to the husband one last time, you are still vulnerable to trusting a man who has taken advantage of you. To turning tricks to gain favours. He stands there flushed, arms benign at his side.
“Run away,” he agrees, then says your name. And you can’t stand the sound of that name because it won’t let you inhabit its luxuries, so you turn heel, for real now, rushing out into the night where the hard white deck is empty, where a waxing moon lights a path on the ocean.
/ / /
You find a way to lodge the money into your bathing suit. Then swim away, in which direction you have no idea. Just get away from them before you have to kill them for knowing you are alive. As if you could actually to that.
You make fierce breaststrokes, your name on Jablonsky’s lips ringing in your ears. The new identity, the one that peach-coloured face seemed so sure was still possible, looms out there before you, in the direction of Florida. But you know you are probably swimming the wrong way.
The island is small. No matter how far you swim out, just like before, you are led back to the original shore. Until you are ready to be fully cast out, you won’t be.
Day five dead
(In which Bunny has sex with
the young man.)
YOU REACH SHORE and come up onto the beach, settle yourself into the leafy grasses that grow alongside a line of large rocks that spills out into the sea, smell dryness against the indulgence of car and suntan oils, sickly sweet mango juice and parched, laundered towels.
You scan left towards a bluish mountain lane hooded by palms and acacia, wide enough for a car to drive up. The villas on either side are like small pastel mints of yellow, green and pink, nestled into clusters of trees that rise up towards a smaller mountain whose top is lopped off. At the foot of the lane is a decorative wall and just below it a beach lined with low-rise hotel resorts: open-air cabins selling Ting soda and Presidente beer. There is plenty of wind that morning before the sun takes over and changes how you see everything. For this brief, in-between moment, all edges are crisp and tuned to the sound of a single bird, one perched for several seconds not a foot away from you. To the right is the sea. Way out in the distance a giant cruise ship goes by. Your eyes move gradually from sea back to shore, observing mast upon mast of anchored sailboats.
You lay back against the sand, looking up to the palm outspread above you. Something you’ve looked at a million times, but never really until now. A formidable arch guarding over ever-narrowing white rings that lead to a smooth, green interior bark. At the top, a mass of loose layers of brown peel that bunch up like a shriveled pineapple. The look of it makes you thirsty. And you itch.
You creep closer to the nearest resort and stretch out on one of the lawn chairs before the attendants start to arrive. You rush over to the free-standing showers to rinse your feet with the lower faucet, then briefly rinse your whole body and hair with the vast spray of cold water from the upper shower. You take only seconds to do this and don’t really come clean. The risk is to be caught by an attendant, even once. They would recognize you forever afterwards. Before you leave you grab two large, striped towels from under a lawn chair.
Back at your huddling place near the rocks, you make your fingers into a comb to rip through your tangles, then arrange your hair into a stiff nest. Once and for all, you rip the tapes off your body, leaving red welts up and down your arms and legs, wincing in pain as you go. With one of the towels you make a sarong aroun
d your body, with the other you fashion a sort of turban around your head. Couldn’t you look like you are simply a tourist, an early riser and one of the resort guests? You emerge from the rocks, towel-wrapped, holding the NAUI card and the cash tightly between your boobs.
A desire for the comforts and privileges of your former existence rushes back into you. The desire to be held by a man who objectifies you. To be seen as an icon of the sexualized, available woman. Isn’t that what the bastard loved about you? How you knew just when enough was enough, how to extricate yourself when a man was done with you, when he needed his space, how to put yourself at the edge of the bedroom to get dressed again, just out of sight of his ritual smoke. Then give him room, let him be. Make sure that if he did glance your way, you showed him your sweeter angles. Now that the sex was done, your voluptuousness was a hostility he’d like to forget. He wanted innocence afterwards. Until next time. You could get anything from a man when his dick was hard, but after that, you were like a rabbit darting in and out of the game, watching him, waiting to see, not sure if you could believe what he promised.
Bunny and Shark Page 4