She slipped away, ran across the room, and dared me to catch her. I tried, but tripped over a stack of books and went smash on the floor, my glass and ice cubes tumbling onto the carpet while Yu-huan laughed and taunted me, saying I would never be able to catch her. I went after her again, but at my bedroom door she ducked under my arm and ran back into the living room, lay on the couch, a forearm across her eyes, her other hand raised palm forward in a gesture that said: “Come no further.”
I stopped where I was, and she announced that it was forbidden by all the gods and goddesses, especially Chang-Er, for us to touch one another until the deed was done. I did not ask what deed she was referring to.
“Maybe you will have me one day,” she said, “and maybe you will not have me. Who is to know, Charles? Who is to know anything in this strange, cruel, and mysterious world?”
She let her arm fall from her eyes, let her hand lie where it fell, below the bulge where Yun-shan was alive and growing, stroked herself between her legs a few times, sucked on her fingers, shuddered briefly—“And I am Madonna too,” she stated—and sat up. “That is sufficient,” she said.
“You like driving me nuts, don’t you?” I said.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Sometimes I am a bad girl.”
“And you’re nuts too,” I said.
She closed her eyes. “Sometimes yes,” she said. “But sometimes no.”
She lay down again, her hands clasped on her stomach. “You may play with yourself if you wish,” she said. “I won’t mind, or watch if you do not wish me to.”
I flopped into an easy chair, grabbed my cock, but without unzipping my fly. “Is this what you want?” I said. “Do you want to watch me bring myself off?”
“Not at all,” she said. “I just want us not to become lovers today. It would destroy everything.”
“Because you’re pregnant?”
“No.”
“Because you don’t like me?”
“Don’t like you?” She sat up. “But I love you, Charles, don’t you know that? I love you like a brother, and if we do other things—things brothers and sisters sometimes do—we will complicate what is really quite simple.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Then we agree,” she said, and she stood and walked in an amazingly straight line toward the bedroom. “I am going to take a shower now,” she said, “and later on, when I am gone, you are going to make a pot of very strong coffee.”
“But you do like me, yes?”
“I like you very much, and if things were different, of course I would want to be your lover, and bear your son, and even marry you. If…”
“Hey—if my aunt had balls, we would have called her my uncle, right?”
“‘If my aunt had balls, we would have called her my uncle,’” she repeated. “That’s very funny, Charles. In fact, you are a very funny man, I think, and quite wonderful.”
“It’s not my saying—about the aunt and uncle,” I said. “It’s something my father used to say.”
“Then he was a wise man.”
“Still is.”
“And when did you last see him?”
“Three years ago—three years and three months, to be exact.”
“And you miss him,” she stated.
“Sure,” I said. “I miss him, but it’s okay because he has someone living with him now.”
“I said that you miss him, not that he misses you.”
“But it’s true,” I said, even as I felt my erection go soft. “And anyway, like I said, he has someone living with him now—a younger woman who used to be his student.”
“Young women give life to older men,” she said.
“Do you really believe that?” I said. “For a modern woman, isn’t that a backward way of seeing things?”
“Not at all,” she said. “As you put it in your culture—what I have come to rely on as a new and useful motto—‘Whatever works.’ For we certainly know what does not work, since it is all around us everywhere.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Sure. Whatever works.”
“Do you know this woman?” she asked
“Oh yes,” I said. “She’s a well-known writer—Seana O’Sullivan.”
“You know Seana O’Sullivan?” Yu-huan exclaimed.
“I’ve known her since I was a boy.”
“Seana O’Sullivan, the author of Triangle?”
“The one and only.”
“Triangle is a great book—greater than Lolita!” Yu-huan declared. “Greater than ‘The Kiss’! Greater than the novels of Colette!”
“As good as Madame Bovary?” I asked.
“Do not mock me,” Yu-huan said. “Do not hurt me double time.”
“Double time?”
“Once to mock me, and twice to have withheld from me the knowledge that you know Seana O’Sullivan.”
“But I…”
“No ‘buts,’ Charles.”
“Okay,” I said. “So you tell me: Why didn’t I tell you?”
“Exactly. Why did you not tell me?”
“Because.”
“Yes,” Yu-huan said. “‘Because’ is a very proper answer.” She blinked several times. “Triangle is banned in Singapore—you know that, of course.”
“Yes.”
“I acquired my copy in Hong Kong when I was there with Nick.” She looked away. “In fact, I am now remembering that I had forgotten you knew her, and…”
She stopped.
“Yes?”
“That is all.”
“He told you about his wife Trish—his ex-wife—and about how the three of us used to play around, right? Like in Triangle, only without the incest.”
“Although he has done much good in the world, Nick has never been a truly honorable man,” Yu-huan stated. “That is why I am going to take a shower and go home. I will meet you later, at his party.”
“You’re really going there?”
“Of course. But you must rest now. Please do what I say, Charles.”
“Sure,” I said, and I lay down on the couch. Yu-huan covered me with a blanket, then went to the bathroom, and the next thing I knew, she was at the door, blowing me a good-bye kiss and telling me that to prove her love, she’d gone ahead and made the pot of coffee for me.
