Conjunctions 65: Sleights of Hand

by Sleights of Hand- The Deception Issue (retail) (epub)

  “OK, then maybe you can tell me,” Ed began wearily. “Outside it’s day, well into morning even, I should say, or maybe even afternoon—I lost track—or, yes, perhaps even night again—I don’t even know—the shades, I see, are drawn, and the lights don’t help, and I am too afraid to look at a clock, if there even is one, so please, if you will—and this is the most I have said, spoken all night—please just answer this for me: When, hostess, when do you anticipate this party will end?”

  “Oh, we have days!” she shrugged. “An extra day even—why would it end sooner?”

  Tongue out again. It was punctuation of a sort, Ed deduced.

  “You shouldn’t be so selfish,” he said. “Some of us have things to attend to.”

  She ignored him. She was attractive.

  “Work,” he said, “if you want to know, which you probably didn’t.”

  And charming, yes.

  “I don’t mean to be rude or unappreciative, but I just don’t see the point in—,” he said.

  And young, definitely.

  “Well, I suppose there’s the door,” he said, “and I can leave any time I want.”

  Dangerously young enough.

  He said, “Why do I feel like I can’t do that?”

  He looked at the door. He thought about it. Then he looked at her.

  “I hate myself,” he said.

  Tongue.

  “Ignore me,” he said.

  He buried his face in his hands.

  “Stop it,” she whispered.

  He looked up and saw some compassion, which he feared came with some condescension, and so let himself lose it for a bit, while she sat there, helplessly picking lint off her dress, idly shaking her head at him, muttering, “Queer, queer, queer …”

  He was alone. He knew it the minute a group of men burst in from a bedroom apparently, ties undone, faces wet, red, riled, wasted, announcing, “LJ is dead! LJ is dead!”

  In spite of his overbearing exhaustion, and a feeling of impending submission to anything and everything, Ed rose to his feet, alert. Could it be that his—not partner, not friend even, coworker, remember, work, work, ah, work—had indeed somehow in the course of the party or afterparty or whatever it was, indeed just died?

  Ed ran to the bedroom, where two men blocked the doorway. They shook their heads at him.

  “But LJ—,” Ed protested.

  “LJ is dead,” said one of the men. “Died, rounds ago!”

  “What do you mean by that, by rounds?” Ed was frustrated.

  “LJ is dead!” they both said, rolling their eyes.

  “How do I get to see him?” Ed asked.

  “Code,” one of the men said.

  Suddenly a pale hand snaked around his neck, like an ivory hook, and she whispered, “It’s a game, Ed. CON. Ever heard of CON?”

  Ed shook his head.

  “It’s boring,” she whispered. “You have to play and then die to die with him …”

  Like a wineglass down a marble hallway, her laughter shattered, devastating, pure, hard.

  “It’s all a game, Ed. Boring, but play if you want …”

  “I don’t want to play,” he snapped to them all, to the men, to her, and he made his way back to the main room, where, as usual, the phone was pleading shrilly.

  “And that’s another thing—that thing,” Ed said, hoping to point at it, but unable to spot it, “that sound, the phone, why doesn’t anyone get it? Or else unplug the phone?”

  He turned around, but she was, of course, gone. He sat on the couch, tired, ill, maybe even delirious, he considered, wanting to go home, but too tired to do it, to do even work … his own fault, he had gone against his own reasoning, for his coworkers—his coworker and coworker/boss—and for a job he might not even have tomorrow … on some odd upside, he countered desperately, the whole night could be rationalized as work related, since inextricably tied to work, and so excusable in some remote sense, and maybe to some sick opportunist it did not have to be overtime deductible but rather counted as a very integral part of overtime hours … no way, he thought, not him, he respected work and overtime … although apparently not enough, he thought, not enough to have not extracted himself from home and work and all that made sense, namely his own solitude, his own mind—perhaps sometimes a frustrating place, but at least familiar, and at least manageably impossible …

  Ed hailed for another drink. “Something strong,” he said, “but stronger.”

