Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But this vision rose and fell away in a quick flash like the flash of a car’s headlights, blinding one instant then gone the next, though leaving Colin Asch dazed and weak in the knees … like, once, naked except for a thin undershirt, he’d stood on a carpet kneading his toes in excitement and terror and Mr. Kreuzer’d reached out to touch him, the hot little pulsing knob of him, and in that instant he’d come, standing, whimpering, scared, a stream of semen shooting out thinly from him and arcing, and falling … and Mr. Kreuzer said, “That was precipitous, Colin.”

  Weeks later on the afternoon of March 5, Colin Asch in his newly purchased tuxedo was setting the dining room table for dinner, his pulse already fast though he’d taken two Quaaludes that morning, whistling a jagged dissonant version of “Traumerei”—which he’d once played, straight, on the piano, aged eleven—talking to himself to cheer himself up—tonight’s the night! after so much anticipation! Colin Asch’s social debut in Lathrup Farms!—and he stood for a long moment with the place card in his trembling fingers that read in elegant old-fashioned script Charles Carpenter—Colin had done the place cards himself, every one of them: black India ink, a snub-tipped drawing pen—thinking he had to make up his mind soon what to do about Carpenter. Or if he should do anything at all.

  March 5: Colin Asch woke before dawn thinking at first he was in Susannah Hunt’s oversized perfumy bed but, no, she’d laughingly kicked him out early the previous night, a telephone call had come from her fiancé (as she called him), this old guy sixty-two or -three who owned condominiums in the Caribbean, an ex-physician, ex-partner of her husband’s, but Colin Asch didn’t pay much attention to the details, nor did Susannah Hunt, most of the time, but “Honey, I have to look out for my future, don’t I?” So Colin woke in his own bed, his mind immediately flooded with panic thoughts of that evening’s party, the first dinner party of his life, the many guests who were coming, and Dorothea Deverell herself.… He was a novice at such things, a mere baby the women were calling him, thus Susannah Hunt and Ginny Weidmann were helping out and he’d contacted this fabulous caterer everyone recommended, yes the guy costs but it’s worth it.

  Naked and shivering with anticipation, Colin Asch walked through the rooms of his apartment laughing like a child—“I own this! Jesus! I own this!” Staring blinking at the mirrored walls in which his handsome form glided and the high-class furniture he’d bought, the way everything went together, the modulation of the colors, the shapes and figures: “Fantastic.” At the Rhode Island School of Design and that art school in New Mexico he’d checked into for a semester Colin Asch had been told he had a natural genius for ulterior design, a magical eye, and the name of that particular game is BUCKS they told him, none of this artistic-integrity shit, but you just sort of naturally take for granted a talent that comes so easily so he’d never tried to work his way into the field. But here was this stupendous apartment, the living room and the dining room especially, looking like something in Art & Architecture and maybe the Lathrup Farms weekly might do a photographic feature on it, “contemporary bachelor living” maybe: the white walls with the brass mirrors and the wall that was almost entirely glass and the long oatmeal-colored sofa with its dozen designer pillows and the tub-shaped suede chairs in umber and mustard yellow, the twin Halogen lamps (tall graceful black poles, shallow white globes) and the thick-piled creamy-white wall-to-wall carpeting, the dazzlingly beautiful glass-and-chrome dining table and the sideboard and Colin Asch glided about naked partly aroused in ecstasy, also in a kind of disbelief—“Hey: I own this.” He would worry about making the installment payments when the time came.

  You’re some kind of a neurotic perfectionist, Susannah Hunt told him fondly and chiding, and he’d answered proudly, You can’t get anywhere in this shitty world otherwise, and she’d laughed and said, For some of us, trying to be perfect only slows us down.

  Dorothea Deverell too had that insight into his character; the last time he’d telephoned her—anxious to know if she had the date for the dinner party right, the time for the limo, and so forth, he couldn’t bear it if something went wrong! if he was publicly humiliated at the outset of his social career in this affluent Boston suburb!—she’d said, Aren’t you making too much of this, Colin? of me? and he’d laughed nervously and said, gazing at his reflection in one of the brass mirrors like some young British actor on a BBC television program, all elegant cool, the last word in absolute fucking charm, “Ah, but I’ve just begun, Dorothea! Watch me!”

