A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing

by Jessie Tu

  39

  Val comes into my room while I’m still in bed. My last few moments of comfortable sleep for the next thirty hours.

  She smiles her big smile and leans forward, pressing her body over mine. She’s being interviewed for a possible commission early next year at the Museum of Contemporary Art and cannot stay. She rushes out, stopping at my door to wave.

  ‘Don’t be good,’ she says.

  I get up and put on David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ on repeat while I make a snack to take on the plane: Medjool dates stuffed with roasted almond butter. I split the dates down the centre, spoon a heap of almond butter into the opening, seal it like a clam. Each date is cling-wrapped and slipped inside a zip-lock bag which I stuff into the backpack I’ll take as carry-on luggage, along with my violin. I have one suitcase to check in.

  My flight is in the afternoon. I take the train to the airport alone; I don’t want a big send-off.

  During the second leg of my journey, the flight from LA to New York, the woman seated next to me asks why I am going to New York. I reach over to the seat on my other side and pat my case, which is clipped tight in a seatbelt.

  I ask her what she is doing and she tells me she is following a man.

  ‘It’s only been six months but I have a good feeling about it.’

  I nod and start rummaging in my backpack for my headphones.

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asks.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Yeah.’ I slip on the headphones.

  Across the aisle, I see a couple, mid-forties, white. The man looks like a fuller, rounder Michael Fassbender. The woman is lean with pronounced cheekbones and dark eyes. She is wearing block-coloured athleisure. They look utterly in love. Fingers interlaced on the armrest. Eyes beaming.

  They must be having an affair, I think. They have either recently left their spouses or left them in their respective cities. The man has the New York Times spread open across their two seats and is reading with glasses. The woman is looking at a photo on her phone, flicking through the filter options of a picture of herself in a black cocktail dress; she cannot decide whether she looks better in sepia or black and white.

  Later I look at them again. The man is devouring the woman’s face like he is eating chocolate mousse. When the flight attendant comes past with the trolley, they pause, and I watch the man order. (‘A glass of red wine for me, please,’ he says, like he is in a fancy restaurant on the Upper East Side.) The flight attendant hands him a small bottle and a plastic cup.

  The couple flick through a magazine together, their heads close. They are definitely having an affair. Their giddiness is unnatural for a married couple of that age.

  Then the man goes back to the newspaper and the woman picks up the magazine. She is reading an article titled ‘Trust Your Instincts and Don’t Play Games’. It is accompanied by a picture of a black catwalk model in a purple robe. The woman glances over at me, she senses my stare. It’s as though we can each read what the other is thinking.

  I know your secret.

  I know you’re jealous.

  Later, when the man extends an arm between the woman’s legs, she pulls the blanket over his hands, turning her head with a smirk of accomplishment. I know that look well. I have worn it myself. On the streets of Sydney, on the rare occasion when he claims my body in public, I enjoy having Mark’s face buried in my neck. I know that particular pride. I’ve got something you don’t.

  It’s the crafted look of a woman who tells the world: I have the love of a man, and that trumps everything else.

  I wonder what I am afraid of. Without Mark, am I missing some essential fact of womanhood? Alone, am I an anomaly? A thing to be laughed at? A thing to be pitied?

  I want so much to touch myself between the legs. Make it all stop. Drive down that road I know so well. But there is nowhere I can go to make myself come. Nowhere to shed my shame, unburden myself from the dark cave of my own construction.

  I reach for music to calm my panic. I thumb through my phone and stop at Mahler. Fifth Symphony. It blasts through my headphones, fiery and full of dissonance and rage. Mahler, the truculent master of twentieth-century music. The brute. The controlling man. One of his lovers said that being with him was like being on a boat that never stopped rocking. Thinking about Mahler always makes me sad, because when I listen to his music, all I can feel is the sadness of his wife Alma, who was also a composer but whose creativity he discouraged. She has been forgotten. What happened to the wives, the caretakers, the invisible humans who worked tirelessly for the men we now revere? Musing on this distracts me for an hour.

