Further Out Than You Thought (7 page)

Gwen shortened the leash and walked into Jin's with Fifi beside her. Although dogs weren't allowed, she knew he wouldn't mind. He had a little crush on Gwen, and would throw in an extra donut now and then, or a free coffee, if he was careful to keep his distance from Fifi, who had snapped at him once and drawn blood.

“Morning, Jin.”

“Miss Griffin.” He was watching the news. Denny, the white man from the clip last night who'd had his skull bashed in by a cinder block, had been rushed to the hospital by a few black South Central residents who'd seen what was happening on their TV, got in their car, and picked him up. He was in ICU.

She scanned the pharmaceutical section, and her heart started up again, her stomach churned and her mouth went dry. There it was—First Response—between the Vagisil and the Monistat. One stick for thirteen bucks, or two for seventeen-fifty. Better to be sure.

She filled a large cup with coffee, and grabbed a Hershey's Special Dark bar of chocolate and a bag of almonds to make the purpose of her purchase less glaring. Setting the items on the counter, she felt her cheeks and hands grow hot, as if she were a child and she'd been caught stealing, or telling a lie. She searched her purse for cash.

A man poked his head in from the back room, pulling the thin brown curtain to the side, and she could smell the sweet grease in which donuts were born. He said something to Jin, in Korean she supposed.

“Jin,” she said. “Could I have an old-fashioned, too?”

He took a bear claw from the case. She watched him put it in the bakery bag and didn't say anything. She liked bear claws, she told herself. The fried apples and the patches of gooey dough.

“Miss Griffin, my brother, Kim.” Kim stepped toward her. He looked like Jin but much younger. She wondered if he was even twenty.

“Good to meet you, Kim,” she said, and offered him her hand. He hesitated, but then took it in his, which was slight and limp and a little damp. He seemed gentle, like the boy the night before. He blushed, looking from her to the linoleum floor.

“Good to meet,” he said in his thick accent, and went back to his donut making.

Jin rang her up distractedly. There had been looting last night, the news was saying, and other people had been attacked—people driving their cars, people running the stores.

“Why you live here, Miss Griffin?”

“In the Miracle Mile?”

“In this crazy city.”

“Why do you?”

“Family.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“You have family here?”

“No. I don't have any family here.”

“I don't understand.”

She slipped the almonds and the chocolate, the donut and the pregnancy test in her purse and sipped the black coffee. A little weak, but it would do. “I couldn't live in the same city with my family, Jin,” she told him. She might have said
father
rather than family. They were the same thing.

His eyes lit up. “Oh, I see,” he said. And she knew he didn't, not really, and there wasn't time to explain.

“You be careful,” he said. And she promised.

In the car, she took a bite of the bear claw. It was good, but it was no old-fashioned. The clock read 9:45, and it was a few minutes slow. She'd be late for sure. She'd do her makeup on the way.

Leo was in front of the Cornell when she pulled up. He ran Fifi inside and jumped into the car, tricornered hat and all.

“We should let her go,” he said.

“Let who go?” she said, stepping on the gas.

“Fifi.”

“What? It's not like she's our maid or our secretary. We can't just let her go.”

“I mean, let her go free. It isn't right. We shouldn't own animals. And decide for them whether or not they can procreate. It's barbaric.”

“This isn't Mexico. If you let her go she'll get picked up by Animal Control and either get adopted by someone else or, more likely, since she's a biter, get put down.”

Gwen drove fast and blew through two lights as they turned red. She handed him the donut.

“I'm not hungry,” he said and took a bite. “God, what possessed you?” He took another bite and gave it back.

“It's your favorite,” she said, holding it to his lips. He inhaled it.

“Witch,” he muttered, mouth full. “You have water? I just need a sip.” He reached into her bag, feeling for the bottle. Her heart lurched.

“On second thought,” he said, and reached for her coffee.

