Going Native by Stephen Wright

She thrilled to see the magic pouring from her face, from dark profundities of her, glittering pixie particles of me-stuff scattering over the world, and she didn't have to do, she didn't have to be anything more than a sprawled body on a yellowing mattress in a hot room for all to be changed around her. She had already changed herself and she had changed her name and the sound of her rechristening was: Latisha Charlemagne.
    "Whaddya doing?" sounded his voice, slurred, gross, sarcastic, and, concentration broken, she almost went down. She was hopping around on one leg, trying to jam her stupid clown feet into a laddered pair of black leotards. "I'm going out," she explained logically. "Jogging." She didn't know this was what she was about to do until she said it.
    "The hell you are."
    She turned away from him, the claims of his nakedness, his disapproval, his wattled cock. Tackling hands were on her hips in an instant and over she went into the closet beneath a soft cascading of suits and shirts, a clattering of loose hangers. They struggled there a while atop the shoes, a boot heel digging into her back. "Get. . . off," she warned, pushing clawed fingers into the pliable stuff of his face until, sensing her determination, "all right, all right," he let her go to resume the task of inserting leg tabs A into leotard holes B, refusing to recognize her engagement in a vain tussle of mismatched parts.
    "Okay," he said, "I want to see this." He stretched out on the floor, assumed the expression of an appreciative spectator ready to enjoy the elaborate "business" of a professional comedian. But after several minutes of her slapstick, he reached out a restraining hand. "Please," he begged, "no more. Don't make me laugh. Don't give me a heart attack."
    She couldn't stop, though, having glimpsed, she was certain, the obvious solution to this temporary problem in nonalignment on the physical plane. If she could lean against the wall with one leg extended straight out and then bend forward with the leotards in both hands. . . "I need my exercise," she insisted.
    "You get all the exercise you need right here in this room." And then hands were on her again, fastened to the nice places they knew she couldn't resist, and then he was on top of her, he and his shadow, commencing this mutual abrasion he couldn't seem to get enough of, scratching an itch, rubbing the one spot that had to be rubbed and rubbed for the genie to appear, the true genie, not the fake one with the paste jewels and backfiring wishes, but the happy turbaned soul rising up out of the muck of eternity with all the answers, Latisha's raw breath tickling at the hairs of his ear, "Oh, you're big, you're so big," straining against the harness, yes, of course it was a race, too, close field pressed in on either side, moving as fast as he could, riding hard the heart he hoped wouldn't dare betray him, blind chase toward a finish that couldn't or wouldn't or shouldn't come. Mister CD was in love.
    "You're the kind of guy," she remarked later, "who should put his dick on a leash and take it for a walk around the block."
    He had rolled over and his arm was sliding around under the maturing mounds of dirty clothing planted like exotic mushrooms along his side of the mattress. "Where's the damn stem?"
    She pretended to search, then slipped it from her ashtray and handed it over.
    "Well, babe," he declared, clicking nervously on the yellow Bic, "you should have known me in the days when I was Mister LP."
    "You were hot."
    "I was dangerous, I was burning up."
    The smoldering pipe passed between them in a volitionless glide, like an object at a seance, each repetition a reenactment of their meeting one bright windy afternoon, sizzling white clouds blowing past in pieces, carrying with them, for this one day at least, that late summer malaise of extended-mode lives and wilted options thousands of vacations were designed to avoid. Lately, he took his lunch break out behind the store