Mary Caponegro: The Star Café

Mary Caponegro

The Star Café

Carol heard a noise as she undressed for bed; it frightened her—she'd actually been half undressing for bed and half searching for the book she had intended to read in bed, but after she heard the noise she was only a third involved with each of these tasks and a third involved in trying to figure out where the noise had come from—though of course these things could not be measured like sugar or flour; in fact, it would be more than a third of trying to determine the source of the sound anyway, because there was fear attached to that fraction, and fear has a way of dispossessing its neighbors. Carol checked the living room, bathroom and kitchen, and found nothing out of order.

The sound seemed to have come from below her apartment; the more she thought about it the more right that seemed, and since she couldn't stop worrying about it, she went back into the bedroom and slipped into the skirt she'd just taken off, rebuttoned the blouse she'd never gotten around to removing, was thankful she hadn't yet taken off underwear, considered putting back on her shoes but rejected that idea, and walked into the living room again, toward the door.

As she was undoing the latch, she saw on the small table between door and sofa the book she'd been looking for; it must have been there all along.

She picked it up so as not to misplace it again, and opened the door. On the landing she heard the noise a second time. Though she'd been expecting it, it startled her anew, so much so that she dropped the book, then watched it tumble to the second-to-last step.

The hallway was dark and the darkness had intensified the sound. It was dark because the light switch was located on the wall opposite the banister at the bottom of the stairs, and she hadn't gotten there yet because she'd been interrupted by the sound; she was still standing there at fearful attention, like a deer with a flashlight shining in its eyes, as if stillness were some kind of defense instead of vulnerability.

Carol wondered why there wasn't a switch at the top landing as well as at the bottom. Perhaps the architect was biased toward those ascending? Or would it be the electrician? She knew so little about these practical matters; she knew so little about this building she lived in. If she had to guess when it had been built, she might have erred in the region of decades rather than single years. What she did know was that there was far too little light for a building with so many windows, all located on its tree-blocked western exposure.

The noise had stopped but Carol couldn't get it out of her head. It seemed to become clearer rather than less clear in proportion to time elapsed since its occurrence. But how could someone really know if the hold she had on what had been heard or seen or felt was really becoming clearer, that is, truer, or more distorted? Was intensity a proper gauge? Wasn't it often the case that those who felt most enlightened were in fact most deluded?

Then she heard it again, not memory or imagination. It had to be coming from somewhere downstairs, and she had to go downstairs, if only to retrieve her book, so she slowly descended, thinking that it was really the simplest sound, so why so difficult to characterize? It only seemed eerie because she didn't know the source, she kept telling herself.

When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Carol stood a moment, then sat down on the penultimate step, next to her book, listening to the sound that still hadn't stopped—its duration was the longest of the three occurrences—trying to get up the courage to go open the door that led to the little restaurant she'd lived above for all these months but never entered.

The mixture of curiosity and fright had led her this far, she could hardly give up now; the noise might stop again any second and then it would be harder to trace. She walked down the hall and stood against the door with her hand curled on the knob, as if she were holding a piece of fruit still attached to a branch.

She placed the sound the instant she opened the door. The first time she heard it she should have known what it was. Who would have thought an innocent little blender—well, not so little, really, larger, in fact, than any she'd ever seen; she guessed it could hold several gallons—but who would have thought it could make such a queer noise, an innocent if somewhat oversized blender, making what looked like banana daiquiris? She giggled, and suddenly realized she wasn't alone, that she was being scrutinized by a man—a waiter?—more likely the owner, an extremely handsome man in all the conventional ways: dark and tall, both noble and rugged. He switched off the mighty appliance, poured a fraction of its contents into a long-stemmed glass, held that out to her and smiled.

"Hello, Carol," he said.

She was so relieved by the release of all that tension that she suddenly wanted, urgently, to talk to him, though it could have been to anyone, any sympathetic ear into which she could expel what had been building up inside her. She found herself babbling about how pleased she was to have the mystery solved; she was glad it was only that. He listened attentively, but rarely responded. Perhaps she didn't give him much chance.

