Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

We met for champagne and omelettes in a sunny bistro with bright-colored cars honking outside. He talked about the Rolling Stones and his six-year-old daughter, after whom he had named the agency Céleste. He asked if I wanted children. I said, “No.” He grabbed my nose between two knuckles and squeezed it. The omelettes came heaped on white plates with blanched asparagus. He hadn’t kissed me yet. He spread his slim legs and tucked a cloth napkin into his shirt with an air of appetite. I wanted badly to touch him. Inside its daintiness, the asparagus was acrid and deep. He said, “The first thing we need to do is get you a Swiss bank account. All the smart girls have one. First, you don’t have to pay taxes that way. Then they invest it for you. Your money will double, triple. You should see!” I loved him and he obviously loved me. Love like in the James Bond movies, where the beautiful sexy girl loves James but tries to kill him anyway. We would love each other for a while and then part. Years later, I would ride down the street in a fancy car. I’d see Alain and he’d see me. I’d smile on my way past. Sexy spy music rubbed my ear like a tongue; it rubbed my crotch, too. We finished quickly and went to my new apartment.

My new apartment had high ceilings and polished wooden floors. I entered it like Freddie leaping naked into turds. There was a sunken marble tub and a chandelier and a glass case of obscene figurines. There was a black velvet couch with a carved ivory back. I sat on it, smiling and trembling. Spy music blared. He knelt and took my hips in both hands. Brightness poured through his eyes in hot little pieces. I followed with my own eyes, thinking if I could stop one little piece and see what it was, I would find a whole world. But he never let one stop. He just showed glimpses. He knew that I saw this — not with my mind, but with my senses. I couldn’t answer him because I was not his equal. But I could see it and he appreciated that. For just a moment, I saw something in his eye stop. It was like a window opening into space. It was dark and cold. Burning meteors fell in a bright, endless shower. He said, “Are you big shit? Or just cute little shit?” His voice was wondering and tender. The window closed. “Big or little?”

When we got to know each other better, we played like dogs, rolling and growling, pretending to bite. We’d make faces and chase each other around naked. If somebody knocked over a lamp or a pricey vase, it was okay. He’d caper and sing dirty French songs. I taught him “The worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.” He liked that a lot. He sang it, panted it while we were doing the “elephant fuck”—him holding my legs up from behind and me walking on my hands.

But when that was over, he’d be on the phone, pacing around naked, talking business and licking coke off his fingers. Someone would call and offer me a job and Alain would say, “No, not available.” I would say, “I am too available!” He would say, “Shut up and wait!” They’d call back and offer twice as much money. He’d be happy and then he’d start calling around to check and see what people were saying about him. If anyone had said anything bad, he’d call around again and start plotting to get them back. “Blood will pour from his anus!” he’d say. I’d sit curled up in my white silk robe with the black dragons on it, smoking.

In the office, we had to pretend we weren’t lovers. That was okay. I was a secret agent. I was an a-s-s-h-o-l-e. I saw his girlfriend with him at nightclubs, because we all went out together — I sat at their table with many other girls. She was stunning in magazines, but in person I thought she looked old. She had a long nose and a long tooth, and when she crossed her legs, her foot stuck out at a funny angle. But she was clever, I could see. She might have known about me. She’d run her eye over the table of girls and sometimes it would linger on me. She’d lean into him, sardonic and whispering. He’d laugh and look away, his eyes always moving and glittering.

I’d see René, too. He was always with another girl. Sometimes he’d come by the table to talk to Alain. He’d look at me and nod, a little bit of feeling for me still. His girl would blink and look around, scratch her arm. Papillon, pee, pee, pee . It was sad, but I was driving past.

Once, I asked René why he’d picked me up at the airport when he didn’t know who I was. He said, “I knew who you were.” And he had. He knew I would get into his car, and he knew I would go home with him. He knew I had a spider mouth, too. He knew that before I did. I couldn’t see it because I was young and my lips were full and beautiful. But it was there.

The sidewalk climbs a hill. At the top, I see more hills, sky and trees. There is wind and the trees move with it, like it and they are part of the same body, breathing in and out; the wind sending, they receiving, passing it down into the ground. Joanne’s house is at the bottom of the hill, a shambling one-story with a walkway lined with rocks painted by children. The garage is open, with work things and radio music pouring out. Joanne’s husband, Drew, builds furniture and does odd repairs. He sometimes hires street people to help him. They are guys he’s met at the men’s shelter next to the church where the support group meets. He meets them standing outside for smokes. They come up to him for cigarettes, but they stand talking because Drew is like a warm stove of manness. He’s huge, with a chest and back like an old brick wall on legs, a grumbling furnace stomach, and small thoughtful eyes in a fleshy red face. The intelligence in his eyes is warm, but it’s not the love warmth of the heart. It’s from the liver and stomach and glands, the busy warmth of function. He’s slow to talk and he says “uhhhh” a lot. It doesn’t make him sound stupid. It makes it seem like his thoughts are physical truths that have to come in noise form before he can get them into words.

Most of the guys he asks to work for him are okay. They’re ex-junkies and fuckups, but they want to do better. Even so, their presence sometimes pisses the neighbors off. They come over to complain, and there’s Drew: a wall with a furnace stomach and benevolent eyes looking out of a fleshy face. They’ll talk to him about these unsafe people, these sad, ragged people appearing to bang around with hammers and wander the sidewalks. Drew will look into space and go, “Uhhh.” There’ll be a silence. Then Drew will explain why these men are okay. He’ll point to a piece of work and say, “This man did that; that man did this. I need help; they can help.” He’ll make more “uhhh” noises. I believe it’s the noises that get people. Takes them out of the world of words into practical thoughts: Things need to get built. Men need to earn. Neighbors have to be decent. The neighbors walk away confused, like they don’t know what has happened.

A guy named Jerry is in the garage now, working. He looks high. He looks beat-up, worse than Freddie, beat-up inside and out. He looks like he still has goodness but that it doesn’t help much. He looks like somebody wandering in a dark maze, clutching his little bit of goodness, knowing it’s all he’s got but not remembering what it is or how to use it. His body is empty, his face dull and numb. His forehead is a big soft knot of puzzlement. His puzzlement gives him just enough to keep him going; his puzzlement is where he’s still alive. He’s refinishing a chest of drawers. It looks like he’s doing a pretty good job. I greet him. “Hey, Alison,” he says. “Drew ain’t home. Joanne is, though.”

He doesn’t look at me when he talks, but he sees me. It’s like he’s got an extrasensory system built into the side of his body. A lot of street people have this. So do a lot of fashion people. I stand there a minute, listening to the rap song coming out of the radio. A soprano voice peels out of the song, a flying red sound that ripples through the beat, then disappears under it. Somebody sampled the “Habanera” from Carmen .