by Lisa Taddeo
—Is it too soon, Alice said, for us to cook together?
—Maybe, I said. We both laughed. There is no better invitation in the world than women laughing. The boys in the bright Ray-Bans stopped in their tracks and unabashedly stared at us. There were four and not one was better-looking than another. None of their eyes were kind. I wondered how many women between them they’d gotten pregnant. Sometimes I can’t get down a city block without seeing the quiet abortions in the air above everyone’s head.
They were frozen in that airless atmosphere of men waiting to aggress. The way they stared—lips parted in a lively leer, gleaming eyes—often forced the woman to say something first, often out of fear.
I was wondering if Alice noticed them, or if she was even more used to being hit on than I, when suddenly she spoke.
—Do you recognize us from somewhere?
The apparent leader—the tallest, wearing a highlighter-pink sleeveless tank with highlighter-yellow Ray-Bans—pushed the glasses up on his sandy head.
—We were wondering if you girls might know where the vegetarian masala dosas are?
—Masala dosas are traditionally vegetarian, so you don’t need to qualify, said Alice.
—Actually, some have meat, the captain said, smiling.
—Actually, some have meat, Alice mimicked, her lips pursed.
As a group, they looked wounded. It was funny how men could look that way. For years they could violently finger and push just the tip in, all the while saying, Just the tip, just for a second, not like a question but like a mantra. They could thoughtlessly fuck you from behind, their hips on hydraulics. They could be tired, sick, sad, rageful over having the flu, yet their hips would be completely fine, moving back and forth like a car part. Men were dependable fuckers. But suddenly they could look sad like that. After all, they were only trying to make conversation.
—The Indian culture is more meatless than any other, Alice said, but you boys look like you could use some. Meat.
She said the word meat very softly. But not sensually. I watched the rape in them shrivel up.
—Maybe it’s not too soon, I said, staring at the boys, to cook together.
* * *
ALICE’S HOUSE, CLOSE TO THE Venice canals, was nothing like what I expected. I expected to be jealous. Teak and windows, clean lines. Not rich but well planned. Single flowers in old Italian lotion bottles.
I’d followed her in my car, and when we pulled up, I had that sinking feeling I get when something is the opposite of beautiful. I used to feel that with my parents when we’d pull up to hotels they’d booked, or the first time I saw the Poconos house.
Alice’s house was not clean and holistic. It was an exhausted bordello. From the outside it was a tiny cape with blue aluminum siding. There was a shabby porch with two stained armchairs and an old steel planter. The area beneath the porch was covered with broken white lattice. There was a strip of dead grass between the edge of the porch and the start of the sidewalk. From the outside it looked the home of a couple who’d met in college, settled into this spot after a bender, and never left.
The front door opened directly onto a depressing kitchen. Yellowed wallpaper. Cheap white cabinets with pine trim. Beige linoleum floor peeling up at the corners. Coil stove. A dirty white Mr. Coffee. Then there were the inexplicable touches. Dried lavender hanging from the ceiling, Jem dolls and Barbie dolls with dyed blue and pink hair posing from the tops of the cabinets.
Alice, unembarrassed, gave me the grand tour. The living room had a black leather couch and a nineteen-inch Magnavox sitting on a stack of books. Many Persian rugs that looked expensive, some of them beginning on the floor and finishing a few feet up the wall. Ruby and emerald settees, pink and mahogany pillows on the floor, lanterns filled with battery-operated candles. It was both operatic and small, overstuffed and empty.
The bedroom made the least sense. A patchwork quilt. Glossy black cabinets. Lots of unwatered plants, the smell of myrrh. Posters of heavy-metal bands with curled-up edges. A framed picture of a naked man, his crotch obscured by a python. A pink neon sign over the bed, in wild font, said, LOVE ME. I could only think of the stains of many sex acts.
Alice waited for me to turn around after seeing the bedroom. Her arms were folded and she was smiling.
—What do you think? she said.
—It’s kind of insane.
—It’s a reminder not to get comfortable.
—It’s like this on purpose?