  In the dark of the cabin, I see the woman’s small head disappear beneath a heap of blankets on the man’s lap. The man’s eyes are shut, head tossed back, mouth gaping. Small gasps. I think my heart might explode and cause the plane to fall out of the sky.

  It’s night-time when we land. I collect my bags and walk into the arrivals hall to find a man in a grey Philharmonic T-shirt holding a sign with my name on it. I wave. He rushes over.

  ‘Glad to meet you, Jena. I was just watching your performance this afternoon.’

  ‘My performance?’ I follow him through the crowds towards the exit.

  ‘When you played with us. I was going through our archives because I wanted to watch you before I met you.’

  I’m not sure whether to be flattered or on guard. ‘That’s nice, thank you.’

  He tells me we can’t leave yet; we’re waiting on another person—a girl from the UK who’ll be arriving soon. The man has a strange accent. Not quite from New York. I think about asking him where he’s from, but he keeps talking and talking and I can’t get a word in.

  The girl arrives and the man leads us to the cark park. It’s cold. It hasn’t begun snowing, but the air and wind are the same thing, tossing our hair in front of our faces, burning the tips of my nose and ears. I pull a beanie out of my backpack and put it on.

  ‘You’re not used to cold weather, are you?’ the girl says.

  The best way to enter a city is late at night. Like sneaking into a party through the back door.

  We check into a hotel near the Lincoln Center. We’re staying here for two nights before we move to our own apartments in Greenwich Village, which are owned by an orchestra patron. In the hotel, I peel back the curtains and peer out onto Sixty-third Street. Against the black sky, a thousand coins of light shimmer and pulsate. In the en suite, the shower taps are reversed. H is cold water and C is hot.

  I take out my violin. Lean into the familiar. After a few minutes, I grow listless, unfocused. I look out the window at the landscape, an arcade game.

  I need to get out. Reorientate my body to the freezing air of the city. I pull on a woollen sweater, thermal pants, a scarf, beanie, gloves, boots, woollen coat. I take the elevator down and step into the cold night. My phone tells me it’s eight degrees Celsius. It feels like minus twenty.

  The last time I was here, the three-headed beast was doing a full tour of the East Coast and my mother and I had a fight. I had wanted to stay in New York longer to see Ground Zero, but she refused. My violin was the most important thing. Banks didn’t say anything, but I knew on such matters, he would tell me to listen to my mother. We did twenty-three cities in three months. They didn’t even remember my birthday.

  It’s after ten and the pavements are still jostling with crowds. I walk along Seventh Avenue towards Times Square. I walk steadily, eyes drawn to the footpath in front of me. I listen to the sound of dirt crunching beneath my boots, walking past bars heaving with people, past restaurants and dark rooms. I turn my head for a moment, long enough to catch glimpses of laughing faces and animated hand gestures. Stories being told, laughter being shared. I am outside of it all.

  The immensity of the city presses against me. It feels both liberating and suffocating. The city wants to make an impression on me, and I want to make an impression on it. It feels like a duel. I’m too tired to fight. I stop at a crossing just past
Times Square, shivering at the chilling breeze on my face.

  A woman next to me talks loudly into her phone. ‘I feel like when you write it down, it makes it more real,’ she is saying. ‘You of all people should know this. Write down how it makes you feel. You don’t have to share it with anyone.’

  A group of three strolls briskly towards me. As they pass I hear one of them say, ‘I only go to parties where everyone is married now. I don’t go to parties where there are single people.’

  I wonder if he is single. I want to turn around and tap him on the shoulder and ask him to invite me to one of these parties.

  At Twenty-eighth Street, I turn and walk back to the hotel. It’s 3 am when I return to the room, face cold, hairline damp with sweat under my beanie. In bed, I stare at the ceiling, making shapes out of the cracks and stains of its surface. I imagine all the people who’ve ever looked up at the ceiling and wonder what shapes they saw. I wonder how many women stared at the lines while being fucked in this bed.

  I reach for my phone and download a dating app. Upload the photo of me and Val taken before Noah’s party. The men on the site have pictures of their torsos, bulging biceps. They are brawny and they are white and they are black and everything in between. I swipe right. Right, right, right, right, right. Four messages slide on my screen.

