Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. I’d walk to my room, lie down, and drool.”

Sasha laughed. “What about typing? You could be a typist. I mean… uh… a secretary!”

“Do they even exist anymore?”

“Yeah I think so.”

“I can’t work in an office. I suck at that stuff.”

“So fake it.”

“I guess I could.” Cory’s gaze hovered over the limp strands of a deserted spider’s web in the window frame. “But every time you succeed in looking normal in an area where you’re not, something inside you deadens.” She faced Sasha with her violet lips and teeth. “What I mean is that you don’t succeed in pulling the wool over someone’s eyes without pulling the wool over your own… your subconscious goes to the service of public consciousness.”

“Then what?”

“You go crazy.”

“Jeez.”

Cory rubbed her nose. A few different species of sadness were kicking around in her gut now, joining forces. “Every time I consider doing something I don’t want to do, I just remember that I’m going to die.”

“God, you say it like there are numbers on the wall.”

“There are .” Cory returned her gaze to the spiderweb, which swayed in the muggy breeze like an underwater plant. “I was thinking I could get a live cam in here. People could jerk off to me lying around eating cereal and stuff.”

“Who would jerk off to that?”

“People’ll jerk off to anything.”

Sasha stared. She couldn’t argue with that.

“What choice do I have?”

“ Hey. It’s gonna be alright. I promise.”

“Please. I’m almost a whore and everyone knows it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“No.” Sasha leaned on her side and looked Cory in the eye. “I believe in you.”

“Why?”

“It just seems worth it.”

Cory could’ve smiled or sobbed but did neither. “Am I a needy person?”

“Yes.”

“Am I the neediest person in your life?”

“No. You’re just the most willing to express it.”

Cory smiled. She sat up and noticed her popsicle stick on the bed by her leg. “I just had a popsicle blackout.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t remember the end of it.”

Sasha bucked with a little laugh. Then a breeze came through the window and they both went limp. It was so good.

Frances was fifty-nine and Peanut was twenty-five, and because of this they were often distracted by the looks of others in public. Usually people assumed Frances was Peanut’s mother and gave the pair bright, encouraging smiles, happy to see a mother and daughter so glad to be near each other. But then Peanut would give Frances a long, open kiss on the mouth and every smiler would stiffen, fascinated with disgust.

When the two announced their plan to adopt a dog, everyone disapproved. Peanut’s friends assumed domineering parental tones. They seemed to suggest Peanut would leave the animal somewhere or forget to feed it. “Plus, what if you and Frances break up?” one of them snorted.

Peanut quietly considered replacing all of her friends with dogs. She explained that she had already paid for the dog, which was a lie. She hadn’t even met the dog. He was five hundred miles away, in Marietta, Ohio. He was three months old and his name was Tony. Peanut and Frances had spent hours trolling Petfinder.com and gasped when his small triangle face appeared on the screen. He looked unmistakably like a Chihuahua, but had been described on the site as an unknown mixed breed. The dog had chipmunk coloring, with a dark muzzle and large foxish ears. He was pictured in a woman’s dry pink hands, grasped by the torso, with the bratty, oblivious expression of a king’s baby, white chest exposed, little orange legs dangling.

Peanut had filled out a ten-page application online and then got an e-mail from Tony’s rescuer with more questions. Her name was Gail and she wanted to know everything. Would Peanut leave him alone for long periods of time? No she would not. Was Peanut thinking of moving anytime soon, or having a baby? No, never. Peanut wrote several careful e-mails detailing her unconditional commitment to the animal and then Frances had to do the same.

After an unbearable day of waiting, Gail wrote back. Alright, I’m convinced.

“So we’re really doing this?” Peanut said to Frances.

“Really.”

“I can’t believe you’re up for driving so far. I’ve never met someone so willing to go along with my wild plans.”

“Some people would consider that a character defect.”

“No. You are so good to me,” Peanut said and Frances glowed in agreement.

• • •

During the week before their drive, Frances flew to San Francisco on a gig with her band, the Invisible Committee. She didn’t pick up her phone, though Peanut called several times, leaving lewd messages. Frances was too focused on meeting people at parties, grinning hotly at compliments from strangers. She had a distinct allure, and women of all sorts invited her to fuck them. But Frances didn’t want to fuck them. While she developed crushes on various people, their advances often pitched her into despair. Mostly they were fans, beaming with anticipation, waiting for the right moment to corner her. Frances hated for strangers to pounce. It made her feel like she was the commodity, not her work. “People wanna bite my aura,” she said to her bandmates and they all rolled their eyes. But it was true.

On her last night, Frances slunk back to her hotel room and crawled into bed, relishing the quiet. Frances loved to be alone. She groomed herself ritualistically, flossing before the mirror in a striped robe. She studied her face and then thought of Peanut’s face, her bright animal eyes. Frances couldn’t help but measure their life-spans alongside each other. She is like a vampire, Frances thought. She is watching a human wither.

Instead of calling Peanut back, Frances sent her several short, romantic e-mails, which both delighted and enraged Peanut. Some were song lyrics, of which Peanut’s favorite read: I am devoted to your brain and ass and how profoundly they speak. My love is a shaking cup. A little Frenchman.

Peanut smiled reading the e-mail but afterward felt tricked. She didn’t at all like being charmed out of a rageful state and so she willed herself back into anger. Peanut dwelled on the humiliation of leaving dirty messages that went unreturned. She flipped through her notebook, sprawled stomach-down in bed, calves crossed in the air. She loved to read her old poems. They are like photographs, she thought. There’s so much evidence of me.

Peanut turned off the light and lay in the dark imagining she were tough and uninterested in love. Half into a dream, she promised herself she would behave coldly toward Frances as soon as she saw her, which would be the morning of their long drive to fetch Tony.

She had active, colorful nightmares of the apocalypse. Bombs going off, smoke floating from collapsed buildings, people left twitching in the street. Peanut woke up with bags under her eyes. She looked at her phone and, seeing that Frances hadn’t called, an old sadness swooped over her. Whenever Frances vanished, it felt like the old days, before their relationship, back when Peanut was still plotting ways to get near her.

Peanut had first glimpsed Frances singing onstage at a bar, leaning into dusty beams of red and pink light, rope-veins running up her forearms. She sang in a low, androgynous voice that broke into little shouts, her manlike mouth almost touching the microphone. Peanut had come to the show with a friend but quickly abandoned this person to make brave conversation with Frances when the next band came on. Frances was friendly and responsive, but ultimately appeared bored. It took months for her to act even remotely romantic toward Peanut, and during this excruciating period, Peanut had talked to herself in mannish tones and masturbated with a galaxy-print sheet hiked up over her face.