Animal

by Lisa Taddeo

  —There’s a fine for drinking in Malibu, she said, but I don’t know, I’ve never been caught.

  The beach was remarkable because of how close it was to the highway and because I was with Alice, who took off her sandals and led me to the shoreline. She was a Pisces, like you. She sat down on the sand and set the box of clams before us.

  —Here, she said, they don’t need salt but lemon, all right?

  She indelicately squeezed lemon across them all. I hated clams. They tasted like blood and metal. My father loved them. I’d watched him eat hundreds.

  —Oh, God, she said, sucking one down, that’s all I need in life. Clams, beer. The occasional fuck. Twice a month, someone nice. Hey? I really weirdly want to know all about you.

  —It gets darker.

  —Tell me the rest of Big Sky. We are getting to something. I can feel it. Please don’t call me crazy, I’m not sucking up or being a metaphysical twat, I can just feel this.

  A V of birds flew by overhead. There weren’t too many people on the beach, just some wetsuits in the distance. The water was dark. Suddenly I missed him so much that I felt I was about to get swallowed by the blackness all over again.

  I told her that he was more than a man for me. He was a jetliner to a world I so terrifically wanted to be a part of. As a girl I was enthralled with the American restaurants my family never went to. Places with teak banquettes and warm lighting. One place in particular, a vegetarian American café, I dragged my parents into, and the waitress, who had a thick blond braid down her back, served us a loaf of warm pumpernickel bread on a scratched walnut cutting board with a knife and soft butter in a steel ramekin. Ivy plants dripped from the ceiling. At home, it was melting slices of prosciutto and wedges of Parmesan wrapped in cloth beside a grater. Big Sky was a passport to being American.

  —Everybody wants to be Italian, Alice said, and there you are, trying to slough off your own particular beauty.

  —Where in Italy did you and your mother return to?

  —Porto Ercole. Have you heard of it? It’s in Maremma. We had a wonderful little cottage near the water. I don’t know why we left.

  —You never asked her?

  —Please, she said, I’m boring. Continue with your story. It’s like a warped fairy tale.

  I smiled and told her how Big Sky grew up in the mountains and rivers, fly-fishing in Wisconsin and Montana and riding horses and herding cattle. He was a man you could put in a seersucker suit for Easter, but he also chopped wood and understood how meat was processed.

  I told her how he emailed me the very next morning after our sloppy session in my bed. I left my gear, can I pick it up later?

  The font looked different to me from the Sweet dreams message of the previous night. I could feel the chill. I thought of all the boys I had jerked off because I didn’t want to risk disease by putting my mouth on some twiggy, contagious penis. With Big Sky I finally understood why other women risked themselves. I wanted to walk around with him inside of me.

  —Fuck, Alice said. I have never felt that way. In the moment, sure, but not after the man left. Does that mean I haven’t been in love?

  —I think it means that I haven’t been in love.

  She smiled.

  —I wrote back, Sure. He said he’d come by after work. So I spent an entire day getting ready for him. The whole day. Every little thing, including putting a flower in a rocks glass in the bathroom. At five thirty my doorman—don’t misunderstand, it was a shitty building, it was one of those accidental grandfathered-in doorman situations—called up and announced Big Sky’s first name and I began to shake. Do you want to know what I was wearing?

  —Oh, God, she said.

  —A long-sleeved navy Henley, very fitted and tight around my waist. It ended just above my hip bone. Then my white lace panties and that was it. Bare legs down to a pair of high-heeled Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes.

  —Jesus Christ.

  —The colors were off, the navy shirt and the black shoes and the white underwear.

  —I was going to say.

  —It was humiliating. I was a disaster.

  —But he didn’t care.

  —No, in fact, I am fairly sure he did. It was one of those moves you think is a good idea in your head. But if you slept on it, you’d say, Whore! Dumb whore.

  —Had you consulted with any friends?

  —I had nobody, I said, but I thought of Vic. I hadn’t told him about Big Sky until Big Sky began to drip away from me.

  I told her how I heard his knock and the blood from my heart leaked down my legs and I walked to the door with his headset and cap in my hand, and the sound of my heels clacking immediately wrecked my confidence. The sound of my heels was the sound of loneliness. I considered running into my bedroom, pulling on a pair of pants or sexy shorts, but at the very least removing the heels for fuck’s sake. But I opened the door as planned. He saw me half-naked, took me in. He looked shocked but not in the way I had hoped. I suppose I was hoping for him to be a cartoon of the regular man. Horny, tongue-wagging. Or to look at me the way Vic would have if I’d ever opened the door for him like that. Vic would have looked at me like I was an angel.

  —This Vic, Alice said.

  I didn’t want to tell her about Vic but she had to hear about him. I wanted a woman to finally see me. At the same time, I worried she would be disgusted, the way Big Sky was when he saw Vic and realized he was my group.

  I explained how the outfit, the ludicrous idea, was based upon the previous evening. A couple of martinis, darkness. But I hadn’t lived an emotional life in between the night before and that moment. I was stuck in last night, whereas he had gone home to his family then to work in the morning and now, in the innocent light of half past five, I looked like the reason he married his wife and not a girl like me. Imagine the mother of his children, presiding over a roast in the big nice oven, and then me there with my bare legs and my old heels. Here, I said to him, shaking, nervously handing him his headphones and his Mets cap. I thought of my father loving the Yankees. I thought of what my father would think if he could see me now.

