Crossings (18 page)

On the tray is a slice of papaya, a lime cut in half, a cup of coffee. Black. Mik took his coffee black.

I put it down on the chair beside the bed.

I am wearing a black velvet pantsuit. London Shop. Forty dollars, half-price. They weren't called pantsuits then. That's an anachronism. Lounging pajamas? I seem to have been spending a lot of money on clothes lately.

Mik is smoking. He doesn't move, just lies there, looking at me.

I go to the bottom of the bed, and say, ‘Do you want to make love to me?'

Looking straight at him. Making an official pronouncement. I haven't thought this out. I haven't planned it. I just say it.

‘Yah.'

I undo the frogs on the jacket. I take the jacket off. Drop it to the floor. I take off the pants. Let them lie. I take off my brassiere, my panties. Mik lies there, smoking.

Goosebumps. My hips. The scars. Moon crater white. I am shivering, my teeth are chattering. I know I am ugly, standing there in that pitiless morning light, scarred, purple, covered with goosebumps.

I lift the covers and get in beside him. He is very solid, and very warm. Enormous, like a whale. I am frozen to the marrow. My heels are congealed with the cold. If he touches me, I know I shall break off in slowly oozing lumps of meat.

Mik says

I haven't put this in before. It didn't fit. I know it happened, but it didn't fit with the story. So I ignored it. I said it wasn't relevant.

I still don't understand it. Why he said it. It wasn't true. Why would he say such a thing? But I will put it in, because it was said, because Mik said it.

Mik says, ‘I'm not hung like a bull.'

And he puts out his cigarette.

He is all over me, large and heavy, a great crushing weight. I make all the polite little noises to show I am enjoying it. And Mik comes in me, roaring and bucking like a stallion, his head thrown back, hollering. It is all very embarrassing.

‘Did you come?'

‘Yes,' I lie. I think he'll be upset if I say no.

Mik lights a cigarette. ‘No, you didn't,' he says.

And then I find out that men can do it more than once.

My legs are cramping from the cold.

Mik puts out his cigarette and kneels, begins to suck me.

‘No!' I say, pushing at his back. I try to push his head away. But he holds my thighs tighter.

And Mik's face comes up, looms into mine. ‘No?' he says.

And I pull his head down to my loins.

And then he is in me, lifting me up with his wild surging, and I am moving too, moving to him, with him. I have never known this before. This mindless rhythm of my body, up and up, meeting him perfectly, wanting him in me forever. ‘No?' he laughed and took me beyond words.

‘I'm gonna fuck you to death, baby.'

And I came and came again. And he said ‘Uncle?'

‘Uncle,' half-laughing, half-crying.

‘Okay!' Mik says. Throwing himself down beside me. We lie like that for a long time, just breathing. ‘Christ,' he says once.

And now he swivels around and kisses me there, licking me, growling, burying himself. I take his penis in my mouth and hold it. We lie there like two barbarians who have killed each other on the field.

‘Ortona,' I say and laugh weakly.

He says, ‘You're bleeding like a stuck pig.' He is pleased. ‘Jesus, you're bleeding like a stuck pig.'

I can't lift my head. I bit him.

‘Christ,' he says and pulls it out to examine. ‘I'm raw!' Pleased again. Somehow proud. ‘I'll be humping around like some cripple.'

And, ‘I beat you. Eight to six.'

‘You counted!'

‘Damned right.' He snorts. He slaps me on the bum.

‘I'll beat you,' I say. ‘Yet.'

‘You think so.'

‘I'll kill you.'

‘You're a bleeding corpse.'

‘I bet you can't even stand.'

‘You're asking for it.'

‘I'm gonna destroy you,' I say.

And he leaps on me. And he is all over me, in me, crushing me, and he says, ‘How's that?' kneeling upright in the middle of the bed, holding my thighs around his middle, working my hips back and forth in mid-air, so that I am jerked about like a rag doll.

And a long time later, he says, ‘I think that was dust.' And, ‘Give up?' But I can't speak. ‘I want to pull you on like an overcoat,' he says.

And, ‘Hey. You alive down there?'

‘Bastard,' I say, finally.

