Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior

“Please, Tom, I’m on the verge of tears,” Ariel would answer funereally.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Tommy would scream.

When Joey first noticed Daisy, he wondered why this pretty young woman had chosen to work in a filthy, broken-down store amid unhappy homosexuals. As time went on, it seemed less and less inappropriate. She was comfortable in the typing pool. She was happy to listen to the boys talk about their adventures in leather bars, where men got blow jobs in open wooden booths or pissed on other men. She told jokes about Helen Keller and sex. She talked about her boyfriends and her painting. She was always crouching at Evelyn’s desk, whispering and laughing about something, or looking at Evelyn’s back issues of True Detective magazine. She wore T-shirts with pictures of cartoon characters on them, and bright-colored pants. Her brown hair was bobbed in a soft curve that ended on either side of her high cheekbones. When she walked, her shoulders and long neck were erect in a busy, almost ducklike way, but her hips and waist were fluid and gently mobile.

The heterosexual men were always coming to stand by her desk and talk to her about their poetry or political ideas while she looked at them and nodded. Even the gay men developed a certain bravado in her presence. Tommy kept on reassuring her that her prince was just around the corner. “I can feel it, Daisy,” he would say exultantly. “You’re on a collision course with Mr. Right!”

“Do you really think so, Tom?”

“It’s obvious! Aren’t you excited?”

Then Ariel would get up from his desk and lumber over to her and, bending from the waist, would put his large fleshy arms around her shoulders. Joey could see her small white hand emerge on Ariel’s broad flank as she patiently patted him.

And, as if it weren’t enough to be the heartthrob of the basement crowd, she was kind to helpless, repulsive people. There was a grotesque old woman who would come into the store from time to time to seek out her kindness. The woman was at least sixty years old, and covered her face with heavy orange makeup. She bought horrible best-sellers and self-help books with lurid red covers. She’d stand by Daisy’s desk for half an hour and talk to her about how depressed she was. Daisy would turn off her typewriter and turn toward the woman with her chin in her hand. She’d listen gravely, agreeing sometimes, letting the woman give her small bags of hard candy and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone made rude comments about Daisy and “that crazy old dyke.” But Daisy remained courteous and attentive to the distressed creature, even though she often made fun of her after she left.

Joey didn’t think of having sex with Daisy, at least not in detail. It was more the idea of being near her, protecting her. She was obviously so confused. She looked everywhere for answers, for someone to tell her what to think. “I just want your perspective,” she’d say.

There was a customer she called the “answer man” because he claimed that he could predict the future through “automatic handwriting.” He was a handsome elderly man who wore expensive suits and looked as though he’d had at least one face lift. He had been coming into the store for years. Every time he came in, Daisy would walk him off into a corner and ask him questions. He would scrawl down answers in thin red ink and hand them to her with an imperious, terribly personal look. She would become either stricken or joyous. Later she would run around talking about what he’d said, examining the red-scrawled pieces of store stationery. “He says my painting is going to start being successful in a year and a half.” “He says there are no worthwhile men around me and that there won’t be for months.” “He says David will move out next month.”

“You don’t take that stuff seriously, do you?” asked Joey.

“Oh, not really,” she said. “But it’s interesting.” She went back to her desk and stuck the papers in her drawer and began typing, her face still glowing and upturned because someone who was possibly crazy had told her that she would eventually be a success.

He began thinking about her at home. He thought of her body resting against his, of his arm around her. He thought of her dressed in a white kimono, peeking from behind a fan, her eye makeup crinkling when she smiled. Diane became suspicious.

“You’re a thousand miles away,” she said over the Sunday salad. “What is it?”

“I’m preoccupied.” His tone made it clear that her plaintiveness was futile, and she became frightened and angry. She didn’t say anything, which was what he wanted.

He did not lie down with her that evening, although he was exhausted. He walked around the loft, striking the furniture with Diane’s riding crop, annoying the cats, making them skitter across the floor, their eyes unnerved, their tails ruffled. His eyes dried in their sockets. His back was sore and balled into knots from staying up for three days.

He began doing things to attract Daisy’s attention. He told jokes. He slapped his face with eau de toilette. He wore red pants and a sheathed knife in his belt. He did full splits and handstands. He talked about his active role in the theater department at Bennington and his classes with André Gregory. He mentioned the karate class he’d taken once, and punched a hole in a box of books. She said, “Joey has done everything!” There was a thrilling note of triumph in her voice.

For a long time he just looked at her. That alone made him so happy, he was afraid to try anything else. Maybe it would be better to hold her winglike shadow safe in the lock of his memory than to touch the breathing girl and lose her.

He decided to give her a card on Valentine’s Day.

He spent days searching for the valentine material. He found what he wanted in an old illustrated children’s book. It was a faded watercolor drawing of three red poppies sharing a field with pink clover and some blameless little weeds. A honey-colored bee with dreamily closed eyes was climbing a stalk. An aqua-green grasshopper was flying through a fuzzy, failing blue sky, its eyes blissfully shut, its hairy front legs dangling foolishly, its hind legs kicking, exultant, through the air. It was a distorted, feverish little drawing. The colors were all wrong. It made him think of paradise.

He tore it from the book and covered it with a piece of fragile paper so that the scene, veiled by the yellowing tissue haze, became remote and mysterious. He drew five hearts in misshapen lines and senselessly alternating sizes on the bottom of it. He colored them red. He wrote “Voici le temps des assassins” under them.

He carried it to work with him for several days before and after Valentine’s Day. He decided dozens of times to give it to her, and changed his mind every time. He examined it daily, wondering if it was good enough. When he decided it was perfect, he thought perhaps it would be better to keep it in his drawer, where he alone knew it existed for her.

Finally, he said, “I have a valentine for you.”

She pattered around his desk, smiling greedily. “Where is it?”

“In my drawer. I don’t want to give it to you yet.”

“Why not? Valentine’s Day was a week ago. Can’t I have it now?” She put her fingers on his shoulders like soft claws. “Give it to me now.”

When he handed it to her, she hugged him and pressed against him. He giggled and put his arm around her. He sadly let go of his shadow captive.

That night he couldn’t eat his spinach salad. The radish, gaily flowering red and white, was futile enticement. Diane sat across from him, stonily working her jaws. She sat rigidly straight-backed, her throat drawn so taut it looked as if it would be hard for her to swallow. He picked at the salad, turning the clean leaves this way and that. He stared past her, sighing, his dry eyes hot in their sockets.