Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

“He still loves you.”

Kevin looked sheepishly to either side, then tucked his head and whispered that I should meet him in a few minutes in Suite 33. He pulled away from me, walked out tersely, head down, obviously shaken. I stood for a dazed moment on the dance floor, then walked back to my table. I tried to decide what I'd say, but it was too hot and my mind wandered. It was a relief to leave the stuffy room and stand in the cooler cowboy-style lobby. The elevator door opened and I got in. In the mirror that covered the walls my face looked like a murderer's, pale with evil resignation. I realized I was supposed to have a gun, that it was stupid to talk to Kevin, that I'd come to kill him. At three I got out and walked the beige-carpeted hallway and knocked on 33. The door opened, Kevin grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside. “This is crazy,” he said.

I sat on one of the double beds. The spreads were deep blue and there was a vase of white roses and a basket of wax fruit on the night table. He was voluptuous with his puffy lips and long thick hair.

“He's obsessed with you still,” I said to Kevin who watched me uneasily, rolling up his sleeves, rattling his cufflinks like dice.

“Bell loves to spend all his time desiring things. It gives him an excuse whenever he fails.” He looked like he might go on, but he shook his head. “I can't have you here,” he said. “It makes me nervous.”

“I'm no threat to you,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” Kevin said, running his hand through his hair.

“I came here to ask you about love.” It sounded so stupid, I looked down while I said it.

“Like I'm some sort of expert?” He shook his head. We were small and ghostly on the TV screen.

“You just married a woman, you must be in love.”

“Bell's ideas poison everything,” he said. “You have to forget you met him. Don't you see how he's miserable, how he wants you to be miserable too?”

I was startled. “How can you say that?”

Kevin walked over to me and sat at the edge of the bed. “You gotta fall into the river. Know what I mean?”

I was touched at this naive advice and told him how once my mother had come into my room in the middle of the night and said that sex was messy, that sperm ran down your legs. He stared, thinking I was crazy, hoping I would leave.

“You must go,” he said. “I cannot help you.” I felt a little sorry for him, just half an hour ago he'd married.

“I'll go if you tell me about the first time with Bell.”

He flushed. “That's private.”

“If you tell me I'll leave,” I said.

“It was in school,” he said.

“And?”

“You'll definitely go?”

I nodded.

He put his hand on his forehead and stared into the gray TV. Everything around him was straight angles; the bed, the nightstand, the chair by the wall. This was hard for him. “I don't remember why but we were the only ones. Bell came over to my desk and asked me to stand. He rubbed his pencil longways back and forth over my penis. Then we snuck out and into the bathroom. He showed me how we could lock ourselves in the stall and balance on the toilet so nobody could see our feet. He put his palms against the wall and let me take him from behind.”

The thought of them suspended — hands, legs, their heads at odds but balanced — reminded me of an atom, of the three-dimensional models I saw in school. And that moment was Bell's first lightning bolt of life, connected even now to his every molecule.

I stood. “I'll be leaving now if you'll kiss me?” He leaned back as if the thought disgusted him, but then he looked at me and said, “You're really on your way out?”

I nodded and his hot mouth was suddenly over mine. I didn't like his teeth, sharp like a rat and his thin lips seemed like they had bones. He pressed his scaly tongue into my mouth. I slipped my hand over his pants, felt his cock tightening, bowing, as Bell had said, to the left. Happy people are the cruelest, I thought. This was the cock Bell wanted in his mouth, up his ass. Kevin stopped kissing me and brushed my hand away from his pants.

“You can't tell where you stop and other people start,” he said. “That's a dangerous quality to have.”

THE DESERT SUNRISE FILLED MY HEAD. THE LIGHT STALKING ME, a sunrise as certain as the end of the world. Mid-afternoon I arrived, parked the car on Polk Street and dropped the keys through the rental office mail slot. Walking up the shady side of Bush I felt like my head was filled with fiberglass. I wanted to see Bell and the futon. I planned to sleep so long and deeply that when I woke, it would be as if from a past life.

Traffic was light on Bush, a rumpled couple just out of bed passed me, and a homeless man checked trash bins for aluminum cans. Like dream fractals, everything echoed my mood: the pattern in the sidewalk, shapes in the clouds, an image in a stranger's eye. Maybe it was the patina of guilt. I'd done something dishonest in going to Kevin's wedding and I wanted to tell Bell. On the corner of Taylor I paused at the light, took in the used-book store and the fire station across from Bell's apartment.

Someone grabbed my arm, and I jumped, turned to see the little man, his eyes bulging under thick glasses.

“I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“I've been busy,” I said blankly, hoping callousness might send him away.

“I know,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Bell doesn't answer the door.”

“He's probably wandered off.”

The little man shook his head. “I would have seen him.”

He was worried. I could see it in his runny eggish eyes, the way he looked spasmodically to Bell's door.

“Do you love him?”

“It's more than we both understand.”

“Have you fucked him?” I asked.

“He wouldn't after I told him, as a child, I put my teddy bear in the oven.”

It was the kind of bad omen that would make perfect sense to Bell.

“What I can't figure,” he said, his face pinched with curiosity, “is what's so special about you? You see, Bell thinks it's much more exciting with men, he feels like a little boy. With women, he's painting a picture, idolizes the image, falls for it, like one falls for a character in a novel.” The little man paused, flipped his head to Bell's building. “Let me tell you your future.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

The little man hunched his shoulders and turned. “Mark my word. I'm never wrong.” He ran down Taylor Street, staying close to the building like a rat.

The sun reflected like fire on the top windows of Bell's building and the bricks turned a peachy pink color. My key slid open the door. The foyer was dark, smelling faintly of roses and garlic. The worn Victorian atmosphere was so appealing after the antiseptic rawness of L.A. There was Indian music coming from the other end of Bell's floor and someone had left a bunch of bags near the garbage chute.

“Bell,” I said, as my key met with the lock and the dead bolt gave. I called his name again, pushed the door open and walked down the hall, passed the bathroom door and the telephone table. The couch, jade plant, even the futon seemed miniaturized, like going back to a childhood home. Standing there, I could tell he wasn't home and hadn't been all day. The bed was made. His calico scallop shells were arranged by size on the windowsill. His altar in order, postcards of cathedrals, glass candle holders. He'd swept, left a pile of dirt, dust balls, hair, lint and pennies. There were no dirty glasses in the sink and he'd put the silverware away in their proper compartments. Even the splattered spaghetti sauce had been wiped from the tiles over the stove.

I took a pillow from the bed and ducked into the closet, sat on Bell's summer bucks, leaned against the side wall. From here I could see the vault of light retreating out the window. When I thought of what Kevin had said, that I couldn't tell the difference between myself and others, I knew he was right. It was a quality my mother had, Madison and Pig too. Most women ended in blurs and fragments, but that wasn't really a bad thing. I remembered how Kevin's jaw clicked and as he stepped away from me I was certain he would hit me. He didn't know that you slept with your lover's past and future lovers and those lovers’ lovers. My hand on his dick angered him because he realized in the midst of the simplicity of his wedding, the clarity of his union, that life was hopelessly complicated.