At
the party I make a goal. and it is to kiss three men: one with black hair,
one with red hair, and the third blond. Not necessarily in that order.
I'm alone at the party and I have my drink in a mug because by the time
I got here, at the ideal moment of lateness, the host had used all her
bluish glasses with fluted stems that she bought from the local home-supply
store that all others within a ten-block radius had bought too because
at some inexplicable point in time, everybody woke up with identical taste.
I see two matching sweaters and four similar handbags. It's enough to make
you want to buy ugly, except other people are having that reaction too
and I spot three identically ugly pairs of shoes. There's just nowhere
to hide. I know the host here from highschool and she likes to invite
me to things because for one, she feels sorry for me and for two, she finds
me entertaining and blushes when I cuss. It's how we flirt.
About half the people here are in couples. I stand alone because
I plan on making all these women jealous, reminding them how incredible it is
to be single instead of always being with the same old same old except tonight
I am jealous too, because all their men seem particularly tall and kind
on this foggy
wintery night and one is wearing a shirt a boyfriend of mine used
to own with that nubby terrycloth material recycled from soda cans and it smells
clean from where I'm standing, ten feet away, and it's not a good sign when something
like a particular laundry detergent can just like that undo you.
From here, against the wall, I can survey the whole living
room. TV, couch, easy plant. The walls are covered with pastel posters of gardens
by famous painters who rediscovered light and are now all over address books
and umbrellas and mugs. Is it really worth it to dead earless van Gogh that his
painting now holds some person's catalog of phone numbers? Is that what he wanted
when he fought through personal hell to capture the sun in Arles? I used to paint
and I would make landscapes that were peaceful and my teacher would stroll through
the easels and praise me and say, "What a lovely cornfield, dear," but she never
looked hard enough because if you
promotion
did you would see that each landscape had something
bad in it and that lovely was the wrong word to use: I made that cornfield, true,
but if you looked closely, there was a glinting knife hanging from each husk.
And I made a beach scene with crashing waves and a crescent moon and then this
loaded machine gun lying on the sand by a towel; and then I made a mountain town
with quaint stores and tall pine trees and people walking around except for that
one man wrapped in dynamite walking over to the guy with the cigarette lighter
standing by the drinking fountain.
The terrible thing is that the teacher never figured it out. And she saw all three paintings. She actually thought the guy in dynamite was wearing some strange puffy suit and that the corn was just very glinty. She said the machine gun was a nice kite. When the evaluation sheets came around, I said she was useless and should be fired.
The couples are shifting positions and I'm ready now and I
find that redhead first. Lucky for me he is drunk already and sitting in a chair
with pretzels and he's talking to no one because he's on a break from being social
because he is so drunk. I saunter over and ask him to help me look for my purse
in the bedroom. "I lost my purse," I say to him. "Help." He blinks, eyelids heavy
with the eye shadow of alcohol, and then he follows me into the bedroom, which
is covered with people's items: twenty-five coats and half as many purses. I
am rich but I consider stealing some of the stuff because they are so trusting,
these people, and I feel like wrecking their trust. But where would I stash a
coat? We are looking around for my make-believe purse because I don't use a purse
at all; when I go out, I just carry keys and slip one one-hundred-dollar bill
into the arch of my shoe and let the night unroll from there. We're mumbling
in the bedroom and I pretend I'm drunker
We're
standing by the bed, and I lean over and I kiss him.
than I am and then I ask him, right there, among all the coats, if he thinks I'm pretty. His eyes are bleary and he smiles and says, "Yeah, yeah." We're standing by the bed, and I lean over and I kiss him then, really gentle because at any minute he could throw up all over me, and his lips are dry and we spend a few minutes like that, gentle kisses on his dry lips, and then he starts to laugh and I am offended. "Why are you laughing?" I ask, and he laughs more, and I sort of push him and pick up one of the better coats on the bed, with a shiny lined inside of burgundy, and I put it on for a second even though I'm not cold and I ask him again why he laughed and he says, "We went to grade school together," and I say, "We did?" And he tells me his name and then he tells me my name and I apologize because I don't remember him. "I remember you because you were the one with the inheritance," he says, and I tell him I was really good at painting too and he says, "Really? I don't remember that."
So I am through with him.
