The Pisces
Page 44
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“Do you want to know what?” she asked conspiratorially.
“What?”
“Jamie has been asking me about you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I keep telling him we haven’t spoken, but he keeps asking.”
“Well, that’s fine, because I talk to him too. He texts me all the time. Sometimes I text back,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sounding dejected that she was not the sole liaison. “Well, I just figured I would tell you.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“You know, I think he really misses you.”
“Yes, he tells me that too.”
“Oh,” she said.
“But if he really missed me he’d break up with the scientist,” I said. “Then I’d know he’s serious.”
But I knew why he hadn’t broken up with the scientist. Nobody broke up with anyone unless they had someone else locked down. Even Jamie, who—when we were together—seemingly only wanted to be free, had not initiated the breakup. In fact, that had been my fatal error: breaking up with him before I had anyone to trapeze onto. Of course, all of that had led me here, to Venice and Theo, so perhaps it hadn’t been such an error.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what happens when you’re back in Phoenix,” she said knowingly.
“If I come back,” I said.
“Really? You might stay there?” she asked.
She sounded impressed.
“I don’t know, maybe. I just love being so free right now, not beholden to anyone or anything,” I said, lying completely.
I was only trying to fool her, as I hadn’t really planned out the idea of staying. The truth was, I couldn’t fully admit to myself that I wanted to stay. To do this would mean putting an end to the peach pit, blasting it to smithereens. And though it was parked in the far corner of my mind, I needed it. I didn’t actively acknowledge that I needed it—this escape or safety valve—but on a primal level I knew. Perhaps this was what living in the moment was about: an active state of denial about the future. I also felt that somehow Theo just “knew” that not only would my sister be returning soon but that I would be leaving. Maybe this was what past men had assumed of me? That I simply knew everything was temporary between us.
I felt as though it would be evident to anyone, even Theo, that Venice was not my natural habitat. As beachy as I looked in my long white dresses, which I wore solely now—never black anymore—there was something about me that didn’t belong. I was like a cactus, a storer of water, and not a creature who naturally immersed in the water. I didn’t take things lightly. I hoarded. And our differences were evident each morning when his tail would begin to go dry and crack, and we would rush him back to the ocean. I couldn’t hoard him. He did not ask to hoard me. And so I assumed that he never asked if my sister would be returning, or when I planned to leave, because on some level he already knew.
But he didn’t know. And sometimes when we were fucking, despite the relegation of the peach pit to a far corner of my mind, I would begin to cry. There would be the eternality and then a sudden break in the eternality that brought tears. Before the doughnuts, I didn’t even know I wanted to die. Now, I attributed my crying to joy. I hadn’t known that I’d wanted joy either. I had not ever known that I could have it. Now I was crying because it felt like a miracle—not only that I would want to live at all but that I actually could.
The time I cried the most was the day at dawn when he fucked me in the ass. The ass fucking did not hurt, or not in a way that made me wince. I did not cry from pain. This ass fucking was the tenderest fuck I could ever have imagined. Earlier on, when we were whispering to each other on the rocks, he had said, “I want to make you feel things you’ve never imagined and explore places you didn’t think could be explored.”
“Oh yeah?” I had asked.
“Yes,” he had said. “Like deep inside your asshole.”
I’d laughed.
But this was romantic. It felt like a loss of virginity in some way, and completely opposite what had happened in the hotel bathroom with Garrett. For one thing I was lying on my back, not doggy-style. Also, Theo licked my asshole a lot first. I was scared, of course, that it wouldn’t taste very good: as much as I washed before I saw him. I was afraid but he softly licked and sucked it, making me come with his finger gently rubbing my clit. I kept coming on his fingers, when he also put one in my asshole and kissed me from my belly to my neck to my face. Then he kissed my mouth and forehead. His cock was so hard it pushed all the way out of his foreskin, already glistening, straining for me. I grabbed him and it was warm and pulsing.
“Are you ready?” he asked, and I nodded.
He nudged my cheeks apart and opened my asshole slowly. First he put the tip of his dick inside me while continuing to rub my clit gently with the hand he hadn’t used to stroke my cheeks and crack. Maybe he knew about urinary tract infections? Could mermaids get them too? I loved his dick moving slowly in and out of my ass, a new intimacy. I never imagined that anal sex could be loving. I never thought of it as an intimate act, one of trust, only a pornographic and brutal one. So I cried a lot, but not because it hurt.
