The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  11

  Their suite was candle-lit; he had paid extra for that. Impatiently he pulled her through the doorway.

  Of course she would never forget the time when the door opened on the island and she first stood in front of that old lady, who looked her up and down, not as if (so the girl supposed) the girl were nothing, but only as if whatever the old lady’s gaze took away was not the girl’s business; meanwhile the girl continued to be certain that the old lady saw nothing in her; even counting those nighttime submissions to her mother; that gaze made her awfully sad; on the other hand, she had never felt so worthless as at the moment when she realized that E-beth had stopped loving her. Perhaps that was why she allowed the old lady to do what her mother had, in order to prove herself good for something, even if only that one thing; but being young, scared and for what she if definitely not I would have called the last time in her life the object rather than the subject of something that was about to happen, she lacked any notion much less articulation of whatever she was wanting or feeling; and then when the old lady opened the door again and went in, leaving it open so that the girl understood that she was supposed to enter, which she did, still not knowing anything, and numb to whatever might now be done to her since whatever that might be (such was the certitude of inexperience) weighed so light in comparison to the anguish which E-beth had inflicted, making her live each hour as though with her chest slit open, each breath an irritation of the unhealing wound which if it did not bleed and gurgle was no less intractable and quite possibly fatal (if she wanted anything it was death, if that could come without the terror of dying), she found darkness and the scent of drying herbs, but still had not yet beheld what was precious. Now it was time for the next thing.

  12

  Closing her eyes there in the hotel room, she seemed to see the transwoman’s white, white face and white hands as she hurried down the dark street where steam arose from a sewer grating. Judy, little sister, how will you live and love now?—When the straight man came in, there she was: Neva the beguiler and the giver of sacred pain.

  Had he forgiven her yet? Consider the tale of the faithful Jewish wife who was so lovely that a wizard lusted after her the instant he glimpsed the new dress that a tailor was sewing for her, and therefore bribed the tailor to secrete a certain magic charm within the seam. (He was far from the only one, but no matter how we all acted, we were always behaving precisely as she expected us to.) As soon as the wife pulled the dress down over her head, her womb hungered to be filled by this man whom she had never seen, so after promising to meet her husband in the synagogue she rushed to the wizard’s house. They thrust their tongues into each other’s mouths and he was gripping her breasts as she began to whimper with lust, and he lifted her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. As he pulled her dress up to her neck he was already throwing her down onto her back, burying his mouth between her legs, oh, Neva, oh, Neva, then jumping on top of her so that they both screamed with excitement; he was rutting in her now, and they were both groaning and worshipping each other; she couldn’t stand to have anything between them, so she ripped the dress off over her head and then there was no charm. Horrified, she put on the dress to leave, at which she could not stand not to fuck him over and over, so she pulled it off again . . . and then burst into tears of rage and guilt . . . and ran away in her chemise, leaving the cursed dress behind! Since it happened to be Yom Kippur, no one except the retired policeman saw her running through the streets in her unmentionables. Keeping her shame a secret from her husband, she told him that illness had kept her from the synagogue. Meanwhile the wizard sold her dress in the market in order to get another victim. The husband recognized it and bought it a second time to test his wife. Hiding it, he asked her where it was. The woman lied, insisting that she had lost it, at which then he showed it to her and she confessed. He took the dress to the rabbinic court. They cut open its seams and found the charm, upon which they summoned the tailor, who confessed. The wizard was executed, while the poor tailor had to become a water carrier forever; the sixteenth-century German story does not report how well the woman and her husband afterward got on; but I like to hope that after a few beatings their marriage went on even better than before.

  13

  Marlene Dietrich boasted of being able to fake orgasms, and why not? Wouldn’t that have been a credit to any actress? So what if Neva were also faking it, so long as she remained a good fake?

  And so he bent over her, feeling an apparently insatiable excitement. She smiled patiently. Stroking her hair, he murmured: Neva, do you want to, or are you, you know, too sore down there?

  Of course I want to, replied the lesbian.

  That was when he took his resolution: Protecting her from us others who did not want her to love him, he would tell her story to her until she believed. In his pocket waited the engagement ring, which accompanied that prior communication from the retired policeman, whom she also needed to please.

  14

  Now, after lying in bed with Shantelle and gently rocking that tigerish woman into a peaceful drowse, Neva listened to her voicemails.—And I feel a little worried, whispered Xenia, because I’m very sweaty and tingly in a bad way . . . Then from dread Neva’s mouth went as dry as if she were on meth, because what if Xenia had now fallen into terrible need? The Y Bar’s reflected bottles and their glass shelves went higgledy-piggledy; I remember the shining whiskey in the glowing shotglasses and the lesbian’s hands pink and flashing, her white blouse glowing purple, the retired policeman’s head aching on this hot spring night, the fan blades still, pallid and silent like the dead light bulbs above them. Meanwhile the lesbian and Cora Justice, better known as Francine, were sitting in the lesbian’s kitchenette, facing each other across the little table. A bottle of wine stood between them. The lesbian’s glass was still nearly full. The other woman drained hers, set it down a trifle too hard, reached across the table and snatched at the lesbian’s hand, kissing and kissing it.

