incorporates the word “error.” “It’s not normal to wander around a man’s apartment on a Monday afternoon, obsessed.” One cup of syrupy coffee nursed for hours, chain-smoking, time slipping away. “I’m scared.” And why not, I think, even as I whisper into the phone, my bridges burning behind me in bright rows, signposts of what I’ve abandoned for him: a comprehensive-if secondhand-grid of a code: how one* lives*, assembled over decades. Eyes looking ahead, open wide as in a trance, no idea yet what I’m looking at. There’s cause for alarm all right, it would be abnormal to be whistling through my days. The responses are correct, well-oiled brain/well-scrutinized emotional machinery ticking away in unison, all in gear. New events, not enough information available, are liable to be unsettling; new sequences more unsettling than isolated events, new processes more alarming yet….
“Anachronism,” he repeats after me, and there is a pause, and then he says lightly, “So maybe we are and so who cares. We’re fine.” “Tell me what to do,” I say. “Maybe you should go back to the office,” he says. “Do office work at the office. Or give it until three. If you’re not working by then, you’ll know.”
He’s set my afternoon out for me, it’s crisp and clear, divided into segments, so much for that, thirty minutes on that, no more pacing from room to room. I’ll do what he says. I’ll do what he tells me, forever. Too big a word, better stay away from those, you ought to know better. But what if I’ve found an absolute after all? Always, never, forever, completely: I’ll always love him, I’ll love him completely, I’ll never stop, I’ll do what he tells me forever-how stern a theology can you pick? The god of wrath, forever-and-on, unquenched desire, brimstone paradise. I’ve turned a believer of sorts after all, turncoat, traitor to what I have arduously taught myself: don’t cast me out, don’t ever leave me, desire unquenchable, as long as he loves me I’m saved.
I’m setting the kitchen timer for half an hour. It’ll be 3 P.M. then, I’ll get immersed in the new account then, a fat folder to be studied, I’ll plot my strategy. In the meantime I’ll type. The story a woman told me, how she lived with a man for the year it took her to write her first book, how at 11 P.M. every night he’d turn the TV up and say, “When will you be done with your typing?” She became adept at recognizing the split second when she had to stop-somewhere between 2 and 3 A.M.-just preceding the moment when he’d start hurling chairs, books, bottles.
Typing. Recalling in print, pressing wobbly black buttons. A more or less faithful machine recording a process: what he makes happen. The sleepy slave who, at dawn, sits at her master’s feet and recounts in a lullaby voice, a soothing singsong, what has happened to her that night, as the sky lightens and before they go to sleep, endlessly weary, limbs afloat.
Rapidly, too-55 wpm? Not that fast. Could I play his secretary, give up this lovely, absurd job of mine, be with him around the clock? Beverly, the friendly voice answering his phone: “… may be out to lunch, if he is… message?” From Queens, he explains, “they get paid more in Manhattan, how else are you going to get them out of Queens,” my brain registering feebly but of course I say nothing because my stomach surrenders under the blatant, indolent tone of his voice as he says, “You’ve got to pay those girls more, of course, how else…”; my stomach and thighs responding: faceless girls out of Queens or wherever, just like me, I’m one of them. But ME he loves, ME he allows to bury a face in his armpit, for ME he lights a cigarette with carefully squinted eyes, puts it between my lips, my mouth slightly open, waiting for what he’ll put into it next. Tongue, a dribble of wine, cock, a thumb, one square of bitter chocolate, two fingers, four, half a sauteed mushroom,
“Anachronism,” he repeats after me, and there is a pause, and then he says lightly, “So maybe we are and so who cares. We’re fine.” “Tell me what to do,” I say. “Maybe you should go back to the office,” he says. “Do office work at the office. Or give it until three. If you’re not working by then, you’ll know.”
He’s set my afternoon out for me, it’s crisp and clear, divided into segments, so much for that, thirty minutes on that, no more pacing from room to room. I’ll do what he says. I’ll do what he tells me, forever. Too big a word, better stay away from those, you ought to know better. But what if I’ve found an absolute after all? Always, never, forever, completely: I’ll always love him, I’ll love him completely, I’ll never stop, I’ll do what he tells me forever-how stern a theology can you pick? The god of wrath, forever-and-on, unquenched desire, brimstone paradise. I’ve turned a believer of sorts after all, turncoat, traitor to what I have arduously taught myself: don’t cast me out, don’t ever leave me, desire unquenchable, as long as he loves me I’m saved.
I’m setting the kitchen timer for half an hour. It’ll be 3 P.M. then, I’ll get immersed in the new account then, a fat folder to be studied, I’ll plot my strategy. In the meantime I’ll type. The story a woman told me, how she lived with a man for the year it took her to write her first book, how at 11 P.M. every night he’d turn the TV up and say, “When will you be done with your typing?” She became adept at recognizing the split second when she had to stop-somewhere between 2 and 3 A.M.-just preceding the moment when he’d start hurling chairs, books, bottles.
Typing. Recalling in print, pressing wobbly black buttons. A more or less faithful machine recording a process: what he makes happen. The sleepy slave who, at dawn, sits at her master’s feet and recounts in a lullaby voice, a soothing singsong, what has happened to her that night, as the sky lightens and before they go to sleep, endlessly weary, limbs afloat.
Rapidly, too-55 wpm? Not that fast. Could I play his secretary, give up this lovely, absurd job of mine, be with him around the clock? Beverly, the friendly voice answering his phone: “… may be out to lunch, if he is… message?” From Queens, he explains, “they get paid more in Manhattan, how else are you going to get them out of Queens,” my brain registering feebly but of course I say nothing because my stomach surrenders under the blatant, indolent tone of his voice as he says, “You’ve got to pay those girls more, of course, how else…”; my stomach and thighs responding: faceless girls out of Queens or wherever, just like me, I’m one of them. But ME he loves, ME he allows to bury a face in his armpit, for ME he lights a cigarette with carefully squinted eyes, puts it between my lips, my mouth slightly open, waiting for what he’ll put into it next. Tongue, a dribble of wine, cock, a thumb, one square of bitter chocolate, two fingers, four, half a sauteed mushroom,
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