Little Bird of Heaven (48 page)

The remainder of my life, in Sparta on the Black River, Herkimer County, New York.

In the blinding-bright bathroom hurriedly I washed. I washed parts of myself, leaning against the sink on one leg. I was not so drunk now, in a part of my brain the after-pain of drunkenness began to beat, I would deflect it for now swallowing aspirin, rinsing my face, my eyes. I was not sober but I was not swaying-drunk as I’d been. I was not dry-mouthed as I’d been. Quickly and as quietly as I could I washed as homeless persons wash, just crucial parts of the body. The smelliest parts, the telltale parts. To dry these parts—armpits, groin—I did not use the pristine-white terry cloth towels hanging on racks in the bathroom, but wads of tissue. Even now thinking
He would see how slovenly I am like himself, he would be disgusted.
For still I felt the naive female fastidiousness, a kind of horror, that a man, any man, even a man who had lain with me in bed for hours making love with me in an abandonment of drunkenness, even such a man must be spared seeing that I’d left hotel towels in a dirtied and rumpled condition. A second time, I rinsed my mouth. My whiskey mouth that tasted too of the predator’s tongue and his saliva. I spat into the sink. I was still dizzy, dazed as in the aftermath of sexual pleasure, that piercing of my lower body that left me stunned and wordless as if an area of my brain had been pierced, that controlled speech. If I shut my eyes and opened them the tile walls of the bathroom began to tilt and lurch, I had to concentrate on a horizon, the edge of the filigree-framed mirror above the sink. (The Formica-sink looked to be made of pink plastic bubbles, like teeming protoplasm.) Of necessity I’d inserted a wad of tissue into my vagina that throbbed and burned, to absorb the man’s semen. This semen would leak from me otherwise, it would stain my paralegal-clothes. I’d groped and located these clothes to bring into the bathroom with me. I believed that I had most of my clothing, including my underwear the man had taken from me, fumbling in his impatience, these clothes I man
aged to put on, with my shaky fingers. What I’d pulled over my head—a white silk top, with long sleeves, small pearl buttons—I did not trouble to determine if it was right-side out, or not; if the front was in the back, or the back in the front; my hair was partly unplaited, my hair too the man had dragged his fingers through, pulling, tugging, my pale-blond hair the man had marveled at crinkling and crushing in his big fingers, disheveled now as poor Jacky DeLucca’s silver-wire wig. My face was chafed and swollen-looking and not to be contemplated too closely in any mirror, my mouth was swollen from having been kissed, gnawed-at. I would discover my shoes outside, on the shag carpet. Kicked off on the carpet just inside the door. And my black wool belted coat, part-slid off a chair. There was the man’s heavy sheepskin jacket, on the floor. My shoulder bag that was good Italian leather, a friend had bought me for a birthday, a friend whom I no longer saw, whom I had lost. For so many friends, I had lost. So many relatives, I had lost. There was my suitcase, almost I’d forgotten my lightweight Tartan-plaid suitcase on rollers, so practical for one who traveled on commuter planes and shuttles. On the bed the man was still sleeping, snoring wetly, sprawled and slovenly. When I passed by him in the wan light from the bathroom, where I’d left the door ajar, I could scarcely bear to look at him, for fear that I would love him so desperately, I would crawl into the cavernous bed beside him, I would embrace him, I would bury my face in his neck and never leave, not ever. As if sensing this, Aaron reached for me, in his sleep; too sleepy to open his eyes yet Aaron seemed to be seeing me, with a part of his brain. Mumbling, “Come back, c’mon. C’mere.” I had to wonder if he could have said my name, just then. If I’d leaned over to kiss his mouth could he have said, “Krista? Come back….”

Krista come back, I love you.

I left the room! Swiftly and unerringly I moved. Wanting to think that I was fully sober now. The throbbing headache had begun, this was full wakefulness, penitence. Pain was something with which I could deal. Pain was a legacy I knew, and accepted. Much of my life—personal and professional—was a strategy for dealing with pain, at this I was practiced.
By my watch I saw that it was 8:10 P.M. The day had lurched drunkenly by. I had paid for my room with my Visa card and so had no need to speak with or even be glimpsed by any desk clerk. Through a side door marked EXIT, I fled. After a few minutes’ panicked search I located my car, my secondhand foreign-made car, rolled my suitcase to it, climbed into it and fled. Thinking how wise I’d been, to drive my own car. Not to have succumbed to the man’s offer, to ride with him in his. In my car I drove south along route 31. I took care to drive just below the speed limit for I worried that my driving was what might be called
impaired.
I could not risk being stopped by any law enforcement officer, subjected to drunk-detection tests and found to be
impaired.
I would enter the New York State Thruway at the intersection at which, the previous night, I had exited the Thruway closely followed by Aaron Kruller in the vehicle behind me. I would head south, and east. Thruway signs would speak of Utica, Albany, New York City.

Eventually, signs would speak of Peekskill.

As I left Sparta the air was porous and there were patches of fog yet I could see, in the rearview mirror of my car, the lights of Sparta on its several glacial hills glittering and shimmering like a distant galaxy in the nighttime sky until it became occluded in mist, and in distance, and vanished from my sight.