When Watched (5 page)

“She got the job cause she's good-looking.”

“You think?”

“She's a nice blonde from a private school and she probably sucks their dicks.”

“
Stop.
I don't think she's like that.”

Sasha grinned, sure of herself. “These are men with money. They're hiring blow jobs whether they get them or not.”

Cory laughed a little. “You're right.” She packed the wooden pipe with weed and held a lighter to the cruddy green, puffing till it glowed. “Men have careers,” she said with a gush of smoke. “Women have mouths.”

Sasha's grin deepened. “The other day I saw a billboard and I can't remember if it was for cell phones or an actual escort service . . . but the woman was on the phone and she was doing that finger-to-mouth thing.” Sasha demonstrated, holding one finger up to a mock pout.

“So?”

“So I was like why do women do that? And then I was like duh the finger's a dick.”

“It's like she's thinking about sucking it.”

“Yeah or showing you the way in . . .”

Cory relit the pipe and puffed on it.

Sasha held out her hand. “Gimme that.” They were sitting on Cory's bathroom floor because it was the coolest spot. Outside it was ninety-one degrees and the whole apartment was roasting.

The two of them looked exactly as they had at sixteen—at least to themselves. They were still best friends who lay around gossiping and looking at the walls. They were twenty-five now.

People often asked if they were sisters, though they didn't look alike. Cory was short with a round face and brown curls that came to her shoulders. Sasha was tall and thin. She had a pointy face and dark eyes that looked drawn on.

“I need a job,” Cory said, handing the pipe over. “I'm starting to freak out.”

Sasha looked down at the black plastic mouthpiece. It was considerably bite-marked. “You should learn how to read tarot cards,” she said finally. “You'd be good at it.”

“No. I wanna believe in it too much. I'd hate to be the one making it up.” Cory hung her head low, examining her fingernails. They were a little yellow and some were longer than others. “We should both just marry doctors.”

“Oh
come on
. Do you really want to be some captured pet?”

“Yes.” Cory stared a second. “I'm not a genius like you.”

“I'm not a genius. I'm just popular.”

“But that's a kind of genius, isn't it?”

“I guess,” smiled Sasha. “See? You're a genius too.”

Cory suppressed a naked look of delight. She stared down
at the clammy legs sticking out of her dress. “I just need to find someone to feed me.”

Sasha rolled her eyes and stood up. “Enough already.” She bent over the sink and splashed her face with cold water, then gave the mirror a quick, urgent glance, as if checking to see if she was still beautiful. She was. “Everything costs something, Cory. I mean rich guys are
aw
ful to be around . . . so rude.”

“Well they're full of well-being but nothing's ever good enough.”

“Uh-huh. Their wives are so . . . you know . . . disposable.” Sasha sat back on the floor with a little thud. “I mean disposable if they're
lucky
. Otherwise they just wind up with a rhinestone collar and a long leash their whole life.”

“That doesn't sound so bad.”

“Yes it does. Those women kill themselves.”

Cory leaned her head against the tub. “I'm really stoned.”

“I'm not. This is horrible weed.”

“I know. It's not giggly weed. It just makes you stupid.”

“I don't feel stupid. I don't feel anything.” Sasha stuck her finger in the ashy hole of the pipe and poked around. “This is like a dirty old man's pipe,” she said and relit the charred little nugget.

Cory cracked up. “It was my grandfather's.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I took it from his house when he died.”

“That's disgusting.”

“No it's not.”

“Cory, we're
kissing
your dead grandfather!”

The two broke into high-pitched, chaotic giggling.

“I never thought about it that way.” Cory held her abs, catching her breath. “But I guess you're right.”

“Stoner.” Sasha brought the brown arm of the pipe to her lips and took a long pull.

“You like kissing him.”

“Shut up.”

“You can't get enough.”

“I'm trying to get high, asshole.”

Cory doubled over chuckling, her knotty curls grazing the floor. She stayed there for a while, softly convulsing.

Sasha stared at the smeary base of the white sink. “Is it really Sunday?”

“I have no idea,” Cory said from under a mass of hair.

“I hate weekends . . . once you get into the rhythms of freedom it's over.” Sasha set the pipe down with a small huff. “I'm gonna get going.”

“No.”
Cory's face popped up, flashing urgently. She grabbed hold of Sasha's arm. “Don't leave me alone with the Internet.”

