Little Deaths, page 28
‘Gender’s not important, isn’t that right, Mars?’
Lucky told her about it. But I know Lucky didn’t. She didn’t have to.
‘That’s right,’ I say, and I know from Jo’s smile that my voice is not as controlled as it should be. Even so, I’m not prepared for what happens next: a jumble of pictures in my head, images of dancing in a place so dark that I cannot tell if I am moving with men or women, images of streets filled with androgynous people and people whose gender-blurring surpasses androgyny and leaps into the realm of performance. Women dressed as men making love to men; men dressed as women hesitating in front of public bathroom doors; women in high heels and pearls with biceps so large that they split the expensive silk shirts. And the central image, the real point: Jo, naked; obviously female, slick with sweat, moving under me and over me, Jo making love to me until I gasp and then she begins to change, to change, until it is Joe with me, Joe on me—and I open my mouth to shout my absolute, instinctive refusal—and I remember Lucky saying it is if you think you might want to sleep with it—and the movie breaks in my head and I am back with the others. No one has noticed that I’ve been assaulted, turned inside out. They’re still talking about it: ‘Just imagine the difference in all the relationships if. Judas were a woman,’ Susan says earnestly to Frankie. ‘It would change everything!’ Jo smiles at me and swallows the last of her beer.
The next rehearsal I feel fragile, as if I must walk carefully to keep from breaking myself. I have to rest often.
I am running a scene with Frankie and Lance when I notice Lucky offstage, talking earnestly to Jo. Jo puts one hand up, interrupts her, smiles, speaks, and they both turn to look at me. Lucky suddenly blushes. She walks quickly away from Jo, swerves to avoid me. Jo’s smile is bigger. Her work in the next scene is particularly fine and full.
‘What did she say to you, Luck?’ I ask her as we are closing the house for the evening.
‘Nothing,’ Lucky mumbles.
‘Come on …’
‘Okay, fine. She wanted to know if you ever slept with your actors, okay?’
I know somehow that it’s not entirely true: I can hear Jo’s voice very clearly, saying to Lucky So does Mars ever fuck the leading lady? while she smiles that catlick smile. Jo has the gift of putting pictures into people’s heads, and I believe Lucky got a mindful. That’s what really sickens me, the idea that Lucky now has an image behind her eyes of what I’m like … no, of what Jo wants her to think I’m like. God knows. I don’t want to look at her.
‘Did you get my message?’ Jo says to me the next evening, when she finally catches me alone in the wings during a break from rehearsal. She has been watching me all night. Lucky won’t talk to her.
‘I’m not in the script.’
‘Everybody’s in the script.’
‘Look, I don’t get involved with actors. It’s too complicated, it’s messy. I don’t do it.’
‘Make an exception.’
Lucky comes up behind Jo. Whatever the look is on my face, it gets a scowl from her. ‘Break’s over,’ she says succinctly, turning away from us even before the words are completely out, halfway across the stage before I think to try to keep her with me.
‘Let’s get back to work, Jo.’
‘Make a fucking exception.’
I don’t like being pushed by actors, and there’s something else, too, but I don’t want to think about it now, I just want Jo off my back, so I give her the director voice, the vocal whip. ‘Save it for the stage, princess. You want to impress me, get out there and do your fucking job.’
She doesn’t answer; her silence makes a cold, high-altitude circle around us. When she moves, it’s like a snake uncoiling, and then her hand is around my wrist. She’s strong. When I look down, I see that her hand is changing: the bones thicken under the flesh, the muscles rearrange themselves subtly, and it’s Joe’s hand on Jo’s arm, Joe’s hand on mine. ‘Don’t make me angry, Mars,’ and the voice is genderless and buzzes like a snake. There is no one here to help me, I can’t see Lucky, I’m all alone with this hindbrain thing that wants to come out and play with me. Jo’s smile is by now almost too big for her face. Just another actor, I think crazily, they’re all monsters anyway.
‘What are you?’ I am shaking.
‘Whatever you need, Mars. Whatever you need. Every director’s dream. At the moment, I’m Salome, right down to the bone. I’m what you asked for.’
‘I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this.’
