Elliot Mabeuse (31 page)

"Then what's the point?"

"The point. That it was a long time, I guess. And complicated. And terrifying. And yet it happened, and look how it turned out. With you and me standing here today."

She thought about that and said, "We could have gone to the movies, Conner."

Emma turned and looked down at all the people.

"It is amazing, though," she said. "To think that of all the people in the world, or in the city, we would have ended up together, you and I. What are the odds?" She turned to me. "Do you believe in fate?"

"No."

"Then how do you explain it?"

I laughed. "If I weren't here with you, I'd probably be here with someone else.

The same is true for you, and for all these people. Don't kid yourself, Emma. We've just been given a gift is all. We lucked out."

She stared down at the crowds for a moment and then looked at me.

"That's a shitty thing to say. Are you saying I don't mean anything to you?"

"No. That's not at all what I'm saying, baby. I love you, Emma. But do I think we were brought together by fate? No. What if you hadn't signed up for my class that day?

You see that girl down there by the elephant? Maybe she would have. Maybe I'd be here with her today and you'd be off with someone else. Life is full of close calls and weird coincidences, Emma, and the best we can hope for is that we end up with someone worth being with, because in the end, we only really exist in our lovers'

regard."

"What? What does that mean?"

"It means that when all is said and done, you’d better be loved by someone who thinks very well of you, because they make you what you are, and they become the way you see the world. You want someone who holds you highly in their regard, because that's all you have. What you think of yourself doesn't really matter when you have something like that."

Emma was staring down at the girl by the elephants. She was quite lovely, really, with long red hair and fashionably dressed.

"Do you hold me in high regard?"

"Yes, Emma. I hold you in very high regard. Very high. And you know that, and that's why you put up with me and do all those crazy things I ask you to do."

I put out my hand and caressed her beautiful face and I was really moved, because I think for once she realized how fragile it all is, how easy it is to lose, or to miss altogether.

"I hold you in high regard too, Conner. You know that, don't you? God, I really do!"

She put her arms around me and squeezed and I felt her arms shaking she held me so tight. People walked by and looked at us but we didn't even notice because we were on erotic time and they were just shadows.

"I want so much to be what you want!"

"You are what I want, Emma. You're exactly what I want."

But she looked away and I knew she still didn't believe it.

* * * * We went downstairs then, into the Egyptian gallery, and quickly slipped back into that time, three thousand years ago. It was impossible not to be moved by the things we saw, the signs of the people's humanity, their combs and make-up boxes, their jewelry and prayers for love, the cups these people drank from. In a case against the wall stood the mummies of their bodies and the bodies of their children, even their pets. And here sat their gods regarding them.

I didn't say much. I just let her look. She held my hand or peered over my shoulder into the cases. Sometimes her hand went to the buttons on her blouse and she played with them absent-mindedly or she stroked her hair, and though there were people all around us, walking past and glancing at what we were looking at, we were all alone, alone in our regard for one another, alone as student and teacher. I knew she understood what I was showing her and I knew she understood perfectly. We were alone in erotic space.

We took a break and I led her out into the hallway, to the bathrooms.

"Do you have any money?

"Some. Yes, why?"

"Give it to me."

She reached into her pocket and gave me some bills.

"No, go inside and take off your underwear, precious. Bra and panties. Come out and show them to me."

"Conner…!"

She looked like she was going to say more, but by now I think she was getting used to me and learning I told her things for a reason. Or maybe she was getting used to following orders, or maybe she was just tired. Museums are emotionally exhausting.

In any case, it was taking her money that did it, making it impossible for her to get home on her own. She had to do as I said and she didn't like being blackmailed.

She leaned against the door of the ladies' room and then pushed it open with her back, went inside. I sat down on the bench and waited. People came and went. They were invisible to me. I waited.

"Did you do it?"

She reached in her pocket and showed me her bra. I could already tell she'd done it though. She stood differently, more erect, more conscious of her body.

"Panties too?"

She nodded.

"Good. Then let's go."

She excited me now. Just the knowledge that she was naked and available under her clothes made all the difference in the world. Strangely, it made her aloof. She no longer stood so close, as if my touch had become dangerous.

Towards the end of the Egyptian gallery, we came across an exhibit on their religion, and Emma seemed fascinated.

I said, "Women are the source of all magical power but they can't use it by themselves. They need men to help them make use of it. And men are great at using it, but we can't get to it on our own. We need women for that. That's the way it always is, Emma. We need each other."

She looked at me and smiled. "You're just trying to get in my pants."

I nodded. "Well sure. There's always that too. But it's true, baby. That's how it works. You have these feelings inside and you don't know what to do with them. You bring them to me and I do all these terrible things to you and get you excited and that excites me, and we build up a feedback from there. Isn't that how it goes, Emma?"

She ignored me, looking at the exhibit, so I took her arm. "Come on, love. Now I've got something special to show you. Something most people don't get to see."

From down in the basement we had to go to up to the second floor, and from there I led her to a doorway by a stairwell. I used my pass, the electronic lock opened, and we stepped into a corridor lined with old offices, unchanged from when the museum was built. Just like that we were behind the scenes, back where the curators and

conservators worked, a place where the specimens and exhibits were prepared and cataloged.