He put the bag on the armrest between them. He hadn't seen. But then, he never looked through her purse. He didn't dare. It was a carpetbag affair, terrifying in breadth and density. Like a great mouth complete with teeth—pencils or hairbrushes with thin nylon bristles that pierced you under your fingernails, bare razors. Damn, she thought, she'd forgotten to buy a razor.

“Pick me up on your way home?” he said.

“It'll be six thirty, at least.”

“That's fine.”

“You have water? Food?”

“No.”

“Cash?”

“You know I don't touch the stuff.”

“But if someone gave you money for a tape?”

“I'm not an idiot, Gwen.”

She searched her purse for a five and pressed it into his hand.

“Honest Abe,” he said, and studied the face on the bill before putting it back in her purse.

“Leo—”

“Zero. Please.” He tipped the front corner of his hat, grinned, and started singing, a sort of Middle Eastern chant. His voice was liquid, clear undulating blue, lit so you could see to its depths. It made the traffic stop and go rhythmic, made it flow, ebb and slap. The Mediterranean on an afternoon in October. They'd been there once. Made love on a hot smooth rock.

Put the trip on credit cards.

It seemed so long ago, like a dream. Greece and its empty beaches. Folegandros, the island where she first had Leo in his sleep, took him as a real succubus would, on that cement dock at the beach with the long name, the furthest beach, the one that made the villagers smile when she and Leo had asked. “Livadaki?”

“Ah, Livadaki.” They'd nodded knowingly, pointing in its direction, their smiles showing their missing teeth.

Leo was nude when he fell asleep. They'd skinny-dipped in the brisk sea and stretched out on the dock to dry. He was sleeping on his back, and she whispered to him, “Who am I?”

“You?” He'd laughed to himself. She'd touched him, lightly. And when he stiffened, she straddled and rode him.

“You like this, don't you,” she teased.

“Yes,” he said, under his breath.

“Who am I?” she said again, but he was beyond all talk, this thrust fast and needful. Unconscious of himself, Leo had been, for the first time with her, one with his hunger, his passive, pleasing mode a shadow.

She'd rolled off him, her knees red. He was still sleeping, the hint of a smile on his lips. At the top of the hill, an old Greek woman in a black dress, sidesaddle on her donkey, had stopped and was watching them. How long she'd been there, Gwen hadn't known. She imagined she'd seen everything.

Gwen had smiled and waved at her and dove into the sea. Her hands parted in a breaststroke, her legs kicked and closed. Under the water she opened her eyes, and swimming was like flight in dreams, how it makes you free and limitless. Leo was hers. In that moment—in which he'd trusted her completely, the way a child trusts his mother—she had the power, had that willful, girlish, stamp your foot, dance on the tabletop if you want to power. She had been charged with it.

Now she looked at him, in the passenger seat, lost in his own voice, singing with his eyes closed. She could take him anywhere and he wouldn't know it. She could get on the freeway and head west, till they hit the Pacific, and then veer north, up the coast. She had an aunt up there, in Santa Cruz—her mother's youngest sister, Sam, who lived with Loni, her partner. She'd told Gwen she was welcome anytime. They could stay with them awhile. Get out of the city, have a few days at the sea.

His chant gave way to “The Freedom Song.” Her birthday present the first year they were together, it was her favorite of his songs. But the cars were moving too fast. She wanted to hear one verse at least before she let him out. He sang and she joined in, singing higher than him, harmonizing.

They were at his stop—the curb before the freeway on-ramp—and she pulled over, watched him open the door, step from her car, tap his hat onto his head so it would stay put in the breeze, and wave good-bye with his fingers—
toodle-do
—one at a time. She had to smile.

BY DAYLIGHT THE exterior of the club was something Gwen tried not to look at. Like a condom under the pier, or a beggar at a stoplight. It was made of cement blocks and was big and boxy as a warehouse. The white paint was peeling, showing Pepto-Bismol pink beneath. It was ugly—uglier because it aimed at ugliness, because the ugliness was itself an attraction. The club was, simply, ugly as sin.

