Mira Corpora (10 page)

Now a chorus of voices murmurs over the body. The bedroom lights strobe off and on in slow motion. Unclassifiable sensations spread and dissolve through the body. There's a peculiar throb, reminiscent of a finger plucking the granule of hard pit from the center of a peeled grape. Behind the reddish darkness of its eyelids, warm and stinging colors bloom like fireworks against a flat night sky. Its toes curl, its back spasms and flexes, its fingers coil into tiny fists. Its jaw lowers like a drawbridge but there's no sound, no indication of either pain or pleasure.

Later the body finds itself seated on the leather couch in the living room. The party is in full swing. A hiccupping electronic beat blares over the speakers. There's a jumble of hands thumping out conversational points to the manic rhythm. A number of guests have donned festive masks. Black masks with sequins, white masks with feathers, red masks with long crooked noses. The body suspects it may be wearing a mask too. If so, that's its only item of clothing. It's stark naked except for being wrapped in a strand of red and green Christmas lights.

The middle-aged woman sits nearby, fingering one of the blinking threads of lights. Her brown curls appear more unruly. Her lips tremble and her chest heaves, as if she's trying to suppress some erupting emotion. “We need to talk,” she whispers. At least the body thinks that's what she says. The woman reaches for a tall glass of what's probably vodka. The drink sloshes violently, half the contents landing with a splash on her plaid skirt. The body realizes she's no longer so sober. If she ever was.

A young blonde bursts into the brownstone. The front door swings open and she tumbles inside with a gasp. Maybe she was one of the partygoers earlier this evening. Or some other time. A column of cold air and snowflakes squalls into the room after her. Car horns and ambulance sirens blare in the distance. The
blonde's pupils are glazed over with excitement. “There's been a terrible accident,” she announces. “Tractor-trailer jackknife. Cars piled up everywhere. Bleeding people wandering the street.”

The partygoers exchange muddled looks. Several remove their masks. At this late juncture, their ragged minds are unsure whether to treat the announcement as fresh fodder for conversation or a distant tragedy to be ignored. Even Gert-Jan seems baffled. The blonde shakes the snow off her jacket. She claps her hands together and clarifies the meaning of her message. “It's totally awesome,” she says.

Gert-Jan instructs the partygoers to grab flashlights from the closet. They'll tramp out to the street to check out the smash-up. What the fuck. The party was getting predictable anyhow. Nobody bothers to give the body instructions, so it remains seated, brilliantly lit and slightly shivery. It watches the blonde lead a single-file line of unsteady souls into the night, masks resting atop their heads, clutching half-full bottles and tripping over half-laced boots.

The middle-aged woman lingers in the doorway. She's the last one left. But instead of chasing the roving flashlight beams, she shuts the door. She stands directly in front of the body. “I'm Naomi,” she says loudly, as if afraid it might be hearing impaired. Her breath reeks of grain alcohol and chewed cashews. Her mouth gleams sensuously from a fresh coat of lip gloss that only partly camouflages the fuzz of a menopausal mustache. “I want to help you,” she says. “But there isn't much time.”

The body nods. It has no idea what she's talking about. She snatches an unfinished glass of emerald liqueur off the coffee table and polishes it off in a single surging swallow, oblivious to the liquid dribbling down her chin. Without further preamble, she yanks the plug for the Christmas lights from the wall. All the dazzling colors encircling the body go dark. As if someone has extinguished its halo. The dead strands of lights sag and flutter around its limbs as she pulls the body toward the upstairs
bedroom, the limp cord and exposed plug dragging a few paces behind.

The woman shuts the door behind them. She removes the mask from the body's face, then begins to unravel the string of lights. “We better do this quickly,” she says. “The others will be back soon.” The body remains motionless as her woozy fingers untangle the strands, slurring together the interwoven wires on its hairless chest, slender arms, shakily bowed legs. Once she's done, the woman heaves open the bedroom window and ducks her head into the night. The curtains billow and deflate behind her. A few lost snowflakes filter into the room. No idea what she spies out there. “The monsters,” she says. “The things they've made you do.”

The body nods. The woman seems to be awaiting some reply, but it isn't sure how to respond to her look. After a moment, it says: “Thank you.”

She turns toward the body. For the first time, her eyes seem to register how it is perfectly nude. Its smooth cock and balls have begun to shrink in the chill breeze. Its raw elbows and splayed feet quiver ever so slightly. Its otherwise unblemished skin is crisscrossed with indentations from the strands of miniature light bulbs, forming traces of a ghostly treasure map. “Don't be afraid,” the woman says softly. “I'm going to help you get out of here.”

The body pays no attention to her words. It's fixated on her facial expression, which has done a weird somersault now that they're sitting together on the black mattress. Some subset of emotions is imploding behind her eyes. She stutters something but the syllables are still-born. Her pinky traces the pointy vertebrae down the body's back, as if deciphering a coded message in Braille. She leans over and kisses the body on the mouth.

When their tongues touch, the woman jumps back. She exaggeratedly wipes her mouth with the hem of her wool sweater. Then she spits in the body's face. A thick gob lands between its
eyebrows and slaloms down the bridge of its nose. Traces of her cherry gloss are smudged on its puffy lips. “Little pervert,” she hisses. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The body betrays no sign of emotion. The blankness of its features is so pure that it seems prepared to reflect this emptiness indefinitely. But then it does something surprising. It licks the traces of saliva from the tip of its nose and says, “I'm sorry.”

The woman's mascara-framed eyes flood with dark tears. Her tiny hands cover her face so only a penumbra of frizzy brown hair remains visible. She speaks in choked and cautious tones, as if she has a baby bird cradled inside her mouth. “I'm the one who should be sorry,” she whispers. “You're just a child. I have my own children who aren't much older than you.” Her voice splinters into silence. She's drunk enough to be undone by her own revelation.