He laughs. ‘Tough guy.'

The papaya was ground into Jocelyn's shag rug. I don't remember how it happened.

We went for a swim that night, after dinner. A sedate dinner except for one moment when Mik said, innocently, ‘What's the matter? You got a boil on your bum?' Jocelyn looked at him, surprised. ‘Your sister,' he said, ‘she's twitching.'

The salt stung. Blood was coming down my thighs. I watched it swirl away in the water, thin dark threads. Mik swam far out, huffing and blowing like a walrus. I floated.

‘What's the matter?' he said, coming up and ducking me. ‘Can't take it, eh?' So I swam far out, and he went round me in circles, calling, ‘You'll never make it!'

I went to bed, my own bed, and fell asleep without a pill.

When I came downstairs in the morning, Mik was waiting in the kitchen. He took me into his arms and held me, looking down into my face, calling me a name I can't remember. He kissed me, a long gentle kiss, his mouth hard and dry. It was the first time our lips had touched.

He made my breakfast. I sat, waiting in the dining room, in the warm morning sun. Bacon and eggs and fried potatoes. Toast and lashing of butter.

‘Eat up. You're gonna need it.'

I ate up. Then he took me upstairs. I could hardly walk.

Later: ‘You won't admit it, will you?'

‘What?'

‘You liked that?'

‘Yes.'

‘It didn't hurt?' He is propped up on one elbow, looking down at me.

‘No.'

‘No. Want some more?'

‘All you've got.'

And he called me the name I can't remember.

And later: ‘Enough?'

‘Why? You tired?'

And later: ‘Say it.' His hands around my throat. ‘Say it, or I'll just keep humping you.'

‘It hurts.'

‘What? Louder. I can't hear you.'

‘It
hurts
!
'

And he laughed.

That day or the next or the next, I don't remember, he took me to see some people. A linoleum carpet. Big maroon flowers. A man. A woman. In an apron. Little blue flowers on the apron. Beer. Mik talking. The woman talking. Upstairs. An upstairs. An upstairs apartment. A television set and a lamp that went round and round. A fire. A lamp that pretended to be a forest fire, the light going round and round inside so that the fire sprang up, consumed the trees, died down sprang up, died down, round and round. A lamp on the television and the maroon flowers, large fleshy petals, on the floor.

It was cool, the linoleum against my cheek.

And then I was in a dark room, in a bed, and the woman was bending over me. She was asking me to drink some of this hot tea, it would make me feel better. ‘Men are brutes,' she said.

And a taxi. And Mik in the taxi, grim.

Jocelyn saying, ‘What's the matter?'

‘She's got a stomach ache.'

I slept for thirty hours.

And he woke me and took me to his room. Afternoon light. Green. Dim green light.

I held onto his shoulders as if I were drowning. The great crashing of the waves was Mik, the storm and the thunder, and all the winds of chaos. ‘I love you,' I said, over and over. ‘I love you.'

He took me across the bridge to meet the buddies.

‘Wear that blue suit,' he said. I wore the blue suit and put on my white gloves and the sandals with the plastic inserts. I did up my hair in a great coil in the back.

We were sitting in a room in the St. Helen's. There seems to be a lot of men there. Mik is ignoring me. Sitting over to one side of a stove. Talking to the men. From time to time I look to him, but he doesn't look to me.

Someone is cooking chicken on the stove. And someone else is giving me a piece of toilet paper, folded neatly for a napkin. And I am holding a piece of chicken, very greasy, in the toilet paper. I am trying to eat it. I wipe my fingers on the toilet paper, but it is too greasy. I am given another piece of toilet paper.

No one says anything rude to me. Once someone says ‘shit' and then ‘Excuse me.'

Someone says to Mik, ‘Right off the banana boat.'

‘So you're Mik's landlady?'

‘Yes.'

It is all very uncomfortable. No one seems to know what to say to me. They are talking to one another as if I were not here, and yet I feel that I am here, very much. Someone says, has anyone seen the benny snatcher? I gather this is a proper name of some kind. But the Benny Snatcher isn't here today. Someone called Taffy is here. It all sounds as if a foreign language is being spoken. The banana boat is mentioned again and I ask if they are longshoremen.

