Seeing Double

by Karen Runge

  Daniel lay back, his arms crossed behind his head.

  Ada rolled over. She undid her jeans. Neven watched her, considering. Her eyes narrowed, her mouth soft. Smiling. Almost. He slid his hand between her legs, finding his way beneath the warm, damp clasp of her underwear. He didn’t ask Daniel’s permission. He knew he didn’t need it. Not in the games of flesh.

  * * *

  Daniel watched him. Neven, fucking his wife.

  Fucking. It could only be that. A brutal term. An honest word.

  He looked on with calm fascination, propped up on his side, plucking at the grass as Neven tore into her body. It was intense as a battle, violent, close. The guy favoured depth—frowning down at her, watching her face for signs of pain. It was hard to tell if it was fury or fascination that made him glare at her like that. It was impossible to know if her expression was of agony or ecstasy. Either, both. It didn’t really matter.

  She gasped for air and turned her face away, her cheeks flushed. Her hair lay wild and tangled in the grass, gleaming in the sunshine. Neven grabbed her jaw and turned her face back toward his. To kiss her? No. His eyebrows drew tighter. He paused, his hand gripping the cusp of her throat, his thumb pressed into her cheek. “Don’t look away,” he said, studying her eyes.

  It was as much a threat as it was a request. She nodded. But there was no fear in her eyes—only a glazed light, soft and open. Like warmth. Like happiness.

  A thread of anxiety unfurled in Daniel’s gut. Would it make any difference to them if I wasn’t here? If I was gone?

  A gift for Ada. Neven was meant to have been that—a gift from husband to wife. Thoughtful, considerate. Something to be enjoyed and then forgotten, or broken. The loss of it something Daniel could console. But Neven was not that. He wasn’t anything like that at all.

  She’s my wife, Daniel told himself. Mine. Nothing that happens here changes that.

  Neven bent to bite her breast.

  Harder, Daniel thought, disappointed to see tongue so quickly follow the flash of teeth. Bite it off.

  It was a nice enough idea, but he corrected it. He liked Ada’s nipples. He’d hate to see them severed. All the same, the image sent a stirring through him. He looked on, hesitant.

  Why not?

  Daniel pulled his shirt off over his head, self-conscious for just a moment at the comparison between himself—fine-formed, almost effeminate—and Neven, broad-shouldered, powerful. As though the three of them were each one of a gradient. Female, neuter, male.

  But who is stronger, really? he thought, sliding a hand up Ada’s leg so that she turned toward him. When she moved he saw a flash of silver; he saw light exploding under the surface of her skin.

  Like her blood is stardust. He laughed out loud, not knowing that he had laughed. If Ada and Neven heard him, they didn’t react.

  The effect deepened as they moved tighter together—psychedelics trickling into their brains, making colours explode and shapes warp. Their skin smelled of sweat and chemicals. Their bodies were clammy, hot. They touched each other and thought of sulphur, of fire. Touched each other, flinched.

  It was over too soon, or not soon enough. The three of them panting in a close, sweat-slick embrace. Ada between them, her head tilted back, her eyes closed against the sun.

  Time lost itself in that place.

  * * *

  It was an hour later before Neven remembered his camera. Remembered it too late, in the dying afternoon as euphoria wore down into a heavy, dragging lethargy. It felt too close to depression, this weight. Paranoia seeping in, turning beautiful things ugly. He saw it in the moody set of Daniel’s jaw, the way Ada lay on the blanket with her eyes shut tight and one arm crossed over her breasts, her free hand clawing at her hair.

  He picked up the camera to take a picture of her, the beauty of her, swathed in shadow and natural light. Sensing movement, she opened her eyes and swatted the camera out of his hand before the shutter closed. Stared at him with her eyes black, fixed. She spoke, her mouth twisting around sharp words he was still too high to follow. Her face, for a moment, was monstrous. Her teeth straight and paper-thin, like an ivory razorblade shaving black words. Green and grey trickled over her skin. Moss poured out like water, washing her face in slime. This was what he saw, knowing it wasn’t real, that it was a trick of his own mind. Unsettling nonetheless. When she stood and walked off into the trees to be away from him, from Daniel, he picked the camera up again. Aimed it at her back.

