by Lydia Millet
CONTENTS
Libertines
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Bird-Head Monster
Self-Expression and Leadership
The Fall of Berlin
The Men
Fight No More
I Knew You in This Dark
Stockholm
I Can’t Go On
God Save the Queen
Those Are Pearls
Oh Child of Earth
LIBERTINES
She stood for a moment in the quiet bathroom, in its stillness that was like a held breath. Then she opened the book, sat down on the toilet and let a line of type catch her eye.
“Supper and the orgies transpired without unusual incident.”
Disappointing: a page without graphic sex. She only had a couple of minutes till the showing, though, so she closed the book and swiveled it back into position on the shelf over the bidet. Not the first time she’d hid out in a bathroom all furtive: when she was a kid, the neighbors two doors down had kept a copy of The Joy of Sex in a basket beside their toilet. They had an orange shag rug on their toilet lid. The book featured line drawings of naked old people with nests of curly hair around their private parts; seeing those pictures, her little sister screamed.
After they discovered it, the two of them used to find any excuse to go pee in that house. Sometimes they’d claimed their own toilet was clogged.
Later, when they were in their twenties, her sister denounced the book at someone’s bridal shower. “Groovy sex is worse than no sex at all,” she had said. That was before she stopped drinking and turned to self-help.
In this book, musty with age, there were no pictures. Just many, many words. Too many. In general she didn’t read long books, but for porn she was willing to make an exception. This porn used old-fashioned language—a buzzkill when she first found the book, but it grew on her over time. French dukes lined up dozens of kidnapped virgins and proceeded to “deflower” them. At first, in her mind’s eye, there had been literal flowers. A damsel held them up in a small bouquet until a duke came running at her, punched her, then grabbed the bouquet and stamped on it.
Luckily the owners didn’t care what people thought of them, or she’d never have seen the book. But this was an old-money house, and old money didn’t give a shit. New money tended to stash its porn in drawers. Even safes. She’d seen it: safes. Unless the new money was a creative, and then all bets were off. One actress whose house she’d sold had a purple sculpture on her coffee table of a guy with his head between a woman’s spread legs.
“Jeff Eating Ilona,” the actress had proudly told her was its title. “A limited edition.”
Gate buzzer. She headed downstairs, checking herself in a hall mirror. She’d emailed this client a few houses but he hadn’t liked any of them; this was the only property he wanted to see. He’d come into the office briefly with his driver, and someone had whispered that he was an African leader; he wore a hat of spotted fur. It made you think of corruption, maybe a coup or child soldiers . . . but this wasn’t going to be the house for him either. The view was breathtaking on clear days, but the place wasn’t modern enough. Powerful men wanted their houses shiny.
He’d have to fall into the new-rich category, as a dictator, she thought, because a dictator didn’t act like old money. She’d read about one recently who showed off on his birthday by eating a baby elephant. Old money, well, maybe they’d eat an aging elephant, maybe an elephant that was already sick, if it was on offer at a dinner party. Maybe. They wouldn’t care to be rude. Most often, though, fine-dining-wise, they’d steer clear of an elephant.
She didn’t know for a fact that he was a dictator, obviously. She did know he was standoffish. His assistant, or whoever had called to make the original appointment, had said not to address him directly. It might be a religious thing. She’d recently had a sheikh like that: Saudi. The sheikh’s handlers asked her to avert her eyes whenever she talked to him because he didn’t like to be looked at by a Western woman. Such women were harlots, sadly.
She smiled as she pushed the button to open the gate. There were harlots in the book, but she acted nothing like them.
Too bad.
The sheikh would only consider reinforced masonry—he’d wanted to buy a house for his daughter, who was a freshman at USC—but nothing had been good enough, plus the whole family hated every neighborhood. Only Bel Air they liked, but the daughter finally said no to the house there, near the country club, claiming it was depressing. Also the smell in the four-car garage was “weird.” (Mothballs.) Had the person who lived in the house died?