“Is the Internet in here?” Sasha smirked. “Is it in the toilet?”

“No but it's where I'll go . . .” Cory stared pleadingly. It was a face beyond tears. “There's this YouTube video called ‘Woman Accidentally Cuddles with Burglar.' I've never clicked on it . . . but it wants me.”

“Come on, Core.” Sasha unhooked Cory's sweaty fingers. “I have to work tomorrow. I just wanna go home and—”

“There's another one that's like, ‘Man Trades Kidney for iPhone.'” Cory stretched out on the floor, exposing the floral crotch of her underwear. “Oh Sasha. What the hell am I gonna do?”

Sasha stood up and put her hand on the doorknob, impatient.

“I don't mind being glamorously poor,” Cory glowered, “but not so poor I look like white trash.”

“You really love this, don't you?” Sasha took her hand from the knob.

“What?”

“You're rolling around in your misery like a pig.”

Cory swallowed. “Sorry if I'm
bothering
you,” came a dry, splintery voice. She looked ready to cry. “If I can't be ugly in front of you then—what the fuck? Fuck you!”

Sasha knelt beside her friend. “Okay.” She sighed. “Be ugly. Be really ugly.”

Cory stared up from the dirty tile floor. “Sometimes I have these fantasies where I'm comforting
you
.”

Sasha sniffed shyly. “But you do.”

“No. You don't need it. You're one of the beautiful people.”

“Shhhh.” Sasha brushed a fat curl from Cory's balmy forehead.

“I need to be making money.”

“Yeah I get that.”

“When I meet people I always wanna ask how they do it . . . actually sometimes I
do
ask.” Cory's face crinkled up with the embarrassment of a memory. “I'm like an animal watching human life and trying to take tips . . . but it doesn't matter
what
I do. I'm an outsider.”

“Yeah,” Sasha grinned. “Another breed.”

“Hey!”

“You know I'm kidding.” Sasha smiled sweetly. “The question is how to get paid for being you.”

“It seems impossible.”

“It's not.”

Cory sat up. She lit the pipe and took a grim drag. Now she tasted her dead grandfather. The weed was gone. “I'm a baby and a criminal,” she croaked. “I'm picking pennies off the floor.”

“Gimme a break.”

“If I see a penny I pick it up!”

Sasha rolled her eyes. She helped Cory to her feet and they stumbled into the kitchen, a fine grit pressing into their bare soles. Cory gave one foot a little shake and ducked the strip of fly tape that hung in the center of the room. Sasha raised an arm and fanned her pit. “Jee-sus,” she said. “I'm like a fucking chicken in the oven.”

“A
fucking
chicken?”

“Yeah. A chicken getting fucked.”

Cory smiled a little, then opened the freezer and stuck her arm in. She pulled out a couple popsicles: grape for her and strawberry for Sasha. “This is all I've been eating.”

“Shut up, orphan.” Sasha grabbed the red popsicle, tore the plastic off, and bit into it.

The two of them walked to Cory's little bedroom, which felt hotter than all the other rooms. She had no overhead light, just a brown skinny-necked lamp that poured light the color of beer.

Cory switched on the fan by the bed. “It'll get cooler once the sun sets,” she promised, then opened the window and inserted a bent screen.

They lay with thin pillows bunched up behind their heads, lapping up the popsicles in a quiet, methodical trance.

Once finished, Sasha said, “You could stay with your mom for a while.” She gave the wood stick a final suck.

“No way.” Cory frowned at the ceiling. “She would just look at me and
know
I was stoned.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know. I'd walk to my room, lie down, and drool.”

Sasha laughed. “What about typing? You could be a typist. I mean . . . uh . . . a secretary!”

“Do they even exist anymore?”

“Yeah I think so.”

“I can't work in an office. I suck at that stuff.”

“So fake it.”

“I guess I could.” Cory's gaze hovered over the limp strands of a deserted spider's web in the window frame. “But every time you succeed in looking normal in an area where you're not, something inside you deadens.” She faced Sasha with her violet lips and teeth. “What I mean is that you don't succeed in pulling the wool over someone's eyes without pulling the wool over your own . . . your subconscious goes to the service of public consciousness.”

“Then what?”

“You go crazy.”

“Jeez.”

Cory rubbed her nose. A few different species of sadness were kicking around in her gut now, joining forces. “Every time I consider doing something I don't want to do, I just remember that I'm going to die.”

