The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

  Friday when I went into Jennifer’s room, there was something in the air. The place smelled like a science lab, a fire, a failed experiment.

  Barbie was wearing a strapless yellow evening dress. Her hair was wrapped into a high bun, more like a wedding cake than something Betty Crocker would whip up. There seemed to be layers and layers of angel’s hair spinning in a circle above her head. She had yellow pins through her ears and gold fuck-me shoes that matched the belt around her waist. For a second I thought of the belt and imagined tying her up, but more than restraining her arms or legs, I thought of wrapping the belt around her face, tying it across her mouth.

  I looked at Barbie and saw something dark and thick like a scar rising up and over the edge of her dress. I grabbed her and pulled the front of the dress down.

  “Hey big boy,” Barbie said. “Don’t I even get a hello?”

  Barbie’s breasts had been sawed at with a knife. There were a hundred marks from a blade that might have had five rows of teeth like shark jaws. And as if that wasn’t enough, she’d been dissolved by fire, blue and yellow flames had been pressed against her and held there until she melted and eventually became the fire that burned herself. All of it had been somehow stirred with the lead of a pencil, the point of a pen, and left to cool. Molten Barbie flesh had been left to harden, black and pink plastic swirled together, in the crater Jennifer had dug out of her breasts.

  I examined her in detail like a scientist, a pathologist, a fucking medical examiner. I studied the burns, the gouged-out area, as if by looking closely I’d find something, an explanation, a way out.

  A disgusting taste came up into my mouth, like I’d been sucking on batteries. It came up, then sank back down into my stomach, leaving my mouth puckered with the bitter metallic flavor of sour saliva. I coughed and spit onto my shirt sleeve, then rolled the sleeve over to cover the wet spot.

  With my index finger I touched the edge of the burn as lightly as I could. The round rim of her scar broke off under my finger. I almost dropped her.

  “It’s just a reduction,” Barbie said. “Jennifer and I are even now.”

  Barbie was smiling. She had the same expression on her face as when I first saw her and fell in love. She had the same expression she always had and I couldn’t stand it. She was smiling, and she was burned. She was smiling, and she was ruined. I pulled her dress back up, above the scar-line. I put her down carefully on the doily on top of the dresser and started to walk away.

  “Hey,” Barbie said, “aren’t we going to play?”

  Days Without Someone

  by Dodie Bellamy

  Day One

  Hieroglyphs litter my computer screen . . . where’s the story? Maybe it’s over my shoulder—I turn my head back: a messy bed the pillows angled against one another, forming a V or the head of an arrow pointing at me . . . the lack not just of Ryder but of both our bodies. I swivel in my office chair to better study these vanished others those two naked forms on the bed rolling about from pillow to pillow, silent and in slow motion like some corny film, gauze filter over the lens a mysterious source of sunlight shiny moments glinting in little star bursts . . .

  Ryder’s gone to Barcelona for twelve days, an eternity considering we’ve been dating less than two months. My own ass is as good as anything, I suppose, to remember him by . . . tender, burning from the inside out in daylight an invasion incongruous as Magritte’s locomotive . . . last night I wrote my love all over him: purple bruises with a flourish of red filaments frayed nerves. How’s he going to hide that from his wife?

  Writing has always been more sexual than sex, the sustained arousal of never quite getting it right.

  A bit of post-orgasmic conversation returns to me:

  Me: And he lived to tell about it.

  Ryder: Who would he tell?

  Me: He tells the sunset.

  He’d certainly never tell a homo sapiens. I like to imagine Ryder flying all the way to Spain just to confess to a Mediterranean sunset—it’s so Marguerite Duras. Reminded of Ryder, I underline a passage from Blue Eyes, Black Hair:

  She looks at him. It’s inevitable. He’s alone and

  attractive and worn out with being alone. As alone

  and attractive as anyone on the point of death.

  A married man who drinks by himself and sleeps on the couch. I tell myself I’m better off outside his life, his tortured take on the mundane.

