Crossings (17 page)

I remember too Mik making love to me when I had my period.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

But, oh Mik, it's awfully good to see you again. I've been away from you so long. Pages and pages.

He gets me some black coffee and I do the big confession bit.

‘I'm not clean and good. I just want you to know. Not like your mother's kitchen cupboards.'

Mik waits.

‘Had an abortion. Not my husband's either. So now you know.'

‘So?'

‘What you said. Other day. 'Bout Gil. Just want to get it straight. Don't make me into some fantasy.'

‘What did I say?'

‘When you said you loved me. You know.'

Mik shakes his head. ‘What day is this?'

‘Day you came into my room. You know. Day you told me 'bout Gil. How you killed him.'

‘I never came into your room.'

‘You came into my room and you said. You told me. You didn't?'

He shakes his head.

‘You had a friend called Gil?'

‘Yah.'

‘You killed him?'

He shakes his head.

‘Oh.'

I think it all over.

‘All right. Just so long as you got it perfectly clear. What I am.'

‘What are you?'

‘Destructive.'

And Mik says, ‘You can't destroy me. I've been destroyed by experts.'

 

I DO STUPID things. I mean, really stupid things that it embarrasses me to tell about. I fall in with the innocent game. At dinner I tell Paul that he's inept at social intercourse, and pretend I don't see Mik cough and choke on his milk.

I say, ‘So what's this sixty-nine you're always saying?'

‘Sixty-five,' he says, not cracking. ‘It's rule number sixty-five, on the cell door. “Prisoners will cease and desist from making loud noises,” etcetera.'

I'm not sure what I'm up to, but whatever it is I don't like it. So one night, coming back from the beach, I say, ‘I know what sixty-nine means. I was only letting on I was dumb.'

‘Oh yah? So what does it mean?'

‘It means doing it upside down.'

For some reason this amuses Mik even more. He throws back his head and hollers.

‘No. I know all the words. Look. You have, you've made me up, and it's ridiculous. I can say all those words. Oh go fuck yourself.'

That's the first time I say it to Mik. This time he laughs even harder.

‘What's the matter?'

‘It's the
way
you say it,' he says. ‘Like a kid saying “poo.”'

‘But you've got to stop apologizing every time you let something slip. You do, you know. You're always apologizing as if I'd never heard such language before.'

‘Have you?'

This stops me. Really, I haven't.

‘You like to think you're wicked. You don't know nothing, baby.'

This makes me furious. ‘Don't patronize me. Don't you dare condescend to me.'

‘Look.' He sits down on the sea wall and rolls a cigarette. ‘Last week I was across the bridge. My buddies and me, we had this hooker in the room. There was five of us rammed it to her.'

I refused to be shocked. ‘So?'

‘So she never felt a thing. She was out cold.'

This does shock me. ‘How
could
you? I mean, wouldn't that be worse, her not knowing?'

‘I didn't want her awake. She had a face like a horse's ass. I hung her head down over the edge of the bed so I wouldn't have to see.'

I don't know what to say. The sea moves normally, gently swells on the beach. Children play with red balls. Gulls dive and scream. A summer's night. He's right. I don't know nothing.

‘Once Gil and me, we had this Italian hustler. We made her do it in the mouth. It's safer that way. Anyway, Gil did it first, and then me. When I was finished, Gil slapped her on the back and made her swallow it. God. She was mad!' He chuckles, remembering.

‘But why would he do a thing like that? Lord, what a filthy thing to do! I mean, it's not filthy to swallow it, of course. In some societies they think it's good for the complexion. But he must have thought it was the worst thing he could do to her. It was an act of degradation.'

‘“An act of degradation,”' Mik says, rolling it around in his mouth, tasting it. Then he laughs.

‘I mean, he obviously did it to make her feel disgusting.'

‘She
was
disgusting.' Then he looks at me. ‘You didn't have to do that,' he says. ‘I know what “degradation” means.'

‘Then why do you talk like that?'

‘Like what?'

‘Like “You don't know nothing” and “I ain't goin' nowhere” to Paul? Even to me.'

‘Paul expects it,' Mik says. ‘So do you.'

I shoot a look at him. I couldn't risk him full face in those days. He is staring out at the water, his face hard and lined, his eyes dangerous. Now he turns to me, and he does not smile. I look away.

‘You just don't know,' he says. ‘I seen things … saw things at Ortona you wouldn't believe. I don't believe now. But they happened. I did them.'

‘Ortona? Where's that?'

‘Italy.' He gets up now. ‘Let's go.' He's walking ahead of me, fast, and I have to run to keep up.

‘Hey. Wait. What's the matter?'

He slows down.

‘Did I do something, to make you mad?'

His mouth twitches. 'Naw. It's just, when you said “Ortona”, like you never heard it before.'

‘I haven't.'

‘Yah.' He nods. ‘Yah. It's just, Ortona was … to a guy in the war, Ortona was … like you said Thermopylae to some old Greek.'

‘Oh.'

We walk for a while. Then he says, ‘You haven't got me right either, have you?'

‘Apparently not.'

The sun has gone down. Now the air is soft and dark.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I thought you were illiterate.'

Mik stops in his tracks, and for one moment I think he's going to hit me.

It's a deep thrill in the groin, and I hold my breath. His face is in the shadows. Then he laughs. A huge wondrous laugh. Mik's laugh. A long deep roar from the gut.

We go on walking.

‘You know,' he says innocently, ‘you remind me of this lady gorgonzola, they got a very high smell to them. You heard about the smell of gorgonzola?'

Now it's my turn to suppress a snort. ‘No, I'm sure you mean a gerontium. I mean the boats. Not gorgons. Gerontiums. A gorgon's a kind of cheese. Very smelly.'

