Found this ealier...
Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:13 am
Joseph Dooley called me this morning, which surprised me because Joseph stopped calling me after he moved in with Sarah. I understood completely. When you date your friend’s ex, you talk less, and the unease sets in like a rot; when you move in with your friend’s ex, you break contact altogether, sterilize and débride the friendship; when you impregnate her, you amputate and change phone numbers.
“Broseph, long time, no speak,” I said. I liked calling him that. I'd coined it in the fifth grade and eleven years later, it still made me laugh.
“Yeah, sorry. I go by “Joe” now,” he said.
“Sarah likes it better, huh.”
“I like it, too. It sounds strong.”
“Sure. Joe,” I said. The apprehension and silence crawled on us like ants. Formication, they called it—the feeling of imaginary bugs crawling all over you. I waited for him to get to the point, and I swatted my arms just in case.
“Look Dave, it’s Sarah. I’m worried,” he said.
“The baby alright?”
“Oh, the fetus is healthy, it’s nothing like that.” Fetus? How clinical. All of Joseph’s charming idiosyncrasies turned creepy.
“Then what is it?”
“Well, this is hard to put seriously, I don’t know—Dave?” he said and jumped into it. “Sarah is convinced that my cat is trying to kill her baby.”
Joseph told me about Sarah’s desultory moods and bizarre behavior—“Sounds like the old Sarah I knew!” I said—and his words tumbled onto each other, losing all coordination in the face of desperation. I felt bad for him. He had been my friend, after all. We grew pubic hair together, double-dated at the freshman dance, failed Calculus arm in arm. I felt the pangs of loyalty brawl my grudges. When he told me her latest whispered confession—as if the cat, Klondike, could understand her accusations—I laughed into the phone, hoping it would jar him awake, because he sounded like he might’ve believed her.
“Broseph, your cat isn’t trying to trip Sarah and kill the baby.”
“But cats,” he said, “are crafty, territorial little bastards. Sometimes Klondike will just sit there and stare at her…evil.”
“Broseph—”
“Joe,” he corrected.
“I remember Klondike tripping me, too. He gets under people’s feet all the time. He wants attention.”
“She, not he. Klondike is a female.” And he weighted the revelation like it held the key to a mystery.
“Wait, are you saying the cat is jealous? You’re talking like you’re pregnant now.”
“Pheromones. Animals can smell them. Klondike knows about the baby.”
I’m not sure what Joseph wanted from me. He hoped that I’d talk some sense into Sarah, as an old friend. But he didn’t trust me with her, not because I’d try anything, but because she might. Not a good feeling when your tenuous grip on a wanderlust lover falters. I had gone through it. My hand strained and she slipped, falling from my trapeze perch and landing in Joseph’s net. And he was all too happy to catch her. Joseph had grown up my second fiddle, but that's a natural thing among boys. We tend to pair like that: one guiding by example, the other lending admiration. The handsome one with the symmetrical face and genetic advantage got the girl, and the unremarkable one got to be a tertiary part of it all. He reflected my strength back at me, and I made him feel accepted. But the design is faulty. There comes a time of revolt, when the second fiddle takes his aria and makes a mad dash for an upstage. I sensed it coming, but tried to ignore it. I've had many Sarah's, and they came easy. He'd only had one. Desperation must have been living in him, congesting like bacteria, and I imagined it a drowning strangle. And a drowning man claws at anything to float himself, which means he's dangerous.
“I might have to drop him off at the pound. Sarah’s saying some really nasty things. I don't want—I can't—lose her.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll come over and talk to her.” But it felt like I was stepping in something.
Why do we run hypothetical scenarios through our heads when all they do is steer our behavior into guilt? On the drive over, I had sex with Sarah twice, and each washed in a different atmosphere and circumstance, and I loved them both. The first time she repented and wept at my feet and the sex was sweet, full of absolution, and I felt like a merciful god. The second fantasy was more realistic—and therefore, better—and in it she flirted with me by hurling insults, as is her way, and we slapped each other, finally exploding into carnality. It was rough and fast. I felt like a god. Revenge and sex were the same with Sarah, and I stopped myself from a third fantasy before it got out of hand, before I wanted it for real.