He was looking at her intently from behind the counter, and when she felt too uncomfortable to confront his gaze directly she stared at the travel posters that adorned the wall behind him. She must have imagined that his eyes were unusually bright; it was her weariness, it was the candlelight, but for some reason she felt compelled. She was telling him all these things about herself, all the silly thoughts, the things about the architect and the light fixture, how they'd been so long next door to each other and never known each other better, and really she'd never done anything like this before but she was letting him hold her; first he had held her hand and then suddenly she was in his arms, he was murmuring softly, "yes, yes," consol-ing her, reassuring her, stroking her hair, and then other parts of her, and before she knew it she found herself in bed with him, in the back room, which was not so sordid as it might sound. There was a bed and all the accouterments of civilized sexuality, of comfort; it wasn't after all a closet, but she wondered what he would do if a customer came in, and then she began to wonder why there weren't customers out there. There hadn't been any when she came in, nor all the time they'd been, or she'd been, talking; she'd run on so about up and down and stairs and light; she'd been overwhelmed, full of herself in a way quite foreign to her, though there was also the sense that she was acting out a role that came very naturally, almost as if she'd rehearsed it, and she wondered if all this was the thing people always meant by the term "attraction," "I'm so attracted to you," as if people were magnets, which would be at least somewhat specific, or if she was just needy because of the fright, and lonely, lonely for a long time now, which would be at least not entirely, merely physical.

In either case she wasn't proud of herself; it was strange to be in bed with a man she barely knew, though in those minutes of talking it seemed there was some intense acquaintanceship occurring. It was strange to be in bed with someone at all, she'd been alone so long, almost out of habit; the "with" of "in bed with" was the important part of the construction, to be in the presence of another human being, because the sex came naturally enough; the angels never really withheld that.

Awkwardness granted, the motions materialized, to such a degree, in fact, that she felt she was experiencing far more than just going through them. She couldn't remember such satisfying sex; was it just the novelty? But everything clicked. She felt that they'd held each other's bodies for years and every gesture had the right timbre and timing, but with none of the staleness that might characterize the context. It was perfect but also felt, not slick. She certainly felt, and it seemed the kind of feeling that could not exist except reciprocally. It was as if they were lovers reunited after a long separation, fitting easily into place again. What was passion if not this? She slept a blissful, sated sleep.

When she woke up, she was alone. Everywhere around her were mirrors. The way school buses have mirrors to cover every possible vantage, this room, from her position on the bed, allowed her to see her body from every angle. She was fascinated by this, and distracted for quite a while, but then began to be afraid. She couldn't find her way past the immediate space around her. It reminded her of fancy New York stores in which it is difficult to find one's way because the different departments are separated by walls of mirrors.

Suddenly he was there in the mirrors. She was extremely moved that he'd come to be with her there, to rescue her; for some reason she was certain that he wasn't trapped by the situation, but had purposefully navigated to it, to get to her. Her first impulse was to take his hand and run with him out of this world of reflection, but he didn't lead her out; instead, to her shock, he climbed on top of her—what could be less appropriate?—at least out of sequence; that came after the rescue, in the gratitude and relief stage, while here she was, still a captive of this reflective dragon. But as the weight of his body pressed against her, she decided she'd been wrong; it was completely appropriate. She was so tied to her sense of propriety. There was no need to leave the place right now; no exits would seal while he entered—which happened so quickly she was startled, but startled at how wrcstartled her body was, unkindled but still receptive—he taught her so much by his body.

He was thrusting in her so energetically it should have hurt, but it didn't, or if it did, the hurt was subsumed in the intensity of pleasure and excitement she felt. She had an orgasm as intense as any she had ever experienced, and felt after as if she could never have another, intense or otherwise, but just as she was thinking that he turned her over onto her belly and came into her from behind, and she heard herself make sounds she had never heard from her own mouth, in response to this pleasure on the crest of saturation.

She made them all the way to her second orgasm, not a very long way, in fact, and then there were others; she'd always thought that a myth. Only as she was coming did she remember the erotic potential of this room or space she was in—she'd been so overwhelmed with sensations and feeling that it hadn't occurred to her to heighten the effect with the visual; she was angry at herself to have missed out on that; when would she ever have such an opportunity again.

She loved the idea of watching their bodies in conjunction with each other, of him pressing into her. She turned to look back over her shoulder so that she could see him disappearing into her, and then turned her head in order to be able to see without straining, in all the mirrors. Her orgasm, at its most intense point, was retracted. The cry that rose from her throat continued, though perhaps the pitch changed just slightly, or the quality of the sound; maybe only she could hear the difference, that it wasn't from pleasure or surfeit anymore but from shock and bewilderment, because in all the mirrors she was there writhing—she could see her breasts and belly and legs, all from underneath, as if there were no bed obstructing; she could also see herself from his vantage; she could see what someone opening a door, if there were a door, would see, from far away, with the head prominent and the hair draped over the bed; she could see her shoulders and back, but he was not depicted in any of these images. She lay on the bed without partner.

She felt humiliated and horrified, and guilty too, though she couldn't have said why.

