She called Helen. “How’s Paul doing?”
Helen was speaking in a whisper all the time now, in an attempt not to burst into tears. “He’s in and out of consciousness. The doctors don’t know yet if he’ll recover from this bout. They can’t seem to pinpoint any one problem. I’m afraid he’s just going to let go . . .”
Beth could barely hear her. “He won’t let go so easily. Your brother’s will is stronger than that. Let me know if anything changes, for better or worse.”
Beth was long past crying for her ex, yet there were times when the knowledge that he would die before Jessie was a teenager felt impossible to grasp. Jessie would lose her father, and as complex as their history was, a love bond persisted that had sustained them as family.
CHAPTER FOUR
Isabel
“SO WHERE ARE we going?” Isabel asked Christopher as he ferried her to his apartment on the Upper West Side. She was excited to be out of the dreary workday and into the realm of evening.
“I have tickets to see Othello at the Delacorte,” Christopher coolly announced, as if tickets to Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater could be had by anyone at any time. Located in the heart of Central Park’s west side and nestled on the flank of a rocky rise, the Delacorte provided an intimate theater venue against a spectacularly dramatic backdrop. Most people waited in line all afternoon for free tickets to the evening’s show. But Christopher had bypassed this inconvenience, either paying a steep price for the privilege or cashing in on a serious favor.
“Your favorite, Christopher Walken, is playing Iago. It should be hilarious. I thought a picnic in the park before the play would get you home and to bed earlier than if we waited until afterward to eat.”
Isabel happily let Christopher take charge of the evening; watching Walken channel malevolent Iago would be the perfect way to turn a crummy day into a glorious one.
Christopher lived across from the park in a classic six. He’d had the apartment since he first came to New York seventeen years ago and paid one-quarter of the market price on his lease due to the rent control laws not meant to protect the likes of Christopher Bello. He lavished the money saved by the criminally low lease on the apartment’s luxurious interior. The inconspicuous lighting offered a rosy glow that simmered on and off silently upon entering and exiting each room. Guests always looked their best in Christopher’s apartment. The modern furnishings, custom built to fit the space perfectly, were hewn from walnut, outfitted with thick, tufted cushions and cost a small fortune. In spite of the clean lines of the apartment interior, there was a lushness to Christopher’s home that always made Isabel think of Jeannie’s prison lair in I Dream of Jeannie.
Back when Christopher and Isabel spent those awkward getting-to-know-you dates together, Isabel had spilled red wine on a bone-colored floor cushion. She was mortified. Christopher dismissed it and never mentioned it to her again. Like most of the people in Christopher’s life, things were also expendable. Whenever she visited his home, the spot on the cushion came to feel like something she owned in his space.
Shortly after, a rare book Isabel had found in the stack of art books on Christopher’s coffee table had further cemented their connection. Jean Cocteau’s Le Livre Blanc, an explicit collection of prose and line drawings depicting sex between men, was far from a staple in the libraries of even the artiest straight men. Christopher’s possession of The White Book intrigued Isabel, but more, it locked into her own fascination with the artist.
“Why do you have Cocteau’s White Book?” she’d asked him.
“It’s so louche, I love it,” Christopher told her, as if that would explain everything.
“Louche? Really? I always thought it quite tender and brave,” Isabel retorted.
Unapologetically homosexual in a time when it was not acceptable to be so, Cocteau hadn’t explicitly claimed authorship of the book when it was published in 1928. It would have been disastrous to his reputation to have so brazenly pushed the limits of polite society by admitting authorship that early in the twentieth century. Still, the inimitable drawings and prose made it clear who had created it. Isabel applauded the audacity it took to create and publish the tome, even if anonymously.
Cocteau had been a kind of hero to Isabel since she first discovered his work in Paris when she resided there in her early twenties. The artist lived without excuse, creating a body of work that defied categorization as a filmmaker, poet, novelist, painter, provocateur. Isabel lived by Cocteau’s tenet: “Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.”
