trapped
Mark. Gooley
atop her, preparing for sex. She had forgotten his name, didn't want to
have sex with him, disliked his very smell -- sweat and garlic mixed with
the remnants of some cheap men's perfume -- yet she wrapped her arms around
him and forced him against her. He was an inconsiderate and hasty lover,
but the moans, writhings, and cries of "Oh, God!" that she found herself
producing at the right time seemed to assure him that she was enjoying his
ineptness as much as he was. He slid off of her, and she murmured, "That
was wonderful," in that breathy voice she hated, and giggled her annoying
giggle.
The man sat up, got his watch from the nightstand, and looked at it
as he put it on. "Gotta get going," he said. "I'll be late to work."
"I can't fix you some breakfast?" she said, almost running out of
breath. Using my voice wrong, she thought: all the air goes out in a rush.
And why am I offering this fool breakfast?
He shook his head and started putting on his clothes, picking them
up from the floor. "I'll grab something on the way," he said.
"Okay," she said. She got out of bed, quite naked, and rummaged
through a pile of clothes in the corner of the room until she found a
nightshirt, one with a large cartoonish koala and a few cocoa stains on
its front. She put it on and showed the man to the door of her apartment,
where they kissed politely before he left; she showed no sign that she would
rather not have even touched him.
Good riddance, she thought, as she closed the door behind him. Hope
I never have to see him again. She went back to her bedroom, pulled off her
nightshirt, and threw it back onto the pile of clothes in the corner. No
need to be so messy, she thought. Then she went to the bathroom for a
shower. She wet her hair and put a dollop of overpriced shampoo onto her
left palm; this stinks like a rotting fruit salad, she thought. The
conditioner was almost as bad. Then the soap: like industrial cleaning
fluid, she thought.
Tiffany smeared deodorant onto her carefully-shaven armpits -- another
nasty smell, as of talcum powder only stronger. She took from the medicine
cabinet behind the mirror a bottle of perfume -- a cheap copy of Poison, one
that smelled even worse -- and dabbed it liberally on her wrists and throat.
More rotting fruit, she thought. She got out her ugly little neon-pink hair
dryer and a brush with heavy plastic bristles, and dried her hair, regarding
herself in the mirror. Straw blonde, she thought. I had to dye it straw
blonde. It doesn't match my skin at all now, and those dark brown roots...
those eyebrows, God, how I hate plucking them, and they're such an ugly shape
now...and that stupid, smug, contented expression on my face!
Her hair was near enough dry, and she shut off and put down the dryer.
To the right of the sink was a can of hair mousse, and she rubbed a generous
handful into her hair and brushed her hair into shape. I hate this gluey
crap in my hair, she thought. After she had rinsed and dried her hands, she
looked in the mirror and concentrated, trying to change her expression. The
muscles of her face tensed, forced her mouth into a grimace. She willed her
real self into her face, demanded that it present who she really was. For
a few moments she saw in the mirror the face of an intelligent, gracious
woman, and then her concentration broke and the foolish girl's face was
back. Damnation! she thought, but could not say.
Tiffany looked at the rest of her body. Not bad, she thought.
Breasts a bit small, but they're good and firm. But why did I have to
have the nipples pierced? They both got infected, too -- if I had to do
it, why couldn't I have taken proper care of them? God, they look so
stupid -- why not install grommets, like in a piece of camping gear or
something?
She brushed her teeth. Such an idiotic thing to do right before
eating breakfast, she thought; it makes the orange juice taste shitty, and
I'm getting my teeth dirty again right away. Nevertheless she brushed them
carefully, and rinsed her mouth with bright red saccharin-sweet mouthwash
(it's repulsive, she thought).
