She was very close now, and half-smiling. “But your face! My but you’re handsome, real super-goodlooking, I gotta give you that! Like a movie star? And sweet Jesus you’ve got a mouth! Why was it ever wasted on you? A God-lickin’ beauty if I ever saw one!”
Her lips parted slightly now, pink tongue peeking out of one corner. “You ever been kissed? I mean kissed—by someone who ain’t your mother? Mother’s kisses don’t count.” She laughed and it seemed almost good-natured. “Y’know what? I’d like to kiss you. I’d really like to try.” Her bottom lip disappeared for a moment. “But I ain’t ever kissed a dwarf before. How about you?” Another laugh. “I don’t mean have you ever kissed a dwarf! I suppose you ain’t, unless you found one in a freak show, but a real girl—someone normal, like me. Pretty. And desirable.” A moment. “Ain’t often you get the chance, I guess.”
The sad, sad part of all this was that he wanted to kiss her, and be kissed back. He prayed that she meant it, his pulse going so fast he could feel the blood beat in each sweating temple. Yes, he wanted that kiss, no matter the cost or the circumstances. Nevermind what this cheap, silly, humiliating, embarrassing, taunting, sadistic, mocking girl said. Because (sweet Jesus!) she had a mouth, too: utterly “God-lickin’ ”—to his empty heart.
He was half-strangled for air, the kiss going on for so long, but he thought he dared not breathe, this not being the proper way one kissed. Lovers, true lovers he had seen in films, always drew apart, away from each other, panting for breath.
Airless, his senses dizzied, he pressed his famished mouth closer, then, lost to reality, made the mistake of touching her breast.
She freed herself instantly with a startled cry, mixed fun and horror, ran up the balcony steps, then turned and looked down at him, breathing as heavily as he.
Oddly she said nothing truly cruel or disparaging. Simply:
“Bruno—If you ever grow three feet more, and lose that hump on your back, come around. I’ll be waiting.”
Waiting.
On the third day, he had to call Mrs. Evans. There was nothing else to do, no way to spend the crushing weight of his desire. He couldn’t continue, hours at a time, pacing his tiny room like a prisoner before the morning of his execution.
The maid—what was her name, Rose?—answered, friendly enough until she heard the name of the caller. Then, icily, though she obviously knew who he was, made him repeat it twice more, adding shockingly, “and who is it you wish to speak to?”
He had already told her, but he told her again, feeling kin to the protagonist in Kafka’s The Castle.
“Well—” (Extreme doubt.) “I’m not sure Madam is in,” leaving it there.
“Well, would you find out!?” He was angry. “Would you be good enought to inquire?”
After a pause: “Very well.”
He waited, and waited, the corner of one fingernail chewed to the pink point of bleeding. But then, suddenly, she was there, and “spring came on forever”—her soft voice like the sweet flood of a drug through the veins of an addict.
“Bruno!”—as if it had been a year. “How nice of you to call. I’ve been thinking of you.”
He had no idea what he mumbled in reply, being too relieved, too happy to listen as she continued: “I have your card. And so pretty; with flowers, and smelling so lovely! Tell me. Is that —is that some sort of cologne you use?”
As wonderful as all this was: her gentleness, and warmth, her apparent happiness that he had called, he discerned (was he unreasonably suspicious, insanely paranoid?) something vaguely fake or artificial in her tone—as if she felt herself compelled to buy a bunch of violets she didn’t really want from a ragged flower-girl on a snowy street corner.
“I think maybe,” he said, after pretending to be surprised that the card was perfumed at all, “that I had just finished shaving, and some of the lotion I use was still on my fingers when I wrote it.”
It seemed more manly that way: an accident of sweetness; it pleased her nonetheless, since she hardly believed in accidents at all.
The weather next. How sharply cold (they agreed) it had turned; and the radio this morning (he said) warned there might be flurries of snow.
Wouldn’t that be fun! (she replied) My! So early in the season. Well, if it did, if it snowed, she’s be right out in it; she loved it melting on her face; the flakes, like tiny fractured stars (her very words!) catching on her eyelashes.
