by Frank Deford
Bucky’s mouth flew open. Nina threw back her elbow in imitation of Constance’s action. “Well, I’d say you just kind of jolted him. But you should know, Constance…” She stopped then, turning back directly to Bucky. “I assume you’ll allow me to tell everything.”
He knew what was coming, and chagrined, he nodded. So Nina faced Constance. “A few weeks ago, Bucky somehow managed to hide himself overnight in the Metropolitan so that he might be alone in gallery twenty-seven, and he, uh—”
“I jerked off,” Bucky said.
Far from being appalled, Constance merely reached toward him, waving with understanding.
Nina went on. “Luckily, no one caught him in the act, but he’s been barred from the museum. And given your own behavior yesterday, Constance, you might—at least for now—want to steer clear of the place.”
Constance kept her counsel. Nina continued. “Okay, we start getting really spooky here, but bear with me. I’ll try to speak as directly as I can, without editorial comment. Now, I’ve sought, as Bucky requested, to take you both back beyond this life, into—”
Constance’s hands flew up. “So, that’s—”
“Yeah,” Bucky said.
“I apologize for not leveling with you, Constance, but it’s more productive to try that without a subject’s being a party to the effort.”
“I understand.”
“With Bucky, as I told him at the time, I had no real success. There was only one thing you said—”
“I did?”
“Yeah. You, uh, uttered the name Ollie.”
“Hey, you asked me about that once.”
“Right. That time you referred to Ollie while we were talking, without even realizing it.”
Now Constance said, “Ollie?” in that way as if the name rang a bell.
“You know it?” Nina asked.
“Well, yeah, it seems to ring some kinda bell.”
“Well, there’s a good reason why. Whereas that one name was all I could get out of Bucky, when I regressed you, you moved back very easily into 1635.”
“Wow!” Bucky cried out, and even the unflappable Constance looked up in delight. Almost unconsciously, too, they reached across the great abyss that Nina had created between their two chairs and managed to touch fingers. She let it pass. Bucky said, “Tell us about Constance and—”
“In a moment,” Nina said. “First, let’s go back to the museum. There are, of course, two Rubens that grab your attention. But listen,” Nina leaned forward on the bed, “you two react quite differently to the two paintings. Bucky, you’ve always been much more affected by Venus and Adonis, but Constance, you totally lost your composure when you came to the other—to Saint Francis Meets the Holy Family.”
Tentatively, Bucky and Constance turned to look at each other, both nodding, affirming Nina’s analysis. She went on.“You see, Bucky, from the first, you were convinced that you were somehow in Venus and Adonis. And you were just as sure that Constance was in it, too. Okay, leaving aside for the moment the question of how this might be, we naturally assumed that you, Bucky, the man, must be Adonis, and—”
“Of course!” he cried out, actually jumping to his feet, pumping his two fists into the air.
“Of course what?” Constance asked.
Bucky looked to Nina and she held out her hands, indicating that he had the floor. So Bucky declared, “Connie, you were Adonis.” Then to Nina, “Right?”
Nina said, “Go on.”
“And I was the Madonna.” When Constance looked confused, he kneeled before her, taking her hands. “Don’t you see, Connie? It’s so obvious now.”
Nina said, “Just try to remember, Constance. You were stunned by Venus and Adonis.”
“I remember. I said: ‘I’m home.’”
“Exactly. She did, Bucky. Because somehow you knew you were home, Constance. Because Adonis, up there—that was you.” Nina paused, catching herself. It was amazing how easily she was speaking now without any qualification or reservation. That was you —you, a twentieth-century woman had been a seventeenth-century man. That’s what Dr. Winston had said. Without admitting it, she had at some level in her own mind leapt over the line. Oh well, onward. To Constance: “But it was only when you saw the Madonna that you lost control.”
“Because Bucky is the Madonna,” she ventured—tentatively.
Nina nodded. “And because you love him. As you loved that woman he once was.” Constance and Bucky looked over to one another, rather like a couple of kids who shared a neat secret. Nina spoke to him: “But you, Bucky, you always reacted to the Madonna in a more casual way—like she was a good buddy, a confidant.”
“Which she certainly was, since she was me.”
“I guess.” Nina shrugged. “Anyway, you acted completely differently in front of Venus and Adonis. Of course, at first this was complicated somewhat because, naturally, you thought Constance must be Venus.”
“Only Helena is Venus.”
“Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute,” Constance snapped. “Who the hell is Helena?”
Both Nina and Bucky smiled and filled her in on Helena’s place in the Rubens’s family. Bucky also said, “What’s amazing is, that time I was jacking off—I knew, deep inside, that a part of me was doing it because of Adonis. And that just embarrassed me more, because I thought, now, on top of everything else, I’m turning gay.”
“Have no fear,” Nina said, “your rampant heterosexuality is safe for yet another century.”
It was the closest they’d come to a joke all afternoon. Constance, though, barely broke a smile. She only got up, said, “Pardon me,” and went into the bathroom. Bucky looked up, almost shyly, at Nina. “How ya doin’?” she asked him. She meant: right now, all this.
But he answered, “Oh fine. I’m planning a sailing trip.”
“The whole family?”
“Yeah. Up the Sound, into the Atlantic. I was thinking: better do it now before the kids get too old.”
Nina went along. “Gee, that sounds great.” But, she thought, this is just like it used to be, back in the beginning, when Bucky was afraid to talk about anything real, so we just chatted about everyday stuff. So, here he was, prattling on about a family vacation, as if the love of his life—of all his lives—wasn’t right there with him, and that soon enough, they would start talking again about how they lived together in the year 1635. So, Nina continued in the same blithe vein. “I’m going to San Francisco myself next week.”
“Great.”
“It’s a convention, but I’m using it as an excuse just to get away.” She didn’t add: away from you. Away from all this madness. And away from the man I love who loves me, but won’t even call me back.
“Wine country?” Bucky asked.
“No, I don’t think so. You see, Bucky, I like wine just fine. I mean, I like to drink it. But really, I don’t like to analyze it and talk it to death.”
Bucky laughed, relaxed. “Yeah, Nina. That’s what I like about you: you always get it just right.” He reached out then, and for just a second, he touched her hand. Nina winked at him, and then they sat back until momentarily, Constance returned.
Nina treated everyone to Tic-Tacs, and then she resumed. “All right, now we come to Constance under hypnosis. You spoke to me in a voice that belonged to an English sailor who had just signed onto a ship bound for Amsterdam.” Nina paused. “He went by the name of Oliver Goode.”
Bucky caught it right away. “Ollie!” he called out.
“Ollie,” Constance said. “I was Ollie.”
“Oh yes,” Nina said—although for just a moment, her mind wandered, because she looked at Constance and knew she’d been Ollie, and she looked at Bucky and she knew he’d been Margareta. And surely Ollie had killed Margareta—killed the woman he had loved. And there they were, before her.
But then she caught herself. Hello, Nina, that was 1635—back with the Pilgrims. And she regained her perspective and resumed the narrative. “Now from Amsterdam, Ollie went overland down to Antwerp to pick up a new ship, but in 1635, Antwerp was blockaded by the Dutch—the Protestants. Ollie told me all this, and when I went back and read up on the period, it checked out perfectly.” Nina glanced at Bucky. “Spot on,” she said, with a British accent. He smiled.
Constance was only impatient. “What happened next?”
“Well, a man named Cornelis sees Ollie and tells him that Rubens is looking for a strong, handsome man to be the model for Adonis. So, he tags along to Rubens’s house, which is by a canal called The Wapper.”
“You mean like Burger King?” Bucky asked.
Constance frowned at such frivolity, but Nina said, “Yes, spelled a bit different, but the same pronunciation. More important, Rubens’s house is still there today, only now the canal is filled in as a street: Wapperstraat.”
“The house is actually still standing?” Constance asked.
“Perfectly restored—exactly as it was in 1635.”
Constance crossed her arms before her and shook her head, charmed at this revelation.
Nina continued. “So, as soon as Ollie arrives at Rubenshuis, the master takes one look and considers him the perfect Adonis. He even compares Ollie favorably to another muscular model he’d used years before in another famous painting entitled Ascent to the Cross. I found a picture of that, and, yup, big strong guy right in the middle. Constance, it’s amazing what you—what Ollie—told me. The detail.” She took a sip of water and went on. “As it turned out, Rubens was so taken by Ollie that he gave him a very nice salary, plus he let him stay in an extra house he owned, right around the corner. On Hopland Street.”
“Is that house still there, too?” Constance asked.
“Well, Hopland Street—it’s still there. But the house, I assume it’s gone. It wasn’t anything special. Except…” Nina paused, “…except it was in that house where Ollie carried on an affair with the woman who posed as the Madonna.”
Reflexively, Constance looked at Bucky, and he directed a thumb at his chest. “Me,” he said.
“Well,” Nina said, “anyway, her name was Margareta.”
“Last name?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did they marry?” Constance asked.
Nina passed for the moment on revealing the fact that, inconveniently, Margareta was already married to someone else. She just said, “It was at this point that I had to end the session with you, Constance.”
Her disappointment—and Bucky’s—were palpable. “When do I get to do it again?” Constance asked.
“After we get a chance to digest all this. Maybe it’s a blessing that Bucky and I both happen to have vacations coming up.”
“My husband and I are going away, too. Jackson Hole.” She looked at Bucky. “That’s where I plan to tell him that when I get back, I’m leaving him for you, darling.”
“Well, it’s up to you two,” Nina said, “but I would suggest that you both hold off on those plans till we’ve finished this business.”
Constance got her back up. “What’s this gotta do with the price of eggs? We know we love each other. Now we know we always have.”
She turned to Bucky for affirmation. He looked a little unsure. Nina jumped in. “Look, this is powerful, mysterious stuff. In a way, you’ve waited for each other for almost four hundred years. Another couple weeks…”
Bucky took Constance’s hand. “It’s a good point, darling. If we get distracted with our own lives, it could be that much harder when we concentrate on trying to find out what happened back in Antwerp.”
Nina spoke up again, “And, Bucky, I’ve come up with a better idea how I might get you to regress next time. It’s your call, but I’d ask you both to put off any dramatic changes in this century until we’ve done our best to resolve what happened in that other time and place.”
Bucky glanced at Constance, but without waiting for her response, he declared, “I think you’re right, Nina.” Constance nodded then, herself, if not with great enthusiasm.
“Fine,” Nina said, grabbing up her papers, “so we’ll regroup in another couple weeks.” Just then, though, her eyes fell upon a word underlined boldly in her notes. She hesitated. After all, she could all but feel the electrical field that Constance and Bucky were sparking; never had Nina Winston wanted more desperately to depart a premises. But, she said, “I’m sorry, hold your horses. There is one other thing.” And then she spoke just the one word: “Jocelyn”—which provoked such a startling reaction from Bucky that Constance’s head jerked up, too.
“For Chrissake, Nina,” Bucky whined, “why bring her up?”
“Because she’s contacted me personally, and because she has something interesting to say that at least deserves to be heard. By you both.”
“All right, who’s Jocelyn?” Constance asked.
“An old girlfriend,” Bucky told her, although averting her eyes.
“Oh, that’s nice.”
Nina stayed out of it.
“An old girlfriend, Connie. We’re talking fifteen years ago. Jesus, you were already married. What was I supposed to do, take up celibacy?” That mollified Constance sufficiently for him to continue. “When I first saw Venus and Adonis, I had to talk to someone, and I spoke to Jocelyn because I knew she had an interest in reincarnation. In fact, she was the person who suggested I go see Nina.”
“Strictly second-party referral,” Nina said, picking up the thread. “I’d never met the lady—never did until Bucky refused to talk to her anymore. She was very curious about our sessions.”
“Damn Jocelyn,” said Bucky.
“And what did you reveal, Doctor?” Constance asked, harshly.
“Nothing. But she already knew about you.”
Constance whirled to Bucky. “You told her?”
“Years ago, I had told her about us back in Philadelphia. That’s all.”
Constance mulled over that revelation, then declared, “No more.” Nina wasn’t altogether sure whether that referred to Jocelyn or this meeting, or both. Anyway, she moved quickly ahead to end things, all but announcing “In conclusion,” the way boring speakers do.
“All right, let me wrap this up,” Nina did say. “The issue is not so much that Jocelyn knows about you, as what you might like to know about what she told me.” Whereupon, Nina went over Jocelyn’s devotion to Sergei and Ludmilla, to their belief in reincarnation, and particularly, to their understanding of the concept of Double Ones. “Jocelyn is naturally most fascinated with you two, because she believes that together you can virtually prove that Double Ones exist.”
“I guess,” Bucky said.
Constance was not so pleased. “Meddler,” she groused. “And you stay away from her, Bucky. I don’t want any old flame of yours—or anybody—snooping around like I’m some specimen, studying me the way I study companies. We’ll end up as freaks on the front page of The National Enquirer.”
Nina stood up. “Fine. You owe Jocelyn nothing. I just wanted you to know that this woman sincerely believes that you two can absolutely prove the existence of reincarnation.” She paused before adding, “And may God help you if she’s right about Double Ones, because if she is and if you two are, then The National Enquirer will be small potatoes. So, you wanna stop all this now, I understand.”
Constance announced, “No, we will just never speak to her—and you tell her that, Doctor.”
Nina said, “I will,” and then rather formally, shook both their hands. As she stepped into the corridor, the door closing behind her, she heard Bucky call after her, “Thank you, Nina.”
Nina said, “My pleasure.”
25
Bucky stepped toward Constance. At la
st, alone. But just before he took her in his arms, she held up a hand to halt his advance. “Wait,” she announced. “You are never to see her again.”
“Nina?”
Constance shrugged. “Well, in time perhaps we should abandon her, too. But I mean Jocelyn. That woman is wicked, and her nosiness can only mean trouble for us. Our love is only ours.” Bucky nodded, intimidated by her intensity. “Swear to me you’ll never speak to her again.”
“I swear,” he said formally, although at this moment, brimming with ardor, Bucky surely would have sworn to anything that Constance requested of him.
“Good,” she said, and, instantly putting all that aside, she tossed her head back, running her hands through her hair. Bucky stood transfixed, then, as Constance brought her hands down further, to her dress, and began unbuttoning it, one by one by one. She tossed it aside, then tapped at the hook to her bra between her breasts. “You undo it,” she said.
Bucky did. “Now, pull them down,” she said, nodding to her panties. He followed that sweet order, too, then stood back and gazed upon her, unadorned. “I wanted you to see me first. I’m real. We’re real.”
“You’re magnificently beautiful,” he said, and he tried to kiss her, but instead, Constance pushed him back and began undressing him, until they stood there, real, before each other.
Constance fondled his erection. “Do you remember,” she asked, “when this was me?”
“I’m not sure, Connie. Do you?”
“I think so, yes.” He placed his hands on her breasts. “And yes, I remember me doing that to you.”
But Bucky did not say any more, only lowered her upon the bed, where they were furious in their passion, and as perfect in love as Constance had told Nina that they must be. Moreover, for them both, there was this, too: the most amazing bright silver filled their vision—alike, whether their eyes were open or shut. “Do you see the silver?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Double Ones,” she sighed. “We are Double Ones.” And for the first time in all her life, Constance Rawlings cried tears of joy.
