Michael Aro

Twenty-One Women

Aesthetic statement
I believe that every story is many stories. First among them is the actual narrative or telling of the story—this happened and then that happened. This telling of the story is the root of a tree from which all other forms of the story branch and blossom. The second story is the story of the reader's world—the unique connections that the words in the story make to each reader's knowledge and life experience. Although a writer cannot know exactly how this story will be constructed by a given reader, the writer can be conscious of the fact that this is happening and do his or her best to make this form of the story as rich and varied and open as possible. A third form of the story is the story of the words themselves, the language of the story—a literal attention to the position, use and history of each word in an effort to understand its relationships to every other word and combination of words, both inside and outside the narrative. As a writer, this is what I try to do. I try to tell all of these forms of the story at one and the same time.

***

There is very little left to do. I am sitting in the car. There are two people and the cashier that I can see through the window. One of them is pointing a gun at the cashier. The other one crying. All three are women. The one with the gun is wagging it. All three are walking away. There is no one I can see. Time goes by. The one with the gun is back. I cannot see the gun. She is leaving the building. She is walking to the car. She gets inside. She looks at me. We are leaving. It is dark all around. The moon makes the road shine. Car lights appear and disappear. She is looking at me. I have a full tank. I can go anywhere. I like to drive. The radio is off. I like it off. I like the sound the car makes. I am looking straight ahead. She is staring at the side of my face. I can tell. She will not stop. I am almost never nervous. It is my nature. The car is relaxing me. There are hours before the sun comes up. I do not have to stop. The road is long in the desert. I am warm. I feel good. I roll the window down to let the air in. No one is talking. I like that. I feel good. The car is an automatic. All I have to do is steer. With one hand I steer. With the other hand I rub my neck. It feels good. There was a stream near our house when I was little. I dropped leaves in and followed them. They floated out of the woods and between the grass and disappeared under the water wheel. The wheel turned and turned a rope that ran a water pump at our house. The water wheel turned a stone wheel at the stream. We put corn under the wheel and the wheel crushed it. I am hungry. I only eat when I am hungry. I sleep when I am sleepy. I do everything when I am that thing. This is a strange house. No one is home. I am in the kitchen making good food. There is a dog. The dog likes me. I let the dog out. She is here with me. She is eating and looking out the window for car lights. There are no car lights. Before we leave we use the bathroom and fill a bag up with drinks and food. There is another place. There is always another place. I sleep in the day and drive at night. No one bothers me that way. I can pull over in quiet places and sleep and eat and do everything else I need. She tells me I am beautiful. She is beautiful. We have been together always. Since before we were born. I am sitting in the car with a new moon. My breasts are sore. I take them out and rub them. They are perfectly round with large circles in the middle and hard nipples. No one touches them but me. I let her watch. We get in the back. She reaches down and takes me out and puts me back where I belong. I look down at her. I say her name. She says that is not her name. What is your name then? A me. She says she is a me. I am a me. Everyone is a me.

***

You cannot tell one person from another at that kind of distance. You would think someone in authority would say something that would stick in the mind. But that is now no longer possible.

He is silent, listening to a buzz ferocious enough to scare a horse fly off shit.

"I tell you," he says. "Far away from here there was a flood as far as the eye could see. Now half the houses are on stilts, walking this way and that."

"You need to hold still. If it hurts too much we can stop for a little while. Besides, I need a cigarette."

"Why stop now? Look at me. I am flowering begonias from the knees to the navel. Even my ass. My arms and back are a school of koi. My zodiac chest. My waterfall belly. I'm all in." Trying not to pass out, he sucks air between his teeth. "Tell me one more time why I do this."

"No. You tell me."

"Sleep with me."

"Not yet."

***

"This I know for certain. We communicate with a belief that we understand each other's distinctive features all the while wondering if it's just us carpooling back and forth through some parallel universe."

"What did you just say?"

She tries again. "Eating seedless tangerines together is so much more fun than just peeling them and the little sections and the taste, don't you think?"

"Please pass the milk, please."

"So, is Jill coming?"

The green glass tabletop is covered with dew and the few people swimming nearby seem happy as porpoises.

"I don't know. Maybe."

***

I saw Ginger and Angel and Laura. I did. It was auspicious because I was on the marble floor in a relatively dry spot and there they were. They were all laughing. Laura said, "Oh my God, is that you?"

There was a puddle near my hair. It was not blood, thank goodness. And also thank goodness we weren't in the men's bathroom. What could be worse?

Angel helped me up, still in one piece.

"How did this happen?" It was Ginger's turn.

"I don't know. I just looked up and there you were. Would you like to go someplace?"

I could not find my cell phone to make the call, so Angel made it for me. The car was outside, waiting as always. It's good to be famous. It's better to be rich. Lucky, I am both.

***

He cannot help himself. Counting is the last thing in the world you want to do at a time like this.

There are more lights in this one spot than anywhere else in town.

