Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“I don’t know,” he said. “Twenty?”

“Actually I’m twenty-eight,” she beamed.

“No,” he said, grinning in his handsome, ghoulish way. “Really?”

“Really,” she said seriously because it was a serious thing. “Twenty- eight .”

“Well,” he said, “you’re doing an honor to your decade.” Then he leaned out of the record cover as if it were a car window and kissed her on the mouth.

She heard saxophones and seagulls, a hammer hitting a nail. Everything in the world; everything holy and good. It was a wet, biting kiss and it stirred the glittering feeling in her crotch. Soon every cell in her body was glittering too. She hoped it would go on and on and on and somehow lead to sex. But his lips released her and he sank back into the record cover.

The spit he left on her tongue tasted like black tea and tobacco. There was a third element also, one that began quietly, but soon it was all she could taste. It was the surprising flavor of his flesh itself. Smiling, she thought, No animal tastes alike .

“God,” she said, her eyes immense. “I like you so much. I might even love you.”

“Why?” he asked, staring in his deadpan way.

Then a number rose in his eyes: 2,898,787,775. It was the number of women who loved him and it blazed a sickly yellow.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I didn’t think you’d ask why .”

“Come on. Tell me.”

“I like your visions. They make me wet. ‘I Me Mine’—that song makes me wet . I wish you weren’t George Harrison. I wish you were…” She touched the bone of his cheek. “I wish you were anyone.”

“Anyone?”

“I wish you just like, worked at a deli.”

“No.” He moved his face from her hand. “You wouldn’t want me then.”

“Oh but I would! I would see you and I would just know you were wonderful. I would try to seduce you.”

“What would you do?”

“I would walk up to the counter.”

“And then?”

“You would say hello.”

“And then?”

“I would say hello. I would just stand there.”

“Enticing.”

“No there’s more.”

“I’m listening.”

“I would buy you a pickle.”

He laughed.

“Or whatever you wanted. It would be like when someone at a bar buys the bartender a drink.”

She was getting excited and the air knew it. God knew it. Even the little brown spiders in the walls knew and they didn’t scare her. Not now, not tonight.

“Then I would invite you over,” she continued. “I would bring you to this room and we would crawl onto the bed. I would kiss you but like where no one else has ever kissed you.”

“Where?”

“Your eyelids.” She smiled. “Your ass.”

“Lots of people have kissed my ass,” he smirked.

“No I mean really kiss your ass. Like with my mouth.”

“I know what you meant.”

“Well I would do it differently,” she smiled. “And I would get completely naked. I would even take off my earrings and like if I was wearing lipstick I would rub it off with a Kleenex. Then I would lie on my back and I would open my vagina with my fingers,” she said seriously. “And in there you would find the whole universe.”

“The whole universe is in there?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve always wanted to see that.”

“Wait, you’ve always wanted to see what ?”

“Everything.”

“Me too. That’s why I can’t sleep.”

“You want a lot.”

“I do.” She leaned nearer to the record, to the wet heat of his breath.

“If I saw between your legs,” he said, “what would I see? What does the whole universe look like?”

“I don’t know. I think of infinity. The blackness of space.”

“I think of a big yellow field and a little horse walks by.”

“A little baby horse?”

“It’s a baby, yeah.”

“I love that… I guess the universe is vast so you have to pick something to look at.”

He stared. “You haven’t really told me — I want you to tell me exactly … why you want me.”

She stared back. He seemed so insecure — more insecure than George Harrison had to be. Maybe that is all a rock song is, she thought. Discomfort. Horrible embarrassment. Set to a tune.

“C’mon,” he said. “Why?”

“It’s just something that happened. I woke up one day — I woke up burning,” she said, loving the words. There was nothing better, nothing more electric than thinking something and saying it immediately. “Have you ever burned, George?”

“Yes.”

“Is it hard to burn for people when everyone’s burning for you?”

“Exactly. I can’t match them. I can’t even come close .” He looked away. “In the early days on tour when all the girls were screaming, I couldn’t hear the band. I couldn’t even hear my own voice — just all these screaming girls, you know.”

“It’s like they were the band — the screaming girls.”

He laughed and she looked away, smiling uncontrollably. “I love the way you sing,” she said. “I love that I can hear all the spit in your mouth… there’s a hiss.” Then, returning her eyes to his, she said, “You wrote all my favorite Beatles songs.”

“Oh,” he grinned.

Blushing, she muttered, “I have to pee,” and took the record with her to the bathroom. She leaned it up against the green tile wall, then pulled her underwear down and sat on the toilet.

“Nice music,” George said as she peed. He laughed and she joined in, quite hysterically. Then she looked at the other three Beatles, who remained flat and devoid of animation. They looked spooky next to George’s breathing face, like deer heads on a wall.

She flushed and shut the toilet, then sat cross-legged on the cold tile floor, slouching before the record. “There’s such sadness in you,” she said.

“No that’s you.”

She frowned. “That’s just the problem. I can’t see what’s inside anyone.”

“Well,” he laughed, “we aren’t frogs in your laboratory.”

She smiled sadly. “I know. I just… I can’t connect with anyone. I always think I know what someone’s face is saying,” she said, shaking her head. “And I’m always wrong.” She looked down at her naked toes on the green tile floor. “I’m so intense. I repulse people.”

“I’m telling you, you need to play.”

“Stop saying that. It’s like you have one idea.” She touched her forehead and grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just have to finish this story. Then I’ll calm down.”

“No,” he said. “There will always be another story. You will never be calm.”

Suddenly he looked exactly like the devil. And she knew he was right. The story loomed, unfinished, one of a lifetime of stories. It was enough to make her scream.

“In the story we’re talking,” she said anxiously. “Kind of like we’re talking right now. Only something happens.”

“What happens?”

“Well I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“Does something have to happen?”

“Yes,” she said and waited for him to make a suggestion. But he didn’t. “What do you think should happen?” she asked. “I mean, what do you think would happen? I want it to feel, you know, real .”

“What about this?”

“This now?”

He nodded.

She stared at him a minute, then picked up the record and walked swiftly back to her bed. There she began typing all the words that had passed between them, all the ones she could remember.

Afterward she read over what she had written. She wasn’t sure if it was any good. “God damn,” she said.