45.
I didn’t mention Dominic to Theo again. It was taking more and more pills per day to keep the dog relaxed and asleep, and I went to three different vets to get more prescriptions. In an odd way I had become a drug addict of sorts, like Claire after all—going from doctor to doctor to get the pills. Only I wasn’t getting high on the medication itself, but on the time and intimacy with Theo that it afforded me.
“We travel a lot,” I heard myself say to the veterinarian. “I’m going to be touring through Europe and I can’t bear to leave him home with a sitter. He’s my child, basically. So I’ll need some for the plane ride and each of the train rides from city to city.”
“How many cities?” she asked.
“Ten?” I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
I had heard of addicts going from doctor to doctor to get pills as their tolerance for the drugs deepened. Anything involving addiction always escalated, never the other way around. I felt this to be true within myself, and that when and if I returned to Phoenix I would need a thousand lovers to ever take the place of how good it felt to be with Theo.
One night, when we were lying on the sofa tangled up together, after a day of lovemaking, I asked him how many other women who lived on land he had been with.
“There have been a few,” he said.
He told me about a woman named Alexis with long black hair who was a heroin addict. He had licked her menstrual blood too, the first he ever tasted, and watched her shoot dope. She would come to the rocky shore in Monterey every night, when he lived farther north, already slurring her words. He never knew whether she believed he was real, or a side effect of the drugs. But he stayed with her as she sat by the ocean and nodded in and out. Then she stopped coming to the ocean entirely. He feared she had died, until one night, he heard her singing in an old wooden boathouse some feet from the shore. He dragged himself into the boathouse and stayed with her that night. In the boathouse were a few old blankets on the ground and a suitcase full of clothes. He realized then that she was homeless. He wished he could walk on land and bring her food. He would bring her fish, but their raw, dead bodies only nauseated her and he didn’t know how to build a fire to cook them. So he gave her licks of seawater and bites of seaweed.
“What?”
“Jamie has been asking me about you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I keep telling him we haven’t spoken, but he keeps asking.”
“Well, that’s fine, because I talk to him too. He texts me all the time. Sometimes I text back,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sounding dejected that she was not the sole liaison. “Well, I just figured I would tell you.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“You know, I think he really misses you.”
“Yes, he tells me that too.”
“Oh,” she said.
“But if he really missed me he’d break up with the scientist,” I said. “Then I’d know he’s serious.”
But I knew why he hadn’t broken up with the scientist. Nobody broke up with anyone unless they had someone else locked down. Even Jamie, who—when we were together—seemingly only wanted to be free, had not initiated the breakup. In fact, that had been my fatal error: breaking up with him before I had anyone to trapeze onto. Of course, all of that had led me here, to Venice and Theo, so perhaps it hadn’t been such an error.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what happens when you’re back in Phoenix,” she said knowingly.
“If I come back,” I said.
“Really? You might stay there?” she asked.
She sounded impressed.
“I don’t know, maybe. I just love being so free right now, not beholden to anyone or anything,” I said, lying completely.
I was only trying to fool her, as I hadn’t really planned out the idea of staying. The truth was, I couldn’t fully admit to myself that I wanted to stay. To do this would mean putting an end to the peach pit, blasting it to smithereens. And though it was parked in the far corner of my mind, I needed it. I didn’t actively acknowledge that I needed it—this escape or safety valve—but on a primal level I knew. Perhaps this was what living in the moment was about: an active state of denial about the future. I also felt that somehow Theo just “knew” that not only would my sister be returning soon but that I would be leaving. Maybe this was what past men had assumed of me? That I simply knew everything was temporary between us.
I felt as though it would be evident to anyone, even Theo, that Venice was not my natural habitat. As beachy as I looked in my long white dresses, which I wore solely now—never black anymore—there was something about me that didn’t belong. I was like a cactus, a storer of water, and not a creature who naturally immersed in the water. I didn’t take things lightly. I hoarded. And our differences were evident each morning when his tail would begin to go dry and crack, and we would rush him back to the ocean. I couldn’t hoard him. He did not ask to hoard me. And so I assumed that he never asked if my sister would be returning, or when I planned to leave, because on some level he already knew.
