Lying In Bed

by Rose, M. J.

  “Did you send the museum letter?” I asked, as we strolled around the counter.

  He hesitated for a few seconds. So short a time I was almost surprised I noticed it. His eyes and mine held. There was only one lost beat of time before he said: “Yes.” And then he smiled. It was a secret smile, suggesting the reaction of the woman who’d received it. I wanted to know more. And at the same time, I didn’t want to know at all.

  Suddenly, I was glad Gideon hadn’t told me anything about his lover. If I could picture her, see her in my mind reading my words, it would bother me. Might even freeze me. This, too, was new for me. I’d never been bothered with whom my letters or stories were being sent to. These weren’t mine the way these were.

  “So, do you want to hear my idea for this story?”

  “I’m breathless with anticipation.”

  “That’s the perfume getting to you.”

  We laughed and then I launched into the story. “I think a man might bring his lover here to chose the perfect fragrance for her.”

  “How would he do that?”

  We were starting to play a game. Playing together this time as opposed to the two prior instances when I’d be on my own with an invention that sprung entirely from my imagination. I preferred it this new way, but didn’t allow myself to spend time figuring out why.

  The air conditioner was strong in the store. I took my sweater from around my waist and put it on, watching Gideon pick up one bottle after another that appealed to him the most from a visual standpoint. He opened each one, sniffed at it, and then put it down.

  “So this is what he does?” he asked.

  “Yes. He wants to find exactly the right perfume.”

  He picked up a bottle of Annick Goutal, in a cut glass falcon, sniffed, sniffed again, frowned, and returned it to the countertop.

  “But it’s difficult,” I continued. “Each is too intense on its own. He can’t tell from how the scent smells in the bottle how it will smell when he touches the liquid to her and it’s warmed by her skin.”

  I picked up a bottle of a classic, Shalimar, and handed it to him. Gideon put his head down and inhaled. Then shook his head. “I could never chose one only from smelling them in the bottle.”

  He tipped the bottle and wet his fingers with the perfume. then pressed his fingers to my wrist. First there was a coolness on my skin but, after it dried, the sensation of his fingers lingered, the way the scent had burst forth and then lingered, filling me up, overtaking me.

  I held my hand out for him and he bent over it the way he had bent over the bottles. As he breathed in, his raven hair fell in his face and brushed against my skin. The sensation made me suck in my breath.

  This was not supposed to be happening. I was not supposed to be reacting to him like this.

  “He can’t really pick out the perfume on his own, can he?”

  “No. He has to ask one of the saleswomen to help him test the perfume. He picks one who he thinks looks the most like the woman he’s in love with. She’s happy to help. But something starts to happen as they test out the perfumes. He smells more than the scent. He smells her. The earthiness of her beneath the synthetics, and the oils and he’s attracted to that smell. More attracted to it than anything he’s ever smelled before. It’s as if he’s known her primeval essence all his life without being aware of it. He wants be enveloped in it, in her.”

  Gideon’s eyes were on me now, and he was nodding. Not overtly, but subtly. Just enough of a movement to let me know that he was slipping into the story with me, falling deeply into the fictive dream. The same way I was.

  “The saleswoman doesn’t mind. She likes showing off the scents for him. And she likes the feeling of his hair, so soft against her skin when he bends over her, almost as if he is praying, to take in her smell. But they’ve run out of room on her wrists and so when he tries out the next scent she takes his hand and instead of pressing his fingers to her lower arm, she puts his hand up behind her ear, under her hair, in a private place on her body that is not exposed.”

  “Even though he knows he shouldn’t, he leans toward her. Taking her shoulders in his hands, he holds onto her and puts his–”

  Gideon’s hand was lifting up to my neck, he was moving my hair, and then he stopped. The look on Gideon’s face probably mirrored the one on mine as we realized the same thing at the same time. Which one of us had warned the other off?

  It didn’t matter, the moment was broken as surely as if it had been one of the crystal bottles of perfume dropped on the glass counter, shattering into a hundred slivers of broken light, stinking up the air despite how fragile and gentle and sensual the scent was in the right proportion.

  “Well, this won’t work. I can’t have you send a letter about someone seducing a poor salesgirl when his lover is pining for him.”

  He laughed. “Definitely projecting the wrong thing.”

  “I’m sorry.” My own laughter sounded tight and nervous. “That’s the way the story started developing.”

  “Not to worry. It was a great story. It’s amazing how you slide into telling them. Like you’re putting on someone else’s shadow.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell him, didn’t even want to accept it myself, but this was atypical for me. Stories didn’t usually come to me this easily. And I didn’t normally disappear so deep into them.

  And I didn’t normally find any inspiration in my clients.

  23.

  We were both headed downtown and so we walked east together to take the subway.

  Sitting next to him, as we were whisked through tunnels under the city, we were quiet. When the train jerked to a stop at 42nd street, our legs banged together. I was aware of the two inches where his jeans touched my khaki’s. There was a patch of heat that sizzled through the fabric. And for a few moments I couldn’t figure out whether or not to move. I knew I should have. Or he should have. But neither of us did.