But then, a club is a weapon. It's all about function. A heavy stick with a thick end. One good whack on the head will do the trick. Boom, down.

Men came to the club to feel the beat of the music in their blood, in their bones. To sit in the dark and watch.

Sometimes, dancing, she'd gaze at the field of men's faces and wonder. How many had planned to go there? How many had tried to drive home? How many had girlfriends, wives? Did they tell them where they'd been? Or did they lie?

These men came to the club to be someone else for an hour, to feel their heart beat in their chest as if they were nameless. To glow with anonymity in a place where anything could happen.

And then there were those men who were single, or at least interested in more than a mere glimpse of flesh. There were the ones who gave her their cards: coffeehouse kid, artist, real-estate agent, M.D., executive loan officer, V.P. of a film company, attorney. What did these men want? Sex? Or love—a pill for their loneliness. Or were they mining, driven by the desire to bring something found in the dark (as if by feel) into the daylight, to see it sparkle in the sun?

It can't be done.

To make a fantasy real is to lose the fantasy.

“STEVIE,” JOE SAID. “You're late.”

“I know.” She gave him her music—Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong. “Who's managing?”

“I am.” He grinned. “You can make it up to me later.”

She laughed. He said this to all the girls. Nothing ever came of it.

“You're up next set,” he said, “if you can make it.”

Brett was onstage—not naked—nude. Like the sign outside said. Stevie paused. To be naked was to be exposed, caught with your pants down. Nude implied awareness and intention. The ownership of one's own body that meant power.

Her legs just parting, her hand rising, she was indrawn, like the tide when it recedes, taking everything with it. Context and content, she asked nothing of anyone. Stevie tried to move, to move on, she had to change, she had to . . . But Brett stole her eyes and gave back beauty, reflected light and shadow—that line beneath her breast described just so when her hand reached high and her head turned toward her shoulder, as if to inhale the smell of powder, perfume, and sweat.

Her smell.

The club no more than the space around her, the scattered customers, the smoke, a border for her exquisite sex, for her song, Brett looked down at herself, then up, to Stevie. Her eyes held hers, asking,
Do you see?

Her labia. That smooth, soft cleft.

If labia are lips, then the cunt is a mouth, and a mouth shapes one's voice into words. In the beginning was the word—the word made flesh, in the cave where we each were formed. Even closed, labia sing the mystery of the source.

More than meets the eye. So much more.

The song was fading. Brett closed her legs.

In the dressing room, Stevie threw on the simplest costume she had—a dress, if you could call it that, with a stretchy black lace bodice and a skirt of gauze. Black satin G-string. She buckled her black heels. Pulled on her long black gloves.

Brett was off; Stevie was on.

They passed each other, Brett's hand brushing Stevie's thigh. She caught her breath, looked at Brett, her strong brown back.

There, on her backstage stoop, Devotion was blowing smoke rings in which circle of hell? Limbo, lust, gluttony? “Want some?” she said, angel of the haze.

“Not today,” Stevie said, and she walked onto the stage straight.

It was just another dayshift. She could take it. She'd jazz things up with Louis.

She shook her hips and shoulders. She took the pole in hand and spun, the club a blur. Moving in circles, she felt like a kid. Moving to move, to whirl the brain and fall on the grass under the loopy stars.

Slowing, she could see Mr. Cooper in the gloaming, alone at a table, the coal of his cigarette a distant planet. So far off.

How we live and die alone. Vast reaches of lightlessness between us.

Her palms sliding down her thighs as if turning them out, she descended to a squat. Maybe she did need a little something. Just a puff. To fill the void with a bit of fire, of lift, a hot-air balloon to climb inside and ride out, over the sea. To catch the waning morning moon in a net of gauze and bring it back, before it was too late.

“Devotion,” she said between songs, “I was wrong.” She took the joint and sipped the smoke. She stepped out of her costume. Watching the fumes dance under the bare bulb, she could feel the dream returning. The poetry.