Well yes, in fact, she’d wanted to say, because that’s the only way anyone ever leaves a house this stunning. Of course she hadn’t admitted it. Buyers didn’t like houses where death had occurred. It seemed to them a bad omen. And in a sense they were right. Since it was true that at a certain point you might live in a house, and at another point, typically later, you would die. “Hmm, it’s not my listing, as you know . . . I think maybe they moved to Montenegro? Or was it Monaco. I can certainly research it for you.”
The sheikh had actually lost his temper when the daughter said the house depressed her; he let loose a blistering stream of angry Arabic. But his daughter was spoiled and stubborn. Almost a week of showing them houses, and in the end he’d put her up at a hotel in Beverly Hills, where she would live in a suite. For four years.
Here were the new clients, the dictator, his driver and another guy she hadn’t met before. Frankly she could picture any one of them holding a machete. The driver was a white guy from South Africa, she’d guessed last time from the accent, and the new man, black like the dictator, was huge and muscle-bound. They were more like bodyguards than drivers/handlers, actually. Did weapons bulge under their jackets?
“Hello,” said the driver. The other two just nodded in greeting.
She smiled, welcomed them in, stood back as they filed past. She’d worn three-inch wedges instead of four-inch pumps, in case, like the sheikh, they were opposed to loose women.
That was the thing about American men; in a way it was comforting. When push came to shove, no woman could be too loose for them.
The dictator stepped through the doorway second; the other two seemed to be bracketing him. Maybe the bodyguard in back, his shoulders broad as a wall, was supposed to take the main guy’s head-bullet. She glanced out at their Land Rover, shining on the driveway. Silver and top-of-the-line; it retailed at 200K, if she remembered right from Bobby T.’s boring car monologues in the break room. She had to drive a status car too, in her line of work, so she paid through the nose for the lease, but some joker had rear-ended it yesterday in a parking lot and now the bumper was hanging half-off. It wasn’t presentable. She’d had to park it on the street.
For a second she expected to see the glint of a gun in the sun. Barrel protruding from a Japanese maple.
She closed the door.
The three men stood at the picture window with their backs to her, looking out over the canyon, the downtown skyline in the distance. This house always seemed to be waiting for the mudslide that would drag it down the cliff, snagging those giant, spiky plants as it fell. Chunks of frame and plaster would be dangling off plant stalks as beds and espresso makers tumbled down the hillside. Till that day came: 2.8 million, if you don’t mind.
She was fine living in the flats. Sure, a fault line might split open into an abyss beneath your feet.
It still seemed like a better bet.
“Let me show you the exterior space,” she said, and opened the doors onto the deck. She told them the square footage, mentioned the multicolored underwater lights in the lap pool. Personally she thought the lights were a little Miami, but you never knew what could impress buyer
s. They followed her down to the pool area, where the driver and bodyguard milled around and the dictator positioned himself at the far end, staring into the water. “Now,” she said, “it’s not quite as striking in daytime, of course, but you can make the water pink or yellow, a whole range of colors, you see?” which she demonstrated by flipping the wall switches.
“What was that movie where the kid got electrocuted?” asked the bodyguard.
She glanced over her shoulder quickly, but the driver and dictator weren’t near. The bodyguard had to be addressing her. He was towering but had a handsome face. Almost sweet.
“This little kid dove into a pool at this party, but the lights under the water were broken. The poor kid got electrocuted. Died right away. You know which movie I’m talking about?”
“Sorry, I think I may have missed that one.”
“Matt Damon,” said the bodyguard, nodding, and walked away from her.
“OK, let’s keep going,” said the driver. The dictator wasn’t coming with them but staying by the pool. He hadn’t moved in a while. Gazing at his reflection. Either that or he’d seen something else in the pool that obsessed him. Maybe, staring into the turquoise shallows, he was hallucinating—scenes from his younger days, some old-time genocides. Long-lost machetes danced before his eyes. The leopard-skin hat had no brim; well, sunstroke might drive him inside eventually. She led the other two upstairs, showed them the third and fourth bedrooms and sauna.
