Two Girls Fat and Thin (36 page)

“No,” she said sharply, raising a hand. “No fire.”

He stopped. “Okay,” he said almost tenderly. “Nothing you don’t want.” And he turned and hurled the candle against a wall, smashing it.

He pressed her face down on the edge of the bed and bound her hands behind her back. Her knees were bent up to her chest and splayed apart so that her vagina and asshole were pulled open. She thought of her exposed crotch, feeling that these hairy wet holes were her, just as her eyes and nose were her, and yet, seen isolated and up close, they were prehistoric, stupidly impersonal, beastly and irreducible—yet still gentle, merciful and sweet.

She felt him embrace her spread buttocks; he must’ve been kneeling. She felt him kiss her hips and behind over and over again. “Baby,” he murmured. “Baby girl.” He dipped his tongue into one hole and then the other. The barrier protecting her genitals fell away; her inner flesh opened to receive pleasure. He slowly fucked her with his tongue, and her mouth released a genuine sigh. Her body opened more deeply until she felt herself split and revealed all the way into the pit of her guts, a place of heat and light that shone with tenderness for the lover who had come at last.

He gently withdrew from her, licked her once more, and backed away. She was aware of him behind her, and although she didn’t make this association, she felt as she had when she was alone with her father in his car and he had made her say what Dr. Norris had
done; pinned, helpless, exposed. Only now she felt her opened being contacted and stroked instead of coldly regarded. She thought: I love you.

He struck her with the whip. The pain cut her drunkenness and shocked her so badly she couldn’t scream. He struck her again, harder, and she did scream. Her panicked body jerked against its restraints and tried to close in defense; from her depths there burst a terrified creature, all elongated hands and wild distended mouth, its body twisting crazily as it flew into her throat, silently crying, No, no, don’t let him hurt me. But it was too late.

She let her attention wander
to the welts pressed against the vinyl seat of her office chair as she sat, still struggling with Medicaid forms. “I hope you didn’t leave permanent marks,” she’d said as she lay in his arms.

“Not this time,” he assured her. “We’ll talk about that later.” He turned away from her, his back hard as a door shut in someone’s weeping face.

Sleep alternately took her under and released her, tossing her into his room with its staring furniture and scattered bundles of dirty socks, and then drawing her back into her loud and messy dreams.

She blinked and looked up from her Medicaid forms, suddenly recalling: the unhinged Granite enthusiast, Dorothy, had appeared in a dream. Probably, she thought, it was the discussion of Granite’s work the night before. A strange dream; they were walking in a garden of blighted flowers and trees that were twisted into aberrant forms, both rotted and beautiful. The gravel path beneath them shimmered with a light that seemed radioactive and frightening to Justine. It shifted as they walked, crawling like the colored sand of a kaleidoscope; Justine was afraid it would open and swallow them. The fat woman seemed to sense her fear and took her hand firmly, giving her to understand that even if the gravel did open under their feet, she would still bear them aloft.

“You shouldn’t be involved with this man,” said the fat woman. “He is dangerous.”

“I know,” answered Justine. “But it’s something I have to do.”

“No it isn’t.”

They looked at one another, and Justine noticed the clarity and beauty of the other woman’s eyes.

“Are you feeling better now?” asked Glenda. “Your face looks very relaxed.”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. Can I make a phone call?”

“Of course.”

The fat lady’s phone rang for a long time with no answer. Justine remembered that she worked on a graveyard shift and wondered if she were still asleep. It was four o’clock already; probably she had dialed the wrong number. She hung up, called again, and was answered immediately.

“Hi, it’s Justine Shade. Remember me?”

“Yes.”

Dorothy’s hollow voice made Justine pause; nothing happened in the pause so she continued.

“Well, I’m close to finishing my article, and I just have a few things I’d like to, er, tie up. I remembered you said you’d be happy to meet again if I needed any more information, and I thought I’d invite you to have coffee.” Dorothy was silent. “So we could talk,” added Justine.

“Um, yes, that would be—I’d like that.”