She had no idea how to attack this problem with relation to the other person who might or might not be present. It was an extreme case of some kind of sexual etiquette. The problem was, she didn't know this man, the cafe owner, at all; she knew him no better than she'd know a blind date, and yet they were sharing, weren't they, this intimate circumstance. Everything had felt so natural before; she'd let the sensation absorb any uncomfortableness, but now she was too disturbed by his absence from the mirror to retrieve her passion, and she felt too silly or shy to inquire about it directly.

Would he think she was crazy, or was he somehow manipulating his own image for some sinister reasons she had no idea of? Oh, why did she ever with this perfect stranger, and hadn't he seemed it in both senses of the term, but now she would pay.

What would her mother say, who'd always been so cautiously liberal... "Carol, if you don't know a man's last name, you don't know him well enough to... " Thus what had seemed the most natural thing in the world suddenly de-naturalized and was transformed into the most awkward. How could she carry on this charade, when she possessed private knowledge that her partner was missing? It was just ludicrous to continue and at the same time witness the bleak absurdity of her body making love to the atmosphere. The postures could be made to look ridiculous enough even with both parties attending, but then at least they were salvaged by familiarity. Maybe the act itself was unnatural, maybe this was some elaborate lesson for her. She could be alone the rest of her life; she knew how.

She couldn't ask him what he saw in the mirror; she wished she could be so direct, but they hadn't spoken since that initial conversation, which might as well have taken place in some other world. She could feel the motions going on in some removed physical dimension, but to a very different effect. She was numb now, throughout her body; she wondered if he'd notice; he must notice. Was he intending all this, and should she then try her best to play along to try to counter-trick—how appalling to have to think in terms of strategy in such circumstances—pretending she really did see him in the mirror? Or was this some entirely different conspiracy of the elements in which he was as innocent as she? But was she? How could she be in such a terrible predicament if she hadn't done something terribly wrong; yes, it was repression and all the rest, but really, this kind of thing didn't happen to the average person. Confront, evade, despair? She didn't know which to do.

She'd never in her life faked an orgasm, as women were supposed to be notorious for, and she hadn't had so many either; in fact these recent ones constituted more than a small percentage of the total, but to do precisely that suddenly seemed the best plan, to get it all over with, so that this beginning-to-be-very-oppressive weight would be removed, and she wouldn't have to continue doing this thing, performing these movements, which are by definition directed toward another, to no one. She even managed to make some noise; she was surprised at how convincing it sounded, having expected the artificiality to be glaring. The trouble was, he took no notice; she might have spared herself the trouble—he wasn't through. Then she realized that she hadn't noticed if he had yet had one to her many, how selfish of her; she'd been caught up in the intensity of her own pleasure. But he seemed insatiable. It felt so odd, and now it was the etiquette thing amplified thousands of times, because she wanted to say, "Excuse me, do you think you'll be through soon?" as if to someone at a pay phone, except she had made all her calls and just wanted to hear the receiver click.

As she looked at her body now, it was limp and tense at once, receiving the invisible—less absurd than what she'd seen in the heat of her solitary passion, but still pathetic. Maybe there was a device analogous to the one-way mirror: a half-mirror, in which only one party at a time was visible. Such a thing could exist. So now the big question was, did he see only himself, the same way she saw only herself? How simple it all was; she was immensely relieved for the second time in—how many hours had this been going on?—she had no idea, but was overjoyed to realize that the sum of their perceptions would yield a complete love-making couple; she thought she might cry with the relief of it. Suddenly it was as it had been back in the cafe; she had invented all the problems; she was ashamed at having suspected him. She wanted to tell him everything and have him say, "Silly thing," and stroke her, make it all better.

But he didn't say that and she was still trapped underneath him: this man she was not with despite his presence. It was happening to someone else; he was inside someone else, who only happened to be Carol. Who cared about sex? She'd give up sex forever; just get her out of here. She yearned for nothing so much as the removal of this corporeal hook whose eye she was. Oh, give her the pain; she'd rather that, to feel her body affirming the wrongness of what was being done to/in it, the participation that pain was, rather than this numbness, distance, this irrevocable breach with the action she was party to.

She was exhausted now. Maybe she could cry so much that her body would force itself to sleep and when she woke up it would be normal, because that was the way things had worked till now; why shouldn't it solve itself so simply? But how could it when the situation had changed so drasti-cally? She had not chosen this. Everything was different; he wasn't the same he; she herself—oh, was she also different, not just in the sense of having learned something, but substantially altered? Could she not go home again even to the home of her being? Was it going to prove that large a crime she'd committed, to herself, or invited if not committed: some psychic leaving of the keys in the car, or the house unlocked? Take from me; violate me?

But no, how could she have known that the locks would not only be changed by the time she got home, but in her impotent presence the lock, the whole house changed, the door, the windows, the stairs (how long ago it seemed she'd stood at the top of her stairway) all turned inside out and impossible to put back in order.