But he didn’t know. And sometimes when we were fucking, despite the relegation of the peach pit to a far corner of my mind, I would begin to cry. There would be the eternality and then a sudden break in the eternality that brought tears. Before the doughnuts, I didn’t even know I wanted to die. Now, I attributed my crying to joy. I hadn’t known that I’d wanted joy either. I had not ever known that I could have it. Now I was crying because it felt like a miracle—not only that I would want to live at all but that I actually could.
The time I cried the most was the day at dawn when he fucked me in the ass. The ass fucking did not hurt, or not in a way that made me wince. I did not cry from pain. This ass fucking was the tenderest fuck I could ever have imagined. Earlier on, when we were whispering to each other on the rocks, he had said, “I want to make you feel things you’ve never imagined and explore places you didn’t think could be explored.”
“Oh yeah?” I had asked.
“Yes,” he had said. “Like deep inside your asshole.”
I’d laughed.
But this was romantic. It felt like a loss of virginity in some way, and completely opposite what had happened in the hotel bathroom with Garrett. For one thing I was lying on my back, not doggy-style. Also, Theo licked my asshole a lot first. I was scared, of course, that it wouldn’t taste very good: as much as I washed before I saw him. I was afraid but he softly licked and sucked it, making me come with his finger gently rubbing my clit. I kept coming on his fingers, when he also put one in my asshole and kissed me from my belly to my neck to my face. Then he kissed my mouth and forehead. His cock was so hard it pushed all the way out of his foreskin, already glistening, straining for me. I grabbed him and it was warm and pulsing.
“Are you ready?” he asked, and I nodded.
He nudged my cheeks apart and opened my asshole slowly. First he put the tip of his dick inside me while continuing to rub my clit gently with the hand he hadn’t used to stroke my cheeks and crack. Maybe he knew about urinary tract infections? Could mermaids get them too? I loved his dick moving slowly in and out of my ass, a new intimacy. I never imagined that anal sex could be loving. I never thought of it as an intimate act, one of trust, only a pornographic and brutal one. So I cried a lot, but not because it hurt.
45.
I didn’t mention Dominic to Theo again. It was taking more and more pills per day to keep the dog relaxed and asleep, and I went to three different vets to get more prescriptions. In an odd way I had become a drug addict of sorts, like Claire after all—going from doctor to doctor to get the pills. Only I wasn’t getting high on the medication itself, but on the time and intimacy with Theo that it afforded me.
“We travel a lot,” I heard myself say to the veterinarian. “I’m going to be touring through Europe and I can’t bear to leave him home with a sitter. He’s my child, basically. So I’ll need some for the plane ride and each of the train rides from city to city.”
“How many cities?” she asked.
“Ten?” I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
I had heard of addicts going from doctor to doctor to get pills as their tolerance for the drugs deepened. Anything involving addiction always escalated, never the other way around. I felt this to be true within myself, and that when and if I returned to Phoenix I would need a thousand lovers to ever take the place of how good it felt to be with Theo.
One night, when we were lying on the sofa tangled up together, after a day of lovemaking, I asked him how many other women who lived on land he had been with.
“There have been a few,” he said.
He told me about a woman named Alexis with long black hair who was a heroin addict. He had licked her menstrual blood too, the first he ever tasted, and watched her shoot dope. She would come to the rocky shore in Monterey every night, when he lived farther north, already slurring her words. He never knew whether she believed he was real, or a side effect of the drugs. But he stayed with her as she sat by the ocean and nodded in and out. Then she stopped coming to the ocean entirely. He feared she had died, until one night, he heard her singing in an old wooden boathouse some feet from the shore. He dragged himself into the boathouse and stayed with her that night. In the boathouse were a few old blankets on the ground and a suitcase full of clothes. He realized then that she was homeless. He wished he could walk on land and bring her food. He would bring her fish, but their raw, dead bodies only nauseated her and he didn’t know how to build a fire to cook them. So he gave her licks of seawater and bites of seaweed.
