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| No. 9 |
Summer 2005 |
Ross Davenport Simonini
I Have Heard Asphyxiation Is the
Worst Way to Die
There was tissue in her bedside table. I knew because I looked while she hid in the bathroom. I even waited until she began to pee before I opened drawers and reached inside and felt the paper box erupting with a thin dryness.
Fiele could not hear me over her own urine.
In the first weeks, she had run water while she peed. It made me think her upbringing had driven a strict modesty into her. Before that, it made me think her urine flow was extremely powerful. These assumptions were not true.
Then she opened the door and stood with the center of her body pointed at me. I was surprised by the sight of her. I had almost forgotten she was ever coming out of the bathroom. I had almost realized how perfectly not-alone it could feel if she was always in the bathroom and I was always in the bedroom -- separate but never together. Instead, she was now at the foot of the bed, avoiding my eyes, forcing her lips together transparently.
After a moment, her head jittered.
-I'm not selfish, she said.
-I didn't call you selfish, I said.
-I'm not asking you to do anything against your will, she said.
-I know.
-This is supposed to be about pleasuring each other, she said.
She moved near me and sat on the bed. She put a pillow in her lap and smoothed the material with her fingertips.
-I like doing everything to you, I said.
She didn't look at me. She sniffed.
-There are things you like less, she said. Like giving head.
-Stop it. That's not true.
-Then why do I feel like it's a favor whenever I ask you to do it?
-I don't know. You shouldn't.
-Because it seems strange of you to not do the one thing that you know I like. Especially when it's the only way I can orgasm.
I looked at her face and tried to appear solemn.
-That means every night you're choosing if I orgasm, she said.
-I'm not choosing.
I paused. I hadn't thought before I spoke and wasn't sure if these were my intended words. I didn't want to ignite any further problems.
-From now on, I'll do what you like, I said.
-From now on I'll know you're only doing it because I want you to.
I forced out a false cough of a laugh. There was no way to refute this statement.
-Don't think that, I said.
- I can't help it. I hate having to ask you for this.
I stretched open my eyes and looked at her. Her voice had developed a point.
-I know you know what I like, she said.
She paused and stared into my eyes. Then a yawn came out of me and she grimaced when she saw it.
-Are you trying to tell me something? she said.
I relaxed. This question required no reply.
At some point, she left the room and I stayed supine on the bed with tight, closed eyes and pretended to sleep. From the kitchen, there was the sound of hands against paper, of paper against paper. She was doing something productive and I despised her for it.
Then I began speaking to myself, aiming my words at her.
-Fiele, I whispered. What are you talking about? Why are you always talking like that?
I didn't move for a long time. The silence became like warmth and I counted the space between every paper sound. They were more irregular every time. Then the sounds stopped and she clomped into the room and turned on the light.
-I need to shower before I go, she said. If you don't want to go with me you don't have to.
Her voice had a prescribed softness. She wanted a response.
-You want me to go, I said. Right?
I tried to use a tone coated in sleep. Two of my words unintentionally cracked. I listened to her slide open the closet door and pictured her gazing into the thousands of hanging clothes, deciding which ones she hated least. -Do you need to go home first? she asked.
I shook my head. My eyes were still shut.
-Why are you showering again? I asked.
-My father has a thing about my sweating. If I don't shower he'll comment on my smell.
In the car, she took a wad of paper out of her pocket and set in my lap. She didn't like things in her pockets when she drove.
-He doesn't know I'm coming, she said.
-Should I wait in the car?
-You came to lift boxes. You're no help in the car.
-But maybe you should go in first. So I don't barge in on your father.
-He's probably not even home.
She turned on the radio. We drove through the city's more industrial districts and the lights from certain silos colored the sky dark burgundy. At a crosswalk, we paused alongside a group of teenagers at a bus stop. I glanced over and three of them were staring me down. I looked away. Fiele's head was forward. I looked back and they were still staring. I arched one of my eyebrows, tilted my head and gave myself the challenge of not averting my eyes. There was no expression on my face. Then the light changed.
-People hate other people, I said.
-What? she said.
I didn't repeat myself. I realized how histrionic I sounded.
-Those kids were staring me down, I said.
-They probably thought you were someone else.
I had been to Fiele's father's house a few times before and had met him on two occasions. He was conspicuously drunk on both of them. He had taken me by the shoulder and directed me into the family room where he played old Chess label blues records and said nothing pleasant. In some ways, I had understood him very distinctly, from the way he spoke. We seemed similar. In other ways, I knew him from Fiele's viscous descriptions. When she explained her youth, there was always an illustration of his vitriolic music and how it correlated with violent bouts of drinking. To me, he seemed like a man who didn't have the decisiveness for violence. He seemed safe.
