Suicide Blonde Read Free Page A

cross-country and fights with their fathers and especially their old lovers? Sometimes I think I'm more interested in Bell's old lovers than I am in Bell. When I met him he was seeing a woman. And though I never said it, her description was enough like Marilyn's that I would think of her that way. Once I called her, the answering machine revealed a disembodied voice, low and secure, that made me feel stupid. But Bell only longs for Kevin, and sometimes, lately, I feel myself longing for him too.
    Bell told me Kevin was dark with a tight hairless chest and a cock that was lipstick pink and slightly bowed to the left. He had intelligent eyes and a way of leaning toward you when he made a point. When I thought of Kevin he was surrounded with pale sunlight like Jesus. Sometimes he seemed to smile at me and I'd feel myself being pulled through my head into Bell's pearlish chain of memories. But once there, it was frustrating, like watching from the window as your beautiful young neighbors made love.
    I thought of Bell yesterday, how he had satirized female cooing sounds, made his features dreamy, threw his head back in burlesque of a female orgasm. The mocking tone of his voice, “You take off that,” when he stretched the material of the teddy then let the elastic edge snap against my skin. He is bad for me. This idea startled me and for a while I watched the fountain water splash between the figurines. A strong wind juggled the eucalyptus leaves. Nature is most beautiful in its movement: wind, water, the sinking sun. And it was just then that I saw a woman striding carelessly into the park.
    She leaned on the edge of the fountain, letting her long hair brush the water, dressed in a paisley mini-dress and platform shoes. Wind rattled the lilies. She unbuckled her shoes and in one practiced movement pulled her dress over her head, and stepped into the fountain. I was startled, heard my breathing change like with sex. She was nude and so pale that the marble seemed sooty in comparison. When she looked my way her eyes caught light and burned red. If she saw me, she didn't seem to care. Her wide features were set smoothly, but it could just as easily have been the calm of the insane as true tranquillity. Quickly, she washed her feet, squatted, splashed water between her legs and over her breasts. Standing, she put her head between the thighs of a marble soldier and was encased for a moment in a pillar of foaming water. Sitting on the edge of the pool, she wrung her hair out and skimmed water from her body with flat open palms. There was a frail power about her, not dangerous, but resilient, as if she'd be hard to kill. I admired her absence of fear. The woman pulled on her dress, held her wet hair back as she strapped her platform shoes, then turned toward the milky lights of the Tenderloin.
    I stood and watched her descent. The water seemed to absolve her. She held her shoulders regally and didn't look back, though I wanted her to turn and see me standing small against the trees. I felt better . . . maybe it was just that I knew Bell was meandering back to our apartment, past the Bacchus Kirk and the Malaysian bar on the corner. Or maybe the woman was a talisman, one that would help me in whatever came next.
    O PENING THE APARTMENT DOOR, I THOUGHT THE LEOPARD'S lit eyes were two cigarette tips, but then felt the empty space and knew Bell was still not home. I didn't turn on the light. Whenever he left a place it was like he had never been there. I went around the room touching things. This is his . . . I was trying to get on intimate terms with the room. I needed it on my side.
    Where would I be when he came in? On the bed would seem like I had already acquiesced. What if I leaned against the kitchen doorway and lit a cigarette? What would that say? Indifference? I could get into the tub, force him to talk to me through the closed door—I liked the implication of that—he would be confronted with the thought of my body, the image