Was she high? Or drunk? He was instantly ahamed for having thought so. She was just being gay, and playful, and maybe, maybe genuinely glad he had called. Why should he doubt it? After all, she was lonely, too—sad, and deeply grieved. So he got to the point. When . . . when could they meet; when could he see her again? He wanted (placing his heart on his sleeve) to see her so very much.
Well goodness. (Such a question.) Bruno! Any time. He knew that; they’d agreed. Only he was to be sure, always be sure to call, to telephone first; as if, at the moment, he wasn’t doing exactly that . . .
Martin Dzierlatka dialed for the third time, and Rose told him for the third time, civilly, having learned quite well how to pronounce his name, Dz and all, that “Madam is on another line.” Would he care to leave his number so she could call him back?
He was afraid to do that for fear she wouldn’t call. “No. I must go out for a while,” he lied. “I’ll try again later.”
He smoked two cigarettes, drank a can of beer, stared at Grover deeply asleep on the living room couch, snoring with the mucused purr of a giant cat, curled in a fetal position, a sparkle of spit gathered at one fallen corner of his mouth.
The operator interrupted Mrs. Evan’s valium-spiked monologue to demand another coin, the nasal tone half-human, half-machine. This was the second time.
“Dear Bruno!” his lovely lady said quickly, “spending all his hard-earned money to call me! I must let you go for now. Stay well. Be happy. We’ll see each other soon. Very soon.”
And he heard the hum of the dial tone.
Sometimes, in the McGraw-Hill mailroom when work slackened off, Bruno would pick up the phone and dial outside just to hear that tone, that hum, listen to the voice of the loveless world, hurt himself, needlessly, with all the numbers of friends he didn’t possess, could never call.
Other-worldly, that sound: recorded on the deserts of Mars, the clouds of empty Venus.
He must be ill, he thought, dialing like that, listening: doing such a thing.
Angel’s teacher, that Miss Evans, called five times. No, six, counting a week ago yesterday. Too often. So often that Aurelio, who didn’t mind initially, had finally to get rough.
“Listen—Miss Evans—there ain’t nothin’ wrong with him now. He got over his fever n’everything. It’s uh, how do you say?—emotional, unnerstan’? I seen a lot of it in his mother. It’s a kind of phraze kids go through his age; I mean fourteen. They’re moody, y’know? Sensitive. Am I right? Hell, you should know; you got a million kids . . .”
And the sixth and final time, irritation sharpening his tone: “Miss Evans; he don’t have me worried. He’s fine. It’s you, you got me worried, callin’ like this, y’know? Am I makin’ myself unnerstood? I don’t want t’have t’drag my ass down to no principal about how things are goin’ between the—uh, faculty and the student body. Maybe you wouldn’t like that, either—eh? Anyways . . . tell y’what. He tol’ me he’s goin’ t’school tomorrow. So you’ll see ’im then, right? And there’ll be no reason f’you to be callin’ here again. Okay?”
And that ended it.
But ending it—putting the receiver back on the hook—Aurelio took time and interest enough to stare curiously at his son, who had listened, with barely no expression except for an occasional rapid blinking, to all that had been said.
“So, your—uh, chocolate-chip cookie-maker seems to be running out’a sugar. Or yeast, maybe—eh? With you home”—a good-natured leer—“she ain’t got no self-raisin’ dough.”
Really such a dumb-ass joke, Angel had to
smile, but made no reply. His body felt rested, his heart rhythm steady and remote. No extra, erratic beats because his father had begun teasing him again, the man’s eyes restless. Anxiety takes energy, so does antagonism. Angel had little for either. He was depleted, but not in the sense of emptiness and exhaustion. He had grateful, convalescent eyes, and was, at least for this little while, finding it less painful to be alive.
One good thing—
During all the time he’d been sick and getting well, his father hadn’t touched him . . . except in the gentle careful ways a loving father touches a son who is ill and must be made better.
But viewpoints are different! Angel had his. And “Miss Evans” had been given hers—as frustrating, garbled and occasionally obscene as it was. But what about Aurelio himself? He’d quickly tell you that what had happened was easily this:
The kid had been a real pain in the ass for two days; looking bad, too pale, sunken-eyed, with the clear sweat of a fever on his face. But he wouln’t let you near him to take his temperature; you couldn’t even talk to him, you couldn’t.
