Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“I bet you drink a lot too,” he said, still smiling foolishly.

“Not really.”

“Youth is an incredibly buoyant medium,” he mused. “What you can do at twenty you can’t do at forty.”

“So you’re forty?”

“About that.”

Kit undressed. She lay on the bed with shining eyes, like some dog awaiting the strange and particular abuse of its owner. Ned stripped down to his boxers and stood alongside the bed, staring down at her.

“You are so stoned,” he said.

“Not so much,” she said.

“Yes you are. You’re barely here at all. It’s like you’re dead.”

Kit felt a flash of panic pass through her eyes and knew he’d caught it. Ned was right. She was completely stoned. And because of this, certain things in the room appeared huge. The pink-flowered Kleenex box. The pump bottle of generic lube. Ned’s oily, egg-like head.

Kit was arranged facedown on the bed. She shut her eyes and Ned rocked into the quiet space between his hands. “I think you like this,” he said, which was what they all said.

She fell into a partial sleep. Dreamless brown darkness closed around her. She heard her heart beat. It was like a fist pounding at the bottom of a swimming pool. Ned groaned. He came onto her buttocks and she woke, a dull hate glowing inside her. She stood and wiped off her butt cheeks with a tissue. “Are you married?”

He nodded.

Kit returned to the bed. “Does she know you come here?”

“I think she does.”

“And it doesn’t bother her?”

“She has a very good life,” he said. “She’s not gonna go and fuck that up.” He lay down on the bed next to her.

Kit refrained from pointing out that he had not answered the question. He went on to say that his wife didn’t work. She took care of his daughter. He talked about her in a frank and vulgar manner, like she was an animal who had eaten out of the same can for years. He said she was really interested in astrology. He said all women were. He said his wife kept a dream journal and he laughed gently, slightly like a madman. “Who cares about dreams?” he said. “They don’t mean anything.”

Ned said he was a dentist and Kit wondered how he handled all that revulsion. He complained about his practice and boringly recounted the events of a cocktail party in which he had humiliated a fellow dentist in front of several beautiful women. “That took a bite out of his swagger!” he said. And Kit laughed obediently, which felt like the worst kind of sex.

• • •

Kit and Lucy walked to the train at dusk, snow swirling past their faces. The sky was a pearly gray, the moon dimly visible. The two walked along a narrow path of brown slush, bookended by white humps of snow. In their boots and coats, they looked like the children that they were. Each bundled and waddling, their tight dresses and biscuit-colored stockings buried underneath. Lucy wore a long tweed coat with big glossy black buttons, Kit a brown leather bomber jacket and sagging wool-knit hat. They hooked arms, steadying each other.

“He like, reprimanded me for eating a corn muffin.”

“What an asshole.”

“It was like he wanted me to be dead. Like I was interfering with my potential hotness by living.” Businesspeople passed swiftly in black coats. “I hate this neighborhood,” Kit sneered. “I hate every single person.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. I’m freezing. And I hate these tights.” She wiggled with discomfort. “I hate this dress.”

“Well,” Lucy grinned, “they need you to remind them that they want to fuck you.”

Kit laughed. They stopped in front of the train station and looked at each other. “Do you wanna come over?” Lucy asked. There was snow in her eyebrows.

Kit couldn’t help but smile sheepishly at the offer because, until that moment, they had only ever spent time together in diners or on the black couch. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

• • •

Lucy’s apartment was small and lit like a bar, one long room with yellow light in every corner. There was an old claw-foot tub next to the stove and a mattress on the floor by the wall. Kit stooped to pet a brown rat terrier with a silvery snout. He rolled under her hand with a guttural moan, groveling with delight. “That’s Curtis,” Lucy said.

“It’s like a dirty-sock sex club in here,” Kit laughed.

“I know.” Lucy smiled without embarrassment. “Curtis pulls them out of the hamper. I should probably throw some of them away,” she said, lifting a white ankle sock off the floor. “That way I would be forced to do laundry more often.” She jammed the little white sock into an overfilled wicker hamper. “I won’t go until I’m completely out of clothes. Hate it too much.”

“Seriously, I could look anywhere and see socks.”

“Do you want anything?” Lucy asked.

“Anything?”

“Well. Beer or water.”

Kit laughed. “I’ll take water.”

“Help yourself, okay? I’ve gotta take him down.” Lucy velcroed a little red coat onto the dog and left.

Kit ran tap water into a Charlie Brown Christmas mug. She roamed around the room, sipping water and snooping vaguely. Apart from the strewn socks, Lucy’s apartment was relatively bare. There were tall Mexican candles on the floor by her mattress, a tiny cactus on the windowsill. And on the floor there was an old mint green record player with brown accents. Lucy’s possessions looked misplaced, but because there weren’t so many, the wrongness of their arrangement had a childish charm.

Kit spotted several photos of a younger-looking Lucy, tacked by the bed in a crooked cluster. In one she sat in an auto rickshaw, in another she stood handling fruit in a marketplace. Kit approached the images intently. She sat cross-legged on the bed and stared up at them.

The door flung open and Curtis raced inside. He leapt onto Kit’s lap and squirmed on his back in ecstasy, biting her fingers gently, his wet paws paddling. Kit stroked his underside, her eyes fastened to the photographs.

“He likes you,” Lucy said.

“Does he not like a lot of people?”

“No. He likes pretty much everyone.”

Lucy hung her coat on a hook by the door. She pulled off her boots and stockings, then fetched a can of beer from the fridge and tapped the top of it with her fingernail. She turned to Kit, who still sat staring at the photographs. “In India I just went around buying things. You can spend a quarter in like a half hour,” she said, cracking the can open. “It was so beautiful there. Every single person was doing something. It was such a sensory overload, but way softer than America.”

“I want to travel,” Kit said. She looked at Lucy. “I sort of feel like I have to do it now, while I’m still cute. Like if I wait till I’m old and ugly it won’t happen.”

“You might be right,” Lucy said and took a swig from the silver can. “But I’m really looking forward to being old and ugly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’ll be nice to be left alone. I want to get a little house somewhere with grass out front for Curtis. There’s no grass here. I mean, there is grass but you aren’t allowed on it, not with a dog, anyway. It’s like walking through some holy museum.” She stooped to pet Curtis. “Sucks.”

Kit smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just like when you talk about how much something sucks.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m serious! That’s always how I know I like someone. They’ll be going on about their own hell and it should be tedious to listen to but for some reason it’s not. Something about their face or the way they’re joking about their unhappiness is so… attractive.”

“I know exactly what you mean. It’s like perfume.”