They thought about the dear little perverted nurse and wondered if she would ever settle down. They wondered if she would be so enthusiastic about every patient. They hoped she would never become jaded. They hoped the hospital knew how lucky it was to have her. They wondered if they could meet their own little nurse someday and live happily ever after. And so they fell asleep without masturbating.
Sometimes her performance was too good and it took away from the sex.
? ? ?
SHE HAD ON a black Napoleon hat. It was like the black part of a crescent moon. She was riding around on a hobbyhorse. There was a backdrop of the frozen Russian landscape stuck up behind her. How cold it was meant to be in this make-believe Russia! The white makeup on her face made her as pale as the snowflakes. She was wearing a long black coat, and she had on a pair of bloomers but no shirt. She made love to Mimi, who was also dressed up as a soldier.
“Did you know that Napoleon was afraid of cats? But that he liked women’s pussies?” Mimi asked Rose. “Did you know that he used to dress in the clothes of a poor person so he could walk through the streets of Paris to find out what people really thought of him?”
“How do you know all that about Napoleon?”
“I have a book about him that you can borrow.”
Mimi was the only person Rose had ever met who liked to read as much as she did. Rose kept the things she read stuffed messily in her head like a walk-in closet. Mimi kept them all organized in her head like a scientist. She filed them away like a stack of cue cards. The facts were always there when Mimi needed them. She was a genius. She should have been a lecturer at the university. She should have been touring around in a black suit and tie, talking about French history. She was here without her clothes on, though.
? ? ?
MIMI WAS GETTING DRESSED in a maid’s outfit. She turned her back to Rose so that her friend could do up the little buttons at the back.
“What in the world do our clothes say about us when we put them on?” Rose said. “There’s no real dignity in any of these costumes. If I’m a maid, I do what the owner of the house tells me to do. If I’m a nurse, I do whatever the doctor tells me to do. What are we as women, other than barnacles that attach themselves to higher life forms in some pathetic attempt to clean up messes? Tidy up what men have left behind—make the world a lovelier, better place for men. I would like to play a part in which I don’t have a superior.”
The director told Rose that she should save her philosophical speculations until after work because they were causing the male actors to lose their erections.
Rose looked over at the male actor. He was wearing a long white wig and a black judge’s robe that went down to his feet. He was casually stroking his cock to get an erection so they could start the film again.
A man walked by with a mask of a donkey head and a tail attached to a belt around his waist. Rose looked down at his penis to see if she could recognize who it was by the organ. It seemed to be a rather ordinary penis.
“Have you watched any of the movies we’ve been making?” Rose asked. “In every one of them, the woman is hunted. She’s subdued, isn’t she?”
“Oh, you’re not supposed to look into them so hard, you know. They’re just there to let some lonely people get their jollies,” said Mimi.
“A girl’s desire is like a pretty butterfly. And a man’s desire is like a butterfly net. His desire captures and kills her. He turns her into an object to be pinned on a corkboard. I don’t think I’m interested in the tyranny of the couple. I’m more interested in what a person does when they’re forced to be by themselves.”
“You just want to sit on a chair naked and masturbate?”
They both laughed.
“Are you going to get into your costume soon?” Mimi asked.
Rose had said all that while being stark naked, not a stitch on her other than a string of fake pearls, a pair of black high heels and a little tuft of pubic hair.
33
STILL LIFE OF MURDERS
McMahon had thought about Rose compulsively during the past year. He had stopped sleeping around. It was too emotionally risky. Before Rose, he had always felt completely in command when sleeping with a woman. Now he felt vulnerable, like the woman could take something from him. He felt as if he were begging them for something they could never give him. The emptiness and longing he felt after sex made him sick inside. He blamed Rose for this.
And he sometimes even felt strange when he masturbated. He always felt like weeping after he came and his fantasy dissipated. It wasn’t worth the orgasm. He sometimes wondered whether the sex had affected Rose similarly. After all, he had been her first. So he had to have registered in her consciousness in some fashion. He had to be emotionally important. If he knew she felt the same, he thought that perhaps he could go back to being a man.
? ? ?
MCMAHON KEPT EXPECTING ROSE TO return for money, but she never did. He thought maybe Rose had died. He had everyone in the police station paid off. The crime-scene photographer put together a portfolio of Jane Does in the city who had died suspicious deaths since Rose had run off on him.