  The jerk in the khaki shorts popped up and said for him, “Something with everything. Like, you know, everything bagels? Get my man the everything bagel of drinks! Something with everything!”

  Suddenly another sound: the previously somber strapless sisters in the kitchen, barefoot, drawing quite a crowd, doing a dance of some sort, a drunken grind, hiking up their gowns, at the applause of many men and some women, hotfooting, melting into each others’ bodies, tribally, primordially, chanting something like an ancient rhyme, a kid’s song, a jingle, over and over, until the words were clear to him, “Is it worth it / let me work it / is it worth it / let me work it … !”

  It wasn’t without mesmerization value, Ed thought to himself, when suddenly, like a commercial break cutting into a cliff-hanger, a man’s trench blocked his view.

  Roger.

  “Just wanted to tell you that Casper’s leaving with me. He said you don’t need a ride.”

  Ed hated that he had to look up at Roger—it made his message even more severe, even more godlike, and unfair. The truth was, Ed did want a ride, an out, an anything, even if it involved Roger. But of course since he had put it that way he couldn’t argue. Roger and Casper clearly meant to exclude him. Maybe they just wanted to be alone; Ed blocked the ensuing thoughts out of his head. Casper was clearly fed up with him. Casper probably felt that there he had been, trying to do a good thing for a coworker—not coworker, but employee, because he was, after all, according to Casper, below him—and Ed had ungratefully made a fool of him and him and them all—

  Ed nodded. Soon the crowd swallowed Roger, and Ed sat alone again, drinking his cloudy everything, again alert to the nonstop trills of the phone.

  “Where is it coming from?” Ed asked out loud.

  “What?” answered a young boy, no more than seven, he imagined, in a three-piece suit.

  “The ringing,” said Ed, “the phone.”

  The young boy nodded. He ran off, disappeared—of course, Ed thought miserably; one second here, the next second, gone—but returned moments later, presenting Ed with a silver cordless phone.

  “Well,” said the young boy, placing it on Ed’s lap. “Well, answer it then!”

  Ed nodded, smiling weakly. It made no sense, he knew, for him to do it—or to be ordered by this stiff child, whoever he was, who happened to find and finally bring to him the source of many, many hours of Ed’s deep annoyance, the trill, the plea, the shriek, no, it made no sense—but still he did.

  On the other end, laughter like the final jangles of porcelain wind chimes in a hurricane, and an incisive whisper, even over the filtering of fiberglass and airwaves, transmitter to receiver, from some where to another where, still so clear it hurt, her words: “Meet me in the master bedroom. Now.”

  It didn’t take him long to find it. He headed to the only bedroom he knew—the one LJ had died in—still with the guarding men. “Which is the master bedroom?” he asked. They squinted their eyes at him, didn’t say a word, but Ed, keen to their games, onto this world suddenly, followed their eyes across the room and dashed with several “Excuse mes” and “Pardon mes” and “Oh, yes, hello, again” to purple lace and “Ah, leave me alone now, please” to baked Cleavage, and finally down a dark hallway to a door, which led, dead end, to a door labeled MASTER. Before he could knock, the door opened just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the white-hot-studded something, just enough for him to get gripped by the old shapely hook and claw, all leading to a laugh, and lips, and, of course, tongue, out then in, and a whisper, “
Welcome.”

  “Look, are you fooling with me?” Ed knew his words would come out wrong. All wrong and yet—well, Ed couldn’t believe it, yet there he was seated, placed awkwardly on the high bed—white-and-gold Egyptian silk bedding, same sparseness, a vanity, a tiny chair, everything gilded or golden and ivory and marble and womanly and girlish—with the hostess lying not so modestly, one bare leg flung out of the slit on top of the other, a disheveled twinkling charming young thing, like a restless newly caught silver fish, tossing and turning, laugh upon crash, bored or amused, he knew, for his sake, somehow. “What I mean is, what is it you want from me?”