She always wondered, when she showed that second-floor bathroom, if anyone other than her would ever notice the book. The 120 Days of Sodom. Memorable title. So far no client had mentioned it, but why would they? The cover was drab, no pictures of bodies. See? The driver had walked right past the bathroom door without even glancing in. Not the type for his-and-hers sinks.
Would they like the book if they read it? Parts of it described gleeful murdering.
Her phone rang, unknown number but she didn’t like to miss a possible client. No one was going to buy today. Anyway she had nothing to gain from bird-dogging.
“I need to take a quick call,” she said to the bodyguard, who had opened a hall closet and appeared to be scrutinizing linens. She walked outside onto a guest balcony adjusting an earbud. From here she had a view of the dictator below. He still stood motionless.
The caller, a certain Sheila, wanted to visit one of her listings mid-Wilshire: a modest home, six figures. Sheila, at least, was a relatable buyer, wisely preferring the earthquake/chasm area over this vertical, parking-challenged, erosion/mudslide/wildfire zone. Showing houses to women was easier because she never thought of attacks. A woman had tried to attack her only a couple of weeks ago, actually, whereas a man had never attacked her. Technically. But the female attack had been a freak occurrence, and not too serious either. The attacker was hysterical because of a foreclosure—her emotion was understandable, if not the flurry of weak-fisted blows. In the end, she’d given up easily and slunk away.
Statistically speaking, the next attacker would have to be a man. Maybe several.
Time to go, probably, before the assault got underway.
She saw the driver before he saw her; he was standing in front of a full-length mirror in a guest bedroom looking at himself. He was striking a pose, she could swear, his chest puffed out a bit.
She stepped back, silent as a cat.
South Africans were rumored to be rapists. The white ones especially.
She ran scenarios, that was all. She wasn’t clinically paranoid. But someday, would the odds line up against her?
“OK,” she called out, “how’re we doing in here? Did you have any questions for me?”
And she stepped forward again, into the doorway. The driver had snapped out of his mirror pose and quickly pretended to be looking at a plant.
“I’d be happy to work up a list, if you like,” she said. “If you’d just tell me what you’re looking for, give me a sense of your wish list . . . you know? I know it’s tempting to browse online, but you can’t always make these calls based on the MLS photos . . .”
“Yeah, no,” he said.
“Why don’t you take that to Mr. Diallo. See what he says. OK? Otherwise—”
“Blind leading the blind,” said the driver agreeably, turning from the plant and fixing his eyes on her. The pupils seemed very big. As big as dinner plates. Was he stoned?
Were they all stoned?
Now they seemed sluggish in their movements, when she thought back. Not grim, not stern—more slow, like three-toed sloths. Things nested in a sloth. She’d seen it on TV. Sloths’ hair was long and greasy. Animal hippies.
“Ryan? Ry! Ry!” someone was yelling. The bodyguard’s voice had an urgent tone.
“Lynn?” called the driver—Ry—but he was already running back along the hall, then thumping down the stairs. She followed, not so fast, because the wedge heels were narrow on the bottom. When she came out the back sliders all three were in the pool, fully dressed. At first she didn’t recognize the dictator without his hat. They were pulling him out of the water, lifting him up onto the lip. His dripping limbs flopped.
Her own legs went fluid; her arms were hanging.
Then the big man—Lynn—was doing CPR. Odd that he had a girl’s name.
“I’m calling 911! I’m calling 911!” she shouted. Her phone was shaking in her hand, trembling so hard she couldn’t dial. “Siri. Call 911.” Calling emergency services in five seconds.
She thought of the front gate—how did you leave it open? She only knew how to buzz it open, but then it closed automatically. She had no idea how to leave it open—she had to, for the ambulance—should she wait out front? Oh: the operator said they already had the code. Right.