  Day Two

  Stuffed in my mailbox a postcard mailed from Oakland the day he left. His words are elegant and black. A large passage is written over a smear of white-out . . . with the tip of a butter knife I scrape it away. A corroded message slowly emerges—I can’t make out every word but the subject matter is clearly Freud on cryptography, how it reveals the inner man. Ryder knew I’d excavate his secret—so well has he trained me in the labyrinthine pleasures of the hidden pulling away from the toll booth Ryder says softly but firmly “I thought you were going to abuse me.” I know this is a code but for what? Tentatively I pat his thigh, fumble with a shirt button . . . yes? . . . no? . . . then the waistband his zipper parts as easily as his lips and I bow my head to the inevitable . . . over the Golden Gate Bridge, down the endless expanse of Lombard Street . . . Ryder won’t let me see where I’m going, my cheek brushing denim my mouth full of cock. From the waist up he’s a model citizen of the road, observing the speed limit, smiling at fellow motorists at stoplights as he murmurs “Oh wow” or “This is great.”

  My lover has lips as round and swollen as life preservers, but they don’t make me feel very safe.

  Slits of world peek through Levelor blinds—Ryder’s out there, maneuvering his way through a foreign tongue. The distance is inconceivable: thousands of miles, a handspan in an atlas. Is Spain any farther from San Francisco than Oakland? I’m used to living in his absence the imperceptible accrual of appetite . . . burnishing my favorite tender moments like worry stones, I superimpose them on the daily, try to survive their unavoidable dilution. Does Ryder flicker through these words like a summoned ghost—or am I driving him even farther away with my insomniac urge to reinvent him no wife, willing to slay dragons, etc. no wonder I’m always surprised when he’s through the door—suddenly—rubbing his erection against me, all pleasure, or apologizing with tears in his eyes.

  Day Three

  The head of his penis is unbelievably soft, velvet without the nape. Right now, nothing about him seems very believable he is flying far above me in the ink-colored sky unreachable a concept bereft of input. I should have asked him for something—something funky of his, to wear. One unseasonably warm afternoon he left a sweater here—I hardly knew him but I pulled it over my naked breasts—the sleeves hanging to the tips of my fingers were his hands holding me down, the rough brown wool his chest, his back sheathed in his molecules I felt positively amniotic . . . after I came I wiped the collar between my legs. And the magic worked—we were lovers in a couple of weeks. When I told him my ritual he wore the sweater to work the next day, idiotically smiling to himself, my secretions a necklace about his fine German throat.

  His Lou Reed cassette, a prison novel by Albertine Sarrazin, a magazine from San Diego: Ryder clings to the things he loaned me these fragments I have shored against my ruins. High-strung and schmaltzy I play “Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis”—a CD he bought in admiration of my intelligence and drama, the large gestures with which I snub him at parties. If he lit two cigarettes in his mouth at once, he knows I wouldn’t laugh . . . graciously I take what he offers, suck the moist tip with a broad jerky movement let’s not ask for the moon Ryder likes to point out the constellations, the brown stars in my iris, Venus, Orion.

  He was always telling me how “good” I looked. But sitting here at the keyboard in a flannel bathrobe without Ryder to look at me, do I look like anything at all? There’s not an inch of me he hasn’t licked—some residue of him must linger, an
astral impression radiating from my body pink smeared with yellow trailing off into the atmosphere his skin smells of soap, his hair like cherries at public events he blankly wavers beside the Mrs.—how do I pull off casual with this man who just that morning stuck his tongue up my ass, I strain to look past those pale eyes instead of burrowing why can’t I grab those adorable touchables that compose his person with perfect aim we graze arms or hips slipping one another a sly grin—an eyewitness probably wouldn’t even notice.