“God, you say it like there are numbers on the wall.”

“There
are
.” Cory returned her gaze to the spiderweb, which swayed in the muggy breeze like an underwater plant. “I was thinking I could get a live cam in here. People could jerk off to me lying around eating cereal and stuff.”

“Who would jerk off to that?”

“People'll jerk off to anything.”

Sasha stared. She couldn't argue with that.

“What choice do I have?”

“
Hey.
It's gonna be alright. I promise.”

“Please. I'm almost a whore and everyone knows it. It's just a matter of time.”

“No.” Sasha leaned on her side and looked Cory in the eye. “I believe in you.”

“Why?”

“It just seems worth it.”

Cory could've smiled or sobbed but did neither. “Am I a needy person?”

“Yes.”

“Am I the neediest person in your life?”

“No. You're just the most willing to express it.”

Cory smiled. She sat up and noticed her popsicle stick on the bed by her leg. “I just had a popsicle blackout.”

“Huh?”

“I don't remember the end of it.”

Sasha bucked with a little laugh. Then a breeze came through the window and they both went limp. It was so good.

Frances was fifty-nine and Peanut was twenty-five, and because of this they were often distracted by the looks of others in public. Usually people assumed Frances was Peanut's mother and gave the pair bright, encouraging smiles, happy to see a mother and daughter so glad to be near each other. But then Peanut would give Frances a long, open kiss on the mouth and every smiler would stiffen, fascinated with disgust.

When the two announced their plan to adopt a dog, everyone disapproved. Peanut's friends assumed domineering parental tones. They seemed to suggest Peanut would leave the animal somewhere or forget to feed it. “Plus, what if you and Frances break up?” one of them snorted.

Peanut quietly considered replacing all of her friends with dogs. She explained that she had already paid for the dog, which was a lie. She hadn't even met the dog. He was five hundred miles away, in Marietta, Ohio. He was three months old and his name was Tony. Peanut and Frances had spent hours trolling Petfinder.com and gasped when his small triangle face appeared
on the screen. He looked unmistakably like a Chihuahua, but had been described on the site as an unknown mixed breed. The dog had chipmunk coloring, with a dark muzzle and large foxish ears. He was pictured in a woman's dry pink hands, grasped by the torso, with the bratty, oblivious expression of a king's baby, white chest exposed, little orange legs dangling.

Peanut had filled out a ten-page application online and then got an e-mail from Tony's rescuer with more questions. Her name was Gail and she wanted to know everything. Would Peanut leave him alone for long periods of time? No she would not. Was Peanut thinking of moving anytime soon, or having a baby? No, never. Peanut wrote several careful e-mails detailing her unconditional commitment to the animal and then Frances had to do the same.

After an unbearable day of waiting, Gail wrote back.
Alright, I'm convinced.

“So we're really doing this?” Peanut said to Frances.

“Really.”

“I can't believe you're up for driving so far. I've never met someone so willing to go along with my wild plans.”

“Some people would consider that a character defect.”

“No. You are so good to me,” Peanut said and Frances glowed in agreement.

 • • • 

During the week before their drive, Frances flew to San Francisco on a gig with her band, the Invisible Committee. She didn't pick up her phone, though Peanut called several times, leaving lewd messages. Frances was too focused on meeting people at parties, grinning hotly at compliments from strangers. She had a distinct allure, and women of all sorts invited her to fuck them. But Frances didn't want to fuck them. While she developed crushes
on various people, their advances often pitched her into despair. Mostly they were fans, beaming with anticipation, waiting for the right moment to corner her. Frances hated for strangers to pounce. It made her feel like
she
was the commodity, not her work. “People wanna bite my aura,” she said to her bandmates and they all rolled their eyes. But it was true.

On her last night, Frances slunk back to her hotel room and crawled into bed, relishing the quiet. Frances loved to be alone. She groomed herself ritualistically, flossing before the mirror in a striped robe. She studied her face and then thought of Peanut's face, her bright animal eyes. Frances couldn't help but measure their life-spans alongside each other.
She is like a vampire,
Frances thought.
She is watching a human wither.

Instead of calling Peanut back, Frances sent her several short, romantic e-mails, which both delighted and enraged Peanut. Some were song lyrics, of which Peanut's favorite read:
I am devoted to your brain and ass and how profoundly they speak. My love is a shaking cup. A little Frenchman.