She put on her clothes: the heavily-padded brassiere, the lace
panties, a low-cut white blouse that was always too cold in the office,
a pair of painfully-tight acid-washed black jeans, a pair of high-heeled
gold sandals even less comfortable than the jeans. The crimson polish on
the right big toe was chipped, and she found the right bottle on her
makeup table and painted over the damage. She selected a bow of black
lace from a pile on the edge of the table, put her hair into a ponytail,
and secured it with the bow. This looks stupid, she thought; the clothes
don't go well together, and I'll be in pain all day. But she went to the
kitchen for breakfast.
She went automatically to the kitchen table, picked up the remote
control to the 13-inch set atop the refrigerator, and turned on
"Morningtime USA," the program she hated most. Behind a bag of flour
in a kitchen cupboard was a copy of _Divine Comedy_, English translation
facing the original Italian on adjacent pages, which she'd managed to buy
and get home; she was well into _Inferno_, and wanted to read more over
breakfast, but instead she turned up the volume on the TV and listened, as
she fetched a bowl and a box of cereal, to a story about a housewife whose
hobby was to resemble Elizabeth Taylor as closely as possible. She poured
"Captain Sweetness" cereal (inwardly she winced at the idiotic cartoon and
the nutritional information on the box) into the bowl, got and added whole
milk (all that fat, she thought; why not buy skimmed?), and looked, as she
ate, at the screen: before-and-after pictures for some of the impersonator's
ten plastic-surgery operations, the woman herself in her blue eyeshadow,
the assortment of pads that the woman wore to make her apparent weight
conform to the current weight of Miss Taylor.
Tiffany's face wore an expression of intense interest, but inwardly
she was disgusted. She finished the cereal and, listening against her will
to a new tampon commercial, took spoon and bowl to the sink and rinsed them.
She got out a glass and filled it with orange juice from a pitcher in the
refrigerator, and from a cupboard took out a pair of Pop-Tarts in their
aluminized plastic bag. She sat and watched a story about child prostitutes,
sipping the juice -- with its bitter taste from the toothpaste -- and
munching the Pop-Tarts. Slimy gritty half-baked gunk, she thought, with
sweet glue inside. She finished them, finished the orange juice, with
difficulty tore herself from the O'Rommel's commercial she hadn't seen
before, and went back to her bedroom.
Have to brush my teeth, she thought, but she had already brushed
them before breakfast and she walked into her bedroom and sat at her makeup
table. She took an assortment of earrings from a velvet-lined box,
selected a few -- three for her left ear, two for her right -- and put
them in. Vulgar, she thought. Trendy. God, how that third puncture on
the left had hurt to get done -- right through the cartilage.
Makeup. Tiffany had come to hate it: the smell, the feel of it on
her face. She applied a thick layer of pale foundation in an attempt to
mask her freckles completely and make her complexion match her hair, and
sneered inwardly at the result. Lipstick and blusher and eye shadow and
the lot: too much, the wrong shades, clumsily applied, grotesque -- she
knew how to use it properly, but could not stop herself. I look like a
whore, she thought, and a stupid whore at that.
At length she was ready to go to work. She hated her fake-leather
handbag, hated the keychain with the unicorn on it. She locked the door
behind her, walked along the common balcony that connected the apartments,
went down a flight of stairs and to her car. She didn't particularly like
its bright yellow color, its tiny three-cylinder engine, its automatic
transmission, the high cost of buying it new, the car payments she could
have avoided with a good used car. She tried to scowl at the "Practice
random acts of kindness and senseless beauty" bumper sticker, at the sun-
faded Garfield doll suction-cupped to the inside of the rear window, at
the back seat full of garbage -- impossible. She unlocked the car, got in,
adjusted the rear-view mirror and saw that hated expression on the painted
mask of her face, and gave a stupid little giggle.
She started the car; the radio came on at the same time: public
radio. She'd tricked her superficial self into leaving the radio on that
station in hopes of hearing news about rainforests and other fashionable
causes -- at least she could keep well informed. She backed the car out
of its space and headed for work.
As she got onto the freeway, a five-minute commentary began. She
yawned from superficial boredom, but actually she was quite interested.
