Slut Lullabies (12 page)

But what is that woman doing now, with her miscarried pregnancy and husband in prison? Is she in Ghana, too? Or is she letting some other jag-off pistol-whip her, hoping he gets it right this time without some freak playing Superman barging in?

Why couldn't Nicky have just let that stupid woman die?

This Doctor Havel, who stars in two stories, might as well be Tomas. The plots are different, but the same things
happen
here, really. It's simple: Big-Brotherish political backdrops, women reluctantly experiencing sexual pleasure divorced from love,
succumbing
to freedom. Annette is reminded of Tomas's wife, Teresa, and her adulterous jaunt with the architect who may or may not be a Communist spy. Kundera's women are so often devastated that bodies have wills of their own—Annette feels for them even though the only man she has ever loved is the one she never fucked. Still, she recognizes herself here—a roving shame turned into language—and if she were forced to read a million books (imagine reading a million books!) and told none of the authors, she would know these words as Kundera's. The restrained violence of his jaw and his personal demons are smeared all over the pages. This time, she finds herself scanning stories almost hoping to find musical bars transposed onto the page, obscure references to composers and philosophers of whom she's never heard—she longs to greet her own confusion like running into an old friend after many years and recognizing his befuddling traits and viewpoints as familiar and comforting. Rage boils, obliterating her desire to reach into the pages and grab Kundera's hand—if this writer who makes his living adopting masks cannot hide his own soul behind the words, then how then can
Nicky
, who had scarcely ever written more than his name before he left her? Did even the fingerprints on his Army gun become different than on the one he carried in Chicago? How can the boy she loved shield and remake his identity so completely as to shut her out?

Knocking,
rap rap rap
. Where is it coming from? Annette jerks, bolts upright from where she has been curled over her book, whips her neck around to survey the room. Then she sees him: the Mexican window washer thumping Brent's window with his wiper—has he already tried his own stocky hand and found the thick glass muffled all sound? She looks up and meets his eyes square on. He smirks at her expectantly, raises his eyebrows in question:
Where's the show
?

She lowers her head again, searches for words on the page, a soul to recognize.

But the noise continues. Staccato, persistent, so she stands. Outside the window, the boy grabs his crotch, motions down—she thinks at first he's suggesting she grab
her
crotch, too—but no, he is pointing at the ground. Gestures his watch, holds up all five fingers spread wide and mouths
five
since her track record of behavior surely necessitates stupidity. Her feet move.

It takes only moments to dress and make her way through the lobby to the wall of hot wet air waiting outside. Once out in the open, she nearly scurries to hail a cab instead, then stops, marches to the side of the building where she has seen trucks pull up—where workmen sometimes congregate. In the distance, that monstrous Ferris wheel watches over the city from Navy Pier, the pier itself remade from merely the ship's port of her childhood into a tourists' amusement park full of bells, whistles, and glitz. Annette's legs plant strong on the pavement, waiting, her blood simmering a witches' brew of shame and hope.

Then
he
is there. Walking with a cluster of six other men: the men who share his days, mock his frailties. Men he may someday surprise by saving a woman he does not know from a danger that does not quite have a name. He walks as though one leg is slightly shorter than the other; his jeans are too big. His hair, dark brown, looks dusty, and Annette thinks:
I could find poetry here, too. I could see like Nicky sees
. They approach, so close she can almost feel the steam of their cluster. They are a tangle of accents, but everyone is speaking English. Relief floods her—he will understand. Then terror. Understand what? Why is she here? He moves on, cloistered in his herd of men.

Her secret Tomas has passed. She stands, decked out in her filmy Gucci dress, hair slicked back tight from her face and suddenly pinching her scalp. Among the men he was with, two others have seen her naked. She turns to leave.

Their bodies collide—Annette stumbles. Inches from her body, spewing apologetic murmurs for his clumsiness, is, finally, the Mexican. He looks at her and, like a character in a soap opera or Shakespeare, blinks hard as though she is unrecognizable to him under the disguise of her expensive clothing. Where is his crotch grabbing now?

