Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

“Yeah, she did it. He spent the whole day telling her she was bloated and fat. ‘The lips are too thin, André. Can you work with that? And while you’re at it, do something about those bags under the eyes.’ ”

“Pricks like that should just be killed,” says Karl with feeling.

“I’ll bet she was making a lot more than Karl is.” Joanne’s voice is careful and pointed. She pours the boiling water carefully. “And I’ll bet she could’ve said no and not gotten fired.”

“Yeah,” says Karl. “It’s not the same. But I still think the photographer should be killed. Along with—”

“I’m just saying, if you want to talk about disrespect …” I trail off. Joanne doesn’t like it when I tell stories like this. She thinks I’m acting dramatic and victimized. But that’s not how I feel. I feel like the bright past is coming through the gray present and I want to look at it one more time.

“My God!” cried Alex, throwing another Polaroid on the ground. “Can’t you do better than that? Do you even know what fucking is?” I was drinking orange soda and giggling with a stylist. The shiny little picture flapped across the sand and got caught in some weeds near my feet. Lisa’s mouth quivered. She was thin-lipped for a model. I tipped my head back to drink more soda and to look at the deep and bright blue sky.

“I still think you should try talking to him.” Joanne’s tuned into Karl. “Use the skills we went over. Always talk in terms of ‘I.’ Like, ‘When you had me carry those bags, it made me feel—’ ”

Trisha’s laughter sails into the room with a cloud of TV noise. They’re playing with the channel changer. Zip — voices — zip — music — gray buzz — zip. Their laughter rolls together with the electronic babble in a dissolving ball of sound. Flesh and electricity gather and disperse.

“Okay.” Alex sighed. “Look. We’re going to be shooting from the waist up only. Just put your hand down your pants and make yourself feel good.” One of the Greeks smiled nervously at me and kicked a little sand over my foot. The stylist threw me a hot smirk. Lisa’s mouth was twisted with embarrassment. My heart beat. Tears shone on her face. I frowned and shook sand off my foot. “You haven’t got the lips,” yelled Alex, “so use your eyes! You’ve got the eyes! Use them!”

It was disrespect. But it was something else, too — something I would not be able to explain to Karl or Joanne. Afterward, we all went out for dinner and everybody was nice to Lisa. She sat there, tense and hunched under the niceness. The tension only heightened the beauty of her huge eyes and delicate movements. We ate lamb and sardines, tomatoes dripping with oil. We were sitting on an outdoor patio and the men went to piss in the darkness outside the strung ring of colored lights. It was warm. We could smell one another’s sweat mingled with food and flowers. Alex sat across from Lisa. His face was naked and strange. He said something in a low voice, and for an instant her spirit showed itself — a bright orange pistil in a white flower. “There’s a lady,” he said, and his voice was warm.

Joanne puts her cigarette to her lips. Karl eats his cereal. His rage is quiet. His hurt is quiet. I have aspirin and codeine with my tea. Rain spatters the roof. We sit connected in a triangle. On television, haunted music tiptoes about. Animals bellow. Humans mutter. Comedy music bumps and stumbles. A voice says, “We are here to be the eyes and ears of God.”

I think of Drew’s room of furniture. Some of it he’ll sell, but most of it will build up in that room and spread out through the house. He’s building onto himself and out into the world at the same time. His furniture is for use. But whether anyone uses it or not, each piece adds to the huge place he’s building inside — a place where the physical laws don’t apply, where you can sit in orange flame and be okay. He’s using physical tools to describe this place. He’s leaving physical markers.

One night when I was here, I was alone in the kitchen for a minute and Drew came up behind and pressed against me. I could hear Joanne in the living room, talking to Karl over emergency music on the TV. Fear, pain, excitement, said the music. Sorrow, secret sorrow. We were all high on pot. I was standing at the counter, pouring apple juice. He came in and put one hand on my hip and one arm around my chest, as though to hold me steady. He crouched a little and pressed against me. He put his cheek against the side of my head. Joanne laughed in the next room. For a second, her laugh blended with his touch and I felt held by it. He pressed against my butt. I felt that soft noise feeling all through his body, insistent, warm, ardent, like a snuffling bear at a berry bush. His cheek against me ardent, too. Respecting the bush: May I? Before I knew it, Yes shot down my spine and lifted my tailbone slightly. Ossifier, love’s desire . But silent now, huge and soft with sadness. I put my hand on his. “Stop,” I said. “We can’t.” He held me long enough for me to feel his ardor turn to embarrassment, then sadness, then nothing. He let go, coughed, and opened the refrigerator. I went into the living room. A grim woman flew through gray traffic on a motorcycle. Triumph, said the music. Grim, lonely triumph flying through space. I imagined letting the feeling continue, letting it bend me forward. Open the door to the place where the huge things are. Let him stick it in. He sat far away from me, face blank, cheeks flushed. What would it have been like to open that door again? I might’ve done it, except for Joanne.

Karl puts his dish in the sink and disappears. Joanne takes my wet shoes and socks and puts them in the dryer off the kitchen. Gives me a pair of Drew’s socks to wear. We make lunch — sandwiches and boiled eggs and carrots cut into neat strips. The girls run back in, clamoring for carrots and animal crackers. They sit and draw red animals, whole furious sheets of them. My shoes thud in the dryer. Roommate Nate comes out of his basement room in a pajama top and a cowboy hat. He works the night shift in the emergency room and he’s training to be a fireman. He walks into the kitchen singing, “Move it in, pull it out, stick it back, and waggle it about, Disco Warthog!”

“One,” says Joanne, “quit singing dirty songs. Two—”

The girls crowd around him with their drawings.

“ ‘Disco Warthog,’ ” says Nate, pouring himself a cup of coffee, “is derived from the classic ‘Disco Lady,’ and is therefore not a dirty song.”

“Nate,” says Trisha, looking up, “warthogs are dirty. They’re pigs with teeth!”

“Two. Could you and the girls go into the living room so I can visit with Alison?”

Nate leads the girls from the room, coffee cup aloft. “Let’s go be clean lady warthogs!”

“And no disco whatever!” shouts Joanne. She turns to me and smiles.

Joanne is making a place inside her, too. She doesn’t do it physically like her husband. She does it with thoughts and words. We move around the kitchen, and I can feel the building going on. She’s talking about people we know at the support group. She’s talking about a woman with hepatitis named Karen, who is superpissed about people who help her when she doesn’t want their help. People who lecture her about her smoking and her soothing double vodkas at night, who harangue her about everything from interferon to Bach flower remedies, including yoga, root vegetables, and salmon. “ ‘The worst thing isn’t even being sick.’ ” Joanne imitates Karen’s bitter, husky whine, so heavy, it’s almost sensual. “ ‘The worst thing is having some yoga-class, health food — eating, New Age therapist — going prick jam you about being a junkie. And like’ ”—with fine, hoarse disdain—“ ‘I can afford salmon. Fuck you!’ ” We laugh because Karen is royal, with her long dyed black hair and jewelry, her harsh wild eyes with their ring of green around the gray. We laugh because she’s an asshole. We also laugh because we know what she means about the health pricks, going to gyms, sitting in hot tubs, taking their stinking vitamins and antidepressants. “ ‘Tellin’ me what I need to do, what to eat, what to think about before I go to bed at night — because everybody has to be fucking perfect like they think they are. Because the reality that they can’t control it, that people get sick no matter what they do, scares the shit out of them.’ ”