There are voices outside. Squeals of laughter and drifting catcalls break through the hum of the avenue below. It's the partygoers returning from their sightseeing expedition. Someone retches the contents of their stomach onto the stoop. Gert-Jan hums the half-remembered chorus of a German football chant. The woman grips the body's shoulders. “There's not much time,” she says. “Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you.”

She puts her mouth next to the body's ear and whispers a breathless litany of directions to follow, street addresses, house descriptions, people's names, pager digits. There's a heartfelt urgency to this information that confuses the body. “Remember this,” the woman says. “And as soon as there's an opportunity to get away, you follow these instructions.”

The body's expression remains fixed, but signs of excitement surface in its pores. A tiny tadpole-shaped muscle in its forehead begins to beat, like a second heart. The woman repeats the information: the numbers of safe houses, the names of benefactors, the paths of escape. It's impossible to tell how much the
body is absorbing, but its lips move ever so slightly, as if trying to repeat the syllables.

The partygoers tramp into the old brownstone. The floor reverberates from the vibrations of slammed doors and stamping feet. The mingled voices form a distinct but undifferentiated din. Someone in the living room switches on the stereo and a dramatic burst of strings and wailing vox spills from the speakers. An aria, mid-flight. The music could be a cue. A few seconds later, Gert-Jan bursts through the bedroom door. He has a fail-safe radar for trouble.

Gert-Jan's eyes flit between the open window and Naomi's conspiratorial posture. “Here is a disappointment,” he says. Two partygoers grab the woman under the armpits and drag her from the room. Her shoes plow useless ruts in the carpet, unable to slow her exit. Between muffled sobs, she shouts out phone numbers and street names.

Gert-Jan locks the bedroom door. He looks at the body with a charged expression that it has as much chance of solving as a differential equation. The body instinctively cowers deeper into the mattress. Its sunken spaniel eyes blink furiously. It suddenly appears aware of its nakedness and cups both hands over its shriveled genitals. It tries to summon the words to communicate its emotions, but they surface as mere flecks of foam.

The body's teeth chatter. Gert-Jan shuts the window. He wraps the strand of Christmas lights around the body's shoulders like a shawl. The party rages on below. Bursts of drunken laughter and throbbing music. “It's okay,” Gert-Jan soothes. “I know you're a good boy. I know you weren't listening to any of her nonsense.”

He leans over and whispers in the body's ear. At first, the body believes he's reciting some endearment in German. But soon it realizes these are purely invented syllables. The stream of intimate gibberish begins to erase the woman's instructions, as if the idea of escape is an elaborate joke, as if every word
eventually means the exact same thing. Gert-Jan presses his lips closer. The whispering continues. It's as if I'm not even here.

I'm dreaming upside down. I mean, I'm upside down and dreaming. My feet are propped at the head of the bed and the sheets twist in whorls around my ankles. My naked body twitches ever so slightly. Are my eyelids fluttering? It looks like. If you could crawl behind them, you would find yourself in the middle of a grassy field at night. The moon shines brightly overhead. A lone orange tree stands in the distance. A warm breeze tickles the undersides of its leaves so that orbs of fruit can be seen glistening on its branches. They're ripe for the taking. And where am I in this dream? Lying in the grass and contemplating distant constellations. Content to be a bystander, even in my own imagination.

My eyelids definitely flutter this time. Some bubble of consciousness ripples its way to the surface. I roll over and groan. Reptile-brain tells me to yawn. I stretch the hinges of my jaw. Reptile-brain tells me to open my eyes. I make little slits of them. From the bruise-colored light filtering through the window, it must be some early hour of the morning. The shadows in the bedroom slowly coalesce into familiar shapes. The cramped apartment is eerily silent.

Reptile-brain tells me to finger my crotch. It's a little crusty. I start to feel guilty about something from last night. Not totally sure what it is yet. Still I feel bad about it. Reptile-brain tells me to sit up. Immediately the back of my neck begins to tingle. There's somebody else in the bed. An indistinct figure is heaped under the patchwork quilt adorned with sailboats. A small foot sticks out from under the frayed fabric.

I can't recall anything about its owner. The foot's chipped toenails are painted green, probably some sort of clue. Reptile-brain
tells me to look closer. I take another peek at the body. It's asleep, probably. Completely still, certainly. There's another option, but I refuse to consider it. I don't want to know. There's probably a good reason for not wanting to know, but I don't want to know that either.

Instead, I stare at the half-drunk glass of soda. The fluid is flat, all the bubbles gone, wherever bubbles go when they're no more. An old cigarette butt lies curled at the bottom of the glass, immersed in the dead amber liquid. It looks larval. The ashy black tip resembles a tail dropping spores. This glass of soda is suddenly and truly the most fascinating object I have ever seen. Or to put it another way: It's the one object in this room that I can deal with, the only one seemingly free of unsettling associations. I stare at the glass for a full five minutes.

Slowly my vision expands to include a bottle of neon yellow pills. It sits next to the glass. The twist-top is slightly askew. Gert-Jan must be passed out in the living room because otherwise he would have knocked on the door by now. He doesn't allow the partygoers to sleep in the bedroom with me. “It's dangerous to let them get too close,” he says. “I found out the hard way when I was your age.”

My usual routine would be to shake the foot and point to the door. But Reptile-brain suggests that I should be the one to leave instead. I stand up and pull a pair of jeans and my green sweater from a heap on the floor. Quickly paste them onto my body. Add a pair of muddy tennis shoes to my feet. Lick my palm and arrange my stringy black hair in the mirror. Careful not to look too closely at anything else.