We were discussing theories of history, the gap-toothed stewardess and I. She had been something before she had been this, a student maybe, and before that, she believed, there had been other lives, mainly French: a fishmonger’s wife, a minor poet, a rape victim, a lady in waiting. Perilous chance, she said. Ceaseless repeating. Nostalgia as a revisionist fantasy. She was naked, holding a joint, already far gone. She said that most of her ideas needed charts, graphs. So instead she gestured, swirling her hands around in what she identified as receding spheres, networks. How science flirts with dreams of unknowing. An ice wine, dry, until it hit her lap. This was in one of her father’s apartments, walls clogged with dated acrylic portraits of other women’s children, powder blue with blonde eyes. A view of the Miracle Mile, in miniature, far below. A vinyl of someone singing something called the Just Like Queen Mab Blues. A voice like gargling broken glass. Perilous chance. She was exactly thirty-two, Methodist and pregnant, though she lied about her age, didn’t go to church and assumed her period was late for reasonable reasons, emotional turmoil, the frequency of travel. She was not in uniform, claimed to know all the best waiting rooms. Tea at Jena, she said. The day history ended. Her philosophy had room for everything, a closet, a drawer, a subcategory, a label. She spoke of moral calculus, of the forces that keep track. A ceaseless leveling. One life to another, like stitches counted in sewing, knitting. She wasn’t clear on her metaphors. The conversation switched to needles. A ceaseless yen, needling. The abacus, she said, was an invention of the Arabs. She had been there, in tribal times, learning the secret feminine rites, a liturgy of monthly blood. The moon, for instance. A ceaseless pulling, tide and stitch. She rolled up her sleeve, and I, being pretty stoned, couldn’t seem to avert my gaze.
Spencer Dew's work has appeared in numerous journals. He's the author of a collection of short stories, Songs of Insurgency, and is currently writing a book-length study of Kathy Acker's novels. His website is www.spencerdew.com.
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