Long Division (33 page)

ONE

The female desert spider is difficult to impress. When a male spider comes looking for action—looking to spread his genes like biology tells him he has to—he must be very, very careful. Approaching the female's web, he uses his front legs to shake her perfectly crafted masterpiece with certain socially appropriate vibrations. Vibrations that tell her he's not food. Vibrations that tell her he's deeply interested. Vibrations that tell her what orifice he's shooting for.

In a series of arm-flapping, booty-shaking, abdomen-twisting movements, the male does his best to show the female that his are some genes worth passing on. Nature's proven choreography. All the hip spiders break it down like this. These pedipalps, baby, are loaded with some sperm your precious eggs are aching for. Oh, yeah.

And that's how scientists thought it went. For a very long time. Now they know that there's a little more to it. Good moves won't get you everything. Before it all starts, before the eight-legged seduction ensues, the male releases a pheromone. A scent that tells his potential mate he's ready. Ready to perform. I'm not food, sweetie, I'm the father of your children! She receives this smell, and if she's willing—willing to humor his chivalrous romantic boogie—she sends a scent back. He dances. She watches. Game on.

 

TWO

“God, Ivy, you are so difficult to impress. Look at that guy's shoes. They match his shirt perfectly. And he just picked up that girl's purse—that's so sweet. And he's drinking Stella. You love Stella. Go talk to him.”

“No. I don't want to talk to him.” Ivy smoothes her hair behind her ears. Takes a drink of her rum and Coke, letting the ice hit her teeth and chill them for almost long enough to hurt.

“He's been totally checking you out all night. I'm surprised he hasn't asked you to dance. Bought you a drink or something.” Ivy's best friend, Carly, is a queen of social mores.

“Whatever. I doubt he's a good dancer,” Ivy says, giving his shoes a more careful inspection. They are nice. A few minutes later, returning from the ladies' room, they find him dancing. With his guy friends. Ivy almost wants to laugh at his arm-flapping, booty-shaking, abdomen-twisting movements, but she doesn't. She never thought 50 Cent could inspire such an odd, gangly, but nonetheless spirited routine. He catches her watching him and he winks. She usually hates winks. Thinks that only octogenarians can effectively pull them off. But there's something about it. Maybe the way it lasted such a brief, fleeting moment? The way he didn't stop moving to acknowledge her? The way his hair almost covered his eye so that he could have been twitching—not winking at all? Call it some weird glitch in her biology, but it worked. He danced. She watched. Game on.

On their first date, they do that typical stroll-through-the-park thing. She's eating an apple and they're talking about bad teenage jobs they once had. She's almost done with the fruit, just nibbling around the seeds and the stem. “You're not one of those weird people who eats the whole thing, are you?” he says, and she pauses. Lets the hand holding the core drop to her side.

“You mean those people who eat the core and the seeds and everything?”

“Yeah, those.” He smiles. It's almost challenging. She raises her arm, an eyebrow, stares straight into his eyes, and attacks half of the remaining core. Seriously chomps it. She struggles to chew the bitter, fibrous innards, and he laughs momentarily. For about thirty seconds they walk in silence as Ivy tediously masticates the apple's remains. After a final, triumphant swallow and a deft tongue maneuver to clean her teeth of any stringy remnants, she smiles.

“Yes,” she says. “I am one of those weird people.”

“Fantastic,” he says, and he kisses her.

 

Three weeks and four dates later and it's Valentine's Day. Adam gets Ivy a wok. Ivy gets Adam convertible mitten gloves. They both seem pleased that their gifts are of comparable monetary value and sentimentality. Things are going well.

“So, you really like him?” Carly is always rummaging through her purse for something. Pulling out tampons when she needs a pen. Loose change when she wants keys.

“Yeah. I like him. We get along really well. He's nice.” Ivy shrugs her lips.

“Don't say
nice,
Ivy. Everyone is nice. That's such a lousy descriptor. How's the sex?”

“Christ, Carly. The sex is fine. He's very considerate. Eager to please. No back hair.”

“Well, that's good.” Carly opens and closes another lipstick tube and tosses it back in the pit.

“Yeah, I guess so. And he smells nice.” Ivy means it. He smells fabulous.

“Shut up with the
nice
already.”

“Fine. He smells fabulous.”

 

THREE

The male European nursery web spider provides before he penetrates. In order to approach a female for mating, he must present her with a gift. This reverse dowry comes in the form of a meal. Something large, something tasty, something the omni-hungry female will not be able to refuse.

A larger gift shows the female that this male's got skills. Skills she'd want her spiderlings to inherit. Skills that bring home the bacon. Or housefly. Or aphid. After a successful hunt, the male wraps the fresh insect in layers of his own silk. These layers of gossamer ribbons make the gift seem larger. Harder to unwrap. Longer to eat. Buying him time. And as the female unpacks and devours her nuptial gift—he goes for it. She masticates. They copulate. All at the same time.

 

FOUR

“Oh sweet, Adam. This is the most fantastic sofa ever.” Ivy collapses on the brushed leather, sprawling out every limb. Just because she can.

“Well, the most fantastic deal ever was signed this week, so I figured it was time to splurge.” He lifts one of Ivy's legs and slides under it.

“And I got something else too.” Ivy's head unburrows from between folds of taupe as Adam digs a package out from behind one of the sofa's eight or nine pillows. It's a shiny white box. Wrapped in layers of gossamer ribbons. At the sight of the box, Ivy tenses her glute muscles and the sofa gives beneath her. Not jewelry. Not jewelry, she thinks. He places the gift in her hands, and it takes a minute for Ivy to unravel its wrappings. She stares for a moment at the gift in her palms, letting the weight of its light contents sink in.

“The Royal Ballet of London.”

