Sex and Death

by Sarah Hall

  ‘Look up, let me see,’ her mother said. ‘Oh darling, why are you crying?’

  Whatever its root this penchant for the Verbal Daddy category really can’t be traced to anything her father ever did. In thirty-nine years she never saw him touch her mother lustfully, nor she him for that matter. Here again she couldn’t say why. Both were plain- and pleasant-faced, much slimmer than Brunhilda is, the sort of harmless couple found in medical brochures. Each one seemed to like the other. They often went on nature walks. They called each other Schatzi and they rarely disagreed. But she never saw them clasping hands, barged in to find them nude in bed or watched her father’s fingers idly graze her mother’s ass. She’d presume they were asexuals if not for knowing better – for the world presumes the same of her and look how much she masturbates.

  Her favourite position is prone in bed, a toilet roll between her legs. The roll must be approximately seven-eighths finished, the width of a so-called Monster Cock. She’d mastered the method at fourteen years old, having previously used her pillow, faithfully, bunching it up in a ball at her groin and grinding down against it. The problems were two. The pillow was soft and she, its lover, heavy. Her mother also wondered at the faint stains on the case. Like an underage mistress the toilet roll was soft yet firm, would hold its form, and when it lost its usefulness could simply be discarded. In six years Dirk never thought to ask why the cardboard cylinders never showed brown, why they always vanished, an eighth left to go, replaced by fresh and fluffy ones.

  Verbal Daddies and toilet rolls.

  Brunhilda’s chest of secret joys.

  To which at the end of her sexless marriage she added: homosexual husband.

  Imagining Dirk on his hair-dusted back in a happy baby yoga pose, his small cock resting sweetly on his stomach, out of use; imagining Heiko plunging in, his buttocks taut (from her bird’s eye view), his broad back flexed and rippling – made Brunhilda come in seconds. The more explicitly violent the fantasies were – the harder the thrusts, the louder the squeals – the more aroused Brunhilda became. Soon she abandoned her laptop. She no longer needed the visual aid and so became more mobile. She masturbated madly whenever alone and once while Dirk was sleeping. If after she came she always felt an overwhelming flood of guilt, she couldn’t let the sex scene go; it felt so thoroughly right. At last her husband’s uselessness – his passivity, his inferiority, his fundamental weakness as a man, his flab – had been put to good use.

  Brunhilda had never been happier. Dirk had never been happier. A balance had entered their daily lives, the tenderness born of guilt. Couples keeping secrets are remarkably affectionate (‘Would you like a bit more clotted cream on your fork-split scone, my love?’). Brunhilda was keeping two secrets, mind: the one the sexual fantasy, the other the peace and the sense of relief that she felt when she thought Dirk is gay! This was a secret she kept from herself. Why else had he married her?

  Brunhilda is brilliant and wickedly funny and told, as heavy women are, what lovely skin and hair she has – but what was this to Dirk? There are men who value intellectual agility over physical attractiveness. In Brunhilda’s experience such men are unusual and unusually intelligent. To recognise brilliance is easy. To enjoy it requires native brilliance. As Dirk has none, Brunhilda never knew why he’d proposed. Her reasons for accepting were clear enough. He loved her repetitive cooking. He kissed her goodnight on the back of the neck. He loved his repetitive job. To know his reason finally and to relish it in secret she now felt for him a love-like blend of loyalty and pity.

  And so to the violent sex scene Brunhilda added her own healing hands: cradling Dirk’s head in her lap as he squealed, pinned and wriggling with pleasure. Heiko, thrusting athletically, was not her competitor but her avatar. Through his perfect body flowed her scorn, her pudgy hands her love.

  Never had she felt such honesty. Such equilibrium. Such euphoria. Believing Dirk in love with Heiko, Brunhilda fell in love with both. We can imagine, then, what she must have felt when Dirk came home one Wednesday night and kissed her neck then backed away and said to her, ‘I’m leaving.’

