The First Principles of Dreaming

by Beth Goobie

  Jez decided to make a quick job of it. Erupting out of her mother’s darts, she pulled on the triumph of the pink satin bra, Starsky, and skintight jeans, then sucked in and dragged the zipper closed. Eyes shut, she took a careful breath. After almost a decade as a Women’s Auxiliary Prayer Group sewing experiment, Jez’s fast-growing impression of jeans was that they were a well-disguised tourniquet applied no-holds-barred to the crotch; for the life of her, she couldn’t see how they would tempt anyone into a life of sexual debauchery. How was one supposed to wear them and function?

  Gingerly, she levered one leg, then the other, over the top of the front passenger seat. “Look, Mom,” she said, jerking her blue and white oxfords up and down. “No socks.”

  Dee shot a quick glance at Jez’s naked ankles and swore softly. “Cold skin, cold turkey,” she shrugged.

  Radiating exultation, Jez edged out of the back of the car and carefully lowered herself onto the front passenger seat. If her new jeans were a well-disguised chastity belt, still, after seventeen endless years, she was sitting on an undeniable ass; she had tits Mick Jagger would put his lips onto and suck. The unexpected excitement pouring through Jez was so volatile, she wanted to howl, but beside her Dee continued to slump oblivious, a yawn eating half her face. Small bugs were definitely crawling out of every pore.

  “So, um, what’s up?” ventured Jez. “Your mother feed you the Abomination for breakfast?”

  “Huh?” croaked Dee. The gaze she turned toward Jez was the palest purple—two complete blanks.

  “You know,” explained Jez, “666 on your toast, the Beast hiding at the bottom of your oatmeal. Your stomach a burning lake of fire.”

  “You got the last part right,” groaned Dee. Straightening, she reached across Jez and opened the glove compartment. “I’d better do your face,” she added, taking out a makeup kit. “Otherwise no one’ll believe you’re my friend.”

  Taking Jez’s chin into her hand, she stared as if searching for a hidden code, then sketched a series of quick, sure lines. “Okay,” she said, leaning back against her car door and giving Jez the once-over. “You’re for real now.”

  Tilting the makeup case’s small mirror this way and that, Jez caught angled reflections of a bold, pouting face she had seen previously only in the sweaty touch-alive fantasies of her own mind. How had Dee found this and coaxed it onto the surface? she wondered. How had she looked at Mary-Eve Hamilton in her green and red plaid midi and known it was there?

  “C’mon, we’ve gotta make tracks,” Dee said abruptly, shifting in behind the wheel. “I forgot my compass set at home, and I can’t do isosceles shit without it.”

  Punching in the Deep Purple eight-track, she turned up the volume and drove straight past Eleusis Collegiate. They entered the suburbs, Jez perched carefully on the edge of the passenger seat, still trying to ignore the crotch of her jeans. Idly, she picked up the Sticky Fingers eight-track by her feet, realized what she was looking at, and started to put it down. Then she brought it back up and stared with unabated curiosity. Though she wasn’t a virgin—had, in fact, repeatedly managed to lose her mythical virginal status—every one of her acts of carnal abandonment had taken place in complete darkness. To date, she hadn’t managed a single direct look at the damn thing.

  “Next time they play Eleusis,” yelled Dee, tapping the eight-track’s cover, “they’re mine.” Lifting the tape from Jez’s hands, she placed it between her thighs and rocked. Wild giggles took Jez, and she stared fiercely through the passenger window as the Bug turned into the alley behind the Eccles’ home and pulled up next to the garage. The engine died, terminating Deep Purple and leaving the girls alone with the slanted rush of wind. Several drops of rain splattered the windshield. Tossing the eight-track onto the floor, Dee swiveled left and pushed open her door with both feet.

  “Day off,” she announced, and got out without looking back.

  “Day off from what?” asked Jez, emerging uncertainly from the passenger door.

  Dee was already halfway up the stairs. “Didn’t you know?” she called over her shoulder. “It’s a national holiday. Deeday. Y’know—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Deeday. Whenever it’s Deeday, we get the day off.”

