When Watched

by Leopoldine Core

  “Anyone who isn’t on their phone is eating,” she said disgustedly. “Couples mostly, but none of them are looking at each other. Eating has become this . . . grim religious practice.”

  Hank laughed. “I love you.”

  “There’s a big neon sign that says toasty—bread that’s going bad that’s been toasted.”

  “I wish I was there with you.”

  “No you don’t.” Lenora took a breath as if she were about to say more but didn’t. She was prone to exactly this sort of pause in a conversation as she was often distracted.

  “Did you hear from Tom?” Hank asked. Tom was Lenora’s agent. She had sent him the first half of her new manuscript, a novel about a female drug mule called The Donkey Show.

  Lenora had spent the past year meeting with an actual drug mule—Angie—for research. She had read an article about the drug bust online and grew very curious about the sort of woman who boards an afternoon plane with giant packets of heroin stuffed up into the chamber of her vagina. Lenora became obsessed with Angie and soon began visiting her in jail with a tape recorder.

  Secretly it made Hank a little sick.

  “He loved it,” she said.

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did.”

  “But I had to ask.”

  “He said it was satisfying.” She let out a huff.

  “Oh come on. Who cares what he said?”

  “It was sleazy,” she said and resumed her distracted silence, which seemed now to contain annoyance.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  She paused a second more. “That I should try to do some work while I’m stuck here. I have that contest I’m judging.”

  “The stories?”

  “Yeah.”

  He scratched some dried food off the thigh of his jeans, flicked it into the air. “I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re stuck there.”

  “It’s actually kind of nice. I like that nobody knows who I am—I like being nobody.” She went quiet again. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay. Tell your mom uh—tell her hello.”

  “Hello?”

  “Well. Give her my love.”

  “She might not remember you.”

  He blinked into space.

  “Hank, she hardly recognizes me.”

  “Tell her anyway,” he said, weirdly hurt.

  “I will.”

  Hank hung up and sank back into the sofa, looking around. Before him hung an oil painting of three milk cartons filled with yellow and orange roses. It didn’t give him any sort of feeling—never had.

  Everything they owned came from an antique store, which seemed eerie to him, like they had no history. He felt like a visitor in the home of another man—a very important man who wrote book after book and fucked Lenora constantly.

  Dazedly he pictured her naked chest, soft with a pale explosion of freckles and one red birthmark that she loathed. It lived under one of her breasts and resembled a little spoon. “I love it,” he would say to her in bed, putting his face near the spoon. Then she’d roll her whole naked self away, pull the sheet up, and groan.

  Hank sat there picturing it—the spoon. The moment of seeing it before she turned. He wondered what Lenora was thinking about at that moment. Her mother? Another man? Existence?

  The love always came this way—like a mallet. And then he saw stars. It didn’t feel good—the pictures that hovered at the front of his skull: Lenora kissing up the zipper of his jeans, then peeking up to say what she said once, four years ago: “I can’t believe I can have this.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  • • •

  Hank woke up an hour later. He ran his tongue over the lemony fur on his teeth and swallowed—revolted, then shut his eyes again and lay there, tipping in and out of consciousness.

  In a fog he observed whole hours fleeing his life forever. He kept picturing what he would do if he could move. Make a roast beef sandwich with mustard. Masturbate. Write seventy pages without stopping. Or pee—suddenly he really had to. He ignored the urge but it waged on and on and soon he had a vision of himself soaking the sofa.

  I’m a neglected dog, he thought and then realized that in this scenario he was also the abusive owner.

  Lenora had a theory about dog training that he never forgot. “You give them a treat when they’re good,” she said. “But only sometimes. No dog should be rewarded every time.”

  Hank considered the chronic hope of a dog trained this way, a dog made to wonder: Will she give it to me now? How bout now? It seemed cruel to melt a being down like that—to nothing but desire.

  Outside a bottle shattered and he was grateful for it. They lived on Riverside Drive and generally there was no one in sight, just joggers—haggard, anorexic ones. Maybe there were some kids out there, he thought, a smile on his lips. Getting tanked.

  Hank glared down at his body, then ordered himself to stand. He felt tired, flabby and separate from the universe. Like an athlete without a team. Or a sport.

  The apartment was dark and manicured, a long hall with the occasional foreign object on a shelf: an eel trap, a ceremonial African hat, a yellow-eyed devil in a shadow box. It seemed so many steps to the bathroom.

  Hank had read that most depressed people didn’t know they were depressed, which fascinated him—being that he was so acutely aware of his own depression. This should feel good, he thought when the arc of urine crashed into the toilet. It doesn’t.

  He didn’t wash his hands. He ran a green comb through his hair and turned before the mirror, examining his stomach in profile—the low mound. Then he gazed at his mouth, which had a slight duck quality. Quack, he thought, shutting his lips. Quack, quack.