I pulled into the carport and knocked on their apartment door. I heard arguing, probably about me, and I stowed a smile. Oh, what did it matter? Tact was anachronistic in this new age of betrayal. I was smarmy and glad, and when Joseph answered the door, I wrenched a toothy grin and hoped he was miserable and was glad when he looked it.
“Broseph!” I said, and he let me in. He'd lost weight in the last year. His face was gaunt and hard angled. He shook my hand and offered to get me something to drink.
Sarah wobbled from the bedroom, a swollen pod on skinny stalk legs, and she sighed and pushed her aureate bangs to the side and wiped the shine from her nose and high cheeks. Her head cocked, her pale eyebrows slid into a steeple of pity, and she pouted and moaned my name like a falling siren. "Daaaave…" I scooped her into a hug, really laying on the intrusion, and felt Joseph’s acid look bore into my back. She smelled like jasmine. She had worn scented oils in the beginning of our relationship, and jasmine had been my well-known favorite. She hugged me back, hard. Chemical reactions fizzed in my brain, and I saw things: the curve of her spine in the Sunday morning bedroom light; the way her hands looked interlaced in mine, alternating tan and pale fingers like stacked sandwich cookies; her nose crinkled in laugh when I couldn’t stop my throat from nervously urping during our first kiss. I pulled away and saw how swollen her breasts were. “Wow,” I said, “you’re really showing.”
“Eight months,” she said.
“So where’s the little monster?”
They looked at me, dumb.
"Oh, you mean the cat!" Joseph said. He went into the hallway and slipped into the bathroom, and I heard Klondike mewing and Joseph mumbling. Sarah and I waited in the crowded living room, still very close. She said, "You shaved it off," and ran her hand on my cheek. Her skin was cold, but heat spread beneath her touch. Joseph reappeared and must've seen me blushing, even through the dusky lighting, because he asked, "Still living with your parents?" He passed Klondike—sleek, gray, skittish—and the cat's hind legs wheeled, and his forearms hinged out like Frankenstein. I put him against my heart and scratched the short-furred patches in front of his ears, and his green eyes folded to slits. He shook a purr into my ribs.
"This little guy? He wouldn't hurt a fly," I said, more to the cat than to them.
"He's been such a little brat," Sarah said, "always getting under my feet. I'm afraid I'm going to fall and hurt the baby."
Joseph punched a look at her. "That's not how you've been putting it the past week. What about cats hating pregnant women? Trying to kill babies? Sleeping on infants' heads and suffocating them in the crib? What about all that?"
Klondike was really purring now. I could've opened my mouth and the sound would've buzzed out. Sarah said "I never said I was sure, okay?" and now they both looked embarrassed.
“Thanks so much for taking him,” Joseph said to me. I stopped stroking and the cat swallowed its hum.
“What? I didn’t agree to anything of the sort.”
“I thought you were going to help us out—" he said, but I cut him off, voiced raised, and Klondike squirmed.
“I said I would come over and talk to Sarah. The cat isn’t my problem!”
“Shit,” he muttered, and took Klondike by neck scruff. Claws unsheathed and pulled my sweater until the fabric popped free and clung to me again, covered in gray fur. Klondike batted Joseph's hands and hissed. “Shit,” he said again and slammed the bathroom door after they'd stepped inside. Sarah and I were alone again.
"You're not happy," I said under my breath.
"I miss you."
"I'm not buying that."
Something in the bathroom fell, and Joseph yelped "Let go, you little bastard!" Sarah took a step closer, bringing the jasmine with her.
"Why not?" she said.
"Because you like to run from things. You're looking for a way out."
Anger twisted her face. "I love my baby."
"I'm not saying that."
