by David Surface
(01/10/01)

"I don't think I want to." She said it carefully, tentatively, as if she was asking a question instead of answering one.

"Sure," he said too quickly, then, "Why not?" He was curious; he thought the reason would be simple and have to do with the two of them. But when he saw her look down, gathering her words, he realized with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was about to get a story about someone else.

"A long time ago," she began, and he thought that this must be how all lovers begin stories about other lovers, a long time ago, "Someone asked me to do that. I said I didn't want to. And he called me a bitch." Here she laughed her short, unhappy laugh. "So I don't have very good feelings about doing that. I guess that's not very fair, is it?"

"No. I mean, it's all right. Don't worry about it." He'd listened to her story with a feeling like something in his head was about to explode. But by the time she was through he felt better, even stronger, knowing he was better than that, knowing he would never do that to her; he hoped she knew. If she didn't, he would show her; he would never ask again.

He was still self-conscious of his body around her, of his thin chest and the hips that were too wide for the rest of him, so when he turned out the light before they took off their clothes, it was more for his sake than for hers. He thought that this would change in time, and it did, a little, though whenever he had to cross the room naked and pass through a shaft of light, he felt the pale flesh hanging from his bones and it burned him, knowing she was watching.

Her body, to him, was a private miracle. Small as a child, there was so much of her, so much to learn, he knew he'd never be able to know all of it. Even if he kept going for the rest of his life, there would still be more.

"What do you call it?" he asked, because he thought he could now.

"What?"

"What do you call yourself -- here?" he asked, cupping her, holding her between her legs.

"Nothing," she said after a while.

"What do you mean?" he looked up, smiling, and saw that she expected him to believe this. Nothing. No name for what she had. He wanted to say the name, but he wanted it to be the one she used. He was sure she had a name for it and that it would be beautiful. Even if it was one of the names he already knew, she would say it in her voice and make it beautiful. He'd thought they would share it. Now she was telling him they would not. Even though they both had no clothes on, he felt like he was the one who was naked.

"Nothing," he said, "That's a funny name," but what he wanted to say was, Don't do this. Don't leave me here.

Christmas Eve, and they'd been kissing naked on the big couch in her parents' living room for an hour before John felt brave enough to start moving down the front of her body, kissing his way down. When he slid his hands under her hips he could feel her go tense with what he hoped was her own pleasure. He waited for his mind to get used to this new way of seeing her and himself. Her hair, her scent, were amazing and almost blinded him to what he was looking for; he couldn't believe how hard it was to find at first. He pushed his tongue around in the bristly, chestnut colored pubic hair until he found the soft lips and slipped the tip of his tongue between them. What he tasted went straight to his brain and cancelled out every other thought, except the memory of being five or six and pushing his tongue out underwater toward the aluminum ladder, the hard, bright taste of metal pulsing through the water to his tongue in electric waves.

Carmen jerked and a sharp laugh came out of her. "Sorry," her voice drifted down from somewhere above. When he went back to what he was doing, she laughed harder and rolled away.

"What's the matter?" It was difficult for him to speak.

"It tickles."

"It tickles?" He felt like he was trying to push the words through from the other side of a deep and vivid sleep.

"Yeah," she said, pushing herself up and out of his reach on her elbows. "Okay?" It was not really a question.

John suddenly felt the cold light falling across his naked legs and ass, the ridiculous posture he was in. He felt a door close in his face. This is all I will ever have of this. No one I love and who loves me will ever look down at me from up there and say my name.

She had a dog -- her father's, really -- that lived under the house and ran out snarling whenever he drove up. A beautiful black and white mongrel, part shepherd and part collie, it could run faster than he could drive and literally ran circles around his car whenever he drove down her street. The dog, whose name was Travis, would escort him from his car to the front porch, running a wide circle around him through the fallen leaves, then shoot up the stairs ahead of him to be waiting at the door. He'd ring the bell and at that signal, together with Carmen's footsteps, her unlocking and opening the door, Travis would become ferocious for five seconds until Carmen shouted his name, so that her first greeting to John always came together with this ritual anger.

Inside, Travis would watch John from the far side of the room until John sat on the floor and let his hands hang loose over his knees toward the dog. Then, the cautious approach, the preliminary sniffing, the inevitable walk into his open hands. It was a perfect little drama that played itself over and over again and he loved it. Sometimes he would stay on the floor for hours, rubbing rough circles in the animal's warm neck, thinking, This is what I do best. This is what I love.

