by Steven Brust
“Right.”
“And if she didn’t, what was the point?”
“To scare me, maybe; to get me to make a mistake.”
“Why go through all that to get you to make a mistake, when she could just tell you what mistake to make, and you’d have to do it?”
“There’s that,” I said.
“Maybe she isn’t after what you think she’s after.”
“Maybe.”
His eyes focused on me for a moment before shifting away again. “You look, I don’t know, younger than you did.”
“It’s what comes of a healthy life-style. You could take a lesson from it.”
“I surely could, yessir.”
We sat for a moment in a stillness that suddenly made me uncomfortable. I said, “I wish I could start a fire.”
“There’s no more wood in here; you’d have to bring it in from the carriage house.”
“Maybe I will. Want to toast marshmallows?”
That pulled a laugh from him, albeit a small one. “Sure. Then what would we do with them?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just enjoy watching them burn.”
The storm has ended, and I am shivering with cold; my fingers are tingling as they return to life. Perhaps it is a torture I inflict on myself to type while my hands are in this condition. If so, it is stupid. I will wait for a few minutes, then resume.
There. That is better. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that the windows in the typing room (there are two, one facing west and the other facing south) are boarded up. They are covered by thin plywood strips, and not perfectly, so just at the moment, with all the clouds having dissipated as suddenly as they appeared, I am receiving some light from the half-moon, which is cutting through the slats and making a sharp white image across the keys as she sinks. The weather has warmed slightly, but it is still cold, or my fingers should have warmed up sooner; but I am not inclined to start yet another fire and warm myself up thoroughly. I wonder if it would be possible to get the furnace going; it is a hot-water radiator furnace and newer than one would suppose. Does this kind of furnace produce visible smoke? Probably.
I felt that Jill had recovered enough that I could go and see her again, although I made yet another firm resolve to stay away from Susan. She has a very active life, and I didn’t want her to come down with some strange illness that matched Jill’s, and would cause doctors to start paying attention. In a general sense, doctors are the least of my worries, but why should I take unnecessary chances? And I don’t really want to make Susan start missing classes.
So I said to myself.
Heh.
I took myself to the big white house with blue lights in the attic, I entered, and found the living room empty and the inside lights off. I climbed the stairs, nodded to the saint pictured in the stained glass, and came to Jill’s door, which I opened. She was awake, sitting up in bed, I think just staring off into space. She showed no surprise when I came in; just dropped her eyes, then unbuttoned the top of her nightgown, then looked at the wall in front of her and waited.
I looked at her carefully. She was still pale, as from illness, and had unhealthy-looking circles under her eyes. Her hand, outside of her blanket, seemed to tremble slightly. I shook my head, which attracted her attention enough that her eyes returned to me; she looked puzzled.
“Not tonight,” I said. “I have a headache.”
She frowned and shook her head slightly, not understanding. I sighed. “Just rest,” I said. “Eat a lot. You need to recover.”
“But you—?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I can wait. I don’t want to kill you, child.”
“Why not?”
“You are of no use to me dead.”
“Oh.” Her lips formed the word, but I heard no sound.
I thought I would say hello to Susan, so I went over and tapped softly on her bedroom door. She called for me to come in. She was lying in bed, hands clasped behind her head. The bedclothes were down by her waist and she wore nothing. She greeted me with words I cannot now recall. Then, I suppose seeing some expression on my face, she said, “What is it, Jonathan?”
“There is a scent in this room,” I said. “A cologne that I do not recognize.”
“Oh, yes, that is Jennifer’s.”
“Jennifer?”
“A friend.”
There was a burgundy-colored button-up blouse draped over a chair. Susan would not wear burgundy. It came to me that the last time I’d been in her room, there had been a pink sweater hanging from one of the knobs of the closet door, and she wouldn’t wear pink, either.
“What is it, Jonathan?”
And, beyond the perfume, there was the unmistakable odor of sex in the room. Recent sex.
I said, “What did you say your friend’s name is?”
“Jennifer.” And yes, it was there in the way she said her friend’s name, too. Perhaps everyone else called her Jenny, but Susan had needed her version, one that she could say sleepily, while holding her in the warm afterglow of love.
I said, “I just wanted to say hello.”
“Well, hello,” she said brightly.
I smiled, keeping my feelings off my face, and closed the door. I went back into Jill’s room. She hadn’t moved. I took her shoulders in my hands; it came to me, as if from somewhere outside of myself, that if I let myself begin I would kill her; so I threw her back onto the bed. I heard something like a sob escape my throat. Jill was staring at me with a hurt-puppy look that made me wish very much to strangle her; instead I stepped around the bed, to the window, flung it open. Mist poured in like smoke, and I felt the clouds gather above. “Don’t go driving anywhere,” I told Jill. “Winter storm warning,” and I passed out through the window, into the fog and the swirling snow of the storm.
I remember little between the beginning of the storm and my arrival in this room, but my brain is full of images of swirling snow, and of lightning dancing back and forth between clouds, and throwing my rage down on the helpless Earth below me.