  Jez hesitated. Truth be told, she would have preferred more options, but all she was being offered was a view of Dee’s back as the other girl disappeared through the garage’s second-floor doorway, the green and red midi slung over her shoulder. A brief burst of rain hit Jez in the face, startling her into momentum, but after darting up the first several stairs, she slowed—as she was all too quickly beginning to discover, movement in tight jeans was an art form, learning it a baptism of fire, and these particular stairs looked to be an especially long burn. A fleeting vision of her homeroom class whisked through her mind, everyone in postures of boredom, safe and secure at their desks. Deep-throating nicotine with Dee after school had let out for the day was one thing, she thought grimly—breaking a straight-A average quite another. With a loud moan, the wind tore into the trees around the garage, releasing a long spirit-line of leaves. Watching it from the landing, Jez waited, but no last-minute angels revealed themselves, no sirens keened in her blood. Even her dream of The Chosen Ones had vanished, leaving her empty, without sanctuary. She was no one. She could become anyone. In front of her a doorway stood open; she walked through it into Dee’s place.

  “Close the door,” said Dee.

  Inside the room, Jez found everything draped in black—the window, the bed, the couch. On the coffee table a single black candle gusted wildly, and Stevie Nicks’s “Rhiannon” once again haunted the stereo. But it was the two long-haired guys smoking on the couch that claimed Jez’s attention. Though they were no longer Eleusis Collegiate students, she recognized them immediately—Dee’s older brother and a former bass player from the school band. Like everything else in the room, both were dressed completely in black. Uneasily, Jez’s eyes flicked toward Dee’s T-shirt—also black, and dominated by a large white skull—then down to her own black Starsky and Hutch.

  “What is this?” she asked. “Stephen King’s home-decorating kit?”

  The air was gag-heavy with smoke. Butting out his cigarette, the bass player got up and closed the door, then leaned against the black sheet tacked across its inner face.

  “Cute,” Dee’s brother said softly, his eyes giving Jez the slow slide.

  “Jailbait,” agreed the bass player, his hands coming around Jez from behind and pulling her in hard against his crotch.

  “Dee!” hissed Jez, stiffening, and the other girl’s gaze slid across hers, wide-eyed, an animal being dragged toward fear. Slowly, the bass player’s hands started to move and Jez’s stomach inverted, turning on its axis. Lifting her left foot, she kicked backward, and felt the thud of a sturdy blue and white oxford entering flesh. With a howl, Bassie let go and Jez pivoted, reaching for the doorknob. But before she could grasp it, Dee’s brother grabbed her around the waist and swung her onto the bed, his full weight coming down onto her like a gut punch.

  “So you’re Dee’s new friend,” he murmured, his face one inch from hers—Dee’s face but more angular, the blue eyes deeper set.

  “Take it easy, Andy,” said Dee, edging onto the side of the bed. “She’s religious.”

  “Jesus-bait,” grunted Andy, thrusting with his groin, and a jagged fear swept Jez, filling the air with tiny, scratchy sounds. “Want to fuck, Virj?” he breathed, his mouth pressing hers so hard, she could feel his teeth through his lips. Abruptly, he pulled back, and Jez became aware of Dee leaning over them, nudging her brother’s face with her own.

  “C’mon, Andy,” she said. “We know you’re not a dog, so stop acting like one.”

  “Who’re you saving her for?” growled Andy, glancing up at her.

  “Shh,” said Dee, slapping his face playfully.

  Andy tensed, his expression shifting to neutral, everything
going into the eyes. “Make new friends but keep the old, eh, Dee?” he murmured. Without warning, he launched himself, taking Dee facedown onto the bed beside Jez and pinning her as a grinning Bassie pulled down her jeans. For a single taut breath, the two guys stared, transfixed, at Dee’s naked, heaving ass. Then, leaning forward, Andy bit her hard on one buttock.

  Whooping loudly, both guys climbed off the bed as Dee struggled, choking on her own breath, to pull up her jeans. “Come and get it, Dee. Come and get it,” they chanted. “Rape me, rape me.”