  But what about the dining room chairs? They were three-legged, which he hadn’t exactly noticed when he bought them. Sitting on them could be trickly because they wobbled slightly, but if you sat carefully and didn’t shift your ass around they were OK. Colin Asch stood biting his thumbnail wondering if he should warn his guests tonight about the chairs, just casually, or say nothing.

  He saw too suddenly that there were black scuff marks on one of the walls from the fucking furniture delivery men and it looked as if—from this angle, the sun glaring the way it was—the windows were rain-splotched, and he’d washed them himself the other day, a long hard job, thus it sickened him if he’d have to wash them a second time, not that he minded the literal expenditure of energy (he had plenty of energy) but the idea of it, the repetition of an action already performed, asshole repetition of something you’ve done once and were pleased with, demoralized him—it was a sign of the inferior man, the slave mentality, and not that of the master.

  A flood of panic hit him then that even the Quaaludes could not forestall. That he’d made a mistake and could not alter the course of time to undo it. Like the car skidding and crashing through the rusted bridge railing and into the water, and not even God himself could reverse time if the fucker’d wanted to.

  The day before he’d been in a weird wired state too at L.L. Loomis, bossed around by his so-called supervisor, Jay—the bastard’s actual name was Jason—who behaved in a systematic patronizing manner toward Colin Asch, handing him crap assignments any asshole could do like double-checking galleys and pasting labels on packages, running errands to the printer like a mere messenger boy, it’d been weeks now since he started work and he was yet to be allowed to experiment with design and layouts—Jay’s fear of Conn Asch’s potential talent was transparent; also, the fucker was jealous of Colin’s connection with Susannah Hunt, who was an old, good friend of Mr. Harris who owned the business.

  Jealous too of the sexy black Porsche Colin Asch drove, and the stylish clothes Colin Asch wore, and the luxury apartment he knew about (from Colin’s chatting with the office girls) but would sure as hell never see. Thus referring to him not quite behind his back as “glamour boy,” “angel puss,” and “blond beast.”

  Just give them a chance to see how imaginative you are, honey, how shrewd and sharp, Susannah Hunt told him, and this Colin certainly intended to do but had been thwarted thus far by the selfishness of Jay—though sensing himself a popular addition to the office staff. But day following day his supervisor was stiff with him, ignored his smile, his good-natured placating remarks, sure the bastard was jealous, paunchy fag-looking guy in his early thirties, probably he knew about Colin Asch’s big dinner party to which he wasn’t invited so he was pushing Colin all that day, then finally when he told Colin to run some crap back to the printers to have it reset Colin said quietly, “Fuck you: I’m not a gofer,” and Jay said excitedly, as if he’d been waiting for this, “That’s exactly what you are, glamour boy, so move your ass.”

  In an instant the revelation burst in Colin Asch that the force inside “Jay” was giving permission to the force inside “Colin Asch” to confront it and destroy it if he could, but Colin sat quietly, unmoving, his mind working quickly, he didn’t want to disappoint Susannah Hunt was the primary thing, when she had such faith in him and had helped him so much, lending him money as she had and possibly there would be more to come (though “lending” was sort of ambiguous since maybe she’d never get around to actually asking for it back)
and he had to be reasonable: he knew this was a trial period for him at the public relations firm and he had only to work hard and succeed and later when he was promoted to the top or had maybe moved on to a billon-dollar company in Boston or Manhattan he’d tell them all to go fuck themselves.… Christ, he could understand how ex-employees so frequently returned to offices and factories and this poor bastard the other day in Kansas City spraying innocent people with bullets in a post office he’d been fired from, Colin could understand that mentality for sure but he’d never fall into so crude a mold for the simple reason he was too smart. Once you lose control it’s all over. So he lifted his eyes to those of his frowning supervisor and managed a childlike hurt smile and said, repentant, “Well, I guess you’re right, Jay. Thanks for reminding me!”

