Olath

Unwise the boast that had me with my back against the bar, elbows hooking it, shoulders sore from my weight slung between. The line of waiting men was long. They were laughing, the men, pretending it was all in good fun, like my boast had been, but when each stepped up to face me his jaw would set and his eyes would narrow and he meant for his punch to hurt, to disarrange my innards, to rupture something even and send the juices of one organ slurping onto the next. Each man would look into my eyes as he struck, wanting to drink in my pain. I fixed my mouth in a smile of unconcern but the smile grew tighter and tighter and finally froze into something desperate. With each blow my eyes became more wet. One jarring punch brimmed them, and there was a trickle down one cheek and then both. The next man in line stepped up laughing, ha-ha-ha, a Wall Street sort, tie flopped back over one shoulder as if he were a Kennedy, shirtsleeves rolled on forearms gymtoned and sprouting sun-bleached hair, and the man, the horrible man, drew back his blond-knuckled fist and clenched his teeth.

•

I was lying at the foot of the bar, weeping, my dress shirt sopping floorbeer. My weight pressed against the cold stone tile, and my belly was a hive of pain. The bar was quiet now, though not yet closed. High heels tapped across the floor. They stopped before my face.

I hauled myself to my feet and slid sniveling onto a stool. The woman looked at me and drew on a cigarette which made a gently sticking sound as her mouth disengaged, printing dark red lipstick onto its filter. She was pale and thin and a dusting of rouge shadowed high cheekbones, and she exhaled.

"You are interesting," she said. She had an accent--from where, I couldn't know. "You are not stupid, like those other men." She again brought the cigarette to her lips, sucked, and separated, the tack of lipstick once more tugging at her lip. "Or perhaps," her brow briefly furrowed, "yes, as stupid, but--different. You have ideas," one hand vaguely waved, its cigarette tucked in the V of gloved fingers, "ideas that come from a different place. 'You could all sock me; I have the hardest abdomen in the state'--who says this? What sort of man?" She took another puff. "I am Olath," she said. This is where she would have smiled, were she ever to, and she did not.

•

In the cab she looked sometimes at me, sometimes at the street, her expression the same. She did not speak and I did not. I looked at her, framed by the window on which rain smeared city lights.

The apartment lobby was grand and empty, and in it a wizened man in an ornate uniform sat like an old generalissimo behind a spreading doorman's desk. Olath passed him without a nod; I trailed her like a dog. The elevator sucked us quickly to a high floor, settling with a motion that curdled something deep in me. The elevator gave onto a hallway that hummed faintly and our footfalls on its carpet were soft but distinct like mountain climbers' on glittering snow. Her key clicked in a lock and her apartment showed distant lights through large windows and had modern furniture, some of it covered in leather, some in fabrics simple yet fine.

"This is a beautiful apartment," I said thickly.

"I have the use of it," she said.

I felt worn and swaddled in stink. She would not, however, let me wash; she accepted the human body as it was. She helped me off with my shirt--it was hard for me to shrug or twist. "I do not make love in the American way," she said.

She moved as if the earth were sea. She looked into my eyes as if feeding from them. Once she said a word, a foreign word, hard to hear as clamor rose inside my head. My eyes flooded and again I wept, and she watched, eyes narrowed. Olath watched me, pinned and struggling, and I wept.

•

It was three weeks before I could do sit-ups again. Four weeks after that I once again saw Olath. It wouldn't have happened except by accident: On the night I had spent with her, when all had been empty and still, I had asked if I should leave my number and she had looked at me and said nothing, and I knew this was not yes.

But I saw her. I was walking one day and she was there, on the street. She walked ahead with a man, a tall man who wore a cape. This is something you will not often see. They were deep in conversation. "Olath!" I called as I trotted to catch up, and its horn blared as a cab scooped my legs from under me. My shoulder slammed the hood and my head snapped against the windshield. The cab was braking. I was in the air. I was on the ground.

I was facedown. So far, nothing hurt. Now I felt something tickle on my scalp. Blood dripped from my face to the pavement. Now my chest hurt. Something inside had been bent the wrong way. My legs did not hurt: I did not feel them.

There were voices:

"Has anyone called? Has someone called?"

"Buddy? Are you all right?"

"Did you see? Did you see?"

"He ran in front."

Somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and roughly pulled. Inside me, things poked each other like rusty springs. It was hard to breathe. I was being rolled onto my back. It was Olath.

Another woman said, "You're not supposed to do that. Move them."

Olath gazed down. "I am a doctor." This was not, so far as I knew, the case. The man in the cape, next to her, frowned with distant curiosity. He had a long nose. His head was drawn back and cocked at an angle that can be attained only by the highest foreign nobility.

"He ran in front." A turbaned man said this: the cabbie.

"I saw it, yes," someone said.

My breath was bubbly.

"He must be moved onto the sidewalk," said Olath. She stooped, and I felt my ankles grabbed. She was strong. She dragged my body across the gutter and up, my head bumping along behind. My insides were torn. I would have screamed had I the breath.

"You're not supposed to do that," said the woman who was against moving me.

"Foolish man." Olath was looking at me. "Foolish man," she said.

"Excuse me, Miss?"

"She's talking to the fucked-up guy."

"They know each other?"

Olath looked down. So did the people. They looked at me. I looked at them. I heard the siren. By the time the ambulance pulled up all they could do was cart off my body, my poor battered body. I am no longer there. Olath has me. I don't know where she has me. Europe, perhaps. It is not a place I know.