Steve Erickson - Our Ecstatic Days

Back in the little gutted room with the elevator cables I turn and he’s standing there in the doorway blocking it. For a second all my defenses go up the way they do when a woman is cornered

as a little girl, running one afternoon into my uncle’s bar and crying out

and a man is blocking her way out. All my defenses go up and suddenly he looks crestfallen, he’s seen it in my face, seen the way I got a bit afraid of him, the way I hate him just a bit after everything he’s done, after the way he’s slept next to me and hasn’t even tried to get under the blanket with me; for me to suddenly get wary and afraid of him, well, I can see how it hurts him. As though he would ever do anything to me. As though he would ever threaten me in any way. He’s hurt by my collapse of trust in this moment and something else, I know there’s something else, I knew from the first night he came to me. “Sorry,” I half murmur, half snap, and that comes off a bit defensive too.

He nods. He backs out of the doorway to let me by.

In the doorway I take his face between my hands. “I’m sorry,” I say again, gentler.

He nods again.

“Jeez,” I say, “what is it Kale. Are you in love with me, is that it? Do you just want to fuck me, is that all this is about?”

“Those are two different questions,” he answers.

“Why,” taken aback, “that’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever heard you say.” I take his hand and pull him down in the doorway and we sit together our legs entwined. I reach out from beneath my blanket and take his hands in mine and hold them. It’s not like that with me and boys, I try to explain. I know a man always thinks he can change a girl like me if he only gets the chance but that’s not going to happen. Really, at this moment I’m not trying to be a bitch, if anything I’m sort of begging him to understand. You’re pretty though, I’ll give you that, I say to him looking at his water-green eyes that light up in the night and putting my hand in his brown feathery hair that smells like tall dry grass — but it’s more than that. Somehow I feel it’s more than that. Later, back at the Chateau and lying in my own bed, I think about how it’s more than that. Part of me thinks well I can’t see

What’s missing from the world? and years later from L.A. to Tokyo there

him any more, because it just torments him, but the other part of me isn’t sure I can stay away, because there’s a connection for sure. Not like we’re lovers but … something else.

Over the next couple of weeks I go out with him again to the island called the Hamblin because it’s truly mega out there even if there’s no blue anymore, even under the gray sky and looking out over the gray water, and also because of that connection. Because I can’t help wanting to spend time with him. But after a few times I know I can’t anymore, that it means too much to him to be with me and it hurts him too much not to make love to me. Like the first night out on the Hamblin he never imposes himself on me in any way except one time standing next to him looking out at the lake I put my arm in his as the wind comes up and then he puts his arm ’round me and his fingers brush my breast ever so slightly like it’s an accident — boys will be boys, eh? One night he comes to the Chateau with some food and money to be my slave again but we’re somehow too far past that scene anymore, and there in the Lair before the fire he tries to tell me, I know what he’s trying to say and I’m thinking oh no don’t, don’t say it, and he can’t, it catches in his throat or he can’t come up with the words or something, and he starts talking with his hands. His eyes coming at me fixed, relentless, he starts talking in this sort of sign language, his hands making these urgent elaborate pictures in the air, and he becomes more and more frustrated, his eyes closed tight, hands darting in front of him faster and faster till finally I just take them in my own, “Hey, hey,” to try and calm him. He relaxes and his hands rest in mine and he opens his eyes and just looks at me.

I wait for Armand and his boys to show up. I figure it’s a matter of time, that they’re not going to let that night go unanswered for, so I gather up all the cash they paid me and keep it handy on the off-chance that somehow returning the money will

inside me that question was beginning to grow into its own answer, What was

satisfy them though I don’t believe that at all. My only concern now is that no harm comes to the Mistress. I’ve almost convinced myself it’s all been forgotten when yesterday afternoon I finally hear the approaching sound of the motor of the powerboat, and get the money and go out the back, down the stone steps into the grotto. The boat approaches and it’s my friend who drove me in the limo and chased me into the glen — on his forehead he has the scar of a pretty good gash where Kale leveled him with the oar.

He’s about as happy to see me as I am to see him. For a moment the boat just bobs on the water in the afternoon shadows of the grotto. “Cunt,” he finally says.

I let that one pass. “Look,” I say, “here’s the money back,” thrusting it in front of me with both hands.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“Here’s your money back. Tell your boss I’m sorry.”

Well what can I say. You’re not going to believe this, but — Turns out Armand doesn’t want his money back, and he’s not sent his boys out to beat me up or kill me or ransack the Chateau. Turns out he wants me to come back up to the house and do the whole thing over again. Without the other girls joining in this time but all the rest of it: the blindfold, the cuffs, the little red ball in his mouth — he especially liked the little red ball — the whole thing except we’ll do it in private or, if I feel safer, he’ll come out to the Chateau and send his bodyguards away and we’ll do it here, all night if I’m agreeable and he’ll pay me double what he paid the first time, up front. I have to wear the white lace corset and stockings, though. That’s the only stipulation.

Men! Fucking unbelievable, what? I just stand there with my mouth open and finally stammer I need a bit of time to think about it, because I don’t want to say yes and I’m afraid to say no. Back ’cross the lake goes the boat to Armand, from the grotto steps

missing from the world, and although I didn’t yet know it was growing inside

I watch it cross the lake, trying to think what I’m going to do. I don’t want to go back to that house, I tell the Mistress, but I don’t want these boys out at the Chateau either. There’s a lot I don’t tell the Mistress. I don’t tell her everything that happened that night in the hills because every time I see her now she just looks older, she seems to come out of her bedroom less and less, and to move more and more slowly — and I’m onto the business with the lapsinthe. I’ve figured out what that’s about, to the extent it makes sense at all, she thinks one night she’s going to finally take one too many that’s going to put her over the edge once and for all, whatever the edge is. But I figure the last thing she needs to hear about is what happened that night at Armand’s, just so she can worry about me. I tell her a bit about Kale, not really so much except, you know, There’s this boy — because there’s not that much I know to tell, is there? except he’s strange and sort of sweet and he’s in love with me. Yes she whispers they all fall a little in love with you, and I say no, this boy’s in love with me. And what do you think about that, she asks, and I say well it’s not something I can reciprocate, is it (perhaps she’s checking for some weakness in my lesbian resolve), but he’s sweet I say and very strange and I don’t want to hurt him (I haven’t really told her how he saved my little pixie behind) and the last time I saw him, I saw it in his eyes, this hurt, and I just wanted to run because I had never seen a boy hurt like that over me, not like that. I thought I was happy making the men cry a bit, what with a good healthy thrashing that would get a few tears flowing and the blood moving — but not like that, and it shocked me. And the Mistress she says well then you know you should send him away. It’s only right. You should send him away. And I say, I know.