by Robin Kirman
After half an hour, she noticed the same man approaching Gerry, apparently to say good-bye. Gerry told her later who he was—a German grad student named Torsten.
“He asked me about you.”
Ten days elapsed before Torsten called her—not to invite her on a date, as she found herself hoping, but to request a delivery. He needed pot for his migraine, which was so bad he couldn’t bring himself to stir from bed. Gerry wasn’t feeling well himself, so the story went, and had suggested that Alice, in his stead, might bring the package by.
“I don’t do favors,” Alice said.
“I wouldn’t call it a favor,” Torsten replied. “You caused this headache. All week I’ve been banging my head against the wall, trying to remember exactly how stunning you are.”
Torsten was fond of giving compliments, the more outsized the better: this was one of the first qualities Alice observed about him. If not for her argument with Georgia, it was doubtful she’d have been taken in by such gross charms, but she was feeling eager for both a distraction and male admiration, and so she’d promised Torsten she’d come by.
When she’d arrived at his apartment, a cheap basement flat in Somerville, Torsten continued to fawn over her: she made him tongue-tied, he claimed—Gerry had warned him the only thing more devastating than her beauty was her wit. To relax, he rolled a joint, but she refused to share, afraid she might say something fatuous to spoil his impression.
“I dislike drugs, too,” he assured her. “I smoke only for the migraines.” He apologized for feeling sick and failing to entertain her. Otherwise he’d have cooked for her or at least put on some music. His music collection was enormous—hundreds of CDs—stacked between expensive speakers and stereo equipment. Apparently this was where all his money and attention seemed to go—the apartment was otherwise neglected, smelling of mold.
She asked him if he studied music.
“Physics. It’s my second Ph.D.”
“What was the first?”
“I’ll tell you another time.”
Another characteristic of Torsten’s that Alice soon observed: he enjoyed being elusive, especially when it came to the most innocuous subjects. At the same time, matters that another man would have felt compelled to hide were open territory for him, like the fact that he was married and his wife had refused to join him in Cambridge, preferring to remain in Paris with her many lovers.
“You resemble her,” he told Alice, “a black version.” This may or may not have been the case, hard to tell from the one blurry photograph he’d shown her of a tall, strong, square-jawed blonde. “Not in the features, so much,” he amended, “but in essence.”
Alice wasn’t sure what to make of such remarks, or of the fact that Torsten called her again, that evening, scarcely after she’d left, to ask her to keep him company the following day: “You’re magical, you know; you made my headache disappear.”
By the week’s end, she’d been to Torsten’s place four times; never once had he made the trip to hers. When she raised the issue, he pleaded a mild case of agoraphobia; he only left the house to visit the local food shops or for the single class he had no choice but to attend. Thankfully, he was sure Alice’s magic would soon cure this condition, too: “You make me feel at home,” he claimed, referring not to Paris, his wife’s domain, but to what he called his true home, the extinct East Germany (thus uniting himself and Alice as children of the Soviet catastrophe). They were like siblings, sharing a common soul, he said—all very grand, but could soul siblings fuck? Still Torsten hadn’t so much as tried to kiss her or in any way suggested the possibility of sex.
—
One night, when Torsten had fallen asleep on the sofa, Alice stripped off her clothes and went down on him. He’d been just hard enough, just long enough, for her to climb on top of him for several minutes and, from then on, they kept up a practice of occasional, usually abortive encounters. Each time, she had to be the instigator and the incident was followed by Torsten leaving her in bed and going off to sit alone for the next hour, sifting through CDs. When she pressed him on the problem, he attributed his inhibitions first to his migraines, then to his loyalty to his wife, and finally to his wife’s destructive effects.
This was progress of a sort, Alice believed, and soon Torsten was comfortable enough with her to instruct her how to touch him and what stories to tell him while she did: there was a rigid formula that he required—her and another woman, him as the observer. After fifteen minutes of such encouragements, Torsten was able to perform on his own, albeit briefly, which seemed to leave him gratified. Not her, it was true, but she’d never much enjoyed sex anyway, the few other times she’d had it: once in high school, with a college boy whose only attraction was the fact that he was taller than she was, another time with a persistent admirer who’d cornered her at Gerry’s. Before Torsten, she’d had to be drunk even to get naked with somebody; since puberty her body had been a source of anxiety, not pleasure—a place where terrible failures might take place. At least with Torsten she didn’t feel ungainly; he was big and clumsy enough to render her comparatively dainty. She liked how small her hand felt in his, how slender it looked at the wrist, and there was something in his foreignness, and loneliness, that touched her and bound her to him.
Torsten, for his part, declared her his perfect woman—at least she might be, once she’d shed certain conventionalities. He urged her not to hide her height, to wear clothes that bared her wide shoulders, to dress in heels—not little kitten ones—but platforms like the leopard print pair he brought home for her one evening. He didn’t want her slouching and softly padding in her flats; he didn’t approve of her efforts to be sweet. He liked her humor best when it was cruel, found her darkest, most suspicious insights most intriguing. He’d followed her pieces in the Crimson, most recently, the Playboy Ivy models search, and he believed she could become a tremendous writer if she could just purge herself of that American restraint; in this cause, he was prepared to help her.
