Even the comical portal of Diane’s open mouth began to seem okay now that Hazel had gotten used to it. It was just an exaggerated expression. Diane was really surprised, that’s all. Making a face like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Hazel remembered a fund-raiser she and Byron had attended where she was in the bar line next to a woman wearing a pair of Gogol concept shoes—they were wedges whose platforms digitally displayed her weight and BMI on the left foot, and the number of steps she’d taken that day alongside the number of calories she’d hypothetically burned on the right; whenever her weight decreased more than a tenth of a pound, the shoes would start flashing and emit celebratory bursts of pink LED light for twenty seconds. The woman had asked the bartender for another glass of a very specific wine, and when the bartender told her they were out of it, she’d made a face not unlike Diane’s current expression. Finally the woman’s shoes had started blinking, which broke her out of the trance; she looked down at them, reading the numbers, then shot the bartender a different horrible look. “Apparently,” she said, “disappointment is great for my metabolism. So I suppose I should actually thank you for ruining my night.” Hazel had watched her blink off into the distance, then wanted to try to cheer up the bartender. “Jeez,” she’d said to him, “what’s her problem?” But he wasn’t rattled. “What did she say?” he asked. “I didn’t hear her. I was staring at her chest.”
Hazel had nodded and fielded a question to him. “If women could either be exactly like they are now, or you could turn us all into giant breasts, every single one of us becoming just a giant breast and nipple that doesn’t talk or think or eat, we just roll everywhere and leave a silicone slug trail in our wake, which would you prefer?” The bartender’s eyes had started scanning the room for an answer, as though he might see a woman standing against the wall next to a giant breast, therefore having a convenient visual guide to help him compare and make his decision. “Where does the slug trail come from?” he’d asked. “What’s lubricating it? Is there still a down-there?”
Since the bartender was occupied in thought, Hazel had grabbed a liquor bottle and begun making herself a drink while she spoke. “Well,” Hazel said, “let me elaborate. Say there’s a port the size of a standard vacuum cleaner tube on the side of the breast. That way the breasts can stop at silicone stations, which are just like gas stations basically, and get pumped up with more silicone. The bottom of the breast is porous, allowing microdroplets of the silicone to ooze out throughout the day and make a greasy path for us to slide across. It’s all the mobility we have.”
“So this port though. That’s, like, where men can put it in?” Hazel had taken a small sip of liquor and tried not to cough. “Of course,” she finally responded. “Without arms or legs it would be hard for us to stop you.” He’d clapped his hands together. “Brilliant. Done. Let’s make it happen.”
Now, looking at Diane’s mouth, Hazel thought of this port. She had an urge to see what the doll’s mouth felt like inside. While the opening was wide, when Hazel squinted one eye and tried to see down it, the interior looked snug. Which she guessed was what people were paying for.
To ease her guilt about violating the doll’s mouth with her hand, Hazel decided to pretend Diane might be choking on something. “This has nothing to do with sex!” Hazel began, in a series of verbal assurances that were as much for herself as for the possible Byron-cam. “I’m just making sure you don’t have anything lodged in your throat after breakfast. No precaution is too great for your safety, Di.” The mouth accommodated Hazel’s first four fingers, but getting her thumb inside took some convincing. Finally her hand was in (“Say AHHH, Diane! I feel like a dentist!” Hazel joked), and then her forearm.
For whatever reason, her limb being engulfed felt soothing. It was like her hand was being held in an advanced way. A nontechnological way? As if Diane had placed Hazel’s hand not inside her throat but on her abdomen, and then bent over, folding herself around Hazel’s fingers and wrist and elbow, the most committed handshake ever. It felt almost intimate, until Hazel pushed a little farther and realized she was feeling the back of Diane’s head from the inside.
Then the sensation of Diane’s rubber lips squeezing tightly around her forearm got uncomfortable. Hazel thought about the automatic blood pressure cuffs at the pharmacy in her childhood, how she used the machine every time she went, but every time was certain, at least for a moment, that the machine had finally gone haywire—had constricted far too firmly and wasn’t going to loosen fast enough for her limb to maintain its necessary blood flow.
Then she thought about the giant snakes she’d seen on the nature channel whose jaws unhinge to make way for whole pigs and other large meals. What if Hazel woke up in the middle of the night on the porch feeling like her legs were bound, but when she lifted the covers, what did she see beneath them but Diane? Who had slithered into the bed and was in the process of ingesting Hazel whole, legs first? Diane, who would be able to turn real and come to life as long as she ate a living woman once a month to sustain her? Though Hazel hoped her father wouldn’t sacrifice her for the sake of giving his love doll sentience, she couldn’t say for sure. Hazel imagined him entering the room in the final moments of her consumption, Diane’s lips having crossed the Rubicon of Hazel’s collarbone so that only her head remained unswallowed, to say good-bye and apologize. Sorry, kiddo. The gal’s gotta eat. Maybe he’d pat Hazel on the forehead, the same way he used to at bedtime when she was a little girl, before giving her one last reassurance: “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you’ve fully liquefied inside her before Diane and I get intimate. You don’t want paternal moans of intercourse to be the sound track to your death, or for Diane to be in motion so the stomach-acid bath of your final demise is violently sloshing around as you suffocate. No, you’re entering the undertow of calm waters now. We’ll take it easy while she digests. Just close your eyes and pretend you’re out camping underneath the stars, getting zipped up inside a warm, full-body sleeping bag that stings a little and wasn’t constructed from a sufficiently breathable fabric.”
It was this thought that made Hazel begin to actively recoil. Then she had a worse thought, triggered by childhood Halloween party games where she’d had to reach into bowls and jars she couldn’t see the inside of to feel things that mimicked the texture of certain organs—how often did her father clean Diane? Were her fingers beginning to get sweaty inside the constricted space, or had they stumbled onto moisture?