You've Got to Read This (19 page)

104 • THE STAR CAFE

building with so many windows, all located on its tree-blocked western exposure.

The noise had stopped but Carol couldn't get it out of her head. It seemed to become clearer rather than less clear in proportion to time elapsed since its occurrence. But how could someone really know if the hold she had on what had been heard or seen or felt was really becoming clearer, that is, truer, or more distorted? Was intensity a proper gauge? Wasn't it often the case that those who felt most enlightened were in fact most deluded?

Then she heard it again, not memory or imagination. It had to be coming from somewhere downstairs, and she had to go downstairs, if only to retrieve her book, so she slowly descended, thinking that it was really the simplest sound, so why so difficult to characterize? It only seemed eerie because she didn't know the source, she kept telling herself.

When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Carol stood a moment, then sat down on the penultimate step, next to her book, listening to the sound that still hadn't stopped—its duration was the longest of the three occurrences—trying to get up the courage to go open the door that led to the little restaurant she'd lived above for all these months but never entered.

The mixture of curiosity and fright had led her this far, she could hardly give up now; the noise might stop again any second and then it would be harder to trace. She walked down the hall and stood against the door with her hand curled on the knob, as if she were holding a piece of fruit still attached to a branch.

She placed the sound the instant she opened the door. The first time she heard it she should have known what it was. Who would have thought an innocent little blender—well, not so little, really, larger, in fact, than any she'd ever seen; she guessed it could hold several gallons—but who would have thought it could make such a queer noise, an innocent if somewhat oversized blender, making what looked like banana daiquiris? She giggled, and suddenly realized she wasn't alone, that she was being scrutinized by a man—a waiter?—more likely the owner, an extremely handsome man in all the conventional ways: dark and tall, both noble and rugged. He switched off the mighty appliance, poured a fraction of its contents into a long-stemmed glass, held that out to her and smiled.

"Hello, Carol," he said.

She was so relieved by the release of all that tension that she suddenly wanted, urgently, to talk to him, though it could have been to anyone, any sympathetic ear into which she could expel what had been building up inside her. She found herself babbling about how pleased she was to have the mystery solved; she was glad it was only that. He listened attentively, but rarely responded. Perhaps she didn't give him much chance.

He was looking at her intently from behind the counter, and when she felt too uncomfortable to confront his gaze directly she stared at the travel posters that adorned the wall behind him. She must have imagined that his
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eyes were unusually bright; it was her weariness, it was the candlelight, but for some reason she felt compelled. She was telling him all these things about herself, all the silly thoughts, the things about the architect and the light fixture, how they'd been so long next door to each other and never known each other better, and really she'd never done anything like this before but she was letting him hold her; first he had held her hand and then suddenly she was in his arms, he was murmuring softly, "yes, yes," consol-ing her, reassuring her, stroking her hair, and then other parts of her, and before she knew it she found herself in bed with him, in the back room, which was not so sordid as it might sound. There was a bed and all the accouterments of civilized sexuality, of comfort; it wasn't after all a closet, but she wondered what he would do if a customer came in, and then she began to wonder why there weren't customers out there. There hadn't been any when she came in, nor all the time they'd been, or she'd been, talking; she'd run on so about up and down and stairs and light; she'd been overwhelmed, full of herself in a way quite foreign to her, though there was also the sense that she was acting out a role that came very naturally, almost as if she'd rehearsed it, and she wondered if all this was the thing people always meant by the term "attraction," "I'm so attracted to you," as if people were magnets, which would be at least somewhat specific, or if she was just needy because of the fright, and lonely, lonely for a long time now, which would be at least not entirely, merely physical.

In either case she wasn't proud of herself; it was strange to be in bed with a man she barely knew, though in those minutes of talking it seemed there was some intense acquaintanceship occurring. It was strange to be in bed with someone at all, she'd been alone so long, almost out of habit; the

"with" of "in bed with" was the important part of the construction, to be in the presence of another human being, because the sex came naturally enough; the angels never really withheld that.

Awkwardness granted, the motions materialized, to such a degree, in fact, that she felt she was experiencing far more than just going through them. She couldn't remember such satisfying sex; was it just the novelty? But everything clicked. She felt that they'd held each other's bodies for years and every gesture had the right timbre and timing, but with none of the staleness that might characterize the context. It was perfect but also felt, not slick. She certainly felt, and it seemed the kind of feeling that could not exist except reciprocally. It was as if they were lovers reunited after a long separation, fitting easily into place again. What was passion if not this? She slept a blissful, sated sleep.

When she woke up, she was alone. Everywhere around her were mirrors. The way school buses have mirrors to cover every possible vantage, this room, from her position on the bed, allowed her to see her body from every angle. She was fascinated by this, and distracted for quite a while, but then began to be afraid. She couldn't find her way past the immediate space around her. It reminded her of fancy New York stores in which it is difficult
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to find one's way because the different departments are separated by walls of mirrors.

Suddenly he was there in the mirrors. She was extremely moved that he'd come to be with her there, to rescue her; for some reason she was certain that he wasn't trapped by the situation, but had purposefully navigated to it, to get to her. Her first impulse was to take his hand and run with him out of this world of reflection, but he didn't lead her out; instead, to her shock, he climbed on top of her—what could be less appropriate?—at least out of sequence; that came after the rescue, in the gratitude and relief stage, while here she was, still a captive of this reflective dragon. But as the weight of his body pressed against her, she decided she'd been wrong; it was completely appropriate. She was so tied to her sense of propriety. There was no need to leave the place right now; no exits would seal while he entered—

which happened so quickly she was startled, but startled at how wrcstartled her body was, unkindled but still receptive—he taught her so much by his body.