But I know I've lost that round.

‘No, I know what you're thinking of, but it's not gerontium. Gerontium, that's a kind of purple ointment they give you for the clap.'

I laugh and Mik says, quickly, not to lose it, ‘Maybe I'm thinking of an orgon. Nah, that's a place in the States, got all the roses.'

‘No!' I'm recovering slightly. ‘You're thinking of organza, it's some kind of orgy they do in the South Pacific.'

‘I thought that was onanism,' says Mik.

‘No, that's a religion. You take an onastic order.'

‘Yah, you're right,' says Mik. ‘Order of Saint Succubus.'

I collapse. I stand there, holding my stomach, laughing like a lunatic. Mik says, ‘Come on, you're stopping traffic.' But I laugh helplessly all the way home.

In bed that night, I say, ‘Joss?'

‘Unh?'

‘You remember that night, when Paul was here, and Mik said a gorgonzola was a gondolier?'

Jocelyn laughs.

‘Did
you
know he was putting it on?'

‘Sure. Didn't you? “Up and down the carnals”!'

I don't say anything.

‘Didn't
you?
'

‘No. I'm as bad as Paul.'

‘Got to watch those stereotypes,' says Jocelyn sleepily. And, ‘I kind of like him.'

‘Mik,' I say to say his name.

‘Mr Clean,' she says and laughs again. ‘That supercilious little prick.'

‘You
passed Paul onto me!'

‘You didn't have to take him.'

‘You really like Mik?'

‘He's funny.'

AND GUESS WHO comes back from Mexico.

‘How did the sculptures go? Got any response?'

‘We didn't get a chance. We were going to live like natives, but you need a work permit.'

‘So how's Rosa?'

‘Well, she had to have an abortion in San Francisco. We stopped off at Sam's and did it.'

‘Yours?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

Neither do I.

The teenage boy had disappeared. The other two women took off separately, hitch-hiking. Ben sold his car in San Diego.

‘I thought you were never going to come back.'

Ben ignores this. ‘As far as I'm concerned, Vicky, we're still married.'

‘I could show you the papers.'

‘That's all it is, papers. We're still married. Spiritually.'

‘So. You never contacted the flying saucers.'

‘Paul tells me you've got this man living here. This ex-convict.'

‘That's right.'

‘I hope you know what you're doing.'

‘Yeah. Well.'

He looks at me with those mournful suffering eyes. ‘I love you, Vicky.'

‘How are you doing for money?'

He has just one request to make of me. Only one. He wants to do a head of me. In terra cotta. Will I sit for it?

I sit for it. He has the stuff all out there, on the porch. He knew I couldn't refuse.

He is working silently, intently, and Mik comes in the door. A large, noisy man, Mik. Crash. He stops dead at the sight of us.

Ben gets up and puts out his hand, then pulls it back, smiling apologetically. ‘Clay. Sorry. I'm Ben Ferris.'

Mik stares at him.

Ben, explaining, says, ‘I'd shake hands only my hand's all over clay,' and he offers it to Mik. Proof.

Mik stands there and finally Ben gives a nervous laugh.

‘Vicky's been telling me about you,' he says. Mik shoots me a look, and I want to say it's a lie.

‘I hope we can be friends,' says Ben.

‘Yah?' says Mik and lumbers over to the stairs and up to his room.

Ben looks at me sorrowfully. ‘Has he paid you anything?'

‘He's looking for work,' I say.

‘He hasn't paid you anything, has he?'

‘So how's Rosa?' I say.

‘Fine. She's a fine person.'

‘You two still together?'

‘No. Didn't I tell you? She went to Mexico City.'

‘Oh. I thought you said that was Ida and Stephanie.'

‘No. Rosa went too.'

‘But I thought you said she had an abortion at Sam's.'

‘That was on the way down.'

‘You mean you
all
stayed at Sam's, you and Ida and Stephanie and Rosa, and the boy, what's-his-name? All of you?'

‘Lionel. His name's Lionel. Sam's changed a lot.'

I bet.

‘Sam's become rather conservative.'

Ben is wearing sandals, the fashionable kind, a new Mexican shirt. Beads.

‘How much did you get for the car?'

‘A hundred dollars.' Ben is bending now to the head. Looking up at me carefully, bending again to the clay. A spatula in his hand. I was going to say scalpel, but it wasn't.

‘So how're you off for cash?'

‘Oh Vicky,' Ben says, ‘you always were so materialistic.' And later, ‘Can I leave it here? I don't think I'd better do any more today. Can I leave it here and come back to work on it?'

‘All right.'

And before he leaves for Ivan's, Ben touches my arm. A feathery touch, like Archimedes … if you have the proper fulcrum, you can move the world.

‘I just don't want to see you get hurt,' he says. And, ‘I like your hair. You're very beautiful, Vicky. I love you. Just remember that, I love you. I always will. We're not divorced.'

Ah god, god, god, ah god.

Mik comes down and finds me sitting there, staring at the head.

‘What's those?' he says.

‘What?'

‘The hair, the way it's spread out. Like snakes.'

I laugh. ‘Medusa,' I say. Mik is right. The hair spreads out like snakes. The face is dead. The eyes are staring, sightless, and the neck is cut off. Medusa, after Perseus cut off her head.

‘The little creep,' Mik says.

‘What?'

‘He's a little creep.'

‘It's how he sees me.'

‘Yah. He's a creep.'

One night we play chess and Mik bets me breakfast in bed if I win: I lose.

So I take him his breakfast on a tray. It is the first time I have been in his room. Everything is very neat. The clear thin sun of nine o'clock is coming in under the blinds. The house is still. I waited until Jocelyn left.

Mik is lying there, under the chenille bedspread. His chest is bare. He is smoking.