  Snapped.

  This was the picture he kept of her. Naked except for her panties, torn to a single elastic brace over her left hip. Damage done by his or Daniel’s overzealous hands. Her back was dark with wet earth—like she’d fallen, like she’d been pushed. She was walking away on wounded steps, sharp stones and broken sticks digging into her soft feet. Her fists clenched at her sides, her hair tangled down her back. Her head was slightly turned, showing the curved angle of her cheek.

  This picture of her was his alone. One she’d never remember him taking. And in it, she wasn’t even looking at him.

  – FOURTEEN –

  Listen. You know this about me. That I welcomed evolution, that when I bit my tongue I swallowed blood. That I’ve never forgotten the taste. It just took me a while to discover it again. To understand what it meant. What it really meant, I mean.

  That day when we met in the coffee shop by the temple. You remember it? The smell of incense smoothing the air, brightening the heat. Spiritual spice to breathe. That day we met between heaven and earth, without Daniel knowing. The first secret between us.

  I got there before you. I ordered Daniel’s favourite—a cappuccino with extra cocoa—knowing it would make me feel sick. Ordering it anyway as though the choice itself made him present. Like I wasn’t betraying him just months into our marriage. Because of that coffee cup. His presence in its presence. Making it okay.

  When I went to meet you. While I was waiting for you.

  I sat by myself in the corner, drinking too fast, then not at all. Milk froth drying to a thick, fatty scum on the inside edge of the cup. I wasn’t sure if it was the caffeine or the sweetness or you that made me feel so sick. Sipping, waiting.

  I think it was you.

  I heard your bike pull up outside. Though it could have been anyone’s bike—there are so many—I knew it was yours. I felt you coming before I saw you. Before the engine stopped and the door opened, I felt each step. Your energy crashing closer to mine. And I braced myself. And I almost ran.

  But that would’ve been worse. People like you, and me, and Daniel. We’re not the ones who are supposed to run.

  You weren’t wearing your leather. You came in jeans and a bright green T-shirt. The wrong colour for you. I’m glad you did that, though. It gave me something else to focus on. The you that I saw in my head was different to the you I saw in front of me. Finding me. Sitting down opposite me. Ordering an Americano, thin and black. Your eyes shifting around me, over me. Neither of us asking that question. So what are we doing here? Really.

  Because maybe we knew. Maybe we did.

  You told me about that place you come from. That place I haven’t seen, that place Daniel has never seen. Remote to us, sketched from movies and books and cultural clichés. Mysterious, vacuous space these images create. But then, in this country we made our home, every foreigner has this power.

  We talked about these things. These ridiculous things that separate instead of bind. When I can’t imagine what thicker bonds we’d need than what we already had. Blood in our mouths and thorns in my back. Daniel’s hands, your hands. And me caught between.

  I wanted to leave. Every minute, I thought of it. Imagining Daniel was a block away, a step away, a breath behind my ear. I was distracted, dizzy. You were losing patience with me, I know. Smiling at me anyway. Smirking? Your gaze edging round my face. It was only at the end that you looked me in the eye. Hard glare, just like his. But bloodless. Unlike his.

  “Why do you do it?” you asked m
e.

  And this was the conversation we’d been trying to have while my stomach churned and you avoided my eyes.

  “Because I want to,” I said. “Because it’s exciting.” And I smiled with all my teeth.

  “That’s not all of it,” you said. Because you knew.

  I told you about fish scales. I told you about thorns. I told you something, some things. Not everything. I told you, “Sometimes dead things move, and live things lie still.” You weren’t supposed to understand, but I think maybe you did.

  “And you?” I asked. A polite return—but I wanted to know. I did.

  “We had a pet rabbit when I was a kid,” you said. “We kept it in a hutch outside.”

