When Watched

by Leopoldine Core

  Gretchen brought a glass of water to bed. She reached for her newspaper and spread it wide in front of her. Another bolt of thunder turned the room white and she flipped her newspaper over with a closed expression. Ava looked around the room. It was sparsely decorated, with a small television, several shelves of graying books, and some free weights rowed by the wall. She felt suddenly, incredibly lonely.

  Though she sensed no invitation, Ava rolled near Gretchen and kissed her shoulder, a fearful smile on her lips. Gretchen pulled slightly back and gave Ava a pat on the head, as one would a little purring cat that is bothering them. Ava lay back down and folded her arms in amazement. Gretchen continued reading her newspaper as if she were alone. There was evil glittering in her beauty, Ava observed. Gretchen looked almost cadaverous. She had taken the most ordinary act in the world and injected it with malice.

  A pained silence entered the room but Gretchen seemed unscathed, newspaper in hand. Charm is a creepy, scary thing, Ava thought. The light shifts slightly and she looks maniacal.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Ava said finally.

  To this, Gretchen looked up from her newspaper, still naked. She made a face of mock guilt and said, “Well maybe. Yeah.”

  Ava was jarred. She felt her eyes moisten, if only from astonishment. She considered saying something frank like, “Oh, so you’re a bastard,” but it seemed no use. Gretchen appeared impenetrable. Responding would be like pissing into a rainstorm, Ava thought. She got up and dressed, hating to be naked, however momentarily.

  “You should take an umbrella,” Gretchen said as Ava approached the door.

  Ava paused. A smile of acute pain spread across her face. “Thanks,” she said and bent down, seizing a small black umbrella with a hook handle. “Bye.”

  “Bye.” Gretchen smiled mildly. It was the smile of a priest or a friendly stranger on a subway platform. Not the smile of someone who just bought you dinner and fucked you and is now sending you out into a downpour, Ava thought.

  Outside the streets were empty. The umbrella was broken so she had to hold it open. After a couple blocks her arm hurt so she threw it away. The rain had become more of a mist. Ava wanted to drink. But more than that she wanted to vanish, to linger in some way station between life and death. A ghost, she thought, or a gas.

  By the sixth block of walking, Ava was convinced that she wasn’t an alcoholic after all. I’m just lonely, she thought, craving some culty community. She imagined brown liquor in a glass on a wood tabletop and her body softened. It seemed like the most normal thing in the world, to pick it up and drink. I’m just a masochist, she decided. And that has nothing to do with drinking. It had stopped raining but Ava was soaked. “Fuck you, Gretchen,” she said aloud. “And fuck God.”

  Ava walked through her front door and instantly felt disgusted by her apartment: her faded black couch with the broken springs, her groaning refrigerator. She wanted to catapult herself somewhere, anywhere. To be in that soft, familiar spaceship, a drink in hand, ice cubes rattling as she raised it to her mouth. Ava peeled her clothes off and let them slap to the floor, thoughts of brown liquor blazing in her mind. She imagined slowly sipping the dark drink, although her drinking had never been slow. Ava had been an Olympic drunk, careening throughout the East Village from bar to bar, shouting things she wouldn’t remember. Those nights always ended predictably, with her sprawled under a stranger in a strange bed, tipping into a void-like sleep.

  Ava remembered waking up and seeing a stranger’s naked backside, their cats walking around meowing. She remembered her dread, her fear of who the person would be when they turned around. But that was better, she thought. Better than all this consciousness.

  Ava toasted a slice of raisin bread and spread butter over it, then took a bite and threw it out. Food was sickening. I am an alcoholic, she thought. She ran a bath and tested the temperature with her fingers, hot. She climbed in and wondered if it was possible for someone to drown themselves in a bathtub, holding their body down with pure will alone. Probably not, she concluded, because the creature wants to live. A friend of hers had hanged himself and she often pictured the act of his departure. The thought she couldn’t shake was that, undoubtedly, when he kicked the chair away, he wriggled. The body fought to live, she thought. And while he was wriggling like that, he must have known it was a mistake. The creature said no and the creature was him. She sank down, her knees jutting up out of the water. But maybe not, she considered. Hair raised around the sad island of her face, eyes closed. Maybe it is possible to end your life unambivalently. It seemed entirely possible at the moment. With her ears under water, Ava heard her pulse. She raised herself up and stood before the mirror, steam rising around her naked body.

  In bed, she wore an oversized T-shirt with palm trees on it. All I do is talk to myself, she thought. She wanted to believe that God was glowing inside her. But it seemed that where God might be, there was a batch of whispering goblins, taking turns convincing her of crazy things. The sea of devily voices occupied most periods of silence. They were like her family: menacing and enduring. She wanted to choke them all with booze before one took over.

  Ava strained, inside of herself, to tunnel through the dark verbal smog, clasping her hands together. She looked about the room and asked a chair for help. Then the closet door. Help. Next the ceiling fan, its slow, maniacal turn. Help me. The window. The tree in streetlight, rain dripping off its leaves. Let me out.

