Seeing Double

by Karen Runge

  A nice thing to say, I thought. Maybe some of our kinder hours together were spent like that, with me on the bed and him in that chair. Watching each other, oblivious to each other. Our focus fading in and out.

  What he couldn’t do, I did.

  What I couldn’t do, he did.

  There was the day I took the train out to the forest park. It was early afternoon on a remote subway line, the carriages almost empty. My underwear damp, itching my skin because I’d left the house wet and I was still wet and I didn’t know why. What was wrong with me? This energy he’d awakened.

  Men. Beautiful men. Serious, sensitive. Wide shoulders, large hands. Stubble. I watched. I waited for them to lick their lips. That moment. Tongue and teeth and rasp of coarse hair. Their eyes fixed, focused. Glancing at me. Looking back at me. Staring at me. Because I was projecting something. This need. They stayed where they were, circling me in their minds. Trying to read me. Men are afraid, inherently and profoundly. Terrified. I know. And when I looked at them sometimes they looked away. Sometimes they didn’t.

  Hey girl, you alone?

  Hey girl, where you going?

  You coming with me?

  Come with me.

  I saw them form the sentences in their minds. Saw them stop the words, a whisper bitten mute in the backs of their mouths.

  I went to the park. The forest park. I walked between the trees with my bag slung over my shoulder, my arms folded under my breasts. Small steps, tight steps. Dust dulling the leather of my shoes. No thorns. Behind me, children were screaming somewhere. Laughing or crying? I’ve always found it hard to tell.

  I walked, desperate with the energy that twisted through me. Relaxing my shoulders, unfolding my arms. Tracing my fingers across the rough bark faces as I passed. And even this was blissful. Even this warmed me, in hidden places deep inside. The smell of tree sap, pine needles. Dead things, dry things, crushed under my feet.

  No thorns. No thorns at all.

  Hey little girl, wanna fuck?

  This voice I sometimes heard in my head. A voice I didn’t yet recognise. And I answered it with real words, soft between my teeth. Breaking.

  Yes. Yes, I do. I really, really do.

  Amazed, breathless, laughing. Because it was a revelation to me. A new sense of freedom. An undiscovered power, understood.

  That’s what Daniel did. Do you understand me? That’s what he did. That.

  And what about you, Neven? What did you do?

  Or maybe I should ask you, what have you done?

  – SEVENTEEN –

  Her shoulders were bare. Maddening. Sculpted bone and smooth pale skin freckled by the sun. He thought of touching her. He thought of her. Bare.

  “What the hell are you wearing, Ada?” her friend asked, laughing.

  “It’s the coolest thing I could think of, in this heat. I feel like I’m naked in it. I can’t even wear a bra with it. Thing is, if I go to the bathroom I have to take everything off. See? It’s one piece.”

  “Better make sure there’s a lock on the door.”

  “Doors? In this place?” Ada laughed in derision. “I’ll get Daniel to stand post. Or Neven.”

  They sat on footstools out in the street, eating cheap lamb—Wild rat meat? Stray cat meat?—off of sticks. The guy who ran the place worked over the coals, his shirt off, smooth skin glistening like ochre cream. He turned the meat with one hand, and with the other he waved a thick cardboard fan over the grill, dispelling smoke in fast, efficient sweeps. His thick arms were vivid with tattoos.

  “Sexy.” Ada nodded to him.

  Her friend curled her lip. “Him?”

  They drank beer out of litre bottles, the glass warming too quickly in the sun. The nearest restroom was the public one around the corner, the heat ripening its stench of effluent and disinfectant to a wild hum that stung the air. Almost enough to spoil it all. Almost.

  Daniel and Neven sat beside each other, feet in the dust and hands behind their heads. Sweating into their palms. The heat. That summer heat. It trapped itself in the narrow alleyways, searing the tar, baking the walls. A grid of concrete coals. An urban desert maze.

