My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro

by Jeffrey Eugenides

  that Pip would take pity on me. I heard their car idling. I listened to the traffic and the sound of pedestrians walking carefully around me.

  I could almost hear Kate and Pip arguing in the car, Pip wanting to get out and help me, Kate urging them to leave. I pressed my cheek against the pavement in prayer. High heels clicked toward me and stopped; an elderly woman’s voice asked if I was okay. I whispered that I was fine and silently begged her to move on. But the woman was persistent, so finally I opened my eyes to tell her to go. Kate ’s car was gone.

  I pulled the phone into the bed and slept for three days. At intervals I would open my eyes long enough to remember and then I’d drop back into unconsciousness. In dreams I knew I was tunneling toward her—if I could only dig deep enough, I would find her. The tunnels narrowed as

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  I crawled through them, until they became impossibly knotted strands of hair that I could only tear at.

  On the afternoon of the third day, the phone rang. I pulled it up from the loamy depths of the bed. I wanted her to know, from the moment she heard my voice, that I was dying. I delivered a salutation so craven, so wretched, that it fell through language like pebbles. Hello.

  It was Mr. Hilderbrand, the landlord. In some bizarre, alternative, science-fiction reality, the rent was due. It was just one month ago that we had lifted Leanne ’s dirty slip. I hung up the phone and looked around the room. My post was still standing in the kitchen, tactfully silent. A dangerously tall table-like structure wobbled in the middle of the room.

  It was the first square foot of the upstairs. I crawled underneath it and imagined Pip and Kate eating dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Berryman. It was the kind of scenario Pip had often described. We could not walk past a fancy house without her presuming its owners would want her to live with them if only they knew she was available. She saw herself as a charming street urchin, a pet for wealthy mothers. It was a scam. There was nothing in the world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this.

  Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

  I went to the bathroom and threw handfuls of water on my face, and it was easy. In fact, I could do anything. I took off the jeans and T-shirt I had been sleeping in. Naked, I crouched on the floor and sliced the legs off my pants with a box cutter. I put them on and they were itty-bitty.

  Itty-bitty teeny-tiny. I sawed through the T-shirt, leaving if you love jazz on the floor. honk barely covered my small breasts, but hey. Hey, I was leaving the apartment. I was walking down the hall, and there was a small basket of old apples in front of the neighbor’s door with a sign that said, for my neighbors please take one. And hey, I was starving.

  I took an apple and the door swung open. I had never really seen this neighbor, but now I could see that she was a junkie. An old junkie. And she was wearing a sweater that I knew she had found in the hallway. It was Kate ’s cardigan. She told me to take another one, and then she asked for a hug. I hugged her hard with an apple in each hand. Last week I would have been afraid to touch her, but now I knew that I could do anything.

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  I had no money for the bus, so I walked. It was an incredible distance. A horse would get tired galloping there. When birds flew there, it was called migration. But it wasn’t difficult, it just took time. It was a new experience to walk across the city in tiny shorts and a half-shirt that said honk. People honked without even seeing the shirt. I often felt that I would be shot in the back with an arrow or gun, but this didn’t happen.

  The world wasn’t safer than I had thought; on the contrary, it was so dangerous that my practically naked self fit right in, like a car crash, it happened every day.

  The place I was walking to was in a strip mall, between a pet store and a check-cashing place. I asked the man at the counter if they were hiring, and he gave me a form to fill out on a clipboard. When I handed it back, he stared at it without moving his eyes, which made me think maybe he couldn’t read. He said I could start tonight if I wanted to come back at nine. I said, Great. He said his name was Allen, I said my name was Gwen.

  I hung out in the strip mall for three hours. The pet store was closed, but I could see the rabbits through the window. I pressed my fingers against the glass, and an ancient lop-ear hopped toward me wearily. It looked at me with one eye and then the other. Its nose quivered, and for a moment I felt that it recognized me. It knew me from before, like an old teacher or a friend of my parents. The rabbit’s eyes darted across my clothes and sniffed my wild, sad urgency and guessed that I was up to no good. Then I stood up, brushed off my knees, and walked into Mr. Peeps Adult Video Store and More.

  The “and More” part was in the back. Allen left me there with a

  woman named Christy. She was sitting in a green plastic patio chair and wearing a pink OshKosh overall dress. Looking at the sturdy gold overall fasteners, I wondered if everything familiar was actually part of a secret sexual underworld. She showed me into the booth and began packing dildos and bottles and strings of beads into a sporty Adidas bag.

  Adidas. Her tools were laid out on an old flowery towel, and I knew that if I smelled the towel, it would smell like my grandmother. Gramma.

  Christy wrapped the towel around a small empty jelly jar.

  What ’s that for?

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  Pee.

  Even pee was in on this. She showed me the price list and the slot that money would come through. She raised her hand through the air as she described how the curtain would roll up. She cleaned a telephone receiver with Windex and paper towel and told me to never leave it sticky. Then, with hasty efficiency, she pulled her long, thin hair into a pony-tail, swung the Adidas bag over her shoulder, and left.

