Gravity Box and Other Spaces Read online

  Her breath shuddered out in a last wave, and she felt control return. She smelled pungent and dug out her bottle of perfume. A few minutes later she walked over the grass to the gravel driveway to the marble entrance. With each step, the music, now mingled with laughter, grew louder. I’ve made a mistake, she thought as she walked into the storm of revelers.

  Just inside she took a glass of champagne from someone and entered the beast. Hands, hips, elbows, and knees all touched her, seeming to caress her as she passed along, deeper into the antic folds of expensive clothes and cigarette smoke bluing the air. Everyone seemed on display, but crammed together so no one could get a clear look. Conny drank her champagne and made greeting noises, searching idly for a familiar face, one with a name that she could talk to. The faces all looked so earnest about being casual that they lost all legitimacy and their smiles seemed overburdened with meaning. She recognized no one. It was pleasant, though, to be stroked and petted through the careless gauntlet. She missed it, touching and being touched by flesh. It would, she thought, be pleasant not to miss it. She finished her drink and found another before she made it to the far side of the room.

  A bar had been set up, tended by three men in short white jackets. She caught herself on the edge, held onto the polished wood like a shipwrecked passenger grasping a floating plank, and watched them busily mixing drinks. She stared at their hands, at their quick efficiency working with bottles, ice, and glass. She finished her second glass and set it down with a solid click.

  “I’d like a Manhattan, please,” she said. “Something from home.” She laughed.

  “Conny! Glad you made it! Where’s William?”

  Brian stood at her side, grinning, his face a bit red.

  “Home,” she said. “Working.”

  “Ah. Dedication. Admirable.” He glanced to the side. “I’ll have a gin and tonic.” He smiled at her again. “Any trouble finding the place?”

  Conny lifted the glass to her lips and shook her head. Brian picked up his own drink as people jostled against him. Fluid sloshed over his hand, and he glared around.

  “Crowded here.” He gestured with his head that she should follow him, then took her hand and led her through the labyrinth of people. His touch was moist and too warm, but she was reluctant to let go.

  She lost her bearings quickly. It was as if the room had suddenly grown larger now that she was nearing its center. All she saw was people pressed close to her or the ceiling beyond the brilliant chandelier. There was a second floor and more people standing along the railing looking down. She imagined that they watched her, making quiet bets on whether she would reach the exit of the maze before being eaten—

  A clarinet screamed against the steady, frantic rhythms, but she could not see the band. People bobbed in place, unconsciously following the beat, their bodies drawn into the pulse. She felt it, undulant and insistent, rippling through them all, bringing them into synchrony, into concert. She knew that feeling and for a moment it seemed right that she was here.

  She bumped against Brian. He had stopped to talk to someone. She heard him introduce her briefly—something about “his writer’s wife”—and saw a bright face smile at her. She made herself smile back. She could not hear their conversation, not as words. Except for the surreal sharpness of the music, sounds seemed muffled, blended into a steady drone, like water. She liked the effect. The anonymity of the noise made everyone appear smarter, more sophisticated. They all had something to say to each other, and they all appreciated what was being said.

  She could hide within it, say nothing, and pretend along with the rest of them—

  She felt warm. She raised her glass and noticed a faint tremor in her hand.

  He’s working again—

  She licked her lips and filled her mouth with cold liquid.

  “Conny?”

  She saw Brian staring at her, a faint crease of worry between his eyebrows.

  “Warm,” she said. She finished her drink. How many did that make? “I think—is there somewhere I could lie down?”

  His smile widened almost imperceptibly and the crease vanished.

  “Of course,” he said.

  He pulled her through the crowd until they reached a curved staircase that went up to the second floor. He took her elbow and helped her as they ascended. At the top she looked down into the mosaic of people, still unable to locate the band, and tried to picture herself as part of that crowd, one frantically bland face out of hundreds.