  Thoughts of Jay were getting scrambled into thoughts of Dorothea Deverell and the upcoming party so he spent a while with the Blue Ledger soaking in a hot bath trying to work things out control is the essence of survival taking another Quaalude anything done henceforth is blessed because it emanates from the soul but still he was feeling weird so he got dressed and drove by the caterers’ to see how things were going, drove to a florist’s to buy razzle-dazzle flowers—a dozen ruby-red roses, big bunch of purple dwarf iris, big bunch of mixed gladioli, Colin Asch’s favorite flower—then came back home and made a few calls, one of them to the limousine rental and another to Susannah Hunt, who didn’t seem to be in the apartment or in any case wasn’t answering her phone, and one of them to Aunt Ginny, who said, “Colin dear, please don’t worry—the caterer will take care of everything, or almost everything, but would you like me to come a little early, to help out?” It was only 5 P.M. but he decided to get dressed anyway, putting on the tuxedo he’d bought the week before at the Village Haberdashery, 20 percent off the ticketed price, the ivory-white silk pleated shirt and the embroidered red silk vest and the black bow tie, and staring at himself in a full-length mirror Colin Asch felt chilled, he looked so good, an old melancholy washed over him like dirty water—Why has this young man blessed with such looks such brains such talent been treated like shit all of his life?

  To which there was no answer.

  Barefoot in his formal attire Colin Asch spent an hour and a half fussing over the table settings, arranging and rearranging the floral displays, positioning the place cards—twelve guests at his table and the guest of honor was obviously to be seated at one end of the table and the host at the other but where to put Charles Carpenter, for instance? and where to put his VIPs as he thought of them, the Director of the Brannon Institute himself Mr. Morland (who had initially declined Colin’s invitation but then, on the basis of Colin going personally to speak with him, consenting) and his wife, and Tracey Donovan, the young woman from the Lathrup Farms Monitor who covered area “social and cultural” events. Also there were the Weidmanns, and there was Dorothea Deverell’s assistant, Jacqueline, and an unknown factor named Paul Wylie who was another Institute worker, Colin hoped not a guy his own age or type, and a second unknown factor but probably harmless, a woman friend of Dorothea Deverell’s named Merle Altman. Five men and seven women which presented a problem he couldn’t solve to his satisfaction and where should he put Susannah Hunt, on his right hand as she’d naturally expect or midway down the table next to Carpenter maybe? She knew Carpenter, she’d said, and liked him. A lot.

  Colin checked the champagne another time, counted the wine bottles—Martin Weidmann had advised him on the wine and he hoped to hell he could trust his judgment—and there was the brandy, and the crème de menthe, two or three other fancy liqueurs he picked up just in case, and on the shelf carefully wrapped in a Kleenex the pulverized pill he meant to sift into Dorothea Deverell’s drink or possibly her coffee at the end of the evening: he’d forgotten the specific name of the pill but it’d been one of the giant white ones, one of a very few remaining from his stay with the woman in Fort Lauderdale. “Better put it in my pocket,” he said aloud, and did.

  As promised, the caterers arrived precisely at 7 P.M. So Colin began to feel a little more relaxed; then the Weidmanns arrived at 7:30 and he felt better still, in fact moved almost to tears by the very sight of them—Aunt Ginny a good-looking woman in an aqua cocktail dress with a sequined bosom, Uncle Martin in black tie like some handsome old graying business executive in an advertisement—the only living relatives who cared a fuck about Colin Asch. Aunt Ginny kissed him and moved on into the kitchen to take charge, and Martin seemed impressed with the apartment and the furnishings and asked after Colin’s new job and told him he looked great in his tux and Colin blushed with happiness and stretched his arms to ask, like a boy asking his father, if maybe the sleeves weren’t a little short?—did his cuffs stick out too much?

  “They look fine,” Martin said, pouring himself a drink. “Those are interesting cuff links,” he added, and for a dizzy moment Coin thought the cuff links were actually Martin’s, then remembered of course they weren’t.

  “Oh, these? They were a gift,” he said, holding out his wrists for Martin to examine them, gold with ruby and onyx insets. “Sort of a private joke; this woman I used to know called me ‘Colin’ like with a ‘K’—you know, like a German pronunciation: ‘Kolin—so she had these cuff links made up engraved with a ‘K’.”

  “Interesting,” Martin said. “And how’s my old friend Susannah Hunt?”

