You've Got to Read This (21 page)

On some level she knew she was an intuitive person, but she hadn't learned to trust herself, too cautious, as if there were a very strong force at work inside her all the time that wasn't allowed to come to expression, like all that sun missing her house, all this foliage in her head, that was so pretty and interesting and alive, but how much it got in the way. She suspected that her mind had evolved in some distorted fashion, different from the rest of the world. And now here she was, trapped in this stagnancy of glass, that had become by all its clarity a blur, itself a distortion. She couldn't forgive herself, though she supposed she'd suffered enough to be redeemed of any number of sins or crimes. She cursed her intuition, because she'd never have stayed with him if she'd weighed, considered, evaluated. On the other hand, she'd never do anything if she always weighed, considered, evaluated; that was precisely what so often kept her from doing any number of things, things she felt a genuine desire to do, but couldn't get over this habit or obsession of getting stuck, nothing resolving itself. She felt the irony of the whole thing as deeply, as physically, as a metallic taste in her mouth: that the only time she'd ever felt not removed from her body, when will and act had meshed, was with him; it had felt so right, but clearly had been wrong, as wrong as anything could be. She slid the tab of the zipper all the way up and fastened the button at the waistband of her skirt, then leaned against one of the mirrors as she dreamily repeated the motion of button through opening, gentle grasps and pulls, all the way up her blouse. If only there were as simple a motion to secure her exit. He had said she had only to figure it out. And there had to be a door; somewhere there had to be. She
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thrust her weight hard against the mirror as she leaned, then moved forward to tuck in her blouse. Had the mirror seemed to give a little as she had pressed? She must be imagining it. Perhaps if she pushed against every mirror, one of them might yield.

In the cafe, he poured her a drink, yellow, creamy stuff from the blender into a large, stemmed glass. He held it high as he poured, the way waiters had poured milk for her in restaurants when she'd been young; she'd been impressed at how high they could go and still not spill. She fumbled in her pocket for change, feeling stupid, not knowing where she stood. He put his hands over hers and said, "On the house."

"Oh," she said softly. "Thank you."

She had no idea what role she was playing. Was she customer, or worse, had he been hers? It was so different, he was nice again. His demeanor toward her suggested that they were only now about to be lovers, romantic, but she knew they'd already been, and what had gone on had had little to do with romance. She wasn't making much progress with the daiquiri, taking occasional nervous gulps, clutching the glass.

"It's different now," she said with desperate bravery.

"Same ingredients as always," he replied. "Are you sure you've had one before?" The way he smiled made her nervous. This was more confusing than ever.

Too uncomfortable to look at him, she kept surveying the room and its contents: the candles, the fancy Breuer chairs, all the bottles and glasses lined along shelves on the mirrored wall of the bar, a large quilt that somehow fit in with the rest of the decor; the central part of its design was a large star—it took her a minute to realize it was there because of the name of the place: the Star Cafe. The quilt took up almost all of one wall; the other walls were decorated with posters, mostly from museum exhibits. There were the travel posters as well, one a sophisticated montage of tourists and countryside in Greece, each scene in a separate little box. On the bottom was Greek lettering. She had always wanted to go there; it seemed like such a magical place, not just in some superficial sense of island and sun (one of the little boxes showed tourists lying on a beach) though that was appealing, and not just in the sense of the magic of the past either, being surrounded by ancient history, her sense was of a magic that was also chthonic. That was the world of myth, of gods and goddesses, of honor and heroism, justice, revenge.

That was a much larger world than her own, she felt, that company of furies and sirens in which choice was fate, and fate was really everything, but no matter what brutality caused by what whim of some god's arbitrary favoritism, reliable rosy-fingered dawn was always waiting in the wings to make it all into poetry. She was enamored of that civilization which was a celebration of the splendor of form. She thought of the perfection of body that lived in those white marble statues, the strength and grace which
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rhymed for her with his body, the body that had mingled with her own, but was now so distant. She needed to know that it had.

