No One Belongs Here More Than You

  In the powdery warmth of the bathroom I felt euphoric. Being alone suddenly felt wild. I locked the door and made a series of involuntary, baroque gestures in the mirror. I waved maniacally at myself and contorted my face into hideous, unlovable expressions. I washed my hands as if they were children, cradling one and then the other. I was experiencing a paroxysm of selfhood. The scientific name for this spasm is the Last Hurrah. The feeling was quickly spent. I dried my hands on a tiny blue towel and walked back to the bedroom.

  I knew it the moment before I saw it. I knew I would find them together on the bed like this, I knew I would be stunned, I knew they would spring apart and wipe their mouths. Pip would not look me in the eye. I would never talk to Tammy again. I knew we would all graduate from high school, I knew that Pip and I would live together as planned. And I knew she did not want me in that way. She never would. Other girls, any girl, but not me.

  Now that we had paid the rent, we felt entitled to mention the cockroach situation to the landlord. He said he would send someone over but that we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

  Why not?

  Well, it’s not just your apartment; the whole building’s infested.

  Maybe you should have them do the whole building, then.

  It wouldn’t do any good; they’d just come over from other buildings.

  It’s the whole block?

  It’s the whole world.

  I told him never mind then and got off the phone quickly, before he could hear Pip hammering. We were making some renovations; specifically, we were building a basement. Our apartment was tiny, but the ceilings were tall, and there was a tantalizing amount of unused space above our heads. Pip thought lofts were for hippies, so even though our studio was on the second floor, she had sketched out a design that would allow us to live on a low-ceilinged main floor, and then, when feeling morose, descend a ladder to the basement. We would leave the heavy things down there, like the refrigerator and bathtub, but everything else would come upstairs. We could both picture the basement perfectly in our heads. It had a damp, mineral smell. Warmth and seams of light seeped through the ceiling. Up there was home. Dinner waited for us up there.

  One of the many great reasons for building a basement was our access to free wood. Pip had met a girl whose father owned Berryman’s Lumber and Supply. Kate Berryman. She was a year younger than us and went to the private high school by Pip’s grandma’s house. I had never met her, but I felt glad that we were using her. We practiced a very loose, sporadic form of class warfare that sanctioned every kind of thievery. There was no person, no business, no library, hospital, or park that had not stolen from us, be it psychically or historically, and thus we were forever trying to regain what was ours. Kate probably thought she was on our side of the restitution when she struggled to pull large pieces of plywood out of the back of her parents’ station wagon. She left them in the alley behind our building, honking three times as she drove away. At her signal, we strolled out of the building, pretending to take a walk, sometimes even stopping to buy a soda, before arbitrarily, on a whim, deciding to amble down the alley. We hauled it upstairs, feeling fairly certain we had hoodwinked everyone. We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which meant we were not alone in this world.

  Each morning Pip made a list of what we needed to do that day. At the top of the list was usually go to bank, where they had free coffee. The next items were often vague—find out about food stamps, library card?—but the list still gave me a cozy feeling. I liked to watch her write it, knowing that someone was steering the day. At night we discussed how we would decorate the basement, but during the day our progress was slow. Mostly, what we had was a lot of pieces of wood; they leaned against the walls and lay across the couch like untrained dogs.

  We were trying to nail a post into the linoleum kitchen floor when Pip decided we needed a certain kind of bracket.

  Are you sure?

  Yeah. I’ll call Kate and she’ll bring it.

  Isn’t she in school?

  It’s okay.

  Pip made the call and then went to take a shower. I continued hammering long nails through the post and into the floor. The post became secure. It was a satisfying feeling. It wouldn’t withstand any kind of weight, but it stood on its own. It was almost as tall as me, and I could not help naming it. It looked like a Gwen.

  The buzzer rang, and Pip ran damply to the door. It was Kate. I looked up at her from where I was sitting on the kitchen floor. She was wearing a school uniform. She was not holding the brackets. Maybe she had hidden them up her skirt.

