Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“She’s always home,” he continued. “I was born in the bathtub.”

“Oh I’ve heard of that.”

“When I was out of her my mom said what is it? And my dad said a baby.” The boy laughed and laughed at himself. When she joined in, his laugh got even more hysterical.

They caught their breath and were quiet a moment. “How old are you?” She squinted.

“Nine,” he said flatly, as if feeling no connection to the number.

“I remember nine,” she grinned. “It was a good year.”

He looked into her eyes very deeply and she shifted in her daisy dress and tennis shoes. Then suddenly, as if he’d heard a bell, the boy backed away, said “Bye,” and walked into the bar.

She stood there a second dumbfounded, then walked toward one of the grimy windows. Inside she saw the boy standing next to a stool with a man on it. She felt certain it was his father. It had to be.

Jabbing her cigarette out on the brick wall, she had a vision of the boy as a grown man, kind of fucked up from spending night after night with his dad at a bar. She figured he would live in bars though he hated them, the dark crib of his life. You never stop being nine, she thought and felt like a genius. It was thrilling when she had an idea and it felt true. Some back door in her heart flew open and she had the sensation of leaving the ground, for a second anyway.

But no, not everyone was permanently nine, she decided. Some people were four. Others fifteen. And all of us walking around with our older faces, relating as adults but feeling like children, she thought. It was why actual children looked like celebrities — spiritual celebrities. They were so full of truth, she thought, and not just their own. It was the great secret of humanity and it whirled in their eyes.

She had a bunch more cigarettes as she walked on. She felt the air kissing her ears and neck and thanked God for it. She could only thank God for a few things, the things that were always good to her. Because otherwise God seemed to be jerking off on a hill somewhere with gleaming eyes, watching her fuck up. But the air was good, it always was. And the moon was good. So good. Even the rats were good the way they waddled with such speed — such desire . “I love you,” she whispered. To all rats.

She went back to the man’s apartment with a racing heart and took all her clothes off, then crawled into bed. She had used his key so as not to wake him but he did stir when she started climbing over him, kissing up the front of his T-shirt.

He laughed in a groggy way and stuck one hand in the mess of her hair.

“I want you so bad,” she muttered into his shirt.

“But you have me,” he said, sitting up.

The light stayed off but moonlight from the window showed her what his face was doing. He was looking at her like she was a puppy who had eaten all his shoes. And she felt like one.

She sat up and he held her face in his hands. She was so beautiful, he thought. But beautiful like a junkie, all wild and skinny and freaked out. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I feel funny. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Why would you lose me?”

“Because we’re fucking.”

“So?”

“Everyone who fucks someone stops fucking them at some point. And then they start fucking someone else.”

“Do you want to fuck someone else?”

“No! But it’s inevitable, right? One day one of us’ll wake up an—”

“Don’t do this.”

“Okay.” She took a breath. “Wait. Don’t do what?”

“Tamper with perfection.”

She stared a second, then nodded. “Okay.”

He rubbed his eyelids and sighed. “Like every time I’ve become obsessed with the I Ching it becomes sort of loathsome .”

“That’s such a weird thing to say. I don’t even know what you mean.”

“I just mean you shouldn’t think so much… about chance.”

“Tell me about acid.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“God.” He shook his head. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Just tell me.”

“Well… it’s like living in a poem,” he said, relaxing into his pleasure. “It’s cartoon and allegory… and the allegory goes as deep as you do.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“It really is. You should do it already.”

“No. I think I just like hearing about it.”

He squinted at her. “You’re a strange creature,” he said, grasping her naked arm and giving it a squeeze.

“You think we’ll love each other for a while?” she asked.

“Yes,” he grinned. “Absolutely.”

“You could die while fucking me. I mean doesn’t that happen?”

“What?”

“When you do Viagra.”

“I don’t do it that much.” He started stroking her arm. “I think you’re gonna have me for longer than you expect. I’m gonna be like a telephone hanging around… there’ll be nothing left, just this voice that’s me that won’t go away,” he said.

It made her laugh. Then a long pause. Then she said, “Why do you like me? I’m such a grump.”

“That’s what I’m into.”

“And I’m stupid.”

“You are not.”

“I can’t remember the things I’m supposed to and you know it. My mind gets crowded with other things…”

“I love your mind. It’s not some dumb grove where all the trees look the same.”

She looked at him then and thought that he could’ve been anything he wanted. A poet, maybe, or a filmmaker or a novelist. But she was glad he wasn’t any of those things. She was glad he was lying there in the moonlight, a big sexy nobody who could’ve been somebody. There was something so rich about it.

“Just enjoy this,” he said.

“Because it’s gonna end?”

“No. Because it’s good .” He shook his head with a little smile. “You’re so morbid.”

“I thought everyone was.”

“Not like this.” He put his hand over her heart and felt its mad flutter. “Breathe.”

It turned her on, him telling her to breathe.

He said it again. “Breathe.”

Hank was on the sofa when his wife called. He hadn’t moved much in an hour.

“My flight was delayed,” Lenora said.

“Shit.”

“Now I’m eating this really pathetic sandwich,” she said and paused — maybe glaring at it. “It’s weird not eating red meat. I’m now one of those people who asks if the chili has meat in it. And of course it did . So I was condemned to the broccoli and cheese soup. Then I got really wild and bought the Tuscan turkey sub — which is all language. It’s really just the worst kind of turkey.”

“The turkey that’s really bologna.”

“Exactly.”

They were quiet a second, a low snarl of static between them.

“A lot of other people are on their phones,” Lenora said. “It’s how we wait. We evacuate .” She paused quite vividly this time. Hank saw her cool blue eyes darting around the fluorescent hall of space.

“Anyone who isn’t on their phone is eating ,” she said disgustedly. “Couples mostly, but none of them are looking at each other. Eating has become this… grim religious practice.”

Hank laughed. “I love you.”

“There’s a big neon sign that says toasty — bread that’s going bad that’s been toasted.”

“I wish I was there with you.”

“No you don’t.” Lenora took a breath as if she were about to say more but didn’t. She was prone to exactly this sort of pause in a conversation as she was often distracted.

“Did you hear from Tom?” Hank asked. Tom was Lenora’s agent. She had sent him the first half of her new manuscript, a novel about a female drug mule called The Donkey Show .