—It’s like this because it’s like this. Some of it is laissez-faire sloppiness, laziness, what have you. Mostly it’s cheap, whatever I had on hand, garage sale things. Some of it’s from an escort’s place on the boardwalk. She gave me her pillows.
Because my expression didn’t change, she squinted and cocked her head until I looked directly into her eyes.
—Don’t forget, she said, I’m younger than you.
* * *
IN NO TIME, THE UGLY home transformed before my eyes, the way the ugly homes of beautiful women are wont to do. Alice cranked open the window in the kitchen and the California breeze blew in. She set a bushel of basil in a vase filled with water, and a bunch of cilantro went into an empty creamer carton. She took out all the fruit and vegetables we’d bought, arranging them in bowls and tall carafes until the kitchen came alive. Dusty orange watermelon radish, prim pearl onions, grassy spring onions, vine tomatoes, and limes. Sandy spinach, mustard greens, and arugula. Green papaya and avocado, and the banana blossom looking like a panicked bird in its own white bowl. She placed the hunk of ruby tuna we’d bought from the fishmonger on a white cutting board and then rubbed the bluefish with salt and oil and left it in its brown waxed paper. She washed her hands with Mrs. Meyer’s lemon soap and played calypso from her laptop.
She was going to make a salad and ceviche and she asked me to tell her about Vic as she worked. She asked me what he looked like. I described him as best I could but said that he was more of a feeling than anyone I had ever known. I told her about his hats and his suits, how large they were, that he’d never worked out in his life beyond the weights he lifted in high school. And though he wasn’t overweight, he was definitely ashamed of his figure, and so he wore these big suits.
She asked me again if it was crazy of her to think that we were getting somewhere. I told her no, it wasn’t crazy. I could have said more then. I could have told her everything, and I wanted to. But she was right that Vic would lead into the rest.
I’d already told her about Scotland and Cumberland Island and Mexico. The sunny days. The times when I’d still felt like a girl, when I could still pretend that I hadn’t flushed myself down a drain. Now it was time to tell her when the rot set in.
In as much detail as I could remember, I described the company trip to Palm Springs. The scaly heat of the desert. Vic was always arranging events so he’d have an excuse to be with me for a long weekend. It’s funny to think how many corporate dollars are spent so that one man can fuck one woman.
We stayed at a ten-bedroom guesthouse that had natural-rock hot tubs with unobstructed views of the mountains in the distance. I’d never been attracted to any of our colleagues, but there was one man, Paul, who had just come from Virginia, from some old tobacco family, and he hunted and fished and wore Minnetonkas and swore very graciously, the words goddamned and witch’s tit.
Paul was something of a precursor to Big Sky. He was an amuse-bouche. I sat next to him at the first dinner. It was held at a decent chain with a huge kitchen and a gas-burning fireplace that stretched horizontally across the room. We sat in long strips of two and Vic was diagonal from me. Poor Vic folded the napkin in his lap very meticulously, but for some reason I always had the feeling it was tucked into his shirt, beneath his neck. I listened to Paul with my chin in the cradle of my palm. I laughed a lot. I did that with most men at first. I’d done it with Vic. I told Alice how I was sure I’d gotten this from my mother. Paul talked about hunting like an asshole. But he was also self-
effacing and had a nice head of chestnut hair so that overall it was charming, and had I been a little healthier, I might have tried to date him. But I didn’t. I flirted in a way that a man from a good Southern family couldn’t quite comprehend. It made Vic angry. I could feel his wrath across the table. His skin was red. He drank glass after glass of wine. Then he switched to Scotch and flicked his eyeballs to the back of his brain.
But he didn’t erupt. What he did instead is what all men do when they feel like another man has touched something they think they own—they try to reclaim you. That night he came into my room. There were no locks on the doors and I had the room on the top floor between Vic and some woman named Crystal whose eyes ping-ponged from side to side when she talked and everybody made fun of her all weekend long and so did I.