“Yep.”

“These are, like, the best seats ever.”

“Yep.”

“Oh my God, Adam. Thank you.”

“You didn't even know they were coming to Boston, did you?” Ivy's eyes snag on the block-letter date printed on the two snuggling tickets.

“This is three months from now.”

Adam tells Ivy that now she has plenty of time to buy a new dress or something. She hugs him then wiggles her head back into the crack in the sofa. She sighs. They snuggle. All at the same time.

 

FIVE

Successful mating of the funnel-web spider relies on old-fashioned anesthetics. The female's typically reluctant, often feisty, maybe even relentlessly chaste demeanor makes getting laid a tricky matter. The male uses a pheromone, a chemical he releases within close proximity of his chosen mate to sedate her. This fast-acting drug renders her totally out of it. Just as it renders him totally safe for uninterrupted, unobjected intercourse. But he must be speedy, for this comatose state can last minutes. Can last hours. Can last indefinitely.

 

SIX

“Here's your drink, babe. This place is fucking packed.”

“Thanks. Well, at least we have a table.” Ivy stirs the rum and Coke with its straw before taking a sip. Her lips curl and her nose twists. “Ish, this tastes kind of gross, what did you get me?”

“Bacardi and Diet.”

“Oh. Well, okay.”

“Do you want to order food?”

“Whatever, I don't really care. You can order for me, Adam.” And he does.

 

Sometimes she lets him do that. Often she lets him pick the movie. “I don't care, Adam. Just not too many guns and cars blowing up.” In bed one night, Adam strokes Ivy's hair so nicely. So tenderly. In a way that makes her head tingle and her eyes narrow so much that she doesn't even mind that he's simultaneously watching an hour-long special edition of
COPS
. Her “Books to Read” list doesn't shorten. And it doesn't grow, either. Ivy spends so much time with Adam that she drops out of yoga and calls her parents less. They drink lots of wine. And sometimes, Ivy doesn't even bother to read the label.

 

Carly asks Ivy one day why she stopped looking for a new job.

“Dude, Ivy, what happened to getting a new job?”

“I don't know, I just kind of forgot. Work goes so much faster now that I can IM Adam all day.”

“That's sick.”

“You're sick.” They're at a nail salon and Carly is examining a bright orange bottle of polish. “I can't believe you're looking at that color.”

“Orange is really big right now, Ivy. You're so totally out of it.”

“Shit. Maybe I am.” Ivy thinks that maybe she is. Maybe Adam has sucked the life out of her with his nice car and his brazen good looks. And as the tiny woman trims the cuticles of Ivy's small feet, she contemplates trimming Adam out of her life. The pedicurist applies a muted pink paint to her nails, and Ivy thinks about napping in Adam's plush sofa. With her toes under the drier, she decides to keep her mate for the time being. She's not super happy. But she's fine. This relationship can last. For now, indefinitely.

 

SEVEN

The female St. Andrew's Cross spider takes fornication to a whole new level. Into the next world even. Once the male's pedipalps have slid back and forth and back and forth enough times into her reproductive openings for her to assume a sufficient amount of sperm has been deposited—she fucking kills him. Right then. Right in the middle of it all. Fertilization as a prelude to homicide. In some cases, the female will even begin to eat the male while his sex organs are still in motion. Going in for the kill. With a whole new meaning.

 

EIGHT

“So you're going to do it?”

“Yep.”

“You're going in for the kill?”

“Don't be sick, Carly. You act like it's something fun. I hate breaking up with people.”

“But you have to. Before you melt into watching the WB on Saturdays while the two of you flip through linen catalogs.” Ivy can picture Carly nodding while she speaks on the other side of the phone.

“Yeah. You're right. It's just that he's so nice. He's so damn nice. He just so nicely made me dull. Nicely dragged me into his sticky web of banality.”

“Whoa now, ‘sticky web of banality.' That is my girl. Ivy, you're almost back. Go get him.”

 

This wasn't supposed to happen, she thinks. Eight limbs tangled in silky sheets. His penis sliding back and forth and back and forth enough times for Ivy to nearly get there. She's having such a good time, really. On her back, left leg hooked on his right shoulder, with each pulse she entertains different phrasing in her head, and it feels awesome.
Adam, it's just that I. We're so diff erent and you. You know, it's only because.
She contemplates actually doing it. Right then. Right in the middle of it all.

The bed smells fabulous. Vibrations. Abdomens twisting. She gives him the gift of a wet tongue to a dry ear. He rolls her on top to buy them both some time. His midmorning, hint-of-toothpaste breath almost lulls her into forgetting her visit's initial intentions. And as it all reaches the top, Ivy remembers that it's not a climax, it's a prelude. She must stop. She has to. Going in for the kill, she relaxes her upper body on his chest and stretches her arms to the headboard.

“David?” she says. And before he can answer, Annie is pulling herself up to her elbows. Her right hand, that had just momentarily reached the crack between the headboard and the mattress, catches something on its way up. The thin-threaded white of a delicate female weapon. Annie rubs the fabric between her fingers; the first time it's touched her skin.

“Annie, I can explain.” She sits up. Looks closer at the intricate pattern of the garment's silky weave. “It's not what you think, babe.” She dismounts the bed deftly. Pulls on her sweatpants, her sweatshirt, letting her head pause inside the cotton for long enough to almost make her dizzy.

“It was only this one time, I promise.”

Emerging from the worn gray fabric, Annie's eyes are blank. Her posture calm. Her lips sealed. And as she tosses the panties back onto the bed, she actually hears David say he's sorry.

“I'm sorry.”

And inside her mouth, her tongue moves slowly, thoughtfully, left to right across the sharp ridge of her upper teeth, tracing the weapons she didn't use.

 

THE END
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