That's when he stopped. Vision was the only sense that informed her, because feeling had long since been used up. The point was that nothing was different after he stopped, the same way on a long trip you feel like you're driving even after you get out of the car. She wanted to know what it was that made that particular point the one he'd selected as enough. Maybe he'd climaxed. But she suspected he had a completely different kind of sexuality, not based on that system. Even if it was the same system it was different, because no man ever took that long to get to the point conventionally regarded as completion; no ordinary man. Or had she drawn it out in her mind because she was so uncomfortable? No, there couldn't be that much disparity.

He was leaving. He had dismounted and left the bed. It seemed that he didn't need any time to recover from his own experience. He was walking away and she was free, no longer oppressed by that weight, that invasion; she'd been granted just what she pleaded for. But what would she do, if he left her all alone in the room again, with no one and no way out and no way of knowing where? She was more afraid than ever.

"Oh please don't go," she said. "Don't leave me alone. I'm afraid to be alone here."

Her request wasn't on the order of begging the lover to linger a little longer, wanting to draw out his sweet company, not Juliet bemoaning the lark song; it was simply preferring any risk to the risk of solitude, the way someone you're suspicious of suddenly seems harmless when you see the real villain. But she was only half involved with this anxiety about his departure, probably more than half, that is, not entirely consumed by the fear, because she was partly caught up in watching him begin to dress, seeing his body for the first time from a distance, with perspective. And she was also ashamed at feeling renewed attraction for this man whom she'd minutes ago felt utterly victimized by. But she couldn't get over his beauty; at this moment she wasn't so much aroused by the sight of him naked as interested in his body aesthetically.

She dwelled upon the refined features: cheekbones, throat, his beautiful hands. Her own hands had felt the softness of his dark hair, from that of his head to the field that pooled below his navel. He was fuzzy and nice down there; she remembered the feeling of that against her. Before she had only seen him hard, now she found it just as appealing soft; she supposed he wouldn't appreciate that sentiment, he would surely not deviate from the norm in that respect. She also wondered if it was abnormal of her to feel as she did, not to prefer it hard.

They had been united by that organ; now it was just a part of him again; perhaps it had its own little memory, its own will, and was choosing now to disassociate itself from the warm surround she had provided. And how she had soared in the first stages of that providing. She'd never had such a strong sense of being with a man: that she was the feminine to his masculine. He elicited from her a quality of her own femaleness that she'd never before experienced on that physical plane—a response she realized might be hopelessly bound up in the conditioning of role, but was nonetheless immensely powerful. It was getting clear again, with the distance, with his going, the power of the sensation that had made her respond in a way she never had: totally. She'd come outside herself to meet him through the medium of body, through the act of letting him inside her, and yet never felt so fully in her body, in her self, as when she had.

He was working now toward his clothes: a neat pile contrasting with her own things, scattered around it. She didn't remember him taking off what he was now putting on; she thought they were the same clothes he'd been wearing when they first met and talked. It was a button-down shirt, that much she remembered, but the color looked a little different than it had in the candlelight: pale pink oxford cloth; it might look effeminate on most men but on him it was just right, perfect for his blend of beauty and masculinity, his refined masculinity.

As she was observing him in the act of dressing, deep in her own reflections, she felt quite spontaneously in her genitals the muscular contractions of orgasm. She'd been concentrating on the pinkness of the shirt, and watching him put his firm, muscular—first right, then left—legs into his gray flannel trousers in a business-like manner, when out of nowhere her body had produced this gratuitous release to no accumulated tension, in an instant of incredible intensity that left her completely drained, as if she'd been building up to it for some time. She'd often wished she could speed up that process but this was a most undesirable other extreme, this joyless, arbitrary orgasm; it was in no way satisfying. If anything, scary. This very strange ventriloquism made her furious. For the first time toward him she felt her emotions focus as unmitigated, almost violent anger. She felt used, much more so even than when he had been doing to her what technically could be considered rape. But to do this intimate thing from across the room! How cowardly of him; that's what it was, truly unmanly, that he wouldn't even face her with his body to manipulate her, though in a way it was honest, to be so blatant.

A marvelous thing indeed it would be if she could think her way to orgasm, or come just by watching him, but this was quite different, as removed a process as artificial insemination, this artificial climax for which she had been just the vehicle. She wanted to hit him but she was practically incapacitated as a result of her climax. She wanted to hit him because she felt stunned as if she had been struck; she had fallen back from an upright position, and as she'd fallen back, her peripheral vision had received the mirror's version of that moment. It contained two genders; a man's reflection had been for that instant there: a single thrust by all the reflected men in all the mirrors: multiple petals around her lonely, central, actual pistil, from which no bee sucked nectar. Why was she surprised, that they would contradict no matter what, turn appearances around as a matter of course? She should have the pattern down by now.