"Conner!" Emma whispered. "Are we supposed to be here?"

"Sure. I work here. This way."

I led her down some more stairs, to a shipping room where I used my pass to call the elevator. We got on and headed down. Emma was nervous. Her nipples were showing clearly beneath her blouse.

"Where are we going?"

"Where the gods go to die, lover. Where we all go when you women don't love us. When you don't give us everything you possibly can."

The elevator bumped to a stop and the doors opened with a snarling sound onto utter darkness and the smell of dust and disuse. We got out and I found the lights, snapped them on, and banks of fluorescents blinked on, marching off into the distance.

We were in a vast, windowless warehouse lined with row upon row of identical giant steel filing cabinets, running almost the entire length of the museum.

"This is the museum's out-of-collection collection," I said. "These are pieces that have been taken out of the regular collection because they're no good any more. Poor quality or falling apart and past preserving or one thing or another. They've been retired, so to speak. Come over here. Look."

"What is that?"

Up against one of the banks of cabinets a kind of ancient sculpture—a column of marble about four feet high with a man's head carved into the top, badly decomposed

but clearly classical Greek, and about a foot below the head, mounted on the column and standing straight out, was an erect phallus. That was all. A head and a dick on a column of marble.

I let her look. I watched her face, trying to imagine her coming upon it alone in the wilds in the Greek countryside maybe , years ago.

"It's called a
herm
," I said. "The ancient Greeks used them as boundary markers to mark the edges of their property, or their city-states, where the civilized world ended and the wilds began. That's the head of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, the god of thieves and tricksters. Also the god of boundaries and edges, where the unknown begins. That other thing is just what you think it is. A cock. A hard-on. An excited male organ. There's a lot of wise-asses who work at the museum. The herm was being retired, so someone probably just left it out here, outside the out-of-collection stuff as a joke: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' It's kind of a mess in there."

"But what's it mean? Why does is he…like that?"

"You tell me, precious. Why would the Greeks mark the beginning of the unknown with an erect cock? Hm? What do you think they were trying to tell us? It's kind of interesting, isn't it?" I smiled at her. "What would you have chosen, Emma? A skull and crossbones, huh?"

I led her past the
herm
and down one of the aisles, through the giant cabinets towering over us like cliffs, over the old wooden floors, back away from the elevator, back into the darkness. I didn't bother turning on any more lights. I wanted it dark.

"This is creepy, Conner. This is like the place where people get killed in monster movies. So what am I supposed to see here?"

Way towards the back was a break in the solid wall of cabinets where several had been removed to form a work space, a few tables and chairs and rolling work lights, some carts and supplies for sorting and labeling. There were some boxes and packing and all around stood figures of Egyptian gods and goddesses, some recognizable, some not. I'd left them there weeks ago when I'd volunteered to box up the McCutcheon collection for storage, an indifferent amateur collection donated to the museum wrapped in newspaper and stuffed into shoeboxes.

I sat down in one of the chairs. "This is my little army of Gods," I said. "No one worships them anymore, but at one time they did. At one time, the universe was full of their energy. It came in two kinds, male and female, and people who had it were considered very special. A lot of them were priests and priestesses and they lived in temples and talked to the gods because this energy they had was a gift from the gods.

When they felt it, people figured they weren't generating it inside, but feeling it from the outside, like they had a special kind of sight or sense. Like they could see something no one else could see. I've been teasing you on the trip down here, telling you we were in erotic time and space, but that's really an old pagan idea, that there's another world we're in that some people can see."

"Uh huh. And where are we going with this, Conner?"

"I'm trying to show you something, Emma. I'm trying to explain something to you.

I told you before that women are the source of this energy that men need, but they can't do anything with it. They can't use it without a man's help. And a man—"

She sat down. "Can't we talk about this outside? This place is getting to me."

I didn't say anything. We could hear the sounds of the museum faintly from outside. Emma slumped in her chair and looked at me. She jammed her hands into her pockets.

"Stand up," I said.

"Conner," she began wearily.

"Stand up, Emma. Take your coat off."

"Someone could come in—"

"I don't care what someone could do. If you don't want to talk about it, then we'll get right on with the object lesson. Now stand up and take your goddamned coat off, Emma."

I reached back and turned off the overhead fluorescents so the only light was what reached us from the elevator area, the lurid red light from the emergency exit sign over the door at the end of the aisle. The little figurines cast long shadows. Emma stayed in her chair.

I didn't hesitate. I got up from my chair and crossed the distance between us in two steps, grabbed her coat and pulled her to her feet so quickly she gave a little bark of fear. I held her in one hand and spun her around and backed her against a cabinet.

"What do you think this is, Emma? What's this little game now? Did I just tell you to do something?"

She grabbed at my hand. "Conner! What's wrong? What did I do? Why are you like this?"

"I just told you to do something. I didn't tell you to sit there and think about it."

Her eyes searched my face and I dared her. I dared her to keep on looking at me.

"Sometimes you forget who I am, Emma. I'm the one who knows you, remember? I'm the one who knows who you are, and you need me just as much as I need you, because without me, you can't do anything with it, Emma. Without me, you just ache and ache. You need me to get it out of you, baby, don't you? I'm the one who knows where it is and knows how to get it out, so you need me. You should remember that.”