Lynn was on mouth-to-mouth duty while Ryan pumped the chest. She’d always meant to take a course in CPR . . . what if the others hadn’t been here? She shivered. She couldn’t control it. Now she knew what that meant, shivering uncontrollably . . . but they had it covered, didn’t they? They’d probably seen their share of death and dying. Bodies that floated down the Zambezi. She thought of “Great Rivers of the World,” a page in the family atlas. She’d often stared at it when her mother was locked in her room crying. Bad thought; block it. They didn’t have a TV back then. The atlas’s filled-in shapes were so satisfying, how they brought space into those smooth, flat pages, both space and fullness, perfect borders and free air . . . the fields of pastels, fine lines like the edge of lace or a leaf. Oceans two-thirds of the planet’s body, the blue rivers its veins as they shot through the continents.
Congo, Niger, Zambezi. Across the world, along those veins, bodies floated when war struck the land. Refugees fled from Somalia. They fled from Syria. Afghanistan. Sudan. By the millions. She knew. She read the news.
Next to the flotillas of bodies, a Hollywood lap pool was child’s play.
“Not responding,” said Ryan, on the brink of tears. “Bloody Christ. Goddamn.” Wait. Now he sounded Australian.
Lynn shook his head and muttered, “Keep going, Ry. Just keep going. Don’t give up.”
She heard the ghost of her own voice, back at the office in the future, telling a story of death by water. Guilt dragged at her—but then Lynn jerked his head back and the dictator was spitting out water and coughing. They turned him on his side and patted him.
Yes! She wanted to leap over the pool and join them—celebrate. But it wasn’t her victory. She was a bystander.
They didn’t notice her, faded into the background there, but she pushed herself forward unseen. No one could know how much she felt. So glad, so glad!
He was OK.
A cool wind rose from the deep canyon; a siren wound down into silence.
In the book the libertines tortured people. The guy who wrote it had been in prison at the time, locked up in a stone tower. It was revenge porn written by a convict, basically. Mostly just dirty because you felt how desperate the guy was to get off.
For him freedom meant doing exactly what you wan
ted all the time.
Was that freedom for everybody?
The siren was closer, so she turned and went through the house to get the door.
Two paramedics. Burly, like fireman clichés. With a stretcher.
“Through here. They revived him!” she offered giddily.
Maybe he’d fainted from heat exhaustion and fallen in. Her fault for wishing sunstroke on him—that brought her down, flattened the arc. She would have guessed he could swim, though. Maybe he’d hit his head after fainting. And who knew what might have happened with the owner, with liability—she didn’t know how homeowner’s insurance worked in a case like this, if she herself might be blamed—a selfish thought, of course. Banish. But practical concerns intruded when you didn’t want them to. Reflexes, that was all: a rubber hammer on your knee.
The bodyguards looked up as she trailed the medics to the pool area, stepped back at the medics’ approach. They let the other men bend down beside their charge. Ryan watched for a minute, then seemed reassured. He stripped off the jacket he wore, held it by the shoulders and snapped it to dry it off; Lynn was bare to the waist the next time she glanced his way. A tattoo of fine branches laden with white blossoms.
He came over to talk to her—she wished he was wearing a shirt, because of the muscles/embarrassment, but still, it was nice of him to come over.
“Thanks for calling,” he said.
“Do you know what—?”
He had a curious look on his face, pinched. Still tense from the near miss. “He suffers from depression.”
Something seemed to be swimming in the hot tub—small and orange-brown, it churned in the jets’ turbulence.
“His hat,” she said, and bent down to fish it out.
Fine orange fibers were coming off on her fingers. Fur wouldn’t do that.
“Thanks,” said Lynn, and reached out his hand. She laid the hat on it. It was hard not to look at the branches spreading on his broad chest. Her gaze stayed on it a second too long. “A cherry tree,” he told her.
“Excuse me?”
“Some cherry trees have white blossoms,” he explained. “I didn’t want to go with pink.”