The Change Room

by Karen Connelly

  She knew, early on, that Benoît adored her. Occasionally, shyly, he would tell her that. Je t’adore. Pourquoi? Parce que tu es adorable. He seemed to know, somehow, beyond language, outside or possibly inside the borders they maintained, that he was helping to dissolve some poison in her body. Usually they had traditional, reasonably passionate sex, intimate without being overbearing. But once, when they hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks, their lovemaking tumbled, fell, crashed into aggressive, hungry fucking. Even before it was done, she turned away from him, her body flooded with memories from that night in Marseilles. She began to cry; the crying quickly became uncontrollable. Until Benoît put his hand on her naked back and said her name. Then slid his hand up higher, touched her neck. She shuddered. “Shar.” Benoît touched the precise spots where the blade had entered, once, twice. She let go the scream that she could not release that night in Marseilles. Benoît did not flinch. He did not raise his voice. He said, “Shar, you’re here. With me.” He didn’t take his hand away. He drew the knife out of her; she felt it go. Relief rushed into her body. She cried for a long time, curling back into his arms. After a while, he said her name again; she stared at him. He knew without knowing. “If you ever need to, you can tell me what happened.”

  “I think…No. I needed…” What? “I needed someone to see me.”

  “Et voilà. I see you.” He pronounced in a triumphant voice: “Ma belle amie, je te vois. Et tu es libre.” He spread his palm over her heart. Then he said lightly, “Now, let’s eat something. You must be starving.” She was.

  Clackclackclackclack! Clack-clack! Her eyes were still closed but the clatter could only be Mrs. Shinx. Shar on her pedicure throne slivered open an eye and grinned: Mrs. Shinx had donned a pair of fluff-banded ruby-red mules. Kitten heels. The young woman drew away from Shar’s scrubbed and rubbed feet as Mrs. Shinx clattered toward them, a plastic box full of Shar’s preferred nail polish carried in her arms like a baby. “What colour you want today? You like this? Vely lucky colour!” She held up a scarlet bottle.

  Shar nodded just to make her happy. Then she wrinkled her nose at the fumes. The other two women’s toes were done; they were getting their fingernails painted right beside her. Giselle, her recent lawyer ex, had hated nail polish, partly as a manifestation of the capitalist beauty industry, but mostly because it meant that Shar was going on a date. With Benoît. He had always loved nail polish. Lacquer, he called it, in English. Fourteen years and several cities later—he had also lived in New York, and in Montreal—they still saw each other regularly. Giselle had never met him, but she had always disliked him; he predated her. Near the end of their relationship, she’d asked Shar, “Why did you tell me how long you’ve been having sex with him? You didn’t have to. You could have…”

  “Lied?”

  Shar shook her head at the memory of it. That was the problem with sex work and its complexities. People said they wanted the truth, but they preferred the lies.

  This morning Benoît had flown in from Paris for business, but also for the pleasure of seeing Shar. He was her oldest, most generous client and one of her dearest friends. After all this time, it was fair to say that, yes, finally, she loved him. The very least she could do for him was her nails.

  13

  Orchids

  THE CRUCIAL THING, ELIZA THOUGHT, WAS TO LIE. BUT she was a terrible liar, always had been. How could she lie to everyone? Andrew, Kiki, Bianca, her girlfriends, her kids, the school moms she worked with on the fundraiser. She could not do it. She could not lie to Andrew. It was wrong. Impossible.

  She sat at her desk and attended to the morning’s emails while her body buzzed. Kiki had left an Ivory Mammoth orchid near her computer. Eliza gazed at the bloom closest to her face. She wanted to lick it. No. She wanted to eat it, the whole thing. Swallow it down. To no one in particular, she said, “This orchid is extraordinary.” An echo seemed to distort her voice. But only she could hear it.

  The white bloom was as big as her fist. Fist made her think of Shar’s hand, a hologram of fingers that still slid exquisitely back and forth between her legs. She was wet again. Or, still. Was that normal?