‘You wanted Salome, and now you’ve got her. The power, the sex, the hunger, the need, the wanting, it’s all here.’
‘It’s a play. It’s just … it’s a play, for chrissake.’
‘It’s real for you.’ That hand is still locked around my wrist; the other hand, the soft small hand, reaches up to the centre of my chest where my heart tries to skitter away from, her touch. ‘I saw it, that first audition. I came to play John the Baptist, I saw the way Lucky looked at me, and I was going to give her something to remember … but your wanting was so strong, so complex. It’s delicious, Mars. It tastes like spice and wine and sweat. The play in your head is more real to you than anything, isn’t it, more real than your days of bright sun, your friends, your office transactions. I’m going to bring it right to you, into your world, into your life. I’ll give you Salome. On stage, off stage, there doesn’t have to be any difference. Isn’t that what making love is, giving someone what they really want?’
She’s still smiling that awful smile and I can’t tell whether she is talking about love because she really means it or because she knows it makes my stomach turn over. Or maybe both.
‘Get out of here. Out of here, right now.’ I am shaking.
‘You don’t mean that, sweet. If you did, I’d already be gone.’
‘I’ll cancel the show.’
She doesn’t answer: she looks at me and then, phht, I am seeing the stage from the audience perspective, watching Herod and Herodias quarrel and cry and struggle to protect their love, watching John’s patient fear as Herod’s resolve slips away: watching Salome dance. When she dances, she brings us all with her, the whole audience living inside her skin for those moments. We all whirl and reach and bend, we all promise, we all twist away. We all tempt. We all rage. We stuff ourselves down Herod’s throat until he chokes on us. And then we are all suddenly back in our own bodies and we roar until our throats hurt and our voices rasp. All the things that I have felt about this play, she will make them feel. What I am will be in them. What I have inside me will bring them to their feet and leave them full and aching. Oh god, it makes me weep, and then I am back with her, she still holds me with that monster hand and all I can do is cry with wanting so badly what she can give me.
Her eyes are too wide, too round, too pleased. ‘Oh,’ she says, still gently, ‘It’s okay. You’ll enjoy most of it, I promise.’ And she’s gone, sauntering onstage, calling out something to Lance, and her upstage hand is still too big, still wrong. She lets it caress her thigh once before she turns it back into the Jo hand. I’ve never seen anything more obscene. I have to take a minute to dry my eyes, cool my face. I feel a small, hollow place somewhere deep, as if Jo reached inside and found something she liked enough to take for herself. She’s there now, just onstage, ready to dance, that small piece of me humming in her veins. How much more richness do I have within me? How long will it take to eat me, bit by bit? She raises her arms now and smiles, already tasting. Already well fed.
THE DISQUIETING MUSE
by
Kathe Koja
Most of the stories in this anthology are about losing control in some way. Sometimes this loss is liberating, other times merely terrifying, as the protagonist of ‘The Disquieting Muse’ discovers.
THE DISQUIETING MUSE
They sat in a circle around him, in the room as white as a block of salt, as Lot’s pale wife turned from defiance to thoughtful critique of humours no less stringent than her own: and they listened; anyway he thought they were listening, sometimes it was hard to tell. Debbie, arms folded, head cocked like a clever pet; Mrs Wagner who had trouble keeping her mouth closed; Mr Aronson who would not stay still.
‘We’re going to work,’ he said, using his doctor’s voice, calm and pleasant, was it pleasant? ‘in red this time’. Red, the tricksy colour, blood and guts and resonance all the way back to the womb, like echoes, breadcrumbs left to mark the trail of an access forever now denied. Rubbing at his nose, half-unconscious and then consciously stopped; too much like a tic. Daily surrounded by movements deliberate and not, he kept his own affect even, his motions minimal and serene; a berg of calm in this endlessly juddering sea.
‘Red today, to help us feel our emotions.’ No one said anything. ‘Does’ anyone need any additional materials, any paint? Mrs Wagner? Debbie? Mr Aronson, are you going to join us today?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You know, Mr Aronson,’ Debbie’s petulance, that false gentility behind clown’s eyes, the yellow curve of nail so long it was hard for her to hold a brush, a piece of chalk, a pencil stub, ‘you know I asked you not to use that word. I mean I asked you not to use that—’
‘You fuck off too, lardass.’
