by Aina Hunter
I was sitting by myself in that gaudy hotel lounge getting drunk in the effortless way that is possible when there's no hurry, when you have all night, when you need to think. Luxury chain hotel-American monstrosity, steel and concrete queen. The massive top floor rotating too slowly to even tell we were moving at all. From whatever angle I tilted it was the same comfortable fog, the same drizzly sky. Lights from the cars below and the office windows all mixed up together, overlapping gray and blue. That place was my discovery. No one I knew would ever think to go there.
I wasn't looking and feeling my best-hardly eating, not changing clothes, just drinking coffee and smoking and getting plastered. I hadn't brushed my teeth either, not for days, but my mouth felt clean anyway. It was sterilized by the whisky. (Georgia was a fanatic for clean teeth. Compulsive, had hers scrubbed by an obese hygienist once a month, the first Friday of every month.) But Georgia wanted me out. Not just out of her flat but out of the city altogether. I was an overstayed houseguest in the city that was her home and property. I know that she hated the idea of running into me at a strange AM hour buying OB's at the Walgreen's. Sort of like when you order a big room service dinner, eat yourself sick and then pile all the leftovers and garbage outside the door. You just want to forget about it, you want it to go away. But I didn't have anywhere to go away to. So I lingered, making myself as inconspicuous as possible. Georgia growing more and more unpleasant. It was predictable, actually-it's boring to be worshipped and Georgia is easily bored.
It was almost eleven and there was hardly anyone there, a few white businessmen huddled over papers by the window. Flipping through binders of paper, faces in shadow. Two elderly ladies giggled at the bar over milky cocktails. Two half tables pushed together made the most noise. Uninhibited tourists, Chinese from the sound of it. Drinking and chattering.
Okay, I've never been one to be really "in touch" with my feelings, so it's no surprise I'm not sure how I felt. You'll use your imagination. Georgia had suggested I go home and move back in with my stepbrother. Hinted she'd found me more interesting over the Internet, when I was a big-eyed Louisiana girl. In my natural habitat, so to speak. But I was past whining and being depressed. I knew I had to pull it together soon. Maybe even hitchhike out of state-Tucson's hot but the rent is cheap, plus they have those big cartoonish cactus that stand along the highway with their arms out. But that night that gorgeous hotel lounge would absorb me; they wouldn't close till one or two.
The alcohol seeped through my blood and warmed my face. My grouchiness uncurled, I stretched out. That's why I didn't look away when I saw him at the bar. My defenses were down, reflexes slow. Studying me so I studied him back. Together we were the unimaginative photograph of a person taking a photograph. Thick dark hair with gray all through it, suit and tie, naturally. A hairy South African rock spider meets a sullen female native. He gulped his drink, turned to speak to the bartender. Nodded briefly in my direction with a confident movement (not Georgia's graceful sureness-his was choppy, punctuated). I was filled with malice. Goody, I cackled. Sharpened my teeth.
But before I could think of a strategy he'd started in my direction. The little arrangements of furniture made it less than a straight shot, though. He gave me just enough time to panic. I looked away, fumbling my cigarette. Hadn't expected such a tall, large person to move so quickly. But there he was, fresh drink in hand. Mid-thirties, with the casual unselfconsciousness of a lifetime of privilege. Would I mind if he joined me?
"Why, certainly!" I said, louder than necessary and heartier than for what might have passed for normal. "Have a seat!" But reaching for the ashtray my fingers were shaking. I cursed myself, my cowardliness, and did some fast thinking. Two choices: cut him down now or cut him down later after getting a couple drinks out of him. I could pretend to be nice, draw him in, pick him apart, bite of his head. Fifteen minutes later, an eloquent closing statement. A Scooby-Dooby-esque unmasking. Expose him to his crimes and send him cringing to the elevator. I decided on the latter.
But it was a strange, wet, spooky night. And on top of that the alcohol, but I'm not blaming it on that-I have good judgment between the second and third drink. Catch me any other time and you're spinning the wheel. It wasn't his looks either-he had a big jaw and a lived-in face. But his eyes were brown and intelligent, and the lines around his mouth were kind. The cutting words didn't come so easy.
I let him buy me another drink (firewater, Pocahontas!) and then he wanted to talk. His voice was the warm car motor you've heard before, resonant and conversational. He pretended not to realize we were enemies, which is funny if you think about it at all. We both knew who the police would believe, who'd get seated near the kitchen in the restaurant. But he chatted at me like to the sister of a good buddy. He talked about scuba diving; he loved to scuba dive. I should try it if I got the chance-he'd seen such amazing worlds underwater. He liked to play golf (golf!); he liked to run marathons (why?). He traveled a lot but he didn't enjoy it. It could be lonely. Do I like to travel?