"Were you ever there?" she asked him, not even asking for understanding so much as simple information.

"Once, years ago," he said, "but it's too dirty and the food's too greasy. I like a more antiseptic atmosphere; Scandinavia's more to my taste."

Willfully or inadvertently he had taken her to be referring to the travel poster. She resented this glib distortion of her meaning. He had no right to be so evasive. Or had he just misunderstood? He had no right not to understand. Anger supplanted her nervousness so that now she had no trouble looking directly at him. But he wasn't looking at her; he was eyeing the blender, and before she could challenge him he was onto that as the new topic, as if his little remark had been an adequate response to her searching question, and no more need be said about it. What nearly disarmed her was the tenderness with which he said, when he looked back at her, "How sweet that you were afraid of my blender; silly thing."

That was just what she would have wanted to hear before, but not now that she'd been through what she'd been through, an experience of suffering so vivid that it created a landscape in her mind as powerful as the mythical one in which she had just been lost. In fact they became one for her at this moment; she could envision her own story painted across some urn, the woman whose lover wasn't there, in little scenes that reminded her of the travel poster, except that they weren't photographed and weren't in boxes, little red figures depicted on the urn: Carol in her apartment, then going downstairs, then in the bar, Carol in bed, then in the mirrored room, Carol looking in the mirrors, him there, him not there, but Carol crouching in the urinal was really too squalid for the likes of any Grecian urn, and now, with her imagination engrossed in this world that did not take passion lightly, that addressed mortality and immortality as real concerns rather than abstractions, and raised to the highest pitch the difference and link between the two—now, it was grossly inadequate, even pathetic.

"I'm not your silly thing," she blurted out, and he seemed taken aback by her anger.

"What's got into you?" he asked.

"Stop pretending you don't know," she said. "You know what I'm talking about. Tell me if you were there or not."

"I've already told you . . . " he began, but she cut him off. She was very worked up now.

"When I ask if you were there, I mean were you with me, in the room? I mean I know you were with me, but what I'm asking is . . . why are you trying to make me think I was imagining you?" This speech was delivered
crescendo ed accelerando.
"You owe it to me to tell me!" She was very excited and annoyed to realize she had to urinate again. She must have managed to get down more of that daiquiri than she thought.

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"Yes," he said quietly.

"What do you mean yes? You can't say yes or no if I ask you, was it a, b, or c. I need a specific answer. Was it real or my imagination?"

"Yes!" This time it wasn't quiet.

He didn't look like someone playing games; he looked tortured himself, but she was sure he must be trying to get away with something.

"You're being cryptic again," she said. "You're trying to confuse me. And I need the ladies' room; does that ring a bell? I may as well tell you that it's illegal not to have one in a public eating place, so don't try to tell me there isn't any."

"You think you're so smart," he raised his voice to match hers. "I have something to tell you too. There is, technically speaking, no ladies' room.

There is, however, one rest-room, androgynous, past the bar and to your right."

She began the journey immediately. When she'd taken only a few steps he called to her, by name, for the first time since that very first time.

"Carol!"

She turned around.

"We're through."

That was fine with her; she turned away again directly and continued on the prescribed route. Once through a corridor she found the door immediately to her right, marked simply "rest." She opened it, entered, and shut it behind her, pushing in the little circle in the middle of the knob to lock it, then tried to jiggle the knob to make sure. She realized how silly that was; who was she locking out? The man who had seen and known her body to the full extent of possibility between human beings? But locking it made her feel better. The interior was clean enough; she would have tried to hold out if it hadn't been. This bathroom was extremely clean, in fact, so she didn't feel the need to get in and out as quickly as possible. It was mirrored, of course, mirrored tiles on the walls and floor. Also the ceiling. The toilet and sink were ordinary. A fresh bar of soap lay in the dish on the arm of the sink—so much nicer than powdery stuff out of a dispenser, she thought.

