“I need my head back!” and a lunge, God she was strong, fierce jerking elbows and kicking feet and snapping teeth as her mouth worked, long slippery thread of spit and trying to get at me and I held her, tight, tight, I wanted to drag her out and away but the way she fought, the force I had to use just to keep her from breaking loose, I was hurting her already even though she gave no sign she felt it. I would have to really hurt her, maybe even knock her out (though I had no confidence I could actually do it, I had never done anything like that before), and meanwhile she was wearing me out just fighting me, fighting me, fighting me, and finally I yelled, “Okay, okay! Just stop, okay? Just stop,” and I gave her an extra-hard shake, her head snapped like whiplash and she got quieter, still panting but quieter.
“I need my head back,” she said.
Oh God. I tried to talk to her, talk her away from the craziness but she kept straining past me, little whine in her throat like a sick animal, mumbling about her head and pushing with all her strength against my body as if I was a wall or door she must surmount to be free. This would go on all night, forever, until she wore me down and I had no doubt she would. Eventually. She was the queen of eventually.
“Stop it/’ was I going to have to really beat her up to stop her, oh God please don’t make me do that. “Stop it, Nakota, just—” Whine and panting, like wrestling a dog, snapping at me, so this is what it’s like when someone loses her mind, uh-huh, pushing and pushing against me and all her muscles alive and she kicked me, I should have expected it, the classic move, and as I jack-knifed, groping for my balls, she bounded past, a literal leap like ballet and the pain, yeah and the anger made me able to grab a part of her, some skinny part, and sling her with all my strength against the wall. She hit like a door slamming but the momentum was too much for me, balance gone and I was too close, too close to the Funhole, so black and calm below me as I pinwheeled in perfect silence, the moment as long and exquisite as a car wreck I’m going to fall right into it and nothing from Nakota, I had knocked her finally silent, no help there hold on I can’t I’m losing it God and with a plunge like a scream I fell full
length, body wrenching like a twisting fish and my right arm, thrust out for desperate balance, at last gone deep inside. She got her head back, all right.
3
Nakota as nurse. We both needed nurses, she more than me, though my bitten hand was already outrageously swollen, “What kind of germs you got anyway?” weak joke that got less than a smile, lips twitched around her cigarette. Black smoke, stinging in my eyes. Her motions were slow, crippled grace, she moved about the flat like you drive a wrecked car, even her hair looked wounded, dirty looking and dragged back in a twist-tie bow. We had taken all the aspirin in the house and were starting in on the Nyquil.
It was almost morning, overcast dawn, sure to snow again today. Me in bed, Nyquil in one hand, beer in the other, Nakota bent shivering over the stereo. On her bare back, just above her ribs, was a disconcertingly heart-shaped bruise. You only kick the shit out of the one you love.
“Hurry up,” I said, “you’ll freeze.” She found what she was looking for; it took some looking: loud kickthrash music, fitting obbligato for our little dance; ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Funhole Waltz. Back across the room and it hurt to watch, bruises like clouds, massed and banked all over her but especially on her arms, where I had gripped her hardest; the memory of my tyrannical panic made me wince, but I knew for once I had been purely and unarguably right. An odd feeling. Not pleasant. You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things.
Climbing into bed, into the warmth; we had piled on every blanket in the house, we needed that heat. I cuddled her with careful arms, gentle of her pain, offered her a sip of Nyquil. “Pleasant bouquet,” she said. Her speech was slurred.
When she handed back the bottle I flinched in the taking, and she turned her head, slow. “I thought it was the other hand,” she said.
I did too, but there on the right palm, a hole, a definite hole, and an ugly scared suspicion rose like dizziness: oh God please, not a souvenir. I did my duty. Please don’t do this to me.
1 compared hands. The left one, the bitten one, was puffy, purpling, you could see it had been torn. The right one had a puncture in the palm, a round wound with round gray edges. As we looked at it a minute drop of clear fluid, thick as syrup, welled up but did not drip.
“Did,” her voice sharpening now, sitting up straight oh you sick bitch, she was excited, “did something—hurt you?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
My voice was shaking. I wanted to hit her again, turned away instead. Eyes closed, remembering only the fear, possessed by fear at the lip of the Funhole, so great and the feeling of clenching, then hearing her distant moan and pushing myself back and away, crawling to where she sat still against the door. Crying without tears. No new head to present to her, but her own seemed to be working okay at that point. Back upstairs to a burning shower, it seemed we couldn’t get enough warmth, enough different kinds of medicating, Nurse Nakota pushing pills in my mouth. Now back to normal, cheering my contamination.
“Did something down there—”
“I said shut the fuck up!” and I slammed my hand down on the bed, quake of covers and the Nyquil splashing green as chartreuse and a pain that made my eyes spring to watering, oh God that hurts, Nakota subsiding but with shiny eyes, I closed mine so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
“Leave me alone,” I said. And she did. But I felt her thinking.
Old saw proved right: it was better in the morning, bruises, swellings, aches and all.
All but my right hand.
Alone in the bathroom, back against the un-lockable door, examining my hand in the weak fluttering light: like checking a bite from the devil, yeah, almost scared to touch it, and sore? Oh it was. I ran cool water on it, then warm; the skin there reddened a little under heat, but otherwise there was no change.
Nakota knocking, “I gotta get in there, Nicholas.”
“Wait a minute,” pressing a little harder against the door. I held my hand close, close to my eyes, small sloping grayish wound like a miniature, scale-model
don’t say it
“I gotta pee, Nicholas!”
Stepping away from the door, letting her in, holding my hand close to my side. As she pissed I dressed, hurried in absurd uneasy fear to grab keys and get out, yelling “Bye,” over my shoulder as I slammed the door too hard. In the hall, panting too hard. All my motions on cartoon speed, revved up, I forced myself to walk very slowly down the stairs and I did not want to stop at the Funhole door, of course I most certainly would not be stopping there because the handle felt so good, so good in my sore hand, and inside
it was warm, warmer than the hall, warmer than my flat even, the heat seeming to emanate, of course, from the Funhole itself and why wouldn’t it, hmm? Why wouldn’t it Murmuring to the darkness. “What did you do to me?” Warm. A tension I had not fully noticed seemed to drop from me all at once, my shoulders slumping in relief, so warm. My hand was wet, soft sweet dribble of fluid, it too was warm. “What’s going to happen to me?” No answer, no oracle. Just the mouth of the Funhole, warm breath rising, I noticed in a dreamy kind of way that its smell was stronger today, a rich and complex odor, maybe it was a kind of incense, a spice smell, maybe it was