Veronica (9 page)

In Paris, things happened fast. Two weeks after my first job, I met the head of Celeste. His name was Alain Black; he was a South African with a French mother. He was the man I had glimpsed on my first day there. He was lean and pale, nearly hairless. His eyes had thick, heavy lids. They were green, gold, and hazel, so mixed that they gave an impression of something bright swarm-jng through his irises. Mostly, the swarming was just emotions and thoughts happening quickly. But there was also something else, moving too fast for you to see what it was. He asked if I had a boyfriend yet. When I said, “Rene,” he laughed and said, “Oh, Rene!” Then he said I needed a haircut. Galled a hairdresser, told him what to do, and sent me to the salon in a taxi. The salon was full of wrinkled women staring fixedly at models in magazines. When I walked in, they frowned and glared. But the girl at the desk smiled and led me through rows of gleaming dryers, each with a woman under it, dreaming angrily in the heat. The hairdresser didn’t even need to talk to me. He talked to someone else while I stared at myself in the mirror. When it was done, I made the taxi take me back to the agency. It was closed, but the doorman with mad eyes knew to let me in. He knew where I was going and he knew who else would be there. Alain looked up and smiled. “Do you like it?” I asked. He stood and said of course he liked itj it had been his idea. Then he jumped on me.

I say “jumped” because he was quick, but he wasn’t rough. He was strong and excessive, like certain sweet tastes— like grocery pie. But he was also precise. It was so good that when it was over, I felt torn open. Being torn open felt like love to me; I thought it must have felt the same to him. I knew he had a girlfriend and that he lived with her. But I was still shocked when he kissed me and sent me home. At “home,” I wrapped myself in a blanket and looked out the window at the darkening mass of slanted roofs. Rene came by. I wouldn’t see him. Darkness gradually filled the room. The phone rang; it was my mother—her tiny voice curled up in a tiny wire surrounded by darkness. I talked to her through clenched teeth. I told her she was a housewife who didn’t understand anything about the real world. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I could hear she was hurt. After I hung up, I could feel it, too. Her hurt was soft and dark and it had arms to hold me as if I were an infant. I sank into her soft dark arms, into a story of a wicked little girl who stepped on a loaf and fell into a world of demons and deformed creatures. She is covered with snakes and slime and surrounded by the hate of every creature trapped with her. She is starving, but she can’t eat the bread still stuck to her feet. She is so hungry, she feels hoUj|l like she’s been feeding on herself. In the world above, her mother cries for her. Her tears splash scalding hot on her daughter
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! face. Even though they are tears cried for love, they do not bring healing; they burn and make the pain worse. My mother’s tears scalded me and I hated her for it.

My roommate came home and turned on the light, and— bang!—there was no mother and no demons. She clacked* across the floor in her high heels, chatting and wiping her lipstick off. It was 4:00 in the morning, but when she saw how unhappy I was, she took out her tarot cards and told my fortune until it came out the way I wanted it. (Luxury. A feast. A kind, loyal woman. Transformation. Home of the true heart.) The sun rose; the enamel rooftops turned hot violet. I had just lain down on the couch to sleep when Alain called and told me I was going to be moving into an apartment on rue du Temple. The rent would be taken care of. Everything would be taken care of.

We met for champagne and omelettes in a sunny bistro with bright-colored cars honking outside. He talked about the Rolling Stones and his six-year-old daughter, after whom he had named the agency Celeste. He asked if I wanted children. I said, “No.” He grabbed my nose between two knuckles and squeezed it. The omelettes came heaped on white plates with blanched asparagus. He hadn’t kissed me yet. He spread his slim legs and tucked a cloth napkin into his shirt with an air of appetite. I wanted badly to touch him. Inside its daintiness, the asparagus was acrid and deep. He said, “The first thing we need to do is get you a Swiss bank account. All the smart girls have one. First, you don’t have to pay taxes that way. Then they

invest it for you. Your money will double, triple. You should see!” I loved him and he obviously loved me. Love like in the James Bond movies, where the beautiful sexy girl loves James but tries to kill him anyway. We would love each other for a while and then part. Years later, I would ride down the street in a fancy car. I d see Alain and he’d see me. I’d smile on my way past. Sexy spy music rubbed my ear like a tongue; it rubbed my crotch, too. We finished quickly and went to my new apartment.

