Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

I couldn’t do anything about that atrocity, but, I told myself, I could do something about Justine Shade; my wavering resolve was strong again as I bore down upon Charles Street.

I was at first glad to discover that 33 Charles was only a few houses down the block, but as I entered the small building, I found myself wishing it had been farther away so that I would have more time to prepare myself for the encounter. I stood before the buzzers wiping my sweating hands on my dress in blank anxiety until I remembered my strategy: first push her buzzer to find out if she was home. Easy enough I thought. I almost cried out in alarm when the device buzzed back. I was not expecting that; surely she wouldn’t be stupid enough to admit anyone who buzzed her from the street. To make sure I pressed the button again. Again I was startled by an even more immediate response. I stared at the door. What if she was expecting a friend and thought that I was that friend? That would mean the friend could arrive in the middle of my scene and cause awkwardness. Then I realized that such an occurrence would cause all the more embarrassment for Justine, would mar her social plan. The door buzzed a third time, unprovoked. I shoved it open and began to climb the stairs, my determination advancing and receding. According to the mailbox she was on the fifth floor, and I tried to take advantage of the long walk to rehearse the outraged speech I’d planned. I panted as I climbed, and the panting fed my sense of extremity and imminent crisis. “And then,” I whispered between my teeth, “then you have the nerve to patronize a thinker who—”

Like a jack-in-the-box, her door popped open before I’d reached the landing, a pale, mocking face peeked round its corner. Leering, goading, apparently expecting me! I lunged, I gained the apartment, I knocked the face to the floor! “You bitch!” I yelled.

Victorious, I shut the door behind me. Then I blinked. Embarrassment prickled my face. Before me lay sprawled a naked ratty-looking young man slowly propping himself up on his elbows, a psychotic smile infecting his face. His eyes traveled up and down my body with such aggressive lewdness that I felt like stepping backwards. He spoke to the corner of the room.

“Hey,” he asked it, “who’s the tub o’ lard?”

I followed his gaze, and the air began to ripple like water. Justine Shade lay naked on her bed, her hands and feet tied to its corners, her head raised, her wild mascara-smeared eyes staring at me with utter incomprehension. She dropped her head, muttered incoherently, then raised her head again. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked.

“Don’t tell me,” said the man. “It’s one of your diesel dyke girlfriends.”

“Eat shit,” said Justine.

I saw marks on her thighs and breasts, and dried blood on her lips. My voice came mechanically out of my throat. “I came because of that. thing you published in Urban Vision , that’s what I’m doing here.” I used the words as if they could insulate me from the scene before me. I realized I should turn and walk out of whatever this was, but I was transfixed by Justine’s raised face. Her skin was so red it could have been scalded, her forehead was almost contorted with tension while her lower face was weirdly lax, her eyes were like terrified animals bolting in every direction and finding no release. She looked both inhuman and shockingly human. But when she spoke, her voice and words were clipped, flat, almost rebuking.

“Dorothy,” she said, “this is really not the time to discuss it. Why don’t you call me later?”

The man rose from the floor into a squatting position. “Why don’t you eat her pussy?” he suggested conversationally. “I’ll watch.”

Justine spoke again, her voice even more absurdly proper. “Actually,” she said, “now that you’re here, could you untie me? I have to go to the bathroom and this idiot”—she indicated the man with a head gesture—“has gone completely off the deep end.”

Her voice held a tea party in the garden while a child was murdered in the house. I could not hear her in her voice or see her in her face and for a moment my contempt for her was almost hatred.

The man stood up. “Are you mad at her?” he said. “Maybe you’d like to whip her?” He took a whip from a small table and held it out to me. He was close enough for me to smell the liquor evaporating from his skin, to feel the aggression crackling around him with the electrical force of a bomb. I could feel it pressing around my head and body, wanting to get into me. He stepped closer. I stepped towards the door. “Get away from me,” I said. “Just get the hell away from me.” My hand was on the doorknob.

“Dorothy,” said Justine. “Please.”

The brittle control of her voice cracked and I heard her. I looked and saw the strange, serious woman who had come to ask me about Anna Granite. She was desolate and ashamed. My heart opened with a quick, painful movement. I moved swiftly towards her.

The man stepped in front of me and put his hands on me. I pushed him away. He stepped in front of me again. I pushed him. He leaned into my face and started talking to me. His voice coiled round me like a snake. My body stiffened with fear. He put his hands on my breasts and hurt me. And I hit him. His hands flew off my body as he reeled backward, clutching his bleeding mouth; he wavered and fell, banging a skinny hip on a little table. His ferocity fell in pieces around him, and he crouched, looking at me with a slippery grin. He started to say something, but I didn’t give him a chance. I kicked him first, squarely in the chin, and then he got up and then I hit him again. It was a terrifying sensation, my fists beating his face, my foot slamming his belly and the knuckles of his hands as he clutched his naked little prick. He hit back, but he was weak and drunk and I could barely feel it. I got his hair in my fist and propelled him to the door, kicking his tailbone to encourage his scuttling cooperation. With my free hand I opened the door, kicked him into the hall, slammed the door, and locked it. My hands were trembling. He had torn my dress and bloodied my lip. My legs were trembling. My whole body was trembling. I felt as if my blood would burst from me. I felt my face with both hands, trying to make myself come back again. I was interrupted by a noise from the bed. I looked up. Justine was wriggling against her bonds. “Hurry!” she said. “I’m going to throw up!”

Quickly, I went to her and began to untie her. “Are you all right?” I asked idiotically.

“Just a minute,” she gasped.

I freed her and she immediately bounded towards the bathroom, the flesh of her scarred backside jiggling urgently. Outside, the man began to pound on the door with furious vigor.

I sat gingerly on the edge of the grossly rumpled bed and listened to the pounding. The door jumped and shuddered on its hinges, but it held. The man began to yell and curse, displaying a good deal more focus and force than he had a moment ago. I yelled at him to go away. Then I remembered that his clothes were in the room and he couldn’t go away. I didn’t know what to do. If I opened the door, he could come in full of murderous sobriety and rage; he could attack me and choke me to death. He was, after all, a man and, for all his puny size, possessed of testosterone and the other mysterious chemical and hormonal forces that goad that sex to kill, rape, and commit crimes of horrific sadism; I had simply gotten the drop on him. I felt afraid, more so than when he had been in the room. I thought of calling the police, but it was possible that if they appeared he would charge me with assault — and he had a witness, the unpredictable, perverted Justine Shade who was at the moment emitting unpleasant bodily noises from behind the bathroom door, of no help to me at all.