A few minutes later she had her strength back, but since immediacy would have been the point, there was no use in striking him now. It would probably only end up hurting her anyway. Alternatively she decided to maintain utter dignity, which was difficult because she needed to go to the bathroom and there wasn't a chance she'd be able to divine the whereabouts of the ladies' room. She got off the bed in as stately a manner as she could accomplish and walked slowly but deliberately to where he stood. She tried not to feel vulnerable despite the fact that she was naked and he now completely clothed.

"There's a matter of some urgency," she said.

He looked up at her. "If you want to leave," he said, "all you have to do is figure it out. No one will stop you. I certainly won't."

After she had held her breath a minute, determined not to start crying, she tried again: "That's not the matter I had in mind—something much more mundane. You see, I have to, I need to [he was no help] find a bathroom."

"There aren't any." He wasn't very gracious.

"Oh," she said, at a loss. Then she found courage.

"Look, you have to help me."

She was afraid he wouldn't answer, and was thankful when he finally said, as if he'd been thinking about it all the while rather than ignoring her as she'd thought, "In fact, there is something," and hastened to add, "but it's only meant to be decoration. It was part of the architect's design."

Since her urgency was not decreasing she couldn't afford to be choosy.

Responding to her expectant look, he led her to an alcove she could have sworn had not existed, but then it was hard to tell because of all the reflection. In any case she hadn't noticed this place before.

Somehow the mirrors masked the contours. It was hard to tell how far the room extended, hard to distinguish what was reflection from what was actual space.

"This is all I have," he said (what a funny salesman he'd make, she thought), gesturing toward two gleaming urinals, affixed to the wall at waist height, totally out of place though in another way consistent with the atmosphere.

"Are you going to watch?" she asked in an injured tone, and he accom-modatingly turned to walk away, but then she called him back and asked him to give her a hand, being pragmatic rather than proud.

"Help me," she said, but it was a question rather than a statement because she didn't know exactly what she wanted him to do for her, or whether he would even know how to help her. She had in mind a position that would somehow enable her to put feminine function into masculine form. She stood on tiptoe and stepped backward, facing him—she did not want to have her back to him—until she straddled the fixture. It was difficult to do this, but not impossible because she, although not tall, had fairly long legs, and the thing itself was not all that high. The insides of her thighs made contact with the porcelain rim; it was cold, but she couldn't raise herself high enough to avoid it.

She was still looking at him for some kind of assistance, and he, regarding her now as if she were truly demented, approached her, reaching his hand out hesitantly, as if he felt obliged to offer it but didn't know quite where to touch her, how to hold or support her. Finally he squatted in front of her and the urinal, and grasped her legs just above the knee, as one might hold a ladder someone else is standing on, to make it secure. This was no help. It was so strange to have him touching her in this functional way; she realized she didn't want him to touch her at all. Certainly she didn't want him to witness her in the actual act of urinating, especially in this awkward posture, and she couldn't wait much longer. Perhaps realizing that he was making no contribution, he rose, but kept standing there, out of malice or ignorance she wasn't sure: his face was blank.

"Thanks for the help," she said, hoping he would take that as dismissal.

He looked mesmerized by her sustained acrobatic—an expression foreign to his face as she knew it: being in the power of something rather than being in power over something, someone. Then he snapped out of it, looked normal again, and said, "The needs of his guest are a host's first pri-ority." Was he sneering, or was it her own distortion of his smile? Then he turned quickly away. They seemed far from anything sexual now, poles apart from each other's sexuality. It was as if her nakedness were the most ordinary thing in the world to him now. At least he was gone and she could urinate in peace, if not exactly comfort, since relief was thwarted by the awkwardness of posture. There was so little space between her and the fixture that she got splashed by little droplets. Well, it's sterile anyway, she thought. Of course there was nothing to wipe herself with; there were no accessories to this monstrosity. It vaguely resembled a baptismal font.

She eased herself off, gripping the sides for support; this time she didn't have to worry about looking dignified. Once on land again, dry, flat land, she spread her legs, planting her feet far apart, and waved her hand rapidly between her thighs to speed up the air-drying process, as she leaned against the cold porcelain, too cold to keep contact with for any longer than necessary. She was tired of being in discomfort. Hadn't she suffered enough? She stopped leaning and tried fanning with no support but found her legs still too unstable, so she compromised by kneeling, though that didn't leave much space in which to wave her hand. All her muscles ached now; she wanted to find the bed again and lie down, but she couldn't summon the energy. Fatigue overcame any squeamishness she had about lying on the floor near the urinals: he had said they were only used as decoration. She lay on her back, at first with her legs up, positioned like an open scissor, as in one of the exercises she did, to facilitate fanning, which her left hand had taken over. The absurdity of the whole endeavor suddenly struck her; she dropped her legs to the floor, exhaled, and closed her eyes, vowing she would allow herself the luxury for only a minute. It might have been several minutes, before she was seized by panic. Where had he gone when she'd sent him away? She forgot about her fatigue and ran into the main part of the room, trying not to bump into glass. He was nowhere. As she was about to call him she realized she had no name for him. Oh, what a fool she was, alone just as she'd feared, and all her own fault. How useless everything was.

