Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners

by Y. Euny Hong

  Even with my opera glasses, I could hardly see a thing. Looking so far downward at the stage was making me dizzy and I had to lean back in my seat.

  Joshua’s behavior was mortifying. He kept humming through the arias, and applauded at inappropriate moments, as if we were at a rodeo. A few times he turned to me and said things like, “She’s the last of the lyric sop — sopranos.”

  “Shhh,” I said, but he was not the only one talking. Some woman with her hair in a chignon was gabbing at full volume to the man next to her.

  I leaned over and whispered loudly in the woman’s direction, “I don’t know how you people do things at Disney on Ice, but here you keep silent during the performance.” In the shadows I could see the silhouetted head turning to glare at me several times during the performance. I contemplated how wrong a chignon hairdo was for someone like her, whose head was proportionally so much larger than her body. She and I exchanged silent, invisible hate flares.

  After act two, we sauntered out to the lobby and Joshua said, “That seemed kind of abrupt. The couples meet, one guy buys his girlfriend a bonnet, and it’s over? Isn’t Mimì supposed to die? It’s just as well. Let’s have a nice stroll, shall we?”

  My jaw dropped. My stomach fell. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You mean, because it’s too hot for a stroll?”

  “No, it’s intermission. What is wrong with you, Spinoza?”

  “Oh,” he said. “But everyone got up to leave, and there were cur-curtain calls — three, in fact — and people were throwing flowers onstage, so naturally I thought it was over.”

  I anesthetized myself with Heidsieck, then sulkily followed Joshua to watch the second half of the opera. At the end, when consumptive Mimì was coughing up her little lungs, everyone around me started coughing, too, as if in sympathy, or maybe they had colds and had been holding in their phlegm until they felt that Mimì could camouflage their coughs. Poor people have colds all the time, it seems. I guess that’s why domestic help are always taking sick leave.

  During the five curtain calls, the audience stood to do their usual indiscriminate, mindless, and unmerited standing ovation. As the applause died down, someone booed. Very loudly. Good for him.

  “How unbelievably rude,” said Joshua, standing up. “Let’s have our stroll now.”

  I said, “Spinoza, have you ever been blackmailed before?”

  “No. Why?” He looked terrified.

  “Because if you don’t feed me, I’m going home.”

  “Oh.” We stood among the exiting crowds, who were undoubtedly on their way to nice restaurants with their nice dates. Joshua half-smiled and said, “How about if I make you dinner?”

  I brightened. “No man has ever cooked for me,” I said.

  Just moments later, Joshua and several people surrounding us were stunned by the sound of my yelling at the top of my lungs. A woman had stepped on my sandaled foot with her stiletto heel. She was still standing next to me, a cigarette in her mouth, fishing in her purse for a lighter.

  “An apology seems to be what’s called for,” I said to her. “That was no accident.”

  She looked at me contemptuously and cupped her hand over her lighter. She was wearing a bizarre, baggy blue acetate pantsuit that looked like a karate outfit. It was the woman with the huge head whom I had shushed during the opera.

  “If it wasn’t an accident, I don’t need to say sorry,” she said, looking off to the side and smoking her cigarette with ferocious drags.

  That is a gauntlet, is it not?

  “When you talk to me, you look me in the face,” I said.

  “Get away from me,” she said, though her eyes betrayed a glimmer of fear that beckoned me to crush her.

  “I will follow you all night until you apologize,” I said, breathing fire.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Joshua, gently grabbing my elbow. I must have looked like a madwoman, because when he looked into my face he appeared frightened, and let me go.

  “I’m calling the police,” the woman said.

  I said, “I relish the thought. Who do you think they’re going to believe: me, or a first-generation white-collar acetate slag? They’ll come here and see that it’s you who looks out of place here, not me. They’ll look at the two of us and know that it was you who instigated this. These people are my people, not yours,” I said, gesturing the crowd at large. Those within hearing distance recoiled.

