Amelia Gray: Gutshot: Stories

At work, he stood with his nose to the Stonehenge poster until a woman from Human Resources asked him if he might like to take a walk with her. She said that his performance had been going sideways lately and that they were looking for someone moving in more of a vertical direction. The words coming out of her mouth didn’t make sense and Mark tried taking context clues from the pictures of children and mountains set in frames on her desk. Before she outlined his severance package, she had to ask him to stop chanting.

The walk home was deeply satisfying, so ideal in the movements of the small animals and in the appearance of flaws in the road. Even the flaws, on further observation, were so perfectly placed that they stood as proof of a grand design created for his witness. He sat down on the sidewalk to observe the way a banner flapped beneath a store awning and stayed there for a few hours, leaning against a mailbox.

He returned home to find Emily sitting on a milk crate in the middle of their empty apartment. She was naked from the waist up and examining her bra. “What do you think this is?” she asked, turning the cup so he could observe the flecks of dried blood inside it.

“I have no idea.” And indeed, though he searched his memory, all he turned up were strange pictures out of place: a hornet alighting on the upper corner of his crib and disgorging the first papered layer of its nest; a woman kneeling before a man, both robed in white; a boy seeming to leap from his bike onto the hood of a passing car. “I can’t even imagine.”

The home remains. Even if the house was razed, the foundation scored and broken, and the pieces carried away, there would be a feeling of home, where people cooked dinner or lay down exhausted or looked out the window at the garbage truck rumbling down the road.

Our home was once the preparation wing of a garment factory, in which material was boiled with chemicals to change its color and character. We found this information in public records, though hints were present in the scars on the concrete where machines were once bolted, an industrial ventilation system like an artery across the high, open ceiling, feeding air to each white-walled room. The larger silo has since been destroyed and replaced with a new shopping complex, but our home remains, a testament to utility.

It was my idea to rent the girl. My partner called a service and asked the receptionist if their business practices included the concept of fair trade. It was important to him as a consumer, and the least he could do would be to utilize his privilege to benefit others, even in some small way. As he spoke, I rubbed the crotch of his jeans.

The girl arrived the next morning and rang the bell twice while we took turns admiring her through the peephole. She read our address from a pink notebook. Her hair was blond and ironed straight and she was falsely tanned. She leaned back to look up and down the street, shading her eyes with the book. While we watched her, my partner asked me if we could educate her on the physical dangers of using chemically bleached products and I said No, none of that.

The girl pounded on our door with her little fist, examining the peephole. We could see her eyes, pale and clear, the whites like water in a dish. It occurred to me that men delivered our groceries and laundry, our products, and this was the first girl I had seen in a year, at least. She looked surprised, shocked even, when my partner unlocked the door and she saw us both standing there, smiling at her, but she entered our home anyway and put down her things. She said she had just come from class and I asked her what class she was taking and she said Life science and I said Ah, yes. Her fingers were manicured with a pink polish. She smelled like a bowl of sugar that had been sprayed with a disinfectant. Even her name sounded processed. My partner clasped the girl’s shoulders and told her that he was happy she had come. She started to say something but he embraced her and she frowned and put her tanned arms across his back and said Okay, okay.

My partner suggested that she change into something more comfortable. We led her to the bathroom and she removed her dress before us on the hemp bathmat and stood quietly while we anointed her with oils. I rubbed her feet and legs and my partner did her back. The oil was a jojoba blend to which I had added fresh sage and rosemary. She was tense under my hands. There seemed to be a thin layer of glowing light just under her skin, a scratch away. I began to feel calmer as I rubbed and was able to hear more of the conversation my partner was having with the girl. He talked about how honored we were that she joined us on her journey through life. He asked her the question he had read that morning on his Questions calendar, which was What are you doing to make life more beautiful for the next generation? She said she wanted to be a physical therapist. He moaned a little.

The preparations over, he led the way to the air-conditioner intake duct in the hallway. I passed him a screwdriver and he began to remove the duct’s grate, handing me the small screws. He said that becoming a physical therapist was very much like playing House Heart with someone you trust. She said that she didn’t understand. She stood between us with her arms crossed over her breasts, each hand holding the opposite shoulder. The oil made a small pool around her toes. I held her hips and kissed her face and tried to tell her a joke but she didn’t laugh. She asked what we were doing in the hallway and I told her that my partner and I have a game we like to play and it’s a special game to us, very special, but we never have had a chance to share it with someone else, and it would mean so much for us to take that step with her help. He was prying the grate from its spot and so I hushed the girl and patted her round bottom.

The duct’s main supply area was large enough for a crouching man to spend a few productive hours on the controls behind locked panels inside. There would be plenty of space for our girl. When we kissed her and coaxed her in, she barely had to bow her head and then stood comfortably. Her feet were bare but I had swept the spot many times before, and that morning had scrubbed it clean with a vinegar-soaked rag. When my partner moved to affix the grate she made a whine of protest, but he explained that sealing her inside would allow us to truly play the game, and that we would be so pleased if she would help us finally achieve this milestone as a couple, a romantic goal for which she would be well compensated, enough to focus on her studies for the remainder of the year. Finally she was silent and the grate was quickly secured.

For a while, nothing happened. I worried for a moment that she had vanished. Then we heard her scraping around, feeling the boundaries with her feet and hands, no doubt discovering there wasn’t room for her to sit. My partner said that she would find a duct at her head and one at her feet. Those main lines would branch into smaller channels leading to different rooms; one would end up over the kitchen and another would terminate in the living room, one over the chandelier in the dining room and the other three in the bathroom, bedroom, and office. She would be able to hear us at different points of the ductwork, thanks to the happy accidents of design that allowed for such echoes. In a small voice, the girl asked if we could maybe just let her out. I found my purse in a closet and fed a few singles through the grate. The money stayed stuck or floating there for a moment before she took it. She would have to stand there with it in her hand since she didn’t have anywhere to put it.

The scratching continued, the thumps of her body bracing against a confined space, then a sharp kick against the metal. She was crying softly. My partner knocked on the wall and told her to calm herself, that she would earn five times more than she would if she had made love to us in a traditional way. He said there was no danger to playing House Heart, that there were secrets to be found.