“You can only become your true self with me. The same for me, with you.”
What sort of true selves he meant, she wasn’t sure; but he’d begun speaking of a “him and her,” of a future together, and Alice had been surprised to feel that she, perhaps, desired the same.
During Torsten’s next migraine attack, while he was confined to the sofa, his landlady appeared. An older black woman, she stood at his door yelling, threatening to call her son to collect the rent, which was three months overdue, if it wasn’t paid that day. Alice wrote out a check on the spot and, when Torsten was well enough for her to tell him what had happened, she suggested he come to live with her. Torsten groaned at the prospect of a move, but approved of the idea of living together: Alice could sublet her place on Inman and the proceeds would more than cover his rent and afford them dinners out, taxis to campus, a life of relative luxury.
Of course it occurred to Alice that he was taking her money, but it was Vasily’s money anyway and a small price to pay for getting what she wanted: power over Torsten. She’d discovered a passivity in him—not only in bed—and, the more he needed her, practically, financially, the better positioned she’d be to make demands. In the end, if it was what she wanted, she’d get him to leave his wife for her. Already she and Torsten shared a home and a routine. In the mornings she attended classes while he slept, in the evenings he attended class while she did school work, and in the middle they met near campus to shop for dinner on Harvard Square.
—
While Alice and Torsten were stepping out from a bakery one afternoon, Alice saw a young woman jogging toward them, blond hair bobbing at her neck, dressed in a wife-beater and skimpy red shorts.
She turned away, hoping that Georgia hadn’t seen her or would sense that she wished to avoid her. But whether out of cluelessness or out of decency, Georgia called her name. Or maybe neither cluelessness nor decency explained it; Georgia was eyeing Torsten, curious to observe the man behind her friend’s recent disappearanc
e. Six weeks had passed since she and Georgia had last met.
Immediately, Alice could see how taken Torsten was with Georgia: the sexy outfit, the fluffy blond hair, lifted off her neck like a pom-pom. For all he mocked that plastic American aesthetic, he, like Alice, was evidently fascinated by this instance of its perfection. She supposed she’d known he would be and had kept him from Georgia not by accident.
“I’ve been wanting to meet Alice’s friends,” Torsten effused, the first Alice had heard him utter anything of the kind. “Come by tonight, Georgia. We’ll buy a cake. Angel food. Do you like angel food?”
With one glance in Alice’s direction, Georgia seemed to understand she must decline. “Another time maybe.”
On the walk back home, Alice felt her jaw aching from tension, the effort of not shouting. Since when was Torsten so eager to entertain—their universe seemed to happily include only each other—and what was this sudden enthusiasm for pastry, let alone one so specific? “Angel food cake. What the fuck was that?”
“Your friend inspired me. She’s like a frothy, yellow cake.”
“And you want that, that’s the idea?”
“Not for me: for you. You’re the one who denies your appetites.”
He’d grinned down at her, his fleshy lips repulsive. Cars were moving past them; she felt an urge to shove him into traffic, to hurt him terribly for what he was likely imagining.
As soon as Alice and Torsten returned home, she went to her closet and retrieved the pair of platform shoes he’d bought her. Drag shoes. She threw them across the room: one struck him in the chest, another at the knee.
He shouted at her: “Are you crazy?”
“You are. You can’t even admit that you don’t want a woman, do you?”
“Alice, I have no idea what you’re saying.”
Torsten, who’d before extoled the perceptiveness in her most paranoid musings, now dismissed her suspicions about him as utter nonsense. “I refuse to talk with you until you’re rational again.”
Fine with her: he wasn’t the one she wished to speak with in any case. There was only one person, she believed, who could help her out of her confusion—she had to get in touch with Torsten’s wife. That night she locked herself away inside their bedroom and waited for Torsten to fall asleep on the sofa. When she was sure he wouldn’t hear her, she crept out and found his wife’s number listed on one of his old phone bills.
“I’ve been living with your husband,” she told the French voice on the answering machine. “I’m not calling to upset you; it’s hardly sexual. It might seem strange my turning to you, but I must ask. Did he ever suggest you do things with other women? Did he ever ask you to pretend to be a man?”
She made several such calls. Maybe more than several. She began to lose track of what she’d actually said and the things she’d just imagined saying, lying in bed half sleeping.
The next day she didn’t attend class; she didn’t leave the bedroom even to eat. Torsten went about his business, shouting at her sometimes through the walls. Time jerked along—both quickly and slowly—before her subletter called to let her know that people had been leaving messages for her: students, the senior tutor of Adams House, and her concentration adviser. She told him not to give out her new number and not to bother her again. Finally, one afternoon, Torsten threatened to kick down the door if she didn’t get up.
“This has gone on long enough. You’ve been in there five days. Let’s take a walk.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
She sent him away and then emerged from the bedroom, dressed in sneakers; her running shorts gaped at her stomach.
She’d run as far as four blocks before she started to feel dizzy, another four blocks before she blacked out.