  Where are the brackets? I asked.

  With panic in her eyes, Kate looked at Pip. Pip took her hand, turned to me, and said, We have to tell you something.

  I suddenly felt chilled. My ears felt so cold that I had to press my hands against them. But I quickly realized this made me look as if I were covering them to avoid listening, like the monkey who hears no evil. So I rubbed my palms together and asked, Are your ears cold? Pip didn’t respond, but Kate shook her head.

  Okay, go ahead.

  Kate and I are going to live together at her parents’ house.

  Why?

  What do you mean?

  Well, I’m sure Kate’s dad doesn’t want you living in his house after you stole all that stuff from him.

  I’m going to work at Berryman’s Lumber to pay him back. I might even make enough money to get a car.

  I thought about this. I imagined Pip driving a car, a Model T, wearing goggles and a scarf that blew behind her in the wind.

  Can I work at Berryman’s Lumber, too?

  Pip was suddenly angry. Come on!

  What? I can’t? Just say I can’t if I can’t.

  You are purposely not getting it!

  What?

  She raised Kate’s hand, clasped in her own, and shook it in the air.

  Suddenly my ears were hot, they were boiling, and I had to fan my hands at either side of my head to cool them down. This was too much for Pip; she grabbed her backpack and marched out of the apartment with Kate following.

  I could not let her leave the building. I ran down the hall and threw myself on her. She shook me off; I locked my arms around her knees. I was sobbing and wailing, but not like a cartoon of someone sobbing and wailing—this was really happening. If she left, I would become mute, like those children who have witnessed horrible atrocities. No one would understand me but those children. Pip was prying my fingers off her shins. Kate knelt to help her, and I was repulsed by the touch of her pudding-like skin, I wanted to puncture it, I lunged at her chest. Pip took this moment to scuttle down the stairs, and somehow Kate was behind her. I was holding Kate’s cardigan. I ran after them, watched them hurry into Kate’s car. Before they pulled away, I shut my eyes and hurled myself onto the sidewalk. I lay there. This was my last hope—that Pip would take pity on me. I heard their car idling. I listened to the traffic and the sound of pedestrians walking carefully around me. I could almost hear Kate and Pip arguing in the car, Pip wanting to get out and help me, Kate urging them to leave. I pressed my cheek against the pavement in prayer. High heels clicked toward me and stopped; an elderly woman’s voice asked if I was okay. I whispered that I was fine and silently begged her to move on. But the woman was persistent, so finally I opened my eyes to tell her to go. Kate’s car was gone.

  I pulled the phone into the bed and slept for three days. At intervals I would open my eyes long enough to remember and then I’d drop back into unconsciousness. In dreams I knew I was tunneling toward her—if I could only dig deep enough, I would find her. The tunnels narrowed as I crawled through them, until they became impossibly knotted strands of hair that I could only tear at.

  On the afternoon of the third day, the phone rang. I pulled it up from the loamy depths of the bed. I wanted her to know, from the moment she heard my voice, that I was dying. I delivered a salutation so craven, so wretched, that it fell through language l
ike pebbles. Hello.

  It was Mr. Hilderbrand, the landlord. In some bizarre, alternative, science-fiction reality, the rent was due. It was just one month ago that we had lifted Leanne’s dirty slip. I hung up the phone and looked around the room. My post was still standing in the kitchen, tactfully silent. A dangerously tall table-like structure wobbled in the middle of the room. It was the first square foot of the upstairs. I crawled underneath it and imagined Pip and Kate eating dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Berryman. It was the kind of scenario Pip had often described. We could not walk past a fancy house without her presuming its owners would want her to live with them if only they knew she was available. She saw herself as a charming street urchin, a pet for wealthy mothers. It was a scam. There was nothing in the world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

