Susanne opened the window because she wanted to listen to the rain. Blowing
up across the red chiffon curtain and the long bottle of Blue Nun, the wind
cut through her room to the empty baggies and lace panties scattered on the
floor. Jeff had been over the night before, tried to pee into the blue bottle,
and for all that a 6:45 am call for a coke run should send any reasonable person
flinging the phone across the room, she was whipped, and she did it for him.
Whipped is a cruel word, a pop psychology word, not a word she wanted to apply.
She wanted him and she was the sort of person who did what she was told.
When his cab pulled up to where she was waiting, hanging on the wrought-iron
gate, she strode up and paid for it with her last $10.00. She had been out all
night at Assembly, her money going to shots of Fernet and margaritas, and she
somehow tried to justify it as she skipped upstairs with him watching her bare
legs. She was wearing a denim mini-skirt that was a little too last spring,
and round black heels. It was 7:12 in the morning and she had not been thinking
too hard about style, smearing concealer under her eyes and combing her hair
in expectation, shaving herself, wondering why she did all this for someone
who had forced her to have sex with him, forced her to have unprotected sex
with him, almost gotten her pregnant, put her at risk for disease, almost and
almost and she skipped up the landings with his hand around her waist and her
purse a little bit lighter.
He was tall, Jeff was, 6'3", with pearlescent rosy cheeks like
a young boy. As soon as they got to her room he stopped rambling about his business
partner going to China, taking all of his designs with no contract, about everything
being based on trust, and began to take off his pants. Trust. That was what
he had said before, said when he took the condom off and stuck his dick inside
of her, said, "I am teaching you about trust, this shows that I trust
you and whatever you have I have, and whatever I have you have. I am going to
show you you can trust me by pulling out at the exact right time and coming
all over your pretty face."
At that point she had squirmed, and cried, and begged him to stop. She had
twisted and pulled around and wanted to yell but she knew her housemates would
hear and condemn her for letting the wrong sort of people into her room. She
didn't let in many, but enough to know that they were dodgy sometimes
and she should know better. She didn't.
Jeff took off his pants and tucked himself in next to her. He said, "Do
you have it?"
"Yeah. Justice was a little pissed, but he said fine, he knows me, just
not to make a habit of it."
"You know it's no big deal."
"Yeah, and I know you only call me after 4:00 am, so that's your
deal. I take no responsibility."
"Are you going to cut it up or not?"
She did, pulling up an antique hand mirror and splicing up two lines. They
did them, and she hoped with the sweep that this wouldn't seem so bad.
She was virulently aware of her own vulnerability. It wasn't as if her
phone never rang. She was just the sort of person who did what she was told.
The light was coming through the window that she couldn't see, draping
across the room, red from the curtains. Her nose felt scraped out, she had been
doing too much lately and it almost didn't feel good at all. But Susanne
was accustomed to taking what life gave her, going from the next thing to the
next thing as if an assembly line or an old freight train was chugging her onward.
Automation. Never autonomy.
Jeff grabbed her and lifted her bodily to a lower part of the bed. He sunk
his lips into her neck and wrapped his arm around her waist, and she could feel
him hard against her thigh. She kept her eyes open, watching the porcelain lucky
cat endlessly wave its paw on her bedside table, next to a glass dish of earrings
and several half-full glasses. Water or vodka, she wasn't sure, likely
melted ice from any or either. He lunged over her and whispered, "My little
girl likes it hard, hmm…"
"Oh, yes, daddy," she tried to whimper. It came out whole. As
he pressed down over her something began to rise, and the anger as the rain
stabbed against the window and the lucky cat waved tenuously, delicately, and
something truly furious began to rise within her as he pulled up her skirt and
said, "Oh, now who do you belong to?"
"Jeff." She squirmed upwards, more solid now, what had been effervescing
away now coming forth fiercely. "I don't think…" Suddenly
the sparse trill of his phone began to ricochet through the room.
"Kitten, would you see who that is?" She obeyed. The digital face
read, "Louise".
"It's your girlfriend," she said harshly. He squeezed his
eyes together until tears ran out.
