Part 2 (1/2)
”Yes.”
”They're less willing to take responsibility for their contradictions.”
She didn't say anything to that.
”They're less romantic.”
”They're less romantic?”
”Of course that isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing.”
”Women are less romantic than men?”
”Yes.”
”I don't think so.”
”Actually, it's the only thing I'm reasonably certain of.”
”I don't know any woman who would agree with that.”
”That's because for a woman, romanticism is a pattern of behavior, or maybe even ritual, whereas for a man it's a matter of life and death. a.s.suming he's the sort of man who was ever willing to die for anything in the first place.”
”Yes, well,” she answered witheringly, lighting another cigarette, ”maybe women haven't always had the luxury of dying for romance.”
”Well, there you go.”
”Anyway, you're generalizing.”
”That's what you asked me to do, remember? Your contradiction, your responsibility.”
She widened her eyes ferociously. She asked my name and I told her, and she said maybe she had heard of me; I told her I doubted it, and she asked if I wrote some books once, and I admitted I had. ”I read a review of one, maybe,” she said. ”The last one.”
”That was a while ago.”
”The pretentious one.”
”All my books are pretentious,” I a.s.sured her. ”The last one was just especially pretentious.”
”My name's Jasper.”
”Interesting name.”
She was bored with how interesting her name was. ”It's a name without a reason,” she explained. ”No, my parents didn't think I was going to be a boy. No, they didn't conceive me in a town called Jasper. No, they didn't name me after Jasper Johns or an Uncle Jasper who left them a million dollars. ...” On her finger was a ring in the shape of a cat, curled around a red stone. She held her hand up and even let me take her fingers in my own so I could examine it. She looked at me like she saw right through me. ”It matches the one in my l.a.b.i.a.”
”Pardon me?”
”It matches the ring in my l.a.b.i.a.”
”I don't believe you.”
But of course I did. I believed it completely. She appeared genuinely unconcerned with whether I believed her. ”Well, I'm not going to prove it to you,” she said.
Inspiration was at hand. Not because I was in control of anything but because her control was so complete she found giving something to me easy, a gesture of s.e.xuelle oblige in lieu of the evidence that there was a cat ring in her l.a.b.i.a, which was the only thing that matched anything else she wore, namely the ring on her finger. ”In my story,” I said to her as calmly as I could, ”the artist poses a question to each model, who is a stranger to her.”
”Yes?”
”Where does he touch you?”
She nodded.
”There's no preface to the question, and the 'he' referred to is irrelevant. Sometimes the model is surprised by the question, sometimes she's amused or threatened. In each case the artist a.s.sumes she's taken control of the situation by catching the other woman off-guard, until one night she meets a model who answers as though she's been expecting the question all along.”
Thinking only a moment Jasper said, ”Under my breast. Below my nipple.”
”Which one?”
”The left.” She said, casually, ”When his hands are raised to my breast, you know ... he's exposed to me. Disarmed.”
”Disarmed?”
”Like in the gangster movies. When the bad guy puts his hands in the air.”
”Or the good guy sometimes.”
”Or the good guy.”
”Is he the good guy or the bad guy?”
”He's the good guy,” she answered, ”when I'm the bad guy.” She leaned back where she sat and looked me in the eye. ”Last night I went to this opening, a little gallery downtown out near the third ring. I thought I might see myself there. I mean, in a painting.”
”You mean you actually are a model?”
”-but I was walking through the exhibit and by the time I was halfway, I'd had a little wine, and was feeling a little. ...” She smiled and widened her eyes again that way she had; in moments she suggested complete dementia, in others almost unearthly composure. ”So maybe I was there after all, and I just didn't recognize myself.”
”What does it mean when you see a painting of yourself and you don't recognize it?”
”It means the artist ought to give up painting, as far as I'm concerned. Did you think it meant something else? You didn't think it meant something deep and psychological, did you? I don't think too much about the meaning of things. Halfway through the exhibit I b.u.mped into him or he b.u.mped into me, I don't remember. ... He acted like he knew me, but as far as I know we've never met. It didn't matter. We went back to his place. I went into the bathroom and took off my clothes. When I came back he was pa.s.sed out on the bed, so I undressed him and blindfolded him, and tied his wrists to the bedposts with my stockings. I found his keys and turned off the lights and went to this little bar I like, down by the beach. There's a good jukebox there. I was drinking and started talking to this woman, I don't remember her name-she was quiet, like someone who was dying to be wild but just didn't know how, and we had another drink and I said, Let's go see this guy I know. So we went back to the apartment. He was still tied to the bed. We did what we wanted. Sometimes we kissed each other, sometimes we touched him. Sometimes we just left him there and didn't pay attention to him at all. We'd wander around his apartment and look at his things and drink his liquor and stand naked on his balcony, looking out at the ocean, listening to him thras.h.i.+ng on the bed inside trying to get free. The more desperately he thrashed, the more we liked it. I could tell she was holding back, waiting for me to let her know that whatever we were going to do was all right, and finally we went back to bed and I got on top of him and then she did, and then we both did at the same time. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it's every man's fantasy. Every man thinks it's his fantasy. But when I held his face between my thighs and put myself in his mouth to make myself come, I could tell he realized it wasn't his fantasy, it was my fantasy. Afterward the other girl got on top of him and it was taking her longer, so I started whispering in her ear, telling her I was a man and how I was going to f.u.c.k her from behind. That made her come. We finished and put on our clothes and went back to the beach bar where we had another drink. We were still laughing about it. He's probably still there, tied to the bed.”
I believed all of it, the way I believed the bit about the l.a.b.i.a ring. But while I had been given everything I could hope for, somehow she was still in charge; sort of like she said, I thought it was my inspiration, but now I realized it was hers. She got up from the table and finished the last of her wine.
”Maybe you'll write another book someday,” she said on her way out, ”even more pretentious than the last.” And then she disappeared through the door and I sat there staring at it for five minutes, just to be sure she wasn't coming back. Then I swallowed the last of my wine, gathered up my notes and rushed back to my apartment, where I bolted the door and turned out the lights and by the glow of the desk lamp wrote down every single word, every single thing about her I could remember, every single thing she said. ...
We call our movie White Whisper because it doesn't mean anything at all, at least as far as we can tell. ”But just where,” Viv asked one night, reading the finished script, ”do you propose we find an actress with a cat ring in her l.a.b.i.a?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. ”Do you actually know a woman with a cat ring in her l.a.b.i.a? Also,” she added, flipping back several pages, ”women are a lot more direct.”
”What do you mean?”
”When they talk to each other. A woman doesn't say b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she says t.i.ts.”
”Are you sure?”