  She said nothing.

  “I mean, it’s your party and for the last—let’s just face it, many and many and many—hours, half a day, maybe, more, God knows how long have I been here—anyway, since whenever, you have—and forgive the wording—sought me out or something, quite actively, for reasons I don’t understand—this is, after all, your party and certainly all these guests your friends, maybe family even, lovers even, who knows—and I, certainly you don’t know me—for a second, I know, I mistakenly thought I knew you, but it was all in my head—imagine that—maybe it was the anticipation over you and you did, yes, live up, just so you know—anyway, why the one guest you definitely do not know, what is the point? What do you want out of this? Out of me? Or am I making too much of this?”

  He paused. “Are you maybe just bored?”

  Outside, the revival of the primitive chant: “Let me work it / is it worth it / let me work it” …

  She reached for a bottle under her pillow and playfully, with an idle flick of the tongue, poked out a blue pill from a purple pouch, and dramatically let it drop down her throat.

  “What would happen,” she said, “oh, never mind.”

  Then she said, “What would happen if I kissed you?”

  What was he to say to that? On some level, yes, he did want it. No man wouldn’t. Well, some man wouldn’t but she knew he was not like that. He felt lost. He did not know how he had allowed himself to get so far, so deep, away from everything, for instance, his work—“First tell me, is the three-day weekend near a close? Really, I have to know. I know it’s not appropriate but I have to … I work.” And she was on him. They kissed. It was fine, he thought, it had been a while, so it seemed good and worrisome too, which was all very normal, he told himself. But something about being wrapped in those arms, as cold as he had suspected, bloodless almost, and yet tight, eager, desperate, maybe, even—it reminded him of time running out, ­dead•lines, ends. It reminded him of dying. He buried his face in the sparkles of her blindingly bright world and swore he was losing it.

  They talked.

  About the guests. She told him cooked Cleavage was “really not bad at all,” “lush!,” “a patroness of the arts,” “maybe complicated,” but “mostly a real love.” She called them all “filler,” “good fluff,” “all essential,” “loves,” “strangers.”

  About meds. She was taking a pill she took three times daily, unless the day required four, she explained. She said it was: “often jagged,” “an upper really,” the type that “made you talk of death a lot,” “a good fading,” “an elevator sinking,” “overall, a brilliant pill.” (“Does it help with your work?” he wondered. “Work!” she cried. “I’ve never worked a day in my life.”)

  About work. He claimed: “It means the world to me,” “financial and emotional and so maybe spiritual,” “always, as long as it takes,” “it takes the place of friends,” “I am always, always, always—except for tonight, these nights, today—oh, what day is it anyway—always, always working, so I wouldn’t know the difference,” “what else, I ask you, really on this level, with this level of easy, uncomplicated interaction, questions, answers, yes, no, black white …,” and “I wouldn’t know.”

  About sex. She declared: “Yes, you would, surely you’re not a virgin, a eunuch, asexual,” “baby, I’ve had them all” (“Conversational burlesque,” he pointed out, “all that ‘baby’ stuff, I know that.” “Doll, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”), “I’ve slept with a lot less men than you think,” “I don’t do this ever really,” “Come on, just for a bit,” “OK, so I guess a lot more,” “And not on my birthday, what a cliché!,” “Don’t change the subject,” “Fuck,” “Me.”

  “Because, work,” he said, zipping up his pants, knowing well they had done it, the third extra day upon them, and his work—“Wait!”—was waiting, and so—“Come back, Ed!”—he dashed to the door—“Now!”—with one last glance to see it closed. “But I’m not done with you, it’s not time!,” yes, the MASTER, shut, back out, full of it all, still on, room to pause at the kitchen mirror, examine face, hair: not too bad—wave back bye at a wave or two—absently bravo “it / worth it / let me work”—avoid suits, khakis, Cleave, lace, lips, middle fingers—bye—throb in the crotch, damn—and head to the door—“Sir, I have the time, I have the time, sir!” (young three-piece suit)—bye bye bye—a heave of the chest, hell, a jerking of the knob, slick with the sweat of too many grips, surely, nonetheless—“work it!”—out he was, an out-ing that had only seemed hard, but in execution wasn’t at all, was slippery, oily, easy, a reminder—opposites, damn, contradictions, hell—no work, all play—until it was all over, done, with a barely unsuccessful small-capped “slam.”