  Wordless, Dee threw herself at them. Andy and Bassie ducked, guffawing, but instead of attacking, Dee lunged past them and grabbed an object lying on the coffee table. Suddenly her brother and his buddy started fighting each other for the door. Frantically, they yanked it open and shoved themselves through the gap, then slammed it shut just as a jackknife thudded into the wood behind them. Muffled footsteps rumbled down the outside stairs, and the walls reverberated from several emphatic kicks. Still lying stunned and wide-eyed on the bed, Jez realized that under the quivering black sheet tacked to the inside of the door, Dee’s jackknife had nailed Farrah Fawcett right in the kisser.

  Moaning softly, Dee stumbled against the coffee table and the candle toppled. In the sudden complete darkness, there was only the sound of Fleetwood Mac and two girls’ harsh breathing.

  “I have a lighter,” Jez said into the void. “For the candle. It’s in the pocket of my dress.”

  “I got a new one,” Dee replied. With a quiet click she came into view, her face flickering as she knelt at the coffee table and relit the candle. The thought came to Jez then of a cat she had seen once—the lower half of its body run over and squished flat, the upper part dragging itself off the street, looking for a place to die.

  “Deeday always like this?” Jez asked carefully, wiping the taste of Andy from her lips.

  “Deeday,” Dee said bitterly. “Andyday. Every day is fucking Andyday. Sometimes I want to kill him so much, I dream of peeling his skin off with my fingernails.” Hugging herself tightly, she took a long shuddery breath, then added, “Only kids are lucky. D’you have a brother?”

  “No,” said Jez. “I’m an only-only. Think you’ll need a rabies shot?”

  With a snort, Dee wiped her eyes, smudging her makeup. “Isn’t that for wild animals?” she asked.

  “He’s an animal,” said Jez.

  Dee rocked slightly, staring at the candle with dazed eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. “Check to see if the skin’s broken, okay?” she whispered.

  Jez swallowed, her throat clenching like a fist. “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  Unzipping her jeans, Dee bent over the couch. Slowly, disbelievingly, Jez leaned toward the other girl’s naked ass and ran her fingertips over the reddish-purple bite mark on the right buttock. A single blue monarch flew the other. Two breaths left Jez; she wanted to trace her mouth—soft, open-lipped—across them both.

  “Skin didn’t break,” she said. “It’s smooth.”

  “Thanks,” said Dee, and pulled up her jeans. Turning, she knelt with her eyes lowered and concentrated on lighting a cigarette. “So,” she said, inhaling, the rasp of smoke deep in her lungs. “You’ve met my brother and you’re not running off screaming into the black night?”

  Jez shrugged. The thought hadn’t occurred to her, at least not since Andy had taken off. No, she realized then—the longer she remained in this place, the further its candlelit shadowiness seemed to move into her, creating a kind of oneness. In a way she could not have explained, its very darkness felt familiar, almost like home. Playing with this thought, not sure what to do with it, she faced Dee, both of them still kneeling, the black candle’s flame between them. The stereo was quiet, Fleetwood Mac having come to an end; the only sound came from the wind in the trees and a car going by in the alley.

  “Andy was the one who took off screaming,” she said, cradling admiration in her voice. “I like the knife in the door. Nice touch.”

  Dee’s hands moved compulsively, molding the soft wax at the candlewick’s base. “I practice knife-throwing at the dartboard in our basement,” she said, her voice edgy, as if reluctant to reveal much. “I’m better than Andy and he knows it. Sometimes I just aim for the walls. Daddy likes to show the knife marks to his clients.”

  Jez tried to imagine her own father proudly displaying a wall full of his daughter’s knife gouges to visitors. “Why don’t you keep the jackknife in the door permanently?” she said. “Come in handy if you ever need to use it.”

  “You’re not mad about Andy jumping you?” asked Dee, her eyes flicking past Jez’s. “I thought you’d freak. He always jumps my friends. Sometimes he goes further, sometimes not.”

  “You mean this was supposed to be some kind of a date?” said Jez, stunned.

  Dee took a deep breath, and the hand holding her cigarette shook. “Most of my friends like Andy,” she mumbled. “Usually they’re in his room with the door closed.” Shoulders slumped, she sat staring at the candle flame. “D’you like him?” she asked hesitantly.

  Jez tasted contempt. “Like I said,” she grunted, “keep the knife in the door.”

  Dee’s eyes darted to her face. “Would you use it?” she asked.

  “Would you?” said Jez.