But she wouldn’t let herself cry—no more despair. It was time to be practical, at least to go through the motions of being practical, for her own sake, to try to create some sense, even a contrived one, of order, in this most peculiar, relentless universe. So she began to dress, even though there was no rational reason to do so, except to feel dignified, and what else was there to do? She looked fondly at her scattered clothes. She regarded them as a soldier might some article that had been with him through numerous battles. And who knew what battles were yet to come, she thought, almost saying it out loud to her faithful skirt and blouse, the ones she'd been in the process of removing when she left her bedroom to investigate, the thing that got her into this nightmare: her fear of the sound, followed by her—feeling—for the cafe owner.

On some level she knew she was an intuitive person, but she hadn't learned to trust herself, too cautious, as if there were a very strong force at work inside her all the time that wasn't allowed to come to expression, like all that sun missing her house, all this foliage in her head, that was so pretty and interesting and alive, but how much it got in the way. She suspected that her mind had evolved in some distorted fashion, different from the rest of the world. And now here she was, trapped in this stagnancy of glass, that had become by all its clarity a blur, itself a distortion. She couldn't forgive herself, though she supposed she'd suffered enough to be redeemed of any number of sins or crimes. She cursed her intuition, because she'd never have stayed with him if she'd weighed, considered, evaluated. On the other hand, she'd never do anything if she always weighed, considered, evaluated; that was precisely what so often kept her from doing any number of things, things she felt a genuine desire to do, but couldn't get over this habit or obsession of getting stuck, nothing resolving itself. She felt the irony of the whole thing as deeply, as physically, as a metallic taste in her mouth: that the only time she'd ever felt not removed from her body, when will and act had meshed, was with him; it had felt so right, but clearly had been wrong, as wrong as anything could be. She slid the tab of the zipper all the way up and fastened the button at the waistband of her skirt, then leaned against one of the mirrors as she dreamily repeated the motion of button through opening, gentle grasps and pulls, all the way up her blouse. If only there were as simple a motion to secure her exit. He had said she had only to figure it out. And there had to be a door; somewhere there had to be. She thrust her weight hard against the mirror as she leaned, then moved forward to tuck in her blouse. Had the mirror seemed to give a little as she had pressed? She must be imagining it. Perhaps if she pushed against every mirror, one of them might yield.

In the cafe, he poured her a drink, yellow, creamy stuff from the blender into a large, stemmed glass. He held it high as he poured, the way waiters had poured milk for her in restaurants when she'd been young; she'd been impressed at how high they could go and still not spill. She fumbled in her pocket for change, feeling stupid, not knowing where she stood. He put his hands over hers and said, "On the house."

"Oh," she said softly. "Thank you."

She had no idea what role she was playing. Was she customer, or worse, had he been hers? It was so different, he was nice again. His demeanor toward her suggested that they were only now about to be lovers, romantic, but she knew they'd already been, and what had gone on had had little to do with romance. She wasn't making much progress with the daiquiri, taking occasional nervous gulps, clutching the glass.

"It's different now," she said with desperate bravery.

"Same ingredients as always," he replied. "Are you sure you've had one before?" The way he smiled made her nervous. This was more confusing than ever.

Too uncomfortable to look at him, she kept surveying the room and its contents: the candles, the fancy Breuer chairs, all the bottles and glasses lined along shelves on the mirrored wall of the bar, a large quilt that somehow fit in with the rest of the decor; the central part of its design was a large star—it took her a minute to realize it was there because of the name of the place: the Star Cafe. The quilt took up almost all of one wall; the other walls were decorated with posters, mostly from museum exhibits.

There were the travel posters as well, one a sophisticated montage of tourists and countryside in Greece, each scene in a separate little box. On the bottom was Greek lettering. She had always wanted to go there; it seemed like such a magical place, not just in some superficial sense of island and sun (one of the little boxes showed tourists lying on a beach) though that was appealing, and not just in the sense of the magic of the past either, being surrounded by ancient history, her sense was of a magic that was also chthonic. That was the world of myth, of gods and goddesses, of honor and heroism, justice, revenge.