  And suddenly you were shivering, your jaw clenched, your hands twitching. “I loved that rabbit.”

  “But?”

  “But it kept getting hurt.”

  “And that excited you?”

  A blackness slammed into your eyes. Too much. I’d said too much. I’d pushed too hard. You looked at me like you hated me. And I knew that we were done.

  We left. You said you’d take me home. I got on the back of the bike with you. My arms around your waist, feeling the strength of your body, your sweat from the summer heat. Your body already felt so familiar to me. And I leaned forward, resting my cheek on your back.

  Bliss.

  You took me home, took me right up to the entrance. I got off. Your eyes, I felt them watching me. Were you waiting for me to invite you up with me? I wanted to. So much. To fuck you without Daniel watching. Vanilla sex on our bed, true and desperate and real. You’d kiss me and I’d kiss you back. There’d be no blood. Not then.

  But I couldn’t.

  And you wouldn’t.

  “See you around,” you said. And you started the bike up again, and you didn’t even hesitate. Turned, revved, vanished. Left me empty, cleaved. Like I’d cheated though we hadn’t touched each other. Like we’d done something so much worse than just drink coffee and talk without talking.

  You asked me why I did it, and I didn’t tell you the truth.

  “Because I want to,” I said.

  A different version of the facts.

  What version did you give me, exactly? I wasn’t supposed to understand, but I thought even then that I did. And I know now, yes, I did. The rabbit. The hutch. The rabbit that kept getting hurt. The rabbit you loved. Trapped. Locked away in a cage. Forgotten for days without food and water. Desperate, desolate. Gnawing at the bars.

  My hands are bleeding.

  – FIFTEEN –

  He didn’t tell them when he decided to move. He rode into the compound with his hiking bag on his back and a rucksack gripped between his feet. Everything he owned in the world, out here. In the East. The bike was awkward under all the weight, heavy on the turns, gravity and gradient a struggle. He bullied the handlebars, keeping the thing stable. He rode in weighed down, harried. His back soaked with sweat from the heat, the load. He rode in with his shadow chasing him.

  “You go here! Go here!” the estate agent shouted to him as he rode up. He was a wiry little guy with guilelessly broken English and a thick, rubbery smile. He gesticulated to the spot where he wanted Neven to park.

  Neven killed the engine.

  “This everything?”

  “Yes, this is everything.”

  “Good, good,” the agent smiled. “Not so much. I help you.”

  The little guy snatched up the rucksack, wincing at the weight, and Neven smiled at the struggle, watching. They began the long climb up five flights of stairs to the door.

  “You know,” the agent said, “here we don’t put elevator in building if not too tall. Maybe seven floor will have elevator. But not six.”

  “Well, with any luck I won’t be moving again anytime soon.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  The stairs were bare cement, chipped in places. The smell in the stairwell was of cooking oil and stale cigarette smoke. The walls were filthy, stamped with words Neven couldn’t read and numbers he didn’t understand. Most of them looked like phone numbers, but he wouldn’t know who they called or what would be said on the other end. Or what to say. Were they for prostitutes? It was tantalisingly easy to imagine. Stumbling up these stairs in the early dawn hours in dizzy euphoria, money in his pocket and his key in his hand, pausing for a moment to take out his cell phone, dial one of those numbers and garble out his address to whoever answered. Pace his apartment and drink beer until the knock came at the door. Asian princess in black leather heels.

  You called?

  That would be nice. Except…

  Except it was a cliché. An image so worn out from frequent handling that he could almost see the creases in the corners, the fading in the colours. Unreal against reality because in truth she’d probably smell like garlic and her dress wouldn’t fit her properly and she’d be a little fat, maybe even a lot fat. She’d have a Hello Kitty clip in her hair and be completely oblivious to its irony. If she laughed, it’d likely be in a childish giggle, culturally trained as she was to believe it’s more of a turn-on to play at being immature than it is to be sexual. And Neven would feel like a paedophile. Even if he survived these obstacles with his dick still in the game, she’d barely contain her revulsion at having to blow/fuck/strip for or be mauled by another foreign guy, whose sexual appetites were notorious by reputation. He would feel her reluctance like acid on her skin. No matter how much she giggled, how much she smiled. Nothing put him off more than that—the hardening of the eyes, the stiffening of the lips. Nerves flinching under his touch in tiny, tight twitches.

