Diana the Goddess Who Hunts Alone

XVIII

“You left the door open.”

“You’re mistaken. Look at it. It’s tight shut.”

“I mean the bathroom door.”

“Yes. It’s open. So what?”

“I asked you always to keep it closed.”

“Well, it so happens that at this particular time I’m going in and out a lot.”

“Why?”

“What’s it to you? Because I’ve just come down with a case of Montezuma’s revenge, because …”

“You’re lying. You Mexicans never get that. You reserve that for us …”

“Diarrhea recognizes neither frontiers nor cultures. Didn’t you know that?”

“How can you be so horribly vulgar?”

“Why’s it such a big deal whether the bathroom door is open or closed?”

“I’m asking it as a favor.”

“How delicate we are. At least you’re not giving me a direct order. After all, I am living in your house.”

“I never said that. All I’m asking is that you respect …”

“Your manias?”

“My insecurity, stupid. I’m very sensitive to things that are open or closed. I’m afraid. Help me, respect me …”

“So our relationship is going to depend on whether I close the bathroom door or leave it open?”

“It’s such a little thing. And since you put it that way, yes, you are in my house …”

“And you’re in my country.”

“Eating shit, that’s true.”

“We could go back to Iowa and eat fried chicken in cellophane or dog-meat hamburgers. I’m ready when you are …”

“Since you don’t respect my vulnerability, you can use another bathroom and let me have this one …”

“I can also sleep in a different bedroom.”

“I’m asking you to do me the tiniest favor. Close the bathroom door. Open bathroom doors scare me, okay?”

“But it doesn’t bother you to sleep with the bedroom curtains open?”

“I like that.”

“Well, I don’t. The sun comes blazing in early and I can’t sleep.”

“I’ll lend you an American Airlines sleep mask.”

“You get up at dawn, so you’re fine. But I end up with a fucking migraine.”

“You’ll find all the aspirin you need at the drugstore.”

“Why do you insist on sleeping with the curtains open?”

“I’m waiting.”

“For whom? Dracula?”

“There are beautiful nights when the moon invades a bedroom, transforms it, and transports you to another moment in your life. Maybe that will happen again.”

“Again?”

“Right. Moonlight inside a bedroom, inside an auditorium, it transforms the world — that’s something you really can believe in.”

“You told me not to believe in your biography.”

“Just believe in the images I offer you from time to time.”

“Please excuse me. I’ll leave the door closed. I wouldn’t want a single moonbeam to escape.”

“Thank you.”

“Assuming one does arrive some night.”

“It will. My life depends on it.”

“I think you really mean, my memory.”

“Don’t you remember any night you’d like to recapture?”

“Lots of them.”

“No, it can’t be ‘lots of them.’ Only one or none at all.”

“I’d have to think about it.”

“No. Imagine it.”

“Tell me what props I’d need, O Duse.”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Duse Medusa.”

“You’d need snow.”

“Here?”

“Snow all the time. Snow all four seasons of the year. I can’t imagine it without snow. Snow outside. A circle. A circular theater. An auditorium. A skylight. Night. Me stretched out on the stage. The two of us alone. Him on top of me. Searching with his hand. Lifting my little skirt.”

“Like this?”

“Exploring me with a marvelous tenderness no other man has ever known how to give me.”

“Like this?”

“He’s patient, exploring, lifting my little skirt, sliding his hand under my panties, searching in the darkness …”

“Like this.”

“Until the moon rises and the light floods over us, the moonlight shines on my first night of love, my love …”

“Like this, like this…”

“Like this. Please, quickly.”

“But there’s no moon. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“There’s no moon here. We’ll have to wait. Or if you’d like, I could buy a paper moon and hang it over the bed.”

“You have no imagination, I told you already.”

“Listen, don’t cry. It’s no big deal.”

“Almost. You almost made it. What a shame.”

“Here.”

“What are you doing? What is this?”

“A present. In exchange for the toothpaste.”

“You killed my imagination. You don’t have any right to do that.”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning. You’ve got to get up very early. Want anything else?”

“Get up and close the bathroom door, please.”

“Good night.”