Perseus
As people filter out of the apartment I drift slowly towards the door. Finally I leave my empty glass on a sideboard, call out a half-hearted goodbye, and let myself out on the tail of a large group. They cram into the elevator, leaving me no space, and apologize furiously and drunkenly as the door closes. I hit the down button and lean back against the wall. I would rather not be a sardine, but I am tired of the loud brightness that is the party, still attacking my ears and eyes from the open door a few feet away. I close my eyes and pass my hand over the stubble on my chin, sighing. I open my eyes. The woman in red with the paralyzing eyes is standing across from me, waiting for the elevator.
An hour before I saw her inside. Her hair was twisted and pinned, like a forties pin-up girl. Her dress too: red, to match her lipstick, with a pencil skirt and a high slit up the side. She held her drink with three fingers and somehow managed not to smear the perfect lip prints on the glass. Her black-framed cat eye glasses sat low on her nose, and, ignoring the woman talking to her, she glanced over them and scanned the room. The other woman stayed blissfully oblivious. The eyes of the woman in red slid and slid and rested suddenly on me. I was frozen. Her eyes were brown, ordinary brown, just like her hair. Her eyes seemed ordinary, her skin seemed ordinary, her features and body and dress fairly ordinary. But her glance fell on me, and she stared, and I was paralyzed. She smiled at me, a small but powerful smile. Invisible, unknowable steam rose from my skin.
In another hour the woman in red is no longer in red. She is Marigold and she is in her pale skin and her brown hair and that is all.
I saw her going into the subway, then again walking towards my building. I ran to catch up to her. She moved fast, despite the tight skirt. I tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled around, a fierce look on her face, her hair flying. “Excuse me,” I said. “Are you following me?”
“I believe you’re following me,” she said, and kept walking. I stumbled behind her trying to keep up.
“I just—I saw you at the party, then in the elevator, then in the subway…and I guess we took the same train…?”
“And?”
“I don’t know?” I said hopefully, realizing how stupid it seemed to conclude that she was following me by a series of coincidences.
“I can tell,” she said, smiling at me in her small, smirky way. Again the steam seemed to rise from my skin. She unlocked the door to my building- our building- and took my hand. I protested and she looked over her glasses with her brown eyes and her curls of hair falling around her face and I could not protest anymore.
Now we are sitting, breathing, on a twin-sized mattress on the floor, an island in a sea of boxes. I lie on my back, propped up on my elbows. She explains, her body folded around a pillow, that she moved in two days ago, that the hostess of the party was her childhood best friend and now a vapid whore. She looks earnest and childlike with her chin resting on the pillow, her glasses off, her makeup rubbed away. The words “whore” and “fuck me again” seem strange coming out of her mouth.
Half an hour before she had closed the door behind us and locked it. She pushed the boxes out of the way and me up against the wall. I smiled. “I’m taking that as a yes,” she said, and kissed me. “Okay?” I nodded. Clothes came off, bodies crashed together, the already-messy sheets on her makeshift bed got messier.
I stand by the door, about to leave. She is still wrapped in her sheet, curled on her bed. “I’ll call you,” I say. “I’m only upstairs if you need me.”
“Mhmm,” she says, rolling over, already drifting away.
I smile, still, watching her sleeping body and its tiny shifts of breath and dreams. I know I should leave but my feet don’t move. Her head turns and her curls of hair seem to writhe in the soft light. I turn out the light. “Goodnight, Marigold.”
The next morning I will wake feeling sick and tired and chalk it up to a hangover. I will sleep in and lie in bed staring at the ceiling. Marigold will still be on my mind. I will eat cereal out of a mixing bowl with a large spoon and then I will go back to bed.
The phone is ringing and ringing two days later. I still feel sick and have not yet gotten out of bed. I want to find out if she had the flu, but Marigold does not pick up. I call again a few hours earlier the next day. Marigold does not pick up.
A week will pass and so will the sickness. I will stand up again, go out and eat a large greasy diner sandwich. I will sit in the sun in the park and wonder why I stayed in for so long. I will finish a project and get paid and feel triumphant. Marigold’s face will spend less and less time projected on the ceiling above my bed.
I knock on Marigold’s door. I ring her bell. Finally I try the knob. It is unlocked, and I go in. The apartment is empty. Less than two weeks after moving in, Marigold is gone. I wander the room wondering what happened. In the corner of the room, where the mattress was, I find a tiny sculpture of gray stone. It is a nude man, lying on his back, propped up on his elbows. On the windowsill above, I find a Polaroid picture of the sculpture, but seated next to it is another, of a girl wrapped around a pillow. The girl has thick curls of hair coming out in all directions, bending like wires, like angry snakes, like an exaggeration of curls the morning after. Marigold is gone, but she has left this small stone man, this small stone version of myself. I put him in my pocket.
Marigold has gone. Marigold is gone. Marigold will be gone. It does not matter where, or why. She is gone and I am here. I sit on the windowsill and frown. I walk out of the apartment. It is for the best.
