GIRL 93
ISRAELI AIR FORCE GIRL
PART 5
(continued)
In the gauzy haze, I reached down for an ornate gold door handle.
The heavy mahogany door opened. The plush interior of the room was lit by candles. Off in an unseen distance, incense burned. The carpet was a deep red, the walls a dark, rich color. Everywhere there was old wood and seemingly older leather. The room seemed centered around a fireplace cavernous enough to roast a pig in. Logs as big around as whole trees burned with a warm, mellow glow. There were comfortable leather gentlemen’s club arm chairs facing the fire, with small walnut tables between them. Dim light, no brighter than candles, emanated from the sepia-tinted art-deco lamp shades of ancient brass lamps on the tables. In one seating area adjacent to the fireplace, three chairs were arranged in a square, so that two chairs directly faced each other, and the third in between them faced the hearth. Two men sat in the chairs next to each other, their faces close as if sharing intense, serious secrets. There were two rocks glasses on the table between their chairs. On another table was a third drink, its owner seemingly missing.
Though I didn’t say a word the two men in the chairs, dim figures both, rose as one and walked toward me. I remembered thinking they must be brothers, as they were the same build and height, and when the reached me I could see that they were twins, both the same image as in the mirror with one exception - the mirror image always looks at me straight on. I noticed how odd I looked from a different angle. In some ways more handsome. In others, disappointing.
The eyes of the man on the right crinkled into crows feet as hesmiled. "Come on in. Sit down. We’ve been expecting you." The other man’s face was neutral, as if he were trying to mask an old hostility, but he nodded at me with a serious expression. It was an unmistakable gesture of respect. I remember being surprised by that, and a second emotion - relief.
I took a seat in the empty chair with the waiting drink. My chair faced the dour brother. The friendly twin sat next to me, on my left. I noticed that all three of us leaned forward, our elbows on our thighs. It was difficult to tell who was imitating - or mocking - whom.
The friendly one reached for his glass. "Twelve year old scotch," he said, smiling. "Johnny Walker Black."
The very same that Girl 6, the immortal Alayna, used to drink, if you can imagine so beautiful and wonderful a woman drinking scotch with the boys.
We all raised our glasses.
"I propose a toast to progress toward peace, and perhaps even the hope of peace itself."
I nodded as seriously at him as the angry twin had at me. To peace, I said.
"Peace," the other said. Odd how the twins’ voices were so similar in timber, yet so different in expression. The light twin’s tone was singsong, almost British. The dark one’s pronunciation could have been that of a Sicilian gang member, guttural and dangerous.
"Let’s talk," the light twin said. And suddenly I recognized him. It was the supreme being, with his usual costume of my flesh. Which meant the other man was my traitorous penis, Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I took another pull of the scotch and sat back in the chair.
"Rex, why don’t youexplain to Mikey what we’ve come up with." The supreme being smiled encouragingly at Rex.
Rex drained his scotch and put the glass down, wiping his lip with one hand and gripping the arm of the leather chair with the other. He leaned forward, his brows rising, his expression serious, but also just barely threatening.
"Israeli Air Force Girl," he said. He looked at the dark antique wood floorboards, which were wide and thick, as if we were in a colonial inn somewhere in New England. When his eyes rose again, they were duller, as if the scotch had suddenly hit its mark. "I was wrong to conduct that meeting without you being on board."
I was amazed. Rex, the supposedly stronger, more aggressive of us,was admitting he had made a mistake. It turned my insides. Where before there had been enmity and hostility, there was only fatigue.
I thought about this a lot, I said, my voice calm and deep. Rex leaned forward, as if I were a judge about to render his sentence. Maybe I went too far. Maybe I overreacted to simple dark hair and dark eyes. I mean, come on, how much could she look like Girl Zero? The supreme being frowned over at me. Sorry. Like Puh, Puh, Patti. I was mocking myself. Imagine being so upset that I couldn’t say the woman’s name. I’d been an idiot. But that was then. This was now. And maybe Rex should be more in charge of the process. I think I’m too analytical. And agonized. I think it might be a good thing to let you alternate with me when we’re in the field.
"Really?" he asked.
I nodded. After all, what did I have to lose? It certainly had to be better than ceasing to exist if the supreme being, as referee, decided I was the sinful party and Rex was righteous. And God knew, I’d done some bad things, some very wrong things.
"So you think you could work with Rex in the future on this enterprise? You’ll relinquish control when he asks? Then request to come back when you think you’re needed? Or when you’re asked to?"
Again I nodded. Afterall, I thought, we’d been doing this in business for a few years. Rex was the sales guy, I was the worker-bee/analyst. I wrote the opinion, Rex talked about it to the partners.
The supreme being beamed, then took another sip of the scotch.
"There is one thing," Rex said haltingly.
