Chapter Two| Jet and I sleep in the same bed, with only sheets and silk that separate our fleshes into being compressed into a single organism. The days with her blur and it is soon revealed that I am not sure where I begin or end, but it isn't in a longing or loving way—the furthest thing from love keeps us here. (Most nights I have to scramble from these sheets like an animal, almost savagely escaping from a deadly trap. I have to wheeze lightly like an asthmatic and untangle myself from the sharp juts of her arms, from the warm cocoon her body makes to mine. I have to whimper to be released from her tight embrace and she dreams the long while I do this of ripping apart bones and flesh and sinewy and devouring blood as ambrosia. After all what more can beasts dream of? ) The late afternoons I always wake first, and stretch like a cat to the sky, I am the most hopeless. This apartment is one small cry from a shit hole: the kitchen is a small cutout with thin cabinets and a small fridge that helps us survive. Jet isn't the type of woman to cook and neither is she to ever marry. Her shoulders are entirely too sharp to be feminine, and her heart, if such a thing existed, was far too cruel—she could never survive being a decent lover neither. The bathroom is like a closet with a shitpot and a bath I breath in, thriving as an amphibian counterpart to Jet; the living room is the place where most of the fighting occurs. I've lived with her a few days now, and already, I've counted the gleams of eyes and locked limbs of her and men locked on the couch. The bedroom was lined with comics, the backs of cereal boxes, and even the pages of magazine spreads she found herself enamored with, grotesque pictures of BDSM with long whips and mouths silence by gag balls—yes, these were the images I dreamt of.
I think back to my dream of her last night.
The sky is deep auburn that burns the sky, and the sand beneath my trekking feet is white. It is soft and hard. I hear drums that beat loudly and in an erratic rhythm and then from the prisoner veil, I see the naked shoulder, the naked form of Jet, except her skin isn't pale. It's a gorgeous flawless mocha. She is a native with her shrilling tongue. And when she smiles it is always that grin, that monstrously affectionate lazy grin that denotes nothing but suffering. There is no one who does not suffer at her hands. She doesn't speak but she simply turns her attention towards the large open mouth of large torture device, meant to bleed out its victim. Something of her own macabre construction, and I know this because I am privy to viewing her naked flesh working diligently until it sweat, bleed, and let her other orifices secrete moisture. Tribal queen in all her glory simply points. Her blood red markings cross her eyelids, the exact point of sensual curve to her lips, to her upturn palms, and down the feminine parts. Blacks coats her breasts in long thick strides towards her hips. The grin. Then, the soft patter of blood, of substance. I am to bleed for her.
They lead me to her crude steel monument, and she watches, those wolf eyes with the slightest curve to give a more humanly acceptable look. But she is far from it. The war paint and bare skin and beastly grin should be this indication, offering me up towards a god she hates.
This morning I watch her move her throughout the apartment dancing on the barely thread jazz flowing from cheap speakers we managed to savage from the dumpster of the adjacent alley. Her legs are long and her voice like a light badinage to the words; of course it isn't in her nature to know the words to this song, so she makes up her own. They are dark in response to the crescendos of pianos and cellos, to the flare of the trumpets. When she says this, I think she talks to me, so I turn my head and she has that secretive smile.
Her small breasts are clad in a silk pink bra and it looks like femininity. She's such a liar and is a monster that wears the skin of a woman. Just beneath the jutting bones I can peer at its truest face, but then she bares those teeth and I, the prey, move away.
Her wearing the pink bra bothers me. I hate the way the cup the creamy texture of her breasts and displays them lovingly. I want to tell her, but I don't. I don't tell her the things I hate about her, she only knows when someone has to love every dark, disgusting aspect of her.
When she looks to me, I pretend I look somewhere else. The telly perhaps but there is a sitcom on that I hate with a bloody passion and she knows it. I can feel her eyes heat. “Interesting?” She baits me, kneeling in front of me with her pink bra and matching panties that barely fit around the little curve of her ass, the knowing smile adoring her face. I look at her and shrug half-halfheartedly and she laughs, as her custom. “You can do better than that can't you?”