I take off the coat and throw it back on the bed and then head to the door.
"Wait, why did you kiss me?" he asks, and I know it is taking a big effort for him to string this sentence together because he is so drunk. "Let's go out sometime," he slurs. "I just laughed because it's funny, it's funny. To kiss someone you knew as a kid. It's funny."
I turn around and he looms above me and I can see the freckles
on his collarbone and that means he has a chest of freckles and a back of freckles
and knees of freckles and freckled inner thighs and I was the best artist in
grade school for several years until that dumb girl moved here from Korea, and
he is laughing more because he knew me as a little kid and is remembering something
and I barely remember what it was like to be a little kid so it seems rude that
he would recall something about me that I couldn't myself. If I can't remember
it, then it should mean no one else can either.
"No," I tell him. "I don't want to go out with you, ever."
And I'm back in the main room. I return to the same wall. The
redhead follows me out and collapses back into that chair, staring, but I ignore
him and look at the table of food instead. The guacamole dip is at half, and
there are little shit-green blobs on the tablecloth. The brie is a white cave.
The wineglasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.
I go refill my glass and the redhead closes his eyes in the chair. One down.
The blond is next, and he is someone I used to date and in fact only broke up with around three months ago so I think it'll be easy; I find him in the corner talking to two other guys and I glide over and because I am me I am wearing an incredible dress tonight; this one looks almost like it is made of metal; it has this slinky way of falling all over my hips and I feel like an on faucet in it and of course I am the most dressed up at the party. I always am, but that's the whole point, so when the host inevitably looks down at her everybodyownsthemjeans at the front door and says, "Oh, but it's not a formal party," I smile at her with as many teeth as I can fit and wink and say, "That's fine, that's fine, I just felt like wearing this tonight." Inevitably, the next time I see that same host she has more lipstick on or a new glittering necklace her mother bought her, but, lady, she is dust next to me inside this silver-ness. I am now almost right behind the blond man who broke up with me because he didn't feel loved and it was true, I did not love him, but he is the type to never go out with someone for a long time anyway so we would've broken up soon regardless and I just gave us a good excuse. I am next to him by now and I tell him we need to talk and could we go in the bathroom? He is confused for a minute but then agrees, and says "Hang on" to his friends who shake their heads because they remember me well and think he's being stupid and they're right but we go into the bathroom and I say, "Adam, I have a goal to kiss you tonight," and he says, "C'mon, is that what this is about?" and I tell him to come here but he has his hand on the doorknob but also he's not gone yet. "You're incredible," he says, shaking his head, and I feel mad, what does he mean, it's not a compliment, and he's out the door. And he's out the door, then. I'm alone in the bathroom and I'm sitting on the sink and my butt is falling a little into the sink part, faucet on faucet, and I turn around to myself in the medicine-cabinet mirror and check my teeth and they are bright and white because last week I bought a new tooth cleaner and it's working and my eyeliner isn't smeared because I bought the new eyeliner that swears it won't smear or you can sue the company, and I'm sitting there
It's
gone on long enough, so I pull away. He has lipstick on the edges of his mouth.
plotting my next blond when Adam comes back into the bathroom with determination
and closes the door firmly. "You're just playing with me, aren't you?" he says,
and I say, "Yeah," and he sighs a little. "At least you're honest," he says,
and I say, "Thanks, I try to be honest, I do, that is one of my good qualities." He
waits there by the door and I hop off the sink to go to him, stand and face him,
and he's not running away so I'm moving in and then we're kissing, that easy,
and his lips are the same ones I know well, in fact he was my longest boyfriend
so I know his lips better than anyone's, and his upper lip is much thinner than
his lower lip which I always liked and I kiss that pillow at the bottom and we
kiss and it gets more, we keep kissing and I remember just what it's like and
I am suddenly feeling like I miss him and I am remembering everything of what
it's like to be with him and I am forgiving him for everything and we're still
kissing and his teeth and his smell and we've been kissing too long now, it's
gone on long enough, so I pull away. He has lipstick on the edges of his mouth. "Okay," I
say, "thank you, okay." He looks shook up but also wants more and he has the
same feeling I do; he felt the room change into a different room during that
kiss but I'm trying to get it back to being the first room, the one where I know
it all. His hands are all over my silver dress slip-sliding around and the bathroom
door opens, it's some lady who wants to use the bathroom and she sees us and
blushes and I'm glad I don't know her because I don't want the whole party
to know I'm in the bathroom kissing a blond while I still have a black-haired
man to finish the night with. Adam is wiping the lipstick off now and his hand
is still on my dress, on my hip; "You're a cold woman," he says to me, and then
his hand is gone and he leaves and I am left in there again and I know I am not
a cold woman because the whole point of why it was hard for him to leave just
then is because I am a not-cold woman but I resent the lie anyway. I check myself
in the mirror again and my skin has sharpened and the teeth and eyeliner are
all still good and I am thinking about him for a minute, thinking about how when
he came inside me and I came outside him he would say something like, "This is
it," and I'd think, It's the end of the world, and then we'd finish up and be
sweating and hot and the world would still be there, like it had swung up and
met us. And when we slept then it was so deep it really could've been the end
of the world with sirens and megaphones and panicked TV people and I know at
least for myself I wouldn't have even noticed.
