Free Fresh Girls & Other Stories by Evelyn Lau Page A

like that, and he will be looking at the floor when he does this. I will say nowhere, that I dressed up only for him, but he will grunt and refuse to look at my face, as if he is sparing himself from looking full upon a vision of depravity and disease.
    Tonight the old man pours the Scotch with a generous hand. I measure the inches of pale gold liquid I will have tosip and see there is something paddling about in my drink. It is sort of fibrous and beige and it alternates between suspending itself in the middle of the drink, wafting up to the surface, then sinking with sudden dead weight to the bottom of the glass. I rationalize that I can drink around it until the last gulp, when it will make a quick and, I hope, tasteless exit down the back of my throat.
    “How are the girls?” the old man asks, settling himself into the butterfly chair in front of the television. The chair is set in such a way that no matter how I sit on the couch, I cannot comfortably talk to him and face him at the same time. Which, of course, I have to do, resulting in various aches and pains caused by the awkward set of my neck. If I were wearing jeans, I would be able to press my back against one arm of the couch, push the cushions aside, and sit relatively comfortably cross-legged, facing the other arm of the couch. I am not wearing jeans. I have my legs crossed and the glass coffee table is too close to my calves, which I remedy by squashing into the couch and raising my knees unnaturally high.
    “Fine,” I say, “the girls are fine.”
    “They’re still there, they haven’t gone anywhere?”
    “They’re still there, I take good care of them for you.”
    The old man chuckles with pleasure. “And the lady, how is she?”
    “The lady is fine too.”
    “Ah,” the old man says, rocking back in his chair. “That’s good to hear, that’s good to hear. Ooh, the lady. Mmm, hum.” He rubs his lips together.
    Incidentally, the girls are my breasts. The lady is my vagina. I am Barbie, or maybe I am Lolita. For us, the old man has created a secret language, a series of codes and signals, the way lovers do in the early, affectionate, slightly silly phase of their courtship.
    “You don’t think I’m crazy?” The old man flicks his eyes at the anchorwoman on the television screen, then turns them back on me.
    “No, I don’t think you’re crazy.”
    “Oh, you’re just saying that. I am crazy, aren’t I? I must be crazy.”
    “No, not the least bit.”
    “Not even a little bit crazy?”
    “Well, maybe a little bit. Only in the most delightful sort of way.” I crack a wide grin at him.
    “Ah. Ooh.” The old man is pleased with my responses, right on cue. He sets his feet apart on the floor and tugs a bit at his tie. I flatter him by noticing the puffy triangle of silk peeking from his jacket pocket. Thus we settle into our routine, the repetitious dance of compliments and reassurances, of advances and coy retreats, news of the flowers he bought that morning and the phone calls he received and how many times he ate that day andwhere. I forcefeed myself another mouthful of sullied Scotch, keeping a wary eye on the creature snaking in its depths. In the distance, off to one side, he says, “You are beautiful, but then there’s no need to tell you that, you are always beautiful, aren’t you? Aren’t you, honey?” and I shake the dizziness out of my head and raise my lips and bare my teeth and say thank you and smile as if my bank balance depended on it.
    The old man keeps five blankets on his bed. We make a game of having me wait naked under a different blanket each time I visit. He will creep over to the bed, as he is doing now, in the semidarkness punctuated by a square of light in the doorway coming from the lamp in the hall. He will shuffle his hands among the layers of wool and cotton, sometimes tickling or pinching me in the process. Tonight I am under blanket number four and it takes him a long time to find me, tossing the