  Everything around us disappeared. There were no other people across from me or behind me or in front of me. The sounds of the subway dissipated. All sense of the rest of my body left me. I simply was that one connection point.

  There was no precedent for how I was supposed to act in this situation. I wasn’t dating this man. I was working for him. Even worse, I was helping him seduce a woman he was interested in. And yet we occupied another realm when we were together. A confusing landscape that engaged my senses and my imagination in a way that was unusual.

  We got out at the Spring street station. I was going to Ephemera and Gideon was going to his studio. Both were in the same direction and we had three blocks to walk together.

  He was taller than me by at least five inches and with such long legs, he walked much faster than I did. I was hurrying to keep up with him for the first block but then he realized and slowed down.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you in a hurry? Do you have an appointment?”

  “The owner of my gallery is meeting me but not for an hour. He has a buyer for a piece that I am finishing up.”

  “I really would like to see your work.” I was surprised at myself. I’d already brought this up without getting the reaction I wanted. Now I was being pushy and overstepping my bounds. But it had simply slipped out.

  If I was honest with myself, I’d admit that I was more than curious. The night before, I’d wanted to look him up on the internet and see if any of his work was online, but had forced myself to hold back. I didn’t want to give in to the urge to scope him out. It was too much like being a high school girl with a crush waiting outside a boy’s house and pretending to bump into him.

  “I hope you won’t be upset but I’ve told Tyler Fisk – he’s the owner of the gallery, the man I’m meeting – about your collages.”

  “You did?”

  “Do you mind?”

  I shook my head.

  Cole had promised me years ago that he was going to help me find a gallery. He’d had such an easy time of it - with his father�
�s and my mother’s connections to the photographic community all kinds of doors had opened for him. At twenty he had already been shooting for Vogue and Bazaar. At 25, he’d seen one of his photographs sold at an auction at Sotheby’s for $25,000. Now at 29, he was having a solo show. Meanwhile, I’d gone nowhere with my work. It didn’t fit into an established area. It couldn’t be categorized. The gallery owners my mother knew handled only photography and said it belonged in a gallery that specialized in the fine arts. Fine art galleries said my work was too photographic and belonged in a gallery that specialized in that.

  It had turned into a matter of pride. As much as I wished I had gotten help, I wanted to do this by myself. Needed to prove that my work was of interest to people because of the art itself and not because of who my mother or my stepfather or my stepbrother were.

  Now Gideon was offering me help and I felt differently about it. Why?

  “That’s extremely nice of you.”

  “I know what it’s like to be where you are and how demoralizing it can be. Making art that no one sees. Yes, I know creating what you believe in and doing it for yourself is what matters. But after a while, you need someone to respond to what you do. You need to watch someone looking at your work and see how they react in order to know if you’re communicating what you hope.”

  “All that’s important is doing the work. Success isn’t my goal.”

  “It’s not success that I’m talking about. It’s interaction. When we paint or sculpt or assemble a collage, we’re using our senses and our souls to make something out of thin air. We’re saying something. And the act of saying it, and the process we go through in presenting it, doesn’t teach us everything we need to know until we can discuss it and argue about it and listen to other people talking about it. It’s like making love versus masturbating.”

  I had been nodding vigorously. He was expressing everything I was feeling, had been feeling for the last few years. But when he used the sexual analogy, I stopped. Suddenly he was taking me to a place I didn’t want to go. Making me think thoughts I wasn’t ready for.

  I no longer understood the act of making love the way I thought Gideon meant it. Had no idea what it would be like to communicate with someone through the act of fucking. I thought I’d known once, but when I’d found out that man had used me, had tricked me into opening up to him before I realized he was going to take advantage of me,I began to second-guess myself. He’d taken a lot from me. Too much. I hadn’t known that you could give that much of yourself away during sex. Hadn’t know it until it was gone. Until he was gone.

  After that I became cautious and held back. Kept my own fantasies in check. I watched. I tried to learn. I listened. I didn’t stay with anyone long because I never could figure out what it was anyone really wanted. Even when it seemed simple and uncomplicated, I questioned it. And they sensed that.

  I couldn’t figure out what I wanted either.

  So it became easier to want nothing.

  With Joshua, my reticence had worked. He’d found it attractive, he said - that I didn’t open up easily meant, to him, that I had not shared how I felt with many men. It was refreshing, he told me. But he’d been too invested in my lack of any commitment to anyone before him. It prevented him from noticing that there was something missing from my emotional commitment to him.

  And then we’d had the fight about my past the night before he’d left for Venice.

  It was only in the last few months, since I’d been writing letters and stories for Grace’s store that, despite myself, I’d begun to think about my own sexuality. As I wrote about other people and their sexual releases and comminglings, I acknowledged how much I hadn’t allowed myself to experience.

  “Where’d you just go?” Gideon asked.

  “What?”

  “You disappeared on me. Looked like you were far away.”

  “I was thinking about what you said. About how much I agreed with it.”

  We’d arrived at my destination.

  “Am I going to see you in the morning?” he asked. “We have to nail down this smell story.”