As she said the last phrase, Justine heard in her voice that familiar disconcerting momentum and was reassured. She hung up strangely gratified, feeling she’d accomplished something useful, related after all to her career.

“Glenda,” she said, pushing her chair back. “How about if I go out and get us some cookies?”

The place Justine Shade had chosen
for our meeting was one of those fashionable cafés where people with expensive haircuts drink cappuccino and eat plates of fruit and cheese. I had walked by cafés of this sort on my infrequent trips to the Village; when I peered into their windows, I would feel my curiosity press forward with its little pink nose atwitch and then my contempt would stiffly pull itself proud and erect, shutting its ears to curiosity’s pleas to maybe go in and have some expensive pastry. When curiosity had the loudest voice, it seemed to me that the people in these cafés were not only attractive but fascinating, that they were probably talking about the issues that Anna Granite’s characters talked about at cocktail parties, each one representing a different philosophical view. Then contempt spoke, and I saw trivial self-satisfied swine obsessed with fashion and artificial emotion, probably on drugs, people like the awful characters in those short glib books by trendy young writers. Sometimes I would have the wistful thought that it might be fun and certainly novel to be, for just a little while, self-satisfied and obsessed with fashion. Then I would reflect that, fun or not, I couldn’t do it because of who I was.

Now though, I had to go into Gran Caffé Degli Artisti, and in I went. Narrowing my focus so that I would respond only to the
visual apprehension of one thin blond girl with glasses (I didn’t want to stand there gaping at the various types that would doubtless abound), I marched through the place. She wasn’t there. I stood a moment, consternated (what if she’d forgotten?) and then sat at one of the cunning little tables across from the door where she’d be sure to see me. I spent some moments arranging myself and then looked up to reconnoiter. I was pleased by the sight of statuettes in niches, candelabras covered with the lavish wax of hundreds of expired candles, and carved, high-backed inquisitor-style chairs. There actually weren’t many people of any description there, probably because it was four thirty, an hour when most people are either at work or getting ready to go to work. A table away from me sat a young woman with long dark hair and soft eyebrows. The multitude of finely wrought silver bracelets on her forearm stirred and gleamed as she lifted and set down her cup. She was reading, with great concentration, a book, the title of which I couldn’t see. Her blouse was plain and gray, but the jacket thrown over her chair was a beautiful little thing of purple, silver, and mauve, and actually had tiny triangular mirrors woven into it. Was this a signal that she was a fashionable person, or was this jacket a personal emblem, a defiance of the tyranny of fashion, possibly even made by the girl herself? I had no idea.

I looked towards the window. Two plainly dressed women in their thirties talked in low voices, their arms stretched towards each other on the table. Next to them was a table of boys with long hair tied back off their faces, a jumble of cups, dishes, and glasses before them on the table. Their profiles, alternately stiff, gentle or fluid were finely chiseled in the sharp relief of the sunlight, like boys who had just moments before been statues sculpted in honor of youth.

This wasn’t what I’d expected, but it was pleasant. I looked at the intriguing glass case of pastries and puddings to my right. I wondered if it would be unseemly to order two. “Hi.” Justine’s flat chirp announced her presence, and she sat down before me, smiling shyly.

I returned her greeting and immediately felt that she had changed since the last time I’d seen her. I couldn’t tell if this change was real or imagined. The waitress, a solemn girl with freckles, brought our menus, and I became too engrossed in mine to examine
her further. I would’ve liked to go and scrutinize the cakes in the glass case and select several by hand, but I was embarrassed to do so. The waitress, however, was wonderfully solicitous in describing the imaginatively named confections on the menu, looking at me as she did so with an expression that suggested not only an intimate understanding and acceptance of my cravings, but also that she was happy to be instrumental in satisfying them. What a wonderful place, I thought, closing the menu. My contentment was interrupted when I glanced up and encountered Justine’s face. She too had ordered and closed her menu and, her face turned slightly sideways, was now staring into space, chewing on a piece of lip and covering half her face with her hand. She didn’t notice my look for several seconds, and when she finally turned towards me, I identified part of what was different about her. Her air of self-containment, her annoying detachment, and her sharp, out-thrusting concentration, which she had trained on me like a radar gun during our last meeting, was gone. I could still feel her little mind buzzing away, but its rays were diffuse, wandering, seemingly too weak to penetrate anything. In addition, I felt her groping not only towards me, but groping generally and desperately, like a hungry infant futilely trying to work its will by flailing the air with its tiny hands. One obvious difference; she was now using a tape recorder instead of pen and paper.

