Savage Love

by Douglas Glover

  I said, “Have you heard the dog barking, that pointless, incessant barking in the night?”

  Susan looked at me as if I were a loon.

  After Geills’s phone call from the hospital, I told my class I was leaving, not likely to return, and that it was no loss because there wasn’t a single one of them with an ounce of talent, insight, or originality, not one capable of rudimentary thought, and only one or two with the ability to put more than three words together to form simple sentences in any language. I said they should all go out and get jobs as office cleaners.

  Someone in the back row said, “Right on!” demonstrating that he had not heard a word I said.

  As I packed my monogrammed Lands’ End briefcase (a gift from Susan, my wife), Ramon Petunless, a colonial studies doctoral candidate of mixed Ethiopian and Puerto Rican heritage, asked if he could have my address in case he needed a recommendation one day. I gave him a business card from the rental storage place, of which I had taken a small stack for keeping notes, and said I would be there for the foreseeable future.

  I took a cab to the hospital, where Geills was more than happy to see me, although they would not let her leave until I pretended to be a relative, which was difficult given the enthusiastic and lewd manner in which she embraced me and continued with her arms around me and her crotch pressed into my thigh.

  Nurse: “Are you a relative, sir?”

  Me: “Ur, yes.”

  Nurse: “What is your relation to this child, sir?”

  Me: “Put down ‘sibling.’”

  Nurse: Silence pregnant with disapproval.

  Me: “Put down ‘uncle’ then.”

  Nurse: “All right, sir, but you know it is a federal offence to knowingly and fraudulently give incorrect information to a health official.”

  Me: “A very distant uncle, an uncle with several removals. I am the brother of her mother’s third cousin-in-law by marriage.”

  Nurse: “Thank you, sir. And what name shall I put?”

  Me: “Ramon Petunless.”

  At this point Geills had her hand down the back of my pants and was heading south.

  Me: “Can we leave now?”

  Nurse: “You understand that you are responsible for all medical expenses?”

  Me: “Sure. How much would that be?”

  Geills was dragging me by a belt loop toward the exit, looking more cheerful than she had a right to be.

  Nurse: “$22,681.23.”

  Me: “Gosh. Can you bill me?” I gave her one of my rental storage cards. “I am the owner.”

  Nurse: “You can’t leave like this. She needs to be in a wheelchair till she gets out of the hospital.”

  Me: “But she can walk. She tried to kill herself with a plastic bag. It didn’t damage her legs. Her legs are in perfect working order. It’s her mind that’s damaged.”

  Nurse: Silence pregnant with disapproval.

  We made love in the back seat of the cab, much to the delight of the driver, a Somali expatriate with an unpronounceable name, a smooth, handsome face, and a tendency to laugh and say, “Oh, boy,” when he looked in the rear-view mirror. It was sudden and surprising.

  One minute we were discussing Proust and what the French call Monopoly and the next she was saying, “Listen to this,” and sticking one of her iPod earplugs in my ear.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “An iPod,” she said. “It’s for playing music.”

  I gave her a look.

  “Just kidding,” she said. “It’s Modest Mouse. You heard them before?”

  I had to admit I hadn’t. She had the other earplug in her ear and she took my hand and interlaced our fingers and squeezed gently and smiled with a sort of contentment, and I kissed her. She started the bellows-breathing thing again, which got me excited — her excitement inciting my excitement.

  “I like it when you look at me,” she said. “It’s hot.”

  Susan had never called me hot. Sometimes she said, “It’s hot in here.” But I never took that as a compliment.

  “You like ska?” she asked, fiddling with the iPod.

  “I’ve never done it, but I’m open to new experiences,” I said.

  “You’re so cute,” she said. “You’re adorable.”