I exit the bathroom after I've used it and the lady who interrupted
is standing there and she is embarrassed and I am not and I step on her foot
as I walk out and she says, "Oops, sorry," like all women do and I am mad at
that because it was my fault so why is she apologizing? And I hate that she said "Oops" in
that little meek voice and now I'm in a bad mood. And I still have one flavor
to go. It's an hour later now and the guacamole is gone and the brie is all shell
and these stupid people don't know that the white part of brie is important to
the taste, that it doesn't count if you only eat the mushy inside, that the French
would leave en masse if they came to this party and saw the Americans carving
out their cheese like cave dwellers, but the party people only like easy cheese,
and easy jeans, and they are all sipping from their fluted glasses and I get
refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving
my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise
and the dress is water. Adam is back with his friends and he won't look at me
and they are sheltering him like a little male righteous wall and the redhead
is gone by now or passed out somewhere and I am looking for black hair, looking,
looking, and you'd think it'd be easy considering something like four-fifths
of the entire earth has black hair and I do find one prospect but he seems harsh
and too talkative so I pass him up and I find a cute black guy but he seems to
be one of the married ones and I am trying to keep this as simple as possible
and I'm looking, still looking, then bingo: it's the tallest man in the room.
He has sharp black hair over his ears and glasses and a swarthiness and he is
the smarty guy and he is talking to a woman who is clearly entranced by him,
but remember: I am a column of mercury, and this woman is wearing a blouse and
khaki pants, drinking water from a mug imprinted with water lilies. The deal
is done.
She is telling him about her job at a pet hospital. She is
a vet of sorts. Every person on earth likes a vet except me, because I think
there are too many animals in the first place. And when these vets keep saving
the sick animals, we are just stuck with more.
"These are from the last cat," she is saying, holding up her arm which is covered with raised tracks.
He nods, observes. I, however, am not interested in her fake drug habit look-alike war wounds. I bet a thousand dollars she grew up with a dog who had a name with a y or an ie at the end. I had a dog once, a big dog, a Great Dane, and I named him Off so when I called him, I said "Off!" and he came bounding over. It really fucked with people's heads. At the dog park no one got it. They kept trying to figure out how I did that, if I was okay, what was happening. I was laughing all the
I can only see the woman's butt from here, but it's very flat and Adam is an ass man so I'm not worried.
time at the dog park. I wore dresses there too and I think people brought their
friends to see me, like I was a sight in the city, a tourist attraction. If I
was forty it'd be a problem but I'm not so they adore me. Off died early because
he was a purebreed but I didn't put him to sleep, I kept him company and stroked
his big forehead until I saw his eyes shut on their own. I had him cremated.
I sprinkled most of his ashes into my plants, but fed a few of the remaining
ones to the cat next door because she had always been tormented by Off's size
and I thought it was a little bit of sweet vindication.
It's nearly midnight, and I'm waiting for the man here to say something so I can form my game plan. Adam is talking to a woman now and I can tell he is appearing extra animated to get my goat. I can only see the woman's butt from here, but it's very flat and Adam is an ass man so I'm not worried. I don't shrivel up into wiggly jealously. Instead I feel like thrusting through all the women here, stepping on all those dainty toes, releasing a chorus of "Oops, sorries," a million apologies for something I did wrong.
