4

THE INVENTION OF PORNOGRAPHY

We will now sit silently upon the cliff and stare down on the darkening plain, the array of camps, the day’s things put up for the night, the bonfires, and the wide-eyed bewildered boy standing before his tent; and we’ll watch as a sickness among the stars causes misery on the ground, and weigh the little deaths of princelings and girls.

Frank Cartwright was sixteen, a junior in high school, too tall by about two inches, sharp-featured, smart, solitary by nature and sociable by default. Kimberly Remington was his first love and the last element of his childhood. This was in Washington, D.C., and she was in her senior year of a girls’ school over the river in Arlington. Her father was a surgeon at Bethesda Naval and Kimmie was regard’s desire, pale and keen; and Frank Cartwright had fought with her the first time he met her.

They were geniuses back then, every one of them; they knew dollars and days, they were getting bigger by the minute. On a weekend night in mid-winter, Frank and a boy he knew from school had gone out drinking down in Georgetown. Two places had turned them away for being underage, but at a third they’d slipped in, overtaking a trio of girls who had stopped just inside the door to remove their coats. Frank had found himself talking—some remark on the cold, a gesture toward the steam that fogged the windows—and soon the five of them had seated themselves, somehow: Frank, friend, tall girl, snub-nosed girl, girl with red hair, at a table in a back room with noise all around them. The red-haired girl undid the scarf from her throat; the sternum below the V-neck of her black sweater was eggshell; she shivered, pressed her knees closely together beneath the table, and smiled. From where Frank sat he could see the curved shadow where her blue-white breasts began, and he became conscious of his hands on the table, one of them idly worrying a bar napkin while the other lay wrapped around his beer. What are your names? he asked the snub-nosed girl, though already there was only one name he really cared about.

I’m Andrea, she said. She pointed to the tall girl. She’s Terry. And that’s Kimmie.

What’s that? said Kimmie. What are you telling him? She smiled, revealing her tiny teeth and a flash of glistening gums. Her features were at once crude and delicate—sharp nose, reckless mouth—etched quickly from some fine-grained material; and her hair fell down her shoulders, glimmering with copper-red like nothing else in nature. She was small as a bulb, white like a pill, bitter as early morning, and Frank could taste her.

They sat and talked for a while and they drank a bit. There were three or four men in military uniforms standing by the bar, laughing and yelling; Frank wondered what he could do if they came back and tried to take the girls away, but they didn’t come, and the music still played. With feathery fingers, Kimmie tucked her hair back behind her pink ear.

Besides which, the tall girl was saying, anyone can lie over the telephone, anyone can say anything they want to.

Was he lying? said Frank’s friend.

That’s just it, we don’t know, said the tall girl.

Kimmie reached into her pocket and came out with a cigarette, which she studied for a few moments before lighting it. I can always tell when someone’s lying, she said. In person or on the telephone, even on TV. I do it, and I’ve never been wrong. I can always tell.

You cannot, said Frank’s friend.

I can, said Kimmie, nodding emphatically. She blew two pearl-grey plumes of smoke from her nostrils and sat back. Watch me. Try and tell me something, and I’ll tell you whether you’re lying or not.

Frank’s friend sat still and silent, trying to see how serious she might be. The others at the table watched. At length the boy ventured a phrase, with as much confidence as he could muster. . . . My middle name is Orlando.

—Lie! said Kimmie, immediately and happily. That’s a lie.

Frank’s friend leaned back in his chair, in part from shame and in part in surprise at the vehemence of her response, but he smiled a little and nodded. O.K., he admitted.

Go on, she said. Try me again.

The boy hesitated, now a little longer. In my grandfather’s house, he said, pausing cannily . . . There were four grand pianos.

Another scorekeeping second passed. True, said Kimmie. Absolutely true, that’s true. The boy nodded again, more pleased that he’d been caught in a fact than perplexed by her ability. I told you, she said. I never fail. Your turn, she said to Frank.

He leaned back and looked at her, alive on the manifestation of her mysterious skills. I believe you, he said.

But she wanted to keep going, she wanted to snatch every phrase from every boy. Come on, she said, squirming a little and then briefly reaching over and tapping her finger on the back of his hand. Come on.

Now what was he going to do? He could tell a lie or tell the truth, in either order, or twice tell her the truth, or twice try to con her; or he could follow fate and chance a sentence, hardly knowing himself whether it was true, at least until he was done with it. —I was adopted, he said suddenly.

Kimmie looked at him carefully, and watched as he watched her. That . . . is . . . true, she said.

No it isn’t, said Frank’s friend, who wasn’t friend enough to know for sure.

Yes, it is, said Frank. Then to his friend: It is, actually. I was.

The friend stirred awkwardly in his seat. Frank had some company he was trying on the red-haired girl, and no more company to give.

One more time, said Kimmie, and now her attention was entirely on this boy Frank, who was clever and open and might surprise her. She didn’t move her grey eyes from his face, not one little bit. Tell me a lie or tell me the truth, she insisted.

He thought quickly, but far out into the reaches of his animus, seized upon a statement and then took a long period to work up his courage; he grinned slightly nervously, started to lean in to her, stopped, —what if he was wrong? —and then continued, because it was a winter’s night, and he had nothing to lose but cold. He put his mouth against her ear and whispered very slowly, his voice trembling a little bit on the end of his breath. You are the prettiest girl . . . I’ve ever seen, he told her . . . And if I don’t get to kiss you by the end of this night, my head is going to explode.

He pulled back and paused, and she stared at him, her features in a rage. She turned more pale, if that was possible, and her freckles seemed to dance upon the bridge of her nose.

What did he say? said the tall girl.

Nothing, said Kimmie, who was now staring at the tabletop. He said . . . Nothing.

What did you say? said Frank’s friend, but Frank merely shook his head and stared at his beer.

Was it the truth or a lie? asked the tall girl.

It was a lie, said Kimmie quietly.

It was not, said Frank.

It was too, she said, and she got up from the table, tied her scarf around her neck, and walked quickly through the bar and out the front door. In the quiet afterward, Frank’s friend and the two remaining girls sat motionless and showed as little as they could; but Frank was thinking about the girl in the snow, and he got to his feet, said, I’ll be right back, and went after her.