"Oh shit, oh shit, I've got to go, Susanne, listen, hold that
thought, I'll call you later, I – "
"You won't call me later, I know you, you'll call me in
two weeks when you want to get laid. Don't go, I, I want you to hold me
for once, I want to cuddle, why can't you – " He was already
pulling his pants on, the sheets damp with sweat, the light stark and bright
now as it inched towards eight o'clock. She huddled on the bed, wrapped
in a purple blanket, staring up at him with fury-dilated pupils.
"You said you would stay. You never stay. You never want more than to
get here and fuck and then leave. You made me go all the way to the Mission
to get this shit for you, and then you barely say thank you and cut out again.
What the fuck?"
"Look, she's my girlfriend. She takes precedence."
"Thanks, thanks a lot. You bastard, do you know what you've done
to me!" Susanne lunged at him, looping her arm over his neck and hanging
there, trying to keep him with her for a moment longer. He threw her off.
Charging down the stairs, he pulled on his blazer and said, "Look, I'll
call you."
She ran down the stairs and threw herself at him, forgetting he was two feet
taller than her, forgetting that dignity necessitated letting him go, forgetting
the grace she thought she'd learned. It all dissolved in desperation,
for the ecstatic dissolve of lust and all the pants pulled on second after.
For the door slammed as the sun rose and she found herself alone in damp sheets,
as the week passed with isolation and finally the trill when she'd forgotten.
She followed him down the stained staircase beneath the lurid glare of the
bulb and into the street. As the front gate slammed and he strode away from
her, she stared at her hands and something broke, all dignity, all grace, all
solemn strength broke and she ran after him in a frantic patter.
His face was set, sullen, glowing with that lurid smolder that she loathed
and loved. The lapels of his blazer snapped back in the breeze as he said, "Look,
leave me alone, I have to go. I'll talk to you later."
"Well, what, do you want to hang out later, will you call me?"
"Yeah, okay, fine, I'll call you."
"When, when do you want to hang out?"
"Later, okay, later."
"When?"
"Tuesday?"
"Fine."
She turned now, embarrassed, and dashed across the dark street to the safety
of her gate. Her building was looming, solid as matrimony, the iron scrolls
folding inward as she pushed past the door and ran, through the dank green hall,
up the stairs and past the shattered glass door of her apartment. No one was
around. Limping slightly, sobbing lightly, she tip-toed to her room and fell
to the bed. Scattered shoes, a plastic fan, and several pill bottles fell in
her wake. She pulled up the velvet comforter and closed her eyes.
In the burrowing and the warming, the serenity and the curling, her eyes snapped
open. It was dark. She pulled off the padded sleep-mask and saw that the room
was bright with morning. Lifting delicately, as if something might break, she
pulled up on the pillows and tried to remember what had happened. As she stared
at the mountains of blankets it all came clear. Jeff. Losing it. Humiliating
herself. Her vision blurred and she fell back again against the dirty pillows,
trying to go back to the previous moment. That grace before you realize what
your life really is. Bitterness. She sunk under the sheets. Closing her eyes,
she tried to black it out by sleep. It wouldn't come.
Finally, she pulled herself up and climbed out of bed. Creeping silently towards
the door, she slid into the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. Pulling
forth a bottle of cheap champagne, she grabbed a glass and walked down the hall
to the back stairs.
Climbing through the mauve-slatted stairwell to the roof, she watched the brightness
fall through the landings. Finally, she pushed open the rotten hatch and emerged
on the roof.
The gravel and tarpaper bent under her feet as the brilliant sun embraced her.
The air seemed alive, and as she stared into the cerulean sky, the horrors of
her night dissolved. One more step, one more step, and she was over the low
wall to the full expanse. There were no railings on the edges, and the avenues
slashed through the apartment facades like violence. She sank down, and watched
the tiny cars flow over the tiny streets, escaping her, the windows and balconies
and smokestacks and clouds. She reached down to the bottle and ripped off the
foil, wrenched off the wire, and pushed at the plastic cork. With a whoosh of
foam the champagne frothed up, pouring over her hands. She would stay here for
as long as she could.
Andrea Lambert lives in San Francisco. She recently
finished her first novel, Jet Set Desolate, "a chronicle of damned
glitterati in the thrall of drugs and desire." This is her third story
for Lime Tea; read her first here and
second here.
