She closes her eyes then, slowly, like a doll. A smile spreads on her face.
I loosen my grip, and it’s as if I’d been choking myself too – my whole body uncoils as relief comes over me.
Bride gasps and coughs, then just breathes loudly, bringing her hand to her throat. She tenses her lower back and thrashes backwards, her cunt spasming and contracting, squeezing me and drawing everything out of me, milking all the cum right into her – which is when I realize that I’m not wearing a condom this time, which should deter me but just makes me come harder. As I come, I have some kind of a half hallucination of something primitive, primal, an egg exploding into a fetus, birth splitting open our united bodies, shattering my entire being into a powerful orgasm.
I collapse on top of her. In the semi-darkness I see Bride’s eyes flicker, something behind them coming apart, loose, some kind of sadness, though maybe I just imagine it. We lie there, next to each other, cooling off, not talking.
I fall asleep with my arm draped over her flat stomach; in my dreams, the furry animal that is and isn’t me is digging up a burrow somewhere in the forest with the moon shining on.
30
THE PHONE RINGS AND I REACH FOR IT, CLOUDY WITH SLEEP. The morning light is sharp, knives in my eyes.
“Hello,” Bride says. In the phone, not beside me, which is strange, but then again, she’s a strange girl, so I just say, “Hello.”
“Sleep well?”
“Yes. I had the weirdest dream,” I say, looking at where her body left a whisper of an imprint on the sheet.
“I’m wondering if you could meet me on the beach,” she says in an oddly businesslike tone.
I don’t mind that she doesn’t want to be flirtatious on the phone, so I don’t push my dream chat – I just ask what time, and she says as soon as possible.
Then I remember the condom. “Is this about the condom?” I say.
“How about you meet me in an hour?”
There’s a pill a young girl can take within the first forty-eight hours. I have no clue if a pill like that is available over the counter or if we’ll have to find a hospital where they can administer it. I don’t know if she’s old enough or if she’s too old for it. I already dread the wait in the clinic and whatever else, a possible lecture from a gynecologist, some mustachioed local doctor with a degree from a university in Nassau or Zagreb.
I should maybe call Dr. Babe. It would be good to bring an actual woman that I fuck to her; maybe it would finally intrigue her the way my asking for tests never seems to. An actual woman might make things real. I feel like Dr. Babe is the type who likes a challenge – after all, she finished medical school, and that is a very challenging thing for a girl.
Bride says, “By the smoothies. I’m picking up a couple of things from there.”
I say yes and hang up. It’s going to be a nice day today according to the Internet, twenty-seven degrees and a breeze. A fantastic day to spend on the beach, and even though I find it impossible to sit on the sand for long stretches of time, I imagine going with Bride and lying side by side, discussing the girls that walk nearby, unaware of our predatory eyes.
I don’t have time for a long workout so I do a super-thirty, multi-interval: jump rope, diamond push-ups, Hindu squats, leg thrusts, kick lunges. I go fast and hard to quell the anxiety that for some reason has reared its head again.
I take a cold shower, so cold that my head feels numb and there’s pain in my ankles as the water cascades down my body. After drying myself off and putting on skin lotion, I put on a clean white linen shirt and linen pants. I skip shaving since it’s day three. I’ve been told a thousand times how great I look with my near-beard. It’s my summer look.
I let Dog out in the backyard to do his business. I make a mental note to scoop the business later to keep the raccoons away. You don’t want dog shit in your yard ever, or you’ll end up with all the shit-eating animals taking over.
I grab a bottle of vanilla-protein smoothie, the last bottle left in the fridge, and I gulp the entire thing. Then I lock the door and walk toward the beach, the liquid sloshing uncomfortably in my belly.
The sun is pale. It’s not even eight a.m. In the distance, the closed shack looks haunted, like a place that’s been abandoned for decades because of a deadly virus. They should repaint it.