  Daniel turned to Neven with a tilt of the chin. “That’s Jean,” he said, his voice slow and just low enough to keep it between the two of them. “She and Ada have known each other for about two years now. She might leave next year though. So, maybe then. The blonde is a cousin of Natalie’s; she’s visiting from Canada. It’s never a good idea to go for people you know, or people who know people you know. This is a big city, but in many ways it’s a village really. For us. Expats. That’s why it’s safest to stick to the dive bars in other districts—the ones near the universities are always good. They’ve got Russians, Koreans…all fresh off the boat and feeling free for the first time.” He licked his lips, tracking his tongue along the edges of his teeth. “Totally irresponsible. They barely know where they are themselves. So that’s good. If we don’t go for the ones that are leaving soon, then we look out for the single, the new, the transient. The unchained. You know.”

  “That’s why you picked me?”

  Daniel turned, stunned. The expression of surprise was feminine on his slim-jawed face. “You picked us,” he said. “Don’t you know that? You had a plan. I should’ve known it, but I didn’t. You took us completely by surprise.” He smiled. “And welcome.”

  “What about Ada? Did I take her by surprise?”

  “I’d say so. She acts like she doesn’t like it sometimes, but…” He stopped. “See, the first time I cut her, she climaxed. She was crying, hysterical really, but it still happened.” He smiled at the memory. “There’s nothing she won’t find a way to tolerate. Even…learn to love. And that’s good for you, too. Between the three of us, we can keep each other safe.”

  Safe.

  Neven watched her laughing with her friends. Like any other girl, maybe. Twisting her hair up off her shoulders, smiling. Breezy and free in that thing she was wearing, a cigarette in her hand, her lipstick smudged by the heat.

  “I wouldn’t have been so safe if I hadn’t caught her with that needle in time.”

  Daniel sighed. “It didn’t happen like that because it wasn’t supposed to. Okay? Don’t think about it too much. Everything’s exactly as it should be.”

  And Neven couldn’t argue with that. Or he didn’t want to argue with that. Closing the door on that part of his mind. And watching her.

  Bare.

  “So, we have a question for you.”

  Neven faced him and saw the smile there. Hard and bright. “What?”

  “Are you in? I mean, are you really in. All in?”

  Neven slugged back his beer. Warm, the bubbles hit his tongue in a smooth, thick froth that dried his saliva, thickened it. He swallowed and it went down in a thin, viscous slime. Not quite like semen. Not quite. “I’d need to understand what you mean by that.”

  “I mean I’m inviting you for dinner with us. A dinner party of three plus one.”

  “One?”

  “Whichever one comes back home with us, Neven. That one.”

  Neven’s hand tightened on his beer. He’d been waiting for this. Not quite hoping for it. He hadn’t been able to hope exactly, not through the thick undercurrent of dread that slowed the dream, hindered it, like tarred brier catching at his ankles. Dragging him back. Here it was. His heart sprang up in his chest with a dark shudder of thrill and apprehension. He felt a pulling in his mind, the sensation almost physical. Something on the verge of splitting apart. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant.

  We’re talking about a girl, he realised. A girl who right now is out in the city somewhere, living her life, thinking her thoughts. A girl who doesn’t know us, who we don’t know. Only we know we’re coming. And she doesn’t.

  “Does anyone…get hurt?”

  “Neven, that’s almost the entire point. Flesh is flesh. Don’t get that confused with anything else. That’s how you go crazy. Or are you that far off base?”


  “No.” Neven frowned, annoyed. “I know what you mean. But for me it’s a little different. I’m not sure about strangers. I think sometimes you have to really hurt a woman to make her love you. Or, to love her. I can understand that totally. In a way that’s…I don’t know. In a way that’s really real. But with strangers…”

  Why had he said that? It had been years since he’d thought along these lines. For a moment he panicked, but when he glanced at Daniel he saw that he wasn’t even listening. Daniel was watching Ada talk to her friend, the barest hint of a smile at the edge of his mouth.

  “But do you think…” Neven struggled to shift his tone. “Do you think it’s okay? I mean, to hurt people you don’t know? People you don’t…you know, don’t love? People who don’t…ask for it?”

  Daniel snorted. “Why are you so worried about people? People you don’t know, you should care all the less about. Remember it. Seriously. Flesh is flesh.”

  And sometimes dead things move. And sometimes live things lie still.

  After a moment Daniel stood, walked to Ada and bent to kiss her on the mouth. She turned into her husband’s kiss. She raised her hand to clasp the back of his neck, and for a moment, her hand hooked. For a moment, her fingers hardened into claws.