By the time I arrived at the party, Nick was totally blotto, and carrying on the way he often did when he got this way—balancing glasses on his nose, throwing peanuts and olives into the air and catching them in his mouth, making the rounds of young women and grabbing ass, then making nice to guys we did business with.
When Yu-huan arrived, dressed elegantly in a black strapless gown, and walked straight to him and extended her hand in greeting, asking if he had seen the lanterns in Jurong Park this year, he stared at her stomach for a while—gaped really—then, very politely, asked her how her family was. Yu-huan put an arm around my waist, kissed me quickly on the mouth, and excused herself, saying she was going to fetch us drinks.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Nick said.
“I hope so,” I said.
“Congratulations, buddy,” Nick said, slapping me on the back. “Though in my experience,” he added, “it’s never been a good idea to bird-dog a friend with his ex.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Well, for starters, this one’s just a little bit knocked up, and if you’re the father…”
“I’m not,” I said. “You are.”
Nick froze for a second—he saw that others were listening—and glared at me with an anger I’d rarely seen him show. He forced a laugh. “You are a character, Charlie boy,” he said, “so it’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type, right?”
“And if you were?” I asked.
He poked me in the chest with an index finger, but lightly. “We don’t really want to go there, do we?”
“No. Especially if you insist on calling me ‘Charlie boy,’” I said. “I’m not drinking tonight, and you’re smashed.”
“So you think you could take
me, huh?”
“Not interested,” I said.
“Same old Charlie—all discretion, no valor. Just like the rest of your tribe, right?”
“My tribe?”
“Like lambs to the slaughter—isn’t that the way it goes? I didn’t agree with much my old man believed, but we did see eye to eye when it came to this.”
“When it came to what, Nick? Be specific.”
“Well, you are still a Jew, aren’t you?” Nick said. “I mean, being with this little bitch doesn’t change your religion, does it?”
I turned away, then swiveled back quickly, blasting an elbow hard into his gut so that he dropped his glass, doubled over, and began sucking air.
“My father taught me that move,” I said. “He’s Jewish too, and maybe you haven’t heard, but Jews don’t take crap anymore.” I turned to Yu-huan, who was by my side, drinks in hand. “My father was once an excellent boxer,” I explained.
Yu-huan handed me my drink, led me to the sliding glass doors that opened to the balcony. Nick’s apartment was on the sixteenth floor, with a splendid view of the city and its harbor. Because of the festival, the harbor was lit more brightly than usual. In the distance, far to the east, noiseless puffs of fireworks were exploding in the sky. I touched Yu-huan’s shoulder, and when she turned toward me, I saw that her eyes were moist.
She bowed her head, and spoke: “I will now ask your forgiveness for the way in which I behaved toward you earlier today.”
“No problem,” I said.
“You are a good man, Charlie Eisner,” she said, “and I hope you receive your reward in this life.”
“Me too.”
“But for tonight, this,” she said, and opened her purse to show me a switchblade. “Later I will seduce him. Despite his rage, or because of it, he will desire me. Nick remains, for all his triumphs, a very jealous man, and will want to re-possess me.”
“Nick’s competitive,” I said. “That’s for sure.”
“No,” Yu-huan said. “Not what you say. That is too simple. Jealousy is much more powerful.”
“It’s the illusion of possession,” I said, and added quickly: “That’s another one of my father’s sayings.”
“Jealousy is the illusion of possession,” Yu-huan stated. “Yes. Then he is still a wise man, your father, even though you have not seen him for three years.”
“Probably,” I said.
Yu-huan touched the knife. “When he enters me,” she said, “this will enter him.”
“No,” I said.
“But…”
“No buts,” I said.
“Because?”
I kept my eye on Nick, who, once he’d gotten his wind back, started drinking again non-stop. Yu-huan and I ate and we drank—no alcohol, only tonic with lime—and a short while later Nick made his way back to us and began taunting me, jabbing me in the chest and asking if I was ready to step outside and settle things between us the way men should, and not with a gutless sucker punch.
I told him I was ready whenever he was. People crowded around, some encouraging him, a few women telling him to leave me alone in exchange for pleasures more delectable than fighting could offer.
“They don’t know Nick,” Yu-huan said quietly.
I turned away, figuring Nick would see my move the way I wanted him to—as a spineless response to his challenge—and walked out onto the balcony. Yu-huan joined me and stood to the side. Nick started shouting now, telling everyone that the truth was that I’d always wanted him, but without a woman in the middle I didn’t have the guts to go for it. “That’s true, isn’t it, Charlie boy?”
“Come and find out,” I said.
Nick grinned madly, then pretended he was a raging bull by making horns on each side of his head with his index fingers, and scraping his feet back and forth on the floor as if preparing to charge. I played along, fluttering an imaginary cape in front of me, then holding it against my thigh like a matador daring him to come at me.
“Vintage Hemingway?” I asked.
Nick howled with laughter—he was as drunk as I’d ever seen him, and clearly unable to figure out what had gotten into me—how I could remain so calm and confident when he was getting ready to take me. He started calling me names—a lame-brained punk, a dickless wonder, a two-bit Jewish pipsqueak whose John Henry was no bigger than what was hanging between the legs of the babe he’d put in Yu-huan’s oven.
