Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

doorsteps, in driveways and gazebos. At parties, she pooped in closets. She pooped in dressing rooms at the mall. I liked to think of it as performance art, and myself as an artist’s assistant, but then Penny pooped at summer camp, in the middle of the stream where everyone bathed and drank water, and I realized that Penny was not an artist. She was a terrorist.”

Or maybe this wasn’t so intimate. Maybe the woman was simply from California.

Nigel licked his lips. “Have you read Homer yet?” “You gotta stop asking me that,” Mona said. He’d given her a beautiful edition of The Odyssey two years ago. She’d read a few pages here and there but could never fully commit.

When she heard Clare roll off the waterbed, she tiptoed into the bathroom and hid in the tub. She sat hugging her knees to her chest, something she’d seen women do in the movies when they were upset, usually after they’d been raped or cheated on.

Strange, she thought, how affected you are by malice when you’re a kid, how a mean word or look can unravel you, how devastating cruelty feels when you’re too young to protect yourself. But eventually, after all those defense mechanisms are firmly in place, it’s the so-called positive shit—mercy, not malice—that brings you to tears.

They had their most intimate conversations on the motel line. The problem was, while he was sharing, expressing, confessing, and sometimes crying, she couldn’t stop yawning. Once she let one loose, they kept coming, one after the next after the next, like waves crashing. They often came in sets of three. Then, a little break. Then another set arrived. They seemed to be generated by something deep inside her, deeper than boredom, some force she didn’t understand. Perhaps if she yawned openly and loudly, she wouldn’t have this problem. Instead, she yawned silently, out of politeness.