I see Bride sitting on one of the picnic tables out front. She is facing the water. I get hard as soon as I notice a flimsy yellow scarf around her thin neck.
She turns and shades her face with her palm. “Hey you,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Sorry to get you up so early. I thought of letting you sleep in, but then I thought it would make more sense if we got this out of the way.”
“Got what out of the way?” I bend to kiss her, but she moves her face away. She coughs. Then she looks at me and smiles a sad little smile.
Perhaps it’s how fond I’ve grown of her over the past couple of days, perhaps I failed to see this all along, but now I can tell that her charm truly comes out when she smiles. Despite the facial asymmetry, her mismatched nose and lips, she’s one of those women who blinds you with beauty as soon as you tell her a joke she likes. She’s the kind of woman for whom you will long madly, possessively, as soon as she stops laughing, and then all you’ll ever want to do in life is make her laugh again.
I want to tell her this. I also want to tell her to never get a stupid nose job, never let some idiot tell her that she would be more perfect if she inflates her lovely breasts with silicone, but I keep quiet, waiting for her to talk, something uneasy slithering its way down my back as I stand waiting.
“Thanks for coming. Though I guess in a minute you’ll wish you’d stayed home,” she says.
“What do you mean? I’m glad I came. I’m always happy to see you.”
“Okay,” she says and shrugs. “Have you ever really punched anybody? Like when you got angry at them?” she says, and I immediately think of our bedroom games. Will I have to punch her next to prove myself to her? The chill on my back doesn’t let up.
I count backwards from ten before answering. “The choking was your idea.”
She nods, her eyes still, unblinking.
I have a sudden image of crows, a field of crows. Like in that painting by that lunatic.
She says, “Yeah. But would you do it on your own? If I said something that really pissed you off? If I told you something horrible? Or not horrible, just, um, something that could potentially cause a violent response?”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but my body seems to. The thing slithering down my back grows colder, expands. I think how the scarf wrapped around her neck is not one solid colour; there are thin red lines popping out of the yellow – it looks like a splash of egg yolk with bloody threads dissecting it. Her hand flies to the scarf as if my eyes made it burn.
“What’s going on, Bride?”
“Guy. It’s not Bride, actually. Why would you even think that’s a real name? Seriously. Come on.” She bites on a cuticle and spits it out. She kicks a small pile of dirt with the tip of her pointy flat.
“What is your name?” I ask, my back too stiff, hardened with ice.
Her eyes on me. “In a moment. But it’s not Bride. First, I need to tell you about why we’re here. I’m about to tell you something that will make you want to hit me, which would be okay since it could only help me further, or rather further my cause, but I don’t want that. Contrary to your impression of me, I don’t like violence. Can you have a look?” she asks, and sticks out her throat so I can open the scarf.
As soon as I graze the flimsy texture with my fingers, she thrashes her head and screams. She screams and then she stops. Then she laughs. The laughter right after the scream. It doesn’t fit.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I say, but my voice breaks and it comes out in a squeak. I’m shaking. I’m suddenly unable to stop shaking.
“Bride. It’s the name of a character from Quentin Tar
antino’s movie Kill Bill. Look it up.”
I lean against the picnic table. She turns her face toward the water again. We probably look like a nice couple, up so early, so healthily, out for a nice walk, taking a break.
She turns back to me. “Listen, in a minute I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna walk all the way to town and walk right into the police station. It’s not a far walk, but it’s far enough and it’s important that I get there looking a little beat. I’m gonna to go in there and tell them that I’ve been sexually assaulted and that you did it. I haven’t taken a shower yet because I figure we’re gonna have to go to the hospital to work up a rape kit and all that. I’m gonna call my daddy and my mommy and tell them what happened, and I’m gonna cry on the phone. They’re gonna tell me it was a bad idea to work at the smoothie shack in this shitty little place, but other than that, they won’t say anything mean because they’ll feel very, very sorry for me. As they should. I may or may not suggest that you were trying to kill me, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably have to –”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I squeak again, and I can’t come up with anything better than this. My mind is a field of crows pecking and pecking and cawing, cawing, cawing. I feel nauseous.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve always been a bit unusual, I guess.”
