Epiphany Jones (23 page)

S
he pats my hair as I lie on top of her, trying to catch my breath.

What
was
that? The noises. The squishy sounds like two wet fish slapping against each other. The hair –
her
hair – that gets caught and pulled under elbows. I was so damn hard. Your hand, it can’t make you feel like that.

Screw what Rachel says, it really is like this warm velvety tunnel. And man, that didn’t take long at all, but I’m really, really exhausted. Bela says something to me in Portuguese and closes her eyes. Sleep is coming for me so quickly, but I’m afraid to let it take me. I’m afraid to see Bela gone when I wake up.

It’s now a few hours later. Bela is lying next to me. She hasn’t taken off. She’s smoking a cigarette. Her little mouth blowing perfect rings of smoke. ‘That’s it?’ she says in flawless English. ‘What are you, some kind of virgin?’

I wake for real now. Bela is lying next to me. She hasn’t taken off. My heart skips a beat as I slowly remember why she’s in my bed.

I just lost my virginity.

And it’s different than all the porns make it seem. There’s something … extra with real sex. The cover is pulled down around Bela’s waist, exposing a breast. Her nipple is almost smooth and flat now, like a melted pink Hershey’s Kiss set on top of a water balloon covered in skin. Bela’s eyes open ever-so briefly. She runs a finger across my lips. A smile shows on her mouth as she drifts back to sleep.

It’s dawn when I wake again. The sunlight is beginning to spill through the bedroom window. Bela sleeps on her side – her back towards
me. I slip out of the bed and grab my khakis from the floor. The crinkled guidebook page with the embassy’s address is in the front pocket. Out the window I see Paulo helping his staff set the tables for the day. It’s Monday. The embassy will be open in a few hours. In the bed Bela’s stomach expands and contracts with each breath. She sleeps so soundly.

And what do I do about you?
I think. The taste of her skin dawdles on my tongue.

It’s Monday. Go to the embassy and turn yourself in like you planned. Do it before she gets up. Do it before Epiphany finds you.

‘Jerry?’ Bela says in her soft voice.

And a panic suddenly grips me.
I need to talk to her
. You never need to talk to your porn when you’re done with it. She’s lying there, looking at me. What do I say? What’s she thinking? What if I wasn’t good?
Did she just look at my penis?
Oh my god, what if I’m not big enough? Was I the worst she’s ever had? How many
has
she had?

‘Come back to bed,’ she smiles. ‘It early.’ And she stretches her hand towards mine. My fears evaporate at the sound of her call. I drop the khakis and the crinkled guidebook page and I gravitate to her like I’m a skydiver and she’s the earth. As I take her hand, as I climb into bed, she wraps my arm around her waist. She’s so warm. So real. The embassy can wait one more day. Besides, if I went right now I’d just walk in there with a big I’m-not-a-virgin-anymore grin on my face and they wouldn’t take me seriously. Tomorrow. I’ll go tomorrow. For now all I can think about is last night.

The drive back from the mountain took longer than the drive there. I had told Bela how much her driving scared me, so she made sure to go turtle’s-pace slow. On the way home we never spoke of her dropping me off at my place. When we arrived she parked and got out of the car with me. The air was chilly. She pulled a leftover bottle of wine from her backpack and said, ‘We should finish, no? You help me with my resoomay, now I help you with your Portuguese.’

So we went up to my place and Bela tried to teach me her language.

‘
Vinho
,’ she said and pointed to the wine bottle.

‘Ve-no,’ I said.

‘Vi
nho
,’ she repeated, smiling.

‘You know, this isn’t going to work. I can’t speak any languages.’

‘What is English?’ she shot back.
‘Eu sou uma mulher,’
she pointed to herself.

‘E-su-uma-muller,’ I pointed to myself.

‘I am sure that is not the case, no? You don’t look like a woman,’ she laughed. Her eyes, they glistened like wet crystals. She pointed at me.
‘Tu és um homem.’

‘I’m a man,’ I guessed.

‘Very good!’ she said, taking a large drink. ‘Now, what else would you like to learn?’

‘CanIkissyou?’ I mumbled.

‘I am sorry,’ she said with a slight grin, ‘I can not follow your words that quickly.’

My face went red and my self-consciousness turned the rest of her teaching into a less playful lesson. A bottle of wine later I still couldn’t speak one word of Portuguese. But Bela, she was having fun anyway. I could see it in her eyes.

‘Wine makes me warm inside, but skin cold on outside, no?’ she shivered. ‘May we light your fire?’