  Smiling

  They are lying in bed naked, she with her head on his lap. And he is gently raking her scalp with his fingernails, which she likes very much. Possibly she likes it even more than sex.

  “Tell me what you were like,” he says.

  She smiles and looks up at him.

  “I mean when you were little,” he says.

  “I loved rolling down hills,” she says.

  “Oh yeah,” he says, remembering all the hills of his life, high and green and endless. “It was like the first drug,” he says. “It felt so dangerous.”

  “I know!” she says, her eyes growing wide. “There were rocks and shit. It was so exhilarating. It was like sex.”

  She sits up and they look hard at each other. It is not a penetrating look, though both mean for it to be. Their eyes search each other scientifically, drinking up the exquisite surface detail by detail. Her eyes, his mouth, her nose, his shoulders.

  “What were you like?” she asks.

  “I liked bobbing for apples,” he says and grins.

  “Oh you did not.”

  “I swear. I was really good at it.”

  “How could you be good at it?”

  “I was really brave.”

  “I could never get them in my mouth,” she says, reanimating the struggle in her mind.

  “You have to let them come to you,” he explains.

  This sends her into gales of laughter. Even when she has stopped, the laughter plays around her eyes.

  He touches her face. “I’ve never liked someone this much,” he says.

  “Because I think you’re funny.”

  “Yeah that’s it.”

  “No really. What is it about me?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s your hair.”

  She shoves him, laughing hard. “Shut up!”

  “It’s really good hair.”

  “Come on. I was asking seriously.”

  “God. I don’t know. It’s your face. Your heart. Your ass.”

  She stares. What he has said feels perfect. She kisses his nose and lies on her back smiling, tits splayed. They are quiet awhile. “God,” she says, stretching. “I’ll never get tired of being in bed.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’ve never seen such a dedicated person.”

  To this she laughs and laughs. He joins in, pleased with himself.

  “All you do is mock me,” she says.


  “That’s what flirting is,” he says.

  “I know,” she says. “It’s a violent act.” She thinks of all the people who flirt with her on a regular basis. They all show their teeth when they smile, she thinks. Now he is smiling, showing his teeth. She is too. Smiling is powerful, she thinks and rolls onto her stomach.

  “God,” he says. “You have a really great back.” He runs his hand over it. This is the first time he has looked closely at this part of her body. They have known each other for only twelve days.

  She looks over one shoulder, beaming. “I do?”

  “Oh it’s perfect.” He kisses her spine and she rolls onto her back again, a greedy smile on her face.

  He curls beside her, laying his head sidelong on her arm so that his lips are pressed against one breast. “It keeps wanting to pop in my mouth,” he says of the breast.

  “It doesn’t want anything,” she says.

  “Well it’s right where my mouth is,” he says. “So when I talk it gets in.” He laughs wildly, letting the tit in. “It maketh it hard to talk,” he says.

  “Why don’t you move?” she laughs.

  “I don’t know, I kind of like it.” He raises his head and they make out, then stare at each other.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  “This.”

  She thinks he might make a joke but he doesn’t. She sits up and pulls a sheet over them. By the bed there’s a small stack of books. The one on top has an ugly fish on the cover. Over the fish big block letters spell WORLD’S WEIRDEST ANIMALS. She picks up the book. Under it there’s another picture book.

  “You read a lot of silly books, you know that?” she says.

  “Well you just read The Metamorphosis over and over,” he says.

  She stares at him.

  “You said you read it every year,” he says. “Didn’t you say that?”

  “So. You wish you could do the same thing over and over,” she says challengingly, a smile building. It is a playful smile but she means what she said. She thinks it takes guts to do the same thing many times. And an imagination.

  “Say that again,” he says.

  “You wish you could do the same thing over and over.”

  “Say that again.”

  “You wish you could do the same thing over and over.”

  “Say that again.”

  “Oh shut up.” She gives him a little shove. They laugh and laugh, then settle back into silence. She opens World’s Weirdest Animals and reads.

  “Jesus,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Ants of the subfamily Formicinae kidnap the eggs and pupae of other ant species, take them home, and raise them as slaves,” she reads aloud. “They spend the rest of their lives doing the foraging, cleaning, and babysitting for their masters.” She turns to him with a look of deliberate horror.

  He grins. “That’s pretty fucked up.”

  “It’s just such a human thing to do,” she says.

  “Right,” he says. “Humans are way worse though.”

  “Yeah.” She stares into space. “The capacity to organize is endless and that becomes cruel.”

  He nods.

  She puts the book down and he picks it up. “My mom buys these books for me,” he says. “Every year for Christmas.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Do you ever buy books?”

  “No. I don’t really like to read,” he says without embarrassment, putting the book back on the floor.

  It mildly shocks her, his ease in admitting this, his confidence. “I love you,” she says.

  “Because I don’t read?”