  Well that’s love, Neven thought, watching them. He didn’t notice that he was gritting his teeth. In the fabric. That’s another way, I guess. And maybe Daniel’s right. Treat flesh as flesh. I guess we could. No. I guess I could.

  The sun shone on Ada’s hair, turning it a bright auburn. Her lipstick, greasy in the heat, had stained Daniel’s mouth. She laughed when he pulled back, wiping it off his lips with her thumb as he smiled down at her.

  She understands him. She’ll do anything for him.

  Behind the jealousy that surged for a moment, sharp enough to make him grit his teeth, he caught a flash of something beautiful in that.

  – EIGHTEEN –

  I have a whore’s heart.

  I have a dark heart.

  You said it. And they did, too.

  Before Daniel. Before you. Long before.

  I was twenty-one, fresh in my skin, new to myself just as my world was still new. I dressed in short skirts. I used too much eyeliner. I didn’t know I was inviting anything. Or if the inviting was something that I wanted. Or if instead I was only walking as close to the darkness as I could get, testing it. Needing to learn where the limits were. What they were.

  But you can’t learn the limits of limitless things.

  I worked in a bar in the city, a place still not yet far enough away from where I’d grown up. A place sunlit and sick with its own importance. The bar faced a street where the trams went by. Students and suits frequented it in equal measure. Everybody, temporary. Everyone, transient. It was the kind of place you can never lay your heart down in, because it has no identity, no core. It was just barstools and battered wood and cheap glasses that broke in the dishwasher when the water ran too hot. Guys leaning over the bar, yelling at me.

  “Hey honey.”

  “Hey girl.”

  “Hey you.”

  Worse when the nights wore wilder, and they fell to that old dive bar tease, “Show us your tits, babe.”

  When they ask to see your breasts, they never call you you.

  And I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Opening the dishwasher door to a freshly broken glass, steam rising into my eyes. And I thought about how easy it would be to grab that jagged stem and slash it across a face. Puncture an eye, rupture a jugular. A spray of blood to paint my cheeks. A streak to slip into my mouth when I smiled. Something to taste.

  Those were the bad nights. Those were the thoughts that exhilarated me. But it hadn’t yet occurred to me to wonder why.

  On the good nights the place was quiet, and the handful of regulars who were sometimes nice and sometimes weren’t decided on nice and took over the music. Clearing the chairs and tables away, taking the rag out my hand.

  “Come dance with us, honey.”

  “Come dance with us, girl.”

  And again, they didn’t call me you. Not then.

  Pulling me into the crush of their bodies, their hands sliding up under my shirt, their fingers slipping beneath my belt. And I leaned into them. I rested back against them. I didn’t dance. I moved.

  Bliss.

  These men in their forties with their wedding bands and bad breath, their hands soft on me, brushing the hair away from my face, fingers gliding down my neck. Gentle touch.

  I’ll say it again. Bliss.

  Joel was the one who gave me cocaine. Joked about how he cut the bar manager’s grams with confectioner’s sugar and still charged him full price.

  “Too fucking dumb to know, the arrogant prick,” he said. “But I won’t give that to you, honey. This stuff is real.”

  Past closing time. Sitting in the front seat of his car, parked behind the bar with the night quiet hushing toward dawn. Sitting in a car with a man in his forties. A key in my nostril and his hand sliding up the inside of my leg. Telling me he liked me. Maybe liked me too much. Taking his hand away to lick his finger, to slip off his wedding band.

  “Sorry, honey, it just makes me feel better sometimes.”

  He returned his hand. And in my head, I thought, Why not just be honest? These cracks and desires. You’re doing it anyway, so what’s the difference? Why not just be real?

  Thought, but didn’t say. Wish now that I’d said.

  He was a big guy, too much meat for his frame. A belly trained by beer and trans fats spilling over his belt. Undoing that buckle, saying, “I just need to breathe.”

  And I said, “Sure.”

  Wanted to laugh at this pretence. But didn’t. Knowing these sheathed sensitivities, and how quickly they can churn to anger. Soft hands clenching, warm eyes hardening. Big men, blistering. I knew already how scary that is. How terrifying that is. This fear they don’t know how easily they instil.

