Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

They both tensed when she said this. Margo took a breath.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He looked at her. “It just makes me think about the apocalypse.”

“I know. A lot of things make me think about the apocalypse,” she said, eyes wide. “I think all these women dying to get pregnant are insane.”

“You don’t want a baby?” He looked genuinely surprised.

“No.”

He stared at her.

“Why let this stranger into your body, then into your home?” she said, wishing she could stop the speech building in her mouth. “It seems mentally ill. People never talk about the fact that babies are strangers. I mean, you don’t know this person.”

“But you love them. I mean, usually you love them right away.”

“So why bring them to this awful place?”

He smiled. “I don’t know. To meet them I guess.”

This silenced Margo. She wondered if she appeared grim. James fixated on the owl wall clock and she strained to decipher his expression. The dark turn in conversation had snatched from the room the feeling that anything could happen. Margo wondered if she had imagined the flirtation to begin with.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” James asked, pulling a pack of Marlboro reds from his shirt pocket.

“No,” she said. Margo despised smoking but she wanted him to have it — the thing he wanted.

James poked a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a match. “Do you wanna take the pictures?” he asked, shaking the match out.

“Okay. We should go to my room, then,” Margo said, blazing with dread. She had forgotten all about the pictures. That was why he was there, she reminded herself.

James sat in front of her in Oceanography — a summer class and the very last one she needed to graduate college. She was in love with him so she said she was a photographer. It was the first thing that came to mind. She said she was putting a portfolio of portraits together and would he mind posing. Then he said “Sure” and she stood there, marveling at what had just occurred.

It didn’t feel like a total lie because she had always wanted to be a photographer. And maybe, she thought, the lie would inspire her to take photography seriously and she would develop as an artist, blow everyone away. It would be like the time she was cast in The Wizard of Oz in high school and had to learn how to sing. Now she could sing.

In her room James began taking his clothes off without being asked to, the cigarette drooping from one side of his mouth, smoke obscuring his eyes. Margo turned on the ceiling fan and the whole room hummed. “Sorry,” she said. “The air conditioner’s broken.”

James shrugged. He stood naked by the white brick wall. “Tell me what to do,” he said and tapped ash into one cupped hand. It was shocking.

“Here,” she said, handing him a mug. He promptly squashed the cigarette out and lit another, his dick hanging frankly. Margo blushed as she held the camera. Helplessly she glanced at herself in the mirror — that fearful, horny person.

“Mark of the devil,” her grandfather had said to her once while drunk, petting her red hair.

“I’m not the devil,” Margo shot back. She was six.

“You’re not,” the old man said. “But he designed you. Twice. ” He chuckled to himself and Margo just stood there, staring up into the red holes of his nose.

“Are you doing anything this summer?” she asked James. “I mean when class ends.”

James nodded. “I’m going on a road trip with my friend Jack.”

“You can drive?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t,” she confided. “I don’t even wanna learn. I’m pretty sure I’d kill someone.”

“No you wouldn’t,” he smiled. “Driving is great. You’re forced to be the person you’re not.” Streams of smoke issued from his nose. “What about you — any plans?”

“I don’t know,” Margo said, staring through the lens. “Taking care of my sister I guess. She lives here.”

He looked confused. She took a picture.

“She gets really depressed,” Margo explained, lowering the camera from her eye. “Last summer it was much worse. She was talking about killing herself.”

“Shit.” James took a drag. “So your parents are making you live with her?”

“No. I like living with her. I mean, we argue but whenever she goes away I miss her. Last summer she stayed at this like, loony bin in New England. Only it sounded really great to me. Like summer camp or something.” She looked down at the camera in her hands. “I remember going to Kmart and thinking I saw her. I said, Baby!” Margo looked up at him. “But I was seeing myself in a mirror. It was me .”

“Whoa.”

“It was eerie,” she said. There was a pause. “Turn around,” she said and snapped a picture of his broad back, the violet bruise hovering on his shoulder blade. “Try to stand up straight,” she said softly and he did, seemingly without a care in the world. But when he faced her, Margo saw his vanity. Behind a wavering ribbon of smoke, James seemed to be watching her carefully.

Margo walked up to him and moved her hand across his chest. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She couldn’t believe that she wanted something and was now getting it. Of course, he wasn’t the sort of person she could really have . He seemed to her like a wild thing and that was his beauty. I’m an animal too, she thought. My animal loves his animal.

It was minutes before sundown. The air was cooler. Electric blue light spread throughout the room and over his skin. Margo set the camera down.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Seven.”

“Crazy.”

“I know,” she said and crawled onto her bed, highly aroused. “Come here.”

He did and her heart pounded. They lay by the window, the weakening blue light on their faces. Margo leaned forward and kissed him, pressing her hands to his chest. It was a long, plunging kiss. He held her face. Then they rolled around, feeling each other up, her dress hiked halfway up her body.

“You have like a porno look,” he said.

“What?”

“No it’s good. I like that your face can’t hide its excitement.”

She got on her back and stared up at him. What he said felt funny, like it wasn’t his. She guessed someone had said this to him once. “I like that your face can’t hide its excitement.” She wondered who it was.

Margo lifted her butt and James pulled off her underwear. He looked at the lower half of her body for a moment, then walked across the room, where his jeans were on the floor. Margo watched as he pulled a condom from his back pocket and tore it open. He rolled it onto his hard-on, then walked back to the bed and pushed into her.

“Did you know this was gonna happen?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

• • •

In the morning, Margo put on the White Album and made coffee.

“It’s weird that everyone likes the Beatles,” James said, not unkindly, as he walked into the kitchen, his face marked by the folds of her sheets. He was dressed, his hair snarled on one side, flat and greasy on the other.

She smiled. He could’ve said anything. “It is weird.” She handed him a mug of coffee and a carton of milk.

“No milk,” he said, taking the mug. He sat at the table and lit a cigarette.

“I didn’t think this was gonna happen,” she said, smiling, sipping her coffee. “I thought I was freaking you out when I was talking about water and the end of the world.”

“No,” he said and dragged on the cigarette thoughtfully. “I mean, you weren’t freaking me out but the end of the world does. I have dreams about it.”