‘Dr Coles,’ immediately, lips around the word like food; not enough art therapy in the world to help Debbie, not enough therapy period. ‘Doctor, I have asked him not to use that word because it’s an ugly word, Doctor, and we’re here to create beauty, isn’t that what we’re—’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ and Mr Aronson out of the chair, Mrs Wagner’s big mouth bending in that deep unnerving smile that always made him think of animals, big wet animals down in the mud, look at the slouch of those breasts, big breasts, her back must be killing her. Something wet, not paint, across her dirty blouse, red and gold windmills and Debbie was still going on about beauty, beauty, and Mr Aronson grabbed his crotch and said, ‘You make me sick right here, you know it? You and your fucking beauty,’ and behind his own eyes, his careful noncommittal frown, he felt nothing; not even annoyance; nothing at all.
‘Dr Coles!’
Like voices from a painting; he had been an art major. Last night Margaret had asked him about Guernica, did it feel like Guernica every day, did it feel like Bacon or Bosch? No, trying for lightness, no, it feels like a painting of a clown. Her smile against his neck, reaching around to feel for his cock; her fingers were always so cold, cold now and ‘Black velvet,’ she said, ‘a black velvet clown.’ The head of his cock was red, a royal colour against the elegant bleach of her hands, her red nails, red as the paint they were using today and now Mr Aronson had consented to sit, Debbie was still talking but Mr Aronson had consented to sit and Mrs Wagner was smiling now down at the colours, red on the floor and between her knees and red on the backs of her hands.
It took him a minute to realize it was not paint.
Sometimes, it was Guernica, after all.
He went for a drink, wanting to call Margaret, not wanting to stay in his office long enough to make the call; more than usually tired, of course it had been an ugly day. He had three drinks almost before he noticed, three small squat glasses of Scotch; he did not like Scotch, hard liquor, secretly preferring fruity drinks, rum and pink froth, but he felt like an asshole ordering them here, anywhere, wanting Margaret to order one first so he could say I’ll try that too, what is it? Knowing what it was. Margaret knew he knew, too, but didn’t care, or said she didn’t; Margaret said he should drink what he wanted.
He was rubbing his nose again, made himself stop again and then, suddenly angry, rubbed hard, faint oil beneath his fingers and he could rub his own fucking nose, couldn’t he? Tics; shit. You make me sick right here. He left the fourth glass untouched; a headache and he went home, the message light on and Margaret’s voice, sweet, light as pink froth saying I can’t come tonight, there’s a meeting, marketing and so on and on, he closed his eyes halfway through. Her voice; her white fingers on his cock. His erection was flabby and small, tired. It had taken over an hour to clean the room after what Mrs Wagner had done. At least she was out of the group now, back to the wards, sixty days minimum like a reward; maybe it was. It was for him, anyway.
Among his colleagues he was unique; and always uncomfortable, did they know, could they smell it on him? Art therapist, but forever more art than therapy; he had never had grand plans, saving the world, saving the sick from themselves, Art’s white knight with the key to free expression in his warm collegiate hand. He had been an art major first, but so unconnected, so thoroughly lost amid the rush and thickets of images caught and captured—too large for him, he knew it the way the ant fears the spider and his advisor had recommended a change in venue.
But I love art, he had said. You can love it there too, the advisor said, you can help other people love it; and then there was a link, a proven bridge between creativity and, say it, madness. Craziness. The crazies always get there first, his instructor used to say; listen to them. Jeremy, listen: her gaze on his, big Teutonic blonde with a handshake that could crush rocks. You’ve got to learn to listen.
His own aptitude had surprised him; his first client had been an even bigger surprise, noisy and stinky, he would never forget her smell if he lived to be a hundred. Piss smell, people said, Margaret said when he told her the story. They don’t wash, they pee themselves. But it wasn’t that, he couldn’t explain, it was something cellular, something to do with the way her eyes had rolled in her head, rolled like a horse’s eyes, the way her fingers closed around the stem of the brush as if she held the tube of his windpipe in that moist considering grasp, he could hardly breathe, he could hardly wait until it was over.
