“Did they ever say anything?”
Nakota drinking Sweet ’n’ Low and mineral water, elbows resting on the slippery bar, trusty rag between us as my own elbow nudged my empty beer bottle. Near Monday midnight at Club 22, just Nakota and me and the lonely scattering of hard cores she served in her bitchy desultory way. Just now their particular glasses were full, mine too for she poured again, draft this time, cheap but what did I care, for me it was free.
She lit another cigarette. Black smoke, yeah. “Did they?”
“What, about the camcorder?” I shook my head. I didn’t apologize and she didn’t mock. Will wonders never cease. Not as long as there’s a Funhole, they won’t. “I don’t think they noticed, but if they did they’re not talking.”
“Every time I see it,” dragging on her cigarette, “I see something different.”
I didn’t. I nodded as if yes, I agree, but I was lying, surprising how easy it was to lie. I didn’t tell, then, or later at my flat, when she came drifting to the couchbed, me already on the troubled cusp of dream, the lines of her bare body sculpted by innocuous TV light, she’d left it on to find her way but not on the Funhole tape, just plain shit TV, commercials flashing like headlights. She pulled at the quilt, low enough to insert herself, place her coldness to my warmth but I was cold, too, cold all the way inside. I held her, her fast breath on my chest, felt myself harden but did not move and she didn’t touch me further, a shared delicacy so complete as if by agreement. When we woke, not morning but lightening, the cold air tinting pink, I was so hard it hurt and still I did not move, but her hands found me, in silence and cold, a few hot strokes and I came and as I did she rubbed herself, half on me, tight against my thighs and I heard her come, a tiny croaking cry, and she said without taking a breath, “Watch it with me.”
I didn’t say no. But I didn’t watch.
I was right the first time: to Nakota it was like a stroke tape. For a mindfuck.
Since the tape’s inception she was in my flat as much as even I could want: Zen and poker-backed, focused on the screen, day after day and no more disappearing acts, staying on till morning. Once in a while she would still be there when I left for work, lying prone and passive but nothing peaceful in those eyes, behind lids that shivered as if she dreamed an endless dream. The tape was always playing unless I shut it off. I was getting very good at ignoring the images onscreen, unless my gaze was caught at that critical point where the figure turned. Then I must watch it, whether I would or no, and in the end feel as I always did, hurt in some spot where I could not see to measure the depth and severity of the wound.
After work, the first few days of snow behind us and already I was sick of it, dirty piles at curbside and people driving as if they had never seen the fucking stuff before, the heat in my flat no real heat at all but a kind of half-assed damp warmth that warped my magazine prints and left the floors dry and cold: coming home, newspaper, half-eaten lunch in grease-spotted brown bag, see domestic me. What’s for dinner, honey, Funhole souffle?
Nakota, in front of the TV as always, but no glance at my entrance, no acknowledgment that anyone else was in the room; just a slow, slow turn, rising to her feet like deep-sea ballet, moving the few steps to the television as if it were miles she traveled, and there kneeling before it to press, gingerly and gentle, her cheek against the glass.
I almost expected—what? a sizzle of flesh? a blinding burst of light? her to get sucked right into the TV? Of course nothing happened, nothing visible I should say because that’s the tricky part, isn’t it, that’s where the rub comes in. The worst wounds are internal, I should have known that from my own experience, but I’m the type of guy who doesn’t learn.
She sat like that for a while; I let her; I saw no reason not to. I stopped staring, put my things away, although it didn’t seem right to start cooking dinner or anything; how does one behave at an ecstasy?
Finally, after I had read the paper, nervous twitch of newsprint every time I thought she moved, finally I went and shut off the tape, shut off the TV, helped her stand—she seemed to need it—and back to the couchbed. She sat down, docile enough, and I stood looking down at her, wondering what to do now. Suddenly she opened her eyes very wide, bugged them at me in a way that would have been comical any other time, and said through a big threatening grin, “That’s right, pamper the madwoman, you fucking idiot.”
“Yes, your craziness,” and to my wary smile she laughed, a normal sound or as normal as she ever got, lit up a cigarette and asked me if there was any mineral water or anything to drink.
“I’m not going to work tonight,” she said. “Tom asked me to but I told him no.”
So the evening, bed, no sex, her skinny body cool to the touch and dropping into sleep like iron into sand. I sat up to read awhile but could not wholly concentrate, the words jumbling into other words, sentences into diatribes and paragraphs into convoluted polemics on the pressure of instinct, and then the words changed again into symbols I could not read and I knew I was asleep and dreaming, and I was not disturbed even though the words changed again to writhe on the page as if they were pinned there and me some spiteful collector who would have them no matter what. They spelled out challenges, feeble defiance, and I laughed and slammed the book shut, over and over, enjoying my rhythmic cruelty to such a monstrous degree that I finally woke, scared, sat up to wipe at my eyes. And saw Nakota was gone.
The door was open.
It took me two seconds to grab on jeans, catching my pubes in the zipper and it hurt and I barely felt it, galloping like the cavalry down the stairs saying “Shit, oh shit” like magic words and even from the landing I could see: she hadn’t even bothered to -shut the storage-room door, hadn’t bothered with the ten-watt light. I turned it on, I wanted to be able to see. Whatever it was.
And a sight, oh, was it.
On her knees, oblivious and naked, braced arms on either side and hair dangling straight, about to stick her head down the Funhole.
“God damn,” too horrified to think what else to do, to worry that I might hurt her, I slammed into her like a truck and knocked her sideways so she crashed like the tethered hand had done, smack into a pile of junk and shit flying everywhere and back she came, crawling like a crab, teeth bare, brows arched and tiny tits jiggling and her eyes absolutely blank and I grabbed her and she bit me, I mean bit me like a dog and blood and worrying at the skin of my hand so I had to jerk it away and in that second boom, back to the hole. I yanked at the back of her neck, panic strength and she made a little sound, I’d hurt her that time for sure and a little, a tiny bit of life came back to her face and I squeezed where I’d hurt her, use the pain, use it.
“Nakota,” squeezing again, “stop it, stop it, you hear me?”
And everything came back, eyes and all but not* right, not quite, I saw it and my grip eased but just one wary notch. Blood on her teeth and almost crying, I had never in my life before seen tears in her eyes, “I have to, Nicholas, let me go.”
Muscles, humming in my arms, vibration passed from her body to mine, God she was strong. “I can’t.”
Tears and blood. “I have to, Nicholas. My head’s down there.”
“Oh, Nakota,” and I thought She’s crazy, this has driven her crazy. What do I do now. “Let’s go upstairs, okay? Let’s go upstairs and I’ll—”