  Brian tugged her away, into a long hallway, and the music became muted, tamer, more distant, as if being left behind in a different dream. Brian knocked on doors and listened. At the fourth he grinned, and they entered a room.

  She found the shape of the bed by the light from the hallway. Her legs felt uncertain as she stumbled toward it. She reached it just as he closed the door. She sprawled across the soft surface in the darkness, stretched briefly, and then on her side, she curled into herself.

  “I’m sorry—” she said. “Just need a little time—”

  “Of course. I quite understand.”

  Through the insistence growing inside her, along her thighs, through her stomach, she felt the bed shift. Then someone stroked her shoulder, touched her face. She flinched away and rolled onto her stomach.

  “Here now,” a voice said, “let me help.”

  She felt her skirt lifted, a hand against the back of her calf, up to her knee. She began to laugh. He pushed at her shoulder, trying to roll her over again.

  Then lips brushed the side of her face, her neck, her ear. She laughed louder, and turned her face away.

  “Here—now—”

  His hands took hold of her hips and began rocking her. She let herself be moved over onto her back, still laughing. She buried her hands between her legs.

  He kissed her. His tongue prodded at her lips. She thought, I should be polite and let him. This is why I came, but she could not stop laughing.

  “Damn it,” he hissed. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry—” She tugged at her skirt, pulling it up, and spread her legs.

  After a few moments, she felt his hand against her, fingers stroking her, thumb searching for entrance. It tickled, and she jerked. He rubbed at her, but did not quite manage to find the right places, the right pressure. Finally she sat up and grabbed his wrist.

  “No, like this,” she said, moving his hand away. She ran her index finger down, and then she laughed, realizing that it was too dark for him to see. She fell back against the pillows.

  She sensed him, sitting nearby in the darkness, rigid and frustrated. She could almost feel him weighing his options. He tried to kiss her again, one hand on her breast, squeezing.

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “I appreciate the gesture—just let me rest.”

  She rolled away. She did not know when he left. She remembered the light from the door again, the sound of it closing, and then she was alone. She pulled up her skirt, jammed her fingers in deep, and rolled over onto her side, coiling around the orgasm, again—again—until sleep found her.

  “Would you like me to drive you home?”

  Conny opened her eyes to the yellowed light of the bedside lamp across a pillow. She blinked and rolled onto her back. Geoffrey’s face hovered above her; the glow spilled across his scar, leaving half his face in shadow.

  “When—? Were you here tonight?” She wondered briefly what he had seen or heard, but the fact of him, here, seemed a tonic to any worry.

  Her head pounded and her right arm had fallen asleep. She tried to sit up. Geoffrey helped her. She bent forward and gazed down at her bare thighs. She tried to tug her skirt down, then gave up and fell back onto the bed.

  “Conny?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You should go home. I’ll take you.”

  “Sure.” Her arm tingled painfully. She used her left arm to push herself back up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  His strong hand took her elbow. S
he got to her feet, then across the room to a door. Geoffrey switched on the light and gently propelled her into the small porcelain chamber.

  She did not throw up. Her stomach churned, but nothing happened. She washed her face, relieved herself, and emerged feeling more awake. Her arm felt almost normal.

  Geoffrey waited on the edge of the bed, a white bartender’s jacket beside him, smoking a cigarette. He let the ashes fall to the floor.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes—you were downstairs?”

  He nodded. “Saw you come in, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything to you.”

  Geoffrey held her arm as they descended the staircase, a pleasant pressure she missed as soon as he released her at the bottom of the stairs. A few people still lingered in the main ballroom. The floor was covered with debris—streamers, paper napkins, broken glass. One bartender slept in a chair behind his station. Conny did not see Brian.

  Geoffrey drove her back in her borrowed car to her borrowed house. Not for long now. Her mind drifted in a haze of nothing. We’ll have to move again. He pulled up by the front door and shut the motor off. A single lantern shone by the door.