My new apartment had high ceilings and polished wooden floors. I entered it like Freddie leaping naked into turds. There was a sunken marble tub and a chandelier and a glass case of obscene figurines. There was a black velvet couch with a carved ivory back. I sat on it, smiling and trembling Spy music blared. He knelt and took my hips in both hands. Brightness poured through his eyes in hot little pieces. I followed with my own eyes, thinking if I could stop one little piece and see what it was, I would find a whole world. But he never let one stop. He just showed glimpses. He knew that I saw this—not with my mind, but with my senses. I couldn’t answer him because I was not his equal. But I could see it and he appreciated that. For just a moment, I saw something in his eye stop. It was like a window opening into space. It was dark and cold. Burning meteors fell in a bright, endless shower. He said, “Are you big shit? Or just cute litde shit?” His voice was wondering and tender. The window closed. “Big or little?”

When we got to know each other better, we played like dogs, rolling and growling, pretending to bite. We’d make faces and chase each other around naked. If somebody knocked over a lamp or a pricey vase, it was okay. He’d caper and sing dirty French songs. I taught him “The worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.” He liked that a lot. He sang it, panted it while we were doing the “elephant

fuck”—him holding my legs up from behind and me walking on my hands.

But when that was over, he’d be on the phpne, pacing around naked, talking business and licking coke off his fingers Someone would call and offer me a job and Alain would say, “No, not available.” I would say, “I am too available!” He would say, “Shut up and wait!” They’d call back and offer twice as much money. He’d be happy and then he’d start calling around to check and see what people were saying about him. If anyone had said anything bad, he’d call around again and start plotting to get them back. “Blood will pour from his anus!” he’d say. I’d sit curled up in my white silk robe with the black dragons on it, smoking.

In the office, we had to pretend we weren’t lovers. That was okay. I was a secret agent. I was an a-s-s-h-o-l-e. I saw his girlfriend with him at nightclubs, because we all went out together—I sat at their table with many other girls. She was stunning in magazines, but in person I thought she looked old. She had a long nose and a long tooth, and when she crossed her legs, her foot stuck out at a funny angle. But she was clever, I could see. She might have known about me. She’d run her eye over the table of girls and sometimes it would linger on me. She’d lean into him, sardonic and whispering. He’d laugh and look away, his eyes always moving and glittering.

I’d see Rene, too. He was always with another girl. Sometimes he’d come by the table to talk to Alain. He’d look at me and nod, a little bit of feeling for me still. His girl would blink and look around, scratch her arm. Papillon, pee, pee, pee. It was sad, but I was driving past.

Once, I asked Rene why he’d picked me up at the airport when he didn’t know who I was. He said, “I knew who you were.” And he had. He knew I would get into his car, and he knew I would go home with him. He knew I had a spider mouth, too. He knew that before I did. I couldn’t see it because I was young and my lips were full and beautiful. But it was there.

The sidewalk climbs a hill. At the top, I see more hills, sky and trees. There is wind and the trees move with it, like it and they are part of the same body, breathing in and out; the wind sending, they receiving, passing it down into the ground. Joanne’s house is at the bottom of the hill, a shambling one-story with a walkway lined with rocks painted by children. The garage is open, with work things and radio music pouring out. Joanne’s husband, Drew, builds furniture and does odd repairs. He sometimes hires street people to help him. They are guys he’s met at the men’s shelter next to the church where the support group meets. He meets them standing outside for smokes. They come up to him for cigarettes, but they stand talking because Drew is like a warm stove of manness. He’s huge, with a chest and back like an old brick wall on legs, a grumbling furnace stomach, and small thoughtful eyes in a fleshy red face. The intelligence in his eyes is warm, but it’s not the love warmth of the heart. It’s from the liver and stomach and glands, the busy warmth of function. He’s slow to talk and he says “uhhhh” a lot. It doesn’t make him sound stupid. It makes it seem like his thoughts are physical truths that have to come in noise form before he can get them into words.

Most of the guys he asks to work for him are okay. They’re ex-junkies and fuckups, but they want to do better. Even so, their presence sometimes pisses the neighbors off. They come over to complain, and there’s Drew: a wall with a furnace stomach and benevolent eyes looking out of a fleshy face. They’ll talk to him about these unsafe people, these sad, ragged people appearing to bang around with hammers and wander the sidewalks. Drew will look into space and go, “Uhhh.” There’ll be a

silence. Then Drew will explain why these men are okay. He’ll point to a piece of work and say, “This man did that; that man did this. I need help; they can help.” He’ll make more “uhhh” noises. I believe it’s the noises that get people. Takes them out of the world of words into practical thoughts: Things need to get built. Men need to earn. Neighbors have to be decent. The neighbors walk away confused, like they don’t know what has happened.

