Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

“You mean porn?”

“Sure, we do some porn. There’s more money for the girls that way. But we do seminude art, as well.” His eyes became more aggrieved. “Do you care what the other girls do?”

I shrugged. Outside the window, electric music corkscrewed through the air. If he hadn’t insulted my boobs, I might’ve tried it out. But I just said bye and left.

Like a cat in the dark, your whisker touched something the wrong way and you backed out. Except sometimes it was a trap baited with something so enticing, you pushed your face in anyway. Once when I was out with my basket, a short man with a square torso said, “Hey, hot shit — you should come work for me.” He bounced a rubber ball on the pavement, caught it, and bounced it again. “I’m a pimp.” His face was like lava turned into cold rock. But inside him, it was still running hot; you could smell it: pride, rage, and shame boiling and ready to spill out his cock and scald you. I stared in fear. He just laughed and bounced his ball; he knew that for somebody what he had was the perfect enticement. The street was full of these enticements, always somebody grabbing you or trying to get something, and us, the girls, proud of our refusals, and sometimes proud that we went ahead with it.

Some of the kids I knew didn’t have parents, or didn’t know them, but most of us did, so barely in the past that it was like they were in the next room. I still felt their breath and the warmth of their bodies, but I so took it for granted, I didn’t know what I was feeling. I had walked out through the gauze veil of the song, not into killing and dying, but into colored lights, hunt and escape. But my parents were still there, like the wishing well and carousel, hidden in shimmering spots. “She’s going to make her way in the world,” said my mother. She stood at the counter, stirring a bright bowl with her brisk arm. She opened a book on her lap, and read a story about a wicked girl who fell down among evil creatures. My father wandered off into his music, but he came back in the cloudy barroom mirror to watch over me. I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing—

I’m finishing up the windows when John comes in, dripping wet and obviously thinking about everything that’s already gone wrong so far today.

“Hey, Allie,” he says, and holds up the box of doughnuts he’s gotten from the grimy take-out store. I climb down from the ladder, making pain noises and exaggerating how hard it is.

“Hey, John. How’s Lonnie?”

“She’s okay.”

“How’s the baby?”

“Cried all night. Lonnie was up and down all night.”

His wife, Lonnie, is a sweet, chunky woman with flabby arms. When she holds their baby, he plays with her flab and he loves it.

John takes off his coat with angry jerks and sets down the doughnuts the same way. He moves like he’s being yelled at by invisible people whom he hates but whom he basically agrees with. He smooths his hair like somebody just yelled, “And look at that hair !” Still smoothing, he turns around in a tight circle, sniffing the air, the contents of his whole head suddenly quivering on the end of his nose. Somebody must’ve just yelled something else. “Alison? Alison, have you been smoking in here?”

“John—”

“You have! Don’t bother to lie! Jesus! How many times do I have to tell you? If you want to kill yourself, do it at home! I know there’s no audience there, but it smells like a cheap motel in here, and the people who come here don’t want to smell that!”

“It smells because I did the windows and tore up my arm.”

“I’m not talking about your damn arm, which wouldn’t hurt if you’d even try to take care of it. I’m talking about smoking in my office, which I’ve—”

“John. John?” A whine comes into my voice, like an animal showing its ass. “I always smoke one cigarette, one, because that’s what it takes to clean the windows. I’d smoke more, but I don’t because—”

“Don’t run that number on me!” He is yelling now, but his eyes are sad and hard. “All I’m asking for is basic respect of my place! Respect and honesty and no bullshit manipulation!” Why is it like this? asks his voice. Why is it like this?

“You don’t know.” I speak quietly, looking down. “You don’t know.” I’m humiliated. He’s angry. That way, we touch together. Tears come into my eyes. I look up; John looks away.

“Just open the window,” he says. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

It really does hurt to open the window, but I don’t say anything. The bush outside is live and wet, a green lung for the sluicing wind and rain. John’s putting out doughnuts and coffee for us. The invisible people are looking away.

A long time ago, John loved me. I never loved him, but I used his friendship, and the using became so comfortable for both of us that we started really being friends. When I lost my looks and had to go on disability, John pitied me and then looked down on me, but that just got fit into the friendship, too. What can’t get fit in is that sometimes even now John looks at me and sees a beautiful girl in a ruined face. It’s broken, with age and pain coming through the cracks, but it’s there, and it pisses him off. It pisses me off, too. When we have these fights and he hears crying and hurt in my voice, it’s a different version of that ruined beauty, except it’s not something he can see, so he can’t think ruined or beauty . He just feels it, like sex when it’s disgusting but you want it anyway. Like his baby plays with the flabby arms, not knowing they’re ugly. I can’t have a baby and we’re not going to fuck, but it’s still in my voice — sex and warm arms mixed with hurt and ugliness, so he can’t separate them. When that happens, it doesn’t matter that I’m not beautiful or even pretty, and he is confused and unhappy.

I always had that, but I didn’t know it until now. It’s the reason somebody once thought I could be a model, the thing they kept trying to photograph and never did. When I was young, my beauty held it in a case that wouldn’t open. Then it broke open. Now that I’m almost fifty, it’s there, so much so that even John feels it without knowing what it is. It’s disgusting to whore it out in a fight over cigarettes, but that’s life.

One night on the street, a small man wearing a red suit bought a yellow rose from me. I remember the color of the rose because I looked down at his feet and saw he had yellow socks on. The rose matched his socks! He said he ran a modeling agency and that I could be a model. He handed me a card with gold lettering on it. I took it, but I kept staring at his eyes; his expression was like somebody giving his hand to an animal so it could sniff, and holding back the other. He said, “Very nice.” He put the flower back in my basket and walked away like he was tossing and catching a coin, like the pimp bouncing his ball, except he didn’t have anything to bounce. The card said “Carson Models, Gregory Carson.”

Carson Models was up a staircase between store windows full of cheap sassy clothes and glaring sun. I noticed a bag of shocking pink fur with a smooth gold clasp, and then ran up the cool stairway. Gregory Carson was waiting for me with a photographer who had a large head and the eyes of a person looking from far away at terrible, beautiful things. He took my hand and looked at me. His name was John. He was the only other person there because it was Saturday; Gregory Carson had wanted me to come on a weekend so that he could give me his full attention.

Gregory Carson said the same thing about my boobs as the fat man, but not right away. First, we drank wine while John set up his camera. Gregory paced, as if he could barely contain his excitement. He talked about how important a model’s personality was. He talked about sending me to Paris. When I asked what Paris was like, he cried, “You’re going to find out!” and leapt straight up and did a jig, like a chipmunk scrambling in the air. I glanced at John. He looked like a cardboard display of a friendly person. Gregory went into a corner and flicked a switch; music came on. It was a popular song with a hot liquid voice. “Ossifier,” it sang. “Love’s desire. High and higher.”