  The orchid was gorgeous. Orkhis: ancient Greek for “testicle.” Eliza licked her dry lips. Orkhis referred not to the flower itself, but to certain varieties’ bulbous, ball-shaped root tubers. While Shar and Eliza were in the change room, Jack Armelle had parked his refrigerated garden outside Fleur. Kiki had purchased ten Ivory Mammoths, some Azafran and Bibi roses (peach and orange tones) and a bunch of purple and mauve alstroemeria, haughtily referred to by Kiki as fake orchids. The true ones stood in various spots around the studio—the fridge was too cold for orchids—each one meticulously staked and covered in blooms.

  Eliza gazed into the velvet throat, where both the female and male sex organs of the orchid were located. “It’s tougher than it looks.”

  Kiki, walking toward her from the workbench, raised one finely tweezed eyebrow. “What?”

  “The orchid. Such a hardy flower. And prolific. There are 25,000 different species of orchids on six continents…Probably it’s the kinky sex that makes them so successful.”

  “Orchids are kinky?”

  “Some of them are mimics. They often look like their pollinators or produce scents that smell like female pollinators—bees—so male bees are tricked into having sex with them.”

  “Why do you know about this? Bee sex?” Those eyebrows drew tightly together, deepening the wrinkle at the top of Kiki’s nose.

  “Orchid sex—the bees just get frustrated. I read about it last night, on an industry website, natural versus mechanical means of pollinating domesticated orchids. Male bees confuse the orchids for female bees, so the bees try to mate with the flower. Of course it doesn’t work. But while they’re busy trying to screw the flower, they get covered in the pollen. When they get totally frustrated, they fly as far away as possible, so the pollen gets widely distributed. Taa-daa! Kinky orchid sex.”

  Gazing down into the sexual parts of the plant, Kiki asked mournfully, “Why is it so ’ard to find a ’usband?”

  Eliza laughed. “Bad date last night?” Her colleague’s round face was pale, which made the dappling of freckles across her nose stand out. She had telltale dark circles under her eyes.

  Kiki flicked a chunk of her red, high-gloss hair over her shoulder. “You know I’m on dese websites. After working all day, I go to work at ’ome, scroll trough, read profiles. Basically, you try to figure out one ting: who is da psychopath.” She paused. “And you do not choose him even if ’e is de only good-looking one. It’s like online shopping. But more difficult.”

  “But what about that guy you really like? Aren’t you still seeing him?”

  Her expression grew complicated. “Jonatan. ’E told me ’e can’t have kids. Infertile. Some genetic condition. Extra chromosome. And you know what ’appened?”

  “What?”

  “When he told me dat, I lost interest. I never want to kiss ’im again. Isn’t dat sad? But why didn’t ’e tell me right away? I’m so glad that we didn’t go to bed yet. Then it would be even worse, I would be more attached.” Her voice dropped to an anxious whisper. “But also it’s awful, that we didn’t ’ave sex. I ’aven’t ’ad sex for…Oh, god, since dat last guy. You know…”

  “The one who was living with his mother?”

  “It’s not that ’e was living with his mother! It’s that ’e lied and told me she was ’is roommate!”

  Eliza nodded sympathetically. “It does seem like slim pickings out there, in the world of the single, heterosexual woman. The available men go down fast.” Like a wildebeest attacked by lionesses, she thought, as the images thrust into her mind; a couple of days before, she and the boys had watched a documentary on lions in Africa.

  “A desert! Da men are creepy or they cannot put down de iPhone long enough to remember your name. Or on the first date, they ask you, Do you do anal?” She shrieked, “Who would ’ave a baby with any of dese
idiots?” She marched back to her workbench. “Do you do anal? How can you ask a complete stranger such a question? In a Starbucks?” And picked up her cutters. “I’ll trim da stems. I need to relieve my frustration.”

  Eliza also stood. “I’ll strip the roses.” Her mind tripped over the word strip. She yanked it back to the task at hand by reading the standing order list for the Regent Hotel out loud. “Three for the big lobby, two restaurant arrangements. Fifty-six small ones for the elevator lobbies and public washrooms. Good. We can do this in a couple of hours. And Bianca will be back by then. She can drive you around to do the deliveries.” Kiki hated driving. Whenever she drove anywhere, Eliza worried about both her and the van.

