My Life in Heavy Metal Read Online Free PDF Page A

Paso, after all, was sweltering.
    Claudia’s knees began to tremble. Her toes dug at my calves and her mouth went slack. With each thrust, I could hear the faintclack of her teeth. And when her hips began to tilt up, I reached down to caress her, that her body might open and bring the miracle of water. I had a vision, even then, with all that had happened, was about to happen, that I might bow my head between her legs and be washed.
    When you live with someone, you come to recognize the way they move, the pace and gravity of their gait. It’s the way of our kind: we can’t help but reveal ourselves. Jo always took the stairs two at a time, favoring her right leg from an old ballet injury, executing a little hop-skip on the landings. And now, somehow, despite the fact that she was thousands of miles away, I could hear the dangerous jig of her footsteps drawing closer. Claudia began to moan and her body opened and released the water and I felt my own body reaching ecstatically to repeat itself.
    The door slammed. Our bodies slammed. Jo’s voice sounded out my name. Claudia grabbed at my face for a kiss. One red suede boot appeared in the doorway. I looked down at the glistening contortion of Claudia’s body. I still believed I might have time, that there was so much time left to me, to behave like this. And then Jo stepped into the room and looked at us and the air inside her seemed to crumple.
    She began to sob, then to choke on her sobs. Her face turned a deep red. It was clear she could not breathe. Claudia’s hips gave way, fell to the sheets with a damp smack. She was facing away from the door, still lost in the innocent spell of pleasure. Then she noticed my face and her head swung around and she saw Jo and began weeping too, a soft sound like neighing. Her legs drew up and curled beneath her. Her painted toes looked like little dabs of blood. Therewas nothing to say. There was that room and the three bodies inside it. Claudia was hyperventilating. Jo was not breathing.
    Or rather, she was attempting to breathe, to draw air into her lungs, but failing. Her body made a hundred silent hiccups; her lips were drawn over her teeth in a grimace. Her eyes were pinched shut. If we’d had a child, a little baby girl, this is how she would have looked at birth, drowning on the air of some cold white room.
    I must have made a gesture toward her, because her body recoiled and she backed out of the room, bent at the waist, like a servant who has intruded unforgivably on the master’s privacy. I stood at the edge of the bed. A draft from the window moved across my absurd little penis. I felt a soft spearing in my side. Earlier, I’d laid down a towel, meaning to slip it beneath Claudia, and now I drew this around me and went after Jo. I had the idea that I still had something to do with her.
    She was in the hall, staggering toward the landing. If I could see her face. I so wanted that—to see her face.
    â€œBreathe,” I said. “You’ve got to breathe, baby.” I reached out to touch the scrolls of black hair pasted to her temples. Her throat clicked and her voice, finally catching, produced the thick vibrato of agony. Her hand raked my face.
    Then she was flying down the stairs, and I charged after her, yelling
wait wait,
yelling,
Oh God, honey.
The neighbors hung from their doorknobs. On the second floor, I got my hand on her shoulder, tried to sort of tackle her, but she threw me off and I landed on my tailbone. A few seconds later the door below clanged. I struggled to my feet and raced down and bounded outside. My towel had fallen away. I was naked in the street, blood smeared on my cheek.
    Someone had called the police, I guess, because a squad car was gliding to a stop in front of our building. The cop squinted atme through his tinted windshield and I ducked back, hid in the shadow of the door, watched Jo sprint into the night and disappear.
    Claudia was gone,