  “Yeah that’s it.” She kisses him squarely on the mouth. “I mean it. I fucking love you. I’m so glad . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I’m glad we’re dating.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Dating?” he says, smirking slightly. “This is quite a date.”

  She shoves him, laughing embarrassedly, then climbs on top of him. “You’re so goddamn funny.”

  “It’s all fear,” he says, feeling her bum with one hand. “It started in high school.”

  She watches his face as he remembers.

  “They were all laughing at me anyway so I thought I might as well take control of it,” he says.

  “That’s smart.”

  He grins. “I was always making the moms laugh.”

  “I’m sure you were very charming.”

  “I was. You’re laughing!”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “But you’re smiling.”

  “I am,” she says, the smile spreading to show her teeth. Then she throws herself down next to him, wanting to see what he sees: the ceiling, mostly.

  “It seems like you like being naked,” he says.

  “I do,” she says. “I like how simple it is.”

  He rests his hand on her stomach and a foreverish feeling flashes between them. She tries to imagine loving him less and she can’t. Then she tries to picture herself as an old woman in a rocking chair. She can’t. And she can’t imagine dying because that would mean the love was gone too.

  She wraps her leg around him. She takes a whiff. Who could die like this?

  Another Breed

  “She got the job cause she’s good-looking.”

  “You think?”

  “She’s a nice blonde from a private school and she probably sucks their dicks.”

  “Stop. I don’t think she’s like that.”

  Sasha grinned, sure of herself. “These are men with money. They’re hiring blow jobs whether they get them or not.”

  Cory laughed a little. “You’re right.” She packed the wooden pipe with weed and held a lighter to the cruddy green, puffing till it glowed. “Men have careers,” she said with a gush of smoke. “Women have mouths.”

  Sasha’s grin deepened. “The other day I saw a billboard and I can’t remember if it was for cell phones or an actual escort service . . . but the woman was on the phone and she was doing that finger-to-mouth thing.” Sasha demonstrated, holding one finger up to a mock pout.

  “So?”

  “So I was like why do women do that? And then I was like duh the finger’s a dick.”

  “It’s like she’s thinking about sucking it.”

  “Yeah or showing you the way in . . .”

  Cory relit the pipe and puffed on it.

  Sasha held out her hand. “Gimme that.” They were sitting on Cory’s bathroom floor because it was the coolest spot. Outside it was ninety-one degrees and the whole apartment was roasting.

  The two of them looked exactly as they had at sixteen—at least to themselves. They were still best friends who lay around gossiping and looking at the walls. They were twenty-five now.

  People often asked if they were sisters, though they didn’t look alike. Cory was short with a round face and brown curls that came to her shoulders. Sasha was tall and thin. She had a pointy face and dark eyes that looked drawn on.

  “I need a job,” Cory said, handing the pipe over. “I’m starting to freak out.”

  Sasha looked down at the black plastic mouthpiece. It was considerably bite-marked. “You should learn how to read tarot cards,” she said finally. “You’d be good at it.”

  “No. I wanna believe in it too much. I’d hate to be the one making it up.” Cory hung her head low, examining her fingernails. They were a little yellow and some were longer than others. “We should both just marry doctors.”

  “Oh come on. Do you really want to be some captured pet?”

  “Yes.” Cory stared a second. “I’m not a genius like you.”

  “I’m not a genius. I’m just popular.”

  “But that’s a kind of genius, isn’t it?”

  “I guess,” s
miled Sasha. “See? You’re a genius too.”

  Cory suppressed a naked look of delight. She stared down at the clammy legs sticking out of her dress. “I just need to find someone to feed me.”

  Sasha rolled her eyes and stood up. “Enough already.” She bent over the sink and splashed her face with cold water, then gave the mirror a quick, urgent glance, as if checking to see if she was still beautiful. She was. “Everything costs something, Cory. I mean rich guys are awful to be around . . . so rude.”

  “Well they’re full of well-being but nothing’s ever good enough.”

  “Uh-huh. Their wives are so . . . you know . . . disposable.” Sasha sat back on the floor with a little thud. “I mean disposable if they’re lucky. Otherwise they just wind up with a rhinestone collar and a long leash their whole life.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Yes it does. Those women kill themselves.”

  Cory leaned her head against the tub. “I’m really stoned.”

  “I’m not. This is horrible weed.”

  “I know. It’s not giggly weed. It just makes you stupid.”

  “I don’t feel stupid. I don’t feel anything.” Sasha stuck her finger in the ashy hole of the pipe and poked around. “This is like a dirty old man’s pipe,” she said and relit the charred little nugget.

  Cory cracked up. “It was my grandfather’s.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I took it from his house when he died.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Cory, we’re kissing your dead grandfather!”

  The two broke into high-pitched, chaotic giggling.

  “I never thought about it that way.” Cory held her abs, catching her breath. “But I guess you’re right.”

  “Stoner.” Sasha brought the brown arm of the pipe to her lips and took a long pull.

  “You like kissing him.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You can’t get enough.”