Leopoldine Core: When Watched: Stories

“He’s probably just a rich guy who went to too much therapy. Those types are really against any sort of prodding of the brain.” In a mock-deranged male voice, Lucy said, “It means nothing. I kill women every night. It means nothing!”

Kit laughed. She considered telling Lucy about Ned’s dying daughter but quickly decided not to. She couldn’t bear to paint him as a tragic figure.

“If he’s paying us double, I’ll totally do it,” Lucy said and Kit smiled, dropping her head, letting hair fall in front of her eyes.

• • •

Later they lay in the dark, Curtis sprawled between them. “I feel weak and depressed from that chocolate,” Kit said. Lucy groaned softly, nearly asleep. She had hung Christmas lights on her fire escape and they cast a gem-like glow over the bed. Kit raised herself up on both elbows and studied Lucy. Her plump face in the colored light, wreathed with hair and shadows. Kit held her breath. It felt dangerous to watch such a beautiful person sleep. Lucy could wake at any moment, she thought, and there would be no mistaking the unflinching blaze in her eyes.

Kit lowered her head back onto the pillow. She felt slightly gleeful that Lucy was willing to touch her, even if it was for money. It seemed, somehow, like a far-off compliment. She closed her eyes and Lucy’s body beamed in her thoughts. She thought of other girls too. All the girls who’d turned her on wildly and never knew. She rolled onto her side, sweating. Her crotch thumped like a big, wet heart.

Curtis stirred, as if in response to Kit’s rising body temperature, the zinging nerves between her legs. He shimmied under the covers and stationed himself between Lucy’s feet.

• • •

In the morning Kit felt like a criminal. Lucy tromped around in her skimpy robe, Curtis following close behind.

“I made eggs,” Lucy said, gesturing toward the stove.

“Great,” Kit said, reaching a slender monkeyish arm out for her clothes, which were scattered by the bed, much in the manner of Lucy’s socks.

Lucy twisted a strand of gold hair around her pointer finger. “I used to think you didn’t eat. Cause you’re like, emaciated .”

“I know. I look exactly like my mom. She’s built like a broom.”

“My mom’s built like a refrigerator.”

“Oh come on.”

“She is .”

• • •

They were both sitting on the black couch when Ned scheduled their appointment for the following week. Sheila responded with a look of mild revulsion as she penciled it in. Kit pretended to ignore the look but took it to heart. Later on, she called the number on Ned’s business card, which in the right-hand corner had a cartoon tooth. It was smiling and had a set of its own teeth. She held the card with her thumb over the tooth while arranging for him to fork over the extra amount in cash. “If you screw us over in any way,” she said, “I won’t see you again.”

Kit saw a number of men that week and avoided Lucy. She paid off one of her credit cards. She learned that Sheila designed clothes when a small green dress appeared on the arm of the black couch. Sheila asked in an oddly sweet tone if Kit would model it for her. She was smiling but a look of scorn remained in her eyes, pulsing dimly. “I need to see it on someone small,” she said.

The dress fit Kit remarkably well and she couldn’t help admiring it, but this only depressed her. It meant Sheila was something other than an asshole. She was an artist.

Kit bought herself a handsome leather-bound journal that day. She put an aqua mason jar full of sharpened pencils on the windowsill by her bed. Then she tried to write but couldn’t. Ragged stray thoughts circled in her mind. Kit didn’t want to sit alone with her life, with the memories of a hundred male voices. She didn’t want to fuss over how to describe their faces. Instead she walked around her apartment, smoking pot from a glass pipe with the stereo on. She played Nico, who sounded like a prostitute to her, used and woeful. These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do. And all the times I had the chance to.

In the morning Kit grabbed the leather journal and jotted down her dream, which felt remotely like a tribute to Ned’s wife. She wrote in a panic, the dream whirling and vanishing. It felt deeply important as she raced on, snatching bits of the fleeing dream. Then she set her pen down and read the frayed, mystical prose with satisfaction. It seemed to be proof of something. That she had an inside. I exist, she wrote and instantly felt foolish, scribbling over the words.

Next she stood at the stove brewing espresso in a small steel pot, then went straight back to bed and sipped from her mug, a brown-tone afghan up over her shoulders. She watched hours of reality TV, which felt sleazy. This is the pornography of our lives, she thought.

Kit wondered if Ned’s daughter was dead yet. She hated to think of him sobbing alongside a hospital bed with a little girl on it. What is the difference between me and her? she thought. Between a daughter and a whore? Possession, thought Kit. His daughter belongs to him.

But they were girls in the same sea, she felt. Both their values had been established in relation to Ned’s sperm. It was gold when his daughter was conceived. It had taken a long, holy swim to the womb. But with Kit, his sperm had just been trash, just some muck on her ass. It was a weirdly gratifying epiphany. I am the receptacle, she thought. His daughter is a deity.

• • •

Time passed crudely. Kit had several dreams of leaping out of windows and becoming a ghost. She didn’t believe in the afterlife but in her dreams it seemed so obvious. Even when she woke, it was true for a moment. Kit was deeply curious about death. We only know how to go from one place to another, she thought. How does it feel to go from one place to nowhere? Her thinking stopped at the point. She could only wonder. Death is the one thing you can’t write about, she thought.

On the day of their appointment with Ned, Kit woke in a sweat. She forgot her dream instantly, but felt certain it had been a nightmare. I was being chased, she thought. Kit hauled herself into the shower and then got high in the kitchen, waiting for her coffee to brew. She set her glass pipe down and called Lucy.

“What the fuck?” Lucy answered.

“Hi.”

“ Hi? You’ve been ignoring me for days.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been really busy.”

“Whatever.”

They met on the street. Lucy in her tweed coat and a pair of oversized amber frames with rose-hued lenses, her bright hair blowing in the wind. Kit leaned up against a brick wall, squinting. She wore dark slacks and waxy brown combat boots. Lucy removed her sunglasses and they exchanged subtle looks of terror.

“Your eyes,” Kit said.

“What?”

“They’re so green.”

“Oh I know. I get startled in the mirror sometimes. Cause they change.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“The Irish thought they were fairies,” Lucy said nervously. “If they had a baby with green eyes, they thought that the fairies had come and swapped it with one of their own.” She nodded as if encouraging herself. “So they basically murdered their green-eyed babies — threw them down a well, hoping the fairies would return their human baby.”

“Scary.”

“I know.”

Upstairs they whipped past Sheila and headed straight for the bathroom. Kit changed into her same black uniform and Lucy removed her coat, revealing a silk camel-tone dress with opalescent buttons down the back. She beamed with anxiety. What was pink came soaring up to the surface of her face like a sunset.