Cleopatra and Frankenstein(105)

“What is that face you make?” she asked.

He brought a hand lightly to his cheek.

“It has been happening for some years now,” he said. “Since my father died. No one is quite sure why.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Very much.”

“I have something a bit like that,” said Zoe. “Well, worse really. I get these kind of … seizure things sometimes.”

Jiro turned his face toward her and widened his eyes. “You have epilepsy, Zoe?”

Zoe felt a lump form in her throat as she nodded. She so rarely said the word aloud.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jiro. “Does it scare you?”

She swallowed. It was an effort to get words out. “Very much,” she managed.

Jiro nodded slowly. “You know, Aristotle believed seizures to be a sign of genius. He had them, and his teachers Plato and Socrates before him.”

Zoe smiled ruefully. “But those are all dead white men.”

Jiro laughed. “And Westerners! But we can still consider his point.”

“I definitely don’t think I’m a genius,” said Zoe.

“Who knows what you will be? You are still becoming.”

Zoe smoothed the robe over her lap and pointed her toes. “I guess that’s true,” she conceded.

“Is that why you went to the meditation group you were telling me about last night? Where you heard about Daddy Dearest? To help with the seizures?”

“Oh God! I told you about that?” Zoe buried her face in her hands. “I only went because my roommate dragged me. It’s a long story.”

“You seemed to be quite moved by it,” said Jiro. “It sounded like a special experience.”

Zoe shifted on the bed. She had no recollection of talking about that with Jiro. She closed her eyes. She wondered if it was the new seizure medication she was taking that caused these gaps in her mind when she drank, like a movie reel that suddenly runs out of film, sputtering into blackness. Or maybe it was just the way she drank. The same way that Frank drank. The same way that her mother apparently drank, when she drank.

“Do you believe in that stuff, then?” she asked. “Climaxing to Consciousness?”

“That, I had never heard of. But yes, I believe in the benefits of meditation. When I have the time, I practice zazen, which comes from Zen Buddhism.”

“See,” said Zoe, poking him in the shoulder. “I knew you were Buddhist.”

Jiro laughed. “You would like me better if I was a Zen monk?”

“Monks don’t get room service,” said Zoe. “And I like you just fine as you are.”

“I like you as you are too, Zoe,” said Jiro.

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Okay,” he said. “We watch your favorite Marlon Brando movie, and then I go to my meeting. Deal?”

Zoe twirled the cord of her robe happily.

“Deal.”



When Zoe woke again, the room was bathed in shadows. The blinds had been drawn over the windows, but a faint square of light still glowed around their edges. So it was still daylight out. She rolled over and found her cheek crushed against a note on the pillow next to her.

I did not want to wake you (it is good for you to sleep I think). I will be back from my meeting at 6 and will bring food in case you are hungry. If you have to go before, please do not hesitate.

P.S. Marlon Brando is my religion now too



The clock on the nightstand emitted its digital glow. It was already 5:30 p.m. She must have drifted off during the movie—but that never happened. Usually Zoe had to be drunk to fall asleep with a man. She sat up against the headboard and stretched her arms out in front of her, twirling her wrists. She felt a growl of hunger in her stomach and something else even lower, something new. She brought her hands under the covers to her groin. She could feel an ache of pleasure as she pressed down on it. That was the new sensation. Zoe had touched herself there before, but it had never felt like this. After a while, she had simply given up trying. She had always assumed that part of her body was broken, just like her epileptic brain. She had woken up, however, feeling different.

Zoe scooted back down in the large bed and opened her robe from below the waist. She hesitated, looking again at the clock. She would die if she was walked in on, but she estimated she had more than enough time before Jiro returned.

“Upper left quadrant,” she said softly to herself.

She guided her fingers to the right spot and closed her eyes. Deep breath. Her fingers circled slowly. Nothing was happening. Then. Something was happening. Time passed, time began to disappear. It didn’t feel like much … until it felt like everything. How to describe it, this burgeoning? An exquisite agony, every part of her tensed into unbearable stiffness, toes splayed rigid, a paralyzing concentration, the certainty that if she let up even a little, even this much, she could lose it, it could lose her … But no, she couldn’t because it was here, she was right at the edge, suspended agonizingly above it, she was close, so close, and then, yes, it was now, it was here, she was falling, sinking, rushing into the red sweet center of it, like velvet, like velvet, one rolling wave after another, pure pleasure, there it was again, that immense intensity, that intense immensity, and again the velvet wave came, beyond words and better than any word, it had happened, she was there, there was here, and she was a real girl, a real girl, a real girl …