  “Come on, girl. We’re just messing around.”

  He sensed the reticence in me. Said that to me, though he’d barely touched me, then.

  “Here. Have another bump.”

  An order, not an offer. I knew by his tone. A key in my nose and a finger wriggling past my underwear, hooking the fabric back. And I flinched. His fingers were thick, scratchy. He had a habit of biting his nails, of peeling back the skin and leaving the edges in hard rags and sharp scabs. This he pressed into my sensitive flesh.

  I tightened my thighs against him.

  He sighed, frustrated.

  “Okay, how about this then, honey? How about this?”

  This was not an offer either. Not a compromise, not an act of kindness. Not quite. Which I guess was what he wanted me to believe. Reaching round past his belly, unzipping, pulling out his dick. Hard, squat stub of a thing, the head swollen and purple-tinged. The colour of ripening grapes. Turgid, sour.

  At the sight of it, at the realisation of what he wanted, nausea hit my belly in a shatter-blast. My stomach lurched and I clapped a hand over my mouth.

  But when I looked at him, I saw hurt in his eyes. Because he thought I was laughing. Laughing at him.

  “No, no,” I said. “No, I don’t mean…I didn’t mean…”

  I was sorry for him. This sad little man with his cocaine games and his ring finger licked clean. His hand sliding off my thigh and that look in his eyes. Devastated. Because he thought I was laughing when I was trying not to throw up. And it didn’t occur to me to wonder which was worse: the fact of my nausea or the assumption of my spite.

  I guess I thought I owed him something.

  I guess that’s why I did it.

  I bent across the handbrake and leaned into his lap. I brought my lips to that thick purple head. This took courage. This required a step away from myself, from the me inside of me. Shattering. A fragment falling to the floor, refracting me.

  I did it for him. Because I was sorry for him. Because he was so weak that he thought I was laughing, and this was t
he greater insult to him. That and not the truth he didn’t see.

  After, he said, “Thanks, doll. Thanks, darlin’.” His voice shivering, breaking. He was still breathing hard. Sighing like the air didn’t hit his lungs deep enough. Doing his belt back up. Turning to me in the semi-darkness, stroking my hair away from my face as I wiped my mouth and forced myself to swallow. Chemical musk, thick on my tongue. I couldn’t wait to wash it out.

  “We’ll do that again sometime, huh?” he said.

  Said it with such certainty. Because once you open the door you’re not supposed to close it right after.

  “Kiss goodnight?”

  Did I say that, or did he? If it was me, I guess I said it with a smirk, coquettish, turning myself into a reflection of his idea of me. My chameleon shades. Shape shift. If not that, then maybe I said it with something wounded in my voice, in my eyes. Trying to smile back at him, my mouth tight, posing as if I was about to cry. Wanting something back. I think. If I didn’t say it then he did, and he said it with his hand already closing around the back of my neck. Probably he said it a little desperately, reaching for me, leaning into me.

  “Kiss?”

  I don’t know which of us said it. Does it matter? I know that when I pressed my mouth against his, he shoved his tongue past my teeth. I know I didn’t like it. That sick stench of beer and bile, the taste of his saliva too close to that of his semen. Chemical murk flooding my mouth. Again. I know I tried to pull back and he wouldn’t let me, his fingers digging into the nape of my neck. That grip of his saying, No, not yet. You don’t get to leave. Not just yet.

  And I thought, All right.

  I sucked his lower lip between my teeth. And I bit. I bit like his lip was a strip of raw flesh—which is what it was—bit like it was a leather strap and I loved the taste, like it was a delectable treat wrapped in a tough casing, and I couldn’t wait to get to what was beneath. His blood burst over my tongue, a copper antidote to the poisoned taint of his other body fluids. In my mouth. This time I wanted it.

  He screamed in the back of his throat, a vibration I felt in my teeth as he writhed back, trying to pull free. But I didn’t let go. His fist exploded against the side of my head. He hit me so hard that for a moment I thought he’d bashed a rock against my skull. But it was only his hand, tightened, flexed. His sad little hand bare of its wedding ring, those fingertips still spiced with my scent. Curled in, slammed against me. His own self-preservation finally kicking in.