flushed, nervous. Like I’m on a blind date. And Jude is right, sort of. Monogamy is defunct, an antiquated concept that never held much water. I had tried to educate myself while I wandered the desert, chasing Jude’s shadow, and one of the books I slogged through was Darwin’s The Origin of Species, or one of its sequels. I wouldn’t call it a page-turner but one thing was pretty clear: Darwin was a maniacal old fucker half-addled by cocaine but the man was no dummy and he wouldn’t have bet a nickel on monogamy hanging around as long as it has.
Monogamy doesn’t work unless it rises up from the bones. Because it promises nothing but fear and tension when forced on you. It fills you up with despair where there might be joy. It shoves guilt and paranoia and self- loathing down your throat, if you don’t truly want it. Jude and I were monogamous when we were together, for the most part. And monogamy was a fucking drag. It seemed like a social obligation, an arbitrary puritanical construct, and after a while we started lying to each other. When I was with Jude, I pretended to know what I wanted, and with a hellish quickness my face became a jackal’s mask. Then I took a bubble bath one night and a gang of psychos ruined her face before we figured the shit out.
I used to watch her sometimes, when she was painting her toenails or brushing her teeth or yawning on the floor in her underwear, flicking through a glossy woman’s magazine. I loved her. I didn’t love her. Once, I watched her take the television apart in the middle of the night because she was bored. I watched her reduce the television to a scrap heap of apparently ruined fuses and wires. Then I watched her put the television back together and was not surprised when the reception was improved. I thought I loved her, then. I watched her smash the same television to bits two days later because she didn’t like some snotty actress and in that moment, I thought I loved her. But there was fear between us, truly. There is always fear but when two artists, two liars, or two killers occupy the same house and sleep in the same bed, rage runs rampant and becomes entangled with mistrust and doubt and alcoholic despair. The love between them isn’t safe in the bones, the marrow.
Jude doesn’t belong to me and never did. I don’t belong to her because our love is unsafe in the marrow.
Therefore, Jude and I are each set free with the flickering hope that we may come back to each other and the knowledge that we may not. And in the meantime we may as well fuck other people and we may as well be casual and nihilistic about it. It doesn’t mean anything because we don’t belong to each other, at least, not now. One day, though. One day. I might just come around a corner and stumble into the version of Jude that I belong to. And when I find her, I just hope I have the good sense to give myself to her.
This is the moment when the blood throttles up to eleven and everything else slows down. The air around me glimmers and I can see the world a little too clearly. I can see the imperfections in the wood and brick and I can see the fine threads in the carpet under my feet. I can hear Miller breathing downstairs. I imagine Jude tying him up, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. The door at the end of the hall is a little black square that from six seven eight feet away looks much too small for me to pass through. It’s just large enough for a little British girl or a fat white rabbit and I love it when pop culture bleeds through to the cellular level. The endless memories that are not my own.
I stop at the door and listen.
She’s got a razor sadness about her, nothing a hundred dollars won’t fix. Tom Waits is playing softly in Molly’s room. Rain Dogs. Bob Frost is a good egg. This is encouraging, I think. Any woman who likes Tom Waits is bound to have sweetness in her heart. I open the door without knocking. Molly sits cross-legged on the bed, her hair hangs yellow and loose. The room is softly lit and eerily windowless. There’s a green armchair in one corner. The red walls are lined with bookshelves. Two silver curtains shaped like angel’s wings hang over a doorway opposite. The bed is small and puffy, with an iron frame. I’m sure it would make a hellish commotion during even the most careful sexual activity.
Molly’s feet are still bare. Hello, she says.
This is awkward and I wait for her to say Can I help you? But she smiles and shrugs slightly and I take it that she is expecting me.
This is awkward, I say.
No, she says. I like you. And we don’t have to do anything.
Oh. Thank god.
But you have to be nice to me.
I stare at her. It’s not a request I’m used to hearing.
Molly picks up a book and curls into a pool of lamplight. The bathroom is there, through the curtains, she says. If you want to brush your teeth.
Thanks. Do you mind if I smoke in here?
Molly shrugs and I sit down on the end of the bed. I dig out matches.
By the green chair, she says. There’s an ashtray.
I move to sit in the green chair. I smoke and watch her read for a while. It’s peaceful but weird, and I realize I’m unaccustomed to peace. Jude and I are rarely so quiet together.
What are you reading?
The Lover, she says. Margurite Duras. Have you read it?
No.
It’s pretty sexy, she says. And depressing. But it reads like film.
What’s it about?
She stares at me and I wonder if she suspects the truth, that I’ve seen the movie twice and, for perverse reasons of my own, don’t want to admit it. Molly smiles and before she can tell me what the book is about, I commence to babble at her.
It’s about obsession, I say. It’s about a French girl living in the Philippines. She wears a man’s fedora, which probably has to do with the fact that her father is dead or missing from the scene. I don’t remember which. Her mother is crazy and her brother is crazy and they have no money. Then she meets a very wealthy Chinese man and becomes his child lover and pretty soon she’s extracting money from him.
You’ve seen the movie, she says.
Yeah.
Why did you pretend to know nothing about it?
Because there’s something wrong with me.
Molly kneels on the bed, eyes bright. Her shirt hangs open as a promise. Throat and collarbone exposed. Her nipples are shadows behind pale camisole and I wonder what her hair smells like, what her skin tastes like.
You didn’t say a word about love, she says.
What about it?
Do you think she loved him, the Chinaman?
No. I think she loved the sex. She loved being the object of desire. But then, I haven’t read the book. I may be ignorant.
Are you in love with Jude?
Whoa.
I’m sorry, she says. Too personal?
No. But kind of sudden.
I’m sorry, she says. Anyway. Are you?
Fuck. You’re one of those people, I say.
I light another cigarette, still jumpy from that coke. Molly seems serene, though.
Which people? she says.
The relentless question people.
I’m just curious. And I think it’s relevant to the project.
Okay, then. I don’t know.
Why?
Jude and I have been apart for too long, I say. And when we were together, we went through some hairy shit, old-fashioned psycho-ward shit. And I don’t think we trusted each other, which is a problem. The sex was good, is good, but it has a lot more to do with domination and pain than actual tenderness.
You believe, though. You believe in love.
I have to believe in something.
Molly shrugs. Good answer.
Thanks, I say. I want to brush my teeth.
