Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“Why don’t you ever go on dates?” Margo asked.

“Because I need space.”

“For the rest of your life?”

“Fuck you.”

“What if you’re gay?”

“I am not gay.” Baby gaped in outrage. “If I was gay, wouldn’t you be too?”

“Not necessarily.” Margo stared into space. “What about that guy Aaron who lives downstairs? Would you date him? He’s like, obsessed with you.”

“I’m so much smarter than him,” Baby said. “And he doesn’t even know it. That’s part of his stupidity.”

Margo repositioned her pillow and noticed it was covered in cat hair. “What the shit?” She began picking little white hairs off the faded blue fabric, one by one. “Chowder is not allowed in here!”

“You have to close your door,” Baby said, the familiar shade of scorn resurfacing in her voice.

Margo stopped grooming the pillow, the beginnings of a sob dimpling her chin. “Do you think anyone will ever love me?” she asked.

“Yeah. But you’ll probably be too busy doing something stupid to notice.”

“Be nice to me!” Margo said, her eyes welling with tears.

“Okay.” Baby patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Margo seized the pillow and threw it onto the floor. “I don’t see how I can go back to class,” she said. “I might strangle him. There’s no kind of violence that doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Baby laughed. “Men are just shifty,” she said uselessly. “I mean, their desires are.”

Margo had entered a grim trance. “Desire is too grand a word for what men experience.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“I said hey and he said what? ” Margo said with mock disgust, her face reanimating. “Like I had appeared on his doorstep with like, his name carved into my neck.” Margo sighed. She lay back down. “God. Why do we have consciousness?” she said.

“It was probably just a mutation that kept evolving.” Baby moved the bag of chips onto the floor and lay next to her sister. “I don’t know.” She pulled the sheet up over them.

“I thought you were dead,” Margo said.

Baby stiffened. A small silence followed. “I’m not gonna do that,” she said finally, in her chilly way.

Margo looked sideward at her sister. “It would be a mistake,” she said carefully.

“I know.”

“I mean a corpse can’t see itself lying there. It’s a show for everyone but you.”

“Please shut up,” Baby said evenly. “I was never showing off. It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

Baby softened. “It was like… I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. How I would do it. When I would do it. I feel like if I ever did do it, it would be to stop thinking about doing it.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t deal with someone finding me. I kept wishing there was some way to off myself and then dispose of the body.”

“Well I certainly wouldn’t want to find you.”

“Well I wouldn’t want you to look through my room and sell my stuff,” Baby snapped. “There’s actually a lot of preparation that goes into suicide if you care — and I do care. But I’m lazy so I kept putting it off.”

“Maybe because you wanted to live.”

“No. It was the laziness. Also the cat.”

They both looked at Chowder, who sat at the foot of the bed, purring ominously. “He loves you,” Margo said.

“Please. Cats don’t love anyone. He hates me the least.”

“So how would you do it?”

“I’m not discussing this with you.”

“With a gun?”

“No. People fuck that up all the time. Then you wind up with like, half a face.” Baby looked thoroughly at the ceiling. “I would jump off a building,” she said finally, almost serenely.

“Why?” Margo said. She looked slapped.

“Because it’s fast. You can’t change your mind.”

“I would want to be able to change my mind.”

“Because you don’t want to die.”

“Yeah, I don’t. And I don’t think it’s cool to want to die. I don’t think you’re cool .”

“I don’t either.”

“Well good.”

They were quiet then, blinking at the ceiling with their same eyes.

“I was reading that the Aztecs took your heart out when you died and weighed it,” Baby said, finally. “To determine where you were going in the afterlife.”

Margo made a face. “I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me.”

“I think it’s a little bit beautiful,” Baby said, touching the crowd of charms on her chest. “I wonder what it’s like to be gone.”

“Probably not much of an experience.”

“Yeah. It’s like the opposite of an experience.” Baby rubbed the little jeweled guitar, then the ax.

“Do you think there’s enough time left on earth?” Margo asked. “I mean to have a whole life?”

They made sideward eye contact.

“I think so,” Baby said. “Maybe just enough.”

“I want to be an artist.”

“So be one.”

“But I feel so behind,” Margo said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I wish time would slow down.”

“Well it won’t.”

“I don’t know… time can be slow.”

“Like when?”

“When you’re in pain,” Margo said quickly. Her eyes narrowed adamantly. “Or when you’re seeing something for the first time.”

“Right.” Baby nodded. “When you feel like a kid .”

Margo looked at Baby and saw her at every age — every era of their face. A great wave of fondness swelled between them. It was positively ancient, their love, and a little excruciating.

Sunlight quivered on the bed. They went on blinking at each other and the passing minutes seemed to fatten. “Stay like that,” Margo said and reached for her camera.

“You should ask ,” Baby said. “And the answer is no.” But then she looked up — right into the camera.

As a child he loved to sing. He was always singing and even writing down some of his songs. In college, he liked to draw and did so when he should have been sleeping. It was the only time left in the day for him. He worked two jobs in addition to his classes. He majored in art but somehow this seems irrelevant because it didn’t make a difference. There was so little time and he was always so tired. But for years he drew anyway because it gave him pleasure. He drew the things in his room and the people he had crushes on. And whenever he met someone, he explained that he was an artist. He pulled out his sketchbook and watched the person flip through it. He watched their eyes. No one ever looked impressed, though a girl once said, “Wow.” But he sensed she was lying.

After college he had many jobs. He worked in an office and he worked at a restaurant. He also did some babysitting. But he did not draw and he did not sing. He had trouble sleeping but no longer filled the time creatively. He just blinked in the dark. For years and years, he was blinking.

Now he is a writer and he is writing. Right now he is writing this story. His husband is cooking dinner. He can smell the meat cooking and he can feel his husband’s anger to be cooking dinner alone. But his husband is the better cook. They have both acknowledged this fact. They have even laughed about it. Still his husband is resentful. He thinks his husband will always be resentful because his husband is better at so many things. This is why their relationship is withering.

Some people can fully engage in unhappy careers, he thinks. For years they can do this, their whole lives . His husband is this way, an unhappy lawyer, though a good lawyer. He thinks that he could never be like his husband, good at something he hated. He thinks that he is not even very good at the things he loves. But this is a little bit of a lie because he holds a certain pride. He loves the songs he sang as a boy and all the drawings. He has been so many people. And all in the service of becoming me, he thinks proudly. He loves his writing. He loves writing this now. Always he is waiting to be alone to write. So I must like writing more than people, he thinks. More than my husband.