“You're awfully shy,” she drawls. She wants to scare him, to be a scary, inappropriate woman; she does not know why. “For somebody who's seen me give my boyfriend head in his dining room.”

“Shi-it,” the boy drawls, laughing. Then: “At first I thought you couldn't see us, but I hear you do that all the time, huh? Put on a show for Canji. Hey, I would, too, if I were fine like you—you look pretty good even in them clothes. We see some weird-ass shit in this line of work, lemme tell you, but ain't half of it fine like you—”

“Canji—is that the other guy?” she bursts. “Good-looking, maybe Eastern European—”

“Damn straight, mama, he goes for your show every time. Personally, I think a person ought to share, but the boss man heard about you and he don't like no trouble. Guess he wants to keep you from wolves like the rest of us.” He howls: “
Ahhoouu
!”

“Does he?” Sweat stains must be visible. Now
that
is what the rich really should invent: clothing that under no circumstances shows moisture—that lets you truly look like a different breed. “So Canji's supposed to protect me, huh?”

“Naw, man.” The boy cannot stop laughing—Annette is not sure whether she makes him nervous, or if he is simply giddy at his good fortune to be talking to the building's stripper right out in broad daylight. Sing-song: “It ain't like that—
he-be-likin'-the-boys
. He'd rather be watching, like, Broadway, eh? It's an offense, for real, I'm telling you. I didn't sign on for this kind of work thinking I'd have to be up on a ledge alone with a faggot. I'm scared for my life, if you know what I mean!”

Annette's mouth has gone dry. “You're lying,” she tries. “You're telling me he's gay because you know I like him.”

“Sheee-eet! Naw, I would not a-guessed that one, no ma'am. I ain't shitting you, I swear on
mi abuela's
soul, no bull. You can ask anyone. You want me to call one of the guys right now? Hey, I can do it, I got my cell—”

“That won't be necessary.” Annette's hand flutters to the gap in her suit jacket; the flesh stretched across her breastbones suddenly feels indecent. “I've got to go.”

“Hey, naw, don't leave!” His voice, so loud—can the others hear him?—chases her through the tunnel of her own humiliation, her heels clicking on hot concrete. The air itself seems far away. She is heading the wrong way to best hail a cab.

“I'm no faggot!” the boy calls. “We don't got no other faggots on our crew. If you're lookin' for a date, you look me up. My name's Angel, remember, like I-will-be-your-Angel-of-Love. Uh-huh, girl, I'll give you a real man, you come asking for me . . .”

Annette gathers the suit jacket tighter together until it skims her throat. Her heart, thrashing so loud in her ears, pounds like heavy running on the ground behind her—like the whole crew in hot pursuit. When she looks, though—once, twice—there is no one. She can no longer hear the boy's voice, taunting. Inviting. She stands in the middle of Olive Park, in the shade of trees, the deceptive bliss of green sanctuary amid urban sprawl, body trembling. Is Canji really gay? And if it were a lie, then what? Did she expect him to arrive at her door with flowers, open the passenger's door of his battered car, kiss her closed-mouthed at the drive-in and ask her father for her hand? What made her think she could go backward? What, exactly, made her think it would be less stifling this time around than when she and Nicky were so hot to court death just to get out?

A man can join the army. A man can save one woman and make up for the trail of female bodies strewn behind him, just like that. Presto change-o, instant hero, the world at his feet.

A woman can clamp her legs shut tight, declare
No more
, and watch herself become even more invisible—give up what little of the world she has.

Annette gropes through her Louis Vuitton tote for a tissue; her fingers brush her Tiffany's keychain. Her mail key, Brent's key, the key to an apartment she despises. Then: the slightly ragged paperback cover of
Laughable Loves
. She didn't even realize, in her haste, that she'd taken it. Her fingers plunge deep inside the pages like into a bucket of ice or a Bible: some chilling relief. The sun scorches, a mere sliver of the heat of Ghana, this thin book under her hand a slim substitution for the redemption Nicky found under the African sky. There had to be a way he could have taken her with, like he planned when he was going to be a wise guy and shoot them to the moon. She was good enough to ruin, not good enough to save. But no, Nicky hadn't ruined her fully either—he'd made sure she knew that, knew it was his choice. A hero would have let her believe in her own decency, her own importance—would have allowed her one small moment of triumph on that porch. OK, maybe she was merely beautiful, not entitled to transcendence, even in the anonymity of a movie theater, the pages of a book. But what more right had Nicky to the transformational, sun-parched, ugly beauty of this wide world than she?

