When Watched (19 page)

“The whole universe is in there?”

“Yeah.”

“I've always wanted to see that.”

“Wait, you've always wanted to see
what
?”

“Everything.”

“Me too. That's why I can't sleep.”

“You want a lot.”

“I do.” She leaned nearer to the record, to the wet heat of his breath.

“If I saw between your legs,” he said, “what would I see? What does the whole universe look like?”

“I don't know. I think of infinity. The blackness of space.”

“I think of a big yellow field and a little horse walks by.”

“A little baby horse?”

“It's a baby, yeah.”

“I love that . . . I guess the universe is vast so you have to pick something to look at.”

He stared. “You haven't really told me—I want you to tell me
exactly
 . . . why you want me.”

She stared back. He seemed so insecure—more insecure than George Harrison had to be.
Maybe that is all a rock song is,
she thought.
Discomfort. Horrible embarrassment. Set to a tune.

“C'mon,” he said.
“Why?”

“It's just something that happened. I woke up one day—I woke up burning,” she said, loving the words. There was nothing better, nothing more electric than thinking something and saying it immediately. “Have you ever burned, George?”

“Yes.”

“Is it hard to burn for people when everyone's burning for you?”

“Exactly. I can't match them. I can't even come
close
.” He looked away. “In the early days on tour when all the girls were screaming, I couldn't hear the band. I couldn't even hear my own voice—just all these screaming girls, you know.”

“It's like
they
were the band—the screaming girls.”

He laughed and she looked away, smiling uncontrollably. “I love the way you sing,” she said. “I love that I can hear all the
spit in your mouth . . . there's a hiss.” Then, returning her eyes to his, she said, “You wrote all my favorite Beatles songs.”

“Oh,”
he grinned.

Blushing, she muttered, “I have to pee,” and took the record with her to the bathroom. She leaned it up against the green tile wall, then pulled her underwear down and sat on the toilet.

“Nice music,” George said as she peed. He laughed and she joined in, quite hysterically. Then she looked at the other three Beatles, who remained flat and devoid of animation. They looked spooky next to George's breathing face, like deer heads on a wall.

She flushed and shut the toilet, then sat cross-legged on the cold tile floor, slouching before the record. “There's such sadness in you,” she said.

“No that's you.”

She frowned. “That's just the problem. I can't see what's inside anyone.”

“Well,” he laughed, “we aren't frogs in your laboratory.”

She smiled sadly. “I know. I just . . . I can't connect with anyone. I always think I know what someone's face is saying,” she said, shaking her head. “And I'm always wrong.” She looked down at her naked toes on the green tile floor. “I'm so intense. I repulse people.”

“I'm telling you, you need to play.”

“Stop saying that. It's like you have one idea.” She touched her forehead and grimaced. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I just have to finish this story. Then I'll calm down.”

“No,” he said. “There will always be another story. You will never be calm.”

Suddenly he looked exactly like the devil. And she knew he
was right. The story loomed, unfinished, one of a lifetime of stories. It was enough to make her scream.

“In the story we're talking,” she said anxiously. “Kind of like we're talking right now. Only something happens.”

“What happens?”

“Well I don't know. That's the problem.”

“Does something have to happen?”

“Yes,” she said and waited for him to make a suggestion. But he didn't. “What do you think should happen?” she asked. “I mean, what do you think
would
happen? I want it to feel, you know,
real
.”

“What about this?”

“This now?”

He nodded.

She stared at him a minute, then picked up the record and walked swiftly back to her bed. There she began typing all the words that had passed between them, all the ones she could remember.

Afterward she read over what she had written. She wasn't sure if it was any good. “God damn,” she said.

“What?” George said. The record was lying flat beside her.

“I just feel like such an idiot sometimes.”

“Well everyone's an idiot
sometimes
.”

She laughed, then stared into space. “Maybe ambition is the great distraction . . . cause it just makes you greedy.”

“Everyone is greedy. Everyone is exactly the same.”

She blinked.
Maybe George Harrison is crazy,
she thought, then reached for the phone. It was heavy and pea green, a rotary phone from the sixties.

