How They Were Found (15 page)

After the mother and grandmother both passed away, the wolf took their places, so that the girl he secretly adored would not have to go without. The wolf raced back and forth between their two houses, switching between the mother's apron and the grandmother's gown, raising his voice as high as it would go. For her part, the girl pretended not to notice, but it was hard, and sooner or later she knew she would slip, or else he would, and then they would have to act like girls and wolves were supposed to act, with howling and screaming and the gnashing of teeth and knives, until they were each alone once again.

The woodsman and the wolf had been friends once, and what happened between them in the grandmother’s cottage a mere misunderstanding. Seeing the wolf there in his mother’s clothing, the woodsman mistook him for the woman he had come to kill. It wasn't until after his axe blade slowed—when he was able to see past his blinding matricide to the fur that covered the floor—that he realized his mistake, and was ashamed.

The grandmother hungered, consumed with her sickness, and in her crazed state she tore the young girl’s limbs from her body with fever-strong twists, devouring each one over the course of several screaming days. When the wolf came to visit, he saw what she had done, and in his mercy he devoured the grandmother too, so that she would not have to live with the sin, so that others would not know what this once great woman had become.

The wolf grew skilled at counterfeiting the girl’s voice. He gained entry into many of her haunts in this way, murdering her family and friends as he went, until his belly dragged on the ground as an animal, hung over his belt as a man. Sometimes, when she joined him in their bed, she laid her cheek upon the fur of his belly and listened to the grumbling from within, to the voices of all her kith and kin he had devoured on his way to loving her. They cried out for her to save them, but she had her wolf, and he was all she needed.

Come get into bed with me, said the wolf, said the grandmother, said the woodsman, said the girl. Each of them made their voice exactly what another wanted to hear, using the perfect enunciation and tone designed to lure them as completely as possible, and to each other they were lost.

Satiated, the wolf slumbered. His belly rose and fell with each breath, each drunken snore. Inside his swollen stomach he'd trapped little girls and mothers and grandmothers, woodsmen by the dozens. All around them were trees and deer and rabbits and birds and flowers, even the remains of a river, drunk greedily a week or a month before. The wolf himself couldn't remember, had been nearly mad with hunger and thirst, and in his madness had consumed all that he could. The wolf slept on, and when he awoke he was surrounded by the shattered ruins of a cottage, and beyond that a vast field of furrowed, rent dirt. He could no longer feel all those he'd swallowed kicking at his stomach, trying to force their way back out. Satisfied, the wolf grinned—a wolf's grin, all teeth—and then he tried to rise, only to find that his feast had turned hard and heavy as stone. No matter how he struggled, he could not stand, nor crawl against the distended weight of his belly, and soon there was nothing left within the reach of his desperate jaws.

If I told you the wolf deserved this lonely end, that his slow, struggling starvation was justified, then that would be one kind of tale. But he was not a moral wolf, and this was never about to become a moral story, no matter how it ended.

So little yet endured! Just the girl, with her red hood, her red cape, her red-slicked knife, with which she was still slashing her own story to pieces, still discovering new and radiant shapes of pain and pleasure, until all that remained was the last dirge of the wolf, howling with hungered frustration, joined by the cries of her own failing voice, each matching the other's song note for bloody note. 

FROM ACROSS THE BAR, I COULDN'T STOP STARING AT HER, at that breathtaking mouth of hers. Obviously as orally obsessed as I was, she filled that laughing cavity with whatever was close at hand: lime wedges, olives, tiny black straws she chewed between cigarettes. Gallons of vodka or gin, I couldn't see which. She cracked ice cubes between strong white teeth, the sound audible even above the jukebox and the clatter and clack of pool balls coming together, spiraling apart. I wanted to stick my fist in there, to get her bright red lipstick all over my watchband.