  Conny stared at him. “You were in Newport. We took a cottage in Swansea, and I thought I saw you there, working in a dry goods shop. Then we went to London again, just for a month, and you were driving a hansom. We moved back to Newport, then to Bristol, now here to Brighton. I always felt you were somewhere nearby and now you turn up. What are you doing? Are you following us, Geoffrey?”

  “You should get to bed. It’s nearly dawn.”

  “William doesn’t expect me.”

  “Maybe not.”

  His arm lay across the back of the seat. Conny looked at his hand, inches from her shoulder, a dark mass of contours, faintly outlined along the knuckles from the lantern light. Between that and his nearly invisible face his white shirt looked like a mass of evening fog.

  “I think he’s asleep,” she said.

  She traced the shape of his thumb, the raised tendons, the blunt shafts of fingers. The texture fascinated her. She lifted it and turned it over and touched the calluses that ridged the top of his palm, just below the base of his fingers. The skin was very warm and dry.

  Conny undid his cuff and pushed the sleeve back, pressing her own palm against his forearm. She could feel his pulse in the thick vein that ran from tendon to elbow.

  “Conny—”

  “Shh. Don’t.”

  She slid her lips over his thumb and teased it with her tongue. He did not pull away. She licked his calluses, the center of his hand, his lifeline, the tendons that tented the skin of his wrist.

  Conny twisted around to face him, kneeling on the seat, and fumbled for the buttons of his shirt. He grabbed her hand. She tugged once, twice, pulled loose, and continued unbuttoning until her hand came against his belt. She leaned forward. Strangely, he smelled warm and sharp, as if he had been working out in the sun all day instead of attending a smoke-and-alcohol-filled party. She pushed aside the open shirt and laid her hands against his chest, surprised at the feel of hair. William’s body was nearly bald and the contours of his torso were the shapes of ribs and collarbone and sternum.

  She heard Geoffrey’s breath deepen. He had not moved to touch her, and she realized that she preferred it that way. To touch and not be touched—the idea fascinated her.

  His nipples went hard and round under her fingers. She licked his stomach, from navel solar plexus. Geoffrey’s head rolled back.

  “Damn—” he whispered.

  She was afraid he might stop her, that she might stop herself. He tasted salty, skin slippery with sweat. She mouthed his neck and worked at his belt, his button, his zipper. Then she laid one hand on the arm still stretched along the top of the car seat and pushed her fingers beneath the waistband of his undergarment. His penis bent down, thick and awkward. She hooked two fingers beneath it to bring it carefully up, afraid of hurting him.

  Then she looked down, certain now that he would not prevent her from doing anything she wanted. Her body blocked what little light came from the lantern by the door; she could not see his face. What she saw were fragments—a shirted arm, a yellowish glint off the car mirror, part of the door against which Geoffrey lay—but her mind supplied the missing detail from the hundreds of dreams prompted by William’s letters. She pulled back a little and grasped his manhood. Touching and not being touched—a new experience. She laughed at the idea. Married all these years and so few times—when William wanted her, when he gathered the energy and the will to fuck her—that was all he did, and she accommodated him. He seemed not to like being touched, as though he did not deserve it, as if embarrassed by his own body, and over time she had become adept at a kind of encouraging passivity and a congenial access. She squeezed Geoffrey, ran her thumb along the underside of the shaft, and wondered why she had allowed it for so long.

  He shifted beneath her, and her heart slammed in her chest certain that he was about to say “enough” and push her away. She let him go and yanked at his pants. He grunted and raised his hips. His trousers slid down to his thighs. She had no more room to back up and get them the rest of the way. She reached behind her and groped for the passenger door handle. The door opened, and she kicked it wide. She eased back, out of the car, pulling him along the seat. Standing on the gravel of the driveway, she drew his pants down to his ankles, then untied his shoes and pulled them off.

  Now the wan light fell across him, and she saw his legs, the hair around his penis, the geography of his belly and chest, and, for the briefest moment, the broken quarters of his face. She knew she was in full view of the house now and this excited her even more.

