When Watched (15 page)

Margo looked at the cat, then at Baby. “You're talking about yourself.”

Baby said nothing but gave a shy look of agreement.

Margo moved an inch away, fully ignoring the demonic white shape between them. He had spread himself over Baby's midsection.

“So James is hot right?” Margo grinned.

“Not really.”

“Yes he is. You wouldn't say he wasn't unless he
was
.”

“Whatever.” Baby moved the white mass onto the floor and rolled onto her side, clutching her gut.

“He's so hot,” Margo said. “He even makes
smoking
look hot.”

“He makes it look like breathing itself.”

Margo smiled. “That's true.”

 • • • 

The next day Margo arrived to class late with a goofy smile. She sat noisily behind James, slapping a marble notebook onto her desktop. Everyone stared. When they had regrouped, she raised the eraser end of her pencil and jabbed him gently on the shoulder.

James looked back with a flash of annoyance, then leaned forward in his chair.

Margo gawked at the back of his head. Slowly, she retracted her pencil, setting it down on the desk, where it rolled to the floor. Margo didn't reach down to get it. She hardly moved. A girl in a red skirt handed her the pencil and she took it mutely, still gawking at him, her eyes immense. Margo couldn't hear anything, only the sounds of her insides: her stomach, her heart, the blood around her brain.

When class ended, James stood quickly with averted eyes.

“Hey,” she said loudly.

“Hi,” he said and smiled. It was a sneaky, fearful smile. He walked into the hall.

Margo shoved her notebook into her bag, walking swiftly after him. “Hey!”

“What?”

Margo looked stricken. “Why are you being weird?”

“I'm not,” he said with another unpleasant smile. “I have somewhere to be.”

Margo stopped walking. She watched him reach the end of the hallway and turn the corner without looking back. Then she leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, crowds of loud people passing obliviously. It had happened so fast, his retreat.
And now everything will be slow,
Margo thought.
This feeling. It could last forever.

She left the building and felt violent toward strolling people. Businessmen passed one by one, talking loudly into their headsets. She kept being caught off guard by an inviting face that wasn't for her. It was confusing and humiliating.
Every place is like an airport,
she thought.

Margo acquired a large bag of corn chips. When she got home the apartment was empty, save for Chowder, who sat meowing by the bathroom door. It was open a bit, white light pouring onto the floor. Margo approached the door and saw something else, the edge of a dark shape, rocking slightly. “Baby?” She gave the door a push and stood staring.

A black dress on a wire hanger hung from the shower rod, blowing subtly in the breeze of an open window.

Margo looked down at the cat and cried. They were the expressionless tears of someone who rarely wept—who hated to. She walked to the couch and threw herself down.

The window screeched open and Baby stepped inside with a towel over her shoulders. She wore a green bikini and circular black frames with cola-colored lenses. Her skin glistened with oil.

“What the shit?” Margo demanded.

“I was sunning myself,” Baby said, removing her glasses.

“Since when do you
sun
yourself?” Margo said, cutting her eyes.

“Since now. What do you care?”

“I was worried!”

“Calm down. I was just on the fire escape.”

“Well I didn't know that. You're always here!” Margo said, pointing to the spot she occupied. “And anyway, we
burn
.”

“Not if exposure is gradual,” Baby said. “I'm being very careful.”

“Your shoulders look red.”

“They're not.”

Margo stormed off. She brought the corn chips to bed and ate them slowly, staring into space, weary with thought. She sensed in that moment that she would never be an adult, not in the manner she had envisioned for herself as a child.
This is never going to end,
she thought.
All this wanting.

Baby came in and sat at the foot of the bed. “Are you seriously mad at me?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry? Do you want some real food?” A rare sweetness had entered Baby's voice.

Margo greeted the alien tone with a weak smile. “Hunger isn't even the word,” she said. “I'm just really interested in food.” Then her face morphed back into a mask of pain and she punched the bed, startling her sister.

“What happened?”