But she made progress, that woman, her psychologist had told him so. Cornering him outside the therapy room, glorified holding tank but ‘It’s really incredible,’ smiling, ‘she’s finally coming along. You really opened her up,’ and he, small Judas smile of incomprehension both utter and dire; the curse of luck: oh God I am good at this, oh God. A roomful of newsprint paintings in wet blues and stinky blacks, she talks, it’s terrific; oh God.
Two years past and he was still helping them, luck’s blind hand in his own, unsure how someone like Mr Aronson, say, or fucked-up Mrs Wagner could take anything from what he gave, or rather lay out for the taking: there was, he thought, no active sense of giving, he put the tools before them, they had to want to be helped. To change. To use art itself as a catalyst for self-expression and through self expression find the freedom to free themselves; he told all this to Margaret and she laughed, head on his chest and she laughed, her fingers curled loose about his own.
‘You sound like a course description,’ she said, ‘a brochure,’ but she was smiling, holding his hand and smiling and he smiled back at her. What did she know, she wasn’t there, she had no idea. Clean Margaret with her hands cold as a clinician, cold as the hands of the clock. He had not told her, finally, of Mrs Wagner, fresh new sense of failure, of luck denied; but now, two days later and Long John was grabbing him in the hall, like a principal collaring a tardy student: ‘Nice fucking work, Jer. Nice fucking piece of work.’
Staring up at him but not straight on, six feet four and yardstick arms even longer in that white coat, dirty collar, it smelled faintly of sweat. And gravy, cafeteria gravy. Is he happy? Is he angry? Nice piece of work, Jer. ‘I don’t—’
‘Mrs Wagner, you know, Mrs Out-to-Lunch? Cut herself up in your playroom, you know. Anyway today’s my day with her and out it comes, big problems, she hates her husband, she hates her kids. Hates everybody, me, you, herself for putting up with it. Mad, and screaming like hell. She’s ready to talk, now.’
‘That’s I didn’t know, that’s really—’
‘Maybe I ought to invest in some crayons, huh. Lucky you,’ and gone, still smiling and he left behind to adjust for himself a smile, he had done it again; how? Mrs Out-to-Lunch; blood on her hands and his hands in his pockets, white coat clean as a piece of new paper, as an unmade wish and in the end what difference did it make, she was Long John’s problem now and they would be sending him a new one, another one to take her place. Maybe today, maybe next session; what difference did it make?
That evening Debbie cried, and Mr Aronson called her a lardass and drew a picture of a big black bird pecking out her eyes before relenting enough to admire her drawing, of a box of chocolates and a sweetheart bow, she was really a terrific draughtsman, Debbie; the bow looked completely real, down to the dust in its creases; it was an old box of chocolates, she said. He himself sketched loops and circles, long lines, geometries in spiral like fractals split down their bloodless middles and left to dry in logic’s light, and Mr Aronson squinted over his shoulder and said, ‘Hey Debbie, look at this—he can’t draw.’
That evening Margaret came to him, soft smile and a half-drunk bottle of margarita mix; her panties were as pink and shiny as her vulva, but it took him almost half an hour to come. She said, still smiling, that it didn’t matter; she did not stay the night.
Her name was Ruth, and she smelled like all the others only more so; like milk and cloudy water, like some fish caught dying in a frozen lake. Albino eyes and a file made heavy with page after page of recommendations, half-sure diagnoses like a map of a land unseen. At the bottom someone had written SCHIZOAFFECTIVE? in heavy red ink; it was crossed out in black, the pen strokes light and thin as hairs.
She would not sit by Mr Aronson; Debbie went not ignored so much as unnoticed, it was as if she did not actually see Debbie at all. Bare white arms crossed across the hospital gown; the chart said she refused to wear street clothes, underclothes. Her hair was incredibly dirty, a thin and gummy blonde. When he tried to speak to her she ignored him too, so he turned instead to the others, told them they would be working in pencil again today, told them to express what they felt to be their worst conflict this week, whether with the staff, or other clients, or themselves.