  Conny grabbed him behind the knees and yanked until he came across the seat, out of the car, and sat down on the runner. She gathered her skirt up around her waist and lowered herself onto his lap. He seemed to flow up into her. She gasped. She found his face, his mouth. Her knees banged the edge of the running board. She wanted to move elsewhere, but she did not want to give him a chance to end the contact. She wrapped her hands tightly around his neck and brought first one foot, then the other, up onto the board. Geoffrey’s arms joined across her lower back and held her while she see-sawed against him. For a moment she was aware of the harsh sounds they made, counterpointing their thrusting, and then she forgot everything but the exquisite contractions, the taste of flesh, and the panic filling her.

  April, 1931

  Conny wiped William’s mouth and shuddered at the thin smear of blood on the rag. Huddled beneath a quilt and two blankets, he trembled, his skin dry and papery. Outside the rain continued, as it had for the past three days. Conny cursed their coming to Norwich. She had not wanted to leave Cambridge. Before that she had wanted to stay in Bedford and before that Reading and before that—the place names stacked in her memory, a succession of borrowed houses, lent rooms, trains, and taxis. They always seemed to find a place from someone who thought it was sophisticated or chic to help support an aspiring writer, even one who could not seem to publish anything, perhaps especially one like that. The charity rarely lasted, especially when they realized William would not attend their parties to be shown off. She still missed the house in Brighton, but, as she had expected, Brian had tossed them out.

  William let out a weak cough. He had been sick since Cambridge, but in the last six days he had grown worse. Conny touched her fingertips to his forehead. Hot. She glanced at the bottle of laudanum on the bedside table. William hated it, but it did help him sleep during the worst of his fevers and coughing fits.

  She left the bedroom door slightly ajar and went down to the kitchen. A puddle covered the tiles by the door and threatened to become a stream. She took the mop and dabbed at the water. There was no energy to her work. It was just something to do. A knock at the door made her look up to see Geoffrey framed in the door window, rain pouring off his wide-brimmed hat like a veil. She let him in.

  “I asked at the post office whe
re you were,” he said. “They asked me to bring your mail. Said you hadn’t been down in a week.”

  “Five days, actually.”

  She hung his coat off the back of a chair in the corner and set his hat on the seat. She ran the mop over the new puddle he made and closed the door.

  He dropped a bundle of envelopes on the table, then stood back, hands in his pockets. Conny thought he looked just like a boy expecting a scolding.

  “We haven’t seen you since Reading,” she said.

  “I’m working at the foundry.”

  Conny waited. She expected a reaction, a recognition, a response—from herself, but nothing happened. She pulled a chair from the table and sat down.

  “In Birmingham,” she said, “you worked in a warehouse. Ipswich it was a street cleaner and in Bath a stable. I’d gotten so used to you being wherever we were that it took three more moves to realize that you’d abandoned us. Five years since you and I started. Eight before that with just William. A lot of time and effort to just walk away from.”

  “I didn’t—”

  She waited for him to finish. When he said nothing, she continued. “He got very sick in Cambridge. I thought he’d die. I forgot all about you then. I didn’t think about you at all till just now. Isn’t that odd?”

  Geoffrey’s face twisted in a painful scowl. Conny thought his scar would open. “I wondered—” he looked toward the ceiling. “Is he—?”

  “Upstairs. Still sick.”

  Geoffrey sighed. “He hasn’t written anything since Cambridge, then.”

  Conny stared at him, a chill settling in her bowels. He gave her a quick, wry smile, then sat down across from her.

  “Did you ever ask him if there’d been anyone before you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Geoffrey gestured at his face. “William wrote a story in university about two boys who became best friends. He didn’t know a lot about friendship. The university journal wouldn’t print it, but the word got around that he’d written it and that it was about me and him. Some lads took it on themselves one night to exact moral realignment. I don’t remember much besides William holding me in his arms, screaming, him with a bloody nose and me with a map of the Suez Canal across my face.”