Sex and Death in the American Novel (19 page)

I flashed to my brother's face in the car that night, and I said, “You know what my brother said?”

Jasper shook his head.

“Three little lines. He was very impressed that that was all you needed to describe sex.”

Jasper shook his head. “I'm sure it was more than that,” but he smiled at the compliment. We both knew my brother was right.

He held my gaze for long minute before he said in a softer voice, “To look at one, you might not know that, but to play it, to listen to it, you would be sure.”

I sighed and we went home.

I lay awake long after he went to sleep, my mind turning in the direction of the safety of home, only this time, I wasn't in a hurry. A bright sliver of light fell across the bed, and in its glow I studied the details of his face. I watched his eyes move back and forth under his eyelids, counted the downy hairs on his nose, pointed almost too much, but as it was, it fit his face, his nostrils opened wider at intervals, and his mouth dropped open every few minutes, then closed again, as if he was aware of himself even as he slept. I lay my head on the pillow and for a moment I studied the curvature of his ear, the ridges and dents. For a while I listened to him breathe, steady intakes and outflows. At one point he turned toward me and absently rubbed his face along the top of my arm. He'd been smooth earlier in the evening; now there was the slightest scratch on my skin. I did not move away from it; I became very still, hoping not to wake him. When his breathing became even again, I rested my chin on the side of his head and lost myself in the sounds that drifted in through the window; car alarms going off, people hollering or laughing, and slamming doors.

Chapter 9

“Look,” I said. “I know it's soon. I know what I want—you. When you want me to give up my own work, say the word. If you wish to have children, I can have them.”

I was conscious of the need to stop sounding so desperate—and since when did I offer to give up my life to have kids? And what was up with the fucking diction?

I shot out of the dream, rolled over and found him beside me, sleeping with his mouth open. Sliding from the warm bed, I turned to see if he was aware of my leaving, but he didn't stir.

I wrapped myself in his robe and went into the living room, set up my laptop, and made a pot of coffee in his cramped kitchen. I got a good hour of work in, trying to physically describe the sensation of anxiety I felt walking toward him, the almost uncontrollable excitement, and the shy something that came with seeing him again. Physical stuff, that's valuable: in work and in life.

After that thought, I went back to the story I'd hammered out on the plane. Focus was impossible. My mood did not match the emotion I needed for that piece. I brought back the way it felt to have Jasper inside me, smoothly moving in and out, my need to please him, and the way his hands felt on my thighs, my ribs, wrapping around my feet as he worked. I remembered the way I'd felt when I'd watched a scene in
The Devil in Miss Jones
, when the dark-haired woman has a man under her, and a man behind her, both of them young and eager to please. She is firmly wedged between them, saying in a voice so full of desire and desperation, “Don't come yet, I don't want it to end,” and the three of them rocked together in this limbo.
Her face is stretched in the most incredible vision of lust I'd ever seen. Most straight porn made me feel guilty for watching. The women in them were receptacles, only there to be bullied and used. The way I had originally approached my story about a woman and two men, the one I started on the way to Montana with my family, I put the woman in the position of boss. Now it occurred to me that if both men were like Jasper—that would be something else, something meaningful and important.

I went to my purse, pulled out my iPod, and cranked in the most sensual music I had.

Something Jasper said at Benaroya Hall came back to me… ‘Third person is almost always more effective.’ Normally I would roll my eyes, unless of course submission guidelines dictated third person, and go back to what was comfortable. Now his energy from the night before glowed inside me, a separate part of him, as if he was guiding me.

They were all together, and the men have forgiven each other, their bruised lips crush against hers…she needs a better name…name…Eve.

The one who lost the battle—the blonde with red-rimmed blue eyes—faces her, his arms around hers, his hands reaching further to the one behind her, who, underneath the scents of exertion, smells like leather and tangy soap. Their faces come together over her shoulder, first testing, pulling back, then together again and they kiss, more roughly than they would kiss her. Their hands move up to run through each other's hair, pull on it, and both pairs of hands move over her arms and shoulders. Sounds of stubble on skin, scraping, hands over tingling flesh, a wince, low voices, soft sounds that create a wispy echo in the silence of this thickly carpeted room.