He wanted her to like it again. That was all. But when he tried to touch her now, there was something in the way. And that something had nothing to do with him -- that was what she told him. As if that would be a comfort to him. What stopped him cold was how beyond it all she seemed. Not in any snobbish, superior way, but with a deep sadness, a weary despair at what they were doing -- at what he wanted her to do. It had become that, so soon -- something he wanted her to do.

Like TB victims, he thought sunlight and fresh air could cure whatever was killing them. He took her to mountaintops (such as they had around there), ruined cabins, hidden rivers that flowed out of hillsides and back underground. Once when they were lying side by side on the ground, not touching, she started crumbling dry leaves in her hand, holding them up against the sun and watching the flakes sift down between her fingers. "Look," she said, "It's so great." It was the first time he'd heard pleasure in her voice in a long time. He picked up a leaf and crumbled it himself, let the pieces pepper down onto her creamy arm, then reached over to brush them away softly with his fingers. Instantly, she jerked her arm away and stood up.

"What?" he asked.

"I was doing it because it was beautiful," she said. "You were doing it just to get on me."

He watched her walk back toward the car, stood in a numb haze to follow her and realized she was right, that he was now making up ploys to touch her.

There was a hill in the center of town where the hospital and water tower were. This was where young couples had gone to park for decades, except in winter when the roads could be too steep and slick for any car to climb, but that was when he took her, shifting down to second gear, then third, ignoring her questions, Where are we going? They were going to do this, he thought, climb the hill and do this like before, although they'd never made love here -- he was relying on the history, the spirit of the place, all the people who had been here before to rise up and help him. And the fact that she didn't want to be here started a little fire of anger down low in his body, and it hit him that this was what he needed to get through his fear of her.

When they reached the top of the hill he was surprised to see that other cars had made it here ahead of them and were parked along the lip of the hill overlooking the town, some of them at crazy angles as if their drivers couldn't wait to start what they'd come here for. Carmen had been silent for a while; now he felt her silence deepen. He turned off the engine and immediately the cold crept in, reaching through the windows to touch the side of his face.

They sat for a minute looking at the lights of town scattered over the dark hillside below, and it struck him how small it all looked. He thought this was something she might like to hear coming from him.

"It looks a lot smaller than I thought. From up here, I mean."

"Really?" she spoke, her voice sounding strange and small to him, "It looks bigger than I thought." He heard her making quiet laughing noises, then realized with a stabbing feeling in his chest that she was crying.

"What?" he asked, touching her shoulder, all thoughts of what he'd come here for gone. "What is it?"

"I'm just glad you're my friend," she sobbed, then folded herself into his side, her sobbing shaking his whole body. His eyes searched the lights outside the car as if he could find among them the thing she'd seen that made her cry. He didn't ask why she was crying; he didn't even feel the sting of what she'd called him (my friend) because he was too busy feeling the warmth of her body against his for the first time in weeks, rejoicing in her need of him, though it was not the kind of need he'd hoped for. I can do this, he thought, holding her tighter and stroking her hair. But soon he couldn't help thinking that he could make her feel even better. If she let him.

The biggest shame was this -- how could he still want it when she didn't? If the reason she didn't want it was because she was in some kind of pain, how could he still want it? Didn't that mean he was bad, like all men? Wasn't that all the proof she needed? She was better than him, that much was clear. He would dry up and blow away needing her, while she would stay the same forever.

Another Christmas Eve, and they sat in the little room under the stairs to her mother's bedroom with one light on behind her head and her face in shadow, the torn paper and the gifts they'd given each other forgotten on the floor at their feet. It was at Christmas, many years ago, that he'd first felt the wall come down. Standing in front of the tree he'd just helped his mother and father put up, he'd waited for the lights and the pine smell and the music drifting in from the stereo in the next room to do their familiar work on him, but nothing happened and the feeling was like being inside a glass jar; the good things that got through before could not reach him and he felt suddenly afraid that this would last and that he would feel this way forever. He wondered (but could not ask) if it was like that for her now, whether this was something she made happen or something that happened to her the way it had happened to him.

He was waiting for her to say something. This was happening more and more; she would stop speaking and after a few attempts to ask her what she was thinking, what was wrong, he would give up and wait for her. Tonight he'd been waiting for nearly an hour before she spoke.

"No one really does anything for anyone else." She said it without looking at him, staring straight ahead, her eyes full of that hard and distant look that frightened him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean no one ever does anything for anyone else unless they get something out of it. It's all for yourself. It's always for yourself."