Cat screech wailed from behind the bathroom door. Sarah melted into seduction again, her eyes tapering exotic and her lips puffing. She coiled her arm around my neck, and pressed her curves against me, and she had so many of them now. Sex is revenge, I told myself, and tried to drum up an excuse to hurt Joseph, but I didn't care that much anymore. Sarah was hurting him enough.
"I don't care about the stupid cat," she said. "I just wanted to see you again. To know for sure, if I'd made a mistake with you."
"And?"
More muffled clamor in the bathroom. Water. Mumbling.
"I'm going to call you tonight after Joe's asleep," she breathed in my ear and scratched her fingernails into my neck hard enough to chalk white lines in my skin.
"You shouldn't," I said. Her hand winded my hip, and she impishly laughed.
"I know."
"No, Sarah, I mean you can't. Don't call me." I pulled away and saw devastation set on her, darkening her, wilting her shoulders. She wrinkled up, spitting out something sour, and said, "You don't really care what happens to Joe. Why should you?"
"I don't. I guess he's got what's coming to him. But I'm not going to be the one." I backpedaled from her and the hallway, towards the front door, and almost tripped over the lint-smudged rug. Then I noticed how sad their apartment looked. Dishes stacked the floor, and bottles and cups covered the coffee table until it resembled a carnival ring toss. Food rotted. Wrinkled clothing balls grew from the carpet in musty mounds. It all smelled like jasmine-laced cat piss.
"I'm still going to call you," she said, and her last word fell silent when light spilled into the hallway, and Joseph emerged from the bathroom. He was sweating, and his eyes wandered unfocused. He didn't look at us. He put his arm around Sarah, but when she moved away, he dropped it to his side.
"I want you to go now," he said to me, "leave Sarah alone. I shouldn't have called you."
I didn't feel like being snide because I saw something resolute in him, something that stood chest-puffed and hard-chinned, like a soldier, so I said "Okay, Joe. Good luck to you both," and I said it as nice as I could, then added: "Everything will work out with Klondike, you'll see."
"I took care of the cat," Joseph said, emotionless, finally staring at me—through me—and I saw that his arms were wet and bleeding and his shirt stained with water. "It's in the sink, and now there's no reason for Sarah to be afraid. We don't need luck. We're going to be very happy."
-
Hmmm...
“Broseph, long time, no speak,” I said. I liked calling him that. I'd coined it in the fifth grade and eleven years later, it still made me laugh.
“Yeah, sorry. I go by “Joe” now,” he said.
“Sarah likes it better, huh.”
“I like it, too. It sounds strong.”
“Sure. Joe,” I said. The apprehension and silence crawled on us like ants. Formication, they called it—the feeling of imaginary bugs crawling all over you. I waited for him to get to the point, and I swatted my arms just in case.
“Look Dave, it’s Sarah. I’m worried,” he said.
“The baby alright?”
“Oh, the fetus is healthy, it’s nothing like that.” Fetus? How clinical. All of Joseph’s charming idiosyncrasies turned creepy.
“Then what is it?”
“Well, this is hard to put seriously, I don’t know—Dave?” he said and jumped into it. “Sarah is convinced that my cat is trying to kill her baby.”
Joseph told me about Sarah’s desultory moods and bizarre behavior—“Sounds like the old Sarah I knew!” I said—and his words tumbled onto each other, losing all coordination in the face of desperation. I felt bad for him. He had been my friend, after all. We grew pubic hair together, double-dated at the freshman dance, failed Calculus arm in arm. I felt the pangs of loyalty brawl my grudges. When he told me her latest whispered confession—as if the cat, Klondike, could understand her accusations—I laughed into the phone, hoping it would jar him awake, because he sounded like he might’ve believed her.
“Broseph, your cat isn’t trying to trip Sarah and kill the baby.”
“But cats,” he said, “are crafty, territorial little bastards. Sometimes Klondike will just sit there and stare at her…evil.”
“Broseph—”
“Joe,” he corrected.
“I remember Klondike tripping me, too. He gets under people’s feet all the time. He wants attention.”