  Outside there was the moon that, in the beginning, somebody had commented was no good. He was grateful to see it—to see that it was night. He took his medication and it went down well, and he realized he could pretend it was the same night. It was 1:00 a.m.—he could imagine it was just three hours since he had arrived. Not bad. At home, there would be the same dim light, the overeager runaway hand of the clock, allowing him to go on, smoothly, working, dying, onward and on …

  As he walked off their lawn, still clearly hearing the resolute sounds of the upstairs party at work, he thought he heard a female voice, hollering, “Dead! Dead!”

  He turned around. He had misheard. The voice was indeed calling to him, “Ed! Ed!” not dead at all. All he could make of it was a cracked window, promising of a room with a golden glow. But soon, dangling out the window’s ledge, he caught sight of it: the gleaming white long finger of a no-doubt snaky alabaster arm, snowlike against brassish, cold, shining, all wow—and he knew it well. He heard it again. He swore this time it was “Dead!” He had to, had to go. “Ed!” Dead? He wanted to look away, but couldn’t, especially when suddenly another hand—“Dead-Ed!”—a different one, darker, olive, red nails, perfect—“Ed; Dead!”—with even a ring on the ring finger, a real rock, blinding too—“Dead=Ed!”—reached over to hers, intertwined even—“Dead/Ed! Ed (Dead)!”—and then both, together, like that, at once, fluttered off, gone. The lights went out.

  Ed thought about work; Ed thought about play.

  Before he knew it, he was back up, up the stairs, conjuring an excuse, like maybe he had come up to call a cab—he didn’t after all know where the hell he was, right, what he was, right, what he wasn’t (Ed: Dead!)—and before he knew it there he was: that very real and consequently sullen and enigmatic young man in the jeans and T-shirt, who suddenly again spoke up with an “I told you so,” leading Ed to the shrill trill that was apparently again meant only for him.

  Six Poems

  Rae Armantrout

  INCOMING

  1.

  “Another year,” I say

  as if this were ironic.

  *

  Because it’s now/

  because I’m now

  in two places

  and thus not

  myself,

  I contain

  the disturbance

  of the incoming

  pulse without

  2.

  A stuffed tiger

  upside down

  in a cubicle

  cubby

  LOGISTICS

  “Packet security.”
r />   He, she, they

  were here to oversee

  packet security.

  It was the only

  game in town

  if this strip

  of abandoned

  staging areas

  deserved the name

  and no one

  had checked recently.

  What remained

  to be demonstrated

  in each

  gesture toward narrative

  was a tough-minded

  nonchalance

  we could almost

  place

  it was so retro

  and thus plausibly—

  or implausibly—

  authentic,

  but, in any case,

  passing through

  CONFLATION

  As a tree

  is concerted

  atmosphere. Each

  one a certain

  ambience

  drawn in and held

  until it turns

  green?

  *

  You go on

  drawing energy

  from conflation, referring

  to yourself

  while implicating

  other beings.

  *

  That’s silly!

  *

  Silly tablecloth

  of the nasturtium leaf,

  flung out

  on its too thin stem,

  perfectly flat, in flight,

  serene

  HELL

  “Able for the first time

  to view

  large bronze statues

  of Dr. Seuss characters.”

  What if

  the wish to be precise

  survives

  the world of objects?

  Thumb and forefinger

  meet again

  as if

  for the first time,

  tugging once more

  on “as if”

  ACCOMPLICES

  1.

  The one in which I laugh about my mismatched