He sees her naked for the first time through the door. She has a deep scar on one buttock. Someone (i.e., an asshole) once told her she was damaged goods. He sees her and thinks, "She is made perfect."

He exists only in her mind.

He calls her back, "Listen. In an effort to understand the situation I have changed my diet. Let me talk. I should not have tried to seduce you. We have been, and will remain, the best of friends. This Friday, pick me up at 7:00 at my place and I will take you to dinner and a movie. We may do something else. I don't know yet. Be sure and bring a pair of shoelaces. We will need those. And your cello."

He wears a camel hair coat, his pride and joy.

There is no jumping forward and backward. Not here. Not this time.

She reaches over and stabs his asparagus with her fork, lifts it across the table. The effect is unprecedented.

Their friendship seems like something from the past.

He is not careful. He has never been careful, except for the feelings of others. In that respect, he is too careful.

She looks down at him lying spreadeagle on his back. Several times he has been overweight when he took a new lover. On other occasions he has been fit as a fiddle. When he starts out overweight, he gets muscles. When he starts out fit, he gets fat. Her name is Deidre, daughter of Erin—not Erin the name of a man or woman but of an island in the sea. Yes, that Deidre.

***

It was a standard second date with standard food, standard bar hopping and standard 3 AM drunken sex. A big dog lies in the bedroom doorway.

The next morning, "What are you doing? Here let me give you a hand with that. This thing is really beautiful. Has anyone ever told you that?"

After numerous bad breath French kisses he takes the dog for a walk. His underwear drawer has boxers, briefs and thongs folded and stacked by category. The sock drawer is organized by color. In the bathroom are clean fluffy bath towels and new toothbrushes—soft, medium and hard. (There is a confrontation, not now, much later, weeks, even—"If you are cynical for political reasons, I can deal with that. But I will not waste my time on a humorless homunculus. You're not one of those, are you?")

Later. "You smell like vanilla."

"I know. I take cinnamon extract and apple cider vinegar for my fungus. Also, women like vanilla."

He exploits her anus in the resulting collective effervescence.

***

My husband's mother is a kind and loving woman, patient to a fault. When she meets someone she will ask, "How are you today?" "Hello, Mrs. Durga," the check-out girl will say, "How is your son, Dr. Durga?"

My husband makes a lot of money in his building full of doctors, but it is not enough because of me. He is a kind man, a good man, a patient man, in all ways like his mother who is better to me than anyone. I am not a bad person.

I go to the store and buy things and take them home. I often take them back the next day. This watch is a diamond watch with a ruby heart in the middle and black arrows to tell time. I liked it and the jeweler said, "Take it home if you like, Mrs. Durga. It is not a problem." I love art. My husband loves art and his mother loves art. Art fills our home.

I was crying because I had done a bad thing. "Why are you crying?" Mother Durga asked. "There is a man," I said. "His name is Rick." "This Rick, has he hurt you?" "No," I said. Then I said, "Yes. But I do not love him. I love your son. More than my own life." I did not lie. "Does he want money?" she asked. "No," I said. "He wants more than that." She took my hands in both of hers and smiled. "So, this Rick is a dick? Give me the man's phone number, my dear. I will go meet with him." "Forgive me," I said. "I know your heart as I know all hearts," she said.

One night at Christmas, Mother Durga came to my room drunk and laughing. She sat on my bed. "I am happy," she said. She had a glass of wine for herself and one for me.

"Do you know what?" she asked. "Do you know what about Rick?"

It was my favorite wine. My mother-in-law is perfect in all things.

"Let me tell you about Rick," she said. "I invited him to a hotel room. I told him to leave you alone. Or what? he said. Or I will destroy you forever, I said. How can a woman hurt me—Rick Hishour, the greatest fucker in world? I am as dangerous a thing as you will ever meet, he said. Well, Mr. Hishour, I laughed. I laughed and laughed until he blinked. He tried everything. He raged and argued and changed his tune so many times. But each time I cut him off. This went on for quite a while. Finally, I asked if he would make me a drink. I must admit, the man made a great martini. Again he tried to bully me but instead he made me angry. I took a sip and smiled and said in my most delightful manner, Roar all you want you stupid, you Rick Dick Hishour, you, because when I finish this drink I will finish you for once and all and the universe itself will scream with laughter. I reached into my purse and handed him a check with more zeroes on it than you can count on one hand. And while the monster was staring slack-jawed at it, I stabbed him with a butcher knife and cut off his head."

"How did you get him out of the hotel?"

"We own the hotel, dear."

"Mother Durga," I said. "You are infinite in your wisdom."

"Call me, Addie, dear."

Michael Aro is a writer, visual artist and technologist. He is the author of the artist's book Red Moon and the novels M and The Rapture. His work has appeared in The Journal of Experimental Fiction, The North American Center for Interdisciplinary Poetics, Unlikely 2.0, identity theory, smokebox. and Harvey Baily's bialystocker.net. His website is www.azazaza.com. He can often be found standing at the intersection of Art, Language and Technology waiting for the bus to show up.

Return