  The store felt very quiet, like a library. I sat on the green plastic chair and adjusted my shirt and shorts. The fluorescent lights droned with a timeless constancy. I looked up at them and imagined that they, not the stars, had hung over the long creation of civilization. They had droned over ice ages and Neanderthals, and now they droned over me. I stood up and walked into my booth. I didn’t have anything to lay out on a towel; I didn’t even have a towel. All I had was the key to the apartment.

  If I didn’t make any money tonight, I would be walking all the way back there. At night. In this outfit. I was in a unique situation where I needed to give a Live Fantasy Show in order to protect my personal safety.

  I practiced taking the phone off the hook. I did it five times, quicker and quicker, as if this were the skill I would be paid for. I thought about the words that I would have to say into it. I had never said any of these words except as swear words. I tried to think of them as seductive. I tried to say them seductively into the receiver, but they came out in a swallowed whisper. What if I couldn’t say them? How awkward would that be? The man would ask for his money back, and I wouldn’t get to take the bus. In a panic, I said all the dirty words I knew in one long curse: Cock-sucking ball-licking bitch whore cunt pussy-licking asshole fucker. I hung up the phone. At least I could say them.

  I sat in the plastic chair for more than three hours. During this time, two different men came into the store. They both peeked at me over the racks of videos, but neither of them walked to the back. After the second man left, Allen yelled out from behind the counter.

  That ’s the second one you’ve let go by!

  What?

  You’ve gotta be more aggressive! Can’t just sit on your ass back

  there!

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  Got it!

  Twenty minutes later, a man in a black sweatshirt came in. He peered over a rack of magazines at me, and I rose to my feet and walked toward him. His sweatshirt had a picture of a galaxy on it with an arrow pointing to a tiny dot and the words you are here. The man looked up at me and pretended to
be surprised. I imagined him instinctively pulling off his hat in the presence of a lady, but he wasn’t wearing a hat.

  Are you interested in a live fantasy show, sir?

  Yeah. Okay.

  He followed me to the back of the store. We parted for a moment and reunited inside the booth with the curtained glass between us. I heard a Velcro wallet ripping open, twenty dollars fell lightly into the locked plastic box, and the curtain rose. He already had his penis out and the phone in one hand. I lifted the receiver. But as I had feared, I was mute.

  I stood paralyzed, as if on a rock over a cold lake. I was never good at jumping in, letting go of one element and embracing another. I could stand there all day, letting the other kids go in front of me forever. He was pumping it up and down and it was a strange sight, not something you see every day; in fact, I had never seen this before. He said something into the phone, but I didn’t catch it. Despite how close we were, the reception was not very good.

  Excuse me?

  Can you take off your clothes?

  Oh. Okay.

  From the start, one is trained not to take off your clothes in front of complete strangers. Keeping one ’s clothes on is actually the number one rule for civilization. Even a duck or a bear looks civilized when clothed. I pulled down my jean shorts and lifted my shirt over my head. I stood there naked, like a bear or a duck. The man looked at me with grim concentration, my pale breasts, the puff of hair between my legs, back and forth between these poles. He checked occasionally to make sure I was looking at him. I diligently stared at his penis and hoped that this was enough, but after a few seconds, he asked me if I liked what I saw. Again I was on the rock, kids splashed below me yelling Jump! But I knew jumping was like dying, I would have to let go of everything. I considered what I had. She

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  hadn’t called, she wouldn’t call, I was alone, and I was here—not even in some abstract sense, not here on earth or in the universe, but really here, standing naked before this man. I pushed my hand between my legs and said: Your big hard cock is making me so horny.

  At five a.m. I was gliding through the night on a bus. The bus was just a formality, though—actually I was flying, in the air, and I was taller than most people, I was nine or twelve feet tall, and I could fly, I could jump over cars, I could say “cock” ravenously, gently, coyly, demandingly, I could fly. And I had $325 in my pocket. Standing with one foot in the bathtub until she returned wasn’t just a way to stop time, it was also a ritual to bring her back. I would be Gwen until she came home.

  I bought a lime-green negligee, a dildo that I devirginized myself with, and a chestnut-colored wig in a bobbed style called Élan. I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn’t. I had thought that I was fragile, but I wasn’t.

  It was like suddenly being good at sports. I didn’t care about football, but it was pretty amazing to be in the NFL. I told long, involved stories that revolved around my own perpetually wet pussy, I spread open every part of my body, I told customers I missed them, and these customers became regulars, and these regulars became stalkers. I learned to stay inside until the moment before my bus came, and then dash past anyone who was lurking in the parking lot, waving and yelling, Come see me on Thursday!

  And I missed her terribly.