  Brunhilda was frying pork chops in their American-style kitchen, meaning the sound of sizzling onions rather drowned out Dirk’s announcement. When she heard again, ‘I’m leaving,’ she said, ‘Good. Please buy a tannic red. And try to be back within thirty minutes? The chops are better warm.’

  ‘No, I mean I’m leaving you,’ said Dirk, now sweating badly. He rested his bag on the island counter but didn’t remove his coat. ‘I’m leaving you for Heiko.’

  Brunhilda laughed. ‘What fun! At last.’

  Dirk was virtually dripping wet. Brunhilda was facing the stove. He raised his remarkably high-pitched voice. ‘I’m leaving you, I said!’

  ‘I heard you, dear.’ She wiped her hands. ‘I’m happy for you both. May I just ask: do you plan to leave me after dinner or before?’ As we said, Brunhilda is funny. But Dirk lacks native brilliance. He looked at her, sweating and blinking and red, a lost and bobbing apple.

  ‘I’m in love with Heike,’ he blurted out and still Brunhilda heard Heiko. A timer went off. She lowered the flame. The kitchen fell suddenly quiet. ‘I’m in love with Heike.’ Dirk started to cry.

  ‘Who on earth is Heike?’

  Heike is a hotel receptionist, a deep tissue masseuse, and Heiko’s best friend. Heiko is gay. Dirk, alas, is not.

  Two days later Dirk moved out. He had lost ten kilos. He left the clothes that did not fit. Months later they divorced. Three weeks after her parents staged their apology-death in Munich, Heike left Dirk for an ageing masseur and Brunhilda made haste for Merano.

  THE CLOSING DATE

  Alexander MacLeod

  This happened not far from where we are now. The Bide-a-While is still there, but when the whole story came out – or at least most of it – they had to change the name. The place closed down for a couple of months before they staged a grand reopening as part of the larger Sleep Station chain. Now the sign is blue instead of faded orange and there are stars and moons around the words, but from the outside it looks like business is about the same. Long-haul truckers and highway work crews, salespeople with samples in their trunks, contractors on short-term jobs that have to be done right here and right now. All the in-betweeners: they still need beds. They still need places to rest when they are away from home, and this building, with its single storey of a dozen rooms in a line, can still do the job. Sheets and towels are changed and there is a person who will pluck unsightly dark hairs from the white porcelain sinks. Lipstick smudges and grey fingerprints are wiped away and all the glasses are rinsed and rewrapped in a special kind of paper that promises sterilising power. Waste baskets emptied, carpets vacuumed, tiny soaps and shampoos restocked. The stubborn red circle of rust around the bathtub drain is scrubbed and scrubbed again. The last guest leaves just before the next guest arrives and different credit cards are swiped. A rotating privacy is what they sell and we were part of the cycle for a little while. In and then out.

  We only stayed because it was cheap – half the cost of the Super 8 or the Quality Suites down the street – and because it was exactly where we needed it to be: two blocks away from the house we had just bought, the permanent home we moved into two days later. This was back at the very start of everything for us, when this was a new city and we’d just got the new jobs and almost a new set of lives or at least a new strategy for the way things were going to be. Our daughter, Lila, was four years old and Maddy was seven months along and nearly ready to go with Jack. Between these two pregnancies we’d been through one very sad, very late miscarriage and we were trying to be extra careful this time. No sudden swervings, no need to strain unnecessarily. We made a detailed but not very ambitious plan for our move and the Bide-a-While was part of it. Two double beds, a mini-fridge and a coffee maker for $63 a night. After the Montreal apartment had been cleared, we were going to drive to Halifax and stay in the motel for a couple of days while we waited for the mo
vers to arrive. Our closing date, the moment of the official transfer, had been locked in for months and June 1st was stamped on all our documents, but before the house came to us, we were going to pause and reset. We wanted to be ready for the change.

