Incredible Feats of Mountain Goats
By Eliza Marley
As far as threesome offers go this one was pretty par for the course. They messaged me on the app, only Hello. It was a good profile. Both of them were in it, face photos too. Over half the people who messaged me were floating torsos, sometimes part of a chin. She was blonde, dyed hair with a strip of dark up top, wearing little gold earrings and her cheek mashed into the shoulder of the man who looked normal enough with a clean face and pasty shoulders. He’d probably have moles on his back. Madison and Cody, late twenties, marketing and finance respectively. They loved hiking, watching sports, and their dogs, plural. In the background of their co-authored profile picture was a sparse looking living room. Beige couch and white curtains. White carpet and beige dining chairs. Beige picture frames and glossy, white bookshelves.
I have a hard time picturing my arm draped on the back of that beige couch, or sinking my knees into such pristine carpet without worrying the whole time I’d leave a stain behind, flecks of dead skin off my scalp scalding the ground as obvious as skid marks. Thighs open, weight pressing offensive depressions that need to be fluffed back out with a rented steam cleaner. I message them back later in the afternoon.
It doesn’t take Cody long to reply. The imaginary countdown of trying to determine how much polite conversation is needed to ease the way starts ticking. How’s your evening going? Busy work week? Do you think it will ever stop raining?
I agree when the offer for more pictures comes up and he sends a photo of Madison that must have just been taken. She’s sitting on their beige couch, wearing white pajamas made of some fuzzy material, matching slippers and holding a mug of tea. She’s smiling, closed-lipped into the camera. No earrings and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on her face.
I drift over her fluffy feet and the bookcase next to the couch. They don’t have many books, a copy of War and Peace and some bartending manuals all stacked neatly with a golden statue placed on top. It looks like a goat, one hoof raised as if to climb the miniscule belongings and gleaming horns poised to ram into the shelf above it which houses a large, empty white vase. A small beige pot with a flourishing string of pearls sits beside it, the only color besides Madison’s own rosy cheeks.
They’ll probably be the type to want to sit down first. Sink into that beige couch with a glass of white wine. Ask me about my hobbies like a job interview. Tell us about your prior experience? Can you provide up to three references? Would I sit between them, there, on the cushion Madison’s feet are resting against or in the other chair Cody must be in to have taken her picture?
I send back a photo of myself in bed, sleep shirt falling off one shoulder and bare legs disappearing under blankets. Looks comfy.
What’s with the dead plant? is the reply. It takes me a moment. I look back at the photo and behind me, down next to my bed is the plant in question. Husk-like leaves blanched beige and dirty where they sag inward. A solitary green nub fights for its life rising up from the carnage. I get another message.
This is Madison by the way, I didn’t mean to be rude, sorry.
I should move things along. Call her funny or pretty or send a more risqué photo of myself, nightshirt riding higher up to my stomach. What plant? That’s the script. Dirty pictures and flirty but careful remarks, nothing to suggest any unequal attraction or ulterior motives. Maybe accompanied by a short video. All within a week, followed by a coffee or beer or glass of wine out somewhere near their place. A drawn out verbal foreplay filled with long pauses and bashful, fluttering glances, wedding rings or engagement rings glimmering in dim, flattering lighting. My own fingers resting folded and alone across a tabletop.
I saved it from a fire escape, I write instead. It was at the building across from mine and dying out in the cold. I felt bad for it and so when I was coming home one day and the stairs were pulled down, I climbed up and stole it. I’ve been trying to nurse it back to health with pretty slow progress.
It’s a true story, not that it matters too much. I have better ones, especially for this. My own online profile is all blue hair and leather skirts, unicorn emoji framed in a brief declaration of my love for strong coffee and desire for new connections. I’m a freelancer for blushing women and their secret sapphic desires, unwilling to leave the security of a Bridgeport condo and their boyfriends. And for the men, ready and willing and more fumbling than they let on, hands shaky at the eager fulfillment of sweaty, pubescent fantasies.
I am the balm of afterwards when arms settle over my body and quiet giggles echo in carpeted bedrooms. The sweat cools and the sheets are washed and changed and I leave before they become untucked again. Before they feel that itch again. When they get sick of pretending the other’s chewing isn’t annoying and the bathroom isn’t disgusting and Wasn’t it your turn to vacuum this week? Intimacy flavored like stale bread, gotten so long ago it becomes a part of the pantry, molding over from the inside out. My phone dings with another message.
You should try repotting it. I have some extra plant food I can bring you if we meet up :)
I put my phone down. It’s late enough that I can pretend to have gone to sleep as long as I don’t forget and open the app again. I stare up at my ceiling, its popcorn texture looks like little mountain ranges half lit with dark shadows being cast by the street lights outside. I always pretend I’m climbing them when I can’t sleep, tracing the ridges over and over.
I think about how I’ll agree to a coffee date in the morning and let Madison bring me some plant food. About how I will scatter it in the soil, tuck it deep with my fingers and spread it down around the roots. About my own gardening supplies I have sitting on the balcony waiting for it to warm up.
We’ll meet up this weekend after a couple days of careful flirting and pre-prepared, artful nudes. We’ll chat about trivial things, our jobs and the concerts we’ve seen. We’ll sit on their stupid, beige couch and I’ll refuse to settle my whole body weight on the cushions. We’ll have sex. It’ll be fine. A little sticky in the early spring humidity. My eyeliner will leave tracks on their white pillow cases. We’ll hug goodbye. I’ll leave. Ride the train home. I’ll water my plants. Order Thai food and watch bad horror movies alone.
But for now I lay in bed and hands drift down while eyes flick back up to the ceiling, tracing little circles, seeking peaks. And when my fingers slip, they are bare and freezing back on that fire escape. Wet snow dropping from the sky making it nearly impossible to climb the steps made of rusted, uneven metal bars. A rescue mission for a plant which had looked so alive from afar, way down on the ground. But up close the pot is painted plastic, not terra cotta, and deeply scratched on the sides where it’s been dragged around. Bigger and heavier than I imagined. Possibly already beyond saving.
Gripping, off balance and teeth chattering. Stroking at the wrong angle and heels sliding on bedsheets, on icy, unstable ground. I had lifted the pot and looked over my shoulder briefly and imagined its weight toppling me over the fire escape. I consider the fall. Long descents and burning biceps moving, holding. I kept the cracked pot aloft all the way home to tuck a big, dead plant right beside my bed where it’s now the first thing I see every morning. Where it still sits now and I catch the beige in my periphery, head tipped back to flex my hips. Pressed into a pillow that only smells like me. I could try and take the plant back. Brave the climb again. I could delete my dating profile, block their number and never speak to them again. Wait a couple of weeks and start over.
I think about Madison, picture her fluffy white pajamas as satyr legs. Drinking her tea out of a white mug and foraging grass in a green field of forbs. Feeding her grapes as she sits reclined, playing a pan flute. Holding a golden goblet of honeyed wine to her lips and watching her disappear back up into foggy hills as the harvest horn sounds. Like those incredible feats of mountain goats that bleat with abandon into the sky, always scaling higher and higher, out of reach from tired, hopeful fingertips. Of her resting her fluffy feet so high up a fire escape I can’t help but keep climbing. She is looking down like she can see me through the snow. She is smiling at her boyfriend on a beige couch through him and to me. The mountains of my ceiling blur together and I follow them, climbing, climbing, climbing.
Eliza Marley is the author of the book You Shouldn't Worry About the Frogs, published by Querencia Press. Her work has been featured in Red Ogre Review, Chaotic Merge Magazine, and Camas Magazine, among others. Eliza is a PhD student in Chicago where she studies climate fiction and ghost stories.