I told him that in the summer months a single golf course uses more chemicals on its green than the entire LA sewage system in a year. I told him that a Nationalist movement has swept the Hawai'ian islands and secession's in the cards. I told him that airline interiors are machine stitched together by third graders in Bangladesh. But he soldiered on, nodding thoughtfully, asking me questions, introducing new subjects, and I ran out of steam. After all, he wasn't actively pillaging and plundering, at least not that Friday night. He was just wanting to be liked and wanting to get laid, wanting things to be okay. Well so what. That's all any of us want, if you think about it at all. He made me think of my eight-year-old nephew, excited about little boy things and needing to tell you all about them.
Mathew was a good storyteller though, and the third drink made me a very sensitive listener. But as he told me about his career (frozen vegetables) and his home life (married, two kids in Ontario), my mind wandered and I sunk into myself. He believed himself honest, so in an existential sort of way, he was. Whereas I, according to Georgia, am sneaky and manipulative. When I hurt people I know it, and half the time I'm glad.
But I had nothing to say to him anymore. I didn't even feel superior because there was nothing really evil about Mathew. He told me he'd spent twelve years building his ugly agribusiness acropolis and that he was only now making money. Said he'd always dealt fairly with his ignorant growers because he knew what it was like to sweat in the sun. He didn't even resent his childhood, he said, because he believed in "karma." Not that it didn't occur to me that he was lying; he could have been a ruthless bastard, for all I knew. But I didn't think so. He seemed too simple to sit down and make up lies for a stranger. That's the sort of thing I would do. If I had the energy.
I know you think I did it to get back at Georgia, because it would irritate her to learn I'd submitted to the white corporate power structure. Not so. I wasn't silly enough to think that Georgia cared who or what I slept with anymore. One last thing I'll say about Georgia is, Georgia was absolute. She'd scraped me off like a tick.
But don't think I was seduced by him, by his talking. When I made the decision to fuck him he was remembering something sentimental about his blond little daughter with a singing voice like a bird's. I am against yellow hair as a matter of principle, and small blond children always put me in a bad mood. He affected me all right, but it wasn't his saccharine. It was his measured reasonableness; his certainty that life is all right and that things come out even in the end. It was the way he put my assaults gently to one side, like he was going to think about them later, which he wouldn't, I knew. Maybe he has the right idea, I started thinking. Who am I to lecture anybody on what to do or not do or how to live.
So he was talking, earnest and reflective, and I became fascinated, leaning forward to soak up everything, each controlled gesture, the details of his life. "How old are you?" I demanded, my head filling with helium. "I'm an old thirty eight," he replied, and I suddenly felt so dizzy. "An old thirty-eight," I echoed. He could've been my dad.
We went to his suite, of course. There was an enormous sack of golf clubs in the bedroom. His wedding band on the sink, the dizzy-making height from downtown. I wanted a bath and he gave me my privacy for as long as it took.
When I climbed from the tub there was classical music. I hummed a little, dried off. His suitcase was open in the closet facing the powder room, and lying on top was a white shirt, neatly pressed. I put that on. It was big as a dress. Dense soft cotton with a chemical smell. I couldn't remember anything that flat and clean against my skin since my uniform at St. Paul's. And why I would suddenly remember my achingly self-conscious forth grade self, arranging and rearranging her braids in the basement Girl's Lavatory is anyone's guess.
I played in the mirror, examining the contents of his black leather pouch, splashing on his cologne. All this time he didn't rush me at all. I know that it's all in my head, but I felt like he understood.
He was a strange, foreign thing and his naked body shocked me. Georgia was lean and brown, with hollow bones like a kite. A kite above a rainforest. I closed my eyes and kissed-softly, with dry lips. He held himself still, non-responsive. I froze. Opened my eyes to see him standing there, eyes closed peacefully. Sober and naked and waiting. Was he challenging me? And more significant than that, I suppose, was my response. Confused and anxious I held his face, forced open his mouth with my tongue. I pressed up against him. Nothing. I licked his pink nipple and then I bit down. Well that did it! He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, hard. Held me out at arm's length. A sharp intake of breath at the same time.