When she awoke in the University Health Center, she was being fed through an IV. The nurse informed her that she was suffering from dehydration and malnutrition. She was down to a hundred and five pounds, severely underweight. A psychiatric consultant was brought in: an easy mark, Alice believed, a student doctor not yet out of her twenties, with a mild voice and cow eyes.
“Physically, you’re well enough to be released, but I still have some questions. On admission, you were disoriented. Do you remember how you got here? I need you to help me understand what happened.”
“I let myself fall for an asshole, but it’s not fatal, I think.” Alice was making an effort to appear lighthearted and lucid, not to ask anything that might raise flags: whether Torsten had been informed of her collapse, whether he’d been by.
“I’d like to schedule you for a meeting with the head of my department. And we also need to get you into treatment for your eating disorder.”
“I don’t have an eating disorder. I had an argument with my boyfriend; I couldn’t eat because I was upset.” Whatever would get her out, Alice was prepared to say; for appearance’s sake, right there in front of the counselor, she’d even taken several bites of the greasy hospital meat and slushy mashed potatoes left for her on a tray.
“Loss of appetite?” That could be a symptom of depression. “Any history of mental disorders in your family?”
“They’re from Serbia.”
The resident refused to join her in a smile, to alter in any way that earnest expression of concern. “Are they in Serbia now? Because I’d like to speak with a parent to discuss some treatment options.”
Finally, Alice let her have it straight: there was no one in her family capable of such a conversation—her father was dead and her mother, even if she could understand what was required, had a hard enough time looking after herself.
“There must be somebody I can call. Any relative. A friend. Someone you can stay with until we’re confident you’re stable.”
“It’s really not necessary.”
“It really is,” the resident insisted. “I’m afraid I can’t release you until I have the name of a responsible adult.”
—
At five p.m., Alice signed her discharge papers and left the hospital for the Au Bon Pain on the ground floor. She was expecting to find Georgia, in whose custody she’d placed herself for the next few weeks; instead, she spotted Charlie Flournoy rising from one of the plastic chairs. Georgia was in New York, he explained, but she’d gotten Alice’s message and spoken with hospital staff. “Everything’s fine. I’ll just be with you until she comes; she’s catching the next train.”
“Is today Saturday then?”
“Sunday—which means I’ve got all day to help you get squared away.” He clapped his hands, a new habit he’d picked up; he was different from when last she’d seen him: dismal that fall, losing weight. Today he looked healthier, even sporty, dressed in navy pants and a pale blue gingham shirt, sleeves rolled up to show off forearms grown more muscled. He was pleased to be in charge; his tone was surprisingly commanding. He’d told Torsten to go out, he said, so she’d feel at ease while they packed up her things, and then they’d sneak them back to Mather House; Gill would let them in through the bathroom and Georgia would meet them there.
Around seven, as Alice and Charlie sat waiting in Georgia’s living room—she, smoking; he, reading a library hardcover, Arts of Power—Georgia bounded in, with a flurry of apologies. “I’m sorry I’m so late: just missed the one o’clock and then the next was local…Are you tired, Alice? Do you want to lie down?” She led them up into the bedroom—clothes strewn across the bed, items she’d chosen not to pack, lacy underwear, heels (for her internship, yes, of course). “Huge mess—wasn’t expecting anybody. Such bad timing, but I’m so glad, so grateful, Charlie could be there for you.”
Was it about Charlie, this frenzy, fear that he’d discover where she’d really been that weekend? But if Charlie noticed anything strange, he didn’t show it; he only turned modestly away as Georgia snapped up a bra, a pair of stockings.
“We’ll figure out where to put everything later,” Georgia rambled on. “I’ve got two floors, plenty of room. And no one in the dorm will
make an issue. They all let their boyfriends stay, right?”
Georgia looked up at her, finally: Alice, alone, sickly, and sad. Only for an instant, but unmistakably, pity flashed in Georgia’s eyes. Alice felt a surge of rage then: at Georgia’s health and beauty, at her rosy cheeks and winning smile, at her delight in her secret affair, one as thrilling as Alice’s had proven agonizing.
The hardest part of that humiliating afternoon was hiding her discomfort at seeing her friend again, the girl who, Alice felt, despite Georgia’s concern for her, was the cause of her breakdown even more than Torsten. A girl to whom everything came easily and whom she wished, then, to see suffer. Merely for existing, Georgia should suffer, since her mere existence had become, for Alice, a source of pain.
6
Georgia’s happiest childhood memories were of swimming, particularly during that year when she was twelve and her parents, together still, had first moved to Santa Cruz, into a weather-beaten yellow house just two blocks from the ocean. Each afternoon that year, in all conditions except lightning storms and raging fever, she went to the beach, after school, for swimming lessons with her father. Lessons, now that she was growing tall and lean and strong, were of a very different sort than she’d had when she was small; now they were not to learn the proper form of basic strokes, side and back and freestyle, but to tackle the waves and current, to navigate through forces much stronger than herself, to dart and glide through tumult.
The summer before these lessons started, she’d waded out into the waves on a choppy day and was caught up by a massive one, dragged across the sandy bottom, her knees and chin scraped upon the pebbles; when she’d finally been spit back out onto the shore, coughing and trembling, she was convinced that she’d brushed right up against death and had only just escaped.