“But why? Is this a game?” I say, and the cawing is so loud now I can’t hear my pathetic squeaking. Everything around me becomes strangely large, towering over me. She’s a monster, a Godzilla with red eyes, and she’s asking me to choke her and my hand is on her throat and her eyes open and then it’s not her –
She says, “Dolores.”
– and so it’s not her, it’s Dolores, Dolores underneath me, and I’m choking Dolores, and she thrashes and her face is a grimace, a death face. I can’t stop choking her and she dies, and her eyes open wide, round, wide sugar eyes, and it’s too much to look at.
Dolores?
“Dolores?” I say.
Bride nods and says, “Yeah, Dolores. My friend Dolores,” and her face softens. She transforms from Godzilla back to a girl, a child. Her face – I don’t know, whatever beatific is, this is it. So young, so sweet, almost glowing from the inside. Holy. Beatific. Not like last year.
Because now I recall her, her other face – her scorn and the long, dark hair when I met her for the first time. Her name is Emily. Em. I try to remember if we talked then, but we didn’t because I would’ve remembered it.
I want to say something, but what could I say?
I just watch her. I watch her and say nothing.
She gets up and walks away. Walks all the way to the police station, I guess. Maybe she crawls there for all I know, to appear even more beat up.
Maybe I should run after her to stop her, stop this craziness, but I don’t.
I feel like throwing up, but nothing comes.
31
I DON’T REMEMBER STAGGERING HOME, BUT I MUST’VE STAGGERED home. It’s not a far stagger. Once I get there, I fall through the front door and close it and lean on it as if that could actually fortify me against whatever is coming. I should call my lawyer.
I don’t call my lawyer.
I think about getting in the car and driving far away. But I’m no match for the officious, angry cops in every shit town across this state. I picture myself flooring the gas, sweating despite the a/c, crying and cursing her name (her real name), only to get stopped by Officer Fuckstick in Buttfuck, South Carolina, population 1,000. How appalling.
I picture myself falling out of the car, babbling on, unable to control myself like a little bitch. What am I supposed to do when they come? What is the appropriate thing to do if you’re an innocent person accused of a crime? If you’re a person who will never actually get proven innocent because of the victim’s superb acting abilities? And I have to give it to her, she is a wonderful actress, putting on movie monologues just like that, with the right intonation and look – my little Taxi Driver, calling herself a crazy film-related (too!) name, convincingly enough that I keep forgetting to ask for ID, pretending to work in a crap job just to trap me.
I count from a hundred down to one and then from fifty. The nausea doesn’t subside, but at least it feels as if I’m trying to help myself. I have no clue what else I can possibly do, so I decide to cook.
I will make a summer vegetable ragout with curry sauce, which is not a complicated dish, but it requires an array of ingredients.
As I prepare the ragout, I begin to relax, settling into the familiar choreography of opening, pouring, stirring, chopping, mixing.
I mix two tablespoons of oil in the saucepan. I pour in carrot juice and briskly stir the mixture until it achieves uniform consistency. I don’t have some of the vegetables the recipe calls for. I’m missing fresh corn and summer squash. I only have enough for one cup of arugula, slightly past its best-before date.
I could call my delivery guy, but I don’t want him interrupting the police.
At this time, my curry sauce is ready to be turned off and drained. I pour the mixture through a fine strainer over a bowl, squeezing all the solid matter. I season the curry with salt and freshly ground pepper and set it aside.
The phone rings.
I put down the eggplant I’m holding. I like the feeling of its slick, rubbery skin.
I pick up the phone. The police say I should come over.
Clever girl.