Around midnight there were still some men playing poker in the kitchen, but most of us had gone into our rooms. I heard my door open. I couldn’t believe it. I thought to pretend I was dead asleep. I heard him walk very quietly to the side of my bed and kneel down until his face was next to mine. I opened my eyes. Hey, he said. My stomach turned. His eyes were small. His skin was dry and he looked like someone who’d let himself go for many years and now, he’d found a reason to live and he wanted to drink purified water and join a gym. He smelled like Scotch and cologne. He kissed my forehead and then my eyelids.
—Jesus Christ, Alice said. Please tell me you did not let him fuck you.
—No. I said I was feeling sick from the wine. He got into bed and held me. In his boxers and t-shirt. He didn’t let go all night.
—Bloodsucking pig.
—In the morning we overslept. I remember the room was very cool, someone had cranked the air-conditioning, and the shades were down and we slept past eight thirty. Nine was the time we were all being picked up by a limo to be brought to the breakfast spot for a team-building exercise. Someone knocked on my door. I bolted up in bed. Vic did not. He snored peacefully. Just a second! I said. The voice outside said, Joan, are you okay? The limo’s here. It was Paul’s voice and I could tell he hadn’t heard me and meanwhile Vic stirred and said, like a hungover boor, What?
—Oh my God.
—And the door began to open and I ran up and pushed back against Paul and I told him that I was running late and I would be right behind them in a taxi. And he seemed to peer around me and Vic was making waking-up noises and I was sweating, I was so afraid. Then Paul left and it was just the two of us in the house and so we both arrived late to the team-building exercise. I insisted in going in a taxi by myself, but Vic popped in about five minutes after me, freshly showered, looking jovial.
—He wanted everyone to think he had fucked you.
—Paul barely said another word to me for the rest of the weekend. Every one of them avoided me. I was garbage.
—You said you ruined this man’s life. And all I’ve heard so far is how he pissed all over yours.
I told her she didn’t know the whole story. By now she had diced the spring onions, tomatoes, and avocados, and cut the tuna into textbook cubes. She’d minced the serrano peppers and cilantro. She used a wooden spoon to gently fold it all with lime juice and a few teaspoons of sugar. We were drinking Sancerre out of short cups, filling each other up frequently. It was just before two on a Monday afternoon.
—We’ll eat the ceviche now, and then I’ll make the salad outside while you grill the bluefish. Does that sound okay?
I nodded. I wished she would do or say something that wasn’t perfect so that I wouldn’t have to kill her.
—Now tell me how you hurt this man, because I have to tell you, Joan, I think you’ve got it wrong.
I told her about the week I met Big Sky. It was the same week that I had a big project due at work, and what she had to understand was that this was the first time in my life I had a job that wasn’t odd. For Christ’s sake I’d made up dead people, and poorly, because I didn’t have any training. At the advertising firm I’d been promoted from a secretarial position to an associate very quickly. I was telling the world to buy beer and cars and to shop at big department stores. I was involved in a conversation, I was involved in the making of money. It had become somewhat lost on me that the reason I was in this vaunted position was because a married man had become infatuated with me.
And Vic was happy to provide for my progression. He prided himself on his connections, his ability to vault people, but with me, of course, he also wanted to prove indispensable. He promoted me again. I met Big Sky a day or so later.
—You have to understand, I said to Alice, the situation with Vic had begun to fester. Palm Springs had happened a few months before, and I was done. I was disgusted. And he could tell.
—Did you tell Vic about him?
—I couldn’t bear not to. I had nobody else to tell.
—Not one girlfriend?
—Nobody.
—You’ve never had girlfriends? Alice asked.
—Not really. My aunt.
—You haven’t seen a point with women?
—I wouldn’t say that.
—Even though, all around you, men were fucking you right in the ass.
—That’s not entirely true, I said, feeling myself flush.
—Joan. This is why you met me. Don’t you think so? Everything happens for a reason. Even the scary things.
We had moved outside to her terrible yard with its yellow-green grass and its Char-Broil kettle grill. It felt like we were in Alabama instead of Southern California, and she was mocking me with her continental accent and her absolute beauty, and I wanted to dislike her very much. But I also felt she was on my side. It was hard to experience the feeling, let alone explain its effect. I wanted her to hold me. My whole life I’d been waiting for a woman to hold me.