  Day Four

  Ryder says we’re Paolo and Francesca, a damnation so beautiful it made Dante weep. I’ll never understand the ease he can come to . . . then walk away from . . . such pleasure. I am humbled before this love of mine—beyond hopeless, a love with no consequences, no returns . . . devoid . . . I’ve always been this way: either not there or too eager. My writing like grave worms moves in on Ryder destroying his last grasp on corporeality. I sense his spirit yearning for something to embody: the stiff daguerreotypes of my memory, a brace clamped to his neck for these unreasonable exposures: Ryder ravishing my armpit, his penis probing one orifice after another and then my thighs my breasts anything that can be clenched, Ryder brushing a lock of my hair across his lower lip, holding my hand through his colorful glove. I’m growing antsy with this script of the remembered, nothing but theme and variation—I want to defile him, rearrange his history as easily as my hairdo. Ryder is a red brick wall. Before him a man in a brown suit is upside down in midair, having fallen from Ryder’s window—the artist has drawn the man’s scream very clumsily so that his mouth looks like Howdy Doody’s, giving an unintentional comic air to the impending squash. Ryder as the red brick wall is impassive through all this.

  The writing won’t let me be—I have to keep pen and paper beside my bed—it sneaks up on me in the middle of the night. Then leaves.

  Day Five

  The world encroaches . . . Ryder grows tiny, crushed with immensity—like the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man when the infinitesimal merges with the infinite and we know we’re not watching any ordinary Hollywood schlock but a slice of Deep Meaning. Still, Ryder won’t be eradicated. At work, strolling down the fluorescent beige corridor, from the gleam at my feet stream ghosts of grooves engraved from the strain of heavy machines that look inside people. Above me to the right, a blue disk embossed with a stylized white female the moon—or a biscuit of sky as I make him coffee Ryder’s still wearing his denim jacket he lifts up the back of my nightgown pulls me to him biting my lips his cold hands cupping my bare ass—this memory inflicts a pang of arousal, a cramp in the groin, painful as anything futile or lost.

  Nina Simone on the jukebox, two glasses of red wine on a table the size of a crossword puzzle. Someone who isn’t Ryder sits facing me, with blue eyes, black hair—a spectre from Marguerite Duras. As he leans forward his chest seems to swallow the table, he says, “The only thing I have under my wings are shadows.” Occasionally his large hand wanders across a bit of my body: a stray I could easily fuck with affection, then walk away from. Ryder is off drinking margaritas with his wife there is nothing in our situation to remain faithful to.

  Day Six

  Desire for Ryder has burnt off with the fog. I am left with a hollow of mysterious origin, a curiosity towards this object of my recent relentless attentions. Late at night the phone turns tensile, surreal, an implement aliens use in their sex experiments: his wife just a room away, Ryder begins to masturbate through the receiver “I’m going to tighten my hand around your throat so you can’t move and then I’m going to stick my . . .” Across the bay I self-consciously whisper, “I’d like that.” He’s amazed at the volumes of cum sprayed across his belly, scoops some up with a finger and eats it. How could this person be so kinky, yet have such a sweetness, a cleanness about him, something very Cranach . . . beneath his dewy skin that fine chiselled bone straining . . . he asks me to squeeze his nipples, hovers above me a bright ecstatic angel eyes closed biting his lower lip, he quietly throws his head back then slowly brings it down chin to chest then back up again: this come shot is precise, yet flattened and blurred like a color xerox of a collage; as I type it a frenetic neighbor stomps above my head. Sex, no matter how fondly recalled, comes across so generic. Only the spurts of conversation between gasps and undulations intrigue me, the way he calls me “Babe” when he’s excited—nursing my neck or shoulder he reaches up nibbles my earlobe and sighs, “Anything you want, Babe,” and I feel cheap in a way I want to go on forever.

  Day Seven

  Red grease floats atop the warm soapy water—clank of stainless steel and chipped saucers—my hands crinkle to pale prunes as Lou Reed warbles Ryder’s favorite refrain I break into a million pieces and fly into the sun . . . who needs this solar glare when there’s the ocean . . . we lingered in the shadow of the coastal highway, the salty breeze cooling my exposed genitalia. “Suck my cock,” yelled a man we couldn’t see, exiling us to the beach . . . small birds scuttled along the wet sand as if animated by Disney . . . the onrushing waves left soap suds at our feet with an overtone of TV commercial or environmental disaster. Ryder reached under my black silk overcoat, under my skirt, his forefinger twirling pubic curls—the shore was scattered with city dwellers their features surprisingly distinct beneath the full moon—before their eager nocturnal eyes I felt like a potboiler, the kind of book read by people who shop at Walgreen’s let’s fly into the sun let’s fly anywhere these beachcombers can’t see. Rinsing a handful of silverware I think I’d forgotten that I could live without him: in my bed, on the phone—next to him everything else seemed bland and disconnected—last night, falling asleep I looked into the shutter of a camera a giant mechanical iris spiraled closed, blocking out the light, blocking out Ryder. Maybe I should call it quits maybe I should wipe my dirty fingers across this page, have his bastard baby.

