Little Deaths, page 47
Room 429 was a pleasant, spacious room, done in earth tones, olives and browns and salmon, with blandly decorous furniture and a clean smell; but as I sat there waiting for Kathleen, I began to think of it as the sort of place where an accountant from Paramus or East Orange might come to contemplate life’s inequities, to thumb through the snapshots in his wallet, gazing longest at one of an overweight brunette with frosted hair inscribed, George, I’ll love you forever, Carla, to take out the Police Special he’d bought earlier that day from an oily, chubby, beringed man driving a late model Chrysler with a bumper sticker reading Kiss me, I’m Athenian, to say a prayer he remembered from childhood, a little hedging of the bets, and then to splatter his brains across the photograph of Bridal Veil Falls mounted above the bed. The perfect place for unimportant tragedy. Vibrationless; reeking of vacancy. Waiting to be filled with someone’s pain.
I had already partly filled it with mine before Kathleen arrived. The ceramic figures of Shango and Ogun lay together beneath the bed, and there were charms tucked everywhere: tiny sacks of herbs, amulets, a bottle of sacred rainwater collected from the hollow of a certain tree in Cuba, bloodied feathers, pieces of mirrors and more, all concealed in drawers, under chairs and pillows, stuck in the molding. The lesser charms of iced champagne, fruit, and cheese rested on the nightstand, along with some silverware and plates. Everything was in readiness. Only Kathleen was missing, and as the minutes leaked past, I grew anxious and began to wonder if she were going to stand me up. I paced about, switched on a bedside lamp, looked out the window at New Jersey’s cement wilderness in the declining sun. I wondered if I should call her. Finally there came a knock at the door.
On entering, Kathleen went straight to the desk and set down her briefcase; then with her back to me, she shrugged off her raincoat and draped it over a chair. When she turned she flashed a nervous, afflicted smile that barely lasted long enough to notice. Seeing this, seeing how drawn her face was, I felt guilty for having pressured her. I knew I should tell her to leave—I didn’t want to hurt her anymore, and this was hurting her, that much was obvious. I had it in mind to say this as I crossed the room to her, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak, and for an awkward moment we stood at arm’s length, just staring at one another. It was early evening, and a rainy grey light filtered through the drapes. Everything seemed dreary and exhausted, and I became aware again of my spiritual fatigue. My eyes filled. There was nothing we could do, I thought. No tactic, no clever fake could smooth over the rawness and regret we had brought into the room. But then she moved close and held me, her head resting against my chest. The way she felt, soft and pliant, her heartbeat rapid as a bird’s, her scent—the flurry of impressions that arose from the embrace were an acid that washed the corrosion from my heart, and it was as if I were back at the beginning, feeling all the treasuring tenderness of new love. Then she lifted her head with a look of sweet expectancy, and I kissed her.
The kiss was tentative at first, exploring, but then tenderness turned to urgency, and we sank down onto the bed and soon were totally involved. If I could have managed a moment’s distance, I would have understood that my plan had succeeded—the original feelings we had shared had somehow been renewed; our sexuality had become easy again, simple, a natural outgrowth of what we felt, expressive of a need for closeness rather than a mere mechanism to achieve orgasm. But I had no such distance. I was with her completely, lost in the turns of her body. Because we knew each other-s needs so well, and there were no anxieties to overcome, no fears of inadequacy, it was better than it had been on the train to Montreal, and we made love for hours, saying almost nothing, just those phrases that served lovers as the stations of the breath. Perhaps it was simply an effect of the ruddy orange lamplight and the blurring of focus that attended the close proximity of our faces, but all the strain appeared to have emptied from Kathleen’s features. She looked younger than she had when I met her, more girl than woman, with her freckles and her overbite. When she came her eyelids fluttered down so that the merest slivers of white showed beneath them.
Now and then the thought that this was the last time brushed against my brain like a cat rubbing against its owner’s legs, but I refused to let it settle. I rejected the notion of loss, and lived in the moment for as long as possible. Eventually, however, there came an interlude in our lovemaking when we could no longer avoid that sad inevitability. I could see that recognition as a sudden clearing of the dazed softness that had pervaded her features, a sharpness in the eyes, as if she were studying me, memorizing the details of my face for some future nostalgia; and I’m certain that she could see a similar recognition in me. Yet even then we did not speak of it. More talk would have been pointless. I think we were both afraid that if we did speak it would ruin what little time we had left.
In a way I was happy then. I had proved something to myself, something that I had not realized I wanted to prove: that love could survive months of ill usage. And inspired by this to quit while I was ahead, I decided that I would make love to her one more time, just once, and then, before the light of morning could expose the illusion we had created, I would say a quick goodbye and send her away. I had forgotten my half-formed scheme, you see, my desperate and poorly conceived magical intent; I had forgotten charms and figurines, I had even forgotten the lineaments of obsession, and I was satisfied with what I had assured Kathleen would be the important satisfaction of’ that night, the understanding that while almost everything had been lost to us, we had formally acknowledged love, we had given it due respect, and in doing so had won lasting respect for all the good that had passed between us.