As it rang she held her breath. She always did this. She could never breathe until the human at the other end put a stop
to all the ringing—said hello. She decided then—waiting for it—that it was the most romantic word: hello.

The ringing ceased. She heard her father but not his hello. He just breathed directly into the phone—into her ear. He always did this.

“Dad?”

“Saundra, it's very late.”

“I know—I'm sorry. I have to ask you something.”

“Are you alright?”

“I'm fine.”

“What have you done? Have you
done
something?”

“Daddy, I'm writing. And I think this could be good—like really,
really
good—but I'm not sure.”

“Well,” he yawned, “it's usually a spell, Saundra—the good feeling.”

“I know that.”

“You can't
really
see a sentence until you feel bad again.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Good.”

She imagined him touching his mustache as he always did—compulsively.

“You had a question?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

She sat up, straightening her spine as if he were there, watching. “Are there any fables or stories where a woman opens her vagina and inside is the whole universe?”

He was quiet.

“I'm writing a story where that happens,” she said. “I need to know if I'm writing a story that has already been written.”

“Well all stories—”

“Yeah, yeah, they've all been written—I
know
. But has the universe ever shown up in a woman's vagina?”

“All the time. Why just yesterday—”

“Daddy, I'm serious.”

“Well what do you mean by the whole universe?”

“I mean the birds, the trees, the entire solar system—everything. The universe, Daddy. The
universe
.”

“Well there's a scene in an Almodóvar movie where a man walks into a woman's vagina and it's enormous. But it's not the universe.”

“Okay.”

“And there's an Italo Calvino story where the whole universe is a woman's fat arms and breasts. But not her vagina.”

“Okay.”

“And then there's the Courbet painting of the vagina called
L'Origine du monde
. But it's not
L'Origine du universe.
”

He laughed and then she laughed. They laughed together heartily.

“You know I was sleeping, Saundra.”

“I'm sorry. I had to know. I knew you would know.”

He was silent. A pleased silence, she thought.

“You should work in the vagina,” she said. “Like at the front desk of one . . . answer absurd questions like mine all day.”

“I think I've worked in several.”

She smiled and knew that he was also smiling. It was a weird smile, his was—a secret smile, one obscured by mustache hairs.

On the pink wall a brown spider made its diagonal dash. A second one followed, then a third and she wondered if an egg had hatched. She didn't care. She lay there with the phone in her hand, basking in something like sunshine. It was the infinite
weirdness of the world and it made her smile again, with her father smiling on the other line, the weirdest man. And she the weirdest woman. And George, blinking beside her, the weirdest Beatle.

“Good night, Saundra,” her father said.

She waited for his phone to hit the cradle and imagined him in his navy robe, shuffling back to bed. She saw him part the sheets and enter them. She hung up.

“How can you say vagina to your father?” George asked.

“I don't know. I just can. He's a professor of German literature.”

“Oh.”

“I can't do anything that normal people can,” she grinned. “But I can do everything they
can't
.”

George laughed.

“He's not always so nice—my dad. He can be very cruel out of nowhere.”

“But you keep calling him. Even though he can be cruel.”

“Even though.” She picked the record up and looked into his eyes. “I think I'm afraid to finish the book,” she said. “Like finishing the book means death.” She sighed. “I don't wanna die.”

“You won't,” he said. “Your book isn't you.”

“What about your music? Was that you?”

“No. It was just something I did.”

She glanced at her cigarette pack and decided not to reach for it. She said, “What's it like anyway, dying?”

“It's like nothing,” he said evenly. “Nothing at all.”

She peered at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You'll see. It's like nothing. We really die . . . I did.”

What he said made her stomach hurt. He had died and not
even God could change that.
Especially not God,
she thought. He was gone, long gone. And the face she was staring into was her own.

She put the record down and returned her eyes to the computer, then unpaused “Here Comes the Sun” and fell back into the song, its tender grip. There were only thirty-two seconds left. Now it was twenty-six.
It'll be over soon,
she thought, the seconds vanishing forever.
It's ending now,
she thought.
This is the end.

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