He sat with his hands folded in front of him, giving his very best impression of patience and understanding, leaning forward slightly like a priest in a confessional, hating himself for not knowing what to say to help her, wishing she would just let him touch her. What they did for each other with their bodies was real -- what she was talking about now was not real -- if she would just let him touch her, she would see that. This thing that got inside her would go away and they would be all right again.

"I don't know," he spoke carefully. "Maybe some people just like to help other people. Maybe they get something out of it, like it makes them feel good. But if it helps the other person, what's wrong with that?"

She kept staring straight ahead for a moment, then turned her face toward him in the lamplight. "You know," she said, "You think you're always going to feel the way you do now, but you're not. You're going to be just as fucked up as everyone else."

Later, driving home past all the houses with their Christmas lights he decided; he would prove her wrong. He would do nothing for himself; it would all be for her from now on. Because he loved her it would be simple and right. It would make him happy to do it. Unless, of course, that meant he was getting something out of it for himself, which would make her right again. He thought about it like this until his head felt like it was going to explode, but in the end he knew he was going to stay with it. He wanted to defeat her by making her happy.

But by the time he turned off his headlights and ignition and rolled silently into his parents' driveway, he was taking the same words he'd used on her and turning them around on himself. And what difference does it make if I don't love you anymore, as long as I do all the things I'm supposed to do and say all the things I'm supposed to say, what difference does it make? He knew he'd never ask this question out loud when he realized he didn't know how to answer it -- he thought it was the kind of question only terrible people couldn't answer.

There were many foreign students in John's English Lit class. He'd already made friends with several of them, including a group of Iranian men and a tiny girl from Thailand whose best friend was a Japanese girl named Keiko. The Thai girl talked and laughed constantly while Keiko said almost nothing and would glide silently by her friend's side, head bent patiently to catch whatever the smaller girl was saying.

Keiko sat two desks in front of him. Though they had only smiled politely and had never spoken, he loved watching her. She was somewhat larger than other Japanese women he'd seen, but she moved her strong hands and solid arms with such delicate control that she seemed much smaller than she was. Her face was a big, calm moon that would appear from time to time out of a curtain of black hair.

The teacher was a harmless charmer who considered it his mission to open young people's minds. "Go out," he said one afternoon, "And do something you've never done before."

John took Keiko to see a performance at the university theater, a company of Flamenco dancers -- not the pretty kind, no sequins or bright colors; it was wild, sweaty and frightening. The women stamped and fumed. One man threw himself to the edge of the stage on his knees and started wailing a song about the five bulls of his senses, about the five gates that would swing open inside him.

Later, the shock of a new mouth moving against his, new breath coming into his mouth. He was surprised at the smallness of her tongue; her scent, which was like some kind of wonderful sourdough bread, seemed to emanate from there. He loved the way her long black hair covered them both like a curtain when she was on top of him. On the couch at his parents' house, she pushed her crotch against his so hard that it hurt. He realized he'd never seen another woman come -- he wanted to see what Keiko looked like when she came.

He reached down and unbuckled the big turquoise and leather belt she wore, unsnapped her jeans and slid his hand down into the humid warmth between her legs. She grabbed his wrist and started to pull his hand out until he found her lips beneath her warm, bristly hair and started rubbing them in slow, lazy circles. She held on to his wrist, but didn't move it away. He kept rubbing and watched her big face grow smooth and still like she was looking for something inside herself. She had stopped kissing him and pressed her lips together tighter and tighter until she finally opened them and took six or seven sharp, knife-like breaths and said a word he didn't understand -- for a moment he thought it might be somebody's name.

When they were through and a violent thunderstorm was lashing at the windows, he tried to make her tell stories about her childhood because that was what he felt like hearing now. To help her get started, he told her one of his own about the Shabby Man, the ancient, blind bum who steals bad children out of their beds at night. He asked her what kind of stories her parents told her when she was bad. "Who did they say would come and get you if you were bad?"

She smiled, her great face so close. "The wind."

"The wind?" he teased her, "That's not scary."

"Yes it is! It is scary. The wind is very scary because he lives in a cave in the ocean, all alone, and when he comes for you, you do not see him."

Earlier John had wondered if he would think of Carmen, maybe even see her face at certain key moments the way people in movies sometimes do, but he didn't. Afterwards he felt surprised to realize that he hadn't thought of Carmen once.

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