Peanut smiled reading the e-mail but afterward felt tricked. She didn't at all like being charmed out of a rageful state and so she willed herself back into anger. Peanut dwelled on the humiliation of leaving dirty messages that went unreturned. She flipped through her notebook, sprawled stomach-down in bed, calves crossed in the air. She loved to read her old poems.
They are like photographs,
she thought.
There's so much evidence of me.

Peanut turned off the light and lay in the dark imagining she were tough and uninterested in love. Half into a dream, she promised herself she would behave coldly toward Frances as soon as she saw her, which would be the morning of their long drive to fetch Tony.

She had active, colorful nightmares of the apocalypse. Bombs
going off, smoke floating from collapsed buildings, people left twitching in the street. Peanut woke up with bags under her eyes. She looked at her phone and, seeing that Frances hadn't called, an old sadness swooped over her. Whenever Frances vanished, it felt like the old days, before their relationship, back when Peanut was still plotting ways to get near her.

Peanut had first glimpsed Frances singing onstage at a bar, leaning into dusty beams of red and pink light, rope-veins running up her forearms. She sang in a low, androgynous voice that broke into little shouts, her manlike mouth almost touching the microphone. Peanut had come to the show with a friend but quickly abandoned this person to make brave conversation with Frances when the next band came on. Frances was friendly and responsive, but ultimately appeared bored. It took months for her to act even remotely romantic toward Peanut, and during this excruciating period, Peanut had talked to herself in mannish tones and masturbated with a galaxy-print sheet hiked up over her face.

 • • • 

On the day of their drive, Peanut sat waiting on her stoop. She wore a sheer, ratty T-shirt tucked into dark denim shorts and white tennis shoes without socks. Beside her feet sat a large straw bag with a rope strap.

Peanut had lived in the same apartment on the Lower East Side since childhood but in the last year, the building had changed hands and since the sale, it kept morphing. First, all of the stone floral ornaments were torn from the facade and then, after months of misguided upscaling, the building wound up looking like a pizza chain with pretensions. Cheap wrought-iron handrails led to a yellow wood door that was often greasy with oil. “It's very Epcot,” Frances had sneered the first time she came over. “Sort of a suburban take on urban.”

Peanut considered how she might appear waiting on her stoop, bent over her marble notebook, legs crossed, big tortoise sunglasses between forward-falling hair. She smacked a mosquito on her calf.

 • • • 

Frances pulled up to the curb in her olive pickup truck, one arm out the window. She had a skinny, creased face and center-parted Jesusy hair that she kept dirty to darken the gray. “Hey,” she said, her voice tender and smug at once.

In the car, Peanut smiled madly. The two held each other and made out greedily for a bit. Then Frances looked nervously out the window, adjusting her black horn-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, come on.” Peanut rolled her eyes. “Relax.” Her voice had a fluty underwater quality, a subtle echo chamber.

“You come on. You're a sweet little bunny and I'm this gnarly old man. I mean if someone wanted to murder one of us to make a point, they would murder me.”

Peanut pointed to a couple of old women sitting on a stoop across the street. They were staring. “Those two absolutely want to murder you. Look at them.” She chuckled. “It's like they don't even care that we can see them.”

“They want us to see. They want us to know what they think of us.”

“Right.” Peanut tipped her head onto Frances's shoulder. “That I'm some victim.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you're the old pervert, right? But I'm considered this, like,
idiot child
with daddy issues. Even your friends treat me like that.”

“Like you have daddy issues?”

“Like I'm an idiot. They don't really,” Peanut paused, “
engage
me. I mean, the level of inquiry is
low
. Like, if we get dinner, they pretend to be talking to both of us, but they're making eye contact with you the whole time. And then you and whoever just wind up prompting each other's monologues. It reminds me of being at dinner parties with my parents as a kid. Back when I was three feet tall and really was invisible unless I was being bad.”

“God. You have to tell me when you feel like that.” Frances pinched Peanut's midsection affectionately. It was a measuring pinch. A butcher's pinch.

“Okay.” Peanut sat up in her seat and remembered that she was angry at Frances. “Or maybe I just shouldn't go. I mean out with you and your friends. I'm not interested in winning anyone's approval.” She opened a greasy paper bag full of broken cookies and scones from the bakery where she worked. “You want?” She put the open bag between their seats.