So Auri clung, silent, to his beer, his TV, and twice in the late evening, went to a bar just to get away and, as usual, returned falling-down drunk.
The third night he got home after work, however, Angel was writhing on the couch, half out of his head, with a fever of 105.
Baffled, panicked, Auri stared at the silver streak on the thermometer, shook it down, tried again, and immediately called for help. Then he did what the doctor told him to do until the man got there: gave Angel an enema, and washed his body down with alcohol, again and again, head to toe, for almost an hour straight. By the time the doctor arrived, the boy’s temperature had dropped more than two degrees.
There was no specific diagnosis: only reference to a respiratory infection of some sort that was “going around.” He got shot with an anti-biotic; then a strong tranquilizer that fixed his mouth in a stupid, happy smile until, minutes, later, his head rolled, and he was sound asleep.
Auri straightened the boy’s legs and arms, tucked the sheet between his armpits, then pinned it at the bottom so it couldn’t be kicked off. Finally, he towel-dried a wild tangle of hair so bedraggled and wet, it looked as if, just now, Angel had walked in from the rain.
This done, the man sighed his profound relief, sank to the floor beside the couch, curled his thick calloused fingers through the boy’s, and in minutes, exhausted, was as unconscious as his son.
During a whole week of nights, Angel’s sweat-soaked t-shirts and shorts were replaced with dry ones; damp pillows and wrinkled sheets were exchanged for fresh ones. He was carried like a baby to the bathroom and back again. Cool folded wet cloths were pressed to his forehead, while countless sips of water and cracked ice, sometimes diluted ginger ale, found a way to his mouth, spilling, deliciously—as he gulped greedily—coldly down his chin.
Bruno called, and although Mrs. Evans—her state agitated— was tempted to see him “to pass the time,” it seemed too shameful a thing to do, so she put him off.
Martin telephoned, too, persistently, and they had several long talks, he so witty and inventive she enjoyed him each time. He and his idle chatter seemed to be the only things sufficiently diverting to take her obsessive mind away from Angel. And Jamie. And the aching preoccupation with what had happened, weeks ago now, in the car.
JdeVR.
Had it been an exchange?—Angel’s ring of crude cut-glass for Jamie’s chiseled gold? Regardless, she could feel it still: the cool thick band that held the raised initials was unmistakable, but also (and she thought of this much later) curiously vulgar—a kind of “evidence” so material it was almost “cheap,” in no way required, indeed puzzlingly offensive . . . until she remembered that Jamie wore the ring on his left hand, and he was left-handed. He had not intended the ring as evidence, a “sign”—only the warm loving grasp of his hand—thoughtlessly the left hand, of course! which he naturally favored.
An illusion? All of it? An hallucination? A mistake? The kind that had happened before: the “Jamie” Mrs. Evans had seen and cried out to and so wildly kissed on Christopher Street in Sheridan Square?
If not, then the sick, drugged dream of a madwoman. Better still: an erosion of grief, a slow self-murder of the mind.
Don’t believe it.
It was Jamie. Unsurprisingly. Without wonder. In no way strange to the faithful, the perfectly loving. An event as normal as the sun in the morning, as familiar as the break of the sea on the shore.
She had held Jamie’s hand—as she held it a thousand times before: from infancy through childhood, to the boy he became, to the man he could have become. And the man he might still sometime be.
Jamie.
Unlike Bruno, who had a peculiar urgency, even a desperation in his voice, Martin didn’t press, his tone was lazy and playful, even containing (put-on or real) a nuance of game-playing seduction.
Finally, she gave in and made a date—dinner and the theater, no less: “a wonderful little bistro” he’d discovered; “expensive but superlative”—and then the opening night performance to a play, the tickets for which a producer-friend had supplied. And—”oh, yes!”—she could “dress” if she liked. He would, too. Wouldn’t that be fun?
She spent two hours dressing. Then, when Martin appeared in the immaculate black-and-white of his tux, carrying a small white orchid in a plastic box—something she wouldn’t have worn though the gesture was sweet—she had Rose turn him away at the door.