  And then suddenly she hiked up the gypsy floral skirt with the black lace and bows at the hem and swung herself over me as if mounting a horse, the motion revealing a complete lack of underdrawers. She blew air out her mouth and preened her neck back and loosened her shirt till I could see that butterfly. She wore an expression that was both sad and beautiful, lorn from absence, from the knowledge that whatever happened between us, it would end badly, that all love ended badly, that we would one day part out of boredom or disgust, or that we would grow old and not be the people we were this minute, or that one or both of us would die and the electric liquid thing that was passing between us would dissipate in the ether. I caught her mood; the moment was worth any loss, any excess. It was worth the sneers of the Somali taxi driver, although, to tell the truth, he wasn’t sneering, he was smiling.

  Geills lived in a bachelorette apartment in the Wallingfords’ basement, no bigger, possibly smaller, than my unit at the rental storage place. The closet had been converted to a bathroom. There was a stove, a refrigerator, a sink, and a foldaway couch that, when extended, fit snugly between the sink cabinet and the facing wall. If you were sleeping, you could not open the door. When we arrived, Frag was in the kitchenette cooking a homecoming meal. I am a private person. I knew I would not be able to use the toilet while Geills was home or Frag was cooking. I also wondered about her relationship with Frag and how things would work out if he wanted to sleep over. There were black-and-white photos tacked to the walls, all pictures of a dog, sometimes alone, sometimes with Geills. Dusty boxes of paperback books climbed the corners of the room. The books on top were pop psychotherapy and diet manuals, guides to a better sex life and animal training how-tos. A camera tripod leaned against the boxes, but there was no sign of a camera. On her bedside table there was a tube of Astroglide, a vibrator, and a copy of Winnie the Pooh. I could see clearly we had nothing in common.

  I glanced back at the dog pictures, curling at the corners — a vicious, ugly beast with a droll eye. In one of the pictures Geills was kissing the tip of its nose. I suggested that perhaps I should keep my unit at the rental storage place. Frag said he would move to the rental unit. What kind of furniture did I have? He had an open face, an aggressively friendly manner, wore a military fatigue jacket over camouflage pants, T-shirt and combat boots, had a heart and the name Irma tattooed on the back of his right hand, and a tic in one eye. To me, he looked schizophrenic, threatening, violent, homeless, and sad. But he shook my hand warmly, asking if I liked red or white, and said he usually cooked Provençal but tonight was a paella the way they made it in Alicante and had I ever been there?

  Geills went into the bathroom. I could hear her pee hitting the water in the toilet. Frag took me by the arm and walked me outside, a charming and genteel gesture that at once made me ashamed of myself.

  He said, “It really isn’t her dog, you know. Not exactly. She got it from a shelter, part pit bull, part greyhound. A street dog from the city. Too wild for her. And she was hitting the booze and doing drugs. It ran away. This was a while ago.”

  I asked, “What kind of drugs?”

  “Oh, the usual kind,” he said. “Crystal meth, ’ludes, horse, crack, acid, OxyContin. Mostly booze, though. But also Valium, Percocet. I could go on.”

  “No, don’t,” I said.

  I said, “I think I’m in over my head.” When I said this, I realized it was the sort of thing Susan would say, that I was in over my head.

  Frag said, “Is there any other way to be?” He grinned infectiously.

  I thought of a dozen sane replies to that, but Geills called f
rom the kitchen, her voice cheerful and pleased with itself, pleased with the world.

  Frag said, “Don’t fuck this up.”

  At dinner, she told Frag that she had decided to stop giving him blow jobs because she wanted to be scrupulously loyal to our new love. Frag said he was cool with that. He gave us both a half-dozen assorted pills for dessert and the next thing I knew it was hours later and I was awake on top of Geills with what I believe used to be called a blue-steel boner slapping in and out of her. This went on and on in concert with moans, murmured entreaties, and sighs (and snores — Frag was asleep in some impossibly cramped position on the floor next to the bed). I thought I would never come, but when I did, I felt as if someone were unscrewing the top of my head and red-hot lava was erupting from my eyeballs and my cock had turned inside out and liquefied all at once, flooding her insides with a strange electroluminescence such that I could see the shadows of her ribs and her heart beating beneath her breasts and the blood shifting through her arteries and capillaries and could hear the ancient conversations of tiny one-celled creatures in her gut and the hysterical cheeping of my sperm driving themselves toward her womb.

