Rufi Thorpe - Dear Fang, with Love

Vera just stared at me. I stared back at her.

“You would do that?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, amazed she didn’t already know.

—

I snuck out that afternoon to buy Vera an amber necklace. I wanted nothing more than to take a nap, but we only had four days of the trip left, and I was worried I wouldn’t have another chance. I told Vera and Judith I was picking up some groceries, and I went out to find the jewelry store Vera had described on Gedimino prospektas, a long, broad street where vendors laid out wares on tables or on blankets on the ground: a multitude of amber baubles, tiny lacquered wooden boxes, hand-carved wooden kitchen implements, fur hats, Soviet trinkets, old war medals, painted canvases hawked by middle-aged artists absolutely reeking of alcohol and cigarettes. Not the fresh smell of alcohol spilled but the citrusy, rotting smell of alcohol that cannot be processed by the liver, now seeping out of the pores as some new poison. Ink, I thought, and wondered if I smelled like that too. I needed to get the drinking under control. I was always intending to get the drinking under control, but I never actually did. It was another thing that made me feel helpless, the lack of progress I made on my various schemes to better myself. My body was just one more dissertation I wasn’t going to finish.

I couldn’t find the shop Vera mentioned, but I found a shop, and I was assured by the high prices that the amber was real. I was not normally very good at picking out jewelry. It wasn’t that I didn’t like jewelry or couldn’t tell when it was pretty, but I knew there was a whole other fashion part of it that I didn’t have a handle on. But with the amber, I was less nervous. It was just like trying to pick a pretty shell at the seashore or a pretty rock at the lake.

I didn’t like the pendants, just one big gob of amber on a chain, and I finally settled on what I thought was the prettiest thing in the store: a necklace of perfectly polished, large, round amber beads that ranged from the lightest, palest honey all the way to the darkest, pitchy red-black, perfectly arranged like a rainbow. I could picture it on Vera’s neck. I knew it was the right one, and I bought it, practically in a haze of exhaustion. I am sure the woman who ran the shop thought I was completely insane; I was barely able to count my money to pay for the thing. Sadly, I needed a beer. I knew having a beer would cure me, but I was unwilling to have one and admit what was wrong with me.

When I got back to the apartment, having bought a useless hodgepodge of groceries as cover, there was a note on the table in Judith’s spidery hand:

Your daughter is acting as my chaperone on a night out. I am unable to work the locking mechanism on my door and so I need her in order to enter and exit my apartment. She has an excellent sense of direction! Don’t wait up.

XOXO, Judith

PS: I am kidding, we will be home early. I am an old woman.

I didn’t even need to think about it. I opened the freezer, poured a shot of vodka, chased it with a pickle, brushed my teeth, put on fresh clothes, and set out for Susan’s hotel.

—

It was luck that she was there. I brought her a bag of little black plums I had bought as part of my cover-story groceries. My mother had always said never to show up to a woman’s house without bringing a gift. I held out the plums, not knowing what to say, just standing there at her door. I wanted her so badly I didn’t even know how to flirt or coerce or beg. I could only hold out the plums and hope she knew what I meant, why I was there, what I needed. It wasn’t just sex I needed, either. It was something I didn’t have a name for.

She was wearing an oversize man’s shirt and pajama pants. “I was writing,” she said. “Sorry I skipped out on Trakai without telling you.” Her hair was wet from the shower. I wanted to lick her ears. I wanted to bite her hair. She took the plums and motioned me inside. “Sit,” she said, and gestured at the bed.

I sat. It was late afternoon, almost evening, but the sun was still bright outside and her curtains were pulled against it so that her room was dim in that very particular way that a sickroom is dim. She sat beside me and reached into the bag of plums, plucked one for herself, then offered the bag to me. I reached inside, my hand awkward and trembly in the plastic, and took one of the little fruits. When I bit into it, juice ran down my chin. The skin was puckeringly sour and the flesh disgustingly sweet. I almost choked on my own saliva. Susan made no game of eating her plum suggestively, but she didn’t have to. It was a frankly, undeniably erotic activity, eating those plums on her bed.

“Are you ever going to kiss me?” she asked.

My mouth was full of plum. I had failed again. I had waited too long. She laughed and reached over and kissed me.

—

My usual pedestrian concerns during sex — wondering if she was liking what I was doing, wondering if I would make her come, trying to keep from coming myself — were absent. Susan didn’t try to say dirty things to me, and I didn’t try to say dirty things to her. Kat and I had had sex something like this, wordless, animal sex, but there was none of that teenage fumbling or frantic lunging between me and Susan. Our sex was slow, almost decorous, and yet verging on delirious. I felt like I had a fever. Naked, her body was small and firm, but she was not skinny. She reminded me of a cat, that kind of contained, graceful plumpness. After she got me undressed, she wanted to look at me for a long time and I felt silly. “Golden fur everywhere,” she said and touched my chest hair.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, I like it.”

When we were done, I pulled the amber necklace out of the canvas grocery bag and gave it to her. I’d brought it with me only because I didn’t want to leave it in the apartment, afraid Vera would find it.

“Are you serious?” she said, holding the beads which almost seemed to glow in the low light.

“Yeah,” I said. I thought that I could always go back to that store and buy something else for Vera. In that moment, I just wanted to give Susan something and the necklace was what I had.

“But this is so beautiful,” she said.

I helped her put it on. She sat on the bed, naked except for the amber at her throat, and ate another plum. I thought that I would remember how she looked for the rest of my life. Her hair was the same brassy red-gold as the middle beads of the amber necklace. Her skin was dewy with sweat. Her room had no air-conditioning and there was sweat at her temples too, making her hair curl. It was clear from the easy way she sat cross-legged that she was comfortable being naked. She was not nude, not like some European painting of coy, pale butt cheeks. She was graphically, powerfully naked, like a fertility idol.

“What are you doing?” she said, and snatched away the bed pillow I had used to cover my crotch.

I laughed. “It’s just a reflex. When it’s erect, it seems obvious to be naked, but when I’m soft I feel like I should cover up.”

“I think he’s very handsome, sleeping like that,” she said, gesturing to the way my penis slumped over my thigh. I had never had a lover refer to my penis as “he,” like it was a separate person. I thought it was cute of her.

“I like you so much,” I said.

“Oh, don’t start with that,” she said. “You’ll get me all confused.”

“But I really do like you,” I said.

“I know. I like you too.” She fished another plum out of the bag and threw it to me, then got one for herself. “These little plums are amazing. I could eat all of them. They’re so sweet, they’re like candy.”

I ate the plum. We were going to talk only about the plums. Normally I was all for avoiding such conversations because women were so often hurt by whatever I was really thinking or feeling, and so talking after sex involved a lot of white lies. But to not talk about it with Susan now seemed perfectly absurd, like we were both ignoring bombs going off just outside our window.