  Do you want to have sex tonight?

  This, from an Eric Bana–Hulk doppelgänger. In the picture, he is sitting at the end of a bed, taking a picture of the mirror which reflects his hunched shoulders and sleeve of tattoos.

  Delete.

  Another: hey

  Delete.

  Another: hi sexy, what’s up?

  Delete.

  Another: why are u on this app?

  I scroll through this one’s profile. A few pictures of him working out at the gym, holding a massive wheel above his head, pumping his fist like Rambo. His mantra: Be honest, and you’ll get no bullshit from me.

  I zoom in on his face. He is black, attractive. A young Denzel Washington.

  I type: Because I am cripplingly lonely.

  My thumb hovers over the send button.

  I backspace and retype: I want to make out with someone.

  He writes back: meet@3pm tomorrow@starbucks on 42nd.

  The cold is paralysing. It restricts airflow; lungs, chest, breath. I put on two layers of thermals, a sweater, a large jacket. I’m still wrapping my arms tight around myself for warmth. Pedestrians scurry along the pavements like ants in a colony. Women in longline puffer jackets. Conehead beanies.

  App-man is taller than I expected, though I’m not sure what I expected. His skin is the colour of charcoal. He’s wearing a scarf that covers his mouth and jaw. He pulls it down to say hi, then pushes it back up when we step outside. As we walk downtown, the traffic of pedestrians moves in one direction. At a set of lights, yellow cabs crawl by. I glare at the ads for gentlemen’s clubs affixed on the vehicles’ roofs. I wonder if App-man is looking at them too. It’s the same blonde woman in each ad. She’s wearing black lingerie, breasts about to tip out of her bra, lips thick with sex. I look away for a moment, ashamed at how far I am from resembling her. My breasts are the size of limes. My hair the colour of tar. My lips are small. The exact opposite of sex.

  He doesn’t seem to notice. We walk and he asks me questions. We can’t decide where to go. In the end we slip into TGIF. Inside, a bored-looking waiter shows us to a table upstairs. The second floor is near empty. Mid-afternoon.

  A middle-aged couple nearby. App-man orders a bowl of glazed chicken. I have an iced tea. It tastes like watered-down Fanta. I ask him how many brothers and sisters he has. I stare at his lips, which are full, thick, swollen. Pink. I wonder what we look like. Two lovers – no, we are too polite. Too formal with each other. Our bodies give it away. High school friends. Work colleagues. Neighbours who decided to hang out. Church buddies. Classmates. We’re a strange combination of people. In New York, though, there is no such thing as strange. I tell myself he must do this with a new woman every day.

  Outside, I place my body in front of him.

  ‘Do you want to come to my hotel?’

  We walk side by side, arms wrapped around ourselves to seal out the cold. I decide we must look like amiable old friends. Ex-lovers. Newly divorced. We’ve subtracted to the formal because we can’t stand to be with each other any other way.

  In the foyer of the hotel and then inside the elevator, he keeps a respectable distance.

  In my room, he asks to use the bathroom. I hear the toilet flush. He comes out and sits on the edge of the bed next to me. I watch him unlace his Nike sneakers slowly and place his shoes by the foot of the bed. He tucks his socks inside the shoes. I glance at him nervously, a schoolgirl waiting to be kissed.

  ‘I don’t know how to do this.’

  He leans over and presses his mouth over mine. It starts, just like that. We push our bodies against each other, hungry, filling a need. In between his body and the mattress, eyes closed, I feel seen.

  While he takes me from behind, my face is buried into a pillow. A sadness moves inside me, something heavy, burning. Wet. I sob into the pillow, the feeling something entirely new yet entirely familiar. He bends over and cups a hand over my breast. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, keep going.’

  His cock is thick, warm and full. But all I feel is the trembling grief of something in my body. All I can think about is Mark and how easy it is to betray another person.

  Everything else functions on auto. My hands reach for those familiar places. This is all rote work. Nothing is as simple, as effortless as making love to a man, especially a stranger.

  He does not make me come.