How good it would feel to have clean hands. She rubbed the soap between her palms for a long time, working up a rich lather with warm water from the faucet. She decided to wash her face as well; she hadn't had the opportunity in so long. She held her hair with one hand but couldn't completely avoid getting it wet. She didn't mind; she would happily have dunked her whole head into the basin for the feel of this welcome refreshment.

In fact, why stop there, she thought, and pulled her blouse off over her head. She felt sweaty and horrible; scrubbing some soap under her arms would make her feel a little better, since she couldn't shower. She unhooked the closure in front of her bra and slipped the straps down her arms one at a time with her, wet hand. In the mirror she stared at her small breasts, and was pleased with them. Her nipples were hard. She rubbed the soap vigor-MARY CAPONEGRO " 117

ously under her arms, then rinsed, trying to stand over the sink in such a way that the least water would spill on the floor.

She had forgotten to check for a towel before she started; there was none, so she dabbed herself dry with pieces of toilet paper. She'd almost forgotten about her urgency; she'd make some superficial attempt at washing of genitalia after. She pulled down her panties, stepped out of them and hung them on a hook she'd just noticed protruding from the door. She rescued her blouse from where it had fallen and hung that too. She gathered up her skirt with her right hand, intending to sit on the toilet, but was distracted by suddenly seeing herself in the mirrored wall, as if seeing another person. She looked at this person who held her skirt in her arms so that it draped her hips but revealed her belly, fur and thighs. Her breasts were still uncovered also, and just as she had found them adequate, satisfying, she now found this lower region of her body, in fact the whole body, cut off as it was at the waist—she found the entire image attractive.

She stood transfixed by this lovely landscape under canopy of skirt. Her flesh seemed firmer than she remembered, more muscle tone; maybe the exercises she'd been doing in the morning and before bedtime had finally paid off. It had been hard to motivate herself to do them, with no prospect of anyone to appreciate the results, since she'd had no way of knowing about the cafe owner. She couldn't have predicted that, though as it was happening, there had been, in the midst of all that anguish and terror and pleasure, a tiny seed of deja vu; that was a common phenomenon, of course.

Well, it didn't make much difference in the end, did it? She knew that she often allowed herself to become the victim of her own speculations, reflections. Now it all seemed unimportant compared to the immediacy of the woman in the mirror, the urgency of that woman's sexuality or physical-ity. Strange to feel genuinely aroused by this image of herself. She amused herself with the idea that it was perfectly logical for her to associate her unaccompanied reflection with arousal, since that had been the consistent image during her definitive sexual experience.

Now the woman in the mirror was touching herself, sliding her palm up her thigh, transferring the skirt to the guardianship of the left hand. Then she left skin to approach her breasts. She caressed them fervently, then left skin again to return below the skirt, lingering for a long time when the hand met flesh again, languidly rubbing the soft pubic hair, just a shade darker than the honey-colored hair of her head, which fell away from her shoulders, skimming the floor as she bent low for the mirror.

The mirror-woman did a seductive dance, holding the skirt tight across her hips, swaying; she watched the curve of her calves as she gracefully inscribed the area of the bathroom floor, often lifting her leg so high that her lips were visible.

She was extremely aroused by this time, and not ashamed of it; she
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wanted to possess this beautiful moving image. She felt a fullness in her groin, decided it was her old need to urinate, which seemed less and less urgent; she couldn't be bothered with addressing that now—it was confusing how similar that feeling was with that of being sexually excited. She was rubbing herself, much more vigorously than was her habit; she let the skirt drop to have both hands. She tried to put one finger of her free hand inside herself but couldn't gain entry, despite the fact that she was very wet by now. It wasn't necessary anyway, and she was happy enough to have access to both hands for rubbing.

She was so tensed and excited that her vision was blurred; she'd lost the mirror's reflection, but it was firmly fixed in her mind; she dwelled on all the postures, the confronting gaze, the beauty and sensuality of that body. She needed some kind of support, weak from so much excitement. When leaning against the sink proved insufficient she quickly closed the lid of the toilet and sat there.