“It doesn't matter.” Margo lay on her side. “I don't know what happened. We had such a good time. I mean, I
know
he had a good time.”

“Maybe he met someone else.”

“In a day?”

“Guys are always weird after.”

“But we were just getting started.”

“Guys don't wanna get started. They want to end it and move on to someone else.”

“Stop telling me what guys are like. I know what they're like.” Margo sat up. “You have a sunburn.”

“I know.”

Margo wished in that moment that she were more like Baby, who'd never had much of an appetite for boys. Her sister just wanted a quiet room to watch television in. That or she wanted to die. Margo was never sure which it was.

“Why don't you ever go on dates?” Margo asked.

“Because I need space.”

“For the rest of your life?”

“Fuck you.”

“What if you're gay?”

“I am
not
gay.” Baby gaped in outrage. “If I was gay, wouldn't you be too?”

“Not necessarily.” Margo stared into space. “What about that guy Aaron who lives downstairs? Would you date him? He's like,
obsessed
with you.”

“I'm so much smarter than him,” Baby said. “And he doesn't even know it. That's part of his stupidity.”

Margo repositioned her pillow and noticed it was covered in cat hair. “What the shit?” She began picking little white hairs off the faded blue fabric, one by one. “Chowder is
not
allowed in here!”

“You have to close your door,” Baby said, the familiar shade of scorn resurfacing in her voice.

Margo stopped grooming the pillow, the beginnings of a
sob dimpling her chin. “Do you think anyone will ever love me?” she asked.

“Yeah. But you'll probably be too busy doing something stupid to notice.”

“Be nice to me!” Margo said, her eyes welling with tears.

“Okay.” Baby patted her shoulder. “I'm sorry.”

Margo seized the pillow and threw it onto the floor. “I don't see how I can go back to class,” she said. “I might strangle him. There's
no
kind of violence that doesn't seem appropriate.”

Baby laughed. “Men are just shifty,” she said uselessly. “I mean, their desires are.”

Margo had entered a grim trance. “Desire is too grand a word for what men experience.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“I said hey and he said
what?
” Margo said with mock disgust, her face reanimating. “Like I had appeared on his doorstep with like, his
name
carved into my neck.” Margo sighed. She lay back down. “God. Why do we have consciousness?” she said.

“It was probably just a mutation that kept evolving.” Baby moved the bag of chips onto the floor and lay next to her sister. “I don't know.” She pulled the sheet up over them.

“I thought you were dead,” Margo said.

Baby stiffened. A small silence followed. “I'm not gonna do that,” she said finally, in her chilly way.

Margo looked sideward at her sister. “It would be a mistake,” she said carefully.

“I know.”

“I mean a corpse can't see itself lying there. It's a show for everyone but you.”

“Please shut up,” Baby said evenly. “I was never showing off. It wasn't like that.”

“What was it like?”

Baby softened. “It was like . . . I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
How
I would do it.
When
I would do it. I feel like if I ever
did
do it, it would be to stop thinking about doing it.”

“So why didn't you?”

“I don't know. I couldn't deal with someone finding me. I kept wishing there was some way to off myself and then dispose of the body.”

“Well I certainly wouldn't want to find you.”

“Well I wouldn't want you to look through my room and sell my stuff,” Baby snapped. “There's actually a lot of preparation that goes into suicide if you care—and I
do
care. But I'm lazy so I kept putting it off.”

“Maybe because you wanted to live.”

“No. It was the laziness. Also the cat.”

They both looked at Chowder, who sat at the foot of the bed, purring ominously. “He loves you,” Margo said.

“Please. Cats don't
love
anyone. He hates me the least.”

“So how would you do it?”

“I'm not discussing this with you.”

“With a gun?”

“No. People fuck that up all the time. Then you wind up with like, half a face.” Baby looked thoroughly at the ceiling. “I would jump off a building,” she said finally, almost serenely.

“Why?”
Margo said. She looked slapped.

“Because it's fast. You can't change your mind.”

“I would
want
to be able to change my mind.”

“Because you don't want to die.”