  Wordless, they stared into the long search of each other’s eyes.

  “If I had the guts,” Dee said finally.

  Getting to her feet, Jez crossed the room and took hold of the jackknife. It slid easily out of the door, then sat in her hand—balanced, a necessary fact. Many of the chosen ones had used a knife in the service of the Lord, she thought, studying the jackknife’s contours in the room’s dim light. Most important, of course, had been Abraham, in the moment when he had leaned over his altar-bound son Isaac, sacrificial knife in hand. This scenario was never pictured in children’s Bibles or Sunday school papers—it was usually a gaily colored drawing of Abraham pulling a ram out of a nearby thicket as a wide-winged angel hovered overhead. But what about those frantic heartbeats that must have taken the patriarch as he stood over his only son, holding the knife to his throat?

  Faith is a knife, Jez thought slowly, its edge pressed to the pulse of everything you know, everything you think you know. Lifting the black sheet tacked to the inside of the door, she studied the jagged hole the jackknife had made of Farrah Fawcett’s face. “Poor Farrah,” she said, placing the knife tip onto the arced neck and slicing downward through the hard nipples, the flimsy red swimsuit. “Poor, poor Farrah.”

  Still kneeling beside the coffee table, Dee gave a startled laugh.

  “Poor Farrah,” repeated Jez, disemboweling the actress’s image. “If you still had a face, you’d be smiling at me right now. I could do anything I wanted to you and you’d keep smiling. A murderer could buy this poster, a rapist, a fucking cannibal, and you’d still be smiling.”

  In the pause that followed, she observed the gutted poster, her breath slowing and lengthening, changing the mind of the room and inviting a deeper darkness. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, a hazy presence began to take shape around her—an underground cavern that opened onto several tunnels. From the mouth of one of these tunnels came the distant rustle of robes and the glow of handheld candles; then a row of gray-robed figures filed into the cavern, silent except for their breathing. Surrounding Jez, they slid a similar robe over her shoulders, raised the hood onto her head, and placed a bone-handled knife into her left hand.

  “So how come you’re wearing my clothes?” asked Dee, apparently oblivious to the arrival of The Chosen Ones. “How come you let me put makeup on you?”

  Disoriented, Jez stared at the solid jackknife in her right hand and the transparent ceremonial knife in her left. Knife of flesh, knife of spirit, she thought, trembling with intensity. Before her, still silent, stood The Chosen Ones, a transparent row of gray-robed figures, and beyond
them knelt Dee, clearly defined by candlelight. What had brought The Chosen Ones here, Jez wondered dizzily, into this room, after so many years? If they had come to fulfill last night’s dream and slit her disobedient throat, why place the killing knife directly into her hand?

  For the first time, The Chosen Ones were acknowledging her. Jez could feel the weight of their gaze, invisible under those shadowy hoods and staring directly at her as if waiting for something—something that needed to come from her. Some kind of signal. A secret sign.

  Uncertain, she shrugged at Dee. “Who wouldn’t want to look like Farrah Fawcett?” she asked. “I just wouldn’t want to turn into her. Smile-baby poster chick.”

  “That’s what guys’ll think of you if you dress like that,” said Dee.

  “So I’ll carry a knife,” said Jez. “Surprise them like you did.”

  “Can’t hide it in those jeans,” said Dee. “They’re licked on.”

  “They’ll think it’s a mascara bottle,” Jez said.

  Tilting her head to one side, Dee studied her. “You’re different,” she said, “than when you came in.”

  “So are you,” said Jez.

  “My ass got bit,” Dee said pointedly.

  Hesitating, Jez glanced around the room, then asked, “What’s with all the black?”

  Dee’s voice warned her away. “Just something I felt like doing,” she said.

  “So it wasn’t for me?” asked Jez.

  “Why would you think that?” asked Dee.

  Another shrug from Jez, echoed by Dee. Delicately, their eyes met. Equal footing, Jez realized. Dee was watching her straight on, as if assessing her for the first time.

  “What do you believe in, Jez?” she asked hoarsely. “Really?”

  Jackknife in hand, Jez stood, Farrah’s paper guts dangling from the blade, the gray-robed Chosen Ones waiting silently around her. “You mean God?” she asked.