  Eliza put the first of the stems into the stripper pipe and pulled, slicing away the thorns in one smooth go. Yes! Strip off those thorns, baby. She did twenty white roses and twenty pale pinks without so much as pricking her finger. Then she pinched away bruised leaves, pulled off the tired outer petals and answered the phone several times. Kiki was almost finished the second large arrangement when Eliza had an idea. “Why don’t I get some of those red pincushions from the fridge?”

  With a rose between her teeth, Kiki turned her head from one side to the other. Removed the rose. “Yeah. Dat’s a good idea. You ’ave not lost it!” She cast a full smile at Eliza. “You’re quick today. A sign dat you’re in da mood.”

  The expression boomed in Eliza’s head like the refrain of a bad song. She was in the mood. She was intensely focused on the flowers, the arrangements, keen-eyed, but she was also driven by nervous hunger. She wanted to get on to the next thing; she wanted time to pass. She wanted to hear from Shar.

  —

  They finished the hotel arrangements in record time. Bianca and Kiki began loading the van while Eliza went to the cramped washroom downstairs. After peeing, she leaned over the small sink and put her forehead and her palms against the cold mirror. As soon as she closed her eyes, Shar was there, behind her, pushing her up against the sink, pulling down her trousers, reaching around, down, between. Every preposition was pornographic. She opened her eyes, stared at the heat-flush that had risen from her chest right up into her face. “What have I done?” she whispered. Maybe it wasn’t just lust. Maybe it was a perimenopausal hot flash, induced by the sudden influx of hormones into her bloodstream.

  Should I send her an email right now? Should I call her? Text? Where does she live?

  Calm down. Shar had to get in touch with her. Eliza would control herself. Important to have the illusion of control anyway. If Shar didn’t get in touch, that would be that. She was too old to be desperate. No, not too old. Too much of an adult. In the mirror, she saw the naked Amazon, breast, hand, black stripe of hair on a narrow triangle of pale flesh. She wanted to get into her. She wanted to have a cock. What? Yes, that was dissonance. She had had crushes on women before, and, in university, a few brief flings. They were try-it-on affairs that never fit well enough to become relationships.

  Thalia had been different, of course. Why not think of her, especially now? It wasn’t like Thalia was a deep, dark secret. Andrew knew. Her close friends knew. But that was on a Greek island, twenty years ago. It was the only time she had been comparably dazzled by a woman. It didn’t end well, but the ending was not what she remembered. That spring and summer on Lesvos were the most beautiful seasons of her life. The superlatives had held as she aged, giving them more power. She had never encountered any other place like that rich island world—flowers, fruit, olive trees, almonds, and light, so much clear light pouring down—nor any other human being like the woman who led her through it. And it was also there, in the village of Eresos, that she learned right down to the soles of her aching feet how to run a restaurant. But before she started working, she and Thalia spent a month together, days sliding into nights into new days when they barely walked out of the stone house in the olive grove except to watch the sunset, or to go down to the sea, usually on horseback, for a late swim. All they did was make love and eat and sleep and fuck and drink wine and ride around the maze of donkey tracks and tip ouzo down their throats and eat grilled sardines and salads and swim and swim, mouths open, full of salt, full of each other. They often swam in the Aegean at night. When there was moonlight, the silver water was so clear that they could see twenty feet down to the rippled metallic sand.

  “Eliza? Are you in dere?” Kiki’s loud voice made Eliza jump straight into the air. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine! Just looking for that earring I lost last week. I think it’s on the floor somewhere.” Eliza’s eyes dropped to the floor to scan the painted cement. She tilted the garbage container, peered behind it. Lifted up the bucket full of toilet rolls. Then she straightened and faced the mirror again. Her face was her own face, unchanged. Yet she had just told a lie so well that she’d believed it herself.

  14

  Rhymes With

  THE AMAZON DID NOT CALL, TEXT OR EMAIL HER. NO smoke signals either, or surprise visits to the studio. Eliza waited for that, from hour to hour, day to day, illogically, because she hadn’t told Shar where the studio was. At any moment, she expected her to walk through the door or directly out of a brick wall. But she did not. Tuesday came again; Shar was not at the pool. She did not come to swim on Thursday either.