“Hey!” she shouts out in the direction of the Mexican boy, though she can no longer see him. “Angel . . . !” He could have taught her Spanish. Something she would carry inside that nobody could take away. Light breeze answers.
He was only a child
. Besides, what would her end of the transaction have been but the same?

Annette's tote is heavy. Holding her breath, she shoves the stolen book under a damp armpit, palms only the key to her apartment, and stuffs the tote and its remaining contents under a tree. Less an offering of peace than a sacrifice she prays will be miraculously ignited by the heat should she panic and rush back. Her wallet, spread open on top, should help in case the elements alone will not assist her. At last sucking air in, fast and thick, deliciously anonymous and far from dead, she slips out of her high-heeled mules, steps out of the comfort of shade, and begins to walk.

Approach

Her name is Merlot, she says, like the wine. It is not her real name, of course, but one she adopted in college because her lovers were always butchering the pronunciation of her actual name during sex. This is what she tells me as we stand by the coffeemaker in the telemarketing department of
Houston Magazine
. She does not lower her voice. She tosses her foamy, black, perfectly disheveled hair so it falls over her left breast in a way that makes me so envious I have to bite my lip. She says, “I'm talking to you because you don't speak like a Texan.” She is even happier to learn that I've only been in Houston for three years, less than half the time she's lived here. Later, though, when I accidentally say “y'all” in conversation, she looks at me out of the corner of her eye disapprovingly. I am careful not to do it again. I say “you all” or “all of you” or even “you guys,” like we used to say back in Minnesota. Merlot seems pleased by my effort.

She befriends me, and so I am befriended. The routine of my life changes with alarming speed. Quiet evenings with Bobby, watching reruns of
Cheers
and
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, are replaced by hours at cafes and gallery openings, which I attend in borrowed black outfits. I am pretty, Merlot says—unbelievably pretty given my mousy personality. “I am attracted to beauty,” she says, “any kind of beauty.” She was a dancer before she moved to Houston, and even now she goes to the symphony and the ballet all the time. I have never been to the symphony or the ballet. “You don't do enough with your beauty,” she says, “so I'm going to help you.”

Her husband lives in Chicago, she tells me, because he had a great job opportunity at the Board of Trade. He is clerking now, but once he starts trading, she will move, too. They have a lot of debt, she says, and implies it is due to some habit that is terribly glamorous and somewhat decadent. At first I think she is hiding a drug addiction, but, although she smokes two packs of Dunhill Menthols a day, she hardly ever drinks (nothing but champagne and crème de cassis) and never says anything I would imagine a drug addict saying, nor would a drug addict want to be friends with someone as un-hip as me. Not that I understand why someone who can go into Brasil in a slinky black dress and kiss all the bartenders hello and who receives personalized invitations to receptions at the art galleries on Lower Westheimer would want to be friends with me, either.

I start to tell her stories about my few girlfriends (none of whom I have seen since I moved in with Bobby), about my relationship (though I omit almost everything, like the fact that I spent fifty-eight dollars and twenty-seven cents last month on self-help books for agoraphobics, which he has refused to look at and called me a bitch for buying), and about my cats (though I do not mention the part about Bobby never letting them leave the pantry). I hope these fragments of my life will keep her from thinking I'm a loser, even though my cowboy boots are not authentic Tony Lamas like hers. A month passes. She does not stop calling.
Well, at least it isn't pity
, I think.

Merlot is an insomniac, which makes me think she is very worldly. I never have any trouble going to sleep. This is because I'm a simpler person than she is, and, in my opinion, the more complicated a person's mind is, the harder it is to slow that mind down at night. Merlot spends hours thinking of things that never cross my mind at all, like who should play the roles of characters from her favorite books should they be made into films. With all the books she reads, it's no wonder she has trouble sleeping.