Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

Ned stood naked with his arms at his sides. He was crying.

Kit stiffened. Goosebumps raised over her body. She considered dashing out of the room naked but Ned lurched toward her. He sank his hot face onto her breasts and sobbed for what felt like minutes, then withdrew his face with sudden embarrassment.

Ned moved to the edge of the bed with his back to her and Kit didn’t ask what was wrong. She didn’t want to know.

“My kid is sick,” he said. “Six fucking years old.”

Kit said nothing. She eyed the shininess between his shoulder blades.

“I can’t see her. I don’t know what to say to her.” Ned looked over one shoulder desperately, his eyes flashing. “What do you think I should say to her?”

“I don’t know.” Kit crawled over to him and forced her hand onto the small of his back, patting it. “What does she have?”

“Leukemia,” he said as though Kit were an imbecile.

Her hand hardened on his back but she continued to pat him, almost harshly. “It’s okay,” she said uselessly. “It’ll be okay.”

Ned turned sharply. “You don’t know that. No one does. No one knows what it’s like… to cease.”

Kit removed her hand from his back. She stared into space. “I bet it’s like a drug experience,” she said finally. “Especially if you’re at a hospital and your insides are failing you. Like you probably have odd sensations. You feel really warm or you hallucinate. Then just drift off.”

“Not everyone goes peacefully. People die screaming.” He had his arms folded.

“You’re right.”

“My uncle died screaming. He didn’t want to die.”

“How did he die?”

“Bone cancer.”

They leaned back on the bed and each looked at the other’s feet. Hers were long and bare. He wore red-and-black argyle socks. Kit looked at them awhile and then through them, at nothing, her thoughts wild. She was angry. She hated Ned for dragging some dying little girl into the picture, for crying all over her breasts. She looked down at her knobby knees, the brown beauty mark near her crotch. I’m like Lucy’s dog, she thought. I don’t want to see him become an animal.

Kit considered her own animal self. A wild thing looking out a window. A wild thing made to be a doll. For a moment she loved herself deeply, whoever she was. It was hard to know in the awful white room. She felt as if a circus tent were draped over her existence.

Ned uncrossed his arms. “I’ve upset you,” he said and touched her leg gently. It was jarring and repulsive. He had never touched her this way.

“No. I’m not afraid of death,” she declared. “I’m glad the human experience ends. I mean, what if it didn’t? What if you were just stuck here forever? That would be scarier than death.”

He seemed to consider this peacefully, folding his arms again. “So what are you afraid of?” he asked and a slight smile tugged one side of his face. It was as if he had just remembered she was a prostitute.

“Swallowing glass,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they can’t do anything about it. Glass doesn’t show up in X-rays. It just takes one tiny piece and you die a slow, painful death.”

“Jesus.”

“A bartender told me that.”

They were quiet awhile.

“I like that you don’t wear makeup,” he said finally.

“Yeah. I don’t think women should,” she said. “It looks so clownish.”

“No. Some women should definitely wear makeup. But not anyone your age. Makeup on a youngster is redundant.”

“You think I’m a youngster?”

“Well you are.”

Kit stared at him, glinting with hate.

“Look at you,” he said. “Your skin.”

“What?”

“It’s so new ,” he said and touched her cheek softly, letting his fingers rest there. “Youth is a class all its own,” he continued. “You all look alike.” He took his hand away. “But the fat breaks down — the glow . And you’re left with a kind of specificity. You fall into racial stereotypes.” He pointed to his own face. “And now you can’t tell what I was. I was this beautiful kid.”

Kit averted her eyes. She folded her arms over her breasts.

“How old are you, anyway?” he asked. “Twenty-something?”

“I’m nineteen.”

Ned smiled greedily. “What’s that like,” he said sarcastically, “being a teenager?”

“Everyone wants what you have so they try to control you.”

Ned looked surprised. He went silent and Kit turned to him, her eyes fierce. “Do you like watching two women together?” she asked.

“What?”

“There’s another girl here and if you paid us both double, you could watch us.”

“Watch you what?”

“You know.”

“Are you a dyke?”

“No. I just think you would like her.”

Ned pondered a moment. He got up and reached into his coat pocket, withdrawing a business card. He placed the white card on Kit’s bare abdomen and broke into a smile.

• • •

Kit saw several other men that day and felt nothing. By nightfall, she stood in the bathroom getting high, staring meditatively out the window. Ned remained in her mind, the weight of his face on her breasts. He is a hog for sorrow, she thought. And maybe I am too. Kit had never envisioned this life for herself. This is really happening, she thought. Any awful thing seemed possible. She was afraid of the concrete and cars down there below, of the opportunity she had always to hurl herself out the window. Kit didn’t really want to die, but the fact of having a choice was frightening.

A flood of bothersome memories surged up as she put her pot away. She remembered her mother saying, “Your job should take a little piece of you that you don’t mind giving.” Kit believed that she had such a job. It’s just my body, she thought. And it didn’t seem like a lot to give away until she considered that it was all she had. This pussy is my only currency. It was a sickening thought.

Outside, the moon was huge with white fog in front of it. A twitchy streetlight shone on the hoods of cars. Kit walked carefully over silvery areas of ice. She stopped to peruse the bright aisles of a deli and bought an expensive bar of chocolate wrapped in gold foil.

On the train, Kit sat by the window and remembered that she had offered Lucy’s body to Ned and to herself. She imagined telling Lucy this and pictured her repulsed response. Kit broke off a cube of chocolate and sank into a whirling rabbit hole of panic. She almost missed her stop, loading chocolate into her mouth with a fixed look of dread. She walked to Lucy’s apartment haltingly, pausing whenever the image of Lucy’s disgusted face reemerged in her mind.

Lucy arrived cheerily at the door, barefoot in a black-and-white-checked dress with triangle pockets. They sipped cans of beer on her bed and Kit rolled a joint, which proved tricky since her hands were clammy. She puffed on the loose roll and they talked. Because Kit was nervous, there was an odd theatricality to what should have been mundane chatter. Eventually a silence grew between them. Kit mopped her forehead with her sleeve. She crawled over to her bag and ate the last corner of chocolate, then blurted her proposal.

“And he wouldn’t touch us?” Lucy asked.

“No. But he will say really degrading things. I actually…” Kit stared into space. “I think I really hate this person.”

“Why? Because he doesn’t respect you?” Lucy said mockingly.

“No. Because he’s crazy .”

“Look,” Lucy said. “Crazy people have one tactic, to convince you that you’re crazy. So you can’t let them.”

Kit nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I even care. It’s the weirdest things that bother me about him. Like how he thinks dreams are meaningless.” She looked at Lucy. “He thinks his wife is stupid for analyzing them.”