  To the implicit rejection, Eliza responded by refusing to even think her name. She allowed herself only the descriptive phrase rhymes with star, then envisaged the small but full mouth, the length of her, limbs, hands, legs, the accordion of muscle bracing her ribs.

  Half of the heavy snow melted. From the playground, in an unexpected role reversal with his older brother, darling Jake brought home a new word, bitch, which he gleefully shared with Marcus, so that both boys swung the swear around like a hammer for several days, despite their parents’ patient and not-so-patient remonstrations. A new event rose on the horizon, possibly a great leap forward for Fleur: someone from Ayeda, the cosmetics and haircare company, called Kiki to schedule a meeting about their three-day international sales conference. She and Kiki promised each other that if Fleur got the contract, they would bring Veuve Clicquot and oysters to the studio and throw a party.

  She whose-name-rhymes-with-star receded whence she came, into myth. Yet the long naked minutes remained vivid in Eliza’s mind, and ached elsewhere. She did not think of them, could not stop thinking of them. She regularly swept the feelings and memories away with a brush of her arm, saying inwardly, or out loud if she was alone, “It’s a stupid crush!”

  She surveyed the mess of the breakfast table. Everyone was upstairs getting ready to begin the day. She was still wrapped in her robe. It was a crush, and she was being crushed by it. Andrew was taking the boys to school because she felt ill. PMS, she said at breakfast, to which she added the word melancholic. Andrew started to laugh—until he realized she was serious. “I’ll walk the boys,” he told her. It was another Tuesday morning. Swim day. She felt keen regret, gazing into her mug of tea. It was cold now, a skin of milk on it and her toast untouched, when usually she liked to eat with the boys, who always woke like hungry cubs. Nothing interested them in the morning but food and milk and making a mess of the kitchen, spilling something.

  What did Eliza rhyme with? Fucking idiot. It wasn’t only the marital betrayal, but that the purity of the pool was ruined. And I have ruined it, she thought. The pool was the only thing in her life that had been all hers, her pleasure, her escape, the bars of sunlight sometimes falling in that one place, sun undulating through blue water. That time had been her only freedom. But she wouldn’t swim today; if who-rhymes-with-star wasn’t there, Eliza would be disappointed. If she was there and uninterested, Eliza would be mortified. And furious. She had spent two weeks in a welter of longing, lust and indecision. Like a teenage girl. Or boy. Or a dopey middle-aged woman making a fool out of herself.

  She could hear the rumble of feet upstairs, the boys in the bathroom now. She went into the front room and waited for her men. Andrew came
down first. “Have you seen that old sweater I like, the beige one?”

  “It’s in the same place in the closet that it always is.”

  “I couldn’t find it. Why are so many things invisible until you look for them?”

  “Because you are wilfully blind in order to make me think that you would be helpless without me.” She reached up to pull the frayed shirt collar out of a different sweater.

  He kissed her quickly. “I would be helpless without you.”

  “That shirt’s getting old. I’m going to cull it soon.”

  “But it’s just getting comfortable!” He loved worn-out, holey pieces of clothing. “Don’t you think swimming would make you feel better?”

  “No. No, not today.” Insufficient explanation. She patted his chest and turned away to ready the boys’ boots. “The pool was so crowded last week.” It was two weeks since she’d kissed the Amazon. This morning was both a debauched anniversary and a mocking salute to her frustration. “I think I’ll just take a hot bath.” Andrew went into the kitchen; she heard him gathering up a few bowls. She put the boys’ winter coats out.

  She would heat up her tea. Drink it in a hot bath and feel sorry for herself. Despite all she had to do at work. She would spread her legs wide open on the edge of the bathtub as if she were still on the bench at the pool and rhymes-with-star held the Wave, that tube of blue silicon, and she would slide it in, stir it around her cervix, play with her clit and come so hard that she would howl before sliding back into the tub, spent, cowed by the intensity of her own fantasy, how much she wanted it to be real. Her tea would be cold again.