As they entered Christopher’s apartment now, she was delighted to see a wicker picnic basket, a white linen napkin expertly tucked around the edges, sitting atop the Carrara marble kitchen counter. Christopher had clearly called in the order and had it delivered to his apartment earlier in the day. Isabel couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had a previous date who’d canceled. She figured she must be the stand-in for an otherwise carefully planned evening. How else to make sense of the tickets and elaborately prepared picnic dinner?
Christopher must have registered the moment Isabel spent taking it all in and spoke as if she’d voiced these concerns out loud: “You can get anything pretty quickly in this city if you know who to call.” He grinned.
Christopher grabbed the basket with his left hand and, with a bow and sweeping motion of his right arm, ushered Isabel out the door and into the elevator. When the doors closed, he leaned over to kiss her on the chin. Isabel didn’t push him away but kept her face expressionless. He was up to something, and Isabel knew better than to guess what it might be. She’d spent way too much time in the past navigating his shifty cycles of affection and distraction to know that there was no use in trying to figure out his motives now.
They crossed Central Park West through the din of traffic and entered the softness of the park, heading east toward the Delacorte. A cool and cloudless summer solstice, the park wouldn’t empty out until well after nine o’clock. Cyclists rode the loop past new lovers making out on park benches. Teenagers played hacky sack in tight circles. People walked their dogs, one man carried a blind Abyssinian cat perched on his shoulder, and another sported a four-foot albino boa constrictor, beautifully marked in white and pale yellow, wrapped around his shoulders and neck. A woman played with her ferrets in the grass. A group of Latinos kicked a soccer ball around a patch of dirt just in front of the Delacorte. Under a huge willow tree, six octogenarians practiced tai chi, all wearing white linen gi and hakama. It was a time of year when all of New York City’s residents and their eccentricities burst from their small spaces into this glorious extension of their homes.
Christopher and Isabel found a patch of neat grass near a large elm, close enough to watch the soccer players but far enough to avoid getting hit with the ball. Christopher yanked a bright red sarong out of his back pocket (how had she missed the bulge there?) and spread it on the ground. He then placed the wicker basket on the corner of it and ceremoniously invited Isabel to join him: “Madam . . .”
Christopher expertly laid out their light supper of cold salmon, spears of asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, steamed edamame, sesame flatbread spread with olivata, and her favorite drink, Orangina (so the dinner was prepared for her!). For dessert, freshly cut pineapple and strawberries beside a tin of crème fraîche. He had managed to not include any of the things that were repulsive to her now. How he had intuited this, she couldn’t fathom.
Christopher was staring at Isabel’s profile as she watched the activity around her. He traced her slightly crooked nose with his finger.
“A boy who loved me broke it when he punched me in the face. I was sixteen years old,” Isabel said without looking at him.
“On purpose?”
“We were stoned, dancing in the dark under a strobe light. He was this quiet, angry boy named Gordon. He missed the arm of a buddy who’d been teasing him and instead smashed my face. I remember the sound more than anything. It made a terrib
le crunch.” Isabel scrunched up her nose at the thought of it. “The party stopped and the lights came on. I’d fallen to the floor and had my hands covering my nose, gushing blood. I was so high I thought the whole thing was funny. Gordon was so upset at having hit me that he got out his father’s shotgun and shot up the trees in his backyard.”
“What became of you and Gordon?”
“I kissed him once, but more out of pity than affection.”
“Where is he now?”
“No idea.”
They grew quiet for a few moments while they watched a toddler trying to blow bubbles, unsuccessfully, with her magic wand.
“Remember our boxing match?” Christopher asked.
“Yes, of course. We’ve had some very strange ways of expressing our love over the years.” Isabel mimed an exaggerated punch at Christopher, then leaned against him affectionately.
When they were still working together, he had once given her boxing lessons as a Christmas present: ten two-hour sessions with a professional boxer. Isabel took to the sport with relish and marveled at her bleeding knuckles after the first few sessions. She hung those bloody fist wraps around her bed frame as a badge of her efforts. She loved punching the heavy bag with her training gloves. She shadowboxed for practice almost every night as part of her daily workout.
