Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

• • •

They passed long, low humps of grass, gray trucks like a train of elephants. And a green sign that read HISTORIC TREE NURSERIES, EXIT 41, with no explanation. Both thought of what this might mean. Peanut pictured people kneeling to water rows of tiny baby trees. Frances thought of dioramas of people planting trees in the past. The dog began to cry. It sounded like he was being burned with cigarettes. Then he rolled onto his back and looked up distrustfully, his bright white chest thrust forward like Christ. “Chihuahua on a cross,” Peanut cooed in a mockingly piteous voice.

“That sounds like a band name.”

“We should claim to be in that band. Like when people think you’re my mom, we should say no, we’re bandmates.”

“That’s so great.” Frances cocked her head in thought. “Because I really hate making a point of saying you’re my girlfriend. People always wind up looking ugly when they try to make a point.” She took one hand off the wheel to touch Peanut’s leg. “Our first album could be called Frantic Licks .”

Peanut roared with laughter. “You know, darling, you look a little like a dog. Because you are kind of always smiling. And you smell like a dog. In a good way.”

“I think I was a dog.”

“No, you are a dog.” Peanut looked out at the wide road, the white light beaming on car tops. She patted Tony. “You don’t really believe in reincarnation, do you?”

“Well, not really but it’s very appealing. I sort of entertain it, with past lives and stuff. Like, my mind slips into it metaphorically. You never think about having other lives?”

“No.”

“So you think people die and then just return to static.”

“No, they return to nothing.”

• • •

They passed lush green farms, black cows in profile on the crest of a hill, a dead deer arranged with its bottom facing the road. Tony’s cries were reduced to a croaking whimper and then, in grim acceptance, he tucked his snout between Peanut’s knees.

They weren’t at all hungry but figured they should eat. Frances took the next exit and pulled over. They sat on a skinny plot of grass in the shadow of a taco chain. Tony peed reluctantly, tugging at his leash.

Frances bought nachos and they ate cross-legged on the grass, holding the cardboard boats up in front of their mouths, away from Tony.

“He has the build of a piglet,” said Frances.

“A pig in a fox costume.”

“A very clever pig who didn’t want to die.”

The dog stood on his back legs with a desperate expression, begging for all the things he smelled. “Look at him,” Peanut said, smiling.

“Dogs are so more apparently animal than us that we get to laugh at their desires,” Frances declared. Peanut agreed. They wiped their mouths and held each other. They looked down at the dog, their tiny witness. He lay stomach-up in the grass.

Frances stroked his throat. It occurred to her that she could die around the same time he did. The thought was a shock and then felt sort of funny. She smiled at the animal, the little measure of his life. A nano life that matches the end of me, she thought.

Frances put her hand on Peanut’s shin. They both looked down at the hand and then, sensing that people were staring, Frances withdrew it and looked up.

They were surrounded by teenagers with benign, captivated expressions. Wives grabbed their husbands by the arm, pointing gleefully. A little boy stepped forward and shyly asked to pet the dog.

Never before had the two been so tenderly observed. They looked at each other and then back at their audience, alarmed. Strangers stood patiently, all lit up, beside a single gnarly tree. Tony tilted his head, ears erect. He studied the crowd and they crept forward. Everyone wanted to touch him. Everyone beamingly asked, “What kind of dog is that?” instead of “What the fuck are you ?”

When people left, new strangers appeared. Some stood at an arm’s length and they were radiant, waiting for their pleasure. They seemed to be touching the dog even before their hands had landed. Tony offered his underside and stared up seductively. He had an appetite for everyone. The dog was littleness itself and this was his power. People weighed him in their hands. They pointed out his smallness repeatedly, almost to the point of chanting, as if Peanut and Frances were in denial of the dog’s size and needed to be convinced. “He’s a tiny baby!” a young girl blurted.

This is what it means, Peanut and Frances realized, to be the keepers of something beautiful. This is what it means to become other people. They thought about what they had been when they stood next to each other. Freaks, strutting their base interests. But now, next to the dog, they lost their queerness, if only for a moment. “We’re sort of like Elvis’s family,” Frances whispered. “The trash these people are willing to put up with to get to the king.” Tony shot them a long look, as if in agreement, and stepped out into an area of sunlight. He was more aware of his beauty than any creature they had ever met. Everyone crawled around him. They sat in the sun, fondling his warm velvet head. And he shined.

She sees him at the grocery store. He doesn’t see her. He is with his daughter. He is putting green apples in a bag.

She grabs a pear and pretends to examine it. She puts it down. She walks over to the melons and stares abstractedly, her heart hammering. She looks up and he’s smiling at her. His smile is warm. Instantly she feels weak and excited. He is walking toward her now.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he says. He’s standing right in front of her. She’s looking down.

He is divorced now so technically it’s possible that they could date. Or just have sex, she thinks. She can’t think about him without thinking about sex. And so she is afraid to look into his eyes, afraid he will know and be disgusted. A man likes a woman to be ambivalent, she articulates in her mind. And she has never been ambivalent about who she wants to fuck. She has always been sure and she thinks that certainly there is nothing uglier than this, a woman who is sure.

They both ask how the other is and both say, “Good.” Clearly both are lying.

She tries to control her face. “I don’t know how to pick melons,” she says.

“You’ve gotta look for the pecks,” he says.

“The what?”

“The pecks,” he repeats. “Birds go for the sweeter ones.”

This makes her blush. What he said feels lewd, filthy. But it isn’t filthy, she thinks. It’s me. I’m filthy.

She looks down at the little girl, who must be seven by now. It is a knowing face. A face that knows she is filthy. “Hi, Becky,” she says to the child, who says nothing.

“She’s a little shy,” he says, patting the girl on the head. But shy is the wrong word. Becky looks suspicious. Little girls know everything, she thinks.

“Well,” he smiles again. “It was nice running into you.”

“Yeah.” She cannot believe their encounter is over. She hates the politeness of her life. He walks away.

She shops impatiently. She cannot bear the fact of time. How it keeps passing. How she has to wait to pay for cans of soup, to have sex.

She wants the man to know what she knows, that she wants him. And somehow she feels that he already does. She has fantasized so heavily and for so long that she feels her fantasies hold a kind of penetrative power. It’s as if my daydreams have hacked into his, she thinks, her eyes shining. She feels certain that she has appeared in his thoughts. She has been naked in his thoughts and this same naked body has returned at particular hours of the day. Possibly we are having the same fantasies at the same exact moments, she thinks, which makes all the dullness between them in public seem coy and silly.