“She, not he. Klondike is a female.” And he weighted the revelation like it held the key to a mystery.
“Wait, are you saying the cat is jealous? You’re talking like you’re pregnant now.”
“Pheromones. Animals can smell them. Klondike knows about the baby.”
I’m not sure what Joseph wanted from me. He hoped that I’d talk some sense into Sarah, as an old friend. But he didn’t trust me with her, not because I’d try anything, but because she might. Not a good feeling when your tenuous grip on a wanderlust lover falters. I had gone through it. My hand strained and she slipped, falling from my trapeze perch and landing in Joseph’s net. And he was all too happy to catch her. Joseph had grown up my second fiddle, but that's a natural thing among boys. We tend to pair like that: one guiding by example, the other lending admiration. The handsome one with the symmetrical face and genetic advantage got the girl, and the unremarkable one got to be a tertiary part of it all. He reflected my strength back at me, and I made him feel accepted. But the design is faulty. There comes a time of revolt, when the second fiddle takes his aria and makes a mad dash for an upstage. I sensed it coming, but tried to ignore it. I've had many Sarah's, and they came easy. He'd only had one. Desperation must have been living in him, congesting like bacteria, and I imagined it a drowning strangle. And a drowning man claws at anything to float himself, which means he's dangerous.
“I might have to drop him off at the pound. Sarah’s saying some really nasty things. I don't want—I can't—lose her.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll come over and talk to her.” But it felt like I was stepping in something.
Why do we run hypothetical scenarios through our heads when all they do is steer our behavior into guilt? On the drive over, I had sex with Sarah twice, and each washed in a different atmosphere and circumstance, and I loved them both. The first time she repented and wept at my feet and the sex was sweet, full of absolution, and I felt like a merciful god. The second fantasy was more realistic—and therefore, better—and in it she flirted with me by hurling insults, as is her way, and we slapped each other, finally exploding into carnality. It was rough and fast. I felt like a god. Revenge and sex were the same with Sarah, and I stopped myself from a third fantasy before it got out of hand, before I wanted it for real.
I pulled into the carport and knocked on their apartment door. I heard arguing, probably about me, and I stowed a smile. Oh, what did it matter? Tact was anachronistic in this new age of betrayal. I was smarmy and glad, and when Joseph answered the door, I wrenched a toothy grin and hoped he was miserable and was glad when he looked it.
“Broseph!” I said, and he let me in. He'd lost weight in the last year. His face was gaunt and hard angled. He shook my hand and offered to get me something to drink.
Sarah wobbled from the bedroom, a swollen pod on skinny stalk legs, and she sighed and pushed her aureate bangs to the side and wiped the shine from her nose and high cheeks. Her head cocked, her pale eyebrows slid into a steeple of pity, and she pouted and moaned my name like a falling siren. "Daaaave…" I scooped her into a hug, really laying on the intrusion, and felt Joseph’s acid look bore into my back. She smelled like jasmine. She had worn scented oils in the beginning of our relationship, and jasmine had been my well-known favorite. She hugged me back, hard. Chemical reactions fizzed in my brain, and I saw things: the curve of her spine in the Sunday morning bedroom light; the way her hands looked interlaced in mine, alternating tan and pale fingers like stacked sandwich cookies; her nose crinkled in laugh when I couldn’t stop my throat from nervously urping during our first kiss. I pulled away and saw how swollen her breasts were. “Wow,” I said, “you’re really showing.”
“Eight months,” she said.
“So where’s the little monster?”
They looked at me, dumb.
"Oh, you mean the cat!" Joseph said. He went into the hallway and slipped into the bathroom, and I heard Klondike mewing and Joseph mumbling. Sarah and I waited in the crowded living room, still very close. She said, "You shaved it off," and ran her hand on my cheek. Her skin was cold, but heat spread beneath her touch. Joseph reappeared and must've seen me blushing, even through the dusky lighting, because he asked, "Still living with your parents?" He passed Klondike—sleek, gray, skittish—and the cat's hind legs wheeled, and his forearms hinged out like Frankenstein. I put him against my heart and scratched the short-furred patches in front of his ears, and his green eyes folded to slits. He shook a purr into my ribs.