  His eyes are the color of my coffee cup he has two hands tendons form deep ridges on the top of his feet: a minefield of camouflage: if his wife sees through my writing I may never see him again. His name’s not Ryder, he’s not in Spain really: encoded in my language Ryder remains disembodied as he is from my life. His corpse walks in Barcelona—it is beet red beneath a peeling nose and baseball cap.

  A huge phallic monster burrowed under the ground shooting up tentacles that grabbed townspeople sucking them into its gaping vagina dentata maw, but I didn’t find much depth in the story—last night, walking home from the movies, I was assaulted by Ryder’s presence, a sadness as surprising and intense as a cold spot in a haunted house just when I thought I was getting rid of him a few hours later he sent me a package in my dream—on the outside of the bubble envelope he wrote, “I hope you’re missing me as much as I miss you.” I opened it eagerly, hoping the thick wad of paper inside was a letter. But it was just a survey Ryder had filled out concerning his hotel service and his knowledge of local history. Is he worth all this attention? He’s off having a Club Med adventure with Mrs. Wonderful while I sit here with time, and more time. A couple of nights ago I walked up to the passenger side of a car he was sitting in—he leaned through the window and kissed me. Then the car sped away and I had to live in a commune with some hippies.

  Day Eight

  Desire that giant burrowing nematode sneaks up and grabs me. Rattling my chest, Ryder’s wormy laugh. He has me. All the places he’s been . . . in relation to my body it’s well past the halfway point he fucked me sideways while I fucked his mouth with my right hand he sucked so hard I thought the flesh was going to fall away like well-cooked chicken—he said he was coming at both ends one long vibrating tunnel . . . what’s inside . . . what’s out . . . the hair on his ass grates against my tongue . . . when I lick him there I’m leaving more than saliva behind: sibilants . . . fricatives . . . a layer of soul . . . Resurrected from Barcelona and this text, will he emerge weatherbeaten but no worse for wear—or will he have irrevocably turned . . . I removed the belt from my robe and tied his wrists to the be
dstead—do whatever you want with me, he said, make it hurt he wanted to be pliable, pliable as absence . . . beyond a few entries in my diary, the gush of a school girl, I never could write about Ryder I was silenced before the undefinable thingness of his lips, his hands, his cock, all the insistent anatomical components . . . then he left and the words rushed in like vultures, picking away, redefining . . .

  Day Nine

  I am aching. I am alone. If only I could give a bourgeois patina of meaning to this. Something French: “Pleasure is the creation of the mind, the body can’t do anything without it.” I’m lying on my stomach and Ryder is fucking me from behind—it feels pretty good, though I don’t take his efforts seriously—I wriggle my bladder into the optimal position, patiently anticipating My Turn—then abruptly the flesh of my vagina crystallizes the unsuspected is inevitable there is no stopping—and when it does happen I raise up on my arms and cry out. This is an ideal state of discourse—unmediated, with a totally receptive audience. Ryder, how could you throw me into this solitary confinement? Here on the inside we call it the “hole.” I’m distressed by this lack of feedback. This silence. I jump out a window wheeling around for one second which is long and good, a century my foot breaks with the impact so I crawl on knees and elbows, dragging this useless lump to the highway I am oozing mud, thorns scratch me at random from bushes—another century goes by, I can’t recognize anything—then I hear the air brakes, the slam of a door, boot-sized footprints—“Monsieur Le Truckdriver,” I plead, “I’m a prisoner of love, the dark side of someone’s double life. Please, will you sneak me to Paris!”

  Eagerly he licks his cum from my mouth: I want to bring the reader this close to writing.

  “Dear William Gibson: