Confidence Read online

  “I am back.” And he smiled back with the filling sense that there were some relationships with women you could have that were friendly and civilized and mutually beneficial, that you could in fact talk to them and express views and hear responses just as you could with anyone and this was more normal than not normal and in fact an activity that was going on all around him. He wondered what the key to this was, besides perhaps never sleeping with them. He wondered if the key was perhaps maintaining the fiction, in your relationships with them, that there were no other women in your acquaintance, that you did not have to work with women, did not know any, were not even aware that women existed in the universe. He wondered how long it would take him, what simple thing he would have to say, to make this friendly bartender announce that he obviously hated her and that she was going to New Zealand to work on an organic farm with people who had ideals. He could probably get it to happen within half an hour if all he did was express an opinion about something.

  He said, “I’m back. I would like to eat something. I can’t read this menu. Feed me something.”

  She stared at him for a second, then said, “All right. You trust me?”

  “I more than trust you. I am excited by the idea of you feeding me.”

  She slid down the bar and tapped things onto her screen. She said to him, “You’re getting some pulled pork sliders and an avocado quinoa salad.”

  “Delicious. You have seen right into my soul.”

  “Are you okay for drinks?’

  “This one seems to be defective.”

  “Defective?”

  “It is flawed by insufficiency. I would like a replacement.”

  She brought him another pint. It was dark, meaty-looking. He drank it with energy. Before she turned away he said, “I would like to see into your soul now too.”

  “Yup,” she said, quite quickly, “so do a lot of gentlemen at this bar.”

  “Oh.” He was scalded by this. He tried to keep his smile, which now felt stiff. “Not gentlemen quite like me, though, surely.”

  “Gentlemen quite like you, yes.”

  He looked at his beer and let her walk away. Now he didn’t want his pulled pork and pretentious salad. He never would have ordered a salad made of grains anyway.

  He waited a minute more and then, when she had turned to someone else, put two bills down on the counter. He took a last look at her tight jeans and the bare waist and the furrows of her bra strap, and he left.

  He walked for quite a few blocks, not towards home. He knew where he was going: it was a place up a flight of dark stairs on a street of dollar stores and Ethiopian grocers. His heart raced as he approached the doorway, and he even stopped for a moment and tried to get himself to go home. But he kept walking, glanced around quickly before pushing open the door marked only with a number, and plodded up the stairs.

  At the top was a closed door and a bell. You had to push it and wait there, breathing hard, for someone to come and look at you through the peephole and open the door.

  The door opened and it was a chubby Russian. She had her clunky heels on and her little sparkly dress with a zipper up the front. She said “Yes can I help you?” as they have to do and he mumbled that he had been there before and knew Jessamyn. She took him through to a room with a sofa and a TV screen. She asked him how long he wanted to stay and he gave her two more bills for a half hour. He sat on the sofa. She brought in another girl and the two of them stood in front of him.

  This was the awkward part, one he had never liked. The Russian was blonde and caramelly, with large breasts pumped up under her chin. The other was pale, black-haired, also puffy, with high black boots and a black dress. He could see lace stocking tops under the dress.

  “Are you interested in blue room or red room?” said the Russian. “I am blue room, which has soft bed, like spa, and relax, and Samara is red room, which has more specialize, if you like more special, with chair and table.”

  He looked at the one called Samara, saw her leather wristband with its big chrome buckle, the hint of confinement, and this decided him. He nodded at her. The other lady smiled and darted away. “This way,” said Samara, very softly, as if unenthusiastic, which was, he supposed, not surprising.

  She took him to a little room with a shower and a futon on the floor and low lamps with red shades. There was a leather-covered bench and a closed wardrobe. It smelled very sweet, like raspberry soap. Samara said she would be right back if he would like to have a shower.

  Taking off your clothes in these rooms was like a medical procedure: there was the same lack of space, the same hurry, and the same sense that one’s clothes were ugly when piled up on a chair, that they looked dirty and should be hidden somehow. The water in the shower was not quite hot.

  He lay on the bed with a towel over his crotch as you would wait for an X-ray. He had spent a lot of the day waiting.

  She knocked and opened the door, just as a doctor would. She said, “How are you doing this evening?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked his thigh. “What can I do for you this evening? How about a relaxing massage?”

  He considered this. A part of him actually wanted a massage.

  “Really,” he said, “I’m looking for you to just . . . take care of me. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “You want me,” she said very softly, “to take control?”

  Her fingers were playing higher on his thigh. He could smell body lotion and the memory of a cigarette, which was not an unarousing combination.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you looking for like a special service?”

  “I guess so, yes.”

  “You want me to treat you a little rough?”

  He said “Yes” and he began to sweat.

  “You want me to treat you like a bad boy?”

  He exhaled, not liking this language.

  “Is there any particular equipment that interests you?”