‘Longshoremen?'

‘Well, if you've been unloading bananas.'

But it is the wrong thing to say. Everyone is laughing at me.

I have the feeling that I must keep my knees pressed firmly together, that I must on no account cross my legs. And I do keep my knees together, pressing them so hard that they turn white. It is a very uncomfortable position.

Mik leaps up suddenly and heads for the door, not even looking at me. He actually goes out of the door, leaving me to say thank you very much for the chicken. I gather up my gloves and head after him, like a puppy dog.

I trot after him down the street. He is walking ahead of me. I feel I have done something terribly wrong but I can't imagine what it is.

We are walking across the bridge. Mik has no money for a bus.

‘Please. Mik. Wait just a minute.' I'm out of breath. I stop to lean over the parapet and look down to False Creek.

He comes back, his face very red and cross.

‘Did I say something wrong?'

Mik barks, a short angry laugh.

‘But you seem so angry.'

‘No, you didn't do anything wrong.'

‘But what is it?'

He looks down at the lumber yards and the tug boats and then up to the horizon where red and blue sails swing nerveless into the white glare of the sun.

‘Nah. You did all right. You're just, like George said, you're just off the banana boat.'

‘What was that about the banana boat, I don't understand.'

He shoots me a look. ‘Green. Like bananas.'

‘Oh.'

He swings away but I hold my ground. ‘But what did I
do!
You
tell
me! You tell me then. What did I do wrong?'

And I grab his jacket and hold on. ‘You tell me!'

‘You want a punch out? I'll give you a punch out.'

‘You tell me what I did.'

‘You went down there. You went down to that place.'

‘But you asked me. You were with me.'

‘Jesus.'

‘What is it? You
tell
me.'

‘You went in there and you sat like … like butter wouldn't melt in your cunt. Like some … you sat there and your legs were so tight together …' Then his mouth quirks. ‘The bastards gave you a piece of toilet paper for a napkin!' He is struggling with his mouth. ‘And Taffy apologized for saying “Shit.” He apologized. Jesus.' Now his mouth breaks. I am hanging on his mouth. ‘They were
scared
of you. Like you was glass. Like you'd …'

He throws back his head and roars.

‘Is that why you took me?'

‘What?' He is still chortling, shaking his head.

‘Like a slave in chains. To show me off. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? What did you want? Did you want me to spread my legs and say, “Okay, boys, one at a time”?'

His face is stone. He turns and walks away, too fast for me to follow. When I get home, he is not there.

But I don't care. I hate him. I don't understand what I have done. I don't understand why he is angry. Go then, go, to hell with you! I go to bed and take three pills.

He is gone before I get up in the morning. Perhaps he never came home at all. Very well. I work on the play.

The man from the sea. ‘When they found me, everyone was dead,' he says. And the girl says, ‘But why were you alive? Why were you saved?' ‘Because I am a carrier.'

At five-thirty, Mik lurches in, filthy, grinning. He has a job. He has been digging ditches all day. He has a job.

He goes off in the morning with a bag lunch. He comes home at night and eats dinner like a somnambulist. ‘Potatoes,' he says, shoving his empty plate toward me. ‘Potatoes.'

There must have been one night when I moved into his bed. I don't remember. There must have been one night when I stopped the pretense and moved into Mik's room. One particular night. But I can't remember. I don't remember what Jocelyn said, if she said anything.

I worked on the play, and Ben came over to work on the head.

I sat there, and Ben worked, and I smelled Mik on me, his sweat, his body, his love, and I felt safe.

One night Mik came in and gave me all the money he owed for board and room, and more besides. And a shoe box. Inside the shoe box was a pair of high-heeled slippers. Cinderella shoes. With rhinestones in the clear plastic heels.

I said, ‘What's the extra for?'

‘That's for the house,' Mik said.

‘But you don't have to give me anything for the house.'

‘That's for your keep. I'm paying for you now.'

‘No.' And I gave the money back to him.

‘I pay for your keep now,' said Mik, handing the money back to me.

‘No, I couldn't. I pay my own way.' And I put it on the mantel.

‘They look great, eh?'