“I hate that bra on you,” I tell her suddenly. She regards me coolly as though I rebuked her and in a way I do. Swiftly she stands and pulls at my small tank, her nose wrinkled in disgust. She does this tenderly as though she were going to caress the slope of my skin, but it is all pretense. Everything wit her is carefully orchestrated, and brutally executed. It is her way. And if it is not followed, I would be the sacrifice she give the world for insolence.
“I hate your shoulders,” she says, glaring down before she moves off. I simply stare after her before turning my attention once more to the television, still watching her out the corner of my eye.
There were rare days when it seemed we got a surplus for income. I had very few talents, all of which included being a freelance photographer, and working behind the counter of a bookstore, the smell of misused and abandoned books settling so much dust on the shelves. Sometimes when I am in the most crowded places, I find myself smelling this particular smell, one that is hard to describe into words: it is a heavy musk that is both stale but surprisingly sweet. It is the smell of distant melancholy, I met him, there, with his perfect hair parted to the side, so pale it resembled moonlight, and his aristocrat features, with perfect aligning, carved from flawless alabaster and made flesh. He held Birdsong perfectly still in his hands, eyes scanning the synopsis—I didn't think he was an avid reader by the cloak that hid his tall frame from view. But when he moved gracefully to the counter, and placed the book on the glass with its worn spine, and I let my eyes move across him. Thick blond lashes frame his eyes, so much is seems his eyes are aliens with their strange mix of cerulean and indigo—closer to the pupil they are indigo, bleeding into lightness. His lips: they tell a story, perfectly formed, the bottom like a pillow for a lover to rest on. They are so pink it looked like he wore lipstick.
“Six dollars?” He asks softly, pulling a ten from his pocket and placing it on the counter, hand still on top of the bill. Veins are present through his flesh, which looks thin and like paper. “Is it a good book?”
I only look at the obnoxiously orange sticker on the cover to see the nearly ineligible writing of the girl that worked with her—it took the slightest of strain to be able to transform the scribble of ink into a number. “Yes. Six dollars.” I respond, merely ringing it up, the register automatically adding the tax. He can see on the screen but she still made no motion to pay until I whispered the price, noting the sun light that cut across his features. I had supposed his second inquiry was a reference to its comparison to A Farewell to Arms, which most male readers I've come into contact with enjoyed it because of the tragedy—so I told him so.
It was then he lifted his hand, and the ten was replaced with a twenty.
Just like magic.
“What is your romance?” He asked softly, using the spoon to stir sugar into the dark liquid of tea he ordered for me. In a small porcelain pitcher resembling the same Jet kept in her bathroom, pouring it over my hair every night in an odd, intimate ritual, is milk. He lifts his eyes then and tilts the pitcher and I watch the thicken milk pool into the tea. I hadn't had tea since I was a small child back in France, learning the etiquette of a proper woman. Of course, I failed horribly at learning how to function as a woman.
“Do you assume that I pursue romances because I'm a woman?” I questioned him, pulling the cup of tea towards me and giving the smallest of smile. I notice that his eyes seem to take in everything without much effort—even brightness of the light, the tint of one color versus another. I think it's strange but unbelievably beautiful. I want to sit on the curve of his lashes and sip this tea, perfectly sweet.
“No—I assume because you look French.” He nods his head in my direction as though confirming his words. I am aware now by the fact the he must have studied my features, more than the briefest glance. I sip more of the tea and push it off to the side, placing my hands palm down against the table. He moves his hands, which aren't much larger than mine over them, cupping them with a cool warmth. He asks me again for my romance, and I decide I will tell him. He is a stranger I've glimpsed among piles of books, and I have a worn spine. I am a tragedy.