  I couldn’t stop. “DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT COUNTRY THIS OPERA TOOK PLACE IN? COULD YOU LOCATE IT ON A MAP? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FOOLING BY SHOWING UP TO AN OPERA, YOU PARVENUE!”

  At that moment a man smelling of CK One appeared at the woman’s side. “Sorry it took so long in the john,” he said to her. “Is something going on here?”

  Joshua grabbed my elbow, harder this time, and dragged me away from the exit, past the fountain, and cut in front of a line of dozens of people to usurp a taxi, where we took refuge.

  “One hundred tenth and Amsterdam,” said Joshua to the driver.

  I was hyperventilating. “You should have let me finish,” I said bitterly, adjusting my wrap.

  “Finish? What were you going to do, stand around and slap each other all night? Judith, you thought I was some philistine for thinking the opera was over at intermission, and yet here you are practically getting into a street fight. And you weren’t making much sense. What do you mean, can she locate France on a map? It was just one bizarre non sequitur after another.”

  “She was like a bag lady coming into my house uninvited.”

  “Lincoln Center is not your house.”

  “It’s more mine than it is hers.”

  “Judith, you’re pretending you were taking some high moral stance, when the fact is that was the most unaristocratic display I have ever seen. You just looked stupid,” Joshua said sternly.

  I hated him for saying that. Facing the window, I said, “My whole class is getting their asses handed to them by common trollops, and you expect me to just take it.”

  Joshua said, almost menacingly, “I never want to hear you use your class as a justification for putting someone down.”

  “You won’t have to hear it, you supercilious asshole,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I want to get out of this cab!” I made a gesture to open the door.

  Joshua grabbed my hand. “Judith, no! The car is moving!”

  “I don’t care!” I screamed, reaching for the door handle.

  Joshua grabbed both my arms and held them forcefully to my sides. I tried to wriggle free but I could not; I was surprised by how very strong he was, given his wiry appearance.

  Our cabdriver, who had been babbling to someone in Urdu over his mobile phone, interrupted his call to shout at Joshua, “Next time leave your woman at home.” We ignored him.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said to Joshua.

  “You’re hurting yourself,” Joshua said.

  “If you let go, I promise I won’t try to open the door.”

  Joshua loosened his grip. “Well, we’re at my place anyway,” he said. “Driver, just pull up here please. Thanks.”

  The driver pulled up accordingly and Joshua sat there, doing nothing.

  “Joshua, you’re on the curbside. You have to get out first.”

  “Um, Judith,” he said sheepishly.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “You can’t pay the driver?”

  Joshua shook his head. “A cab wasn’t in the budget. But I had no choice, it seems.”

  I nodded. I fished scrunched-up bills from the bottom of my pill-box-size purse, which was not designed for people whose dates were cash-poor.

  We walked four flights of stairs to his student hovel, which was sort of quaint, with the predictable collection of abstruse books with broken spines, and Aubrey Beardsley posters on the walls. And, oh my God, hanging in the corridor leading to the bedroom was the same Garry Kasparov poster I used to have in my dorm room. I looked at it again and saw that my initial impression
of their similarity was not mistaken; the two looked so much alike that it almost seemed narcissistic for Joshua to have the poster up in his own apartment.

  I took a seat on Joshua’s sofa. My face was stinging with wet salt; I didn’t realize how much I had cried.

  Joshua silently went to the kitchen and brought me a glass of water.

  “Thank you,” I said, somewhat touched. I was dehydrated; it was kind of him to notice. “I almost got killed,” I said plaintively.

  He seemed unmoved. “No, you didn’t. Drink,” he said, standing over me.

  I emptied the glass. I wished he would sit next to me. But he did not; he just waited for me to finish my water, then he took my glass from my hand and went back into the kitchen.

  I heard Joshua opening his larder. “I believe I promised the lady dinner,” he said.

  I was still sore that he didn’t come to my defense at the Met. I said, “I think the opera should only sell season subscription packages, not tickets to individual shows. That would keep out the dilettantes.”