  I said, “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  And she whispered, “Drugs get a bad rap.”

  And then we heard a furious scratching at the door, harsh pants, subterranean whimpers.

  “It’s the dog,” she said urgently.

  I thought, Hulking, flame-mouth, blood-drizzling beast, half man, half wolf, size of a small elephant. I started to bark, an insane, pointless, incessant barking in the night. Howling upon her bed. Frag stirred, his eyes snapped open, confused orbs. But she slapped me awake and we rolled the bed up to open the door (Frag’s legs became entangled in the bed frame — some obvious discomfort there). And when we finally looked out, the dog was gone. Then the barking began again in the alley beyond the fence, something like my own barks a moment before, assertive, obsessive, insisting on some definite if untranslatable communication, warning us perhaps or demanding food or love or a scratch behind the ear, all maddeningly self-contradictory, for the animal refused to come close enough to receive the attention it desired.

  Wrapped in blankets, barefoot despite the hoarfrost that had descended on the city, Geills and I ran after the dog, trailing its barks through alleyways and parking lots, past construction site hoardings, past city parks, past homes where people slept, past dumpsters, dosshouses, cardboard jungles, and rental storage buildings where more people slept — the whole dark and desolate labyrinth of human existence. My feet were bleeding when we returned, and when I woke up she was gone, and Frag was snoring next to me in the bed, with his arm flung over my shoulder.

  A few days later, in an act of desperation symbolic of how low I had fallen, I went next door and asked Susan for the loan of a hundred dollars. She said I was in over my head.

  I said, “I know. Is there any other way to be?”

  She said, “That doesn’t sound like something you would say.”

  And I said, “Maybe fifty dollars?”

  I told her about the dog, about Frag, about my burgeoning love for Geills, about the spirit stove explosion and my subsequent dismissal at the college, about the rental unit and my new friends there and the Thursday evening bridge nights, about the Monopoly players at the suicide ward, about the Somali taxi driver, about the novel I had started, writing longhand with a pencil, the old-fashioned way, on paper shopping bags from Safeway.

  Susan gasped. It came pouring out of me even as I watched her drawing away, gathering herself in disgust, as if I might contaminate her with my lascivious and libertine ways. Her cheeks were like axe heads; she blushed crimson like a match going up, seemed almost to be suffocating. She lit a cigarette, snapping her lighter nervously, and then lit another without smoking either of them. She combed fingers through her hair and slipped a hand inside her shirt to caress her breast.

  I said I was lost but happy. I had nothing. With the money she gave me, I was going to get a tattoo. If she gave me enough, I would get something pierced.

  “What?” she gasped again.

  “You don’t have to live like this either,” I said. “You can change.”

  “You’re in over your head,” she repeated, handing me the money.

  “Geills is teaching me tantric sex,” I said, and my wife sighed.

  She put her hand inside her pants. She said, “I despise everything you have told me.”

  And I thought how Proust teaches us that all love resides in anticipation, not the beloved, that love achieved is only on loan, that we are martyrs to our desires, which are endless. I had explained this to Geills between bouts of lovemaking. She said, “Is there a French word for ‘Lick my butthole and I’ll be yours for life’?”

  That day, I borrowed money from five former students before college security evicted me from the campus. I borrowed money from the agent at the rental unit office. Ramon Petunless was hanging around, waiting for me to show up because he needed a recommendation. He was in love with Proust now; he wanted to teach.

  I said, “It’s common practice for college professors to accept gratuities in exchange for favourable references.”

  He said, “I didn’t know. How much?”

  He had an addressed, stamped envelope. I tore the side off a shopping bag and wrote, “On no account accept this man into your program. Keep him away from your wives, your children, and small furry pets. He must be stopped. Do not contact me. I am in hiding from you know who.” I sealed it up and handed it back to Ramon to mail.

  “I am so grateful, Professor,” he said.

  “I saved your life,” I said.