The vet is still talking. "Last week," she is saying, "the sweetest beagle came in with some kind of dementia and I had to put him to sleep…"
"That must be tough," he says, "to put a dog to sleep."
I'm underneath the yellow-and-pink floral painting. Fuck
me, I'm thinking. She is taking too damn long. At the door, one of the couples is saying goodbye to the host. Her hand is on his elbow. The host looks dampened; I think somebody broke her stereo.
And suddenly, in a wash, I am feeling low. I am feeling like there is nothing in this whole party for me and I want everyone to leave now. I'm thinking about how when I filled out the evaluation for the painting teacher, and I said she should be fired, I made sure to sign my name. I've given some money to the university — not enough to get a building named after me, but close. And when the next session rolled around and I looked for her name in the catalog, I couldn't find it anywhere. My final painting for the class was that — the catalog page without her name in it.
"Oh," she had said, "isn't that a delightful picture of the sea."
I slump a little on the wall. The red-haired man is back, asleep in his chair. Vet says, "I feel like I'm a prison guard or something with all this lethal-injection stuff."
And then the man says something about how he worked in a prison once and he saw a lethal injection once and it was the worst thing he'd ever seen and I perk up then, rejuvenated, because that's all I need to know; I figure now if he worked in a prison then he has sympathy with people who are trapped or bad and just like that my plan is set.
So I smile at both of them as I move away from the wall in a silvery wave and he notices me then, how can he not, and he nods and khaki vet is off talking again and I interrupt and say, "I have to do something," and the vet is surprised that I can talk and gives me a snotty look down her I-never-got-my-childhood-dream nose, and I say, to him only, "Hey, if I'm not back here in a couple minutes, will you check on me?"
He nods, unsure what I mean. She slivers her eyes at me. I
open mine wide back, because eye slivering is for old hags. I'm not sure about
the details of my plan yet but I step past Adam, who is still talking to that
unfuckable woman with no ass and I go into the bedroom. I'm planning
on stealing something, but I'm not sure what to steal that would make him come
find me. I survey the bed. I could steal all the wallets but it seems too unoriginal
and detailed so I decide to do the thing I wanted to do with the red-haired man
and that is to steal all the coats. I lean over and scoop them together, wool
ones and tweed ones and velvet ones and cotton ones, and pick them up in a huge
stack, my arms a belt, so heavy they make me stagger, and I go inside the bedroom
closet with them and shut the door until I am smothered with coats. It's hot
in there, and it smells like shoe polish. I arrange myself underneath the billion
coats and then I wait for either the black-haired man to remember to hunt for
me or someone else to get ready to leave the party. After just a few minutes,
there are footsteps in the bedroom and it's two people and they're ready to bundle
up for outdoors and go back to where they live and of course they cannot find
their coats and it's winter and they are certain they brought coats. So they
leave the room and return to the host and I can hear her quizzical voice going
up. "Coats? Bedroom." Her tone is always so sincere. In high school her mother
wouldn't let her shop at certain stores because they were too expensive and too
slutty and so I would take her shopping
I
buy perfume so expensive it doesn't smell like anything but skin.
and buy her a blue leather miniskirt or a sheer black slip and she would try
them on at my house in the ultra-mirrored bathroom and model and pose. She refused
to wear them out. She just wore them for me. She has this compact body and looked
sporty in everything and I told her compliment after compliment and we never
touched but she still always blushed like crazy. There was this one dress of
white feathers and she looked like a whole different genre of person inside it.
It would've made my entire high school worthwhile if she'd worn that to her prom
but she could hardly leave the bathroom and her face was bright red so that between
her and the dress I was reminded of a peppermint. I never took those outfits
back to the store; I kept them for a few of her visits and when she seemed bored
of them or started to guilt-trip me and ask how much they cost, I gave them to
Goodwill. Goodwill, for good reason, loved me. And my head is leaning back on
a soft coat of lambswool and I can hear the talking outside getting louder
and I'm thinking that the reason I kept going out with Adam in the first place
was that when I showed him my painting of the ocean in my living room on
our second date, when I was wearing peach velvet, long sleeves, super-plunging
low neck, he looked at it for about one second and said, "Lady, you are screwed
UP." And even though I was a little bit insulted, I was also ridiculous with
gratitude and I took off my clothes right there, in one smooth movement, unzipped
that peach velvet to show a different kind of peach, a different kind of velvet.