When we arrived, Fiele instructed me to wait on the porch while she entered the house through the garage. Her father always left the side door unlocked.
-What about knocking? I said.
-I don't want to wake him.
She disappeared around the corner and I heard her trudging through the garage, stepping on sheets of metal and banging against the walls. If her father had been asleep, I thought, he was awake now, expecting intruders.
I stood on the porch and instantly smelled something putrid. It had the edge of chemicals and salt. It seemed to be coming from the floors.
Fiele opened the door and I briefly imagined her as an insect.
-Can you smell chemicals? I asked.
-I can't.
She didn't turn on lights. She walked past me and moved through the dark house with familiarity. I hadn't been there enough times to recall the general placement of rooms, so I followed her up the staircase and traced my fingers on the banister.
On the landing, the smell came at me again. Fiele clawed at the wall for a switch.
-I smell it, she said.
I looked to the left and saw a light on under the kitchen door. Fiele moved toward it, pushed open the door and let a thick white smoke ooze at us, into our eyes and nostrils and throats.
Then she said something unintelligible.
-What? I said.
-Open the doors, she said.
I opened some nearby doors, stepped onto the balcony and felt an unnatural cough burst through my neck and into my head. It was my first experience with smoke inhalation.
The smoke rushed through the doors, then curled around the lip of the house and dissipated. Fiele was still yelling.
-Where are you? she barked.
I yelled something back and coughed when the words came out of me. My throat felt like a chemical burn.
-What are you doing? she said. Open the fucking doors.
I remember thinking how right she was.
Then I inhaled a shot of cold air and pushed back inside with a sweatshirt sleeve over my mouth. I squinted. The house was confusing and I already felt somewhat lost. When I found her father's bedroom I tugged on the main windows. The television was on. I had heard it when I stepped into the house, but, for some reason, I was surprised to find it on like this .It wasn't clear to me if I should turn it off, so I didn't.
Then I went back to the kitchen and found Fiele at the sink swallowed by grey smoke.
-Fiele.
She had a pot in her hands. The faucet was pouring onto it. There was another pan on the stove releasing a column of smoke.
-Get it, she said.
I retracted my hand into my sleeve, used the material as a glove and took the handle. When I lifted, the smoke slowed and I saw a blackened brick of meat clinging to the bottom.
-Move, I said.
She moved. It felt good to have an unselfish excuse to be rude to her.
I dumped the pan in the sink, under the running water and glanced over to see her crying. I turned off the burner.
-Are you all right? I said.
-It's the smoke, she said.
She used her pointer fingers to wipe her eyes.
-Look, she said.
She pointed to the microwave above the stove. The smoke had melted the face off. The numbers were streaming down the front panel and onto the countertop. The buttons were all there in a taffy heap. When I saw it, I knew the radiation was pouring into my body.
-We need to get out of here, I said. We're going to choke.
Her back was to me. She was moving into the family room and coughing.
-It's not good for you to be in here, I said.
I turned the water off and followed. The smoke had cleared in patches but mostly it seemed unmoving and static. I kept thinking about fans. I imagined fans in all the corners off the house, blowing the toxins into the backyard. For a moment, I believed this was an epiphany.
-Where are the fans? I yelled.
She didn't answer.
-Fiele? I called. Do you have fans?
Then I found her standing over the couch pushing on her father's head. She was using her whole body.
-Oh God, I said.
-Get up, she said to him.
Her voice was monotone.
-Get up, she said.
For some reason, I didn't try to help. I was concerned about the blackness filling my chest.
-Pull him off the fucking couch, she said.
I leaned over his body. There was a magazine splayed across his stomach and one of his shoes was off. My right hand still covered my nose and mouth so I reached out my left, gripped onto his sweatshirt and pulled him onto the floor. His eyes opened.
-Get up, she yelled.
-What? he said.
-You're ruining our home, she said.
-Why are you here? he said. I was asleep.
-Do you see the smoke? she said. The microwave is dead. You left the stove on.
-No, he said.
He stood up, braced himself on the coffee table and cleaned his teeth with his tongue.
-We should all go outside, I said. This is bad air.
-What? he said.
-I'm leaving, she said.
She did not leave and he struggled into the kitchen and looked at the smoke. We followed him. He didn't say anything. Instead, He went to the microwave, pulled off the chassis and touched at the innards.
-What are you doing? Fiele said.
He didn't answer. He just stared into the microwave. She left the room.
-Where are you going? I asked.
-Just a minute, she said.
I immediately went downstairs and out the front door. I sat on the hood of Fiele's car and breathed deeply through my nose and out my mouth. I visualized the smoke being expelled from my body.
A few minutes later, I found Fiele in the backyard, walking the perimeter of the pool, talking to a cordless phone. She was retelling the story with a strange calmness.