  He preferred it the way Ada put it. Sometimes dead things move. Sometimes live things lie still.

  And anyway, the whole fantasy was wrong. Because did prostitutes here even make house calls? Regardless, the question was irrelevant. He didn’t know how to say his address yet, let alone enough language to call in a whore. No. Daniel would have to help with that kind of thing, should it come to that.

  The agent had stopped in the stairwell and was pointing at the numbers, at the words. “This one for water. Your water not work, you call this, or this. This word here, it mean “water.” And this, this one for electric. Problem with electric, look for this word here. Then you call. Okay?”

  Neven laughed, and the agent’s smile slowed for a second in confusion.

  They resumed their journey up the stairs in silence.

  “You very high up here. You have nice view of the rooftops,” the agent said as they opened the door and stepped inside. “You very lucky. This place cheap, very cheap. In old quarter most apartment not so cheap.”

  That’s because the place is a shithole. But the agent was right about the view, about the beauty of the historic quarter. From up here he could see right down into the alleys with their quaint scalloped roofs, murky under their film of dust and bright sunlight. It was a clear day, the pollution not dense enough to obscure the horizon, and the skyscrapers beyond the ancient city wall stood framed against the blue in distant squares. The modern sections of the city. Nightmares too far away to touch him here. He stood close to the window and looked down.

  “What’s that building down there?”

  “Building?” The agent came over and stood close beside him, peering out.

  “No, down here. Right down here. Exactly behind this building.”

  “That? That just old shed. Not used. Nobody use the back here now.”

  With his forehead pressed to the glass, only its roof was visible. An ugly square of corrugated iron, the building squat, set flat against the ground, wild grass and thick weeds rushing up around it. Vivid green.

  “Your AC,” the agent said, turning around to point at the units that hung precariously from the walls. “This the remote. Maybe need new batteries.”

  And Neven followed him, tried to listen to him, all the while with excitement itching under his skin.

  This is mine now, my place now. I have my
own place. I have it here, in the old quarter, just a few buildings away from theirs. But this is mine now. Mine.

  He handed the agent the envelope with money. “Three months plus deposit.”

  Almost everything he had. His bank account gutted. For this.

  The agent plopped himself down on the edge of Neven’s new steel-frame bed to count it out. The bed screamed as he jostled against the hard springs, flicking through the notes, his fingers swift and efficient.

  “Okay, Mr. Neven. You know we say ‘happy every day’ here? One day you say it in my language. But now I say in English. Wish you happy every day here, Neven! Happy every day!”

  Neven was still laughing when he shut the door behind the guy, the sound of footsteps echoing back down the stairs.

  The silence closed around him, alien and strange. He took a few deep breaths. Then he dug his phone out of his back pocket.

  “Hey Daniel, you won’t believe what I just did.”

  – SIXTEEN –

  What Daniel couldn’t do, I did.

  What I couldn’t do, he did.

  Alone on our bed with my hands between my legs. Soft touch. My own flesh fragile and feeling, sensitive to the angle of my hips, the way I moved against myself.

  “I like to watch you,” he said. “I like to watch you, to understand how you understand yourself.”

  “Is that different to how you understand me?”

  “Of course, Ada. I’m not you.”

  He sat in the armchair by the bed. His legs crossed so it wasn’t always possible to see that he had a hand down his pants. Not until he moved. We timed it well, usually. My orgasm, his orgasm, just a few beats apart. Fluid rushing between my fingers.

  “Why can’t you do that with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Laughing at the wet patch. Still quivering. Rushing to change the sheets.

  “One day I want you to squirt with me. I want you to squirt in my mouth.”