  For the last time Neva took her into her arms; and with that happy feeling literally in her heart (the lesbian snoring sweetly on her shoulder, liquidly, like the cooing of a pigeon), Francine decided that she might as well go on living. She gobbled up pleasure like Judy Garland stuffing her face with chocolate cake and candy bars! Neva’s name remained last and first among us!

  While the lesbian slept beside her, the barmaid threw off the blanket and began fingering herself, so gratefully joyful just to play without need or expectation of climax, which must have been something like how it was to be a little thing in her crib, giving herself pleasure and comfort until she fell asleep.

  In her sleep, the lesbian muttered: Don’t.

  But Francine lay remembering how when she was five Jocelyn from across the street had come over to show how her toenail had fallen off, and Francine had never seen anything more astounding! Inhaling the perfume of Neva’s armpit, she closed her eyes, and it seemed as if she remained awake, thinking about Neva and Jocelyn, but now she came awake for real because it was cold and the bed was in motion as Neva sat up to begin dressing. Francine could hardly bear it. Unlike Judy, she had never been a groveller, so she did bear it, dragging her street clothes back over her aching nerves, kissing Neva goodbye like a quick brave soldier; then she went home, shivering. She was now a white dead woman, kohl-painted with eyes, hair, lips, breasts and vulva. Her stomach echoed emptily, but she had no appetite. Dizzily she staggered back to the ice-cold toilet for more diarrhea.

  15

  How else could this story have ended? A Catholic hermeneuticist once warned that should any merely human model of thought or being seek to present the Spirit in its own right, the model, by remaining tacit, supplants the source of Revelation with only human ignorance and pride and inflicts despair. Neva’s way was then the merest model. Offering perfection imperfectly, she inflicted despair.—I reject this because I still love her. (Even now I feel suddenly warm within when
I recall my Neva—the one who gave every part of herself to others.—Then, of course, I get cold again.)

  Did she truly know all too well that the rest of us could not regard love as a sacrament, but only as an instrument of satisfaction? (How did she regard it? When would her face get old and gruesome with suffering?—No, Judy, she said; you don’t want to be like me.) So far as I can tell, she accepted that everything she did was for nothing, and that after she had finished doing her utmost, all of us would go on without her—in which case ignorance and pride might have burdened her very little.—But did she inflict despair? And what would that imply about her?

  Meanwhile, The Lucky Star continues in this exclusive form, as performed by the original cast for up to twenty-three episodes.

  16

  Infuriated by the lesbian’s essential emptiness—she might as well have been her own fiction—the retired policeman dug deeper: no California vehicle registration in the name of a Karen Strand with the birthdates of 1964 or 1986, but the car might be in someone else’s name or she might not drive. He ran the driver’s license with the fake birthdate of 1986. That had been faithfully renewed ever since 2009. The other license had never expired. He couldn’t figure it out; he drank Black Vulture. Meanwhile the lesbian was woken up by her first nightmare about Hunter’s suicide. Her breastbone ached with grief. She and Hunter had been lying in a large pullout bed, which was not actually Hunter’s bed but was here the setting, pretending to be real as did this dream-Hunter who wished for them to lie down side by side on this wide soft bed with its Western-patterned blankets; the rules were that they remained fully clothed and not touch each other. The lesbian could not understand why. They lay there and she longed to touch the other woman but could not. She awoke with her breastbone aching. Tomorrow it would be worse, no doubt. It was seven in the morning; the air was already warm and sticky. She hunted for the magic which would put her right.

  As for me, sometimes I even pretended to be a woman, asking Neva to do certain special things to me, but that didn’t get me any closer to her. The ecstasy of being crushed down into speechless bleeding darkness relieved me from being myself, but swept me farther from the one I worshipped. I admit that sometimes when she beat me I could at least bear a portion of her otherwise undivided pain. (She often wore the calm face of Santa Eulàlia while they are piercing her breasts out, making twin fountains of cinnabar, while a cloud watches patiently.) And what should I expect? Since she, being all-loving, was so much greater than all of us, how could I even imagine “knowing” her? Almost immune to my phantasmal discontents, Judy meanwhile lay on her side, guzzling at the lesbian’s vulva, while the lesbian braced the sole of her little foot against the inside of the transwoman’s knee, moaning happily as if she were about to climax. And Judy’s orgasm protracted itself into an endless scream! The lesbian held her, remembering the smell of the house where she had been a child, and the way the morning would take possession of her stuffed animals on the windowsill. Judy said: You’d never just stop loving me, would you? Neva shook her head, and the transwoman began breathing rapidly and loudly almost in the middle of a sentence. Now she was asleep in earnest, snoring happily, bubbling from mouth and nose, looking old. The lesbian pressed her lips against her lover’s cheek and stayed there for a long time, sleepily holding her; she felt chilly, but the transwoman was still sweating even in her sleep, for which she’d blamed menopause . . . Next up was Holly, who, greedily drinking up more tequila and more rum, began to slur her speech.

  I love you.

  I love you, too, the lesbian brightly said.

  I love you so much . . . More than you know . . . I can’t let you leave me. If you go away I’ll miss you too much; I’ll—are you going to leave me?