That was a much larger world than her own, she felt, that company of furies and sirens in which choice was fate, and fate was really everything, but no matter what brutality caused by what whim of some god's arbitrary favoritism, reliable rosy-fingered dawn was always waiting in the wings to make it all into poetry. She was enamored of that civilization which was a celebration of the splendor of form. She thought of the perfection of body that lived in those white marble statues, the strength and grace which rhymed for her with his body, the body that had mingled with her own, but was now so distant. She needed to know that it had.

"Were you ever there?" she asked him, not even asking for understanding so much as simple information.

"Once, years ago," he said, "but it's too dirty and the food's too greasy. I like a more antiseptic atmosphere; Scandinavia's more to my taste."

Willfully or inadvertently he had taken her to be referring to the travel poster. She resented this glib distortion of her meaning. He had no right to be so evasive. Or had he just misunderstood? He had no right not to understand. Anger supplanted her nervousness so that now she had no trouble looking directly at him. But he wasn't looking at her; he was eyeing the blender, and before she could challenge him he was onto that as the new topic, as if his little remark had been an adequate response to her searching question, and no more need be said about it. What nearly disarmed her was the tenderness with which he said, when he looked back at her, "How sweet that you were afraid of my blender; silly thing."

That was just what she would have wanted to hear before, but not now that she'd been through what she'd been through, an experience of suffering so vivid that it created a landscape in her mind as powerful as the mythical one in which she had just been lost. In fact they became one for her at this moment; she could envision her own story painted across some urn, the woman whose lover wasn't there, in little scenes that reminded her of the travel poster, except that they weren't photographed and weren't in boxes, little red figures depicted on the urn: Carol in her apartment, then going downstairs, then in the bar, Carol in bed, then in the mirrored room, Carol looking in the mirrors, him there, him not there, but Carol crouching in the urinal was really too squalid for the likes of any Grecian urn, and now, with her imagination engrossed in this world that did not take passion lightly, that addressed mortality and immortality as real concerns rather than abstractions, and raised to the highest pitch the difference and link between the two—now, it was grossly inadequate, even pathetic.

"I'm not your silly thing," she blurted out, and he seemed taken aback by her anger.

"What's got into you?" he asked.

"Stop pretending you don't know," she said. "You know what I'm talking about. Tell me if you were there or not."

"I've already told you..." he began, but she cut him off. She was very worked up now.

"When I ask if you were there, I mean were you with me, in the room? I mean I know you were with me, but what I'm asking is... why are you trying to make me think I was imagining you?" This speech was delivered crescendo ed accelerando. "You owe it to me to tell me!" She was very excited and annoyed to realize she had to urinate again. She must have managed to get down more of that daiquiri than she thought.

"Yes," he said quietly.

"What do you mean yes? You can't say yes or no if I ask you, was it a, b, or c. I need a specific answer. Was it real or my imagination?"

"Yes!" This time it wasn't quiet.

He didn't look like someone playing games; he looked tortured himself, but she was sure he must be trying to get away with something.

"You're being cryptic again," she said. "You're trying to confuse me. And I need the ladies' room; does that ring a bell? I may as well tell you that it's illegal not to have one in a public eating place, so don't try to tell me there isn't any."

"You think you're so smart," he raised his voice to match hers. "I have something to tell you too. There is, technically speaking, no ladies' room.

There is, however, one rest-room, androgynous, past the bar and to your right."

She began the journey immediately. When she'd taken only a few steps he called to her, by name, for the first time since that very first time.

"Carol!"

She turned around.

"We're through."

That was fine with her; she turned away again directly and continued on the prescribed route. Once through a corridor she found the door immediately to her right, marked simply "rest." She opened it, entered, and shut it behind her, pushing in the little circle in the middle of the knob to lock it, then tried to jiggle the knob to make sure. She realized how silly that was; who was she locking out? The man who had seen and known her body to the full extent of possibility between human beings? But locking it made her feel better. The interior was clean enough; she would have tried to hold out if it hadn't been. This bathroom was extremely clean, in fact, so she didn't feel the need to get in and out as quickly as possible. It was mirrored, of course, mirrored tiles on the walls and floor. Also the ceiling. The toilet and sink were ordinary. A fresh bar of soap lay in the dish on the arm of the sink—so much nicer than powdery stuff out of a dispenser, she thought.

How good it would feel to have clean hands. She rubbed the soap between her palms for a long time, working up a rich lather with warm water from the faucet. She decided to wash her face as well; she hadn't had the opportunity in so long. She held her hair with one hand but couldn't completely avoid getting it wet. She didn't mind; she would happily have dunked her whole head into the basin for the feel of this welcome refreshment.

