Read Online Fresh Girls & Other Stories by Evelyn Lau - Free Book Online
Authors: Evelyn Lau
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reflections.
This is not a game, you kept saying, until I heard it every night in my dreams. You can call it a game if you like, but I will do almost anything you want, whatever that might be.
I had thought that that for me would translate into walks on the beach and poetry readings and drinking wine, that those would be the extent of my desires. I had not expected this rage that continues to grow rather than subside as you plead with me now to stop, as a thin growl rises in my throat and razors the air.
It is your wife’s fortieth birthday and Dylan Thomas’s voice slows to a stop on the tape. You edge out the door with the sun bouncing off your glasses and your briefcase tucked under your arm. It is always remarkable to me, these partings, how we are able to assume again the responsibilities of work and life as though nothing had changed, as though we had not been permanently altered by our actions. On the surface things are as they always have been — you are discreet with your wounds;
no one asks questions. I sit down at the typewriter and rub my swollen feet, their chafed heels, thinking of our obligations towards wives and poetry and thinking that perhaps this is just as well, we do not want the end to come too soon, the irreversible outcome of the final scene. We want to taste our pleasure bit by bit, inch by inch, we want to lick it slowly and make it last. We will make it good and make it last, my poor tiger-striped victim, we will make ourselves into people we hate enough to kill.
THE APARTMENTS
T he man’s shower curtain is decorated with coral and fish. Jane is reminded of another apartment, the one where the diver lived. But she won’t think about that. This is a different bathroom, with a
Playboy
smoothed under a travel magazine on the counter, a triangular bottle of cologne on a shelf, the absence of a medicine cabinet behind the mirror. And a scale on the floor, where the diver would have kept his masks, both the one he used underwater and the one he used in bed.
It’ll be fine here. It’ll be different from the other nights. This time, it’ll be good. Jane peels up the edges of the travel magazine and takes a peek at the Playmate of the Month, blonde and for some reason wearing acrown. She lifts her eyes to the mirror and shrugs. This relaxes her shoulders, so she does it again. A strand of dark brown hair falls over her forehead, and she pushes it back with fingers that tremble in the critical light from the row of bulbs above the mirror. According to the reflection her face is bloated, her hair needs washing, and there are avocado-colored circles under her eyes. Plain Jane. But the man in this apartment wants her, wants her more than just the way a client wants her. Perhaps tonight will be the night he sinks to his knees and tells her that he loves her, that he can’t be a client anymore, he wants them to go out on real dates: movies, dinners, walks around the seawall.
The thought makes her grin with pleasure, and she tries to focus clearly enough on her reflection to do something about her appearance. Fighting the dizziness from the alcohol, she steadies herself against the counter with the palm of one hand, splashing water over her face. As she straightens up she knocks her forehead against the tap and for a moment the bathroom goes gray, like an old movie. But then the hard surfaces gleam again, the wavy marble of the counter, the stretch of mirror, the faucet. And behind her, a school of fish rises and falls across the shower curtain, circling her head in green and orange halos.
The muffled sound of a cork popping interrupts her as she’s tracing a tube of lipstick with exaggerated careacross her mouth; it gives her a sense of direction, a place to go. She tugs the bathroom door open and crosses the hall, towards the memory of that sound. He’s standing at the kitchen counter, the corkscrew bright and winged in his hand. His mouth exudes the perfume of red
This is not a game, you kept saying, until I heard it every night in my dreams. You can call it a game if you like, but I will do almost anything you want, whatever that might be.
I had thought that that for me would translate into walks on the beach and poetry readings and drinking wine, that those would be the extent of my desires. I had not expected this rage that continues to grow rather than subside as you plead with me now to stop, as a thin growl rises in my throat and razors the air.
It is your wife’s fortieth birthday and Dylan Thomas’s voice slows to a stop on the tape. You edge out the door with the sun bouncing off your glasses and your briefcase tucked under your arm. It is always remarkable to me, these partings, how we are able to assume again the responsibilities of work and life as though nothing had changed, as though we had not been permanently altered by our actions. On the surface things are as they always have been — you are discreet with your wounds;
no one asks questions. I sit down at the typewriter and rub my swollen feet, their chafed heels, thinking of our obligations towards wives and poetry and thinking that perhaps this is just as well, we do not want the end to come too soon, the irreversible outcome of the final scene. We want to taste our pleasure bit by bit, inch by inch, we want to lick it slowly and make it last. We will make it good and make it last, my poor tiger-striped victim, we will make ourselves into people we hate enough to kill.
THE APARTMENTS
T he man’s shower curtain is decorated with coral and fish. Jane is reminded of another apartment, the one where the diver lived. But she won’t think about that. This is a different bathroom, with a
Playboy
smoothed under a travel magazine on the counter, a triangular bottle of cologne on a shelf, the absence of a medicine cabinet behind the mirror. And a scale on the floor, where the diver would have kept his masks, both the one he used underwater and the one he used in bed.
It’ll be fine here. It’ll be different from the other nights. This time, it’ll be good. Jane peels up the edges of the travel magazine and takes a peek at the Playmate of the Month, blonde and for some reason wearing acrown. She lifts her eyes to the mirror and shrugs. This relaxes her shoulders, so she does it again. A strand of dark brown hair falls over her forehead, and she pushes it back with fingers that tremble in the critical light from the row of bulbs above the mirror. According to the reflection her face is bloated, her hair needs washing, and there are avocado-colored circles under her eyes. Plain Jane. But the man in this apartment wants her, wants her more than just the way a client wants her. Perhaps tonight will be the night he sinks to his knees and tells her that he loves her, that he can’t be a client anymore, he wants them to go out on real dates: movies, dinners, walks around the seawall.
The thought makes her grin with pleasure, and she tries to focus clearly enough on her reflection to do something about her appearance. Fighting the dizziness from the alcohol, she steadies herself against the counter with the palm of one hand, splashing water over her face. As she straightens up she knocks her forehead against the tap and for a moment the bathroom goes gray, like an old movie. But then the hard surfaces gleam again, the wavy marble of the counter, the stretch of mirror, the faucet. And behind her, a school of fish rises and falls across the shower curtain, circling her head in green and orange halos.
The muffled sound of a cork popping interrupts her as she’s tracing a tube of lipstick with exaggerated careacross her mouth; it gives her a sense of direction, a place to go. She tugs the bathroom door open and crosses the hall, towards the memory of that sound. He’s standing at the kitchen counter, the corkscrew bright and winged in his hand. His mouth exudes the perfume of red
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