-If I hadn't stopped by, she said, he'd be a dead person.
She kicked at a small patch of lawn. Her left hand gripped the back of her head.
-I was here to pick up some things, she said. Some papers I left.
I tried to gain her attention with my eyes. She didn't look. I molded my fingers into the shape of a phone, pressed them against my head and narrowed my eyebrows at her. Then I hissed. She looked through me.
-He's still inside, she said to the phone. He's at the microwave.
Then she was silent for a long minute. There were scuffing sounds coming from the house. I imagined her father reaching too far into the viscera of the microwave and burning himself on some stray wire.
-I know, she said to the phone. I will.
I could still feel something blocking my breath. I tried to spit it out. I grinded the walls of my throat against each other and spit. Nothing came out. I spit three more times. Then Fiele turned off the phone and headed toward the house.
-What are we doing? I said.
-Leaving, she said.
-Where are the boxes?
-I'll come back when he's not home.
-I can't go back inside, I said. Something's wrong.
She kept walking.
-I'll meet you at the car, I yelled.
I watched her slap her father's back while his hands moved through the microwave. I knew she was enduring a savage embarrassment.
In a few minutes she came to the car and asked me to drive. It was relief. It struck me that the visit to her father's house had completely wiped the conflict between us. There were stronger elements now. If she dwelled on our problems she would feel petty. She would lose my support and right now, she needed my abilities as another person. She needed to keep me content. For this reason, the night had worked itself out.
I backed slowly down the driveway and drove through the residential streets at a strong speed. I wanted her to understand that I was in control now, that I was the structure of the night.
-Can we go somewhere? she said.
-Of course.
-For dinner.
-Of course.
She decided we would go to a noodle joint in the Temple district.
-He's all right, I said.
-He's not dead, she said. If we hadn't stopped by he'd be dead now.
This was repetition.
We ate dinner across from each other and Fiele had already begun to refer to the incident as "the fire." In the middle of eating, she surged into anger.
-Do you see? she said. Do you see what he does?
-I saw.
-I don't know how he stays alive.
She shifted her jaw.
-I don't know how he holds a job. I don't care. I just want all of my things to be out of that house. It seems like every time I pick up a load of boxes, new ones appear.
-I'll help you, I said.
-You shouldn't. I don't want you to endure that scene again.
She checked my reaction to this lie. I nodded. I almost expected her to nod back, to silently thank me for not exposing her writhing embarrassment. She didn't. My reaction was the only callow reaction I knew how to give and it wasn't out of respect. She knew this.
-I wonder if anyone else would have stopped him? she said.
-I don't know.
She buried her nose in her shoulder.
-We're smelling up the restaurant, she said. Our clothes smell like burnt meat.
-I'm trying to ignore it.
-We need a tomato sauce bath.
She took off her jacket. I stood, went to the bathroom and forced myself to cough for a minute. This didn't help. Whatever was in my throat was sharp and stubborn.
On the car ride back, she became a little tearful.
-Why can't people just be better? she said.
-I don't know, I said.
-Last week, she said. I was at a stoplight and three men in robes were going to cars with bags in their hands. I didn't know what was in the bags until I saw one of them pull out a book. Then the tallest one came to my window. I rolled it down and he said, "Do you like to read?" and I said, "What do you have?" He handed me a book on cabinet making. Then he walked away and the light changed.
-Bizarre, I said.
-That's what I'm saying, she said. Why should that be bizarre? Why should free books be bizarre?
-I can't disagree, I said.
We arrived to her apartment boxless. The papers she had been reading earlier were still on the kitchen table. She strode through the room, dropped her purse and knelt on the bed. Her face went into the pillow and her torso trembled a few times before surrendering.
-Are you okay? I asked.
-I'm void of okayness, she said. Plus, I have a headache.
She rubbed her eyes and groaned.
-I'll change that, I said.
I knew what she wanted.
I sauntered toward her, leaned across her body and unbuckled her pants. She breathed with a tone. I gripped onto the top of her pants and pulled them to her knees. I moved my head to her thighs.
-Stop, she said.
She recoiled. She kept her eyes closed and angled her head to the ceiling.
-That isn't what I want.
-I'm sorry, I said.
-I don't want you to apologize, she said. I just want you know what I want.
-I thought I did.
When I said this, I knew I had nothing else to say. She bit her lip, pulled her legs toward her chest and gazed at her knees.
-Aren't there times when you don't want to feel good? she said.
-I think I always want to feel good, I said. I don't think I ever want to feel pain.
-That's not what I meant, she said.
Then she looked at me with exhaustion. Her feet dug into the blanket and her arms hugged a pillow. I didn't want to move.
Copyright 2005, Ross Davenport Simonini nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program
at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.