I lit the fire and we sat down on the back windowsill and looked out into the chilly April night. For minutes neither of us said a word, we just watched cats scurry from shadow to shadow on the cobbled street below. Then, through glassy eyes Bela said,
‘Gostei da nossa conversa de hoje.’
I shrugged and she placed her hand on my arm and said, ‘I am sorry. Our Portuguese lesson already ended. It is easy to slip into mother tongue, no? I said, I enjoyed our conversation today, on the mountain. It was nice.’ Then she cast a glance away from me like she’d suddenly become embarrassed.

‘It was nice,’ I said.

And her eyes caught mine again and after a moment she said,
‘Não tens de perguntar se me podes beijar,’
and she sat there waiting. I thought she’d accidently slipped back into Portuguese again, but she didn’t correct herself. She just held her gaze on me.

And though I had no definitive way of knowing what she’d said just then, the way she timidly cast her eyes down, the way a little drop of wine reverberated on her lower lip – well, sometimes we say things in hard-to-interpret ways because we don’t know how to come right out with it.

I kissed her little round lips. They tasted like plump grapes. And as I stroked her face and kissed her mouth, all inhibition suddenly left us both and she climbed on top of me and I peeled off her turquoise shirt. As we stumbled to the bed the shadows and light from the flames of the fireplace danced across her breasts. And her breasts, they weren’t at all what I was used to looking at. The breasts in my porns were usually perfect spheres with rock-hard nipples. Bela’s nipples were soft and slowly tightened with caresses; her breasts were supple and natural and gave slowly when I kissed them. Her stomach had the slightest hint of a paunch – just a little bit of baby fat that was the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt. And her pubic area, far from being the hairless, slick wax land of the porn actresses, had a little nick and a few red razor bumps where she shaved. Our movements were awkward at times. Our bodies made embarrassing and occasionally funny noises as we joined. But it was wonderful.

When Bela got out of my bed that first morning, when she said she had to go to work, I thought that what had happened had been an anomaly. I thought it was a slip-up on her part due to all the wine we drank. But she left my place for work and when her shift ended she came back that night. She came back
to me
. And lying in bed that second night we cradled and touched each other all over. We whispered to one another, our faces just millimetres apart, and we felt the other’s breath warm us like a heavenly steam.

The second morning-after was worse than the first. Better, I mean, but still worse, you know? I started to feel something I never had before. In bed, next to her, the world was made of nothing but us. But when she left for work that second morning-after there was some kind of new pain in my stomach, like the earth had split and one half of it had floated away. The pain was worse than the fear of going to the
embassy. Worse than even Epiphany finding me. A pain that would only be quenched when Bela’s half of the world returned.

Today is
17 AV
. That’s seventeen days After Virginity, for those of you keeping track. I can’t go to the embassy anymore. Everything’s changed – even my figments. The longer I’m with Bela, the more some kind of anti-figment latency carries over when we’re apart. After the first night, the next day I did see Rachel, but she just stood across the street and didn’t bother me. Later in the day I saw Ana Lucia, but she too left me alone. Since then all my figments have completely disappeared. Even my dreams of Epiphany in that silverware factory come less and less. When I do have them, it’s only partially. Only the beginning where she’s a young girl, alone and afraid.

This afternoon I met Bela when she finished work. As we wandered up and down the narrow side streets we passed a sex shop. Bela laughed at the peculiar toys in the window: the sex swings, the cock harnesses, the nipple suction tubes. Her laugh has the infectious curiosity of a child. She pulled me inside
‘For fun, no?’
and we strolled the aisles and she giggled at the awkward instruments – much to the annoyance of the tattooed and pierced man behind the counter, who knew we had no intention of buying anything.

There was the life-sized dildo shaped like an arm that ended in a clenched fist. There were the anal beads, the whips, the tittie-tassels and cock rings. Then there were the videos, some were pure fetish: animals, midgets, men with vaginas (manginas – a word Bela found hilarious). And of course, there were the leaked celebrity sex tapes.

As we browsed I was more embarrassed than she was. For me, this stuff was always something you never mentioned except anonymously online. In the outside world it was things you would refer to as shameful – no matter how much you enjoyed seeing them used in videos. But Bela, she snickered with hand over mouth at everything and was glad to have a partner in her criminal curiosities.

‘
Pulp Friction
!’ she laughed and squeezed my arm as she read the title of a sex tape with an Uma Thurman lookalike on the cover.

We’re in bed. Bela’s head is on my chest. Her pubic hair is damp as
her crotch nuzzles my thigh. She gently purrs as I stroke her hair. I lick my lips, still feeling her taste on them. Is this what it’s like for normal people? Is this how nights are spent; not in front of a computer, but wrapped around someone you never want to let go of?