In fact, why stop there, she thought, and pulled her blouse off over her head. She felt sweaty and horrible; scrubbing some soap under her arms would make her feel a little better, since she couldn't shower. She unhooked the closure in front of her bra and slipped the straps down her arms one at a time with her, wet hand. In the mirror she stared at her small breasts, and was pleased with them. Her nipples were hard. She rubbed the soap vigorously under her arms, then rinsed, trying to stand over the sink in such a way that the least water would spill on the floor.

She had forgotten to check for a towel before she started; there was none, so she dabbed herself dry with pieces of toilet paper. She'd almost forgotten about her urgency; she'd make some superficial attempt at washing of genitalia after. She pulled down her panties, stepped out of them and hung them on a hook she'd just noticed protruding from the door. She rescued her blouse from where it had fallen and hung that too. She gathered up her skirt with her right hand, intending to sit on the toilet, but was distracted by suddenly seeing herself in the mirrored wall, as if seeing another person. She looked at this person who held her skirt in her arms so that it draped her hips but revealed her belly, fur and thighs. Her breasts were still uncovered also, and just as she had found them adequate, satisfying, she now found this lower region of her body, in fact the whole body, cut off as it was at the waist—she found the entire image attractive.

She stood transfixed by this lovely landscape under canopy of skirt. Her flesh seemed firmer than she remembered, more muscle tone; maybe the exercises she'd been doing in the morning and before bedtime had finally paid off. It had been hard to motivate herself to do them, with no prospect of anyone to appreciate the results, since she'd had no way of knowing about the cafe owner. She couldn't have predicted that, though as it was happening, there had been, in the midst of all that anguish and terror and pleasure, a tiny seed of deja vu; that was a common phenomenon, of course.

Well, it didn't make much difference in the end, did it? She knew that she often allowed herself to become the victim of her own speculations, reflections. Now it all seemed unimportant compared to the immediacy of the woman in the mirror, the urgency of that woman's sexuality or physicality. Strange to feel genuinely aroused by this image of herself. She amused herself with the idea that it was perfectly logical for her to associate her unaccompanied reflection with arousal, since that had been the consistent image during her definitive sexual experience.

Now the woman in the mirror was touching herself, sliding her palm up her thigh, transferring the skirt to the guardianship of the left hand. Then she left skin to approach her breasts. She caressed them fervently, then left skin again to return below the skirt, lingering for a long time when the hand met flesh again, languidly rubbing the soft pubic hair, just a shade darker than the honey-colored hair of her head, which fell away from her shoulders, skimming the floor as she bent low for the mirror.

The mirror-woman did a seductive dance, holding the skirt tight across her hips, swaying; she watched the curve of her calves as she gracefully inscribed the area of the bathroom floor, often lifting her leg so high that her lips were visible.

She was extremely aroused by this time, and not ashamed of it; she wanted to possess this beautiful moving image. She felt a fullness in her groin, decided it was her old need to urinate, which seemed less and less urgent; she couldn't be bothered with addressing that now—it was confusing how similar that feeling was with that of being sexually excited. She was rubbing herself, much more vigorously than was her habit; she let the skirt drop to have both hands. She tried to put one finger of her free hand inside herself but couldn't gain entry, despite the fact that she was very wet by now. It wasn't necessary anyway, and she was happy enough to have access to both hands for rubbing.

She was so tensed and excited that her vision was blurred; she'd lost the mirror's reflection, but it was firmly fixed in her mind; she dwelled on all the postures, the confronting gaze, the beauty and sensuality of that body. She needed some kind of support, weak from so much excitement. When leaning against the sink proved insufficient she quickly closed the lid of the toilet and sat there.

Under the skirt she rubbed so fast that her hand was tiring, so she supported the right with the left, cupped the two and stroked, leaning back against the tank. She recalled there must be semen in her still, if he had come, that is, but he must have come, at least once, and probably generously, he had to have, it just wasn't possible—she felt it coming out of her, not just dribbling but in spurts, as she herself climaxed. She cried out with the new pleasure of it, an intense, confined pleasure, as she felt suddenly claustrophobic; she needed air, even if it was just the air of the corridor. She rose and unlocked the door by turning the knob hard, opened it and stuck her head out, like a seasick traveler leaning out a porthole; she saw down the length of the corridor into the room with the bar, where it had all begun.

Directly in the line of her vision was the poster of Greece; it was far away, and the contents of the little boxes were fuzzy, like the last letters of the eye-doctor's chart, but she could see rocks and white sand, and tall, white columns. She was drawn toward them, she wanted to see every box clearly; her nakedness did not inhibit her for some reason. He didn't matter so much anymore; she wouldn't let him keep her from exploring. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. No one was there.