***
The two cops are unfriendly but polite. Just like cops are in the movies. The first cop is short. He has a moustache. (There must be a rule that requires a certain percentage of cops to grow moustaches, one in five or something like that.)
The room I’m sitting in is pale green, almost white. A door with a thick glass window. Like in the movies, there’s a camera in the corner of the room. I think, absurdly, about waving at it.
There’s a metal table. (Probably issued from a cop movie as well.)
“What’s so funny?” asks the younger, taller cop with no moustache.
I shake my head, cough.
He asks me, again, if I know Emily Rose Reese.
“I do,” I say, although that’s not Emily Rose Reese, the girl they’re asking about. Emily Rose Reese is the weird girl I barely remember talking to last year. A blur of annoying quips and thick brown hair, lots and lots of thick brown hair, and glasses. Em.
The moustache says again, “So you do know Emily Rose Reese?”
I don’t know Emily Rose Reese. Em. I think of the yellow scarf, capillaries of red breaking through egg yolk. The red of her eyes as the sun pierced through the irises.
“How did you meet Ms. Reese?”
“There’s a kennel number on the fridge,” I say.
“Pardon me?” says the moustache.
“It’s not for my lawyer. It’s for my dog. Someone should get him,” I say, and it occurs to me for the first time that we are not in the movies. This is really happening.
I imagine her crying and shaking, showing off the bruises and scratches on her neck, wincing theatrically when people come closer to have a look. I imagine someone asking if it’s okay to take a picture, a no-nonsense but friendly female cop squatting beside her, telling her that she’s being very, very brave for doing this. And she’s looking up at the female cop as she says in the tiniest voice, You think so?
I know so, the female cop says, and her face is complicated; it shows admiration (for Emily Rose Reese) and disgust (for me) – kindness and toughness all at the same time, all needed to express the proper kind of support for the victim.
Later on, Emily Rose Reese will open her legs, allowing people in white coats to insert swabs into her and take samples to keep in red bags with black biohazard signs against red squares. I want them to be gentle with her, those people, to scrape and pinch and whatever else they need to do but only as much as necessary. I suppose I should wish her harm, someone ripping open her cervix in some horrible accident (an earthquake could cause a slip of the han
d), but I don’t.
I realize now that I was Emily’s, Em’s – Em; she’s my Em – mysterious summer project. It’s comforting to know that I was indeed that important to her if only for a little while. But then not just for a little while, really. This, what’s happening right now, this is bonding. This is for life, her accusation and my supposed crime. I will always be the perpetrator, from now on, and she will always be the victim. We will be forever linked in the eyes of the law and the rest of the world. Suddenly the name Bride doesn’t seem so out of place anymore because this union of ours is a marriage; it was for better and now it’s for worse, and nothing can do us part except, of course, death.
I think of Em’s beatific smile from this morning, the way her eyes softened as if we were sharing a secret, the secret that would allow us to connect beyond what was happening. A secret between secretly married people.
I’ve only spent a few days with her and only got a glimpse of the possibility of being with someone like me or, rather, someone who could understand me. Sitting here in this room, this is the only thing I truly miss, her companionship. Not having her here is the biggest source of my distress.
I doze off briefly in a zigzag of non-dreams, colours and electric sand running through my body. I’m aware of where I am and where I’m not.
32
MY FIRST COURT DATE HAPPENS ONE MONTH AFTER MY arrest and bail. My conditions are: no communication with the victim, no weapons, no leaving the city. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was expecting more – having to wear an electronic bracelet on my ankle like a drunk celebrity, getting a camera installed in my bedroom, Net Nanny preventing me from perverting my mind with porn.
Jason comes over every two to three days to torture me with stories about his pathetic dating life. A lot of it happens online. On his desktop, he has folders of links to girls he’s approached or is planning to approach: Yes Girls, Maybe Girls and No! (girls who rejected him, but whom he tells himself he didn’t want to get with in the first place).
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