I kiss her forehead and a small trickle of bitter reality manages to enter my mouth. Sure, it’s been sixteen days now, but where
is
this going? What am I doing? I can’t believe someone like her likes me, but does she even
know
me? I mean, she knows me, but she doesn’t know what’s happened. She doesn’t know I’m wanted for murder. This little sheltered romantic bubble can’t last forever. It wouldn’t be fair to her. I’m going to need to tell her the truth.

From underneath the covers, Bela raises her arm and makes a fist. She twirls her forearm, wrist locked tight, and playfully makes a little monster noise. She laughs and her eyes glisten. ‘The fist, no? From the shop?’

I smile. ‘Yeah, the fist,’ I say.

‘What are you thinking?’ she says.

I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to lose
this
to the truth. Not yet. So I change my thoughts quickly. It’s an automatic response I’ve picked up after years of deceiving others. I tell Bela that, as a child, my sister and I used to love to make jack-o-lanterns on Halloween. We’d carve two each and give our pumpkins one scary face and one silly face.

‘Jacklantern? What is that?’

‘Pumpkin carving.’

Bela just furrows her lips.

‘Don’t you carve pumpkins on Halloween?’

‘No,’ she says. Always short and to the point when appropriate. Then she lets out a little laugh. ‘A pumpkin is just a vegetable, no? Why do you carve vegetables?’

‘We carve
pumpkins
,’ I say, giving her a squeeze, which she quickly uses to nuzzle into me, ‘because, traditionally, they’re meant to ward off evil spirits. You give your pumpkin a scary face and leave it on the porch so ghosts and goblins don’t come around.’

Her look tells me she thinks I might be pulling her leg. But then she
smiles and says she would like to make a ‘jacklantern’ too. ‘To protect against ghosts and goblins and,’ she locks her wrist again and waves her clenched hand in my face,
‘the fist!’

Y
ou would know better than me, but I guess Bela and I had ‘that’ conversation today. That conversation I’m assuming all couples have when they’ve been seeing each other for a while. ‘Where’s this going?’

Bela didn’t phrase it like that, but as we were having coffee at my place after lunch she was being unusually quiet. When I asked her what the matter was, she kind of snapped at me. It took me a while to coax out what was happening. ‘You just say when we meet that you are here on vacation, no?’ Then it hit me that I’d been here for over three weeks now. ‘And when does that vacation end?’ It’s questions like this that make me admire her so much. Questions where you lay your feelings on the line and hope that the person you’re asking doesn’t run over them with a dump truck.

I’ve lied to Bela once and only once. Last week she asked what I did and I told her my father died (which is true) and that he left us a lot of money so I don’t need to work (not exactly true – being a Hollywood PR star might be high-profile, but the pay is lower than you’d think). I didn’t know how else to explain the money, though. But she smiled and took what I said at face value and it killed me inside.

So now, when I tell her that I’m staying as long as she’s here, it’s not a lie. I mean, besides the phone call to Diana after I arrived, there’s been no other signs of Epiphany looking for me. Abdul’s boat left long ago. The police have no way of knowing where I am. And as long as I’m with Bela I don’t see my figments. I don’t need my medicine. I
could
make my life here.

Bela’s sombre mouth grows into a big smile. ‘I like that answer,’ she
says. ‘Yes, I like.’ Then she gets up from the table as if talking any more about it might change something. ‘Okay, I go to my father’s now. We move books to the store. Only a few hours of work today,’ she smiles and leaves me with a caffeinated kiss.

Paulo greets me as I step out into the afternoon sunlight. I want to do something for Bela and ask if he can give me directions to the nearest farmers’ market. He tells me if I cross the Ponte de Dom Luis there’s one on the other end of Vila Nova de Gala. After getting lost more than once I finally reach the market. I search the stands for fifteen minutes with no luck. Then I find a stand with two young men behind it. They’ve got three pumpkins. One has a crack and has started to soften. Though the remaining two are small, they’ll have to do.

As I reach into my pockets for my wallet, out of nowhere there’s a loud crash. I turn in time to catch a glimpse of a figure in hunter-green pants darting out of sight past a stall twenty feet from where I stand. Several boxes of watermelons have splattered to the ground and the stall-keeper’s swearing after the culprit. I quickly pay the two men for my pumpkins and leave before anything happens to them.

I stroll back home and the weight of the pumpkins feel good as I balance one in each hand. When Emma and I used to carve ours I’d go for the traditional jagged mouth or missing tooth face, while Emma would always try something more artistic – like a cat’s face or a flower. I wonder what face Bela will carve into hers?