  There was a squeaking sound, some hissing. His phone, trying to play a tune.

  He said “I have to get that,” and he sat up and then stood up and searched his pants for it. He felt aware of her looking at him as he bent over, his thin legs and his balls dangling.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  “Emma? Emma. What’s up?”

  “Well, they’re letting me go.”

  He turned to make apologetic gestures at Samara. She shrugged and looked at the floor.

  He said, “Letting you go? Letting you go? Why?”

  “What do you mean why? Because I’m fine is why.”

  “Did the doctor come to see you?”

  “He just said I was fine and I could go. Not that I could go, actually, that I had to go, because they have no space for me and this is an acute ward and not a long-term facility and blah blah.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, I’m—” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and shook his head at Samara. He put one finger in the air. She nodded and left the room, closing the door with a click.

  “Where are you?” said Emma.

  “I’m just walking. I walked for miles.” He was shaking his pants out, sticking one leg in, wriggling. “Where’s your mom and Liz?”

  “Well I sent them home. There was no reason for them to be here.”

  “Okay. Okay. So I’ll have to get home. To get the car. I’ll come and get you. So just relax. I’ll be right there.” He had his shirt over one arm. “Okay? Will they let you wait there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “You are so sweet. I’m sorry.”

  When he was dressed he opened the door and listened in the dim corridor. He heard a radio or a TV. Samara came out of another door.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I have to go.” He stepped back into the room and took out his wallet. He gave her three twenties and apologized again and she seemed happy with that.

&nb
sp; When he got her home she turned on the TV and sat as if nothing had happened. She had been talkative in the car, wanting to know how his friends Colm and Raj were, if they had girlfriends yet, and if either of them would consider dating Katy, who had been calling her and who was really very smart despite her obvious craziness.

  There was no message on the phone from the roofer, or from the condo association lawyer, but there was one from Philip his boss saying that if there was anything he needed to be told about he was always willing to lend an ear.

  He called her mom and told her she was home and her mom said she was so relieved and happy for him that she was okay and so grateful that she had someone like him, someone so solid and patient and dependable. She told him again he was a rock.

  He went into the room where she was watching TV and the TV was off and she was folded up on the sofa and sobbing.

  He sat next to her, stroked her shoulder.

  Then he got up and went into the bathroom and locked the door. From under the sink he took a box of tissues and pulled the tissues out. From under the tissues he extracted a plastic bottle, and from the bottle he took two white pills. He put the pills on the sink counter and used the heel of the bottle to crush them to powder. He took the cardboard from a packet of pink disposable razors and used it to corral the powder into ridges. Then he rolled the cardboard into a tube and snorted both lines. There was a stinging and then a dizziness.

  He wiped up the counter and tore the cardboard into smaller strips and threw it away. he put the bottle back into the tissue box, noting that there were only seven pills remaining and that he would have to make an arrangement to meet Danny or someone like him this weekend. This made him so anxious he almost pulled the bottle out again. Danny had been in and out of town and was not always available, and he would have to make risky phone calls to find another guy like Danny and then, who knows, with the current supply situation, how much people were charging or whether they were trying to sell you the new substitute appropriately called Neo like some kind of satire. If he had to start paying a hundred bucks a pill he would not be able to continue, and all the solutions to this were unthinkable.

  He went back to where she was and sat and waited for the nausea to pass and the calm to reach him.

  She put her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she wept, “this shouldn’t happen to you. You’re so good. You’re so perfect. You don’t deserve it.”

  He just patted her. “Everything’s okay now. You’re home. You have to stop worrying so much about everything.” His arms were heavy and he yawned. He felt the cold spreading through him now. Soon she would be asleep and then so would he.

  She was crying so hard now she was almost shrieking. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I would do. Without you. You’re so good to me. What would I do? What would I do?”

  He looked at the window that had no blind or covering on it, so that all you could see in it was your own room, your red lamp, the blue TV. There was a railing running the length of it outside, a bar, to prevent any of the windows from opening. The place was perfectly sealed off. There would be no going outside again now.

  RESEARCH

  She read, “And thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, Why? and sometimes he thought, Wherefore? and sometimes he thought, Inasmuch as which?”

  He smiled at this, lying there in the darkness, mostly because of her accent, which was American and all wrong. It was like hearing it through some kind of distortion filter, or FX box. He could smell the smoke in her hair. He breathed it in.

  “And sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was.” She read slowly, sometimes tripping and starting again.

  He had his eyes closed and his hand on her back, which was bare. He was trying to feel the tattoos under his hand. She was reading by one candle and by the streetlamp glow that came in from between the battered slats of the blind and made her body a pale glow, a white smudge. You could just make out the black stripes like wings on her back. But he was trying to feel them with his fingertips. He didn’t want any light to disturb the room, which was very still.

