Echo-Lala

I've been seeing Ivan for a few months, long enough to find out he likes to pretend I'm a dancer. He sounded embarrassed when he told me, but it's alright. I know the men I date wish I was someone other than who I am: an old girlfriend or an ex-wife, or maybe someone they've seen in a magazine, only they don't usually stick around long enough for me to find out. Not Ivan. He comes to see me almost every evening during the week when he's done teaching at Roosevelt High. He calls me Jacqueline instead of Jackie. I call him I-can I-van.

"Whoa," Ivan says to me while we're having sex. "Slow down." I'm lying on top of him, and he's holding my hips like he's about to lift me over his head and twirl me around, only Ivan couldn't lift much more than a large cat.

When I'm with some men I close my eyes and see different colors, with others I find myself in certain rooms of nice houses I've never been in. With Ivan I don't see anything. Instead, I hear old songs that pop into my head from out of nowhere, like "Love Is a Battlefield" and "American Pie." Tonight I hear "Moonlight Mile" so clearly Mick Jagger may as well be singing it just for me, like I'm the one he's driving to see with his head full of snow, the one he's living for to be lying by his side. The song builds up to this point where the violins are played so hard I imagine the strings flying off the bows and Mick is right there, guiding all that tension, singing "Let it go now, come on up babe." The notes get shorter and shorter and higher and higher until I become the song, like I figured out how to get inside of it. Finally Mick lets out a "yeah" that sounds like he just burst out the front door of a burning building. The radiator clangs and lets out a small burst of steam. I'm done.

"Already?" Ivan asks with surprise, and maybe even a little relief. I'm reminded that we're performing two separate tasks. It isn't like we're cooking a meal or painting a room where we get to share the end result. Bev next door says I should never let a man know I've climaxed, because if they know they can do that to you they'll think they own you, but I don't see what's wrong with being owned. Then again, Bev's former husband hit her over the head with a bottle of vodka before he left her, while my ex-husband just stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked away.

I reach for the soft pack of Marlboro Lights on my nightstand and tap one loose for Ivan, feeling like I'm handing out consolation medals at the end of a race. He doesn't seem to mind. At the rate he was going I'd be pirouetting and pas de whatever-ing on top of him for another hour. That's the thing with Ivan: for him, sex isn't a race, it's a dance. I'm not sure what it is for me.

We sit and smoke, the lit ends of our cigarettes red taillights in the dark. The window next to my bed is so frosted over it looks like a bunch of stars slammed into it. The neon orange from the LIQUOR sign outside illuminates the patterns on the glass. The businesses around here don't need names, they just call themselves what they sell or the service they offer: liquor, food, eats, checks cashed, hair, nails, pets. In this part of town you don't make a fuss about what you need.

I can hear the preacher outside again. He's always pacing the streets this time of night, no matter how cold it gets, and tonight it's so cold that...