"This little guy? He wouldn't hurt a fly," I said, more to the cat than to them.
"He's been such a little brat," Sarah said, "always getting under my feet. I'm afraid I'm going to fall and hurt the baby."
Joseph punched a look at her. "That's not how you've been putting it the past week. What about cats hating pregnant women? Trying to kill babies? Sleeping on infants' heads and suffocating them in the crib? What about all that?"
Klondike was really purring now. I could've opened my mouth and the sound would've buzzed out. Sarah said "I never said I was sure, okay?" and now they both looked embarrassed.
“Thanks so much for taking him,” Joseph said to me. I stopped stroking and the cat swallowed its hum.
“What? I didn’t agree to anything of the sort.”
“I thought you were going to help us out—" he said, but I cut him off, voiced raised, and Klondike squirmed.
“I said I would come over and talk to Sarah. The cat isn’t my problem!”
“Shit,” he muttered, and took Klondike by neck scruff. Claws unsheathed and pulled my sweater until the fabric popped free and clung to me again, covered in gray fur. Klondike batted Joseph's hands and hissed. “Shit,” he said again and slammed the bathroom door after they'd stepped inside. Sarah and I were alone again.
"You're not happy," I said under my breath.
"I miss you."
"I'm not buying that."
Something in the bathroom fell, and Joseph yelped "Let go, you little bastard!" Sarah took a step closer, bringing the jasmine with her.
"Why not?" she said.
"Because you like to run from things. You're looking for a way out."
Anger twisted her face. "I love my baby."
"I'm not saying that."
Cat screech wailed from behind the bathroom door. Sarah melted into seduction again, her eyes tapering exotic and her lips puffing. She coiled her arm around my neck, and pressed her curves against me, and she had so many of them now. Sex is revenge, I told myself, and tried to drum up an excuse to hurt Joseph, but I didn't care that much anymore. Sarah was hurting him enough.
"I don't care about the stupid cat," she said. "I just wanted to see you again. To know for sure, if I'd made a mistake with you."
"And?"
More muffled clamor in the bathroom. Water. Mumbling.
"I'm going to call you tonight after Joe's asleep," she breathed in my ear and scratched her fingernails into my neck hard enough to chalk white lines in my skin.
"You shouldn't," I said. Her hand winded my hip, and she impishly laughed.
"I know."
"No, Sarah, I mean you can't. Don't call me." I pulled away and saw devastation set on her, darkening her, wilting her shoulders. She wrinkled up, spitting out something sour, and said, "You don't really care what happens to Joe. Why should you?"
"I don't. I guess he's got what's coming to him. But I'm not going to be the one." I backpedaled from her and the hallway, towards the front door, and almost tripped over the lint-smudged rug. Then I noticed how sad their apartment looked. Dishes stacked the floor, and bottles and cups covered the coffee table until it resembled a carnival ring toss. Food rotted. Wrinkled clothing balls grew from the carpet in musty mounds. It all smelled like jasmine-laced cat piss.
"I'm still going to call you," she said, and her last word fell silent when light spilled into the hallway, and Joseph emerged from the bathroom. He was sweating, and his eyes wandered unfocused. He didn't look at us. He put his arm around Sarah, but when she moved away, he dropped it to his side.
"I want you to go now," he said to me, "leave Sarah alone. I shouldn't have called you."
I didn't feel like being snide because I saw something resolute in him, something that stood chest-puffed and hard-chinned, like a soldier, so I said "Okay, Joe. Good luck to you both," and I said it as nice as I could, then added: "Everything will work out with Klondike, you'll see."
"I took care of the cat," Joseph said, emotionless, finally staring at me—through me—and I saw that his arms were wet and bleeding and his shirt stained with water. "It's in the sink, and now there's no reason for Sarah to be afraid. We don't need luck. We're going to be very happy."
-
Hmmm...
