And it eased me more this time than the others. For a while it made me feel wholly all right. And with this, too, the familiarity was one of wanting but never having.
She was so near to me but not so close I couldn’t look at her and I did look. Maybe this was what made me go shaky again, the look on her face, which was both sad and gentle. Like she was still keeping herself back, keeping the things inside her away from me.
Her carefulness, I couldn’t fathom it and so I closed my eyes. And when I did, I felt some last part of me giving to her. And now that I couldn’t see her I could feel so much more of the things she felt. And maybe she knew this because she seemed even more to be staying away from me. Was still straining to stay off me and so I pulled her closer, wanting to be in that place where I couldn’t tell us apart.
Her other arm came around my shoulders and she kissed me again. And I let her. I guess I’d always done this. She’d become one of the people allowed to have whatever they wanted of me. Do whatever they wanted to me. Maybe she was the only one left like that.
She began kissing my breasts and then sucking them. She lured me further and further under. And her hand stayed inside me that same soft way until a fullness came into my chest, but of a different sort than I’d let myself know before, even with her. Something very old and tired roved around in there.
I didn’t try to stop it. Not then, and not when her mouth moved lower. First to my belly, and then nearer her hand. And I went lower, too. Deeper into myself when she let her hand come out of me, leaving only her mouth. I turned a little, and she helped my leg curl around her. She slipped just her finger into my ass and then what I recognized became beastly – wildly howling and ancient.
I don’t think I made these sounds. They stayed lodged inside me, echoing there by themselves, alone, and so I felt alone or began to. Or maybe it went the other way around and the loneliness began this, tapped this place. A place so far inside me she couldn’t get there, could only get me there. And now that I was – was there and alone – I most wanted her near me.
I knew she’d brought me here before. Taken me in this way, to this place. And that each time the same need was there – the one to crawl away. Each time exactly the same and not quite. Altering me by degrees. And this time that blackness, that dark sleepy thing besetting me. A sleep able to dampen that big baying mass, but somehow the same as it. Or the back of it.
This time I was trying to crawl away from me but not her. And when I couldn’t, I tried to pull her in here with me, but I couldn’t find my hands. I didn’t know where they were.
I woke to them holding her hips. Woke because for a time I wasn’t awake. Not asleep but not conscious either – in someplace where only my breathing mattered. Someplace between the baying and blackness. Suspended between them in half-light. And from here I could feel her but I didn’t quite feel myself and so I couldn’t know what had happened, not then, not fully.
I woke up to her stroking me, to coming in this huge, quiet way that made me want to cry except with all her carefulness, crying seemed too messy. This nearly put me back to sleep but instead I felt this other thing too, habitual, all about touching her, giving her something back.
I felt unable, though. Completely unable. She seemed content with this. Content with having had me and that I knew it this time.
If she left I didn’t remember it. I did wake up alone, though. Alone and afraid and wanting her.
At least I began with wanting her until I remembered where she’d taken me. Remembered that leviathan thing I’d met inside me. That baying thing she’d let up and that black sleepy thing opposite. And, worst, that lost space between them. I could remember going there, being there, but had no memory of what happened outside it.
The fear of this led me to do something I knew not to. Something I knew should scare me, too. And, in any case, wouldn’t work. Not the way I wanted it to, not anymore.
I called Ingrid. I tried to. I got her husband instead and so, of course, I hung up. Hung up wondering if he’d know anyway. Wondering somewhere in me always how much he knew, and why was he waiting because it felt that way all the time. Not that he’d let off me but was biding his time.
I wasn’t at all clear what to do. I wound up getting dressed, taking some money from the envelope. Then I went to the store. Not the actual grocery store, which was way too far away, but a deli across the street. I bought food, though I wasn’t hungry. I did better at the drugstore next door, bought things I might actually someday use. Then I went back home.
I soaked for a long time in the bathtub. Did this until something woke in me, telling me to get up and dressed because otherwise the phone might start ringing. That I needed to prevent this.
I went to Beth’s office. I was late, I suppose. My sense of time so jangled by now, close was the best I could hope for. I saw her car there, parked where it always was. I nearly stopped, or did for a little bit, just to stare at it. I wondered how she kept up her life. How she kept it going normally through all of this. And so I went inside feeling suspicious of her in some way. Feeling away from her, that we weren’t in sync.
She came to get me before I’d crossed the waiting room. She didn’t touch me, but still there was this shepherding feel to the way she walked with me – a little behind, between me and the door, guiding and preventing escape.
I sat down right away, which left her the one standing. She stayed standing for a bit, close to me, then moving back toward her chair, stopping briefly to look at something on her desk.
I waited for her. And then we sat there looking at each other and saying nothing. She appeared a bit off, and tired too. Tired like me. This was reassuring, though I still wasn’t sure whether she’d pretend last night away. And this time, I wasn’t sure I didn’t want her to pretend it away. Didn’t need her to.