  I think everyone has spent at least one night in a place like the Bide-a-While. When we were kids, my parents used to search for exactly this kind of no-nonsense motel, a bargain option with drive-up parking where they might let us swim in an unsupervised, unheated outdoor pool, twenty feet away from the trucks and the steady stream of highway traffic. There were five children in our family and whenever they could find them, my parents would ask for adjoining rooms. The owner would hand over this strange extra key – usually chained to an oversized block of wood or a thick piece of plastic – and we’d get to turn the secret silver doorknobs and then run back and forth through that opening in the wall that normally stays sealed to most people.

  The paired rooms were identical but opposite, mirrored images, with four beds pushed against the two outside walls. We’d burn off whatever energy we had left jumping across the chasm from one bed to the next and our parents would let us stay up late to watch strange TV in one room while they went across to the other side together. They might bring along a six-pack or a bottle of wine and maybe a bag of chips or some leftover pizza. After half an hour, one of them would get up and quietly close the door on us. I remember the click. We’d be alone, together with just ourselves but separated from them, for maybe an hour before they’d come back and we’d split up again along different lines. A couple of the children would sleep on one side with Mom and a couple of others in the next room with Dad.

  When the news story came out, pictures of the motel were everywhere. Police cars and flashing lights, caution tape and pylons, men in hazmat suits entering and leaving the mobile forensic unit. It was what you’d expect, the rerun of a show you have already seen. Half a dozen satellite trucks pulled into the parking lot for that first week and a line of people of different races, all with perfect hair, reported live for the national shows. It ran in the papers for months, almost a full year. For a little while, it felt like the whole world was paying attention – nothing animates us more than a dramatic loss of life – but for Maddy and me, there was always something extra in it. The story held us differently and claimed us as characters though we didn’t want those roles; it saved room in its plot for our lives. Like walking through a thick fog at street level, the story surrounded us completely and we had to breathe it in. At breakfast, over cereal and orange juice, we’d watch the shows and read, consuming something much higher than the recommended daily allowance of photographs of the victims, accounts of their sad backgrounds, editorials, in-depth analyses, searches for explanation.

  *

  The murderer, as everybody now knows, ran a plumbing business. His truck was already there, parked in front of room 107, when we pulled in the first time. On the driver’s side door, he had a rectangular magnetic sign that could be slapped on or peeled off as the truck moved back and forth between its work life and its other life. There was a basic clip-art icon of a bucket catching five separate drops and underneath it said, ‘Want it done right? Call 902-454-7111’.

  We didn’t see him at all that evening as we unloaded our bags and our toaster and kettle, our box of road food. Juice and bananas and bread and marble cheese and crackers. This was the night of May 30th. It is important to keep the dates right and put everything in proper order. The next day was the 31st. At about eight thirty in the morning we left our rooms at the same time: Maddy and Lila and the murderer and me. We closed our side-by-side doors and entered the outside world at exactly the same moment.

  We had errands to run and forms that needed to be filled out. Insurance, and a trip to the lawyer’s office and then back to the realtor again and the utilities and the phone. The list was complicated and disjointed – more work than we had expected – but every separate task needed a separate line put through it.

  Maddy was hustling Lila towards the back seat on the passenger side. I can see it exactly: her perfect four-year-old summer clothes, the dress and the sandals and the floppy hat. There were yellow straps tied in bows over Lila’s shoulders and a little puff, an extra floof of air in the skirt that made it stick out away from her legs. The shoes had red flowers on the toes and her skin was still shining and greasy from the heavy dose of spray-on sunscreen we had just applied.

  As Maddy and Lila passed by the murderer, he smiled and held out his right hand for a high five and Lila gave it to him hard. He wore blue cargo pants with lots of pockets and a grey tucked-in shirt with more pockets on the chest. In his left hand, I remember, he was carrying some needle-nose pliers and he had a roll of duct tape hanging on his wrist like a bracelet. Again, this was the morning of the 31st. We’ve been over it. There was nothing strange about the way he walked out of that room, nothing strange about the way he handled these objects. He opened his door and threw the tools into the cab and when he turned around he saw Lila still standing there holding out her hand for the return high five. He gave it back right away.