We drank our wine and grilled the fish and the sun lowered and some more breeze came. I felt a little nauseous and Alice decided it was time to eat. She set the table and served the salad. It was a wonderful salad, with the banana blossoms julienned and the vibrant pinwheels of watermelon radish, the arugula coated with olive oil and bright lemon and a dusting of pecorino across the top. It was odd to eat something so fresh on stained armchairs in that unkempt yard with a gorgeous woman. A lot about Alice was a contradiction, but that was true of most beautiful women. There was one poet, one author, they knew backward and forward, which lent them some intractable intellect. Once I knew a beautiful girl from the Midwest who had read everything Barry Hannah had ever written and that was it. That was all she knew. The more obscure the writer, the more suicidal, the better.
—I told Vic about Big Sky after the first weekend when I didn’t hear from him at all. I was so desperate I just wanted to tell somebody who cared for me. I wanted Vic to tell me I would hear from him again.
—Oh, Alice said. That’s always it, isn’t it. Will he call me again? Just tell me I’ll hear from him again, even if it’s only so he can say, This is over.
Alice took a bite. She ate like a European—small, neat forkfuls. A piece of fish with a strip of arugula or radish. Mixing things.
—You grilled the fish perfectly, she said.
I thanked her and she nodded impatiently while chewing, reminding me of my mother, and gestured with her hand for me to go on.
—I told him, and I was breathing heavily, and I was scared. He could tell. We were out to lunch. It was a Monday at this Bavarian bar far from our office and I was drinking Belgian ale though I hate Belgian ale, and he was staring at me with his beady eyes. I kept looking at my phone to see if Big Sky had written and I could just sail out of there, leave Vic forever, the whole disease of it. And this is where it gets awful. Just sickening.
—Yes, tell me.
—Vic told me to write to him. He told me to give him a directive. He told me to write and say, Was just thinking of you. I’m making martinis at five. Stop by when you knock off for the day.
—That’s somewhat good advice, Alice said.
—It was scary, he had this look
on his face like he was accessing a haunted part of himself. Then he sat there with me and we waited. I said, I cannot believe I just wrote that. And Vic said, You had to, it’s fine, he’ll come. And I said, Jesus, that is so unlike me. And Vic smirked, and I remember this verbatim, he said, He’ll be rock-hard the second he opens that email, kid.
Alice doubled over in disgust. I’d thought I would feel shame recounting that, but instead I felt relief. So I continued.
—By now he had this very strange look on his face, this very strange mask. His eyes glittered, he wasn’t sad but enraged, even—
—Turned on.
—Yes. And he said, So tell me about him. And I said, Huh? And he just repeated himself. Tell me about him. Blankly. Straightforward. As though he were just any man and I were just any girl. He said, Is it nice? And I kept saying, What? And he just kept saying those same words, Tell me about him. What’s it like? Is it nice? And finally I said, What? The sex? And he said, Yeah. I said, Aren’t you bored with this? And he said, Nope. I remember that, specifically. Nope. I said, I told you everything. Which of course wasn’t completely true, but I told him so much. I had certainly told him more than a woman has ever told a man who loves her about another man she’s been fucking. And Vic said, Is he a total stud? And I said, Yeah, in a sort of strange way. He’s unthreateningly assertive. Now, this, of course, was the thing that most drew me to Big Sky, but Vic, like every man, didn’t care about that. He sailed over that. He said, Big? Just that, like that. Big? I said, Yes, because I wanted to torture him a little, because how dare he talk to me that way.
—That’s the right thing you should have felt.
—But I was cruel.
—We’ll see.
—And he said, Huge? So I said, Not huge, but big. And he said, Nice. Heavy cummer? And I looked at the tables around us. I was always looking at the tables around us, everywhere we went. I was always feeling depraved and hideous. I said, Who are you? Are you a porn writer? I didn’t understand where this was coming from. And he could see that I was angry and confused, so he said, Aw, come on, kid.