Getting up from my table in the corner, I steadied myself on chair backs and unoffered shoulders. The floor was the sticky history of a thousand spilled nights, and other couples danced between the pool tables and the bathrooms, their shoes making flypaper two-steps to the country-western songs spilling from the jukebox. I weaved between them until I reached the bar, where I took the stool beside the woman.

I lit a cigarette, signaled the bartender for another whiskey with a raised pair of fingers. From up close, the woman was all mouth, the rest of her thin, too thin, hungry and lean like cancer. I wondered about the nutritional value of her life, of everything that passed through the furious red smear of her lips. I imagined both our mouths working furiously on each other, kissing with jaws unhinged as snakes.

I turned toward her, lifted my glass. Tried to remember how to smile without opening my mouth. Felt I probably wasn't doing it exactly right.

Her own mouth said, Whatever it is you're thinking of saying, it's probably the wrong thing.

I waited before I responded. Waited until the urge passed to tell her about my old life, about all that I swallowed in the months before the hospital. I wanted to tell her though. Wanted to tell her about the coins and thumbtacks and staples. The handfuls of dirt and crushed light bulbs.

I wanted to tell her that like a lot of poisons you might eat, you have to swallow a lot more drain cleaner than you'd expect, if you're trying to kill yourself. At least, the stuff hadn't worked on me, not as I'd once hoped it would.

What it had done was clear me out, get rid of all kinds of things that had once been stuck inside of me. That had backed me up.

What it had done was take away my lower intestine, give me a short throw of a colon that couldn't handle spicy food or even most solids. No citrus or tomatoes. No milk or milk products.

This new body, it wasn't supposed to be exposed to alcohol, but giving up the booze was never really an option.

What I said to her instead was, I like watching you eat, drink.

I want to buy you a meal.

A meal with courses. Appetizer. Soup. Salad. Fish. Meat. Miniature loaves of bread with mounded pats of butter.

I said, I want to watch you eat desserts that you have to chew and chew. Taffy. Caramels. I want to give you hard candies to suck thin and crush between your molars.

I said, I'd lick all the sticky sugar off your teeth for hours, if you wanted me to.

Her mouth laughed, said, The only meals I eat I find at the bottom of cocktail glasses.

She fished her olive from under her ice cubes and popped it into her mouth, then licked clear liquor off her dripping fingers. I watched a single drop spill down the back of her hand, trace the blue ridge of a vein from knuckle to wrist. I laughed too, but with a hand over my mouth, hiding the teeth destroyed by chewing steel, the gums peeled black by the Drano. She reached over and pulled my hand down, saying, When I was a little girl, I thought mastication and masturbation were exactly the same word.

She had a disorienting smile, and for a moment I didn't know who was aggressing who. She laughed again, slipped off the barstool with a swish of skirt. Drained her glass.

Her mouth said, It's not love at first sight, but it is something, isn't it?

She walked away, past the pool tables and the dancing couples, their temporary lusts. I watched as she pushed through the swing of the bathroom door. I stubbed out my cigarette, finished my drink, then walked toward the bathroom myself, my guts burning and my throat scratched with smoke, my brain brave and dumb as a lizard's. I put my hand on the cool metal panel of the bathroom door. I pushed.

The bathroom was two stalls and a single sink beneath an empty frame that once held a mirror presumably busted by some drunken stumble. She was inside the near stall, the smaller one. There was less room to move than there would have been in the handicapped stall, but there was enough.

The door wouldn't lock, but I didn't care. Her back was to me, that glorious mouth seen only briefly when she looked over her shoulder, the wet slash of her lips framed by the toss of her chopped blond hair. I wanted her to turn around, but I thought she was teasing me, even though she wanted what I wanted or something close enough to count. She didn't look back again, just put her hands against the slick tile wall, planted her feet on each side of the toilet. Waited for me. When I got close, the nape of her neck smelled like bad habits, tasted worse. I didn't care. I wasn't there to feel nice. Neither of us were. She flinched slightly at the sound of my belt buckle striking the porcelain toilet seat, then asked me my name. I whispered a fake one, then told her the truth when she asked me to repeat myself, knowing she'd assume it was a lie.