  Joshua said, “It would keep me out as well. You realize that.” He appeared in the door frame that connected the kitchen to the living room. He was holding boxes of pasta and crackers. He said, “You know, even if this were the time and place where duels were appropriate, you still shouldn’t have done what you did. Not only because you’re girls. Dueling was only legal if both parties were aristocrats. If you had shot her in a duel, you would have been killing your social inferior, which would have been a crime. I’m almost certain of it. I can look it up if you want. I have a book on nineteenth-century European social history somewhere.”

  Was he serious? “If you have to look it up, it means you don’t really know what you’re talking about,” I said. My upper lip was quivering; Joshua became blurry as my eyes filled, once more, with hot tears.

  Joshua walked to the sofa and stood over me. “I’m really sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to sound so…”

  “It’s not you,” I said, pressing my tear ducts in an attempt to clog them. “I was just so mad.”

  Joshua nodded. “The adrenaline is probably wearing off all at once now.”

  “If you’re such a sensitive guy, why aren’t you getting me a Kleenex?” I snapped. Stupid nerd; how could someone with so much natural understanding not attend to these sorts of details? Yevgeny had French linen handkerchiefs on his person at all times.

  “I was just about to,” said Joshua, who ducked into his bathroom. “I just thought I shouldn’t leave you alone with all these, uh, sharp pens lying around. Okay. Here we go.”

  He reemerged and handed me a white crumpled wad.

  “This is toilet paper!” I snapped, bawling into the linty, scented clump.

  “I’m sorry! That’s all I have,” said Joshua, looking tense. “I guess I should make myself useful somehow.” He went into his kitchen again. “Okay, do you want roasted garlic, mushroom, or alfredo?”

  That question brought my crying to a sudden halt. I peered into the kitchen. To my horror, he was reading off labels of Prego spaghetti sauce. “Garlic,” I said. I had a sudden desire for halitosis.

  As we sat at a collapsible card table before two steaming bowls of capellini alle Prego, Joshua asked me, “What’s wrong?”

  I examined the bowls from which we were eating the pasta and said, “Are these café au lait bowls? What a charming notion.” I think I showed admirable restraint in not asking why we were using old jam jars as water glasses.

  “Is that it? You know, for someone who’s so hung up on etiquette, you’re pretty rude. I’m not even sure why I’m bothering with you, except I promised you dinner and I always keep my promises.”

  “I’m not rude; I’m mean,” I said.

  Joshua half-smiled, exclaimed, “Hoo!” and pantomimed wiping sweat from his brow. The gesture was somehow cute.

  He said, “Did you at least enjoy the opera? Aside from your scrape with death.” He twirled pasta on his fork, dropped it, and twirled it again.

  “Oh, truly,” I said ebulliently. “It was a wonderful production. If I may say this, however, without offending my host, I never cared much for the plot of La Bohème. I find myself always sympathizing with the landlord. I hate bohemians. With a passion. I think those people should pay their rent. If they can’t make a living as artists, then they should do something else. It’s irresponsible not to earn a wage when your girlfriend is dying of tuberculosis.” Or eating spaghetti sauce from a jar.

  Joshua smiled fiendishly. “Interesting, interesting. I’m getting an altogether different impression from you than I did from our initial meeting. Your observations are, if I may say this, a bit bourgeois-sounding. I would have thought a blue blood would eschew the notion that people have to abandon the arts for money. What if I were to tell you that Henri Murger, who wrote the book upon which La Bohème was based, lived precisely such a life as we saw tonight onstage? If he had gone out and found a real job, as you appear to be proposing, we would have no La Bohème.”

  You pedant, you intermission leaver, I thought. Aloud, I said, “The world would not be greatly impoverished without this oeuvre.”

  Joshua continued, “And what sort of career would you suggest for Mimì or Musette — prostitution?”

  That last bit caught me off guard. I coughed suddenly, with red particulate matter flying out of my mouth.

  He continued to twirl his pasta on his fork, not yet having taken a single bite. He said, “Maybe money is more important to you than you let on. I’m genuinely concerned that you think I’m too poor to take seriously.”