“So,” she said, readying the little machine, “I wanted to talk about a couple of things. Do you remember the last time we met how we got into a sort of argument about how many women perceive Granite’s attitude towards sexuality as atavistic and masochistic?”

Her obsession with masochism and perversion was really trying; of course it was her business if she kept it to herself, but for her to invite me out to talk about it was really a bit much, especially since she knew me to be the victim of a sadistic father. She must have noticed my expression because she hastened to make her voice conciliatory.

“You were saying how this isn’t what Granite meant at all. Well, during my research and interviews I’ve noticed—and not just in regard to the erotic aspect of Granite’s work—that her followers often seem to derive meaning from her work that would surprise her critics and even Granite herself. It’s almost as if her work exists
here”—she gestured with her hands as if placing a small package on the table—“and that her followers exist here”—another package—“and that here, between them, is something altogether separate, a mixture of Granite’s work and the perception of it. And I was wondering if she was aware of this when you knew her and if so what she thought of it.”

Her bland delivery of this brainless assertion made it all the more exasperating. How could someone who had spent the last month studying Granite and her followers not realize that this way of thinking was the very thing she—and we—most despised? But as my anger came forward, ready to smite her, I sensed, in addition to her diffuse desperation, a scary fragility in her, a psychic quivering which vibrated in her smile and even more noticeably in her trembling hand. I had the distinct feeling that I was in the presence of someone about to have a nervous breakdown, and I lost my interest in rebuking her. I didn’t lose my interest in defending Granite, but I did so gently.

“Such a concept would never have entered Granite’s head. Of course, there were always flakey people around her who misunderstood her work, but if she saw that they were trying their best to grasp it and simply didn’t have the mental equipment to do so, she was very kind to them. The others, those who deliberately misinterpreted—”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean what happens when people look at a thing and see in it something other than what its creator intended and aren’t aware of the difference. That happens all the time, especially to writers. I just think it’s particularly interesting in the context of what Granite said about objective truth.”

Of course I knew what she meant. But why would she focus on something so trivial when the irrefutable grandness of Granite blazed like the sun, illuminating and upholding the existence of so many people who might have spent their lives metaphorically slumped before their televisions, too despondent to move? (I pushed aside the troublesome thought that Granite herself had espoused contempt for people who fastened their thoughts onto the belief systems of others and would never have done so herself.) It was frustrating to be in the presence of someone so interested in Granite and yet to pass her, ships in the night, but ships that
scraped and grated against each other on the way by. I was exasperated to have this strange, nervous, delicate being flitting about me, first jangling the alarm bells of my most personal issues, seeming to offer intimacy and then denying it, stirring up old grief and then skipping off, and now sitting before me like a foreign solar system gone awry, broadcasting signals from her distant station too weak and confusing for me to read and then saying things which could only lead away from serious discussion and which, furthermore, I sensed didn’t engage her full attention or express her real concerns.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Why are you doing this article anyway?”

When Justine walked into the café
and saw Dorothy sitting there, she was reminded, with unexpected vividness, of the power of the woman’s presence. In the precious café she seemed even more huge than she had in her apartment, even more insistently strange, the emblems of her derangement circling her in an invisible but palpable personal mandala. For a moment she felt embarrassed to be sitting next to a fat lady wearing hideous chartreuse sweat pants, big red hair and the plastic jewelry of a drag queen with an ironic sense of humor. Horrified, she considered the possibility of an acquaintance coming in and seeing her with this person, or even the waitress, who would surely notice how odd they looked together. Then the stubborn kid who had defied society once before spoke up; “I don’t care what you douche-bags do. I’m not gonna hate Emotional anymore,” and she sat down, smiling.