Isabel had taken eight of her lessons when she and Christopher made the mistake of sharing her favorite meal of raw oysters, french fries, and martinis (dry, up, with extra olives and dirty ice cubes on the side) late one night, heavy on the martinis. They argued over dinner, a lovers’ tiff about nothing important, except they weren’t lovers.
Christopher had called over the waiter. “My martini isn’t cold enough. Neither is hers. Can you please take these away and bring us another round?”
“Mine is fine,” Isabel told the waiter. “You can just replace my thermometer-tongued friend’s drink.”
The waiter imperiously picked up Christopher’s drink after winking at Isabel and sashayed toward the bar.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Christopher demanded.
“Not cold enough, Chris? Seriously? Just put in one of the ice cubes we asked for. Why are you being a jerk?”
“I’m being a jerk by expecting excellent service and a cold martini? Don’t set your expectations so low, Isabel,” Christopher said with a smirk.
“Maybe that explains why I’m here with you,” Isabel retorted.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who sent back the drink. You’re being fussy and annoying. Anyway, I’m joking, Chris, get over it.”
“I’m not the one with the theory on jokes,” he replied.
Christopher made believe he was pouting for a minute, then brightened. “Okay, let’s settle it in the ring. Three two-minute rounds in my apartment. I’ll supply the gear.”
Typical, thought Isabel, the lessons were about sparring with her all along. “You’re on,” she said.
They stumbled to his apartment, where they cleared a space by pushing all the furniture against the walls of the living room. Christopher disappeared for five minutes and came back with all the gear.
“Here, put these on,” Christopher demanded as he threw her a balled-up white T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. He’d already changed into the same.
Isabel changed as Christopher watched.
“Okay, good. Now for the wraps.” Christopher solemnly twisted wraps around Isabel’s hands first. He helped her put on gloves, then wrapped and gloved his own hands. He set the timekeeper and pressed the button, they touched gloves, and he put up his dukes.
“Wow, you’re very serious about this, Chris,” Isabel said, and laughed, giddy now with anticipation.
“We said we’d fight, so let’s fight,” he challenged. Christopher caught her with a soft tap to the face. It didn’t hurt but it shifted her good humor to bad.
Isabel lunged forward, forgetting everything her trainer taught her about footwork and balance, and barely grazed her opponent’s arm. He countered the punch with another tap to the head, this one much harder than Isabel expected.
“That hurt,” Isabel whined as she swung again and missed completely.
“I barely touched you. C’mon, fight back. Quit talking. It only distracts you.” Christopher kept Isabel flustered with a flurry of jabs to the body. He wasn’t really hitting her, but his blustery moves made her angry.
Isabel’s lessons with the boxer had been only one-sided. He would hold up mitts and Isabel would punch and jab at them. Sometimes he put the mitts down and said, “Go ahead, make it count. I want you to try to hurt me.” But her boxing trainer was so sweet that Isabel didn’t have the heart to really have at him. She realized now that she was fighting Christopher that she probably couldn’t have hurt him even if she tried.
Now she tried jabbing with all her might with her right, which threw her off balance. Christopher, quick on his feet—he’d been training for the past few years—blocked her punch and followed with an upper cut that stopped before making full contact with her ribs. The bell rang and they dropped their arms and walked around the room sweating and breathing heavily.
One minute later the bell rang to begin again, and Christopher came after Isabel with a real punch this time to the stomach, and she went down.
“What . . . the . . . fuck, Christopher! Are you out of your fucking mind?” Isabel scrambled up from her knees and took a minute to quell the nausea rising in her belly. Fury brought her to her feet and she went after him with a guttural scream that sounded like it came from outside the apartment. Isabel began punching wildly and blindly wherever she could. Off-kilter and with no strategy, she went berserk on Christopher until she finally connected with a shot to the side of his head. A feeling of satisfaction and, with it, a kind of sickness made her stop. She struggled to catch her breath. “You . . . are . . . such . . . an asshole.”