We were lying on our sides, facing one another, when I entered her, and I was amazed by how tight she felt after all those hours of making love; though she was still wet, it took a concerted effort to achieve full penetration. ‘Careful,’ she said as I worked my way in; she set her teeth in her lower lip, thrust with her hips, trying to seat me more deeply. Once I was inside her she gripped me so forcefully, I could barely move. In truth, I was so worn, so mentally enervated, I had no real urge to move, I was content just to have that closeness again. I held her hard against me for a very long time, delighting in the muzzy swirl of my thoughts, in the dissolute warmth of our bodies, a sweet confusion of flesh and spirit that seemed more extreme than ever, as if all our essential things were blurring, running together. A rush of emotion swept over me and I let my feelings out in words, telling her how much I loved her, that I was going to be all right, not to worry about me, this night had been the medicine I needed to cure the sickness that had been wasting me, and I could walk away now without recrimination or bitterness, I could truly accept things. If those words had been spoken to me, I would have thought them stupidly romantic, rife with faux nobility, but I meant every syllable, and Kathleen was affected by them—her eyes teared, and she made to lift her right hand.
Intending to touch my face, I think.
But her hand, resting on my hip, was moored there by strands of a yellowish white, opaque material that appeared to flow directly out of our flesh, our skins. Melted looking. Waxy and grossly organic in appearance, glistening, as if coated in saliva or some even less appealing fluid. Very much like the filmy stuff I imagined I had seen trailing from my own hand several days before.
The strands stretched with her movement, like unset glue, but only a little, and there was an excruciating pain in my hip, as if the skin were being pulled away from the flesh.
I cannot adequately describe what I felt then. My emotions ranged from denial to horror, running the scale of everything in between. It seemed impossible that this could be happening, and yet each time Kathleen tried to yank her hand free, I felt renewed pain. As, apparently, did she, for she cried out with each attempt. I grabbed her wrist, and the confusion and alarm in her face sharpened into terror. She screamed and tried to roll away from me; but she could not. Our hips and thighs were joined as well, the attaching strands so thick in places, stratified, like a mess of strapping tape and freshly applied mucilage, I could not make out the articulations of our limbs. My left hand and forearm were similarly joined to her waist and back, and there were thinner, frailer strands that had connected her breasts and my chest, but these had been snapped by her struggles.
Kathleen began to scream in earnest: raw screeches of animal fear. She thrashed and tossed her head about, causing us both more pain. My right hand, which had been resting on the pillow above her head, was free, and I used it to muffle her screams. Her eyes bulged, her spittle dampened my palm. I yelled at her, telling her to shut up and lie still, that was the only way we were going to get out of this, to go about it calmly. I, of course, was not calm in the least. Despite having a recognition that some portion of prayer or ritual must have proved effective, granting with insane precision my wish of being eternally bonded to Kathleen—and I am sure that this, along with my being accustomed to hallucination, to discomfort, was all that allowed me to maintain my equilibrium … despite having this much understanding of what was going on, my thoughts were in turmoil, and I flirted with hysteria. I pictured the figurines melting together beneath the bed, Oshun and Shango lapsing into a brownish black curdled mass, and I also pictured the lump of pulsing flesh we might become if we could not somehow break the spell and separate one from the other, and those images brought a tide of red darkness into my mind that threatened to drown the last vestiges of my rationality. A trickle of glee welled up from some spiritual bottom-land, and I thought how it was really kind of funny, even ludicrous, most certainly ironic, this surreal wedding of pur flesh. But Kathleen’s fear, less informed and thus more profound than my own, acted to shore me up, and after a few seconds I succeeded in regaining a measure of control.
I removed my hand from Kathleen’s mouth and was horrified to see threads of filmy material, so faint as to be almost invisible, connecting her face and my palm; but these tore with only a mild stinging sensation, and seeing this gave me hope that the thicker strands could be broken.
Kathleen leaked a fuming noise, a sound that might have been made by a defective tea kettle, and burst into tears. ‘What is … what’s happening? Oh, God! What …’ She gave a hiccuping sob, and I said, ‘Just try to stay calm, all right? If we stay calm I think we’ll be okay.’ Her eyes rolled back, and I thought she might pass out; but then she tightened her lips, making a determined face, and nodded. But an instant later she began to shriek and flail about, and I was forced to restrain her again. Even after I had subdued her, after repeating my caution to remain calm, she shivered and twitched and begged me to tell her what this was, what had happened.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Just hang on. Let me see what I can do.’
This was Beltran’s doing, I thought. It had to be some fucking lie he had told, some voodoo trick. The son of a bitch was going to fucking die if I could get clear of this.
Of course I could not be sure of Beltran’s guilt, but hating him acted to centre me, to give me new purpose. I examined the strands that linked Kathleen’s right hand with my hip. ‘Lift your hand, ‘I told her. ‘Slowly. Lift it as high as you can.’