“No. I'm starting to look like a skeleton with a watermelon around its waist,” Frances smirked and then dug her hand into the bag, lifting out a crumbly cookie half.

Peanut laughed and poked Frances's hip. “I like it.”

“It? That's great. So it exists.”

“Oh darling, stop. Anyway, I only took this stuff because it was free. I'm actually pretty revolted by sweets at this point.” Peanut began rummaging through her straw bag and pulled out a CD book covered with peeling stickers. She flipped through the plastic pages.

“Can we not listen to the Smiths,” Frances said, steering back onto the road.

“Why not?”

“His voice is so endless and droning. It just makes me sad.”

“That's the whole point.”

“Well, it doesn't speak to my sadness, it
produces
sadness.”
Frances reached back into the paper bag and felt around. “What are these hard pieces?”

“Scones. They're sort of awful.” Peanut settled on a Gram Parsons compilation and Frances nodded approvingly. “Tell me about your trip,” Peanut said in a soft, guarded voice, sliding the CD in. “Dark End of the Street” began to play.

“We stayed at the grossest Motel 6. There was this place next door called Safari, with a big sign listing everything inside. It said,
ALL NEW LIVE GIRLS
,
RIB EYE
,
BEER
GARDEN
. I loved that it said
all new
live girls. Like, we killed the ones that were here yesterday. They're in the dumpster. These are the new ones.”

“What's a beer garden?”

“I don't know. I think of fat men rubbing beers dangling from tree branches on their naked stomachs. Of course the place was really dark. And the parking lot was full of cars.”

“That's so sci-fi. Every man a little king,” Peanut said excitedly. “You should've gone inside.”

“I know. I wanted to.”

“You would have managed to somehow have a great time. You'd have met some
amazing
woman,” Peanut said mockingly.

“Yeah and we would have had the most
amazing
conversation. While she was giving me a lap dance.”

Peanut pulled the visor mirror down and stared at her face. “Have you ever had a lap dance?”

“I've had opportunities. At Esther's fortieth there were strippers but I resisted. Something about the idea of tons of people watching me get a lap dance.”

Peanut imagined Esther under the grinding pelvis of a stripper. She was a rather conceited woman with close-cropped red hair and a birdlike face. She had once strolled over to Peanut at a party and pointedly asked if she was committed to pushing
Frances's wheelchair when the time came. Peanut had been too stunned to say the deepest thing she felt in reply, or even to take a swing at Esther. Instead she had said in a puny voice, “Yeah,” her eyes cast downward. “Of course.”

“I did go to this place called Debbie Duz Donuts. Spelled D-u-z,” Frances continued. “I was in my thirties. All the waitresses there were topless, so me and Esther thought it would be fun. But it was this sad, boarded-up place and all the women looked really grouchy. We were like a couple of mice ordering our donuts. It was like we were supposed to pretend there weren't tits in front of our faces.”

“That sums up my whole high school experience,” Peanut said morosely. She tilted her face at different angles before the mirror, assessing each pose. “You know your nose never stops growing. It just gets bigger and bigger your whole life.”

“Sort of the toenails of the face.”

“That's funny.” Peanut stuck her arm elbow-deep in the paper bag.
You and me,
Gram Parsons sang mournfully,
at the dark end of the street. You and me.
They rode past shouting boys on bikes. The sun passed behind a black cloud and one hot spot bled through.

“Do you want any more?” Peanut asked and put the hard edge of a scone into her mouth.

“No. I'm turning the corner toward disgusting.”

“Anyway it really freaks me out,” Peanut said, chewing. “Already my nose is a little witchy and I like that. But in like ten years it'll be casting the shadow of a small building.”

“I love your nose. You would look all wrong with a small nose.”

“My nose will always be a little closer to you. Like if I kiss you, it gets there first. It's like a dick.”

The two laughed and were quiet. Peanut resumed her state
of contempt almost immediately. She hated herself for being so pleasant and pledged not to laugh again.
We'll pay for the love that we stole,
Parsons cried, and a red-lettered sign whipped by.
ARRIVE ALIVE. DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE.
The words glowed in Peanut's mind. She set the greasy paper bag down between her feet in a quiet rage, the effect of which was oddly pretty. Frances looked over admiringly from time to time. Peanut looked her best when she was pissed. She took on the neat poise of a killer.

“Will you wipe off my glasses? It's like staring through a potato chip,” Frances said and took off her black frames.