Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“What?” George said. The record was lying flat beside her.

“I just feel like such an idiot sometimes.”

“Well everyone’s an idiot sometimes .”

She laughed, then stared into space. “Maybe ambition is the great distraction… cause it just makes you greedy.”

“Everyone is greedy. Everyone is exactly the same.”

She blinked. Maybe George Harrison is crazy, she thought, then reached for the phone. It was heavy and pea green, a rotary phone from the sixties.

As it rang she held her breath. She always did this. She could never breathe until the human at the other end put a stop to all the ringing — said hello. She decided then — waiting for it — that it was the most romantic word: hello.

The ringing ceased. She heard her father but not his hello. He just breathed directly into the phone — into her ear. He always did this.

“Dad?”

“Saundra, it’s very late.”

“I know — I’m sorry. I have to ask you something.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“What have you done? Have you done something?”

“Daddy, I’m writing. And I think this could be good — like really, really good — but I’m not sure.”

“Well,” he yawned, “it’s usually a spell, Saundra — the good feeling.”

“I know that.”

“You can’t really see a sentence until you feel bad again.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Good.”

She imagined him touching his mustache as he always did — compulsively.

“You had a question?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

She sat up, straightening her spine as if he were there, watching. “Are there any fables or stories where a woman opens her vagina and inside is the whole universe?”

He was quiet.

“I’m writing a story where that happens,” she said. “I need to know if I’m writing a story that has already been written.”

“Well all stories—”

“Yeah, yeah, they’ve all been written — I know . But has the universe ever shown up in a woman’s vagina?”

“All the time. Why just yesterday—”

“Daddy, I’m serious.”

“Well what do you mean by the whole universe?”

“I mean the birds, the trees, the entire solar system — everything. The universe, Daddy. The universe .”

“Well there’s a scene in an Almodóvar movie where a man walks into a woman’s vagina and it’s enormous. But it’s not the universe.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s an Italo Calvino story where the whole universe is a woman’s fat arms and breasts. But not her vagina.”

“Okay.”

“And then there’s the Courbet painting of the vagina called L’Origine du monde . But it’s not L’Origine du universe. ”

He laughed and then she laughed. They laughed together heartily.

“You know I was sleeping, Saundra.”

“I’m sorry. I had to know. I knew you would know.”

He was silent. A pleased silence, she thought.

“You should work in the vagina,” she said. “Like at the front desk of one… answer absurd questions like mine all day.”

“I think I’ve worked in several.”

She smiled and knew that he was also smiling. It was a weird smile, his was — a secret smile, one obscured by mustache hairs.

On the pink wall a brown spider made its diagonal dash. A second one followed, then a third and she wondered if an egg had hatched. She didn’t care. She lay there with the phone in her hand, basking in something like sunshine. It was the infinite weirdness of the world and it made her smile again, with her father smiling on the other line, the weirdest man. And she the weirdest woman. And George, blinking beside her, the weirdest Beatle.

“Good night, Saundra,” her father said.

She waited for his phone to hit the cradle and imagined him in his navy robe, shuffling back to bed. She saw him part the sheets and enter them. She hung up.

“How can you say vagina to your father?” George asked.

“I don’t know. I just can. He’s a professor of German literature.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t do anything that normal people can,” she grinned. “But I can do everything they can’t .”

George laughed.

“He’s not always so nice — my dad. He can be very cruel out of nowhere.”

“But you keep calling him. Even though he can be cruel.”

“Even though.” She picked the record up and looked into his eyes. “I think I’m afraid to finish the book,” she said. “Like finishing the book means death.” She sighed. “I don’t wanna die.”

“You won’t,” he said. “Your book isn’t you.”

“What about your music? Was that you?”

“No. It was just something I did.”

She glanced at her cigarette pack and decided not to reach for it. She said, “What’s it like anyway, dying?”

“It’s like nothing,” he said evenly. “Nothing at all.”

She peered at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll see. It’s like nothing. We really die… I did.”

What he said made her stomach hurt. He had died and not even God could change that. Especially not God, she thought. He was gone, long gone. And the face she was staring into was her own.

She put the record down and returned her eyes to the computer, then unpaused “Here Comes the Sun” and fell back into the song, its tender grip. There were only thirty-two seconds left. Now it was twenty-six. It’ll be over soon, she thought, the seconds vanishing forever. It’s ending now, she thought. This is the end.