The storm cleared as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving me numb, as I sit here before this infernal machine. Now I am no longer cold, but I think I am still numb, and able to wonder, in a distant, abstract sort of way, what sensation will come to fill the void once the numbness has worn off.
I’m feeling about the same as before, although perhaps it isn’t quite as intense. After typing up what happened, I sat very still for a while, then went down to Jim. He said hello, and looked at me for just a moment. He asked me what had happened, and I just shook my head. He waited for a few minutes, and when I still didn’t say anything he took himself upstairs. I realized that he was reading what I’d just written, and that made me uncomfortable at first, but there were so many conflicting passions clamoring for my attention that I finally realized I didn’t care, so I just waited, wondering what he’d say.
When he came back down he asked me to explain it to him. I was not entirely certain that I could, and told him so. He said, “But this can’t be the first time something like this has happened.”
“Something like what?” I said.
He frowned, and I got the impression that talking of such things made him uncomfortable, which, just then, was fine by me; I was still in the grip of some nameless combination of emotions in which anger was, if not dominant, at least a part; I badly wanted to strike out at something or someone. In any case, he said, “Discovering that your lover has someone else.”
“‘Lover,’” I said. “Now there’s an interesting word for it.”
He continued to stare past my shoulder, at my chest, or occasionally at my forehead. “What word would you prefer?”
“How about ‘victim.’”
“Susan is your victim?”
“No,” I said, the word out before I actually thought about it.
“Well, then?”
“If she’s a lover, than she’s the first lover I’ve had since …”
“Yes?”
> “Since Laura.”
“Kellem?”
“That’s right.”
“So this hasn’t happened before.”
“No. Other times, like with Jill, if there’s someone in her life, I either ignore him or deal with him, as the case may be.”
“But this is different.”
“That’s right,” I said. “This is different.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to kill her?”
“Susan?”
“No, this friend of hers.”
“Oh. Jennifer. No, I’m not going to kill her. I wouldn’t do that to Susan.”
“Yo shonuff gots it, don’cha?”
“Cut it out.”
Jim graced me with one of his rare smiles and said nothing else.
After several minutes I said, “So, what would you do?”
“What would I do? Why ask me? I’m not even alive.”
“You’re more alive than most of the people I pass on the street. Besides, what does being alive have to do with anything? You’re human, aren’t you? What would you do?”
He turned around and watched the cold fireplace for a moment, then he said, “I don’t know, Jack.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
He just shrugged. I heard myself growling, and I suddenly wanted to take myself away from there. It was exactly the same as when I’d run away from Jill so I wouldn’t kill her, although I knew I couldn’t really hurt Jim.
I take that back. I think I could hurt Jim, and perhaps I even have. But leave that; there is no way I can hurt Jim physically. I thought I ought to type until the feeling passed, but it hasn’t.
I must get out of the house for a while.
I’m back once more, feeling maybe just a little better, and a little worse at the same time. I left the house and walked about in the immediate neighborhood, until at last all the walls came down, and then I ran. I jumped the fence into Bill’s yard, and there was a growl and a yelp and whine, and then I was gone.
Sometime later I remember walking the streets. I can’t tell you how warm or cold it was, or whether there was a wind, or what people or animals were on the street. I just walked.
I eventually made my way to Little Philly, and found where the girls were enduring the cold. I picked a tall black girl named Stacy who had long legs and a haughty look that set my teeth on edge.
She said, “Hey, honey, wanna date?”
I said, “Sure, honey. I don’t have a car. Where do you live?”
“Not far, sweets.”
“I have the money,” I said. “You have the product.”
She laughed a phony laugh and showed me to a greasy-looking hotel, and when I left she was no longer wearing her haughty look. I left her with a hundred dollars, which was five times what she’d asked, and I left her still healthy enough that she’d probably survive, which I had not originally intended. I didn’t care a great deal if she didn’t; I’m perfectly willing to let the embalmers finish what I start.
I came back home after that, and I sit here filled with that horrible mixture of physical well-being and emotional self-disgust that I’ve had before on such occasions, which is, at any rate, a distraction from thoughts of Susan.
It makes no sense to me that I should feel this way about picking up whores, though; if it is still the remainder of my upbringing (my parents belonged to the Reformation Church and took it very seriously), then all I can say is that one’s upbringing has more power than even the head doctors think, because I don’t know one of them who has ever said that childhood conditioning can stay with you beyond the grave.
NINE
urge v.—tr. 1. To drive forward or onward forcefully; impel; spur … n … . 2. An irresistible or impelling force, influence, or instinct.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY
Another day passed. Physically, I’m as well as I have ever been; I feel young and full of energy. Some of this has crept into my mood, I suppose because the mind wants to follow the body wherever it may lead. But I am now feeling more rational about Susan and Jennifer.