  It was a face that had been called strange as many times as it had been called—not handsome, not that word—but as many times as it had been kissed.

  Hank returned to the sofa and crawled onto it. Loneliness stabbed him all over. But what is it called when your loneliness is worse around other people? He shut his eyes. Surely there’s some long German word for that.

  Hank wished he were writing. He had written one good book but the world didn’t think so. Then he wrote another book but he didn’t love it and neither did the world. Now he was thirty-nine. He thought about his age every day. He also thought he would never write again.

  He wondered how many other people were lying miserably on sofas in Manhattan. A fucking lot, he thought. Night had come down through the windows and across the room in long furry slabs. It made him understand suicide—the darkness did. A desire to take the night and put it inside oneself—that made complete sense.

  Hank sat up and imagined himself dead on the blonde wood floor. He let out a big laugh. Death is just that, he thought. A punch line.

  What’s the joke? he imagined someone might ask.

  Your life is the joke.

  Then he remembered something—a poem. He thought of the poem a lot—more than he thought of the woman who had written it, a woman he had dated in his twenties. The poem was called “Beautiful Things the Poor Can Have” and at first it made him squirm when she read it from her notebook. But by the end of it he had restrained a sob.

  The poem was very literal minded—much like the poet herself. It contained a sort of grocery list of things the poor could have—beautiful things. He still remembered parts of it.

  The poor can put their shoes on.

  The poor can go for a walk.

  The poor can say look at the moon it looks like my

  mother. Everyone will laugh.

  The poor can smoke a cigarette.

  The poor can have a good idea that grows in the dark.

  The poor can tell a lie and say sorry, that was a lie.

  The poor can get in bed and have a
dream.

  The poor can wake up with a headache.

  The poor can shuffle to the kitchen for water and see

  their dog and feel okay.

  The poor can sit in a chair—their favorite chair.

  The poor can look at their own hand and feel

  beautiful.

  The poor can have a baby and often they do.

  The poor can say look at my baby. Isn’t my baby

  beautiful?

  They can hold their baby high

  show all their teeth

  and know God.

  Hank remembered the soft look of pride on the poet’s face when she stopped reading.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “Very much,” he said.

  “But do you get it?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said and smiled. “Tell me anyway. Tell me what it means.”

  “It means the poor can have it all,” she said. “And do.” Then she kissed him.

  The poet had been very poor and at that time he had been poor too. They had been poor together in a tiny apartment in Chinatown and the sex was spectacular.

  Now that he was married to a wealthy woman, he wondered what that made him. Not rich exactly—but certainly not poor either. It was a little like being nobody, he thought. Like a little vase all naked on a shelf.

  Mentally he began a list of all the things the rich could have.

  Really nice doorknobs.

  Rooms they don’t even use.

  Big closets with wooden hangers.

  Duvets with duvet covers.

  Weird lighting fixtures—modern sorts of chandeliers.

  Fresh flowers.

  Copper cooking pots.

  Business associates.

  Health care.

  Rules about how to behave.

  Privacy.

  Things that are white but not dirty.

  • • •

  Hank thought of reaching for a pen but instead grabbed his phone and called Lenora.

  “Hey,” she said after the third ring, her voice a tad something.

  He hesitated. “Are you smoking?”

  “That’s the least of my problems right now, believe me.”

  He went mute. She had taken such pains to quit.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said quickly. “I bought a pack when I got off the plane. It just seemed right.” She exhaled. “The blankets are so bad here. I keep adding another one. They’re not that thin but seem to be made of air.”

  “I can’t believe you’re smoking.”

  “I don’t want to be lectured,” she said evenly.

  “Fine.” He took a gruff pause. “How’s your mother?”

  “You know, the same. Sweet and demonic. Like Satan pretending to be a baby.”

  Hank laughed. “I love you, you know that.”

  “I do.”

  “I know I’ve been saying that a lot. I hope you know I mean something a little different each time.”

  “I know.”

  Hank paused. “I don’t want it to become meaningless.”

  “It won’t.” Lenora exhaled. “Mom gave me a picture,” she said, “of me as a baby. She wants me to give it to you.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lenora sniffed. “She kept saying how much she loved it when I was a baby and suddenly I realized why. I thought oh, you didn’t want to meet me.”

  “Can she hear you right now?”

  “I don’t care. She’s hardly spoken to me. I went out for hours, she didn’t even notice.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Walmart. I just walked around so long that I started thinking what a great deal.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know. Arlington’s a toilet. Always has been.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not depressed. I’m actually kind of inspired. It’s not that I want to be a better person.” She paused. “I just don’t want to be like my mother.”

  He laughed.

  “I know she’s losing her shit—I mean I get that. But she was always a jerk so there’s nothing really to grieve.”

  “What time are you bringing her to the place tomorrow?”

