Circe

by Jessica Penot

  My brothers and I went to New Orleans as we always did. We had always lived only two hours from New Orleans, and the culture that built our area wasn’t so different from the culture that had shaped New Orleans. Not that we had ever cared about that. Mostly we went to drink on Bourbon Street and watch the pretty girls lift up their shirts for anybody who offered them a strand of fifty-cent plastic beads.

  Jeremy and Jeff got a room at the Days Inn on the edge of Canal Street and the inter-state. We didn’t stay in that room for more than ten minutes. We tossed our stuff on the grayed comforter and disappeared into the chaos. At first, we just wandered. We talked and watched. We didn’t want to pick a bar too quickly.

  "I'm amazed Pria let you come," Jeremy said with his heavy Alabama drawl.

  "Pria would have taken me to a strip joint herself for bringing her back to Mobile."

  "Still. She has got to know that all we’re gonna do is go from one tittie bar to the next."

  I laughed. "No one told me that we were goin' to tittie bars."

  "You've been married too long," Jeff responded.

  "Long enough to know I'm not going to watch a bunch of fat or skanky underage girls rub all over a filthy pole."

  "I didn't think there was anything else to do in New Orleans," Jeremy laughed.

  "Hey, now. Don't forget the chain of Voodoo shops and Karaoke bars," Jeff said.

  "Look y’all, that girl over there is showing her tits right now. Isn't that enough? We'll go sit at Cats' Meow with some beads and watch the pretty sorority girls lift up their shirts. You know I won't be able to go home to Pria if I walk into one of those strip joints. It's not like y’all aren't married men. What are Carrie and Brooke gonna say?" My Southern accent was already rediscovering itself again. My brothers had that effect on me.

  "We don't have the pussy-whipped relationship with our wives like you do with yours. Brooke doesn't tell me where I can go and I don't have to tell her every time I take a leak," Jeff said.

  "Y’all are a little too close," Jeremy added.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means Pria has your balls in a little jar beside the bed. Hell, we all know you hate it here. You always hated Alabama. You could be at one of the best programs in the country, but instead you're here and she's got your dick in her hand."

  "I don't even need to answer that. I did not come here to get lectured on what a healthy relationship is by two guys whose wives come over to my house to bitch incessantly about them. At least my wife is happy. And I promise you that happiness results in me having a lot more fun with my nights than y’all have wandering around at night looking for sleazy strip joints."

  Jeff shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette, "You got a good point. And Pria is hot."

  I smiled broadly. "None of these women even hold a candle."

  For a while the topic was dead. We found a bar and sat and talked. Mostly we drank until Jeff's speech disintegrated into a slurred mush of y’alls and fixin' tos. It was like being a teenager again. At that moment, I had to admit to myself that I was happy to be home again. I had missed my brothers. We could just sit and laugh about nothing for hours. Mostly we talked about football and women. I was the only Auburn fan in my family and my brothers rode me hard about it. It didn't matter though. It was the same things we had always talked about. Nothing changed with them. It was as if they had been living in suspended animation.

  "That's it," Jeff declared around midnight. "You’re on your own. I'm too drunk to sit in New Orleans without seeing something besides tits."

  "I thought we finished this talk," I said. "Do I have to kick your ass?"

  "You’re gonna have to. I'll meet y’all back at the room." He just left with a sheepish grin, and Jeremy followed him.

  I sat there for a while finishing my drink. I wasn't mad at them. I couldn't blame them. That was who they were and that is what they had always done. I wouldn’t have expected them to change or do anything different. The only difference was that four years ago, I would've gone with them. And I couldn’t judge them. I had my own vices.

  After a while, I just got up and wandered the streets. I watched the swarms of people interact. A couple of frat boys had glowing spin sticks that they spun above their heads to read, "Show your tits." Men chanted at teenage girls. Other men curled up and vomited on the curb. Finally, I made it away from the Bourbon Street chaos to Cathedral Square where the fortunetellers sat at card tables or on benches. Most of the fortunetellers looked like teenagers who had bought books on palmistry at the local Books-a-Million and were just trying to scam the tourists. Others looked like some of my old patients. Either way, they did not seem like wise men or prophets that one would go to learn about one’s past or future. I stood in front of the white cathedral watching the people move. Watching their gestures and trying to imagine what diagnoses I would give each of them. I thought that when pathology was as grotesque as it was in New Orleans, maybe I could tell by just watching.

  I didn't see her at first. She had been just part of the crowd, but once I saw her it seemed impossible for her to be part of anything but herself. Her green eyes stared out at me through the heat and I stopped thinking about anything but the moment. Her hair was short and cropped. It hung off her head in sharp knots, like feathers. It glowed an artificial blue-black in the dim streetlights. She moved deliberately, like she wanted to draw attention to herself. She turned and smiled at me, showing me her back. She wore a black slip that left her entire back naked. The eyes of an emerald green peacock stared out at me from the enormous tattoo on her back.