She complied, staring at the strands with a mixture of terror and revulsion; the gluey stuff stretched to the length of about four or five inches, at which point it began to cause pain:
Gingerly I pinched the thinnest of the strands between thumb and forefinger. It was slippery to the touch. Vile. There was pain, but it was bearable. I increased the pressure, twisting the slimy stuff. The pain intensified commensurately, but I made no headway in tearing the strand; I only managed to indent it with the tips of my fingers, and when I released the strand, the indentations smoothed over in a matter of seconds. My heart was racing, my hands were clammy, yet with half my mind I had achieved a modicum of clinical distance, and I was fascinated by the material. Skin reduced by several degrees toward the state of pure protoplasm, I assumed. A lot of fat in the substance—that would explain its yellowish cast. Pinching and twisting were obviously not going to work. A tool was needed. Something with a sharp edge.
It was then I remembered the cheese and fruit plate, and the silverware. Among the utensils provided there had been, I was certain, a paring knife.
‘I have to twist myself around so I can reach the night table,’ I said to Kathleen. ‘I’ll go slow. If you move with me, it won’t hurt as much.’
‘Why? What’re you going to do?’ Panic edged her voice.
‘There’s a knife on the table. I can’t get to it without moving.’ I wanted to hold her eyes but they kept darting side to side. ‘I’m going to try cutting through it. I can’t think of any other way. Except to call. If cutting doesn’t work, we’ll have to call for help.’
I thought she would object, but she only closed her eyes; she was very pale, and the freckles on her cheeks stood out sharply like a plague.
‘Okay?’ I said.
A nod.
‘Okay, you’ve got to do this with me now. I’m going to turn my right shoulder toward the table, and you’ve got to slide in toward me and under me as I make the turn. You understand?’
Kathleen said something I couldn’t make out, maybe it wasn’t a word, maybe it was just another signal of helplessness, of abject fear, and I had to go along with her. I understood none of it. My mind kept trying to slip away and retreat into a place where no understanding was necessary. The horrid shit that bound us together was, I realized, beginning to smell, a faint reek of spoilage, and that brought me right to the edge of my limits. I asked Kathleen again if she understood.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I … Yes.’
‘It’s probably going to hurt,’ I said. ‘You should be prepared for that.’
Another nod.
‘All right, I’m going to count 1-2-3, Now. We’ll start on Now. And we’ll move very, very slowly. Ready?’
‘Wait, wait.’ She let out a shuddery breath; I could feel her trembling. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’
There was indeed some pain, but that was not the most disturbing thing. I was still hard, gripped so tightly by the walls of her vagina and, I realized, by the gluey melding of our flesh,—our unnatural genital connection—I could not lose my erection; and as we negotiated the turn, my cock moved in her, taking advantage of whatever play it was allowed—the effect was like a sort of weird Kama Sutra muscle fuck, and the pleasure I experienced was so intense, it overrode the pain. My breath came quickly, the shallow respiration of someone close to orgasm, and even though she winced on a couple of occasions, so did Kathleen’s. I fumbled at the table, straining to see over the edge, felt cold metal. A corkscrew. I pushed it aside with my fingers and touched the knife. After I had it in hand, I told Kathleen I was going to turn back to our original position. She made a sound of affirmation, but her eyes were squeezed shut, and a nerve was ticking in her jaw—I knew she was close to losing it. Again there was that incredibly intense genital pleasure. Against her will, I’m sure, Kathleen’s body reacted, and as we finished the turn, she made a series of those choked, coughing gasps that always signalled the onset of an orgasm, and she arched into me, the fingers of her trapped right hand contorting, clawing at my hip. Tears started from her eyes, and after she had caught her breath, she said, ‘God, it’s like … down there, it’s like that down there, too, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But we can still move a little. If we can get the rest clear, we should be able to …’ I searched for the right words and found no reason for confidence. ‘We’ll be all right.’
When I made the first cut, slicing into one of the glutinous yellowish strands that bound her hand to my hip, the pain was severe. Kathleen let out a cry, bit her lip. The slice was neat, the edges sealed over rapidly. No blood, only a slight milky seepage. But it hurt like hell, and as I deepened the cut, even though I knew the pain was coming, it became harder and harder to bear. Kathleen whimpered, but managed not to cry out again, and I loved her for her courage—her pain threshhold, I knew, was not high.
It took me several minutes, I’d estimate, to cut through that strand. After it was done the stuff began to shrivel, to lose its slick glaze and aura of vitality. It was dying, I realized. Just one strand out of many. But I had a moment of renewed hope.
‘Look,’ I said, nudging Kathleen’s chin with my free hand. ‘It’s going to work. You see?’
She stared dully at the severed strand; a bubble of saliva formed at the corner of her mouth.
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ I told her. ‘It’ll take us a little while, but it’s going to be fine.’
She displayed no reaction, continuing to stare at the severed strand with glassy bewilderment.
I did not know how much longer I could maintain a confident pose, especially in the face of Kathleen’s despair; the prospect of cutting through dozens of strands, the realization of how great the pain would be, especially in the genital region, was not good to contemplate. Fear was simmering in me, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take before my control began to slip. It would be so easy to let go, to admit to the madness of the situation and drown in the chaos that beat at the corners of my mind like a thousand hot rustling wings. However, I repeated my optimistic prognosis to Kathleen and prepared to cut into a second strand.