  She read very softly. “Not very how he said. I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time. Dear dear said Pooh.”

  Her accent was from southern Florida, a place he pictured as parking lots and air-conditioned diners. He kept his eyes closed. He was hoping he wouldn’t cry. It would be embarrassing. His foot was twitching a little but his body was still. It was a mixed up feeling, what he felt: this miraculous calm, to be with her here and having her soothe him like this, the sick joy of being cradled, the sickness he felt at realizing the pleasure he was seeking was his own childhood. He could not stop smiling, though. And he would probably cry, at some point.

  He knew the patterns on her back were thick and sharp-edged, either wings or blades. His fingertips slid up and down the dunes of her ribs. The sweat on them had cooled. Her voice was breathy in his ear.

  “Let’s have a look, said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the place where his tail had been a little while ago.” She giggled a little.

  He slid his face along the pillow and kissed her shoulder. There was a black star on it. He kissed the dark star.

  She reached for the bottle on the floor and gulped some water. Then she put her palm to his forehead. Her palm was hot. She said to his forehead, “Are you asleep?”

  He said to her neck, “It will be light out any second.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “That was lovely.”

  She closed the book gently. “I’ve started saying that now. Lovely. Everything is lovely.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s ridiculous. Lovely. I should wear a straw hat and flowers to say that.”

  He ran his hand along her thigh. “I think it’s a lovely word.”

  She kissed him.

  He said, “I want it to be dark for a while longer. I’d rather fall asleep in the dark.”

  “It’s still dark.”

  “I don’t want to see the light yet.”

  She said, “Are you sleepy?”

  “Nnnn. Not really.”

  Their faces were very close and they were speaking in murmurs just above a whisper. Her eyes were blazing black. She said, barely moving her lips, “Me neither.”

  He put his fingertips to her throat, felt the pulse.

  He said, “I’m still twitchy.”

  “Did you sleep at all, just now?”

  “A little, I guess. It’s that sleep and not asleep thing. It’s a kind of halfway.”

  “I know.”

  There was a slightly different texture to the darkness now in the corners of the room; it was thinning, slipping away like sleep when you wake. He looked at the blind and wondered if he could fix the slats so that no dawn could get in at all. “Do you want to get up?”

  “No.”

  He said, “At least I’ve stopped grinding.”

  “Me no.”

  “Really?”

  “I probably will all day and next day. It always happens.”

  “That sucks.”

  He dropped his hands from her neck and they fell away from each other, onto their backs. Their hands were still touching. The candle flickered on the ceiling. The room was definitely paler, a greyer light. It was beginning to end. He said, “This is silly, how mushy I feel.”

  “I feel it too.”

  “It’s just chemicals,” he said.

  “No, it’s not.” She rolled towards him and they kissed again, their lips cool and dry now. He couldn’t stop touching her, just letting his fingers brush her little breasts, the edge of her ears. This was how they were going to talk from now on, he imagined, kissing every three words. It would be tiring, but he couldn’t stop.

  He said, “So are you really okay now?”

  “I told you. I’m fine. I was fine right away. I just . . . it was too hot and I could
n’t breathe. It was only for a second.”

  “I was so scared. When I saw you go down on the sidewalk. It was like a, like a tower collapsing.”

  She said, “I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Stop saying that. It’s fine. I’ve said this how many times now.”

  “I worry that you think I did it deliberately, that I was just playing a game to get you out of there, and . . .”

  “Of course not. Stop this. I didn’t think that for a second. I’m just happy you’re okay. I saw you come out of the bathroom and you were white, white. I knew something was wrong. So I followed you out onto the sidewalk and when I saw you go down, my heart, my belly just went cold, I thought, oh fuck, this could be really bad. I saw the paramedic coming over.”

  She said, “What were they doing there anyway?”

  “They just wait outside these things. The promoters have to have them on hand. It’s a by-law. It’s in case what happened happens. They’re there exactly for girls like you.”

  “For girls who didn’t eat enough. I’m sorry.”

  “Next time I’ll watch you eat before you go.”

  She said, “I’m sorry. You spent so much money on everything.”

  “Shut up. I was so scared when I saw you go down. You just went down on one knee and you sort of keeled over and coiled up. It was very graceful. I was glad you didn’t hit your head.”

  “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember coming out of the bathroom.”

  They had already been through this, but he knew that they would have to go on telling the story a few times. They had to go over it carefully. It had been scary. And now it was over. He said, “You came and got me and you were white and stumbling and I followed you. And then you came to right away and the paramedic was there and he was being kind of aggressive, and he said he couldn’t let you back in until he examined you, and I knew we weren’t going back in right then. I had all these pictures of me explaining to your parents why you were in the hospital, and then to the cops, and then to the papers . . .”

  “I remember sitting on the sidewalk and drinking water. And then I was fine.”