  I nodded.

  For a moment I was overwhelmed with sadness. I didn’t want him to walk away. It made no sense.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “I’ll call you later. I need to figure out what we should try next,” I said, hearing the harshness in my own voice. I’d retreated already. Reacting to him leaving as if I’d been rejected.

  “And I’ll let you know what my dealer says.”

  I shrugged. “Oh, right.”

  “Don’t sound too excited.” His voice was colder than it had been ten seconds ago.

  I didn’t know what to say or how to explain why I wasn’t more thankful or enthusiastic.

  He’d shown me a wall and where the loose bricks were. He’d even offered to help me pull them out and I hadn’t responded. I didn’t want his help – a man’s help. Not with my personal life, not with my art. Because I knew, I’d learned, that even a man who has your best interests at heart, will, if it comes down to his work, do the selfish thing.

  24.

  I hadn’t been sure what else to suggest for smell until I was walking home later that afternoon and passed a man carrying a large bouquet of flowers.

  What about focusing not on one smell but an abundance of fragrance?

  What would it be like to overwhelm someone with a bouquet of smells and drench them in sensations?

  That’s what I suggested to Gideon’s answering machine that night. I gave him the address of where to meet me the next day and told him to call me if he had a problem with that. If I didn’t hear from him, I’d see him there.

  Lying in bed a few hours later, I didn’t think about myself, but about the woman I was writing these stories for. I tried to imagine her again but I had nothing to go on except that whoever she was she was attracted to, perhaps even in love with, Gideon.

  I’d been in love. In very different ways, with two men. There were others I’d had crushes on, but only those two had aroused a serious depth of emotion in me. Not only were they opposites, but the kind of emotion I’d felt for them was completely opposite too.

  The first was a hurricane. I was in its thrall. Incapable of fighting it. It undressed me and stripped me bare. It made me feel every inch of my naked skin and every nerve ending in my body. It took away my want of food, of sleep, of entertainment, of social situations. There was nothing mild or calming about the storm of sensations that swirled in me when I was with Cole. And there was nothing I couldn’t imagine doing for him or with him. And so I did it all. Brazen and shameless, I split open for him, like a tree struck by lightning, shearing down the middle and immodestly showing its core.

  He took from me what I offered, never considering if it was for my good or not. Cole wanted what I wanted, I thought. Certainly what he gave back was precisely that: his blatant desire.

  I basked in knowing that there was nothing that I could say or do that would disturb him or frighten him away. The deeper I went inside of myself to shock him, the more I delighted him. I spun on him. I rained for him. I lit up the sky giving him everything I had to offer.

  Eight years later nothing was the same. Falling in love with Joshua was like skimming a pond in a small but well-tended teak rowboat, bright with brass fittings. Each of us rowing, the oars dipping only lightly into the water. It was feeling sunshine on your face. Looking up and closing your eyes and looking only out, never in. My reflection in the surface of the water was serene. Clear. And the water itself was not dark or murky but a sky blue sparkling. All of my features were distinct in the mirror image that looked up at me.

  As time went on, I offered Joshua no more and waited to see how much he would demand, only to find he demanded nothing. It was easy giving. No wrenching pulls, no dragging. If I wondered what I was losing by loving him simply, without the old craving and longing and hunger, I don’t remember it.

  Joshua was a relief. I could forget about the girl
who had stripped off her clothes and spread her legs and opened her mouth and couldn’t get enough of the lanky, longhaired boy who couldn’t get enough of her.

  She faded more and more into a past I didn’t think about. I forgot about her the way you forget about a cut that leaves a scar so thin and so pale it all but disappears. I cherished Joshua for who I was able to be with him - someone who did not suffer passion.

  At the time, I didn’t think I was pretending.

  After all, we change. We morph. We evolve into who we are based not only on the experiences we have but the ones we realize we are not strong enough to have again. And I was not brave enough to go back to being even a grown up version of that sixteen- year- old who didn’t understand the concept of shame or the idea of betrayal.

  I turned over on my side and moved the pillows so that a fresh, cooler one was under my cheek. I tried to think of something that wouldn’t keep me awake but would soothe me to sleep. Instead, my mind went back to Gideon.

  What was he like with the woman who was getting my stories? Did she lay herself bare before him and wait to see what he wanted, or did she reach out and take his hand and put it on her breast and show him how desperate she was to have him inside of her?

  What did she write to him in her letters that had made him decide to embark on this campaign of his own? How long had he known her? How well did he know her? Did he know the inside of her? Were the taste and smell of her in his memory? Or was he one step removed? Was he simply responding to her wanting him?

  Which one of them had opened their mouth first during that kiss that is the first marker of how things will progress? When a simple movement turns into an invitation.

  I could see him, facing someone, his hair falling into his face, his green-black eyes focused on her, putting his hands on either side of her face, holding back a moment so he could study her even more closely, set her features in his mind, catch her eye and tease her with what was going to happen.

  I knew – how did I know? – that for him the anticipation was as important as the act. That his wanting was as pleasurable as his release.