People tell me that I have a small, hungry face. One that is triangular and peeks out from dark hair and large dark eyes. The notice my very pretty pink mouth and high cheekbones. Then they notice how petite I am but how I have developed well as a woman. They tell me I am beautiful. Most times, I do not listen; I still see myself as the obese child in France. The dark-face child whose eyes lit up like lights when they landed on sweets with icing and thick cream and raisins and honey. The child who did not belong and pulled restlessly at her dress and tore up her good leather pumps.
I began to hate France. I hated the wind I licked off my lips and the language of romance. I hated the curious tourist and their affectionate whispers. I hated to listen to these men speak their perfect french and raised their delicate eyebrows, only amusement coloring their faces. I hated all the things they loved most about this place. I hated the way they whispered magic lived in the air. And hated it the most because I was in love alone. I loved the mouths of all the men who told me I had pretty eyes. And they liked my mouth for one thing. I would close my eyes during the course of their soft thanks ushering from their lips and pretend the taste was icing, was their love for me. And after wards when they helped me from the ground and rub my knees and then my thigh;, I would cry, and ask if they could take me home.
I told my mother about them. All of them and they were all as William. I told myself I would marry a man named William and I prayed each one was him. She would slap me after each confession and pull my hair out in large clumps, and I would have to miss school because the fat lip and swollen cheeks might be questioned. I could not keep falling down the stairs every week. Then she told me I was too small and my heart was too big and if I was always hungry I should continue to stuff my face with donuts until I choked instead of swallowing their faithless, loveless, tasteless semen. But it had an acquired taste and it was love.
“Being a wallflower whore does not give you love. It gives you children you wish you had drowned in the Pont du Gard.” She spoke it gently brushing wet hair from my face, her eyes these wet stones that dominated her face. I was her reflection, her shadow, her sorrow. Most of all, I was her disappointment.
That night, the first William I had ever loved stood below my window, softly calling up to me. “Mon Petite, ” he cooed. I rushed down to greet him and he kissed my fat cheeks and led me away from the house. I wanted to call goodbye to my mother but held my tongue, bit my lip, felt his large hands over my breasts, smashed between my thighs and sex. I never felt more fat when he grabbed my hips, grinding the sharpness of his against mine. In the forests behind my house, he pushed me to my knees, unzipped his pants, his erection pink and pulsing, and freed and my mouth on it before the first of his pleads became lucid.
“Petite, quickly.”
I always felt ashamed after these moments when he would no longer be the gentle man who recited poetry to me but a man with a pink face, grasping hands, whines resembling animals caught in the back of his throat. I still thought he was beautiful when he arched his neck to the moon and the sweat shone on his face. And the bitterness of his love and the love of every William escaped him. I still thought it all was love, and what was love to me, when all things I loved could only be preserved by resting itself in my mouth and being consumed?
I wanted to make love to him in all the ways possible. I wanted his mouth on me as I had tenderly done to him. I wanted to hear the soft sounds of his pleasure and the thrill as he called me petite. In the bath, I had parted my folds to find my sex, lightly exploring the innocence as a writhing flower. Instead of the pleasure I had heard my mother receive nights she did this, I cried. I wept uncontrollably and utterly horribly. After I cried, I would lie on the base of the tub and stare towards the ceiling, small bubbles gathering at the edge of my lips and escaping to the surface.
It was a curious thing to do this, blink listlessly towards the heavens and think if I stayed here long enough, God might come save me. Finally, when the pain was too much, I would swim my way back into my body and seek air, loud gasp reminding I was back. I would cry harder at that realization.
He only smiled throughout the course of the story, and kept sipping the tea, his eyes trained passionately on me. I ask his name then , and he laughs, a slow husky sound that starts from his heart, I think. “Sinai,” he says softly, and I think Yes. A god. Finally someone to resurrect me from this death of mine. His eyes, ever so gentle, seem to warm with every passing second, pulled from the colors of coldness, “And you?”
I just coyly smiled and shook my head. “I'm the nameless,” I told him.