Maybe that’s why I’d come here instead of letting her come to me. Maybe I thought it’d make all that go away. But she wasn’t going to let that happen anymore. Already she held her hands out to me and I took them and then we were standing.
At first it felt like a long time ago, and safer because of this. But then I kissed her, awkwardly, like I didn’t know what I was doing, and so already I’d given over to her. Given in to us being the same to each other day-to-day. The thing I’d thought I’d most wanted but now wasn’t sure of.
She pulled at my shirt and put her hand underneath it and I began shuddering. I couldn’t stop the shake in my legs, in one leg especially.
She seemed to be fighting something herself – her hands trembling and uncertain, staying for a long time with my breasts. She didn’t really feel there. She didn’t feel sure to me until she began touching my stomach, unbuttoning my pants.
I felt the need to move on her, to gain some kind of footing. But by the time this even registered she’d already gotten into my pants. And then I was sinking to my knees and she with me. Her hand already inside me and the rest of her holding me up, and so here again she had me.
And, like last night, just when I thought I could let this be, let her have me, I couldn’t. I wanted away. Away from that big baying thing coming up now to breathe. And I couldn’t get away and I couldn’t get my breath. It took all the air. And did she feel any of this in me?
*
Afterwards, I couldn’t go home. Instead, I went to the only other place that felt familiar – the parking lot. There weren’t many people there and I had no clue about the trains. I’d lost track of the timetable. It’d been that long.
For these reasons I went into the bar, though as soon as I saw Burt and Jeremy, sitting at that same table, I realized they were why I had come.
I sat down without them asking me to. They barely noticed me; didn’t say anything to me. They didn’t miss a word in the conversation they were having, which seemed encoded. But then ordinary words gave me a lot of trouble these days.
When the waitress came over Burt ordered another round and tacked on a drink for me. A vodka, so at least he reme
mbered something about me. I began to remember things about him. About them. I knew already this wouldn’t work. And from here the urge to go home took me over. I felt too tired to walk, though. And even with money in my pocket and cabs waiting right outside, this way out didn’t occur to me.
When I’d left off expecting him to, Burt turned my way. “Where’ve you been?” he asked.
But then he laughed like he already knew, and Jeremy laughed with him, and then he said to Burt, “I told you she’d turn up again. I told you we wouldn’t need to make any effort.”
I sat there, still not speaking or understanding. Sat there still with this tremendous urge to go home until I finally said it. Asked them would they take me there.
They both were laughing again and then we were all getting up and Burt was paying the bill.
Out in the parking lot, I found myself looking for that hapless guy. Expected to see him parked there and waiting. But I knew he wasn’t, knew I would’ve noticed him on my way in.
I followed them across the lot to a nondescript car. Jeremy got in to drive. Burt motioned me in beside him, put his briefcase on the floor and pulled me into his lap. Once we got to my place he got out with me. He told Jeremy, “Why don’t you go take care of that thing we discussed. This won’t take too long.” And then, like an afterthought, he said, “Give me the case.”
He followed me up the stairs and into my apartment and then into the bedroom. He put the briefcase down and sat in a chair – one I’d almost forgotten because it was buried beneath clothes, clothes now strewn on the floor, except for a slip I’d also forgotten. Burt held this in his hands.
“Why don’t you put it on,” he said, and I hesitated for a few moments before taking it from him.
“I really need another drink,” I said. “Do you want one?” I said these things as I made my way toward the door. He caught me by the arm and twisted. He said, “I’ve got something you want more.” And I knew he meant drugs – even before he’d gone into his pocket, I knew.
He tossed two bags on to the bed. “Fetch,” he said. Said it in such an ordinary way that I simply complied. When I started for them, though, he said, “Put that on first.”
I took off my clothes, except for my underwear, started to pull the slip on over it but he told me to take it off.
“I don’t think you’ll be needing those, now will you?” This was what he actually said.
I couldn’t decide what it was about him tonight that made me unable to disagree, made the things he said make sense. I didn’t know whether it was anything about him really, or something about me. Where Beth had left me, what she’d left me with.
I clearly understood I’d gotten in over my head. I literally felt this way – underwater, my movements all slow and slurred. I crawled on to the bed, picked up the bag that looked more promising – full of pills I mostly recognized and a packet I knew held the thing I most wanted. The thing I’d needed badly since last seeing Beth, probably ever since I’d met her.
Her name crossing my mind again bothered me and not too long after I heard the phone. Heard it as I opened the packet and tapped some on to my hand and snorted.
Burt answered the phone. “She’s busy just now.” And then he unplugged the phone.
“Who was that?” I asked, as if he’d know.
“Just one of your girlfriends.”
I snorted some more and this put me further underneath. Put me to a place I could keep going with this.
Burt took the other bag, the one full of coke, and he snorted some and he watched me, except I wasn’t doing anything.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing him. He told me to pull up the slip. I did what he said and then I opened my legs and he told me to touch myself. He said, “Come on, now, sweetheart. I want to see you.”