  I moved towards her without thinking why and she never took her eyes off me. When I approached her, she didn't smile or greet me in any traditional way. She just took my hand and looked at my palm. She had a youthful look about her, but her exact age was impossible to determine. She seemed like a tiny bird. Her skin was cool and soft against mine.

  "You’re going to die young," she said.

  "You’re doing it wrong," I answered. "You’re supposed to placate me with vaguely positive predictions about the future so I feel good and pay you more money. You’re supposed to figure out what I want to hear and say it."

  "You don't have much faith in my art," she said.

  "I'll have faith if you tell me to," I responded.

  She just looked at me for a minute with a complete self-confidence that only made her more desirable. She knew the effect she had on men. "Do you want to hear the rest of your fortune?" she asked.

  "Only if you’re in my future."

  "I don't think so. I see other women in your future."

  "You see all of that in my palm."

  "No, I can see that in your aura. I see a dark woman. She looks foreign. And I see another woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. The dark-eyed one has no future. It is the one with the blue eyes who is really your future."

  "Are you saying I'm going to leave my wife?" I asked mockingly. She was speaking vaguely enough that anyone could have found truth in her predictions. Everyone has some woman in his life who is dark, and everyone wants someone who has blonde hair and blue eyes, at least stereotypically. I put no more faith in her prediction being true than I did in God himself.

  "I didn't say that. I only said that the dark woman has no future. I see you on the beach before a storm with the blue-eyed woman."

  "When will I meet this blue-eyed devil?"

  "Soon."

  "It's too bad your eyes aren't blue. I would like to end my days with you."

  She laughed. "I thought you were a married man."

  "Until I saw you."

  "Not too insecure, are you?"

  "I never saw the point in playing games. I wasn't very good at them, either."

  "You owe me $20.00."

  I handed her the money. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a hurricane?"

  "I'm working."

  "You can tell me more about the future. I’m dying to know how many children I’m going to have. And you haven't given
me much information on this blue-eyed woman I’m going to leave my wife for and spend the rest of my life with."

  "I may need to read the runes to find out all of this. It may be expensive."

  "I need to know."

  She smiled. "My runes are at my apartment."

  It was that easy. I followed her through the maze of streets that led to her apartment with my heart in my throat. Anticipation can be the most potent aphrodisiac. She didn't say anything. Just watching her walk was enough. It was the thought that made her inexorable. It wasn’t her, but the hint of her. The parts of her that were unknown and forbidden. I did not want to wait until we found her apartment and I felt as if I couldn't wait. You have to understand that I was drunk and in those few moments she had become everything I had left behind in Detroit. She was the dank pavement and the cold aloofness. She was without family, without attachment. She required no sacrifice and I could have her without regret. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for leaving her behind or for bringing her with me. She was the anonymous stranger in the dark.

  I pushed her up against a wall in a deserted alley and kissed her with such force that she lost her breath. She was hard. Skin and bone and angles, not soft flesh, like my wife. I felt her arms around me and there came in me a flood that I couldn’t stop. I had her skirt up and her panties down and was done before she could even whisper her name. There was a moment when she muttered something like, "wait until we get to my apartment" or “wait for something." But her hands were in my hands and she kissed me with a fury.

  When it was over, she disappeared into the darkness without a word. I leaned up against the wall for a minute and just breathed in deep release. I felt no remorse. I felt only peace. I had done this before. The first time it had happened, I had felt a twinge of conscience, but it had become more dream than reality. I reasoned that it affected no one. It was like masturbation and Pria would never know. I didn't know the women or feel anything for them. They were all easy and had followed me without thought. It was part of a fantasy that helped keep me calm when I was stressed. If no one knew, it wouldn't matter. It was no different than the men who made love to their wives and imagined they were other women. No worse then the men who loathed their wives and masturbated to imaginary women with perfect breasts and thin thighs. At least when I was with my wife, I thought only of her. When I kissed her it was only her I wanted. When she was with me, I was filled up entirely by her image. This was my way of staying emotionally faithful to my wife.

  I wandered back to the Days Inn with my hands in my pockets. I took my time. The image of the tattooed woman had completely faded from my mind and I allowed my mind to wander to my internship. There would be two other interns at Circe with me. A woman who had attended the University of Alabama for both her undergraduate and graduate work, and a man who had attended Loyola for undergraduate and the University of Florida for his Ph.D. I had been given their names and telephone numbers so we could work out a carpool. The commute was a beast. Sharing the gas was the only way to make it.

  I wished I knew more about them in advance. I had to be the best, and without any knowledge of the competition it would be hard to know where I could really shine. I already knew that my education was much better than theirs. I had gone to Vanderbilt for my undergraduate work and Wayne State for graduate school. These were not Yale or Harvard, but they were better than the competition and I had a perfect GPA with many publications under my belt.