The one behind Eve—the winner—leans forward, grazing the skin behind her ear with his teeth, the sticky wet skin of his torso connecting all the way along her well-toned back. He pushes her down, working himself deep inside, opening her so wide, his hands wrap around both sides of her hips. He groans and the sound sends a thrill though her that the other can feel. Claude works his way in from below. For a second her attention moves to a painting, purple flowers…plain old violets, but something about this is important, I just don't know what yet. She is sandwiched between the two of them, and can take the loser's face in her tiny hands, stroking the area near his swollen eye, running the tip of her nose over his lips, his cheek, she gently kisses his forehead, on her lips she can taste coppery blood.

A movement a few inches from the screen of my laptop caught my attention and I looked up. There was Jasper, standing before me in green
and black boxer shorts. His bare chest lean and muscular in his slender way, the long ropes of his arm crossed in front of his chest, a lazy grin on his face. When I looked up, he raised his eyebrows, and laughed. “That was something to see,” he said.

“How long have you been there?” I asked, pulling the white buds from my ears.

“Ten minutes, maybe more. The sound of you pounding on the keys woke me a little while ago. I lay in bed listening, then thought I'd get up and start out myself. It has to be the middle of the night for you.”

“I started about five, couldn't sleep anymore. For some reason I woke up early, too keyed up from last night maybe,” I said, still embarrassed at being caught in my erotic fugue state.

“I should have left you alone, but that was just, well…something else. I don't think I've ever seen anyone type that fast while moving their head like that.”

I leaned back and gazed at him, wondering where to go from there. “Sorry I woke you up. Was the music too loud? Could you hear it from my earphones? Tristan—you said once that anyone who listened to music while they were working probably didn't write anything worth reading.” That was one of the only times I had ever heard Tristan say anything less than admiring about Jasper.
How can he not listen to music…that's like a rule or something. Artists must have music.

He gave me a half smile, half grimace, held up his hands in the air, as if to express how difficult it would be to address that now.

When I didn't say anything else he said, “Right then.” He turned to get a cup of coffee. He raised it in front of him and disappeared into a small room that contained a shelf lined with books and a long desk, above which lay more books and papers neatly stacked on top. The only light came from a small window at one end of the room and not much managed to come in since the window faced an alley.

I stared at the ceiling, putting the buds back in my ears. I'd been working for two hours, it would be better to go back to sleep and wake up and edit what I'd written, see if it actually made a good enough story to try to send off, so I left the computer on, let it time out, and lay back on the couch for a short doze. I expected Jasper to work for at least four hours. I thought I had time.

I woke much later, the light had totally come into the apartment and the colors all looked different. Jasper stood in the kitchen sipping a cup of coffee, and held it up when he saw me looking at him. He lumbered toward me and slid himself along the seat of the couch, wedging me between himself and the cushion. “How goes it?” he asked.

“Well… I tried something different this time.”

“How so? Imitating Poe? Wordsworth? Smollett?” he asked.

I twisted my mouth to one side, then the other. “Well, for one I am going to try and be different, a sappier sort of almost straight story. I'm trying to branch out. I am still getting used to writing stories with women in them.”

“I find that fascinating. Most of us try to reflect a version of ourselves to the world. Here you are doing everything you can to avoid that.” His tone was so matter of fact, like his opinion about me was the truth.

“Until recently I had no point of reference when it came to sex that didn't make me cringe. Almost everyone before you made me feel guilty, or like I had failed as a human because I couldn't connect with them like I thought I should.” I watched him for a reaction, when he didn't speak I continued. “In the beginning it was incredibly satisfying to get at what my parents thought was proper. But writing about sex is fun, and I want my life to be about fun, about living. Does that make sense?”

“Definitely.”