  Then it was 8 P.M. and Colin Asch’s guests began to arrive; so many slow dragging hours and now everything seemed to be happening at once, everyone was arriving at once, there were guests like Paul Wylie and Mrs. Morland whom Colin had never set eyes on before, and there was Susannah Hunt in a glamorous black satin dress fairly bursting in the bosom, diamonds glittering on her fingers and at her wrists: Mrs. Hunt who discreetly pecked him on the cheek and breathed in his ear, “Hel-lo Colin!” And there suddenly in the crowded little vestibule stood Dorothea Deverell in her fur coat, bareheaded, smiling at Colin Asch and extending her hand—and Colin couldn’t help himself, he stared at the woman for just a fraction of a second too long: she was so beautiful, she was so perfect, she had come to him.

  Her appearance so dazzled him, he hadn’t time to be disappointed that Dorothea had not come alone as he’d fantasized her, in the elegant Cadillac Brougham limousine, but had had the driver pick up two other guests, her assistant Jacqueline and her friend Mrs. Altman. As if Colin would derive any pleasure from hiring a car at $110 an hour for them.

  But Colin Asch, greeting his guests, showed none of this; he was shaking hands, being introduced, stooping to hear names. Dorothea Deverell seemed quite impressed, perhaps even startled, by the splendor of Colin’s apartment—“But how beautiful, Colin! How unique.”

  “Is it?” Colin asked eagerly. “Do you think so?”

  When he helped Dorothea remove her coat he saw to his immense satisfaction that she was wearing after all the costume he’d given her—the exquisite lace jacket and the long white wool skirt. Again he stared at her, not knowing what to say. His eyes misted over. Finally he whispered, “Thank you, Dorothea,” but the Weidmanns were swooping upon her, she and Ginny embraced warmly as sisters, and the doorbell was ringing again, and someone opened it to another stranger, a snub-nosed smiling woman—and Colin walked off like a sleepwalker with Dorothea Deverell’s fur coat to lay it tenderly across the bed in his bedroom exhilarated by the knowledge that, if all else failed, she had come to him: to Colin Asch.

  Through the lively cocktail hour Colin shrewdly rationed his drinking; he had a naturally speedy naturally wired sensibility which alcohol sometimes exacerbated, so he played it cool, acting the perfect host, introducing guests to one another where required—not that he knew these people but he’d quickly learned their names!—overseeing conversations then easing away tall and handsome and seemingly poised: What a remarkable young man, what an extraordinary young man, he’s Ginny Weidmann’s nephew, who is he, an actor? an artist? a young business entrepreneur? He found himself oddly shy in Dorothea
Deverell’s specific company but was otherwise in control, or nearly—he had only to clamp his jaws shut when there was the danger of talking too fast and too much. The tuxedo was a little warm but impeccably tailored, his new dress shoes gleamed darkly, at the age of twenty-eight he was clearly approaching the prime of his young manhood and perhaps this evening and the night to follow would constitute the pinnacle of his life.

  “Didn’t I tell you, dear? Everything is going beautifully,” Aunt Ginny said.

  And Colin, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, said, “Thanks to you, Aunt, it is.” In truth he was getting a little resentful of the woman’s supervision of the caterer’s assistants as they were serving the hors d’oeuvres, for whose party was this anyway? “I owe you everything!” Colin said.

  He was grateful though for Susannah Hunt’s glamorous presence, and for the chaste distance she maintained between them—would anyone know, could anyone guess, what their relationship was? And it quite flattered him that perky little Tracey Donovan, the media representative for this social event, seemed so sincerely impressed with Colin Asch’s guests and with his apartment and with him—asking him numerous questions about his public relations career, his past television experience, his travels in Europe and North Africa—“We’ll have to get together soon for a full-scale interview!” Mr. Wylie, with whom Dorothea Deverell was earnestly discussing a painter of whom Colin Asch had never heard (Burchfield? Charles Burchfield?) turned out to be, to Colin’s relief, no rival of his but a stocky sweet-faced man of youngish middle age with tortoise-shell glasses; and Charles Carpenter, for whom he had a certain nervous edgy excitable feeling, was quite gracious to him, gentlemanly and charming, including Colin in a conversation (about politics? Soviet-U.S. relations?) he was having with Howard Morland and Martin Weidmann as naturally as if they were all friends—neighbors, peers, equals. Talking with them, offering his opinion, Colin was flooded with a sudden happiness: the happiness of a man among men. Why had he been cheated of this all his life?