I raised an eyebrow.
The supreme being nodded solemnly. "You need to listen to this, Mikey."
Go ahead,Isaid.
Rex took a deep breath. "Israeli Air Force Girl. I need - we need - to see her again."
Why? I asked him.
"Go ahead," the supreme being coaxed.
Rex’s hand shook as he nervously adjusted his bow tie. "I want her. I just want her. I have to see her again."
My face hardened. There’s no way.
"Why not?" the supreme being asked. "Why are you afraid of her?"
Because I could fall in love with her. And she’ll break my heart in the same places that Girl Zero did.
I caught his eye. The supreme being frowned again.
Fine. Patti.
I didn’t even stutter that time.
"She won’t have us," Rex blurted. "Not for the long haul. Not for love. For sex, but not love."
Like that would convince me. If she even so much as touched my cheek, I would be lost. My world would revolve around hers.
"It’s just one more date," Rex said. "But you have to keep an open mind. You have to let her in long enoughto consider being with her. We have to look her in the eye and talk about making love."
Rex? The primordial dinosaur, talking about making love instead of fucking? This had gone too far.
I shut my eyes and her image came back to me, and I started to shake. I felt the supreme being’s hand on my sleeve. It was only then I consciously realized that the three of us were wearing tuxedos. I looked up at his face for a long time, and his strength and courage seemed to flow from his hand into my arm and up to my heart. It felt warm and soothing as it filled my bloodstream.
One date? And then we’re done?
One date and then I might be done, I thought.
There was a long silence. I remember standing up. Both men stood with me, but the supreme being kept his hand on my forearm, and the warmth kept coming.
* * *
It seemed much later, as if months had passed. I had hoped the craziness in my soul would die down, but it never seemed to. On an afternoon when my "Mikey" personality seemed in charge, I text messaged Israeli Air Force Girl.
She seemed surprised and pleased to hear from me. It was broad daylight. Less chance of anything feeling romantic that way. That and the fact that since I had seen her, Israeli Air Force Girl had gotten herself a boyfriend, and she was planning on a night of long, slow, romantic fucking.
When I first saw her, I noticed her aura. It was dark. A black halo surrounded her short but perfect body. I looked at her hard, as if studying an organism in a microscope. It was three in the afternoon on a sunny day. There was no twilight, no romantic starlight now. All her flaws would rise to the surface. The slightest blemish, a single pound over her ideal weight.
But there were no flaws. Israeli Air Force Girl was the most physically perfect specimen of a human female I’d ever seen. Her hair was gleaming and jet black. Her eyes were as dark as the winter sky. Her skin glowed. Her lips glimmered.
And yet, there was darkness surrounding her. It was an anger. There was a grudge inside her that even she couldn’t get to.
She sipped the margarita and after a few minutes, a few colors of the rainbow snuck into her aura. She smiled at me, warming slowly, as she described her boyfriend, and how she loved him, but wasn’t in love with him. And how she longed for the man she dreamt of to be with her. And after she said it, those black eyes drilled into me.
I took one last risk.
So a black bag team comes, I said.
"What’s a black bag team?" she said.
That voice. That goddamned, accented, melodious, beautiful fucking voice.
Think burglars, I said. Think CIA black ops. A covert operation group. Something from one of my novels. Anyway, they come to your bedroom at three in the morning and you wake up duct taped to a chair doped up with sodium pentothal so that you cannot lie. And one of the men asks you, if you dated this guy, this Michael guy, would you love him? Would you want a relationship with him?
She looked down a the table.
Don’t answer, I said, panicked. She’d just rejected me at my most vulnerable. But there had been a moment, just one moment, when I had opened myself up to her. When I had offered her the one thing that I had to give to a woman. Myself.
"No," she said. "I want to answer."
I tried not to listen, but the phrases came down a tunnel toward me and hit me with stinging, salty blows, even though I tried to dodge them.
I want my own children.
I want a man who will love me, only me, forever, and you can’t do that.
The woman who called you a Land Rover, going from vagina to vagina - she was right. You are. You would find some flaw in me. Some birthmark I’d always had. And you would blow it up in your mind until it became big enough to be a door through which you’d make your escape from the relationship. You’d become unhappy and you would leave me. And then I would be here again.
No, I won’t love you, but I could have a sexual fling with you. You could fuck me all you want, but I’ll never love you.
I’ll never loveyou.
Never love you.
Once her words floated in the air between us, like summer fireflies. Now her words were nails banging into a coffin.
She paid the check. Every time a woman did that I felt anguish, as if I weren’t a big enough boy to pay for the girl.
I watched her leave the restaurant. Her image faded slowly in a blur.
It was over.
There would be no more black haired girls, I said to myself.
Only blondes.
Only blondes.
Only blondes.
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