You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [68]
* * *
She said, “God, I hate those stairs.”
Those stairs. As if they were ours. As if we should really do something about them, find another apartment, the two of us. She dropped into a chair and began pulling off her boots. Home after a long day. She stood up and kissed me on the mouth. “You’ve been drinking?” She walked to the fridge and, staring into the white light, looking for something to eat, she laughed and said, “And on a school night too.”
Hours later, naked beneath one of my good shirts, her cheeks flushed, she stood by my window looking out across the city. I made us plates of pasta and put them on the table and called to her. She came and kissed me on the cheek. “This is perfect,” she said. “This is exactly what I want to be doing. And then maybe I’ll go down on you, for once.” She grinned at me and raised her eyebrows. “You know I want to. It’s just, the only time I’ve done it before. It was really horrible. Basically my ex-boyfriend, he sort of forced me to do it, you know. It was terrible. He had the back of my head and wouldn’t let go.”
She put a forkful of pasta into her mouth and chewed.
“Who was this?”
“Come on, Silver,” she said, her mouth still full of spaghetti. “You don’t want to know that.”
“He goes to the school?”
“Yeah, he goes to the school. Can I have a glass of wine?”
I got up and opened a bottle.
“I’d like to kill him,” I said touching her face.
She laughed and looked up at me, her eyes bright. “You’re a sweet man,” she said.
* * *
In the morning I could barely get out of bed. The apartment was very cold. I forced myself into the shower and stood beneath the steaming water until I was warm again. On the way to the métro, I passed a man slumped in a doorway and I nearly stopped. He looked dead. The streets were quiet. There were patches of ice in front of Bar du Marché. One of the morning waiters was scattering salt around his sidewalk.
Again the first one in the office, I opened the window to let the cold air fill the room. Again, the field was covered with a thin layer of frost the color of the sky. The poplar trees were bare.
I was still at the window when I heard a great grunt behind me and turned to find Mickey Gold settling into the deep couch, his legs spread out before him.
“Oh Christ, Will,” he said clutching the inside of his right leg.
“Morning, Mickey,” I said. I was happy to see him.
“Will, I tell you, I was watching the television last night and I sprained my groin. I’ve got these slippers with the no-slip grip, great things you know, cozy as hell, but they’ve got no slide. My grandkids gave them to me. They don’t want me slipping down the stairs. I’m old as hell, Will, you know? So I sat down to watch the television and I spread my legs out like I am now and the goddamn slipper doesn’t slip and bang, I’ve got a pain tearing up my leg like you can’t imagine and now I can barely walk. What the hell? Pull your groin watching television? It’s a wild world, Will. You can’t possibly imagine. Pour me a cup of coffee? And close the damn window. I gotta keep my crotch warm.”
I closed the window and poured him a cup of coffee.
For a moment he was unusually quiet.
“So, Will, I got to ask, what the hell’s going on with you? You doing O.K.?”
“Yeah, Mickey, I’m fine.”
“Well, you don’t seem all that fine to me. You look like shit.”
I shrugged.
“You look thin. Don’t you eat? What do you do with yourself? You ever sleep?”
“It’s been a tough year. I think maybe I’m just burned out. I’ve lost something. Can’t quite seem to put it all in order.”
He nodded, squinting at me, rubbing his groin. “Christ, this thing’s killing me.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Forget it. That’s the way it happens, Will. You’re watching television, everything’s great, and you pull your damn groin. There was a time if I pulled my groin I’d do it playing basketball. But that’s just what happens.”
I smiled at him.
“Mind if I give you some advice, Will?”
I shrugged. “Not at all. Could