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Second Prize
Fiction

VERTIGO AND THE SEX QUEEN (p. 2 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | JUN '04

Around midnight, the sex queen knocks softly on our door. Although I’m not supposed to move, Mark is snoring soundly, so I go to the front door and undo the three deadbolts mounted on it by the previous tenant. "Pardonnez-moi de vous déranger," she says in a throaty whisper. "It is possible to use your balcony? My key is shut inside my apartment." The woman we call the sex queen lives across the hall. Empty grease-stained pizza boxes appear outside her door most mornings. She and her friends arrive late at night or early in the morning. We never see the pizza delivery people either. They must descend as quickly and silently as they arrive, a healthy tip in their pockets and a little light-headed from the clouds of eau de cologne that float out whenever the sex queen opens her door. We see her only on Saturday mornings when she carries a laundry basket down to the lavomat. Then she sits at the zinc bar of the cafe across the street and sips black coffee out of a white demitasse and chats with the barman. She has an enormous mane of dark hair, flawless burgundy nails. Tonight she is dressed all in white: mini-skirt, sleeveless linen blouse, tailored linen jacket. She asks for a knife with a pointed tip. "We’ve only got this," I say, holding out the carving knife we’d wrapped in underwear and smuggled through airport security in Vancouver. She says, "Yes, c’est parfait," and slips off her white stiletto heeled pumps, placing them neatly by the door. Then she crosses to the wooden doors of the balcony and wrenches open the shutters. Mark rolls over and sits up in the sofa bed. I can tell he thinks he’s dreaming as he watches her place the wooden handle of the knife between her teeth and step out onto the balcony. Inside me, the baby flips around at the smell of the night air and the sex queen lifts one bare foot and then the other onto the iron railing. She crouches, freezes for an instant, suddenly leaps the space and the circle of iron spikes that protrude from the wall between the balconies. She lands sure-footed and noiselessly as a cat, takes the knife from between her teeth, and wedges it between the balcony doors with a click. A few seconds more and she is back with an apologetic smile to collect her shoes.

The next time it happens, it is August and I am so ballooned that it takes a long time to get to the door. This time, she is with a tall man, saying, "So sorry to derange you, but it has happened again that I forget my key. Can my boyfriend use your terrace?" The boyfriend is dressed in a black shirt and jeans. He has very white hands and must, I am sure, have flawless nails. His hair is stiff with gel and he has a small shaving cut on his chin. I know the routine. I go for the knife while he unties his shoes. My husband is up and offers the sex queen a cup of tea but she says she’ll just wait at her front door, so we both show the boyfriend the balcony. Outside it is pouring and blowing a gale. When Mark hauls open the shutters, a pile of sheet music flutters around the room. The boyfriend tucks the knife awkwardly in his belt. I can see he is shaking and I think of the rooftop garden and wonder if that boy too, did it for love. I decide not to watch this time, but I hear him say to my husband, "I am sorry but this is my first time." He jumps the gap with a quiet groan. The spikes, I think, but moments later he knocks again at the door in the hall. "Merci et bonne nuit." His voice still quavers as he steps back into the blackness of the hall landing. That night we stay up late, intrigued and talking about the many possibilities this second visit suggests. Is the balcony feat some kind of fierce initiation? Are we too somehow being tested for worthiness? As I fall asleep, I see whirls of white chestnut flowers spiraling in the wind and I dream I am climbing up the iron girders of the Eiffel Tower, unburdened by pregnancy, the knife in my teeth.

On August 31 I undergo a Caesarian section. The anesthetist practices his English on me while I try not to look up at the glossy white ceiling, where I see perfectly reflected the bloodstained gloves of the surgeons digging inside my abdomen. I notice the obstetrician, herself pregnant, has dark sweat rings growing under the arms of her green gown. The baby begins to howl the moment she emerges, and she continues all night, so loudly that the night nurse wheels her bassinet into my room where I am still attached to catheters and drips. She tells me they can’t have her in the nursery until she calms down. "Never," she says, "have we a child who screams like this one. You must keep her in your room and close your door." She clucks her tongue in the way only a Parisian maternity nurse can do. Aside from new babies, there are no children allowed in the Clinique Isis, not even siblings, so every morning for a week I carry the baby to the window, pull back the gauze curtain and wave her infant hand at Mark and Sara who stand on the sidewalk looking up. They wave too, as if waving at an airplane or hot-air balloon in the distance. Then they turn and carry on their way towards Sara’s school. I am discharged early. "Healthy Canadians," the nurses say, but I see the relief in their eyes as the elevator doors shut on me and my wailing child.

Home again, the vertigo returns. Sometimes I have to hold onto the walls as I walk and jiggle the baby in the middle of the night. I wonder if the sex queen is annoyed by the noise but, except for the pizza boxes, we haven’t seen her in weeks. I am so dizzy at the thought of the six flights of winding staircase that it is October before I venture into the street.

1 | 2 | 3 | JUN '04