Jeff Jackson - Mira Corpora

The body nods. The woman seems to be awaiting some reply, but it isn’t sure how to respond to her look. After a moment, it says: “Thank you.”

She turns toward the body. For the first time, her eyes seem to register how it is perfectly nude. Its smooth cock and balls have begun to shrink in the chill breeze. Its raw elbows and splayed feet quiver ever so slightly. Its otherwise unblemished skin is crisscrossed with indentations from the strands of miniature light bulbs, forming traces of a ghostly treasure map. “Don’t be afraid,” the woman says softly. “I’m going to help you get out of here.”

The body pays no attention to her words. It’s fixated on her facial expression, which has done a weird somersault now that they’re sitting together on the black mattress. Some subset of emotions is imploding behind her eyes. She stutters something but the syllables are still-born. Her pinky traces the pointy vertebrae down the body’s back, as if deciphering a coded message in Braille. She leans over and kisses the body on the mouth.

When their tongues touch, the woman jumps back. She exaggeratedly wipes her mouth with the hem of her wool sweater. Then she spits in the body’s face. A thick gob lands between its eyebrows and slaloms down the bridge of its nose. Traces of her cherry gloss are smudged on its puffy lips. “Little pervert,” she hisses. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The body betrays no sign of emotion. The blankness of its features is so pure that it seems prepared to reflect this emptiness indefinitely. But then it does something surprising. It licks the traces of saliva from the tip of its nose and says, “I’m sorry.”

The woman’s mascara-framed eyes flood with dark tears. Her tiny hands cover her face so only a penumbra of frizzy brown hair remains visible. She speaks in choked and cautious tones, as if she has a baby bird cradled inside her mouth. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” she whispers. “You’re just a child. I have my own children who aren’t much older than you.” Her voice splinters into silence. She’s drunk enough to be undone by her own revelation.

There are voices outside. Squeals of laughter and drifting catcalls break through the hum of the avenue below. It’s the partygoers returning from their sightseeing expedition. Someone retches the contents of their stomach onto the stoop. Gert-Jan hums the half-remembered chorus of a German football chant. The woman grips the body’s shoulders. “There’s not much time,” she says. “Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you.”

She puts her mouth next to the body’s ear and whispers a breathless litany of directions to follow, street addresses, house descriptions, people’s names, pager digits. There’s a heartfelt urgency to this information that confuses the body. “Remember this,” the woman says. “And as soon as there’s an opportunity to get away, you follow these instructions.”

The body’s expression remains fixed, but signs of excitement surface in its pores. A tiny tadpole-shaped muscle in its forehead begins to beat, like a second heart. The woman repeats the information: the numbers of safe houses, the names of benefactors, the paths of escape. It’s impossible to tell how much the body is absorbing, but its lips move ever so slightly, as if trying to repeat the syllables.

The partygoers tramp into the old brownstone. The floor reverberates from the vibrations of slammed doors and stamping feet. The mingled voices form a distinct but undifferentiated din. Someone in the living room switches on the stereo and a dramatic burst of strings and wailing vox spills from the speakers. An aria, mid-flight. The music could be a cue. A few seconds later, Gert-Jan bursts through the bedroom door. He has a fail-safe radar for trouble.

Gert-Jan’s eyes flit between the open window and Naomi’s conspiratorial posture. “Here is a disappointment,” he says. Two partygoers grab the woman under the armpits and drag her from the room. Her shoes plow useless ruts in the carpet, unable to slow her exit. Between muffled sobs, she shouts out phone numbers and street names.

Gert-Jan locks the bedroom door. He looks at the body with a charged expression that it has as much chance of solving as a differential equation. The body instinctively cowers deeper into the mattress. Its sunken spaniel eyes blink furiously. It suddenly appears aware of its nakedness and cups both hands over its shriveled genitals. It tries to summon the words to communicate its emotions, but they surface as mere flecks of foam.

The body’s teeth chatter. Gert-Jan shuts the window. He wraps the strand of Christmas lights around the body’s shoulders like a shawl. The party rages on below. Bursts of drunken laughter and throbbing music. “It’s okay,” Gert-Jan soothes. “I know you’re a good boy. I know you weren’t listening to any of her nonsense.”

He leans over and whispers in the body’s ear. At first, the body believes he’s reciting some endearment in German. But soon it realizes these are purely invented syllables. The stream of intimate gibberish begins to erase the woman’s instructions, as if the idea of escape is an elaborate joke, as if every word eventually means the exact same thing. Gert-Jan presses his lips closer. The whispering continues. It’s as if I’m not even here.

I’m dreaming upside down. I mean, I’m upside down and dreaming. My feet are propped at the head of the bed and the sheets twist in whorls around my ankles. My naked body twitches ever so slightly. Are my eyelids fluttering? It looks like. If you could crawl behind them, you would find yourself in the middle of a grassy field at night. The moon shines brightly overhead. A lone orange tree stands in the distance. A warm breeze tickles the undersides of its leaves so that orbs of fruit can be seen glistening on its branches. They’re ripe for the taking. And where am I in this dream? Lying in the grass and contemplating distant constellations. Content to be a bystander, even in my own imagination.

My eyelids definitely flutter this time. Some bubble of consciousness ripples its way to the surface. I roll over and groan. Reptile-brain tells me to yawn. I stretch the hinges of my jaw. Reptile-brain tells me to open my eyes. I make little slits of them. From the bruise-colored light filtering through the window, it must be some early hour of the morning. The shadows in the bedroom slowly coalesce into familiar shapes. The cramped apartment is eerily silent.

Reptile-brain tells me to finger my crotch. It’s a little crusty. I start to feel guilty about something from last night. Not totally sure what it is yet. Still I feel bad about it. Reptile-brain tells me to sit up. Immediately the back of my neck begins to tingle. There’s somebody else in the bed. An indistinct figure is heaped under the patchwork quilt adorned with sailboats. A small foot sticks out from under the frayed fabric.

I can’t recall anything about its owner. The foot’s chipped toenails are painted green, probably some sort of clue. Reptile-brain tells me to look closer. I take another peek at the body. It’s asleep, probably. Completely still, certainly. There’s another option, but I refuse to consider it. I don’t want to know. There’s probably a good reason for not wanting to know, but I don’t want to know that either.

Instead, I stare at the half-drunk glass of soda. The fluid is flat, all the bubbles gone, wherever bubbles go when they’re no more. An old cigarette butt lies curled at the bottom of the glass, immersed in the dead amber liquid. It looks larval. The ashy black tip resembles a tail dropping spores. This glass of soda is suddenly and truly the most fascinating object I have ever seen. Or to put it another way: It’s the one object in this room that I can deal with, the only one seemingly free of unsettling associations. I stare at the glass for a full five minutes.