The Thing Itself: Part One
Topic: Stories
This is the hour when worry butts up against the day. The teeth ache, the skull feels strapped tightly, as if by a belt, the stomach is filled with spongy stones, like lava rocks, abrasive and shifting. It hardly seems worth the effort of continuing, Sallie thinks, and wouldn't it be nice if one could just switch off, like any ordinary appliance, like a television, or the clock radio, flashing its digital time at her menacingly. 10:00 in the morning, the hour Lorca's jovencilla kills himself on the white divan. She feels out of proportion--without geometry, circular, pierced. She can hear Hugh tiptoeing about the bedroom, now in the bathroom, the scrubbing sound of his toothbrush meshing with the soft dribble of water, just barely on, so as not to be so loud as to wake her. She shifts and a lock of hair, half gray, half fading blond, comes to rest perfectly between her eyes. She looks at the closed blinds; clean, mechanical silver (Hugh's choice) back-dropped brilliantly by morning sun. He is such a man, that Hugh, she thinks. So straight, so defined, so damned rigid and angular. Even his features are hard and sharp, coming to him by way of his British ancestry, traced back through this Lord or that. How he was proud of his pedigree! Sallie had no such pedigree. She was common as a daisy (though she had once been a great beauty, and her mind was still one of the sharpest in the field of psychology). No, her parents had only made their way to America during WWII, and what history they may have had had been left in the battle fields of Europe, to be burned, or bombed, or shat upon by vultures. Hugh's family had been here since before America was America, which made him feel connected, grounded, confident in ways she could only imagine, and long for. She felt as if she hovered above life, un-tethered, subject to being sucked off into space without notice.

As the slug starts, so must Sallie begin her day. Slimy, without even the protection of a snail's house, must she start to inch her away across the dark room, to the now vacant bathroom, the light glaring at her from behind the half-closed door. Closing the door with a sigh, she flips off the strong light over the sink at the same moment she flips on the softer lights over the shower. These are not so bright and thus do not hurt her eyes. She prefers this half-darkness, this life of shadow, for it makes the unintentional glances into the mirror less startling. She loathes the mirror, is afraid of it. Mirrors aren't like people; they won't lie, just to be nice. They don't care about kindness or niceties, or the frail feelings of feeble women. They don't care about anything at all, for they are of the same, metallic substance as Hugh's blinds, which is why Hugh loves the blinds and loves mirrors. Hugh loves Truth; Sallie loves Compassion. The metallic substance of which Truth is made has no use for Compassion, thinks it weak, which it is.

Reluctantly Sallie turns the knob on the faucet, sits on the edge of the tub, waits for the water to warm. She is thinking back to Princeton, back to Warren Smitty, her first love, as she jerks the shower knob up, releasing the valve that holds the water from bursting through the showerhead. The water falls softly, like new rain. Hugh must be watering his hostas, she thinks, plunging into the stream. Warren Smitty, now there was a no-man, she thought, lathering her sponge. He was opposite Hugh in every way; dark where Hugh was light, quiet, thoughtful, full of feeling. Hugh was boisterous, arrogant, emotionally dull to the point of being cold. Tracing the sponge down the length of her arm, she thinks how deliciously they had made love in a shower once, in Warren's dorm, at 4:30 in the morning. The sponge slowly edges her left nipple, recalling the sensation of his mouth on her, and stands neatly at attention, willing to go along with this memory as far as Sallie wants. She wants to go all the way, if the sponge that caresses the skin above her right ovary is any indication. Slowly she slips the soapy sponge between her legs, to nudge gently her already hard clitoris. She smiles, thinking perhaps this June day will not be lost after all.