marguerite October 21, 2007

jonathan has a doll. jonathan’s doll is thin and life-sized and her breasts are small things, the size of plums, of palms. jonathan’s doll is named marguerite, not margaret, marguerite; he imagines she speaks with a french accent, delicately spitting out words like olive pits into a napkin. her skin is clammy and her mouth is open, always. she lies still under his weight. after he ejaculates in her he must reach a wet cloth inside her, string himself out of her. he talks to her calmly as he does this. don’t worry, he says, don’t worry. this will only hurt for a little.

jonathan is forty-two and jonathan supervises label placement at the factory. no one ever really told him how to supervise, but he guesses at it for eight hours a day, monday through friday, counting down the minutes until he can come home to marguerite. marguerite is so beautiful. marguerite’s hairs have been placed in her scalp one at a time. sometimes they come out in his hand when he is too rough but she does not scream, she does not scream. marguerite’s skin is starting to smell like a body from his body rubbing off on her body. this makes him uncomfortable so once a week he runs a bath for marguerite and sits on the side of the tub, washing her hair, scrubbing her skin. she never raws. once he put the soap inside her, but he immediately regretted it.

jonathan had a real girl, once. her breasts were heavy, too heavy, and when he fucked her she screamed and he had to yell shut up, shut up, and she wouldn’t shut up even when he hit her and then she was bleeding and she still wouldn’t shut up even when he hit her again and she was bleeding and bleeding and choking and shut up, shut up, and the blood. marguerite is a lady. marguerite does not bleed.

marguerite’s skin split at her side. when he ignored the crack it began to peel away from her rib cage like a puckering wound. when he made love to her the next evening his hand slid through the hole and he could see his fingers moving beneath her skin, feel the steel that keeps her solid. marguerite as exoskeleton made him lose his erection but it was only eight thirty so he drove to the hardware store and bought a tube of caulking and he got half-hard again waiting in line, waiting, and he half-hoped the cashier would notice his erection because he likes to make marguerite jealous and when he walked to his car he put the tube of caulking on the passenger seat where marguerite sometimes sat when they talked in the garage because she didn’t like it when he smoked cigarettes indoors and driving, he put his hand down the front of his jeans and whispered marguerite, marguerite, through all the green lights. marguerite was waiting. she was easy to fix. jonathan likes the hardware store because it makes things easy to fix. jonathan has bought bleach at the hardware store, has bought lye. his house smelled thick and basey until marguerite came, until she filled the rooms with her plastic smell. jonathan knows that women hardly ever smell brand new.

jonathan talks to marguerite every night before falling asleep. he trusts marguerite. marguerite knows where things are hidden. sometimes he does not trust marguerite, and before he leaves for work he trains a camcorder on marguerite to catch her standing, to catch her dancing, to catch her crawling two fingers down her body, past her small breasts, rubbing herself to orgasm. he decides he will watch the tape before punishing marguerite for touching herself, naughty girl. he will give her a chance; if she says his name, jonathan, she will have to close her mouth around the j, the first time he has ever seen it close, when she says his name he will lessen her punishment. he skips lunch and masturbates in the break room. when he comes home marguerite is still. she does not yet know he has caught her, silly girl. the tape whirs in the vcr and she is still, she is still, for two hours she is still, for five hours she is still and it is late, he nods off and when he wakes up he rewinds, just in case she moved while he was sleeping, but she is still, for eight hours she is still. an even worse offense; marguerite has lied to him. marguerite is pretending. marguerite is lucky that she does not bleed. jonathan keeps extra tubes of caulking in the cabinet beneath his sink. jonathan knows that women are always needing to be put back together.