  “You’re too serious not to be taken seriously,” I said.

  “In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I saw you once a few months before we met at Thor’s party.”

  “ ‘In the interests of full disclosure’? Are you afraid I’ll sue you?”

  “Maybe I should be, because it’s a little creepy. I followed you. Just for a bit, and just within Coliseum Books. I saw you there one Sunday, holding a copy of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode, and a copy of The Rules: How to Attract and Win Mr. Right.”

  “That wasn’t me,” I said, my skin tingling with embarrassment.

  “And I remember thinking that your expression reminded me of Jane Eyre.”

  “That social-climbing domestic, for God’s sake?”

  “You didn’t buy The Rules. Only Wahrheit und Methode.”

  “I’m telling you, that wasn’t me.”

  Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a sense of well-being; it took me a moment to realize that it was because of an earthy, nutty smell that had begun to fill the tiny loft. The fragrance had taken me unawares, like being awoken from a bad dream by a concerned kitten licking your face.

  “That’s an unusual odor,” I said. “Like burned armpit with nutmeg.”

  “I’m roasting veal marrow,” Joshua said. “You didn’t really think I was just going to serve you spaghetti, did you? I imagine you did. You were spot-on about the nutmeg, incidentally. Good nose. And a well-shaped one, too. In the nineteenth century, that would have meant a lot more than it does now.”

  “Some compliment,” I said.

  Joshua was intently preoccupied with the state of his marrow. He walked over to the oven, opened the door, and used a pot holder to slide out the heavy cast-iron pan that held the marrow. “It’s ready,” he said, lifting the pan and placing it on the range. “Ever had marrow before?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, eyeing the pan with suspicion and disgust. The cylindrical bone slices looked like a thigh dissection, and the roasting had given them a crackled, desiccated look, the macabre effect brought to a head by the droplets of burned blood that spotted the pan.

  I said, “Joshua, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you sure you know what you’re doing? Aren’t those bones meant for making soup stock? There’s no meat on them at all.”

  Joshua said, “One misses out on a lot by focusing on the m-meat. Woul
d you please slice the bread? Thumb’s width or so?”

  He brought the cast-iron pan to the table and placed it on a ratty pot holder. We returned to our seats. Joshua said, “It’s what’s inside the bone that interests us. You just scoop out the marrow and spread it on the bread.”

  My knife made blood-curdling noises as it scraped against the bone. I spread the gritty, greasy paste on the bread, took a bite, closed my eyes, and thought of England. But I was surprised by joy. It was like some sort of Willy Wonka candy, magically evolving into every sinfully delicious, savory flavor imaginable. At the tip of the tongue, it tasted like fresh creamery butter; then, foie gras; then, crème brûlée; and finally, like demi-glace, like the essence of a hundred cows spread on a single slice of bread.

  “So?” said Joshua.

  “Oh, my God,” I said.

  Joshua, having finished the contents of one bone fragment, now took the hollowed-out cylinder and brought it to his lips. Unaware of anything else around him, he took a few licks around the periphery of the bone, then pressed his tongue into the hollow, lapping it up. He then sealed his mouth over the hollow and began sucking noisily and passionately, releasing his lips occasionally to dart his tongue around the bone. Burned marrow juices dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  “Ah,” I gasped involuntarily, embarrassed at being so obvious in what was already becoming an overwrought metaphor.

  By the time we were finished eating, I was prepared to give myself over to Joshua entirely. Such a sensuous display from such a clod. But as I sat across from him, waiting for him to reach for my hand, he shattered the moment with inane, nervous banter. He said, “Hey, those are really nice opera glasses, by the way. Do you know where I could get something like that cheaply?”

  “You can have mine,” I said, deflated.

  “That’s really generous,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  “Certainly,” I said, taking them out of my handbag, which was slung over the chair. My brief swooning was supplanted by the usual horror with which I associate him. He wasn’t supposed to actually accept the opera glasses; I just compulsively offer people any item of mine they compliment. I was raised that way. Could he not discern that?