Right before I finished, I felt her back arch toward me, felt her hands reaching for my face, pulling it close to hers. Her mouth opened, taking in my cheeks then my nose then my right eye, the whole side of my mouth. I felt her teeth tugging at the scratchy pouch between my ear and my jaw line, wanted her to keep going, to keep devouring me until I was gone.

I'd once thought I wanted to eat something that could end me, but now I knew I really wanted something else, something approximately the opposite. Something this woman could give me.

Later, after it was over, I realized she'd wanted the same thing, that I'd failed her by not tearing her to pieces, by not taking her inside me one bite at a time.

Too focused on myself, what I thought instead—right before I pulled out of her, before she pushed me against the stall divider with her tiny wrists full of their fragile bird bones, and definitely before she slipped past me without giving me the last kiss I so desperately wanted—what I thought then was, This one time will never be enough.

Still misunderstanding everything, what I said was, I'm going to need to see you again.

Her mouth laughed as she exited the bathroom, the sound so loud my ears were already ringing by the time I got my pants up. I raced after her, out of the bar and into the cold parking lot, where I lost her to the night's thick blanket of confusion, its sharp starlight and fuzzed out streetlamps.

I waited for the sound to stop, and eventually it did. Nothing she'd done would turn out to be permanent. Her smell would be gone by morning, and the teeth marks on my face would take less than a week to scab over and then, to my terror, heal completely.

For the first time in months, I went home to my apartment and emptied the kitchen junk drawer onto the dining table. I picked up the tiny nails and paper clips and stubs of pencils and erasers and whatever else I could find and then I jammed them into my system. I considered pouring myself a drink, then stopped and took a long hot swallow from the bottle. I smashed the unnecessary tumbler on the corner of the counter, watched as the cheap glass shattered everywhere. Stepping carefully so as not to cut my bare feet, I picked up the most wicked shard I could find. I held it in my hand, then set it in my mouth, rested it on my tongue. I swallowed hard, and when I didn't die I went back for more.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH ALLISON AND JEFF WAS WHAT WAS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME, to other people Allison knew and, she presumed, to lots of people she didn't know. They had met, dated until it seemed like they should probably move in together, and then lived together until it seemed they should stop. In between, they talked about getting married, about buying a house, about having a family, but they didn't do any of those things. Now they were broken up, and there had been no fighting, no harsh words, just the knowledge that something had ended.

He was gone and she was still here.

That is what she has decided she will say to people when they ask her how she's feeling and if she's all right.

She will say, I am still here. She will say it like it means something all by itself, like quitting or being quit on is the easiest thing in the world.

When Allison wakes up the morning after the breakup, she sits up in bed and listens. She'd dreamed Jeff was there, but of course he isn't. She goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower, where the mirror reveals she's wearing one of Jeff's old shirts he must have left behind. She hates missing him so obviously, but tells herself that she put it on after two bottles of red wine and so isn't really responsible for the decision.

As she gets out of the shower and starts toweling off, she hears the television blaring in the living room. She knows she didn't leave it on, as she barely watches it. She wraps her towel around herself, too wet to be running around the apartment, but she doesn't care. Her head's pounding as she charges through the bedroom and into the living room to confront Jeff and tell him to get the hell out and then she screams, because the person on the couch is not Jeff.

By the time she's finished, Allison has seen enough that she doesn't have to ask who this person is.

What she has to ask is how this person is. Not on a friendly level, but an existential one.

The intruder isn't Jeff, but improbably, he is Jeff, too. A smaller version of Jeff, maybe four or five feet tall. Smaller, but not younger, although this person does remind her of her Jeff a few years ago. He's got the goatee she made Jeff shave off and he's smoking a cigarette clenched nonchalantly between two thin fingers, even though Allison made her Jeff quit the same time she did.