  —Okay, Alice said, so let’s stop for a moment. Because this is important, right? I mean, let’s really stop and get inside this man’s head. So he comes to the door of a woman he ate out last night who wasn’t his wife. Now it’s the next day and he’s sober. He showered last night and once again this morning. He ate pizza with his wife in their apartment off the park. He felt like he could erase it. Now if he can just get back the very expensive headphones his wife bought him last Christmas, it will be like he never stepped foot in a strange animal’s apartment. He spent a weekend thinking of you but then last night he put his mouth between your legs and he felt wrong and sad. Last week he only kissed you, and it felt innocent and full of promise. But last night was too quick and sour. He wondered how many men you did that sort of thing with. You had no compunction about his wife and for God’s sake his infant. Because of course you are the temptress and he is the tempted. And now here you are, opening the door with no pants on. In high heels. His dick is like hey whatever what’s up, but otherwise he feels like you’re nuts. Already he felt strange and awkward coming here, but now he is downright appalled.

  —Fuck, I said, are you trying to kill me?

  —Do you still love him?

  —No.

  —You do. Well, you can’t. Maybe that’s why you’re telling me this.

  It turned colder and the water blew the salt air against our bare skin. Alice was one of those people who didn’t feel cold. The littlest thing can make you feel another woman is better than you.

  —This is important, she said. Please don’t stop.

  —The next part is terrible.

  —Go.

  —I said, Here. And I handed him his gear and he looked down at it and I began to close the door.

  —Like you were just, what, dusting the cabinets in panties and heels?

  —Yes, I said, groaning. I’m ashamed.


  —No. You are all of us. You are the parts of us that no one wants to admit to. Go on.

  —He said hey because he had to say hey.

  —Otherwise he’d be a monster!

  —And I said, Did you want to come inside? Can you imagine? Like you said, it’s daytime, everyone’s sober. He looked confused. But he came inside.

  —Probably, you think, he wanted to end it then? Just get his gear and take off?

  —I never thought of it like that. My aunt once told me that if you have feelings for someone, feelings that are very strong, they can’t exist in one direction alone. That the other person feels them, too. But you’re probably right.

  —You don’t believe I am.

  —I don’t, so what?

  —So nothing. Go on.

  —I offered him a beer. I was the devil, I guess. We sat on my couch and—

  —What?

  —I can’t.

  —Joan, she said, then paused. That’s interesting. I’ve never said your name. I’ve never said the name Joan out loud. Or I must have. Joan of Arc. Etcetera. It’s silky. Joan, please, you must go on. This is how we learn from one another.

  —I asked him if he wanted a massage. I never liked a man that much before. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was flooded with emotion. I took off his shirt and he lay on his stomach on my couch.

  —Couches are less barbaric than beds. There is something half-assed about cheating on a couch.

  —And I gave him an excellent massage. I imagined exactly what would feel good and did it.

  —I just was thinking, when you’re with someone you’re tired of, you give them a massage to get things over with. You expend the least amount of energy. But the first time with someone new, you massage a back like you’re before a committee, competing with every woman you’ve ever felt threatened by.

  —Yes, I said, that’s exactly what I was doing. And his back was stippled with freckles and scars. It wasn’t a pretty back, but I loved it anyway. It was pale. Eventually he lifted himself up and sat down. He pulled me close and I straddled his waist and wrapped my bare legs around it, heels still on. I must have looked like a prostitute. We kissed for thirty minutes, maybe more. My legs wrapped around his waist and no other touching, just kissing. He took my shirt off. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he leaned up and began to jerk himself off and he came on my chest.

  —Romantic.

  —I’m saying it out loud, now, so you are my witness. What I thought was sweet, what I looked upon later as a gesture of, I don’t know, kindness, affection, love? was how he got up to get one of my paper towels and wiped his semen from between my breasts.

  —Fucking hell.

  —Then I spilled a beer in anxiety on my rug and I got so paranoid about the smell of beer lingering that I sprayed it with carpet cleaner right away.

  —In front of him?

  I nodded.

  —What a marvelous complexity, though! So you didn’t come at all?

  —No.

  —He just jerked himself off and you cleaned up some beer.

  —Jesus, I said. You’re making me see the rot on a moment I thought was golden.

  —That’s the point! Now, is coming important to you, as important as it should be?

  —No, I don’t think so, I said, realizing I’d never explored the question.

  —That’s funny. It’s all I care about.

  —Really?

  —It’s all I think about the whole time. And when I have one, I’m like, Goodbye! So people need to get there with me. Or they will be having corpse sex.

  She tilted her head to one side and stuck her tongue out and I laughed.

  —I’m too busy thinking, I said.

  —About?

  —How I look. How he’s feeling.

  —So you fake orgasms?

  I nodded.

  —To what end?

  —I don’t know.

  —You want to please him, to let him know he has pleased you?