  No, said the lesbian, feeling anxious.

  Never?

  I’ll never leave you, even if I sometimes—

  Did I tell you about my biopsy? It came back negative. I’m gonna live, Neva! I’m gonna live!

  I’m very happy for you—

  Let’s go away and live on a mountain somewhere . . .

  Then the lesbian, who had worried that she might not feel desire for Holly, found herself happily lusting after all. She began to stroke Holly’s inner thighs. Then she began to kiss her between her legs; and Holly, who usually climaxed rapidly and powerfully, this time ascended more gently toward orgasm, which upon reaching she inhabited for a long stretch of uncharacteristically honeyed moans.

  Holly’s last time consisted in part of her reporting to Neva: Well, I did what you wanted and had a talk with Judy. You know, that girl is so fucked up! She keeps going on and on about being disgusting. But being part of the queer community and finding freaks, that will help her a lot. Because if she can just embrace her freaky disgusting nature, then it doesn’t matter so much if she’s not attractive . . .

  You’re her community, said Neva. You and Richard and Xenia and Francine and even J. D. Do you promise to remember that?

  I promise if you do something for me, said Holly. You know what I want you to do . . . !

  Okay, said the lesbian.

  Then came more appointments. Neva had us all down by heart! In the beginning getting to know us had felt like descending a flight of stone steps, shining her lantern down into a deep suite of cells. Now she could pass through walls. Her lantern’s lush shadows retained the virtue of changing, however meaninglessly, that ashen, grooved, dead rockscape. Our rectangular tombs had been long since robbed. Around Shantelle the brick walls swelled outward as if concealing something, while my own being was comprised of roofless suites and incomplete arch-roofed tunnels. Penetrating ever deeper inside us all, Neva continued down a wide circular staircase in the white rock of hopelessness, and sweeping down into a dark archway doubly overlined with bricks, down into the kingdom of wells, graves, V-shaped pavements, meaningless walls, lost courtyards, grinning furnaces . . . and each of us in turn lay down with her to raise up cries of joy.

  But even as the transwoman lay dreaming that she and Neva were dancing in outer space (they both had lovely white legs and red skirts; and could scissor-kick their way from one galaxy to another, twirling side by side to atonal piano music), the lesbian and the straight man now bought a marriage license—apparently as foolish a plan as if the retired policeman had set out to trim his own toenails, or, worse yet, walked all the way to Jojo’s Liquors without wearing his compression socks.—But if you were to ask me why she would attach herself to so obviously unsatisfactory a mate, I would need to remind you for the thirteenth time that by definition a goddess dwells among a deficit of equals.

  I do, they said.

  Francine, who briefly felt bitter, opined to me that they had married to try to evade their destiny. But what else could have been the destiny of her adorable Neva, which is to say the one as hateful to Francine as any other lover who abandons and forgets? I myself interpreted the marriage as a logical endgame—because the persuasions of Judy’s fingers, and her starry plastic jewels, were matched in too many elsewheres.

  Incapable of seeing ahead to Act IV, the retired policeman sat down suddenly in that stinking armchair. Deal-breaking bitch! He felt dizzy and confused.

  Well, Neva, said Judy, far away and trying to smile, bon fuckin’ voyage.

  The Bloodsucker

  I could beleeve that Spirits use with man the act of carnality, and that in both sexes; I conceive they may assume, steale, or contrive a body, wherein they may be action enough to content decrepit lusts or passion to satisfy more active veneries . . .

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE, ca. 1643

  The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons . . . It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it b
y the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often in a single feast.

  J. SHERIDAN LE FANU, 1872

  If you don’t stand for something, you fall for everything, Shantelle advised me. Have you heard that one before?

  Her mouth kept twitching.

  What do you stand for? I asked.

  Will you help me kill Neva? She comes between me and every fuckin’ body else! She already offed Hunter, and who the fuck’s gonna be next?

  Shantelle, I said, I love you—to which she replied: You an’ Francine an’ every other worthless bitch! That’s just what Neva taught you to say—goddamn that motherfucker . . . ! Oh, I feel so cold; I feel so bad . . . But I fall for her every time she puts her little booty shorts on. But hey! What the fuck are you about? Why ain’t you dead yet?

  Fortunately, her phone rang. She said into it: Hey, baby; Xenia broke up with her girlfriend who offed herself and it’s fabulous because she’s texting me an’ crying in my arms while I fuck her and that’s like why we get together . . .

  In those days Judy was also crying in my arms. We agreed that to love Neva was to be with her and in her. As for the retired policeman, he bought me a round at the Cinnabar and explained that he was trying to get Neva because she simply couldn’t help but take the life out of other women.

  I hate lies, he said. I’m proud of being proud. Judy Garland images are exploitative and dirty, all right; they’re harmful like drugs. Not that you and I do drugs. Right, Sherlock? My good old Judy’s fucked up. So am I and so are you. Let’s stick to the goddamn truth.

  I went down to the Y Bar all alone, and by the entrance sat a kindly-looking old lesbian whom I had never seen before. Her name was Reba. I asked her how to live my life. Patting my hand, she said: It’s love, isn’t it?