“Olé,” I said, but softly, and flapped my imaginary cape at him. “Olé, Nick…”
“You got it, Charlie boy,” he said, and he came roaring at me. I stood where I was, and just as he was about to plow into my chest, I stepped aside and grabbed for his thigh—I was able to slip my arm under it—and then he was on his way up and over the railing.
Yu-huan had moved swiftly as soon as Nick began to charge, stationing herself between Nick and everyone else to keep them from seeing my movements, but now, Nick’s cry slicing through the air, they pushed past her and began screaming things people probably scream whenever they see somebody fall from a great height.
I looked down, hoping to see Nick’s face—to see him look up at me in astonishment, as in: ‘I didn’t think you had it in you, Charlie boy’—but he’d already gone splat on the concrete below, face down, and instead of a look of astonishment, I imagined an expression of confusion: Why did you do it? he was asking, and before I could reply—and even while I was wondering if I’d done anything at all, since once I’d stepped aside, his momentum might have carried him to where he was without my assistance—he seemed to know the answer, and to hear what I might have said if we’d had the time to exchange words: Why did I do it? That’s an easy one, Nick, since there’s only one true answer, same as always: Because I could.
Make-A-Wish
When, my first night home from Singapore, Max had invited Seana to come on a trip with us to his old neighborhood, she’d replied by saying she preferred not to go home again if she could help it, thank you very much. Now, though, seven weeks after Max was in the grave, Seana and I were driving down to Brooklyn from Northampton, and she seemed even more eager to get there than I was.
“So let’s go home again, Charlie—what would you think of that?” she said when, well past Hartford, we were approaching New Haven.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“And as long as we’ll be in the old neighborhood,” she said, “I’ve decided we should visit my mother and my sisters. I haven’t seen my mother for nearly three years. My sisters say she’s not quite what she used to be—that she’s in the early stages of Irish Alzheimer’s.”
“Irish Alzheimer’s?”
“That’s where you forget everything but the grudge.”
“Sounds about right,” I laughed.
“And once we get there,” she said, “I’ve decided I’ll ask my sisters to invite my father. Or I’ll do it myself, and surprise the bastard. My parents never divorced, but they’ve lived apart for most of my adult life. I told you that before, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And who knows what marvelous things might happen once we’re all together again,” she laughed. “My father was an old song-and-dance man, you know, though I only got to see him perform once or twice, and that was when I was very young—when they were trying to revive vaudeville. But I was remembering one of his gags, about how a newspaper account of an Irish social event begins.”
“So tell me, Seana,” I said. “How does a newspaper account of an Irish social event begin?”
“‘Among the injured were…’”
I asked if she’d called any of her sisters to let them know we’d be coming, and she said she was taking a page from my book—from the way I’d waited until we were nearby, in Maine, before calling Nick’s parents. As in all wars, she said, an element of surprise could carry the day.
“Surprises are good sometimes,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “In stories and in life. Like us.”
“Like us.�
�
“That was one of your father’s mantras, in our writing workshop. ‘Chances are,’ he’d say, and he was quoting from Flannery O’Connor, ‘that if what you’re writing doesn’t surprise you, it won’t surprise anyone else either.’”
I think we both saw returning to the old neighborhood as a kind of pilgrimage, and I was about to say so—to say that it pleased me to be memorializing Max by making his last wish come true, but as soon as the thought was there, I remembered that his last wish had not been about us returning to Brooklyn, but about what he’d said when he’d phoned us at Trish’s: that we shouldn’t forget to be kind to one another.
Seana and I had been living together in the Northampton house for the seven weeks since Max’s death, and what had surprised us was how easy—how natural—it seemed to be doing so. It surprised me too when, snuggled close to me one night before sleep, she whispered that she had a confession to make: that although she’d known a fair number of men in her time, this was a first.
“A first?”
“I’ve never lived with a man before,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I’d said. “Because you’re really good at it…”
What had also surprised was that Max had left instructions for me and for our rabbi, stating that he wanted a traditional Jewish funeral, and spelling out specifics: services for him at the synagogue, where, though he never attended services after I was Bar Mitzvahed, he had remained a dues-paying member until his death; burial in the synagogue’s cemetery; observance of a full week of mourning—shiva—in our home, with a minyan of ten men and/or women, so I could say Kaddish for him three times a day; the wish that I observe other rituals—saying Kaddish for him from time to time on the Sabbath, and on major holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; that for thirty days I obey the injunction not to shave or marry; that during the week of mourning I keep all mirrors in the house covered, and not wear leather shoes; that, as an outward sign of grief, I have the rabbi cut the collar of one of my good jackets with a razor, and not merely pin on a strip of black cloth as was, generally, the contemporary practice; that I keep a memorial candle lit for him for a full week, and light a 24-hour candle for him each year on the anniversary of his death, on which day he hoped I would visit his grave, attend synagogue, and recite Kaddish in his memory.
The Other Side of the World Page 18
