“See you there!”
They climbed rustic wooden stairs and I leaned against a lamp post, blowing misshapen smoke rings and wondering what the hell we were doing. I kept thinking about Hamid, and how I wished he’d said he was sorry about not calling. I was raging, irrationally, that he hadn’t apologized for that evening he knew nothing about, when I lay naked on a table with a pain machine inside me. Smoke and anguish pricked my eyes, making everything blurry.
Suddenly, a woman rounded the corner, walking straight toward me, her trench coat flaring open to reveal knickerbockers and a high-collared blouse that would have been fashionable during the 1980s Gunne Sax craze. Her brown hair was pulled back into a long, thick ponytail.
She stopped directly in front of me and spoke. “I need to talk to you about Lizzy.”
“What?” I was too surprised to ask how she knew me and Lizzy. She looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen her before.
“I want you to know that you don’t have to do something you’ll regret. You can stop now. Tonight.” She tilted her head. “Do you understand? You can go home right now and forget about all this. Don’t let Lizzy suck you into it.”
Now I was seriously weirded out. “What the hell? Who are you?”
“I’m… well, there’s no good way to say this.”
Lizzy opened the door to Mr. Rasmann’s place and called my name. In that moment, his apartment felt safer than whatever was happening here, with this familiar-yet-unfamiliar woman.
“I gotta go.” I raced up the stairs and left her behind, mouth open to say something I couldn’t hear.
We checked out Mr. Rasmann’s living room while he rattled around in the kitchen. He had some worn sofas and easy chairs and an admittedly excellent stereo setup. There was a framed poster of Sid Vicious over the turntable, and some concert flyers tacked up next to it: Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion. Pretty good taste.
Soojin picked up one of those fat, clothbound books full of plastic pockets for photos and opened it to a random page. She held it up to show us. It was full of Polaroids of girls, some completely naked. I was pretty sure that one of them was in my fifth-period government class.
Lizzy gaped. “Why would he leave that out?”
Mr. Rasmann made a cheerful noise in the kitchen. “Found the glasses, girls! I’m washing them just for you, because this is such a special occasion.”
Soojin put the book down slowly, in the exact place she’d found it. My entire chest felt like a vector graphic from that Disney movie The Black Hole: a flat, glowing grid with an abstract throat punched into it. I was nothing but a sketchy representation of gravitational forces.
But Soojin wasn’t. As soon as Mr. Rasmann returned, she pointed at the book. “What the fuck is that?”
Improbably, he was unruffled. He arranged some tumblers around the bourbon bottle, then smiled at us. “That’s my look book. I’m a photographer when I’m not being a high school teacher.”
Heather narrowed her eyes. “What kind of photographer takes naked pictures of girls?”
“Those are art. A celebration of the female form. Beautiful women like you should understand that.”
The astrophysical phenomenon in my chest suddenly exploded into life, filling my ears with radioactive particles, and I heard myself yelling from far away. “This isn’t art! You’re a fucking pervert!”
Soojin shot me a nasty grin and snatched up the bourbon bottle. “Want to know what we like to put in our look book?”
I was gratified to see the grin evaporate from his face. “What… what do you… are you photographers too?”
“I guess you’re about to find out, motherfucker.” Lizzy was practically growling. She’d added a streak of red to her mohawk, and it gleamed like fresh blood. Then she grabbed the bottle out of Soojin’s hand and shattered it against Mr. Rasmann’s face. He made a squeaking noise and collapsed. Soojin kicked his ribs with her boots. “Call me fucking china doll, you piece of shit? I’m Korean! And I’m not a doll!”
I started to laugh, then felt a throb of rage working its way up from someplace deep in my intestines. My body moved before my brain could catch up, and that’s how I found myself on top of Mr. Rasmann, looking into the blood and bourbon that streaked his slack face. He had a faint haze of stubble and a few scabby pimples on his forehead. I pushed one knee into his chest, holding him down even though he was passed out and definitely not going anywhere. My abdomen cramped like it had in Bob’s office, and then Bob’s voice was in my head, telling me that my pain wasn’t so bad. His words became a refrain, a maniacal repetition: Some women love it. Some women love it. Some women love it.
Mr. Rasmann opened his eyes and tried to talk. “What… what the fuck… you crazy bitches…”
I leaned down close to his face and put my hands loosely around his neck. “What do you think those girls were feeling when you took those pictures? Do you think they loved it? Do you?” Heather, Soojin, and Lizzy had come close, standing above me on the floor, witnessing.
“Answer her, you dick!” Soojin kicked him in the ribs again.
He started to whimper and struggle under my knee. “They… they wanted to!”
My arms felt loose and strong. “They didn’t want it!” I was howling again, and my fingers were moving up his face, across the slime and roughness of his cheeks, until I was touching the soft skin of his eyelids. I could hear Lizzy and Soojin and Heather above me, taunting him and urging me on.
I thought about Bob putting his fingers and machines inside me, and Hamid’s plaintive voice on the phone, and all the girls in that look book who couldn’t tell us what they wanted. And then my thumbs were in the soft, warm place that Mr. Rasmann used to look through his camera. They curled in deeper. I bet he’d never realized that eyeballs were actually holes in his face. And every hole can be penetrated. I laughed again, as I jammed my fingers in as deep as they would go, maybe touching his brain, listening to his tongue slither around his mouth and deliver a final hiss of realization.
Then there were more sounds, and Lizzy was grabbing my shoulders and Heather was hyperventilating and I’m pretty sure I had shredded eyeball on my thumbs. I finally tuned in to hear Lizzy giving orders. “…take that bottleneck with us and get a towel to wipe our prints off anything you touched.”
I moved in a daze through the apartment, trying not to touch anything, allowing Soojin to hold my hands under hot water.
It was only when we returned to the car that I remembered the woman I’d seen outside, the one who knew me and Lizzy. Was she a possible witness, somebody who could identify us to the police? For some reason, I felt certain she was not.
ELEVEN
TESS
Chicago, Illinois (1893 C.E.)
In May, the Expo opened to rainy weather and thin crowds, but the Midway was packed. The entire length of the promenade was illuminated with electric lights, a futuristic novelty in 1893. You’d think that would draw gawkers, but the people of Chicago were far more interested in the bazaars, shops, and theaters that stayed open late for the after-work crowds. The Ferris wheel was still far from complete, so the guys running the ostrich farm next to the Algerian Village sold rides above the Midway in a giant, hydrogen-filled balloon. Floating above us, tourists saw the full glory of our artificial Islamic world: the Tunisian and Algerian Villages where I worked stood across the road from the vast, walled chaos of Cairo Street and the garish entrance to the Persian Palace. Every few feet, kiosks hawked beer. The air smelled like grilled lamb, burned sugar, and camel dung from the children’s animal rides. Still, the crowds’ biggest lure night after night was Lady Asenath’s reputation, which shone like a fiery new constellation in the firmament.