  —I suppose.

  —I find that men have a better time when they think they are terrible in bed. It inspires them to read magazines and find a new nub to tweak. They come back and back until they feel they’ve figured it out.

  I was upset that she was more sexually conversant than me. She was younger and better at fucking. She would have eaten Big Sky alive. I shuddered to imagine them together.

  —Are you cold? she asked, rubbing the tops of my arms with her palms.

  —Not a lot, I said, trying to hide how loved I felt.

  —Please, she said, continue, I’m sorry.

  —I’m starting to feel silly.

  —No, we need to get to where this is going. So you didn’t come and he did and he watched you clean the rug and pretended it wasn’t weird.

  —Yeah, and it was tax season and he asked whether I’d received all my forms yet. Then he just stopped and looked at me and said, Who are you? His eyes, I have to explain his eyes. He was like a wolf. Fuck and I loved him. And I didn’t know what he meant. I said, What? And he said, Like, who do you hang out with? And Jesus, I thought he meant—I thought he was trying to inhale me, the way I wanted to inhale him, you know? I thought he was trying to get to know me.

  —Oh, you poor thing.

  —And I began to name friends of mine, like first names. Like an idiot. Because I didn’t understand what he really meant. Which was: What circle are you in? Will my wife find out? Do you hang out with weird bouncers from New Jersey, because you just acted like a girl who does. Then he gave me tax advice and I thought how lucky his wife was—her name was fucking Parker—I thought how lucky she was to have this beautiful, smart, sexy man who does her taxes, who makes a lot of money. Who fishes and hunts. I felt so empty and shitty and stupid. I put on a pair of sweatpants. He left with his gear.

  —But that wasn’t the end.

  —No, but every time was the end.

  I felt like I was going to cry. I didn’t want her to see. I looked ugly when I cried.

  —Perhaps we need an interlude. I think you should tell me about Vic.

  —You’re right, I said, because Vic is part of the actual end. But I’m tired of my fucking voice.

  —I’m not, she said, taking my hand.

  I didn’t think another woman had ever taken my hand in that way. We sat there on the cooling sand and I began to tell her about Vic. I told her about Scotland, our naked bodies on the bed. She didn’t look at me like I was disgusting, and for the first time, I didn’t feel that I was.

  15

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO the house that evening I felt alive. All my life I’d avoided women. They complicated my time. I’d learned how to do everything alone, how to use men for what I needed, and whenever another woman was around, there would invariably be jealousy, or I was bound to act differently, to be less sexual and exacting.

  But with Alice it was the opposite. I felt the need to turn myself up more. She made me feel the way that Gosia had—valid.

  Vic had questioned Gosia’s role in my life once, when he was feeling me slip away. He knew I told Gosia everything. He asked whether I was sure she was the best influence on me. I slapped him across the face. His stubbly cheek jiggled and he apologized right away.

  The truth is, who knows, she might have been a bad influence. She taught me that men will use you unless you use them first, that sometimes men must be punished because women are in important pain from the moment they are born until the moment they die. But you could also say that my mother taught me that, and you could of course say that it was my beloved father who fucked the whole thing up. Gosia did the most for me and did the least to hurt me of anyone in my life.

  I remember vividly the first night she brought me to a bar. I was fifteen. She didn’t drink much, a glass of Grüner here and there. I ordered a Bloody Mary. The bartender, a kind-looking man in his fifties, didn’t question it.

  Gosia unclipped her hair, which was in a chignon. I loved that word. She shook her head and I watc
hed her platinum hair fall around her shoulders. I was not the only one. I clocked three men staring at her neck. She looked at me and smiled. She knew they were looking at her.

  There were many such evenings. She never told my uncle where we were going. She never even told him when we were going to the mall.

  Always ask questions. Never answer them.

  Have more secrets than the person you are with.

  She spoke in epithets. She never implicitly said it, but she was teaching me how not to end up like my mother.

  She taught me well. I could turn it on at any time. I had a man I would never fuck move the contents of one apartment to another, all on his own.

  Gosia couldn’t erase what I’d seen as a child. She knew that she could not. But she tried very hard. I became a sort of Frankenstein’s monster. I could make a man like Vic cut another man’s throat for me, but I could not get the twenty-four-year-old to call me the morning after we fucked. Even with Vic, though, I wasn’t using him to nefarious ends. I was just afraid to be alone. I was looking for fathers in every train car.

  * * *

  THAT AFTERNOON LENNY WASN’T SITTING at our outside table, which annoyed me because I’d asked Alice to wait while I ordered him a paper boat of fried calamari. She asked me about him and I told her some stories and she alternately laughed and shook her head. My life amused her.

  She dropped me off and we didn’t inquire about what the other was doing. It was that early time in a friendship when you respect boundaries and evenings are off limits.

  I walked with the squid to Lenny’s tiny home and knocked. Because the last time we’d spoken he’d been alert and very much himself I wasn’t expecting him to be in the middle of an episode, but he was.

  I heard him through the door say, Lenore, is that you?

  I was depraved. I stole from stores. I used men, but I always gave something of myself in return. But plain and mean deceit? Never. Until that moment.