I turn down a tiny street. Varying objects hang from the small balconies on the worn buildings. On one drapes the red-and-green Portuguese flag. Another balcony has today’s laundry. A third, a cage with two blue parakeets. Fado music escapes from the building with the worn red paint.

I’m about to pass an alley between two of the buildings when I’m stopped in my tracks by a flood of cats that suddenly charge from it. Brown ones, black ones, calico ones. I’ve never seen so many together at one time. I glance down the alley to see how many there are but besides the discarded construction materials and trash that lines the
entrance, the rest of the alley is too dark to see into. Wooden boards crisscross the buildings’ roofs on either side, blocking any sunlight.

But then, as my eyes slowly adjust to the alley’s darkness, I see it, just barely, skulking in the dark. Its shapeless form obscured by shadows could be anything: cats piled on top of each other; a cat the size of a person. But before I can make out what I’m looking at, before I have a chance to move, the object comes right at me and I’m grabbed and pulled into the alley. One of my pumpkins hits the ground with a soft, hollow crack. I stumble forwards and catch the other inches before it meets the same fate. The shadowed form scurries past me in the dark, blocking the exit.

‘I found her,’ a voice says.

And if my pumpkin had a face, it would be one of shock.

Epiphany stands before me, framed in the light of the alley’s exit. She’s wearing hunter-green khakis and a black, long-sleeved T-shirt. A little blood seeps from her lip where a scab has broken.

If my pumpkin had a face, it would be one of irritation.

‘She’s in France,’ Epiphany says.

If my pumpkin had a mouth, it would say, ‘I don’t care.’

‘Jerry,’ she says, as she prowls towards me, ‘she’s in France!’

I hold my pumpkin close like it’s a football and charge my shoulder into her breast. For all I know this could be the last pumpkin in Portugal. No way is she gonna take
this
from me too. Epiphany stumbles back and hits the alley wall. I set my remaining pumpkin safely on the ground behind me.

If my pumpkin could talk, it would say, ‘You’ve got a good thing now, Jerry. Leave Epiphany behind.’

Epiphany looks as if she hasn’t eaten or slept in days. Her eye sockets are sallow. Her arms are thin. And even though it’s been almost a month since she was attacked at the docks, she has marks that look fresh.

If my pumpkin could talk, it would say, ‘Leave thoughts of returning to Chicago behind. You’re happy for the first time in your life. You have Bela. She’ll make you whole again.’

It would say, ‘It’s time to fight for what you have.’

‘What’s happened to you?’ I say, extending my palm so she knows to remain still. Epiphany looks at her hands as if the answer is written on them. Her knuckles are scabbed with freshly dried blood. ‘He found me, but it doesn’t matter–’

‘Who found you?’

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she shouts. ‘Matthew has her in France!’

I raise my other hand to calm her. ‘I thought she was in Spain?’ I say in a way that can’t be taken as anything but an accusation of her increasing instability.

‘He moved her to Cannes!’ she shouts like a lunatic. ‘I arrived too late. He moved all of them already!’ She’s hardly comprehensible now. She’s babbling about some ‘awakening’. Saying we have to get to Cannes before the film festival starts. It’s in two days. We need to leave now.

And again she says, ‘He has her.’

She says, ‘In Cannes.’

She says, ‘The awakening.’

If my pumpkin had a face it would be one of pity – almost. Doesn’t she even remember me drugging her? Doesn’t she remember me disappearing from the ship?

‘It’s been over three weeks since I left you on the boat,’ I say. ‘Do you know that?’

But she only repeats, ‘The awakening … In Cannes … He has her.’ Her voice fluctuates between a loud whisper and a shout and she stumbles towards me like a beggar and clutches both of my shoulders. ‘Matthew is going to give her to monsters at his party. That’s why God told me to bring you! Don’t you see?’ Her nails dig into my shoulders. ‘I can’t get into it on my own! But with you! Matthew knows you! He knew your father! Your father, Jerry! We can get to her before the monsters!’

And I find myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. ‘
That’s
why you did all this to me?’ I pry her hands from my shoulders and push her back against the wall. ‘
That’s
why you killed Roland and ruined my life? So I could be your date to some fucked-up party?’

If my pumpkin could talk, it would say, ‘Be careful.’

Epiphany shakes. Her green eyes flare at me from behind dirty raven’s hair that’s folded in clumpy strands across her face.

I think of Bela to calm myself. And one last time, I try reason. ‘Even if any of this was real, it wouldn’t work. I haven’t seen Matthew since my father died. He probably doesn’t even remember me. There’s no way he’s going to let me into some exclusive party of his.’ The tears in her eyes pop and stream down her face. ‘But even if he would,’ I say, ‘I’m not going with you.’