I remember everything: I crawled on the floor, I let him examine me. I was swallowed up by his thickness, his solid weight (it's so red!" he choked, staggering behind me). He held my head while I sucked and I felt that I was drowning, a lump at my throat. My tongue in his hair, his hard chest. He fucked me from behind, against the wall, against the enormous plate glass. Gripping my flesh, leaving red marks that would later turn purple. When he came I imagined his sperm shooting into my stomach, sharp and white. I felt that I was receiving his power. Madame Butterfly! Josephine! Liliuokalani! I came over and over, my head, drunk and irrational, garbling nonsense. Tsi Czi-Queen Dowager of Concessions, stupid Tehamana, practical Mary Pleasant. Ladies, he is our destruction.
We were together the next day and half of the next. He rescheduled his flight. Walking through the little park by the water he said, with wonder in his voice, "Everything's really working out. I mean, between you and me, I'm like Midas this quarter. Japan's gonna happen this year or next. Those jokers in Florida . . . and you-well, you're really terrific . . ." I reached up to touch his face, to see if Midas could work in reverse. "Hey!" He blocked my wrist with a boxer's reflex. Grabbed and held it. "You're an interesting kid, you know that?"
The thing about Matthew is, he calmed me. Whatever he had to say, I wanted to hear. I lay on his chest, nose buried in his scratchy hair that smelled like detergent. His arm around me was a heavy, comforting weight, and his long stories about growing up in Ontario made me dream. He didn't ask me many questions and I appreciated that. Excepting for when we had sex he held me at a fatherly distance. Georgia would have despised him, and I loved him in my hot, self-negating way.
Going back to his suite that night we shared an elevator with a yellow-haired teenager in a pea coat. Mathew planted himself in front, pretended to notice a stray eyelash. Traced my bottom lip with his finger. I tasted skin, caught my breath as the girl blinked in fascinated disgust. It was a long ride to the twenty-eighth floor, and, in my defense, I swallowed several times to keep down the acid. I really tried. But when the doors opened I stepped out quickly, brushed against her. "Your Daddy's next," I said in her ear. The effect was superlative. The doors closed on the stunned girl and the elevator began its descent. Smiling at Mathew, I took the arm he offered. His face was thoughtful, but otherwise unchanged.
On Sunday we played in bed and strolled the city and shopped. We drank wine and ate and fucked and toasted the beginning of him and the end of me. He was golden, the world smiled on him, just like he said. He had money and drive and a clear path, and a wife who worried and two babies he knew were his and a salty weekend snack in San Francisco, and maybe a petite Korean in LA, and probably a pseudo-intellectual redhead in New York, and always flew business class everywhere. But I didn't feel envious like before-I felt a part of it. Which I was, of course.
Saturday he spoiled me, he showed me off in a short white dress that made my skin glow. He took me to eat in the most beautiful restaurant ever. It was like a museum inside and I felt like a princess. The jealous gay waiter watched carefully as I ordered the bouillabaisse. Baton Rouge isn't that far from New Orleans, I know how to pronounce it. In spite of my poverty Mathew thought I was sophisticated. I lived in the city, after all, and I slept with women. Or maybe I was his childish primitive, his discovery, like Gauguin's Noa-Noa. I tried to see myself in his brown eyes. He ordered what I ordered, broad Canadian tongue flapping over the delicate syllables like a fish.
Sunday morning he left for the airport, dispensing promises and also a predictable aloofness. I lingered in the suite, theatrical and giddy, still feeling the pressure on my jaw where he held it to kiss. Until I had to pee. When I wiped, there was an unfamiliar, stinky smell. I stuck my finger in and tasted-it was a disgusting taste. Full of rotting sperm and loneliness. And sweaty all of a sudden, and sick to my stomach. Head in the toilet I imagined hundreds of white, vigorous sperm coursing through my blood vessels, in and out of my digestive organs, searching for eggs.
I called Ontario
information and asked for his last name. There were two Mathew Omsteads in the
town he said he'd just bought a house. At the first one an old lady answered and
said she'd get him, so I just hung up. At the second number his wife answered, I
knew it was her. I listened to her say "Hello?" and imagined her face. Narrow
and puzzled. Hand holding the phone must have been small and square. And a
crease in her forehead from worrying-the size of her butt, her eldest daughter's
temper explosions, her husband's long absences. There was something sharp in her
voice. "Hello! Hello!" I held my breath. Even the sperm in my blood paused in
their circulations to hear. I wasn't phoning to hurt her or anything; it's just
that there was no one else to call.