  After he finishes, quietly, like he is trying not to be heard, we lie side by side, staring at the ceiling. I listen to the soft inhale and exhale of his breath. He doesn’t say much. Eventually, we pull on our clothes. I walk him to the door.

  ‘See you soon?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  I reach for my metronome and climb into bed. Accidentally, I fall asleep.

  40

  When I wake the next morning, I take a shower. The water blasts directly onto my nipples. I lower myself into the bathtub and make myself come. If I can’t orgasm with a man, why do I keep taking them to bed?

  I’ve learned to go through the motions. I make loud grunts. I know they love hearing it. I perform for them. With App-man, I no longer see the point of that performance.

  I get a message from him and read it quickly as I’m pulling on boots. Without thinking, I type a quick response.

  I gather my bags and violin and take the subway down towards Greenwich Village. My new apartment is on the sixth floor of an old building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. The Philharmonic’s administrator is waiting for me outside. I follow him up to my apartment and he hands me the keys. It’s a one-bedroom place with a walk-in kitchen and a spacious lounge. The ceilings are low, windows large; looking out onto Fifth Avenue, the view extending onto the First Presbyterian Church and The New Shul.

  When the administrator leaves, I take out my violin, play scales, warm up my fingers, adjust them to the northern hemisphere. A few hours pass. Schubert, Mozart, Ravel.

  It is late when I finish. I have a shower, eat some corn chips, lie in bed waiting for sleep. The rumbling of the cars below keeps me awake; sirens.

  I wake at five in the morning, having dozed for only an hour or so, and get up immediately, splashing my face with water in the bathroom. I get to David Geffen Hall early, walk around the space, remind myself of that other life. Geffen Hall. Geffen Hall. A new name. When I played here last time, it was called Avery Fisher Hall.

  The hall through the main entrance is deserted. A security guard stands at the door to the backstage. I tell him my name and show him ID. Inside, the exit lights illuminate the backs of chairs, the music stands, timpani at the back of the stage. I sink into a chair and toss my head back, counting the silver a
nd gold lines that trace the ceiling. The embroidery of a woman’s hooped gown from the nineteenth century. Something worn by an aristocrat’s wife. I shut my eyes for a moment.

  ‘Jena?’ Someone taps my shoulder.

  I had not intended to fall asleep. The seats are uncomfortable and yet I have been out for almost an hour. I know this because Maestro is shaking me awake and asking what on earth I am doing here at 7 am. I tell him I couldn’t sleep, wanted to see the place before it got crowded with musicians and tourists.

  ‘It’s a Saturday,’ he says kindly. ‘We don’t have rehearsals.’ He invites me to a concert in the evening. Zubin Mehta is conducting; the bass player whom I’d so loved, growing up watching ‘The Trout’ documentary, is leading, with a sitar world premiere, and some Haydn and Schubert. I go alone, later that night, even though Maestro has told me to call up some of his friends. ‘You must still have some connections here,’ he says. I nod. In the hall, I file in through a side door and find a seat by the aisle. Mehta walks onstage with the soloist; his face is dark, and appears to frown, even when he is smiling. She is beautiful. The soloist, dressed in traditional Indian sari, hair perfect and full. She sits on the floor on a colourful rug and plays with her eyes averted.

  On Monday, the rehearsals for the next concert begin. Onstage, Maestro is sharing a dream he had the previous night with members of the orchestra, only half of whom have arrived on time. ‘My cleaning lady rang me and told me I needed to give up my condo on Fire Island.’

  He sees me and waves me onto the stage. ‘I trust you slept well?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘You all set?’

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’

  He touches his baton. ‘The election! Some of our players are stuck in a queue registering to vote. Anyway, we are extremely pleased to have you here.’

  I look around and see half the chairs empty. I meet the concertmaster, Frank; who emigrated from China with his parents when he was two. There are three other musicians on exchange: a tuba, a flute and a cello. We’re asked to stand and wave to everyone. We’re the new kids in school. I glance at them throughout the rehearsal, trying to gauge how they’re feeling. They look confident. Still. Their shoulders are square, faces stern, spines erect. I want them to catch my eye, to acknowledge me. None of them do. They’re focused on Maestro and the music in front of them.