  I went to the bathroom and threw handfuls of water on my face, and it was easy. In fact, I could do anything. I took off the jeans and T-shirt I had been sleeping in. Naked, I crouched on the floor and sliced the legs off my pants with a box cutter. I put them on and they were itty-bitty. Itty-bitty teeny-tiny. I sawed through the T-shirt, leaving IF YOU LOVE JAZZ on the floor. HONK barely covered my small breasts, but hey. Hey, I was leaving the apartment. I was walking down the hall, and there was a small basket of old apples in front of the neighbor’s door with a sign that said, FOR MY NEIGHBORS PLEASE TAKE ONE. And hey, I was starving. I took an apple and the door swung open. I had never really seen this neighbor, but now I could see that she was a junkie. An old junkie. And she was wearing a sweater that I knew she had found in the hallway. It was Kate’s cardigan. She told me to take another one, and then she asked for a hug. I hugged her hard with an apple in each hand. Last week I would have been afraid to touch her, but now I knew that I could do anything.

  I had no money for the bus, so I walked. It was an incredible distance. A horse would get tired galloping there. When birds flew there, it was called migration. But it wasn’t difficult, it just took time. It was a new experience to walk across the city in tiny shorts and a half-shirt that said honk. People honked without even seeing the shirt. I often felt that I would be shot in the back with an arrow or gun, but this didn’t happen. The world wasn’t safer than I had thought; on the contrary, it was so dangerous that my practically naked self fit right in, like a car crash, it happened every day.

  The place I was walking to was in a strip mall, between a pet store and a check-cashing place. I asked the man at the counter if they were hiring, and he gave me a form to fill out on a clipboard. When I handed it back, he stared at it without moving his eyes, which made me think maybe he couldn’t read. He said I could start tonight if I wanted to come back at nine. I said, Great. He said his name was Allen, I said my name was Gwen.

  I hung out in the strip mall for three hours. The pet store was closed, but I could see the rabbits through the window. I pressed my fingers against the glass, and an ancient lop-ear hopped toward me wearily. It looked at me with one eye and then the other. Its nose quivered, and for a moment I felt that it recognized me. It knew me from before, like an old teacher or a friend of my parents. The rabbit’s eyes darted across my clothes and sniffed my wild, sad urgency and guessed that I was up to no good. Then I stood up, brushed off my knees, and walked into Mr. Peeps Adult Video Store and More.

  The “and More” part was in the back. Allen left me there with a woman named Christy. She was sitting in a green plastic patio chair and wearing a pink OshKosh overall dress. Looking at the sturdy gold overall fasteners, I wondered if everything familiar was actually part of a secret sexual underworld. She showed me into the booth and began packing dildos and bottles and strings of beads into a sporty Adidas bag. Adidas. Her tools were laid out on an old flowery towel, and I knew that if I smelled the towel, it would smell like my grandmother. Gramma. Christy wrapped the towel around a small empty jelly jar.

  What’s that for?

  Pee.

  Even pee was in on this. She showed me the price list and the slot that money would come through. She raised her hand through the air as she described how the curtain would roll up. She cleaned a telephone receiver with Windex and paper towel and told me to never leave it sticky. Then, with hasty efficiency, she pulled her long, thin hair into a ponytail, swung the Adidas bag over her shoulder, and left.

  The store felt very quiet, like a library. I sat on the green plastic chair and adjusted my shirt and shorts. The fluorescent lights droned with a timeless constancy. I looked up at them and imagined that they, not the stars, had hung over the long creation of civilization. They had droned over ice ages and Neanderthals, and now they droned over me. I stood up and walked into my booth. I didn’t have anything to lay out on a towel; I didn’t even have a towel. All I had was the key to the apartment. If I didn’t make any money tonight, I would be walking all the way back there. At night. In this outfit. I was in a unique situation where I needed to give a Live Fantasy Show in order to protect my personal safety.