A guy named Jerry is in the garage now, working. He looks high. He looks beat-up, worse than Freddie, beat-up inside and out. He looks like he still has goodness but that it doesn’t help much. He looks like somebody wandering in a dark maze, clutching his little bit of goodness, knowing it’s all he’s got but not remembering what it is or how to use it. His body is empty, his face dull and numb. His forehead is a big soft knot of puzzlement. His puzzlement gives him just enough to keep him going; his puzzlement is where he’s still alive. He’s refinishing a chest of drawers. It looks like he’s doing a pretty good job. I greet him. “Hey, Alison,” he says. “Drew ain’t home. Joanne iSj though.”

He doesn’t look at me when he talks, but he sees me. It’s like he’s got an extrasensory system built into the side of his body. A lot of street people have this. So do a lot of fashion people. I stand there a minute, listening to the rap song coming out of the radio. A soprano voice peels out of the song, a flying red sound that ripples through the beat, then disappears under it. Somebody sampled the “Habanera” from Carmen.

I think of my first job in Rome. Huge open windows looked out onto the city. Long white curtains stirred in the wind. Carmen was playing on an old record player. We drank wine and flipped through an Italian comic book about a demon that lived in a pretty girl’s cunt. He whispered to her clit as if it were an ear and said, “Do it with this one!” or “No, don’t do it with that one!” When she did it with someone, the demon hid in her asshole and said, “Phew, it stinks in here!” I giggled, the photographer smiled, and the other model looked bored. The curtains streamed out the windows and Carmen sang of love.

I wonder if Jerry can see any echo of that moment when he scans me. If he does, he probably understands it better than most. The more withered the reality, the more gigantic and tyrannical the dream. From the dark hole of a bar on a street of sickness and whores comes a teeming cloud of music sparkling with warmth and glamour: Sweet dream of rhythm and magic— Look in and see dark dead blurs slumped on stools.

“Joanne’s in the kitchen,” says Jerry pointedly. Still not looking at me, he puts down a can of varnish and studies the finish on the chest. “She with Jason’s kids.” He picks up the can again. He wants me to go away.

I say good-bye and cross the wet lawn. I open the door; a little girl stops running in the hall to look at me. Messy hair, small open mouth, aura of shy, senseless joy. “Joanne!” The girl runs again and disappears, waving the ribbon of her voice. ‘It’s Alison!”

Jason is one of Joanne’s roommates. In the blur of youth, he was married long enough to have five-year-old twin girls, who come to stay with him for a week here and there. Drew and Joanne take care of them while he’s at work; mosdy, that means Joanne. I come into the living room fast enough to see the kid dart around the corner into the kitchen. The living room is a bunch of slumping furniture, plants growing up to the ceiling, an electric guitar on the floor, cat dishes, the TV flashing cartoon pictures, and a huge fish tank bubbling against one wall. In the center of the floor is a chair, its orange seat back carved in the shape of flames—Drew’s work. Also Drew’s work is a bench on bird-foot legs, painted with peacock feathers. Beyond the living room, I glimpse the den, which is packed with Drew’s work: I painted forest of legs and backs, the limbs of imaginary animals. Jason’s litde girls put their heads around the corner and giggle, then pop back into the kitchen.

“I’m in here, Allie,” says Joanne from the kitchen.

“So he expects me—me with the bad back!—to carry two bags of clubs for this asshole,” says another voice.

“Watch your mouth, Karl,” says Joanne mildly. “Hi Allie.” She puts her cigarette out on a litde plate and smiles. The girls smile, too—not only Jason’s Heather and Joelle but also seven-year-old Trisha from down the block. They’re at the table, drawing pictures. Another roommate, scrawny, pissed-off Karl, stands there bare-chested, raging about his golf course job. He’s hunched over Joanne, sending small, concentrated rage at her, like she’s standing there with a big bag to catch it. He looks at me, his raging head pulled into such a point, it’s like his eyes are on the end of his nose. He says, “Hi,” then continues his rant.