“Did you think I was kidding?” He hit her again, this time in the shoulder where the pain did not deter her, and she swung wildly at his belly. At that moment, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted blood.
The bell rang to end the second round and Isabel fell into an armchair against the wall. Soaked with sweat and still feeling woozy from the shot to the stomach, she thought she would pass out. Four minutes of fighting felt like a marathon. The martinis weren’t helping.
About to toss it all over Christopher’s antique Persian rug, she announced, “I’m done. No more. You win.”
Christopher, short of breath as well, put his arms in the air to claim victory, dancing from foot to foot. Isabel thought about smacking him with a sucker kick to the groin—it was so tempting—but she was too tired to lift her shaking leg. Christopher saw her eyeing his vulnerability and stepped back, placing his gloves across his crotch to protect himself. Isabel burst out laughing at his quick reading of the situation. She pushed off her gloves and let them fall to the floor. As usual, the absurdity of their friendship caused the irritation to abate quickly. It reminded Isabel of something her mother would say from her girlhood days when she and her siblings would roughhouse: “It’s a game until someone gets hurt.”
Christopher pulled Isabel up from the chair and led her out to the terrace. She collapsed on the lounge as he picked up the garden hose. Christopher briefly watered the plants before turning it on Isabel, who accepted the cool water. He lay down next to her and pointed the hose up to make a fountain of fine spray above them. He kissed her hard and then turned his gaze to find the few stars that shone through the light-washed Manhattan night sky.
“Did you ever doubt your father’s love?” Christopher asked as if it were the only question in the world.
“No, never,” Isabel answered without much thought.
“That’s why you terrify me.”
Christopher squeezed the handle of the hose harder and showered them with a torrent. When Isabel didn’t protest, he put the hose down and took her hand. They lay silently marveling at th
e crescent moon punctuated at its bottom tip by a flashy Venus. The temperature dropped suddenly—or was it their adrenaline?—and they started shivering and went back inside. Isabel quietly dressed and left him to push his furniture back into place. “Nice fight,” one of them had said as Isabel closed the door behind her. She couldn’t remember now why she didn’t stay.
“That was one of our more interesting dates,” Christopher said now as he fed Isabel a perfect wild strawberry dipped in crème. He was smiling at the memory.
Isabel finally looked at him. “Is that what it was?”
AT A QUARTER to eight, Christopher went to the call window to get the tickets. It was Isabel’s favorite time in Central Park. The bats began their twilight feeding, swooping down across the field in pursuit of an evening feast of urban mosquitos. That bats found a place like Manhattan hospitable made her happy.
“Bad news,” he was saying as he walked back toward Isabel. “Walken is being replaced by an understudy. Let’s skip it and go back to my apartment. We can play a quick game of Scrabble and then I’ll take you home.”
Had Christopher known all along that there would be an understudy and just used the promise of a Walken performance as a carrot? Weren’t they way past that? The thought of coercion probably hadn’t occurred to him. Why would it at this point?
Isabel issued a gag order to the voice in her head and said instead, “Chris, I’m just going to go home. The picnic was lovely. Thanks for everything today, but my head is a bit muddled right now.”
“Are you missing Sam?”
“Not as much as I should be, and don’t ask me what that’s supposed to mean because I have no idea. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
They walked out of the park to Central Park West, where Christopher hailed a cab for her. Isabel settled into the comfort of anonymity so particular to New York taxis. She was glad to be alone again.
Isabel stared out the taxi window as they flew down Seventh Avenue, the blur of pedestrians morphing into one sentient urban being. Contemplating the peculiar nature of her friendship with Christopher, Isabel could count on one finger the occasion of a broken heart. One time only, and it’d been by Christopher Bello. It never made sense to her, how their connection could be so lasting and yet so tenuous.
The End of Men Page 6