  One evening the bus was late and a customer followed me out to the curb. He stood beside me at the bus stop and I ignored him and then he started spitting. First he spit on the pavement, then more generally in the air. I felt tiny wet specks blow onto my face and I pressed my lips together and stepped backward. He, too, stepped back, and continued to fill the air with his scattershot. His harassment relied on a logic so foreign that I felt disoriented, I couldn’t gauge whether it was terrifying or silly, and it was this feeling that told me to go back inside. I walked and then ran, slamming the door behind me. But Mr. Peeps was not exactly a safe haven, and I couldn’t stay there forever. I asked Allen to go outside and see if the customer was still there. He was. Couldn’t Allen tell him

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  to leave? Allen felt he could not because a) he wasn’t breaking the law, and b) he was a good customer. Allen thought I should call a friend or a cab to pick me up.

  I had been waiting for this moment, and I marveled at how organi-

  cally it had arisen. I usually imagined poisoning myself or getting hit by a car. Someone official, a cop or a nurse, would ask if there was anyone I wanted them to call. I would gasp her name. She works at Berryman’s Lumber and Supply, I would say. This situation was not as dire, but it involved safety, and more important, it wasn’t my idea to call her. I had been ordered, almost commanded, by a superior, Allen.

  I called Berryman’s Lumber quickly, almost distractedly, model-

  ing myself after the kind of person who would have a question about replacement saw blades. But the moment the line began ringing, my senses dilated, winnowing out everything that was not the ring or the sound of my own heart.

  Berryman’s Lumber and Supply, how can I help you?

  I’m trying to reach Pip Greeley?

  Just a sec.

  Just a sec. Just two months. Just a lifetime. Just a sec.

  Hello?

  It ’s me.

  Oh. Hi.

  This wouldn’t do. This Oh. Hi. I couldn’t be the person who elicited a response like this. I straightened my wig. I smiled into the air the way I smiled when customers unbuckled their belts, and I made my eyes laugh as if everything were some version of a good time. I began again.

  Hey, I’m in a bind here and wonder if you could help me out?

  Yeah? What?

  I’m working at this place, Mr. Peeps? And there ’s this really creepy guy hanging around. Do you have a car?

  She was silent for a moment. I could almost hear the name Mr. Peeps vibrating in her head. It described a man with eyes the size of clocks. She had devoted her whole life to avoiding Mr. Peeps, and now here I was, cavorting with him. I was either repulsive and foolish, or I was something else. Something surprising. I held my breath.

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  She said she guessed she could borrow a van, and could I wait twenty minutes until she got off work? I said I probably could.

  We didn’t talk in the van, and I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her looking at me many times with bewilderment. I usually changed my clothes and took off my wig before I went home, but I had been right not to do this tonight. I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic. Just as her former home came into view, she made a sudden left turn and asked if I wanted to see where she lived now.

  You mean Kate ’s?

  No, that didn’t work out. I’m living in this guy I work with’s basement.

  Sure.

  The basement was what is called “unfinished.” It was dirt, with a few boards thrown here and there, islands that supported a bed and some milk crates. She waved a flashlight around and said, It ’s only seventy-five dollars a month.

  Really.

  Yeah, all this room! It ’s over fifteen hundred square feet. I can do anything I want with it.

  She walked me between the beams, describing her plans. A toilet

  flushed upstairs, and I could almost see her coworker walking above us.

  He paused, a couch creaked, a TV was turned on. It was the news. She slipped the flashlight into a hanging loop of string, and a dim spotlight fell on her pillow. I stretched out on the bed and yawned. She stared at the length of me.

  You can stay here if you want, I mean if you’re tired.

  I might just nap.

  I have some cleaning up to do.

  You clean up, I’ll nap.

  I listened to her sweeping. She swept closer and closer, she swept al
l around the edges of the mattress. Then she lay down the broom and climbed into bed with me. We lay there, perfectly still, for a long time. Finally, the man upstairs coughed, which set off a wave of kinetic

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  energy. Pip adjusted her shoulders so that the outermost edge of her T-shirt grazed my arm; I recrossed my legs, carelessly letting my ankle fall against her shin. Five more seconds passed, like heavy bass-drum beats, the three of us were motionless. Then he shifted on the couch and we instantly turned to each other, each mouth fell upon the other, our hands grabbed urgently, even painfully. It seemed necessary to be brutal at first, to mine anger and concede nothing. But once we had wrestled deep into the night and turned out the flashlight, I was surprised by her gentle attentions.

  So this was what it was like not to be me. This was who Pip was.

  Because, make no mistake, I kept my wig on the whole time. I believed it made all of this possible, and I think I was right. The wig and the fact that I did not cry even though I wanted desperately to cry, to tell her how miserable I had been, to squeeze her and make her promise to never leave again. I wanted her to beg me to quit my job and then I wanted to quit my job.

  But she didn’t beg, and in fact, Mr. Peeps was essential. Each night she picked me up in the Berryman Lumber van, took me under the

  house, and made love to me. And each morning I went home and took off my wig. I scratched my sweaty scalp and let my head breathe for two hours before getting on the bus to go to work. I lived like this for eight beautiful days. On the ninth day, Pip suggested we go out to breakfast before I went to work.