He was thrusting in her so energetically it should have hurt, but it didn't, or if it did, the hurt was subsumed in the intensity of pleasure and excitement she felt. She had an orgasm as intense as any she had ever experienced, and felt after as if she could never have another, intense or otherwise, but just as she was thinking that he turned her over onto her belly and came into her from behind, and she heard herself make sounds she had never heard from her own mouth, in response to this pleasure on the crest of saturation.

She made them all the way to her second orgasm, not a very long way, in fact, and then there were others; she'd always thought that a myth. Only as she was coming did she remember the erotic potential of this room or space she was in—she'd been so overwhelmed with sensations and feeling that it hadn't occurred to her to heighten the effect with the visual; she was angry at herself to have missed out on that; when would she ever have such an opportunity again.

She loved the idea of watching their bodies in conjunction with each other, of him pressing into her. She turned to look back over her shoulder so that she could see him disappearing into her, and then turned her head in order to be able to see without straining, in all the mirrors. Her orgasm, at its most intense point, was retracted. The cry that rose from her throat continued, though perhaps the pitch changed just slightly, or the quality of the sound; maybe only she could hear the difference, that it wasn't from pleasure or surfeit anymore but from shock and bewilderment, because in all the mirrors she was there writhing—she could see her breasts and belly and legs, all from underneath, as if there were no bed obstructing; she could also see herself from his vantage; she could see what someone opening a door, if there were a door, would see, from far away, with the head prominent and the hair draped over the bed; she could see her shoulders and back, but he was not depicted in any of these images. She lay on the bed without partner.

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She felt humiliated and horrified, and guilty too, though she couldn't have said why.

She had no idea how to attack this problem with relation to the other person who might or might not be present. It was an extreme case of some kind of sexual etiquette. The problem was, she didn't know this man, the cafe owner, at all; she knew him no better than she'd know a blind date, and yet they were sharing, weren't they, this intimate circumstance. Everything had felt so natural before; she'd let the sensation absorb any uncomfortableness, but now she was too disturbed by his absence from the mirror to retrieve her passion, and she felt too silly or shy to inquire about it directly.

Would he think she was crazy, or was he somehow manipulating his own image for some sinister reasons she had no idea of? Oh, why did she ever with this perfect stranger, and hadn't he seemed it in both senses of the term, but now she would pay. What would her mother say, who'd always been so cautiously liberal . . . "Carol, if you don't know a man's last name, you don't know him well enough to . . . " Thus what had seemed the most natural thing in the world suddenly de-naturalized and was transformed into the most awkward. How could she carry on this charade, when she possessed private knowledge that her partner was missing? It was just ludicrous to continue and at the same time witness the bleak absurdity of her body making love to the atmosphere. The postures could be made to look ridiculous enough even with both parties attending, but then at least they were salvaged by familiarity. Maybe the act itself was unnatural, maybe this was some elaborate lesson for her. She could be alone the rest of her life; she knew how.

She couldn't ask him what he saw in the mirror; she wished she could be so direct, but they hadn't spoken since that initial conversation, which might as well have taken place in some other world. She could feel the motions going on in some removed physical dimension, but to a very different effect. She was numb now, throughout her body; she wondered if he'd notice; he must notice. Was he intending all this, and should she then try her best to play along to try to counter-trick—how appalling to have to think in terms of strategy in such circumstances—pretending she really did see him in the mirror? Or was this some entirely different conspiracy of the elements in which he was as innocent as she? But was she? How could she be in such a terrible predicament if she hadn't done something terribly wrong; yes, it was repression and all the rest, but really, this kind of thing didn't happen to the average person. Confront, evade, despair? She didn't know which to do.

She'd never in her life faked an orgasm, as women were supposed to be notorious for, and she hadn't had so many either; in fact these recent ones constituted more than a small percentage of the total, but to do precisely that suddenly seemed the best plan, to get it all over with, so that this beginning-to-be-very-oppressive weight would be removed, and she wouldn't have to continue doing this thing, performing these movements, which are
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by definition directed toward another, to no one. She even managed to make some noise; she was surprised at how convincing it sounded, having expected the artificiality to be glaring. The trouble was, he took no notice; she might have spared herself the trouble—he wasn't through. Then she realized that she hadn't noticed if he had yet had one to her many, how selfish of her; she'd been caught up in the intensity of her own pleasure. But he seemed insatiable. It felt so odd, and now it was the etiquette thing amplified thousands of times, because she wanted to say, "Excuse me, do you think you'll be through soon?" as if to someone at a pay phone, except she had made all her calls and just wanted to hear the receiver click.

As she looked at her body now, it was limp and tense at once, receiving the invisible—less absurd than what she'd seen in the heat of her solitary passion, but still pathetic. Maybe there was a device analogous to the one-way mirror: a half-mirror, in which only one party at a time was visible. Such a thing could exist. So now the big question was, did he see only himself, the same way she saw only herself? How simple it all was; she was immensely relieved for the second time in—how many hours had this been going on?—she had no idea, but was overjoyed to realize that the sum of their perceptions would yield a complete love-making couple; she thought she might cry with the relief of it. Suddenly it was as it had been back in the cafe; she had invented all the problems; she was ashamed at having suspected him. She wanted to tell him everything and have him say, "Silly thing," and stroke her, make it all better.

But he didn't say that and she was still trapped underneath him: this man she was not with despite his presence. It was happening to someone else; he was inside someone else, who only happened to be Carol. Who cared about sex? She'd give up sex forever; just get her out of here. She yearned for nothing so much as the removal of this corporeal hook whose eye she was. Oh, give her the pain; she'd rather that, to feel her body affirming the wrongness of what was being done to/in it, the participation that pain was, rather than this numbness, distance, this irrevocable breach with the action she was party to.