She agreed with the opinion but thought the argument slipshod, and devised
a better one. She wanted to write to the commentator, but she doubted that
she could: moments when she was in some control of her actions were rare
enough, and not to be used lightly: better to read another fragment of a
novel, half of a short story, a few sonnets before the giggling girl took
over again.
Automatically she left the freeway at the right exit, got onto the
frontage road, turned at the right parking lot, pulled into a space not too
far from the building, parked. The sprawling two-storey building looked
prefabricated, ready-made: some attempts at post-modern decoration on the
outside, colored panels and reflective glass, were evidently afterthoughts
and added an extra touch of shoddiness. She got out and walked to the
nearest entrance, the shoes already hurting her feet.
She went in. Fred the security guard, a tall, wiry black man with
a handsome face and a shaven head, said, "Good morning, Tiffany," and she
gave him a lustful leer and a sultry "Good morning, Fred." God, I hate
that idiotic name, she thought: it's as if I'm a piece of jewelry. And
Fred -- such a decent guy; why do I look at him as if he's just a sex
object? A married man, too -- oh, well, I doubt he'll fall for me.
Down the corridors and to her office. She had decorated it herself
and hated it only for that: it had an east window that gave her a view of
beautiful old trees, and let in dappled sunshine most mornings. The carpet
was a pleasant slate blue, and the walls cream-colored with forest-green and
dark-red trim; the furniture was charcoal gray, and modern but not offensively
so. The computer on her desk had a black case. All this she found pleasant
enough, but the embroidery on the walls, done and framed by herself, was not
to her taste: a teddy-bear ballerina filled most of a three-foot frame that
she faced when she looked up from her desk; it was flanked by similar works:
nauseatingly cute bunnies grazing on flowers, and a vapid-faced cartoonish
girl accepting a bouquet from an equally disgusting boy. On the other walls
were her attempts at watercolor paintings: generic mountains with pines and
a cabin in the foreground, a clumsy still life of flower in a cola bottle
and a bowl of apples, and a seascape with a misshapen little boat. She
wanted to weep at the time she had wasted doing the embroidery, wanted to
take down the clumsy watercolors (why can't I make my hand do what I know
it can do? she always thought) and burn them, but of course she could not.
The sickly Chia Pet, the tourist-trap wooden plaques with hortatory sayings,
the dying spider plant in the purple ceramic pot hanging in its macrame
holder -- she hated them all. A single red rose in a cheap crystal vase,
one of a dozen brought yesterday by the head of the division and distributed
to the secretaries as a general thank-you, was one of the few things that
she liked. She put her purse on the floor by her desk, and with a sigh
that never made it past her mind she sat down.
Work. She typed a few letters, aware that she misspelled some
words, but unable to correct them until after she had used the spelling-
checker. Presently a senior secretary dropped by, a fiftyish woman with
long gray hair, a young face, and a stocky but well-shaped body. "Morning,
Tiffany," she said in a gentle, rather frayed voice. She handed Tiffany
a sheaf of papers with her right hand, sipping coffee from the mug she held
with her left. "More for you, I'm afraid."
"Morning, Marty," said Tiffany -- everyone called her Marty rather
than Martha -- in a cute but shrill little squeal, and cursed herself
silently when she saw Marty wince. She took the papers and put them in her
IN tray.
"Met the new guy yet?" asked Marty.
Giggle. Another hidden sigh. "What new guy?"
"Oh, another senior engineer -- he's a Ph. D. so that makes him
senior," said Marty. "Not so old. Looks like a nice guy."
"Another nerd?" asked Tiffany.
"Well, sure," said Marty, "but he's special, somehow. Kind of cute
in his way. Cultured, I guess -- seems to know a lot more than just his job."
"Sounds boring," she said, but thought that she might like him.
"He'll be sharing you with the rest of the group," said Marty, "so
don't flirt with him to the point of breaking his heart, okay?"
"I'll be good," said Tiffany.
