Fucking Daphne (20 page)

The last time I saw her I decided to test that. A mistake, yes, I realize that now, and she was right to be angry. I threw myself in front of a moving train just to see, just to feel, what would happen. I just opened my mouth and spoke. Sweet nothings. Like you do. By the time she could stanch what gushed from me, I had lost several dozen words she didn't even want—ugly words, graceless words. She could not put them back. She had warned me of that. I nodded mutely and looked at my hands, unable to show her my eyes. I was so ashamed, and so proud. I wanted her to submit to me, too, somehow. So I made her take them. I was proud of that. For all I know, she turned around and gave them away.

I wish that I could tell you how exactly she did it, how she took the words. Was it on purpose that she made it so difficult to observe her then, or was that all part of how it was done? Each time I went to her, I would tell myself that this time I would notice every single thing she did, every place her fingers touched, every place my mouth went, every exacting stroke, every soundless cry. No matter how deep the bite or how sharp the shock, I would know this time for sure, so that later I could at least know how it had happened. But I never knew for certain. It only ever happened when I was too beyond myself to know anything more than that she was inside me, when every cell of my body bellowed and yowled, straining to ride the carefully triggered avalanches of sensation.

Then there would be another sensation,
that
sensation, the one I can almost describe. A tendril of her would unfurl inside me, tense and quivering, her touch electric as it caressed the wings of my spine, wrapped gently around a lobe of liver or lung, probing, searching for the place where the word she wanted lay nestled. And then she would find and grasp it, the singing frond of her curling around the word, possessive, ferocious. Eyes open, I nodded, willed her to do it, to tear it from me, to take what she needed. As she pulled the word free I would quake, unable to stop, rigid with the bliss of it, watching that slow glamorous satisfied smile open the criminal painted luxury of her lips, feeling her body go languid as she became, at least for the moment, replete.

She was radiant then, so lovely that the memory makes me ache. I would have given her anything to satisfy her like that by myself: my blood, my money, my heart. But she didn't want those. She took the one thing she wanted; she took the one thing she could use. Every once in a while now I open her books, ones written since she knew me, and I look at the words on the pages. Is that my “cunt”? I cut it and paste it and want it to be. Perhaps it is mere vanity to think so, but having my words seemed, for a while at least, to give her what she needed, to silence the baying hounds of her troublesome destiny. The exchange was viciously unequal and scrupulously fair. I should never, ever have done it. For her, though, I might do it again.

It's funny, I can almost hear her as I write, as if she were reading over my shoulder.
Who knew you were such a romantic, Blank? Where are your bite marks, your scars, your four-letter words, and the things that ripped the bedsheets?

They're in another book, Daphne. You know where to find them.

—Neil Gaiman, from
The Sandman: Worlds' End

“You're a pretty girl,” she says to me. “You are very pretty to me.”

We are lying on a beach that doesn't really exist. I call it that, “the beach that doesn't exist,” even though it does. We are lying on it, on towels, staring up and into the sun. “Ninety-five percent of being a pretty girl is knowing what looks good on you,” I say. “What doesn't look good on me is this bikini.”

We stare into the sun from the beach that doesn't exist. I call it that to be difficult, like a child, and to mark my amazement that a beach should exist in the landlocked middle of nowhere because a
property developer said so, and that we've paid good money to come to a place that simply shouldn't be.

“What's the other 5 percent?”

“Believing you're a pretty girl.” I sit up because I want to see her, and she comes into focus, vitreous against floaters.

There is recklessness in your chronic melancholia, a recklessness that brings you into the arms you find—and how you find them. You are sure the life you are living is not the one you were born to, so you throw yourself into danger. You throw yourself toward causes, toward crises, toward catastrophe. Not for adventure, but for change. And if you are lucky, there are arms for you to land in, the arms you find.

We lie on the beach, slowly burning. We are talking about us.

“It's strange,” she recites, “that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”

“T. S. Eliot,” I say. I recognize the words. She is a poet; she speaks in poetry.

“Yes.”

We lie on the beach, slowly burning. I point at the sky, at a bright orange blimp suspended above us. It advertises the resort. It hovers above us, giving shade like a tree. “Why is it that there are five words for that thing, but only one word for love?” I ask.

She leans on an elbow, dreadlocks spread around her like Medusa's snakes. “Five words?”

I think. “Blimp. Dirigible.”

“Okay,” she says. “Two.”

“Airship. Lighter-than-air.”

“Okay, four.”

“Skyhook.”

She sits up at that. “That's incorrect,” she says. “Everyone knows a skyhook is a fuselage mounted on a helicopter that is fitted with a steel line and hook that carries heavy objects.”