Within seconds he was kissing my shoulders and my side and the inside of my knee
and he told me to stay standing for a while then and I felt like the tallest
person ever born. And by now the couple is back in the bedroom and the party
is filtering into the bedroom because they know something is wrong and they are
all wondering where all the coats are and someone is getting upset, someone with
an expensive coat and I reach out my hand and grope around until I find it. Cashmere.
It smells like a woman, like expensive perfume, but not as rich as me; me, I
buy perfume so expensive it doesn't smell like anything but skin. And they are
panicking and someone is saying how the pocket of her coat has her keys in it
and she's asking, "Who's missing? Who took the coats?" and I am touching the
pocket with the keys, it's near my foot, and I hear Adam call my name and I
am quiet but he is thinking, It's her, she is somewhere hiding with coats,
and
he excuses himself from Flat Butt but I don't want to see him ever again, I want
the black-haired man to find me so I can kiss him and get home already. I close
my eyes, hoping that when he opens the closet he will find me sleeping and I'll
wake, disoriented; I'll tell him in a delightfully raspy voice that I was cold
and needed a blanket and he will think I'm a nut or drunk but also he will be
moved somehow and we'll start kissing in the bottom of the closet and he will
have intuitive knowledge about my mouth, and I am hearing footsteps approach
the closet, heavy ones, male ones, nearby, someone is approaching the closet
and it's opening a crack and then it's open but I can't see who's there because
my eyes are closed and then it's the black-haired man, it is, I can tell because
he says "Oh," and I recognize his deep voice. I reach up a hand because I want
to drag him in here — I am stuck, I am bad, it's jail, it's just like you
like — but instead, he calls out, "Hey! I found the coats!" really loud,
and then I pretend to wake up and say "Oh, hi, what? I was just cold," and the
host comes by and when she sees me it's like I'm her troublesome dog-pet and
she says "I'm so sorry," and the black-haired man points me out and says, "Here
you are, miss," like he's a bellhop locating luggage and I explain how I was
cold and the coat couple reach in the closet as if I'm not even in it and fuss
around and retrieve their coats and then they're off and everyone else is taking
their coats really fast in case I'm somehow going to eat them and it's a time-limit
thing and coat after coat is picked up until I'm coatless and just myself in
my dress and I feel truly cold now and bare and small and then Adam is standing
there in the crowd, and he says, "I'll take it from here," and I think that's
so fatherly of him it makes me feel sort of sick also because it makes me feel
sort of good and the host asks what I was doing, and for the third or fourth
time I say I was cold, I just thought I'd be warmer with all these coats. I make
my
eyes blurry. And she buys it. She thinks I'm that plain drunk from her affordable-yet-delicious
wine. And the black-haired man buys it too and nods but then turns around and
goes back to the other room to talk to the vet. He leaves the drunk crazy lady
behind and returns to the conservative animal lover. And it's just Adam there
now, standing with his familiar face, who knows I wasn't cold or drunk, standing
there as everyone clears out and he tells me to get up and pulls me when I don't
and sits me on the bed. We stare at the wall together. And I'm thinking how I
didn't reach my goal and that the whole strawberry/vanilla/chocolate trio isn't
nearly as good with just two flavors, and he is sitting there thinking something
else, I have no idea what, and he isn't touching me but I can hear him breathing.
In the other room, people are leaving. The hidden coats scared them and they
took it as some kind of cue that the party was over. Everyone is trickling out
and thanking the host and whispering about me and she continues to be ultra-sincere,
even when some complainer says something about a wrinkle in her coat, in a mad
voice. Oops, I think. Sorry. I stare at the wall directly ahead. There's a painting
of a desert hung up. It's in a simple wood frame and in it there's just a row
of cacti and then the sun setting in the distance and who needs weapons when
they're cacti. That's all I'm looking at when Adam takes my hand.
n°
Excerpted from Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender, which will be published
this
month
by Doubleday.
Copyright 2005, by Aimee Bender.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Aimee Bender is the author of the short-story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures, as well as the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper's Magazine, Paris Review, and several other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.