And my pumpkin – if it could talk, it would shout, ‘Look out!’

Epiphany springs at me, slamming me against the opposite wall. Another scab on the side of her lip breaks and blood flows together with the water from her eyes. ‘Your father did this to me! You owe me this! You owe me my life and my daughter’s life! Your father’s sins–’

‘Enough!’ I shout through gritted teeth. ‘My dad was a good man! He had a hard life. He lost his daughter and his son got fucked up and maybe he wasn’t there for me or my mom like he should have been, but that doesn’t give me one reason to believe anything you say.’ My breathing is heavy and I’m surprised to find I feel like I could cry too. ‘You went to get Roland to force him to take you to that party, didn’t you? Because he knew Matthew. But you lost it. You killed the man who could have helped you more than I could. Well, I’m not going to let you kill me, too.’

And my pumpkin, it would warn, ‘Stop while you’re ahead.’

‘I’ve met someone,’ I say. ‘For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m happy. I’m alive. I’ve wasted the last fifteen years of my life walking around like a dead person and I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m staying where I am. I don’t care who thinks I killed Roland.’

It would say, ‘Shut up, Jerry.’

I say, ‘The only thing that matters is Bela.’

I say, ‘You can’t control me anymore.’

My resolve is palpable, and as Epiphany realises she’s lost any power she had over me a shudder reverberates through her body. ‘I can’t get close without you,’ she cries. ‘You owe me. You owe me–’

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I owe you nothing.’

Epiphany shakes her head in short little sways. When she speaks her voice has a grimness to it that I’ve never heard. ‘They’re going to rape her, Jerry,’ she says clutching her fists in the air. ‘She is what I was – the prized virgin. And they’re going to
fuck
her and not care when she cries out. That will just make them
fuck
her more. She’ll be raped and beaten and made to do the most humiliating things. She’ll be a shell of a person.’ She’s trembling so much she drops to her knees. ‘Please, Jerry. She’ll end up like me.’

It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Epiphany use the word ‘please’. And shuddering on the ground before me, she cries. She leans into me and wraps her arms around my legs and cries. ‘Please,’ she begs again. But there’s no warmth in her embrace – not like with Bela. Epiphany, she’s a husk with nothing inside. She’s a fake person. Just like I was.

I place my hand under her chin and raise her face to mine. And I look into those horrible green eyes. ‘I’m not going with you,’ I say.

‘But you’re meant to,’ she says quietly. Hollowly. And slowly her arms unwrap from my legs. She beats her fists against my hips. Even when they pick up speed they’re still just hollow punches. She’s tired and worn down. She beats her fists against me, mumbling about my father and God and fate, until I push her to the ground. And as she struggles to grab my ankles, anything to keep me from leaving, I kneel at her side and tell her that God has never told her she needed me. God has never spoken to her. The voices she hears, it’s just because of the horrible things that happened to her.

‘Everything you believe is wrong,’ I say.

Epiphany cries into her hands.

‘The people who did all this to you,’ I say, ‘they fucked you up. Matthew fucked you up. LaRouche did. But you ruined my life for no
real
reason, and I don’t owe you a thing.’

I grab my pumpkin from the ground.

‘Goodbye, Epiphany Jones,’ it would say.

And, as I turn the corner and leave Epiphany crying on the alley floor, she shouts empty words.

She shouts, ‘You’re meant to help me, Jerry!’

She shouts, ‘You owe me!’

She shouts, ‘You’ll regret this!’

I
took bus after bus, crisscrossing the city, in case Epiphany tried to follow me. I was stupid. I shouldn’t have mentioned Bela. If her life was in danger because of me…

Bela is already at my place when I return. She notes that I look dirty. ‘Well, that’s what happens when you go to the pumpkin patch,’ I say and pull the pumpkin from behind my back.

When we carve it that night, she’s meticulous. Like everything else, if she’s going to do something, she wants to do it right. It takes her an hour to make the mouth. When she’s done we put a candle in it and she asks what we do with the guts.

‘You can cook them,’ I say, ‘and eat them with the seeds.’

‘Or,’ she says, grabbing a handful of the orange insides, ‘you can throw them, no?’ And she shrieks as a stringy wad of pumpkin flesh hits me in the face.

When I get out of the shower there’s no light in the bedroom except that which comes from the pumpkin we placed on the nightstand. Bela is in my bed already, naked under the covers, propped on her elbows admiring her work. She ended up going with the traditional gap-toothed pumpkin mouth, but its eyes are made of stars. I admire Bela admiring her work and lean down to kiss her bare shoulder.