You are lucky. You were rash and impetuous. You placed all your chips on black, spun the wheel. You picked up Daphne Gottlieb in your husband's Acura; you drove her a hundred miles to lie on a beach that feels like something dreamed. You didn't call home. You threw yourself toward a cause, toward a crisis, toward a catastrophe. Not for adventure, but for love.

“There's one noun for love,” she says, “but many verbs.”

I want to ask if she loves me, as a verb. But I'm shy. And I realize the ridiculousness of the question. Instead I say, “Tell me our verbs.”

She is a poet; she speaks in poetry. “Seduce, dally, lust, tryst.”

“Okay, four.”

“Touch, desire, covet, adore.”

“Okay,” I say, “eight.” I look at her and touch her cheek. “Now tell me our noun.”

“A pretty girl. Stolen time. A steel line and hook that carries heavy objects.”

I tug on my bikini.

She rolls toward me; she rolls over me. “Know what looks good on you? Me.”

Words are just breath. They are just sounds you make. They escape. They float around like blimps.

You stagger with words trapped inside your chest. You struggle to breathe as you fill with water and sweetness.

You don't say a thing; you write it down.

The sun is directly above us, and we seek shade, hot dogs, and lemonade on the boardwalk.

“I am not a pretty girl,” I say. “I'm like,” and I look around, “a coconut.” I point at a wreath in a gift shop, tikis, vinyl palm fronds, and wooden monkeys and coconuts. “I'm hard and hairy, and my insides slop around like sugar and water.”

I'm drowning in here.

We hold hands but walk far apart, like punks clearing a dance floor.

You imagine she demands,
Why my arms?
You imagine what you would say, what you wouldn't; that you wouldn't tell her you didn't land there purposefully, that you sought her without seeking, her danger, her cause, her crisis, her catastrophe. This is a stop at a gaming table: You roll dice and kiss her neck and try hard not to think about the arms waiting for you.

Why my arms?
she demands in reality, only to be difficult, like a child, to mark her amazement.

Nothing is true unless it is written down. The precept of the poet.

We shouldn't exist. We don't exist. I want to say this, to be difficult, like a child, and to mark my amazement.

She demands to know why her arms and I struggle to answer her. Something is stepping on my chest. I can't breathe. I can't speak. My mouth makes shapes silently.

You volunteer to write this all down, to make it true. You will give yourself the good lines, the good parts.

There is a yearning in chronic melancholia. Not for life, but to get something—anything—from it. There is an obsession with martyrs, with meaning and memory. You throw yourself into danger. You throw yourself toward causes, crises, and catastrophe, wanting only to be remembered.

We stop in front of the gift shop, look at ourselves reflected in the window. She faces me, plays with the Saint Catherine medal around my neck. I am going to leave her. She knows this.

When I leave her, I will find arms, angry and stiff. They will bind me to the torture wheel. No one will be amazed and converted by my stories; my words will be crushed inside my chest. Under my hands, the wheel will not miraculously break. I am not a saint.

I know this and do nothing.

“You forgot one,” she says finally. “Zeppelin.” She sighs and drapes an arm around my shoulders. “There are five nouns for blimp, and only one for love.”

 

 

W
e were flying from New York to San Francisco, she in 12B and I in 12A, and I was terrified of flying—not terrified of flying, but terrified of suddenly not flying, of suddenly no longer being in flight—meaning terrified of crashing, or terrified of dying, and so when the plane began to shake, I grabbed her arm.

I hadn't meant to scare her or hurt her, hadn't even meant, really, to touch her, but the plane was now jolting—the kinds of jolts one can register in the sounds of objects rattling about: the seat-back trays, the paperbacks open atop the trays, the overhead compartments' doors. And the dinging of certain important bells. The captain's staticky voice.

And I was certain we were nearing the ends of our lives, certain we would ground nose down in a field, or a forest, or fiery in the midst of some endless Midwestern farm owned by a man and his
large-boned wife and two large-boned daughters, and my instinct was to grab this woman's arm.

And my further instinct was to not let go.

The woman and I hadn't talked much before the shaking started, before I grabbed her arm, only a bit of small talk after takeoff, me to say, “Are you from New York?” her to say, “No, San Francisco”; me to say, “Me too”; her to say nothing and adjust her headphones; me to say, “I was seeing my mother; she's in New York”; and her to say, in a tone I hear now, but didn't hear then, as disaffected, “How nice.” Then it was me saying—and I didn't like the way my voice shook, the way I followed my voice with an even shakier laugh—“I've never liked flying,” and her starting to say something, then stopping, then smiling instead. And her teeth were perfect, and I felt myself falling into that dark space I rarely inhabit between jealousy and desire, as she faced forward, readjusted her headphones, turned up her volume, and closed her eyes.

I should say that by the space between jealousy and desire I don't mean a vacant space between the two, but rather the space where the two overlap.