Nicholson Baker: Vox

“Mm-hmm?”

“No, that’s it, I shot my wad getting the two of you face-to-face.”

“No! You’re bailing out right there? Did you really shoot your wad, or you mean figuratively?”

“At the moment, my true wad could not be farther from shooting. It is work getting the two of you together. I feel that any second I’m going to misstep in telling this. It’s very stressful.”

“Now listen,” she said. “Harvey leaves, slamming the door, so the sign says closed, and I, me, I am left, abandoned right in the middle of things by Harvey, and I’m standing there in the shop with the taciturn and very rich guy Forky, Forky Pigtail, who’s holding the necklace that I made in his big knuckly fingers. He sits down on a step stool, he looks down at the necklace, looks up at me. What does he do? ”

“He says, ‘I really do have to see what it looks like on someone before I know whether it’s something I want.’ And you look down at your shirt with the green and black stars and you sort of pluck at it and smile and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not wearing the clothes for that piece. It’s really an evening piece, for a low-cut dress.’ With your finger you trace the ideal curve of the neckline of the dress. And Fork says, ‘Then unbutton your shirt.’ Well, what can you do? You unbutton the top three buttons of your shirt. With each button, you feel the fabric shift slightly against your collarbone. Fork stands up, letting the necklace dangle from his left hand, and, to your astonishment, he begins unbuttoning the buttons of his fly. Because of course he’s a button-fly kind of guy. He unbuttons three buttons. The two of you are still about ten feet apart. You fold your shirt down, trying to make it follow the line of the dress that you should be wearing to wear the necklace, but looking down at yourself you see that you really need to undo one more button, and you dart a glance at him — has he reached the same conclusion? Oh no, he has! He is shaking his head. He says, ‘I think really you’ll need to go down one more in order to wear your necklace.’ So you unbutton one more button, and he responds by unbuttoning the last button of his fly. He doesn’t do anything, he doesn’t reach in, you almost couldn’t tell that his fly was undone, if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve just seen him undo it. Oh, he is a bold bastard! What is he up to? He takes the necklace in both his hands, by both ends, and he shakes it, indicating for you to walk toward him, which you do. When you are standing close to him, he says, ‘l think it’ll be easier if you turn around. Then I’ll be able to see the clasp.’ So you turn around, and you see this necklace, your own handiwork, descend very slowly in front of your face, and you feel the dangly elements just touch your skin and you try to hold your shirt so it doesn’t get in the way, but instead of doing the clasp, he lowers the necklace further and lets it accommodate itself to your breasts, and you hear him say, thoughtfully, ‘Hmm, no, I really think the shirt has to come olf entirely before I can evaluate this necklace. The green and black stars clash with the stones.’ So you unbutton the shirt completely and let it fall off your arms. You’re wearing a black cotton undershirty thing, with very thin shoulder straps. Very gently he drags your piece of jewelry up again, against you, and then finally he fastens it, holding the ends away from your neck so that his hands hardly touch you. You look down at it. It’s hard to tell, but you think it looks kind of beautiful. Your nipples are visible through the black material. He’s silent behind you. You say, ‘Don’t you want to see it now?’ But he says, ‘Wait, let me just do something.’ And you hear a slight scrape of the step stool against the floor, and you hear his shoes on the steps, and then you hear some rustling, and then a very soft rhythmic sound, the sound of the sleeve of his suit jacket making repeated contact with one side of the jacket itself, and, as the speed of the rhythm increases slightly, you hear every once in a while a little sort of plick or click, a wet little sound, and you know exactly what he’s doing, and you hear his voice, with a bit of strain in it, say, ‘I think I’m ready to see it now.’ And you turn, and there he is, on the top step of this little stool, with his cock and both balls pulled out of his pants, and with each pull he makes on his cock you can see the skin pull up slightly on his balls. I mean is this guy for real? And you touch your shoulders with your hands, and you pull the straps of your black undershirt down, and you pull it down around your waist, so your breasts are right there, out, and now you take hold of your breasts, your frans, and you lift them, so that each of the two side stones of your necklace touches a nipple, and by moving your breasts back and forth, you move your nipples, which are hard, back and forth under the two cool dangly stones, and you see him stroking faster and faster, he’s starting to get the about-to-come expression, and you smile at him and move a step closer, so your breasts and your silver necklace and your collarbone are ready for him, and then you look straight at him and you say, ‘Well, what do you think? Do you like it? As you see, it’s really an evening piece.’ And then, stroking very fast, he bends his legs slightly and then straightens them and he goes ‘Ooh!’ and then he comes in a hot mess all over your art.”

There was a pause. She said, “Does he buy the necklace or does he just take his fixed fork and go home?”

“I don’t know. I assume he takes the paper towel that he’d wrapped his fork in and uses it to wipe you off and wipe off your necklace and then he buys it and gives it to you.”

“That’s good. He sounds like an honorable sort. A bit precipitate maybe. Um — would you excuse me for a second?”

“Sure.”

“I just — my mouth’s dry — I want to get some more—”

“Sure,” he said.

There was a long pause. She returned.

“It’s funny that you cast me as an arts-and-craftsy type,” she said.

“Not aggressively arts-and-craftsy. Are you?”

“Well, no. I’m really not, I don’t think. Do you have a ponytail?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then do you have an old-world smell?”

“I don’t think that would be the word for it.”

“I wonder what your smell is.”

“I’ve been told I smell like a Conté crayon,” he said.

“Hm.”

“Or I guess it was that I smelled like what a Conté crayon would smell like if it had a smell.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” she said. “Of course I have no idea what you’re talking about. But no, you know what your story reminded me of, when I was in the kitchen just now?”

“What?”

“I was in a museum in Rome with my mother, and we passed a statue that had all these discolorations on it, a nice statue of a woman, and my mother pointed to a sort of mottled area and she shook her head and said, ‘You see? It’s so realistic that men feel they have to …’ She didn’t explain. And I don’t know now if she was serious or not. I was — I guess I was eighteen. I thought, oh, okay, in churches in Italy, people wear down the toes of the statues of popes by touching them so much, and in museums in Italy, men come on the statues of women.”

“Yes,” he said, “I think I do remember coming on that statue. It’s all a blur, though. There were so many statues in those years.”

“Do you, as they say, like to travel?” she asked.

“You mean get in a plane and fly somewhere for recreation? No. I’ve never been to Rome. I spend my vacation money in more important ways.”

“Like this call.”

“That’s right. Now tell me, though, really, when your mother pointed out that statue, was it faintly arousing?”