Read Online Fresh Girls & Other Stories by Evelyn Lau - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Evelyn Lau
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wine.
“Sweet Jane,” he says.
As she nestles her face against his arm, hair falls into her eyes again, and momentarily the kitchen is seen behind a row of bars and filaments, the counter curving round like a bent dream. She is grateful for this body beside her to hold on to, its limbs more gentle with her than the edges of the counter or the slippery side of the fridge. The wine in her glass catches the overhead light and sends it spinning in thin circles, pretty circles looping between her cupped fingers.
He is kissing her face, her neck, she knows that soon he’ll whisper something about the bedroom.
“Wait,” she says, pushing at his chest, giggling when he blows once into her ear then lets her go. She crosses the kitchen and then through the living room in her high heels, swaying to the beat of the music video playing from speakers connected to his television. Past the wall-to-wall bookshelves, the stacks of records and CDs, the camera equipment dismantled in the corner, towards the open balcony doors where the cold blows in.
She’s lived in this city all her life, nothing is mysterious about its façade beyond the balcony railings — mountains, a few ships in the harbor, the harshly glittering bridges and ski slopes, and the lights of downtown. The lights of the buildings remind her of the apartments where the other men live.
She holds on to the railing and looks down. If she fell the night would glide past her face like a half-remembered dream. Above her the stars have come out in the sky, some fixed, others winking. The sky is hard as slate, but the man in this apartment is soft. He will fix her, make things right. The man is flesh, he has no edges or corners anywhere in his heavy frame. Idly she tries to conjure up the features of his face, but abandons the attempt when she finds she can’t, there have been too many other faces. Never mind. She will recognize it when she goes back inside, she’ll be able to smile at it and kiss it on the mouth like a lover. If she turns her back now and leaves the balcony, the stars shining fiercely in their flat heavens, she’ll be able to pretend the city is a dead thing and that all those lights in all the other apartments are burning in empty rooms.
In the bedroom he’s warm, like a pillow she’s turned lengthwise and hugged all night into sleep, the way she does at home where she sleeps alone. He smells of detergent and the blue cologne. She regrets that she can’tlie in his arms and drink at the same time. From time to time she props herself up on her elbows to swallow from the glass on the bedside table. Its contents no longer taste like anything but cloudy water.
The room itself is cold, he has left the window open upon the hated mountains, the indigo sky. On the cupboard the flames of the oil lamps flicker as though the night is making a wish and trying to blow out all the candles in the man’s room. The bed is large and white, like a field of snow. Soon she will have to give him something for his money. Soon she will see his face as if from the end of a tunnel, when he crouches and arranges his limbs above her body.
He is smiling now. He is above her, inside her. The night leaks in through the window, and instead of being with him she remembers all the other male bodies in their apartments bent in supplication or in dominance — her hand raised to push a shoulder down onto a bed or floor, a slender line of blood trailing from a torn nipple. One man struggles with the nozzle of an enema while he fiddles joyfully with his genitals; another lies spread-eagled on a bed, tied with ropes as cleverly wound as the string she played with as a child, making a cradle, making a bridge. Yet another man kneels on a whisky-soaked carpet in an unheated basement, crying and sucking the four-inch heel on her shoe; while in a penthouse onemore man carefully removes his black Italian suit to crawl into the foyer, barking like a dog. All their faces are red with pleasure
“Sweet Jane,” he says.
As she nestles her face against his arm, hair falls into her eyes again, and momentarily the kitchen is seen behind a row of bars and filaments, the counter curving round like a bent dream. She is grateful for this body beside her to hold on to, its limbs more gentle with her than the edges of the counter or the slippery side of the fridge. The wine in her glass catches the overhead light and sends it spinning in thin circles, pretty circles looping between her cupped fingers.
He is kissing her face, her neck, she knows that soon he’ll whisper something about the bedroom.
“Wait,” she says, pushing at his chest, giggling when he blows once into her ear then lets her go. She crosses the kitchen and then through the living room in her high heels, swaying to the beat of the music video playing from speakers connected to his television. Past the wall-to-wall bookshelves, the stacks of records and CDs, the camera equipment dismantled in the corner, towards the open balcony doors where the cold blows in.
She’s lived in this city all her life, nothing is mysterious about its façade beyond the balcony railings — mountains, a few ships in the harbor, the harshly glittering bridges and ski slopes, and the lights of downtown. The lights of the buildings remind her of the apartments where the other men live.
She holds on to the railing and looks down. If she fell the night would glide past her face like a half-remembered dream. Above her the stars have come out in the sky, some fixed, others winking. The sky is hard as slate, but the man in this apartment is soft. He will fix her, make things right. The man is flesh, he has no edges or corners anywhere in his heavy frame. Idly she tries to conjure up the features of his face, but abandons the attempt when she finds she can’t, there have been too many other faces. Never mind. She will recognize it when she goes back inside, she’ll be able to smile at it and kiss it on the mouth like a lover. If she turns her back now and leaves the balcony, the stars shining fiercely in their flat heavens, she’ll be able to pretend the city is a dead thing and that all those lights in all the other apartments are burning in empty rooms.
In the bedroom he’s warm, like a pillow she’s turned lengthwise and hugged all night into sleep, the way she does at home where she sleeps alone. He smells of detergent and the blue cologne. She regrets that she can’tlie in his arms and drink at the same time. From time to time she props herself up on her elbows to swallow from the glass on the bedside table. Its contents no longer taste like anything but cloudy water.
The room itself is cold, he has left the window open upon the hated mountains, the indigo sky. On the cupboard the flames of the oil lamps flicker as though the night is making a wish and trying to blow out all the candles in the man’s room. The bed is large and white, like a field of snow. Soon she will have to give him something for his money. Soon she will see his face as if from the end of a tunnel, when he crouches and arranges his limbs above her body.
He is smiling now. He is above her, inside her. The night leaks in through the window, and instead of being with him she remembers all the other male bodies in their apartments bent in supplication or in dominance — her hand raised to push a shoulder down onto a bed or floor, a slender line of blood trailing from a torn nipple. One man struggles with the nozzle of an enema while he fiddles joyfully with his genitals; another lies spread-eagled on a bed, tied with ropes as cleverly wound as the string she played with as a child, making a cradle, making a bridge. Yet another man kneels on a whisky-soaked carpet in an unheated basement, crying and sucking the four-inch heel on her shoe; while in a penthouse onemore man carefully removes his black Italian suit to crawl into the foyer, barking like a dog. All their faces are red with pleasure