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Authors: Jane Smiley
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mahogany plank and rosewood mast, you overcast raw edges of sails, you braid the lines and lanyards, you tie the microscopic knots. Remember the time I nosed around your mullion-windowed shop?
“Of course I’ll tell you.”
“Is it with long tweezers, the way they do radium?”
The masts and sails nestled together on the deck like bat wings. You slid the hull gently, tightly, through the neck and positioned it on the floor of the bottle. “Pull this string.” I pulled. The masts stood up and the sails spread and the bottle filled with wind. Won’t you believe the lifelong importance of this mystery to me?
I disrobed. I brushed my teeth twice and flossed them. I plucked two hairs between my eyebrows. I washed my face with glycerine-rosewater soap. I brushed my hair a hundred strokes and poured peroxide into my ears and navel. I applied cups of water to my eyeballs. I gargled. I blew my nose. I emptied my bladder. I cleaned under my fingernails. I buttoned my cotton pajamas crotch to chin, then zipped myself into a turtleneck bathrobe and sat down on the bed. The only, though enormous, bed.
As if I had intended to all along, I walked up to youin the living room, removed every stitch you had on, and threw it all down the air shaft in the hall. I was touched by the frayed waistband of your Munsingwears. When I came back you were shivering every so often, but still comatose. I turned up the heat and, for the time being, covered you with an antique quilt, rose of Sharon pattern, as one such as I, a woman, a cook, a believer in simple plants like yeast, might set the dough on to rise. I pulled on my mukluks, muffled my neck, and sat down with Roland Barthes.
But you (it) were (was) inescapable. Perfectly lubricated in your bendings and unbendings, eyes almost completely closed, with every manifestation of presence and yet gone, gone. I threw down the Barthes, yanked off the quilt, and took a good look. My eye, of course, flew at once to your penis for evidence of your inner life. But I dragged my gaze away. There wasn’t much of you to see, mostly skin not unlike my own. I fingered some of it. It pinched up elastically, resumed its shape, changed white to red to pink. I laid my cheek, my breast, my shoulder, my knee on various parts of you, to tune you in over unusual receivers. I smelled you. You smell like hollandaise for some reason. Experimentally, I applied lips and tongue to your penis. It grew to a firm, tasteful size, unblemished, stem and cap nicely differentiated. I let it wilt. I am not a necrophiliac. Like all of us raised with the Scientific Method, simply curious. I said, still robed, pajamaed, slippered, and muffled, picking Roland B. up off the carpet and smoothing wrinkled pages, “Jeffrey! I’ll put you to bed.” The first voice in hours, all night. You answered promptly. “Watch your fingers.”
“What?”
“Power drills are a dangerous business.” Thus your inner life inexorably proceeded, not exclusive of these hands withwhich I stood you up, the sharp corner of the table around which I steered you, the toilet I placed you next to, but relegating all of our surroundings with no compromise. “Piss!” I ordered. “That’s easier said than done,” you said, already doing it, your eyes adamantly closed.
Man, unconscious, naked in my bathroom, warm skin in jeopardy of cold surfaces, porcelain and metallic. The fluorescent light whitening and fattening him, the muscles in his narrow bony feet (the little piggy that stayed home shorter than the one that went to market) tensing and relaxing as he loses and regains degrees of balance.
Your body. I guided it into the bedroom and set it up at the end of the bed. “Lie down, Jeffrey,” I said, poking the small of its back. It toppled onto the bed, face down. I covered it up, pink sheet, red thermal blanket, white quilt; under its cheek, a down pillow. I hung up my own clothes, climbed into bed with it, turned out the light. Black shades, navy
“Of course I’ll tell you.”
“Is it with long tweezers, the way they do radium?”
The masts and sails nestled together on the deck like bat wings. You slid the hull gently, tightly, through the neck and positioned it on the floor of the bottle. “Pull this string.” I pulled. The masts stood up and the sails spread and the bottle filled with wind. Won’t you believe the lifelong importance of this mystery to me?
I disrobed. I brushed my teeth twice and flossed them. I plucked two hairs between my eyebrows. I washed my face with glycerine-rosewater soap. I brushed my hair a hundred strokes and poured peroxide into my ears and navel. I applied cups of water to my eyeballs. I gargled. I blew my nose. I emptied my bladder. I cleaned under my fingernails. I buttoned my cotton pajamas crotch to chin, then zipped myself into a turtleneck bathrobe and sat down on the bed. The only, though enormous, bed.
As if I had intended to all along, I walked up to youin the living room, removed every stitch you had on, and threw it all down the air shaft in the hall. I was touched by the frayed waistband of your Munsingwears. When I came back you were shivering every so often, but still comatose. I turned up the heat and, for the time being, covered you with an antique quilt, rose of Sharon pattern, as one such as I, a woman, a cook, a believer in simple plants like yeast, might set the dough on to rise. I pulled on my mukluks, muffled my neck, and sat down with Roland Barthes.
But you (it) were (was) inescapable. Perfectly lubricated in your bendings and unbendings, eyes almost completely closed, with every manifestation of presence and yet gone, gone. I threw down the Barthes, yanked off the quilt, and took a good look. My eye, of course, flew at once to your penis for evidence of your inner life. But I dragged my gaze away. There wasn’t much of you to see, mostly skin not unlike my own. I fingered some of it. It pinched up elastically, resumed its shape, changed white to red to pink. I laid my cheek, my breast, my shoulder, my knee on various parts of you, to tune you in over unusual receivers. I smelled you. You smell like hollandaise for some reason. Experimentally, I applied lips and tongue to your penis. It grew to a firm, tasteful size, unblemished, stem and cap nicely differentiated. I let it wilt. I am not a necrophiliac. Like all of us raised with the Scientific Method, simply curious. I said, still robed, pajamaed, slippered, and muffled, picking Roland B. up off the carpet and smoothing wrinkled pages, “Jeffrey! I’ll put you to bed.” The first voice in hours, all night. You answered promptly. “Watch your fingers.”
“What?”
“Power drills are a dangerous business.” Thus your inner life inexorably proceeded, not exclusive of these hands withwhich I stood you up, the sharp corner of the table around which I steered you, the toilet I placed you next to, but relegating all of our surroundings with no compromise. “Piss!” I ordered. “That’s easier said than done,” you said, already doing it, your eyes adamantly closed.
Man, unconscious, naked in my bathroom, warm skin in jeopardy of cold surfaces, porcelain and metallic. The fluorescent light whitening and fattening him, the muscles in his narrow bony feet (the little piggy that stayed home shorter than the one that went to market) tensing and relaxing as he loses and regains degrees of balance.
Your body. I guided it into the bedroom and set it up at the end of the bed. “Lie down, Jeffrey,” I said, poking the small of its back. It toppled onto the bed, face down. I covered it up, pink sheet, red thermal blanket, white quilt; under its cheek, a down pillow. I hung up my own clothes, climbed into bed with it, turned out the light. Black shades, navy
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