We walk up the hill to Noe Valley, suddenly awkward. He lives in a house perched on a side street off Twenty-fourth. He has three roommates, he says, but they are all probably out on this beautiful night. We enter the house. His room in the back is large, cavelike, and high-ceilinged, and on every wall are paintings that looked like they have been ripped out of art books, bought at thrift stores, some framed, some taped from the back. Along these walls turned away from sight are stacks and stacks of canvases.
He goes to get us wine, and in the dim light I study the painting on the wall closest to me. A Japanese print showing a few figures hurrying across a bridge, bare pale legs, the shards of a storm coming down, a riot of waves rising underneath. I move to another and see a woman writhing on the ocean’s edge. She is caught in the coils of a giant octopus, tentacles snaking all over her body. I look more closely, feel my face flare up. She’s rearing back in pleasure, her fingers at her crotch, her snorkel mask forgotten at her throat, and the water gathered at her back. The octopus, enormous and frightening but also erotic, holds her captive. Its tentacles stretch around her ankles, drape around her arms; one encircles an aroused nipple as she pleasures herself. I imagine these tentacles moving around me. How heavy they would be, how easy it would be to succumb to that embrace. Daniel next to me, hands me a glass of red, says, “Teraoka. Do you know him?” I shake my head, embarrassed that he has seen me looking.
He must sense this because he says, “Come on.” He grabs a throw from its place on an old chair and disappears through a window. I push through behind him and am borne into the night. He spreads the throw on the roof and we sit. It is astoundingly warm. There is a downward slant on the slate under us, making our toes curl in vertigo. Below us, late-night stragglers, arms around each other’s waists, stumble home to bed. We perch above them, unseen, but seeing everything in the dim light of the sharp sickle moon. We talk shyly and carefully through the wine. I don’t remember what was said, just that it was said breathlessly. When he reaches over to kiss me I surprise myself by not pulling away as I have done so often. Then there is a dizzy roll, a loss of gravity, a sort of slipping and sliding. His mouth and his scent and a thousand giddy kisses, a hungry taking of tongue and breath and taste, and somehow we have rolled to the very edge of the roof; just below us is a drop into the now-silent street. We look down and laugh because we are invincible, and nothing, not even that empty space just below our heads, is frightening.
And then he says, “Bed?” and stands up and I follow him as he scrambles up the roof and stumbles through the window and toward the bed. He pulls my hand, kisses me more softly, seeing that the atmosphere has changed, but I shake my head and pull away. I cannot do this. There are terrible memories in my skin. I walk out of his door as he calls out, “Can I call you?” I shake my head hard, say, “No, absolutely not. I’m not available.” It is a warning and a threat. I close the door quietly behind me and pray never to see him again.
*
His name is Daniel. He is an artist, a painter in oils and gauche. In the daytime he handles art for museums and collections; at night he paints. He’s twenty-nine, a year older than me. Nadine tells me all this. She tells me he’s been asking about me, asking for my number. She asks if she can give it to him and I say, “No!” and then I go home and look up meanings of the name Daniel. It means “judgment of God.” I shudder. That’s the last thing I need. I read this about men of this name: “Daniels tend to be passionate, compassionate, intuitive, romantic, and to have magnetic personalities. They are usually humanitarian, broad-minded and generous, and tend to follow professions where they can serve humanity. Because they are so affectionate and giving, they may be imposed on. They are romantic and easily fall in love, but may be easily hurt and are sometimes quick-tempered.”
I look up that artist—Teraoka, he had said. I find a cross-eyed geisha, her long tongue intent on her ice-cream cone, characters caught in a shipwreck, and many, many women writhing in the giant octopus’s embrace.
I slam my laptop shut and shower as I always do under burning hot water. I eat my solitary dinner, my eyes on the textbook in front of me. And later I look down to see that I have drawn his name in looping octopus curlicues in the margins of my perfect and ordered notes.
*
I wait for Nadine to ask again. I have to wait days, but then she asks and I say yes, give him my number, and I ignore the Cheshire cat grin that stretches across her face.