  I practiced taking the phone off the hook. I did it five times, quicker and quicker, as if this were the skill I would be paid for. I thought about the words that I would have to say into it. I had never said any of these words except as swear words. I tried to think of them as seductive. I tried to say them seductively into the receiver, but they came out in a swallowed whisper. What if I couldn’t say them? How awkward would that be? The man would ask for his money back, and I wouldn’t get to take the bus. In a panic, I said all the dirty words I knew in one long curse: Cock-sucking ball-licking bitch whore cunt pussy-licking asshole fucker. I hung up the phone. At least I could say them.

  I sat in the plastic chair for more than three hours. During this time, two different men came into the store. They both peeked at me over the racks of videos, but neither of them walked to the back. After the second man left, Allen yelled out from behind the counter.

  That’s the second one you’ve let go by!

  What?

  You’ve gotta be more aggressive! Can’t just sit on your ass back there!

  Got it!

  Twenty minutes later, a man in a black sweatshirt came in. He peered over a rack of magazines at me, and I rose to my feet and walked toward him. His sweatshirt had a picture of a galaxy on it with an arrow pointing to a tiny dot and the words YOU ARE HERE. The man looked up at me and pretended to be surprised. I imagined him instinctively pulling off his hat in the presence of a lady, but he wasn’t wearing a hat.

  Are you interested in a live fantasy show, sir?

  Yeah. Okay.

  He followed me to the back of the store. We parted for a moment and reunited inside the booth with the curtained glass between us. I heard a Velcro wallet ripping open, twenty dollars fell lightly into the locked plastic box, and the curtain rose. He already had his penis out and the phone in one hand. I lifted the receiver. But as I had feared, I was mute. I stood paralyzed, as if on a rock over a cold lake. I was never good at jumping in, letting go of one element and embracing another. I could stand there all day, letting the other kids go in front of me forever. He was pumping it up and down and it was a strange sight, not something you see every day; in fact, I had never seen this before. He said something into the phone, but I didn’t catch it. Despite how close we were, the reception was not very good.

  Excuse me?

  Can you take off your clothes?

  Oh. Okay.

  From the start, one is trained not to take off your clothes in front of complete strangers. Keeping one’s clothes on is actually the number one rule for civilization. Even a duck or a bear looks civilized when clothed. I pulled down my jean shorts and lifted my shirt over my head. I stood there naked, like a bear or a duck. The man looked at me with grim concentration, my pale breasts, the puff of hair between my legs, back and forth between these poles. He checked occasionally to make sure I was looking at him. I diligently stared at his penis and hoped that this was enough, but after a few seconds, he asked me if I liked what
I saw. Again I was on the rock, kids splashed below me yelling Jump! But I knew jumping was like dying, I would have to let go of everything. I considered what I had. She hadn’t called, she wouldn’t call, I was alone, and I was here—not even in some abstract sense, not here on earth or in the universe, but really here, standing naked before this man. I pushed my hand between my legs and said: Your big hard cock is making me so horny.

  At five A.M. I was gliding through the night on a bus. The bus was just a formality, though—actually I was flying, in the air, and I was taller than most people, I was nine or twelve feet tall, and I could fly, I could jump over cars, I could say “cock” ravenously, gently, coyly, demandingly, I could fly. And I had $325 in my pocket. Standing with one foot in the bathtub until she returned wasn’t just a way to stop time, it was also a ritual to bring her back. I would be Gwen until she came home.

  I bought a lime-green negligee, a dildo that I devirginized myself with, and a chestnut-colored wig in a bobbed style called Élan. I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn’t. I had thought that I was fragile, but I wasn’t. It was like suddenly being good at sports. I didn’t care about football, but it was pretty amazing to be in the NFL. I told long, involved stories that revolved around my own perpetually wet pussy, I spread open every part of my body, I told customers I missed them, and these customers became regulars, and these regulars became stalkers. I learned to stay inside until the moment before my bus came, and then dash past anyone who was lurking in the parking lot, waving and yelling, Come see me on Thursday!