More letters, then some battering of notes into reports. Tiffany
had to fight her superficial stupidity in order to do a good job, and the
concentration put almost an intelligent expression on her face. She didn't
notice at first the man standing in the doorway, and almost flinched when
he said, "Excuse me."
"Oh, hi!" said Tiffany. Damn that stupid voice of mine, she thought;
this must be the new guy. Doesn't look too bad. _He's_ got a nice voice.
"I'm Bill Kowalski," he said. "Just started here today." He was
unremarkable: rather tall, dull brown hair, brown eyes, a pleasant but
nondescript face, a slouch and the beginnings of a paunch; he wore slacks
and shirt, with a small maroon bowtie.
"I'm Tiffany Calder," she said. "Nice to meet you."
He wandered into her office, stooped in front of the rose and sniffed
at it. "`Men say there blows/ In Eastern deserts still a rose/ But with no
crimson in her leaf/ And from her heart no perfume flows,'" he declaimed.
Flecker, she thought, and slightly misquoted. But she simply looked
bewildered and said, "Huh?"
"Never mind," he said, and beneath her puzzled, stupid expression
she was furious. I'm tired of being a dumb broad, she thought, of people
patronizing me, telling me "never mind" when I know what they're talking
about. It's maddening. He went on, "Well, it looks as if you'll be my
secretary -- or as if I'll be sharing you with a few other nerds."
"I wouldn't call you guys nerds," said Tiffany, fighting to keep
the stupid tones out of her voice, and failing. She giggled.
"Well, that's nice of you," he said. "Off to the salt mines," he
said, and left.
Quoting Flecker to me, she thought. He might be fun, but how do I
get him interested? How do I show him that I'm not just another giggling
idiot girl? But how can I be anything else to anyone? Her usual foolish
smile remained on her face, but inside she started to cry.
The three companies in this part of the industrial park shared a
cafeteria, and Tiffany went to lunch there, not having brought food along
that day. She paid for the salad bar and loaded her plate, drowning the
greens in a rich, greasy salad dressing; she wanted to gag but lacked
sufficient control of her throat.
A woman at a distant table was waving to her, and she took her tray
and went towards her. It was Krystle: same bogus-blonde hair and heavy
ineptly-done makeup as her own, plump body in a loose dress, homely face.
Not that silly bitch, thought Tiffany, smiling broadly as Krystle greeted
her with "Hi, Tiff!"
"How's it going, Krys?" Tiffany asked, hoping for an occasion for
_Schadenfreude_.
"Just fine, Tiff," said Krystle, talking at a pitch high in her
foghorn-contralto range. "How's yourself?"
Fucking awful, thought Tiffany, but she said, "Doing okay."
"Did you see `Life' yesterday?" asked Krystle, meaning the soap
opera. "I forgot to set my VCR."
Just as well, thought Tiffany, and said, "Sure. Wanna know what
happened?"
"You bet!"
Tiffany wanted to say that John had killed Zelda and served her
thigh and buttocks meat at a dinner party, that Shannon had been revealed
as a transvestite detective hired by Melissa, and so forth, but instead
she began, "Well, John is finally sure that Zelda is having an affair with
Corey, and--"
"No! Really?" said Krystle, but for a moment the foolishness left
her face, like a mask slipping from it, and Krystle looked both intelligent
and entirely indifferent to the news of the soap opera.
Good God, thought Tiffany, maybe she's like me! Maybe she's trapped,
just the way I am. Maybe millions of people are all trapped. But Tiffany
went on, summarizing what had happened on the show that day.
The day's work over, Tiffany drove home. Several minutes after she
shut the front door, the phone rang. "Hello?" she said. I hate the way I
say that, she thought.
"Hey, Tiffany!" said the man on the other end. "It's Jim."
"Hi, Jim," she said. Boring asshole to talk to, she thought, and
he practically raped me last date; I should tell him to fuck off. "What's
up?"
"Tiff," said Jim, "it's kinda late to ask, I know, but you wanna
go out tonight? I got tickets for a late baseball game."