No, I certainly am not going to kill Jennifer, nor am I going to harm Susan in any way; although we certainly must find an opportunity to talk. But that need not be today. I do not wish to see Jill again until she has had a chance to make a more complete recovery, and as for Susan, well, she obviously did not think she was doing anything wrong, and perhaps, by her lights, she wasn’t. And in a sense I have invaded her life; it seems that it behooves me to, if not follow her rules, at least to pay some attention to them.
For today, at least, I cast all of this aside. I turn my attention to my dear old friend Laura Kellem; for if, within my limitations, I can thwart her, I will do so. I must recognize the truth that Susan has another lover; she is no less herself, and my life remains sweeter for her share in it. I will live if I can.
The last reddish tint of sunset is fading, and my typing room is warmer than usual, I suppose because the sun, weak though she be, has visited my sanctum and prepared it for me.
Some days ago, I think the day after Susan told me about her lover, I was walking through Little Philly and I chanced to overhear a lady, speaking to her companion, give forth a piece of contemporary folk wisdom: “The world would be easier to live in if men weren’t stupid and women weren’t crazy.”
At the time I noted it but gave it no thought. Now it comes back to me, and I think that, if it is not altogether wrong (no folk wisdom is altogether wrong; that’s its nature), then at least it is wrong with respect to me. It refers, I think, to how slow men are to see what is before them, and how given women are to self-deception and wild variations of mood. If so, then I am more woman than man, if I am not, in fact, androgynous in this fashion.
I say this because I am discovering how much variation of mood commands my activity. At first, reflecting on Susan’s infidelity, I had been shocked, and so had done things of which I was not proud; pride—true, honest pride—is always the result of overcoming our animal nature, of acting in accordance with principles or ideals which have been learned, cognized, and assimilated.
The athlete who takes pride in running faster than another knows that he has overcome his natural lethargy and trained his body to accept the punishment of the race. The musician who takes pride in his composition or his performance has the right to be proud, because he has created an expression of his discipline and his control. Insofar as we may do a good thing from instinct, we feel, or ought to feel, less pride in the accomplishment than if we had done it through self-control and careful thought; through the domination of the brain over the body. I think my entire life is an effort to secure the command of my brain over my body.
I was not proud, then, that in my frustration I allowed my animal nature to guide me, and as I sat in this room a few scant hours ago and felt sleep overtaking me, I believed that I had come to terms with this nature, and could face Susan’s actions as a rational man. But, as I slept, the animal returned, for as I dreamed my mind created images of Susan and Jennifer; what they might be doing together, the things that perhaps they would say—difficult, because I do not know Jennifer’s appearance, nor do I ever wish to. In the end, I lay awake, unable to move, unable to control my thoughts. Would I care as much if her lover were a man? Would I care more? I cannot tell; all of the tremblings of rage, of fear, of hurt, and of confusion cry out for some sort of action; experience tells me that anything I do from such a motive will diminish me in my own eyes. It seemed to be hours that I lay there alone with these thoughts, gnashing my teeth and cursing under my breath.
When at last I was able to rise, I came back to my typewriting sanctuary, to set down these thoughts, hoping the expression would be the cure. There is no question that it is moods that guide me, much more than thought, and I am not happy in this realization.
Today, therefore, I shall avoid Susan, and I shall likewise avoid doing anything that I am driven
to do by any impetus save cold, logical thought. I will remain in this room for hours if necessary, typing if I feel the need, pacing if that seems helpful. I will conquer this demon ere the night falls.
The brash coals of reason
Linger long once passion’s edge
Has curled the kindling paper black and brown;
And elected, for a season,
To stammer, halt, and hedge;
The smoke billows, ashes blow around
And inspect each nook before they kiss the ground.
I can’t believe the coals will burn,
I can’t believe they’ll die,
I long to track the rising, fading gray
Remains that twist and turn
And melt into the sky;
If heart and mind were one I’d surely stay;
If the coals were out I’d surely go away.
I slept well and without dreams, except that I knew, somehow, that Jill was feeling better. I resolved to pay her a visit to celebrate her recovery, as it were, and I further determined that I would neither avoid Susan nor seek her out; my feelings toward her remain ambivalent but not hostile.
It was in this mood, then, that I arrived at Jill’s home. I debated for some few moments whether to knock, with the attendant risk of meeting Susan, or simply to enter, but in the end I struck the knocker, and to my surprise, it was Jill who let me in; Jill who was now dressed, and seemed largely restored to health; Jill who, upon seeing me, stared at me with wide eyes, and opened the door with trembling hand; Jill who, after I had entered, closed the door behind me and stood looking at me, as if waiting for a signal.
I felt the warmth of hunger fall on me like the first stirrings of love, and I motioned her to me; she came obediently enough. I tried to be careful with her, so as not to cause a relapse. I brought her up to her bed and laid her down carefully. Her eyes, which had been closed, fluttered open. It was only then that I remembered that I had some questions I had wanted to ask her. She appeared healthy, except that her breathing was the slightest bit rapid and maybe deeper than usual.