“I’m sorry. Madam cannot go.” Nothing more.
He stood there stupified, his face first white, then red.
Rose, as mortified and outraged as he to have done what she’d been so curtly and sharply been instructed to do before Mrs. Evans slammed her bedroom door, added, on her own: “She said she’d call you later—to explain.”
He was called later . . . though no explanation was adequate, no apology sufficient.
Her sinuses? Her nerves? A spell of vertigo? A touch of ptomaine? She went through the list and decided against all of them, offering nothing beyond, simply “how sorry” she was and that she would “make it up” to him.
Martin liked people in his debt. In Mrs. Evans’ case, he could count it a blessing. So the evening, the flower, the taxi fare, the dry-cleaning bill to freshen his tux—more importantly, his anger, his hurt pride, his humiliation—all this would be paid for, in time.
It hadn’t occurred to Angel (before he’d been taken ill) even to think about it, but both Martin and Bruno kept wondering how many replies Mrs. Evans had received from her ad. They looked through the Voice’s “Bulletin Board” every week, as well as its classified-ad Personals to see if the advertisement was repeated. It never was.
Grateful, both of them nonetheless then confined their concern and curiosity to this: how many letters had she received from the original insertion? How many did she answer? How many “boys” had she seen and/or was now seeing?
When and if she finally chose one, what would his qualifications be, the few or many qualities that had led her to decide in his favor?
Could the final boy (Bruno wondered) be a dwarf? And the frantic, heart-stopping answer: no. He was truly a fool to think it likely at all. Or even possible. And was that the meaning of his growing anxiety? That he had detected, however subtle, in her excessively gay manner, her “Dear Bruno’s” and many “see you soon’s” an unmistakable—however kind and gentle—rejection, an easy let down?
Given the choice of a whole and wholesome—surely even beautiful—straight-backed boy (so many could have answered her ad!) why would she choose the deformed creature he was?—a large wobbly head atop a mere fifteen inches of tortured, hump-shouldered spine (a “broken angel” a kind teacher of his once called him). But even if he were in heaven, where angels are alleged to be, surely God, too, tidying up, would have considered him a bit of refuse and swept him from that golden floor.
Refuse . . .
And in His infinite mer
cy and justice, He didn’t even have the decency, like Chrysler and Ford, to call back defective models—models, that, if driven too far or too fast too soon might prove fatally dangerous, might possibly kill . . .
On the other (and somewhat less dramatic, self-pitying and literary) hand, Martin, rightfully so, was not at all concerned about his physical appearance.
He was handsome—exceptionally so, if in a somewhat “ordinary” way, with “regular” features and the usual assortment of characteristics so many women consider “beautiful:” perfect teeth, thick dark hair that he could, straight or curled, wear in any style he chose, and frequently did; eyes that mixed a subtle green along with blue, and, above all, a lean, hard, finely-proportioned body he kept in excellent shape.
But if the truth will out, and out it finally did (somewhere below Martin’s navel and well-above his knees) he was counting on the susceptibility of his healthy if still deeply grieved Lady Chatterly to the fine if not exactly superlative attributes of his most laudable John Thomas. Once exposed to and experiencing its full, functioning power and beauty, he’d often had trouble getting rid of the women in his life when his interests (usually another woman) turned elsewhere.
One odd thing; or, rather, two:
The wealthier the woman was, and the more prominent her social status, as well as the luxuriousness of her surroundings, the more probable, though never certain, his own sexual interest.
The second odd thing concerned the theater: applause was erotic, the best of aphrodisiacs.
But he was not alone in this; he had heard other performers speak of it. (Indeed, he had read that Nijinsky had always kept a lover waiting—not in his dressing room, but in the wings, within sight—into whose arms he could instantly fly the moment his performance was over.)
There were a thousand Riveras in the telephone directory, and although Mrs. Evans’ finger searching for Angel’s address slowly touched every one, she was unable to find an “Aurelio.” Next, she checked each number in an effort to find the one she’d been calling, but with no success either. Apparently, for whatever reasons, the man was unlisted.
Bereavements Page 13
