Лидия Юкнавич - Verge - Stories

Leave the legs for last.

Take the razor up smooth against the slight resistance of stubble, flick the wrist at the top, dip the head into the water, swish it around, then back down to the ankle for the next run. Flesh smooth-appearing in a track through white foam. Do it again. Expose the leg in stripes of skin.

Wash off the excess foam, squeeze aloe and rub briskly between the palms, ahh , warm caress up and down the legs.

Slide the hand in each leg, spread fingers wide, and examine for runs, point one toe and enter the hose, pull slowly up the ankle, the calf, and over the knee to the thigh, pause; same with the other leg, pause; scrunch it inch by inch up the thighs to the balls pushed back up into the cave, to the penis tucked tight between the legs and secured with a thong and over the hip bones and snap the elastic around the waist with thumbs.

Then the pumps and the jewels: red stilettos and rhinestones in the ears, at the neck, and of course on the wrists.

Do not rub from the nose toward the side of your face. Always wipe toward the nose in a horizontal direction.

HIS EYES ARE CLOSED. Wait, no. His eye. Just the one now. He picks up the phone. He dials. His skin is too hot against the headpiece. A woman’s voice says, “Hello,” then he speaks, then she says, “Jackson?” This voice resting him. His heart beating out thank god thank god thank god . She says, “Where are you?” He responds, “Can I see you tonight?” Then he nearly passes out.

He does not know how to explain why he needs to be in the car. He thinks up a hundred absurd errands a day so that he can drive around until dark. Maybe he needs that movement to hold him in place. When he sits inside at home, even the air looks empty. The whole world looks slightly off. As the change is not within him at all, but instead the world has changed its angle of vision, closed in on itself, defocused. Isn’t that the damnedest thing? Perhaps the line of a road is the only thing that will ever make sense to him again.

It makes him horny to drive to Mary’s house. They have never been lovers. They will never be lovers. He doesn’t fuck women. Not that he hasn’t, just that he doesn’t. Mary makes him horny because their way of knowing each other has lasted twenty years. She is a big woman, Amazonian, manlike except that this makes her unusually feminine, in a European way. Because she gives him back rubs that last two days. Because she can’t cook and he cooks for her and it makes her cry to eat. Because they are both neck-deep in their lives and have no idea how to proceed. Because they both ended up in California after swearing not to. Because she will not leave him, ever, did not, in the hospital, slept in a chair, like a woman waiting in a movie. Because she has little scars all over her body from a car accident years ago, little glowing white feathers covering her torso. Because their suffering is stronger than love. Because she will look him in the eye. Because she is the only human he has seen in months who will do that.

THE ORB ITSELF has no surrounding connective tissue. A CONFORMER made of silicone is placed inside the socket following surgery to maintain orbit volume and to help form cul-de-sacs or lid pockets that will hold the eye in place.

HIS DRIVING DOWN her dead end, his hearing the car door shut whack , his feet carrying him down a path he could walk with his eyes closed, his knocking on her door, her letting him in, their kissing, their looking at each other, smiling, then her eyes traveling down his body, then her saying, “My God, look at that!” Their laughing their heads off.

Their eating the pesto and pasta he cooks. Their getting high after dinner and his taking his patch off. Her fingers soft as whispers, his flesh hollow. Their watching videos until three a.m.— Red , White , Blue —and then their falling asleep, tangled bodies on the couch. Her saving his life, him saving hers, and no one else seeing it.

THE COLORED SPOT goes up, under the upper lid upon insertion.

HE DOESN’T WANT to lose his way. That’s why he bought the maps. Six of them, just in case technology fails him. Funny—each one is slightly different from the others. How can that be? You’d think there’d be some kind of consistency, some standard. But he finds a street on one and not another. He finds a bridge on one and not another. He finds sites listed on one and not another.

He’d bought the maps as part of The Plan. The Plan was to drive cross-country, to get back his mojo, his self-worth, to get in the car and reclaim his goddamn self. Mary had heard from her therapist that “healing journeys” were important, and she was going on and on about a possible trip to Europe, and he spit out, “What about a road trip? What if I took myself on a road trip?” And Mary had said, “That’s pretty loaded, Jackson. You sure about being in a car for something like that? Stuck in a car for that long?” And he’d said, “I love cars. I love road trips. I’ve always felt more myself when I’m driving—when I’m inside that movement.” She paused a moment, then said, “Maybe that’s just right. Maybe revising the story in a ritual like that, like driving, would be just the thing.” Then she’d looked him in the eye and said, “Go.”

The Plan was for him to drive from Seattle to California to Arizona to New Mexico to Texas, through the rest of those southern states, all the way to Key West. To drive it without stopping and capture it on film, a frame at a time, to replace the nightmare with something real. In a car not the car that had killed Michael, not the car that had taken his eye, but a new car he would get now. Beyond any of that.

AFTER YOU WASH and rinse your hands, lift the upper lid with the thumb or forefinger of one hand. Next, slide under the upper lid and, while holding the prosthetic in place, pull down on the lower lid.

WAKING UP IN THE NIGHT, cold sweat, like a big fleshy cliché of a self. Did his whole life leak out of the socket that night, or only part of it? His memory bends in on itself like a video stuck on pause. Even when he shuts his eyes as tight as possible, the images continue, perhaps stronger than ever, sometimes so fast he can’t watch, can’t breathe.

In the morning he makes a list of things to pack, even as his mind races ahead:

Boxers ten, jeans four, T-shirts ten, socks ten; sweaters and fleece three, leather jacket one, sunglasses brooks brothers, button-downs gap, running shorts nike, caps two; aftershave, deodorant, electric razor, beard and nose attachments, toothbrush, toothpaste, travel-size baby shampoo, l’occitane conditioner, lotion and bath milk, first aid kit, q-tips; water, scotch single malt five bottles, money, camera, film, eyes.

In the afternoon he packs the car. Mary comes over to help, and afterward, as she waves good-bye from her car, he thinks, She looks like a bird, some great prehistoric bird dipping its wing before taking flight.

In the evening, when it’s cool and the road whispers its blue-black beg, he drives.

DO NOT BE alarmed by tears and secretions. Simply wipe toward the nose with a tissue or warm washcloth. You can also use Johnson’s baby shampoo and Q-tips for cleaning dried secretions from the margins. If thick secretions or excessive tearing occur, call the emergency hotline.