“I guess it's like what I was trying to say last night and couldn't. What's the point of nailing down every last detail and understanding down to the minutest point, why the world and its inhabitants are so fucked up, if there is no way you will ever change it? Why not bring some color to people's imaginations instead?”

I know he heard me, but he turned his eyes to my computer screen and said, “Straight, really?” He picked up one of my hands and absently stroked the tops of my fingers. “Can you tell me what it's about?”

In spite of the fact that I could write whatever I wanted and be proud of it, when he was sitting over me like this, I felt like I was about to reveal too much, embarrassing myself, making myself vulnerable. I tried to act like this was just a conversation about work. Hard to ignore the fact that these outlandish scenarios and thoughts did in fact come out of my head.

I thought another minute and said, “A ménage. Pretty basic, only I paired it with these ultimate fighters—I had to include sports and just saw a match on TV. Gross. So the fighters, all battered and messed up, fight over a woman and she ends up in the middle.”

“So you've got two guys and a girl?”

I nodded and explained the plot of the story, and how it was important to have guys that were devoted to her. “The power dynamic has to be right, otherwise it ends up looking like she is just some sort of excuse for them to be with each other by having her at the same time.”

He nodded and bit his lip, eyeing me intently. “Could I take a look at it when you're ready?”

I sat up, crossing my legs. “I am pretty sure you wouldn't like it and would probably not like me after you saw it.”

“Not possible,” he said. “I'm just curious. You don't have to…forget I mentioned it,” he said and ran his hand over mine before getting up and pulling me with him. “Let's get a shower and see what we can get into today.”

That week with him was one of the best I'd spent in years. He took me to see everything, indulging all my questions, often consulting a tour book I bought at the Statue of Liberty. Mornings we worked in our separate spaces, afternoons were for seeing the city, everything from The Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Brooklyn Zoo. I got to roam through the main branch of the New York Public Library where he said he spent so much of his time, where movies were made, where a few of my heroes went to die.

Nights were for everything, from one night seeing
The Royal Family
, fighting the crowds of tourists in Times Square, dinners in a variety of diverse restaurants—Lebanese, Indian, Ethiopian—walking endless streets and looking in all the shop windows. One night over dinner I wrapped my ankles around one of his legs under the table. “Thank you for this.” My heart was overflowing with gratitude. “I didn't think it could be like this. Ever.”

He smiled and said, “What could be like this? The wine? Steak? Hmmm…let's see…”

“Fine. Make light of something of such magnitude, so life altering.”

“Vivi, until you got here I hadn't hardly left my apartment unless I was buying groceries or boarding a plane. I haven't had time to wine and dine anyone.”

“That's not what I mean, at least mostly.” He still thought I needed reassurance. How very egotistical and sweet. “Until now I thought of New York as a stinky old pit of corruption and unhappiness. I came once when I was eleven. Mom took me shopping. Mostly all I remember are bright department store counters, lots of bags, lots of cars, and concrete everywhere.”

“Were you here for an event for your father?”

“Probably, that was about all our lives consisted of when I was young. Life revolved around my father's moods, his absences, his deadlines, once in a while his trips. Who knows what Mom had to do to get us to come along when we did.”

Jasper listened to me with one finger resting on his lips. Clearly he wanted to say something. I watched him when I talked about my father, his interest perked up, but he seemed to be trying to hide it. This time, he was only waiting for me to stop talking, I could feel it.

“I told you I copied his sentences didn't I?”

My stomach tightened. I kept the smile planted on my face, poured more wine.

He put his forearms on the table and grabbed a string bean off my plate. “Your dad…he did things in his work that no one ever had before, or at least no one of his stature. I can see where you get your spirit from.”

I took a sip of wine, and did what I'd seen my mother do countless times: sit back, stiff, with my hands folded in my lap. How could Jasper be this deluded?

He laughed and said, “You know…his essays on the way novels in the last forty years have devolved into nothing more than an attempt at escape, at returning to childhood, and well, also there was this anxiety about the opposite sex that flat out pervaded every aspect of his books…why are you looking at me like that?”