“Yeah, I don't. And I don't think it's
cool
to want to die. I don't think you're
cool
.”

“I don't either.”

“Well good.”

They were quiet then, blinking at the ceiling with their same eyes.

“I was reading that the Aztecs took your heart out when you died and weighed it,” Baby said, finally. “To determine where you were going in the afterlife.”

Margo made a face. “I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me.”

“I think it's a little bit beautiful,” Baby said, touching the crowd of charms on her chest. “I wonder what it's like to be gone.”

“Probably not much of an experience.”

“Yeah. It's like the
opposite
of an experience.” Baby rubbed the little jeweled guitar, then the ax.

“Do you think there's enough time left on earth?” Margo asked. “I mean to have a whole life?”

They made sideward eye contact.

“I think so,” Baby said. “Maybe
just
enough.”

“I want to be an artist.”

“So be one.”

“But I feel so behind,” Margo said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I wish time would slow down.”

“Well it won't.”

“I don't know . . . time can be slow.”

“Like when?”

“When you're in pain,” Margo said quickly. Her eyes narrowed adamantly. “Or when you're seeing something for the first time.”

“Right.” Baby nodded. “When you feel like a
kid
.”

Margo looked at Baby and saw her at every age—every era of their face. A great wave of fondness swelled between them. It was positively ancient, their love, and a little excruciating.

Sunlight quivered on the bed. They went on blinking at each other and the passing minutes seemed to fatten. “Stay like that,” Margo said and reached for her camera.

“You should
ask
,” Baby said. “And the answer is no.” But then she looked up—right into the
camera.

As a child he loved to sing. He was always singing and even writing down some of his songs. In college, he liked to draw and did so when he should have been sleeping. It was the only time left in the day for him. He worked two jobs in addition to his classes. He majored in art but somehow this seems irrelevant because it didn't make a difference. There was so little time and he was always so tired. But for years he drew anyway because it gave him pleasure. He drew the things in his room and the people he had crushes on. And whenever he met someone, he explained that he was an artist. He pulled out his sketchbook and watched the person flip through it. He watched their eyes. No one ever looked impressed, though a girl once said, “Wow.” But he sensed she was lying.

After college he had many jobs. He worked in an office and he worked at a restaurant. He also did some babysitting. But he did not draw and he did not sing. He had trouble sleeping but no longer filled the time creatively. He just blinked in the dark. For years and years, he was blinking.

Now he is a writer and he is writing. Right now he is writing this story. His husband is cooking dinner. He can smell the meat cooking and he can feel his husband's anger to be cooking dinner alone. But his husband is the better cook. They have both acknowledged this fact. They have even laughed about it. Still his husband is resentful. He thinks his husband will always be resentful because his husband is better at so many things. This is why their relationship is withering.

Some people can fully engage in unhappy careers,
he thinks.
For years they can do this,
their whole lives
. His husband is this way, an unhappy lawyer, though a
good
lawyer. He thinks that he could never be like his husband, good at something he hated. He thinks that he is not even very good at the things he loves. But this is a little bit of a lie because he holds a certain pride. He loves the songs he sang as a boy and all the drawings. He has been so many people.
And all in the service of becoming me,
he thinks proudly. He loves his writing. He loves writing this now. Always he is waiting to be alone to write.
So I must like writing more than people,
he thinks.
More than my husband.

His husband wishes he made more money and his family feels the same. They think he is delusional, calling himself a writer. It feels a lot like hate, the things they say.
They don't understand,
he thinks.
They can't imagine doing the same thing every day for hours simply because you're compelled, though you're not getting paid.

“That is not a career,” his mother has said.

“Think of religion,” he said in response. “It's like that. I have
visions
.” But this only enraged his mother.

He thinks that if only he could write all day alone, if only
he were not always drenched in the anger of his mother and his husband, then he could arrange some semblance of a writing career.
I need some fame,
he thinks. And he writes these words very slowly. Then he hears his name. He sets down his pen. “Coming!” he says and walks through the
door.