I began this because it wasn’t so foreign to me. He sat back and watched for a while before he held out the bag. And when I didn’t move in response, he licked his finger and stuck it into the bag. Brought it out all covered in white and then he touched me, started with his finger almost inside me, running it along and in between.
I didn’t feel much. Or at least what I felt seemed to come from his finger and not the drug, felt ordinary that way. I didn’t feel enough off the heroin either, believed it should’ve kicked me down further given how long it’d been since I’d had any. But maybe because I’d spent so many months drowning, this couldn’t compare. Couldn’t take me any further down than Beth already had.
I found this acutely unsettling. I’d looked at this drug as something to count on. A last and sure thing that would hold her at bay and let me keep going. Something to keep my own baying in hand, make it heel.
I went into the packet again, took a lot more into my body, until I should’ve been sick but wasn’t. Not in the physical way I expected. And this, the futility of it, made me want to be away from him, and from all of it. Be away from my life.
Nonetheless, I went through the motions. Did the things he told me to, which were no worse than things I’d done before. They only felt worse for the things in my head, going on in concert. These things being all about Beth, or the things in me she’d uncovered. No matter what I did, or what he did, I couldn’t get rid of her, couldn’t get rid of me.
That he wouldn’t fuck me enraged me. And then I realized it wasn’t about wouldn’t, it was more about couldn’t and I became reckless and insulting. Felt power in this, in taunting him, until he pulled that briefcase on to his lap and opened it.
I couldn’t see inside it and so when the gun came out, it startled me, though I don’t guess it should have. What startled me more was him handing it to me. He said, “You want it so bad? Use this.”
And when I didn’t do anything, when I let the gun just hang limp in my hand, he yelled at me, “Do it.” And then softer he said, “You’ll do each thing I tell you.”
I stared at the gun. It was heavy and looked old-fashioned. It had a long, dull-gray barrel, and the wood of the handle felt smooth and worn like he’d fondled it for years.
I still held it awkwardly, with my hand wrapped around it, around the trigger guard and the wood. The weight of it dragged my arm down, then started it shaking until I trembled all over.
“Cock it,” he said.
It took some effort to pull back the hammer. I had to use both my hands to accomplish this. Had to rest my arms in my lap to steady them some. And while my body kept up this terrible shaking, my mind stayed completely still.
“Go on, fuck yourself,” he said.
And here too I was slow and my dawdling got him yelling again. “Go on,” he said first, and then the soft voice again. “You wanted it bad, right? Well, sweetheart, here you have it.”
I put the barrel between my legs. I put my feet up on the bed and held myself open, and the rest of me upright. I slid it back and forth between my legs, felt everything go slippery there and in my head.
“Put it inside.”
I did this easily, though the sighting notch caught me up a little, tore at me some.
“You like it?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question. “You like it,” he said, again.
I moved the barrel in further and then out some. I found myself moving my hips in a way that sickened me, though the shaking had passed, taken over by arousal and nausea.
“Pull the trigger,” he said. And I didn’t feel fear or even anything like it. I didn’t even pause. I just squeezed the trigger and felt myself squeeze round the barrel, and then I heard a cold click and the sound of his laughter.
I curled on to my side and curled up, still with the gun there inside me. He came over and opened my legs, which was not so easy to do. He took the gun back. Pulled a shirt from the floor and wiped the barrel off, still laughing but quieter.
I lay there and watched him, watched him flick the chamber open. Tip bullets into his hand – just two of them, clinking dully together.
He put the gun into his briefcase, the bullets into his pocket. And he plugg
ed the phone in, had a curt conversation with Jeremy, and then he was gone.
This left me alone – alone with the packet. It didn’t have much left in it. I searched around for a needle, already knowing I didn’t have one. Still I went through everything. Looked in every drawer and every pocket with insatiable need. I kept searching and searching despite knowing I’d never find what just wasn’t there.
Finally I gave up and went to bed, saving that last bit of junk because I figured I’d need it later. That it might not be so easy to get more. Or that what I’d have to go through to get it would take some days to face. This was what my life looked like now, looked like to me – just resting up for more of the same kind of thing that took me nowhere good.
I did rest. But I slept in that nodding, incomplete way. I’d expected this to feel comforting. The way it had when I was a kid, using that stuff in the beginning and it working so well. But it wasn’t working now and I knew it had nothing to do with the method of delivery. I knew none of this old stuff would help me now. That Beth had opened someplace in me I might never get closed.
So I went to her office the next day, still addled and jangled. Sloppy from the rest of the dope, different but not different enough. Enough that she noticed, though. That when I went into her office and sat down, she took one look at me and said, “What’s with you?”
And I said, “Huh?”
“You look like hell.”
These statements were so plain, so direct, which still seemed so unlike her.
I said nothing in return. I just sat there because I seemed to have no idea what I was doing, where anything was going. Only had this horrible want to be in her bed and not mine. Strong enough I said, “Take me home with you.”
It came out in that same reckless way, like the things I’d said to Burt. She looked startled. Like she was calculating things in her head. Things I couldn’t know like the whereabouts of her husband.
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