  By the time I made it to the hotel, I had a plan of attack for Circe. I was excited and I couldn't focus on anything but work. I had beaten my brothers back and I went to sleep easily and comfortably. No one would ever know about my indiscretion.

  My brothers didn't return until five in the morning. They were so wasted that they collapsed on the beds without so much as a word. After about an hour, Jeff got up and vomited twice.

  * * * *

  I did feel guilty when I returned home. Pria had gotten rid of all the relatives, cleaned the house and cooked me dinner . She looked like a Hindu Goddess. Just watching her in the candlelight made me regret every other woman I had ever been with. I kissed her hands and held her.

  “I need to stop,” I told myself. “I have a problem and I need to stop.” In my mind, I could analyze myself. All the cognitive distortions that had been reinforced by my father’s behavior became perfectly clear. I believed that loyalty to a wife wasn’t necessary for her to be happy because my father had never been loyal to my mother and my mother had always told me, “Sometimes it’s best not to know. Happiness is an illusion. Why not choose the ones you want to keep?” I ran through everything I had learned from my father and mother and how this had impacted my own irrational thinking; and in this two-minute therapy session with myself, I knew I could heal myself instantaneously and never cheat on my wife again.

  I don’t know what it was about that night that made me feel this way. I think it was the scent of the curry-laden chicken drifting out of the kitchen. Or maybe it was the way her hair draped her back. It’s funny, the details you remember. I forgot almost everything we talked about that night, but the shade of her nail polish is still as vibrant as the waves crashing before me now. She had perfect cotton-candy pink nails. They were shaped and manicured and flawless. I can still see her tiny feet in my mind, wrapped in pink, strappy sandles. Her shoes matched the color of her toenail polish. She was a woman of details. The napkins always matched the plates and the plates always matched the candles. Her lipstick was always the same color as her polish, which perfectly complimented her pale pink shirt.

  “You’re looking at me as if you were mesmerized,” she said as she served me a piece of chicken.

  I smiled. “You know I am. You just want to hear it again.”

  “I never get tired of hearing it.”

  “You’re beautiful tonight and I can not take my eyes off of you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

  “No. I think that I will be the best intern by far.”

  “You’re conceited.”

  “I’m honest with myself.”

  “I don’t think there’s a difference with you.”

  “I’m not sure if that is a compliment or an insult.”

  She laughed. “Neither am I.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “What?”

  “That I’m confident.”

  “No. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you. You never hesitated. Every other man/boy, whatever, that I dated always flirted and played games. You walked right up to me and said. ‘You’re the one'.”

  “I know what I want.”

  “I know, but I would like to see you afraid just once.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  “No. I think I’m going to put some spider webs in your bed tonight.”

  “That’s not fair. You know my weaknesses too well.”

  “Lots of them and a big spider. You’re not so confident when you’re asking me to kill a spider.”

  I reached out and tickled her. She squirmed and laughed. “I’ll get you if you do.”

  “Eat your food,” she said.

  “I’ll sneak up behind you and tickle you until you cry.”

  “And then I’ll put your toothbrush on the back of the toilet.”

  “And then I’ll hide every pair of those stupid little strappy sandals you collect.”

  “I’d have to leave you then. You know I love my shoes more than you.”

  “I’ve always known that. But you can’t leave me. I’ll tie you up in the closet and feed you only moon pies and the most fattening food I can find until you get so fat you can’t fit out the door.”

  She laughed again. “Eat your food. You talk too much.”

  After a while she looked up from her food. She was serious. “I’m nervous for you,” she said. “I know you came here for me and I know if things go wrong it will be my fault. I really hope you love this place.”

  “I
know. You don’t need to worry, Pria. I’m adaptable. I’ll make things work wherever I am. I always do. It’s just another place and it was a worthwhile trade.”

  “Is it? You’ll hate me forever if this ruins your career.”

  “You catastrophize too much. This couldn’t possibly ruin my career. The worst thing that could happen would be that my career would stagnate, and I can recover from that. Don’t over dramatize.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it anymore. What about your job? When do you start?”

  “Thursday. It pays better than the last job.”

  “You’re good at what you do.”

  “I try to be. I like the atmosphere a lot better. I hate working in hospitals. This rehabilitation center fitness club thing has a lot more of an atmosphere that’s conducive to healing.”

  “You make people better, not the environment.”

  “Unlike you, I try to be humble.”

  “You’re the best physical therapist in Mobile.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know everything, remember?”

  She laughed. Her laugh had the timber of music, perfect and lovely. I smiled, taking her face in my hands. She made love like a melody. The symbol of everything perfect in my life. Of everything good I had ever done. It washed away all that had come before it like some old Catholic Sacrament. Like baptism or the last rites.

  CHAPTER 2

  It listens now, and practices at night.

  William Stafford

  Ehwaz – Movement