I hate baseball, she thought, and who in the hell does he think he
is to ask me out right after someone else stands him up? "Oooh!" she said,
in a squeal of happiness.
"Grab a quick dinner, and we can go out to the ballpark right after
that," he said.
Sounds awful, she thought, but said, "Sounds great! Okay, when
can you be here?"
"Six-ish?"
"Okay," she said. "You better get going."
They said their goodbyes and rang off. Hell and damnation! thought
Tiffany; a whole evening with that prick, and he'll want sex in the end.
Well, I'm not going to make any effort for him. But even then she was
going to the hallway mirror to look at herself.
By the time that Jim arrived, Tiffany had taken a quick shower,
put fresh styling mousse on her hair, squeezed into a tight little black
dress, and put on black pantyhose and tight black pumps. She re-did her
makeup, no better than before, and was ready just in time: moments after
she went to her living room to wait for him, Jim knocked on the door.
She got up and opened it. "Jim!" she said in her stupidest voice,
and kissed him, cringing inside. He was a tall blond man, long but thinning
hair in a ponytail.
"Ready to go, Tiff?" asked Jim.
"Yeah," she said, wanting only to eat a light dinner at home and
curl up in bed with the Dante.
"Okay," said Jim, as she got her purse and keys. "Found this
great new barbecue place near the ballpark," he said, as he opened the
door and they went through.
"Great," she said as she locked the door. Well, that's not so bad,
she thought.
Jim had made reservations, and they soon had a table despite the
popularity of the restaurant. "I'll have the buffet," said Jim to the
waitress. "You too, Tiff?" he added.
The buffet had looked good to Tiffany -- barbecued baby back ribs,
chicken parts, and fish, as well as a salad bar. "I'll just have the
salad bar," she found herself saying. Inside she was almost in tears
again at this pettiness, at being denied even the simple animal pleasure
of a good pig-out.
"Anything else to drink?" the waitress asked. "We've got a lager
and an ale from the microbrewery next door."
"I'll have a Corona," said Jim, and Tiffany wanted to cringe.
"Ma'am?" asked the waitress.
Tiffany wanted to try the ale. "A Perrier," she said.
It was the top of the seventh, and the home team was down seven
runs to two; their best relief pitcher had injured his shoulder the other
night and couldn't play. "Tiff, you wanna go?" asked Jim.
Tiffany was bored, but she was hoping that the longer she delayed,
the less likely Jim would be to want sex. "Let's stay," she said, the
superficial baseball fan agreeing with her inner self.
"Okay," said Jim, not completely happy. A vendor came by and
Jim bought a beer and some peanuts; "You want anything?" Jim asked Tiffany?
She wanted a beer, even the third-rate swill served at the ballpark, but
shook her head.
The seventh inning stretch came. Jim didn't join in the singing
of "Take me out to the ball game," but Tiffany did, cringing when she heard
her breathy voice scream out the words, far off key.
In the end, the home team made a comeback but still lost. As they
came to Jim's car, Jim asked Tiffany, "Your place or mine?"
Take me home and then get out of my life forever, thought Tiffany,
but she said, "Mine, of course." They got in.
"Was it good for you last time?" asked Jim, starting the car.
Jesus, thought Tiffany, it was awful. "You surprised me a little
at first," she said with that annoying squeal she hated, "but it was great!"
"I've got some neat toys in the trunk," he said. "Wanna try them
out tonight?"
Mindless asshole, she thought, always going with the fads. Bondage
crap. What a little shit he is! "Toys?" she said, in exaggerated mock-
innocent tones that made it clear that she knew exactly what he meant.
"Nice toys for pretty little girls," he said, leering at her and
narrowly avoiding a badly-parked car.
A whole night of that bullshit, she thought. And he'll want to do
it again, and I bet I'll act as if I do too. Oh, God. "Oooh!" she said,
and, giggling, put her left hand to his crotch.
Mark., just a speculation, mind you
goo...@netcom.com