  ‘Have a good one, Little Miss Lady,’ he said. And he looked over the roof of the car and smiled at me and nodded his head. I unlocked my door and pushed the automatic button that opened up everything else. I watched him bring his right hand up to his nose and sniff. Then he made a big show of raising his eyebrows and shaking his loose fingers and pretending like the powerful tropical sunscreen smell burned his nostrils.

  ‘Hole-lee coconut!’ he said, and he waved his palm in front of his face.

  Lila laughed in that delighted way that only she could do. She had that laugh for only a couple of months, somewhere in between the middle part of three and the first part of four – I don’t think anybody can hold it much longer than that – but it was there in that moment and she was giving it up for the murderer. A pure kind of wonder – straight-up happy surprise – untouched by anything else. I loved that laugh so much, loved that she could bring up that sound without any effort.

  ‘Sill-lee,’ she decided.

  Then, ‘Silly, silly, silly,’ up and down, like a song. She pointed directly at him, then directly at me.

  ‘Silly man,’ she told me.

  ‘Why thank you very much,’ he said, and he gave her a little nod.

  He pulled a pair of sunglasses off the visor and put them on. They had reflective lenses and when he looked at us again, I saw myself and Maddy and Lila held there on the surface of the glass.

  ‘Have a good one, buddy,’ he said to me. ‘You sticking around for another night?’

  I nodded my head and he gestured at our doors.

  ‘Maybe we’ll see you later on.’

  We got in and turned our keys. The engines started and I waved at him to go first. He gave me a thumbs-up, then quickly stuck his tongue out at Lila as he pulled away.

  *

  Before we found this house, Maddy and I used to stay up very late searching for it, a laptop computer balanced between us in bed. We’d scroll through the internet real-estate listings, dozens of them, maybe a hundred a night, and we got very good at moving the earth with our little gloved computer hand. Lila would go down around seven thirty and not long after that, we’d make a kind of nest of propped-up pillows and then take turns gently swirling our middle fingers on the mouse pad. The computer rested on both our inside legs, pressing down evenly, and I remember the heat of the battery and the buzz of the processor rubbing up against my cock. The machine kept kicking off this steady blue glow as the pictures flashed in front of us and sometimes, when the backgrounds changed from light to dark, I caught a glimpse of our faces pressed close together and staring back out of the screen. Our expressions were blank and our mouths hung a little bit open, but our eyes were sharp and intensely focused. We looked like different people, strangers lit up by this weird trancelike concentration, a couple who did not know they were being observed.

  ‘This one,’ Maddy would say and she’d
dart at it quickly and click and point and click and point again. The tip of her tongue slid back and forth on her top lip as she thought through the possibilities and I could hear the fluctuations in her breathing, the catches and releases, surges and disappointments. Her hair was down and she was wearing her glasses and her pyjama bottoms and the tank top I liked.

  ‘Focus,’ she said, and she tapped the screen.

  It was always summer in the photographs – full trees and lush gardens – and there were never any people in the frame, even when we switched to the Google Earth street view. I think there must have been an algorithm, an elegant bit of code, that went into the images and automatically subtracted the pedestrians or the dogs or anything that might distract a buyer. We made our way, block by block, one house at a time, moving up and down the abandoned streets. Eventually, we got a feel for the market and a sense for the cost of things. The numbers we read seemed to make a pattern we thought we could understand and we started to see everything as a mathematical equation, a pure exchange. The places we didn’t like were ugly or insanely overpriced – only a fool would live there – and all the places we wanted were special and unique, good long-term investments, and certainly worth the kind of debt we would have to take on to get started. We were looking for something on the edge, a hidden gem that did not announce itself in an obvious way, a house with a special potential that not everyone would be able to see.

  *

  When the detectives came to us the first time, they had all their facts in order. Credit card receipts and the motel’s log and the one long-distance call we made to her parents, even the Interac transactions for the groceries and for the thirty dollars in gas I’d bought from the station down the road. This was incontrovertible evidence, rock-solid data drawn from the permanent digital record of the world. The information plotted us into a single square on a tight piece of graph paper. Our location at that particular time and in that particular space could not be negotiated retroactively.