  “It’s called Fern Valley.”

  “Sounds like a cemetery.”

  “Well,” she said smokily, a smile in her voice.

  He pictured her staring out a window, which was exactly what she was doing.

  “And now all this stuff I wasn’t allowed to touch as a kid is being thrown out,” she said. “It’s all over the lawn. People have been taking things.”

  “Don’t you want any of that stuff?”

  “No.”

  “I miss you,” he said, then regretted it.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Do you miss me?”

  “I’ve been gone for less than a day. So no.”

  He was quiet a second. “Sometimes I hate your honesty.”

  “I thought you missed me.”

  “I do.”

  “Well.” She took a long drag. “This is me.”

  • • •

  The next day Lenora arrived at their door with a bruisey look of exhaustion around her eyes, brown hair tucked back at the ears. She wore a long sand-colored coat and knee-high leather boots. Hank kissed her on the mouth, tasted mint and a cigarette. He looked into her tired eyes.

  “Will you help me with this?” she asked.

  Hank wheeled her suitcase in. He was always surprised by how sexy his wife was, long-limbed with a soft galaxy of freckles over her cheeks and nose. It was a little like seeing another woman every time she appeared—like she was continually being replaced by one of her more beautiful sisters.

  He watched as she clacked to the hall mirror and shot it a quick glance, then went straight to her office.

  Numbly he floated to the kitchen for more coffee and within minutes, she was shouting.

  “What?” he yelled.

  “Nothing,” she said when he appeared in the doorway. She had stripped down to a sleeveless gray dress and stared fixedly at her laptop, an unlit cigarette waiting between her fingers. The room was dark, save for a standing iron lamp with a slim green shade.

  “What?”

  “This little baby novelist got a huge review in the Times.”

  Hank walked over to the laptop. “Oh him.”

  “He’s a crashing bore, this guy. I met him once . . . years ago.”

  “You have such a teeming, growing shit list.”

  “That’s what a career is.” She scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “I’m sure he adores my work.”

  “Who cares.” Hank backed away from the computer. “You’ll get one. You always do.”

  “But it won’t be like this. It’ll be smaller.” Lenora pulled a book of matches from her purse and lit the cigarette, savagely pulling smoke into her lungs. “The best thing I could do for my career at this point is hang myself.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.” She tugged one boot off and dropped it to the floor. “It’s a fact. I won’t be famous till I’m dead.”

  “But you are famous. You’re famous now.”

  “Not like I will be.” Lenora had entered an unblinking trance. “All the biographers will fight over me.”

  “Come on.”

  “That’s how it works. They eat corpses—all of them do.”

  He stared at her. “That’s a disgusting way of putting it.”

  “It’s true though.”

  Hank backed out of the room, watching her as he went. Lenora was leaning forward in her cracked leather chair, shoulders gleaming in the lamplight. She sta
red straight ahead with a violent look of contemplation, cars going off cliffs in her eyes.

  He brought his laptop to bed and Googled the poet he had dated in his twenties, Grace Lampert. In an instant he identified her on Facebook, looking rather unhealthy next to a man, presumably her husband, who also looked unwell. The image disturbed him. He clicked it shut.

  Hank heard the front door slam and knew where Lenora had gone. To see the drug mule.

  • • •

  She returned at dusk. She walked to the bed and stared down at Hank, who lay in the same spot with his laptop balanced on his stomach, its cool blaze cast over him.

  “Did you get some writing done?” she asked.

  “No,” he frowned. He had done nothing but masturbate. “I drank too much coffee,” he said. That was true too. “Wound up paralyzed . . . grinding my teeth.”

  She laughed.

  “How’s Angie?” he asked.

  “You know. Fine. Terrible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think that’s what prison is like. You’re fine and then you’re terrible.”

  “Right.”

  “She told me a lot more about her childhood.” Lenora shook her head. “It all made so much sense.”

  “What did?”

  “The abuse.”

  “She was abused?”

  “By her father. He beat her with a belt. She said it had a scene of the desert on it.”

  “Are you putting that in the book?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  He stared at her. “Do you think she likes you?”

  “She doesn’t get a lot of visitors, Hank.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” He tried to dock her gaze with his own but it rushed away. “Does she like you?” he said and realized his question was really: Does she hate you? Because in that moment he did.

  “Why would she agree to see me if she didn’t like me?”

  “I don’t know.” He threw his hands up. “Boredom? Loneliness? Desperation?”

  Lenora cut her eyes. “What are you getting at?”

  “I just wonder how she feels about her life going into a book—your book. Of fiction. I mean, at least if it was nonfiction—”

  “I think she likes that I’m so interested,” Lenora said. “Her whole life people have rejected her.” She climbed into bed and pushed the laptop off his stomach, then ran one manicured finger down his chest and over his navel, pausing at the waistband.