  Then I went to Professor Detweiler’s house, Wagner booming in the background, his mousy wife putting dinner on the table, little individual salad bowls at each place full of greens for the bowels. He mentioned the fire again, which I took as fresh evidence of the narrow obsessiveness of the academic mind. He said the logician Zlotsky, who shared my office, had been caught taking photographs of coeds’ underpants with a camera attached to a cane. He offered me a large sum to stay away forever.

  I said, “Thanks,” and, “See you later.”

  When I got home, Frag was roasting a suckling pig and sipping port while he made up the canapés. The tiny apartment smelled of garlic, ginger, and fennel. The dog was sitting on the couch bed, looking calm, inscrutable, and alert. I recognized it from its photographs.

  “I don’t know,” said Frag. “She was waiting on the porch. I gave her a bowl of kibble. Wait till Geills finds out.” He said, “Your wife was here about an hour ago. She had something to ask you. I invited her for dinner. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I said, “That’s still a lot of food for four people.”

  Frag said, “I invited your friends from the storage place. And some of your students. And Professor Detweiler and his wife, some nurses from the hospital, and the guys from the suicide ward.”

  He was insanely genial for a man so outwardly menacing. I found it disconcerting, much as I had found all experience disconcerting since I met Geills. She had exposed me to the totally surprising nature of existence, which hitherto had remained hidden from me. She had given me a taste for recklessness. I did not long for my old self, but I was often confused and restless. I was susceptible to minute vibrations from the centre of the universe. The words “rebarbative” and “lobotomy” drifted through my mind like spent arrows coming gradually to rest. The pig’s head stared at me through the oven window. The smell of crackling filled our apartment. The dog looked wise, intelligent, and superior.

  We waited together, drank port, smoked a joint. People began to drift in for the party. There were five other novelists from the rental storage place, a chess grandmaster, two landscape painters, and a gay new-music composer, along with Ramon Petunless and Akoschka Weatherby. Akoschka Weatherby struck up a conversation with th
e composer almost at once, revealing herself to be a surprisingly intelligent, darkly beautiful, and even tragic young woman. The dog was alert, ironic, and affectionate. She watched intently and stepped delicately down from the couch to follow me whenever I went to the backyard to pee. Under the moon, the waiting, the gathering of friends, Geills’s absence, the dog’s cold nose nudging my hand, and the nearly imperceptible vibrations of things seemed strangely prophetic. Frag’s Harley gleamed like a chrome statue on the parking pad.

  When Susan, my wife, arrived for dinner (along with the Somali cab driver), she seemed hysterical and distant. I could understand this because crowds had always bothered her. She kissed me passionately but absent-mindedly, called me Jean-Luc, which isn’t my name, and then noticed the dog. Her eyes widened. She was afraid of dogs. But Frag gave her a hit of that marijuana. She asked if she could smoke a cigarette. Several others were smoking; we were a band of jolly outsiders with a taste for life. She wore a black cocktail dress I had never seen before, hemmed above her knees with one shoulder bare, a thin gold necklace circling her throat. She had put on mascara and eyeliner, too much it seemed, and from either tears or sweat her makeup had begun to run. I thought, She seems vulnerable and brave and beautiful, not the woman she once was nor the woman who once was mine.

  Ramon Petunless ushered her away from me to explain how I had saved his life by convincing him to renounce a career in academia. Akoschka Weatherby said I had revealed the true cosmic nature of love to her one day in our Proust seminar. So beautiful and melancholy was her face as she said the words that I knew they must be true. Frag served the canapés and Asti Spumante in tall, elegant glasses and lit candles throughout the apartment.

  Nervously, Susan, my wife, tried to make small talk. “Do you need more money?” she asked. “Were you hurt when the spirit stove exploded? I am not much of a critic, but I would like to read your novel.”

  She seemed bruised, delicate, afraid of rejection. The dog watched, edged closer to Susan. One of the five novelists interrupted, inquiring anxiously if I had found time to look over his revisions. To Susan, my wife, he confided that he had come to depend on my opinion implicitly. Professor Detweiler, appearing tweedy, insignificant, and chastened, asked if I might be available in the coming semester. Some extra funding could certainly be found. There was talk of an endowment for a special chair in Proustian studies.