The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  Kyle had been inventive, Errol had to concede. He could have played by himself, after all, or made his own friends. But it was more fun with Kyle; she had better ideas and older friends. She directed plays with intricate plots and created wild injuries after fights, wrapping swaths of torn sheet around Errol’s arms and legs until he could hardly walk. Yet for all those ideas, all that energy, Errol had paid plenty. Like most petty tyrants, Kyle had been fickle, and her loyalty, fierce one day, dissolved the next. You couldn’t trust her; that was part of the excitement. Kyle was on your side, “Kyle and I,” but one false move and it was Kyle and somebody else. All this had been entirely instructive. As an adult Errol had often used his experience with his sister in understanding manipulative tribal leaders and dangerous Central American dictators.

  Yes, that was how she kept her command from being boring, with “endless shifting alliances.” Still, there were single incidents for which Errol had yet—for Christ’s sake, at forty-eight—to forgive her. Somehow, isolated and confused and removed from his escort in this party full of people he knew who seemed like strangers, Errol remembered being eight years old more vividly than he wished to and felt bitter.

  “The Lowry Boys will be here in a few minutes,” Kyle had told him. “You’re going to listen to their conversation and find out where they hid the secret tapes. Then, when they’re not looking, you spring out of the cabinet and capture them. I’ll be behind this door, and I’ll help you tie them up.” Kyle laughed and looked with a sidelong glance at two other band members. Everyone laughed, but in a slightly odd way. When Errol joined their laughing, they stopped, and Errol found he was hee-hee-heeing by himself.

  “Okay, Kyle,” said Errol soberly. “Can we leave them tied up to the table for hours and hours, like last time?”

  “Errol,” said Kyle slyly, towering tall and thin and clever above him, “whenever I capture somebody I leave them for quite a while. You know that.” Laughter again. Errol joined in. They stopped. “Ready?”

  Errol faced the built-in corner cabinet in the dining room. Kyle had removed one of the shelves so that there was just enough room for Errol to crawl in. Scrabbling up on a chair, Errol found he could fit in only by burying his head in his shoulders and drawing his knees tightly to his chest. Even then Kyle had trouble getting the double doors completely closed.

  “Get all the way into the corner, Errol.”

  “Kyle—”

  “Sh-sh. You have to be quiet and wait, Errol. Wait and wait.”

  Errol bunched up even more and moaned faintly as he heard the latch click. Through the panes of glass he could see his sister grin and stride away.

  After a few minutes Errol’s neck began to hurt and he yearned to unbend his legs. It was getting hot. His breath fogged up the glass, and Errol could no longer see whether the Lowry Boys had entered or not. Errol hummed a little tune. He wrote his name in condensation on the pane. He tried another position but found he hadn’t enough leeway. Soon small shooting pains ran up and down his back. Errol pressed his head against the shelf above him, but this one was nailed in. Gently he tested the double doors, though hoping not to open them all the way because that would make Kyle angry. There was no danger of that, though. The doors gave slightly and stopped fast. Errol pressed harder, taking rapid shallow breaths. The doors still stuck. Gradually it dawned on Errol that the latch closed on the outside, so there was no way for him to “spring” out of the cabinet, Lowry Boys or no Lowry Boys.

  “Ky-le!” cried Errol softly. For some reason, even though she’d fooled him about the doors, Errol still imagined she was stationed in the next room as she’d promised. “Kyle, I can’t get out!”

  Nothing. The glass buzzed from the vibration of his voice. Errol cried louder, until the sound of his sister’s name hurt his ears in that small space. He rapped his knuckles loudly against the panes. His grandparents weren’t home; Kyle was babysitting. No one came. When Errol stopped shouting for a moment, the compartment was deathly quiet.

  Finally, Errol remembered, he’d lost control, and that was what saved him. Errol felt his knees and elbows ram up against the doors. His lungs filled and his shoulders widened, until, his voice hoarse and his knees bruising, Errol heard a long, high crack and the latch splintered free. Gracefully the door swung open.

  Panting, Errol had to pick up his legs with his hands to swing them off the edge. He was alive; he could breathe; he was going to kill Kyle.

  He’d found them at last in the basement. On an odd impulse, then, Errol found the door to Tom’s basement and ambled downstairs. He heard laughter. He had heard laughter. Kyle and the boys of the neighborhood were clustered on the Ping-Pong table, conspiring.

  “You ditched me,” said Errol in the middle of the stairs. “Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want to play with me today?” Errol began to cry, and all the boys were silent. “Why did you lock me in the cabinet?”

  “’Cause I couldn’t just tell you that, Errol,” said Kyle clearly. “You wouldn’t get the message, would you? You tag along with everything I do. How else was I going to get rid of you?”

  “Who’s there?” asked Gray from below. Errol had remained halfway down the stairs. He walked down a few more steps to find Gray and Raphael playing pool by themselves.

  “It’s Errol,” he said stiffly. “Don’t let me disturb your game, though. I was just exploring the house.” Errol began to walk back up.

  “No, don’t go!” Gray called back. “You can play the loser. Which will be me, I assure you.”

  “Is that Gray Kaiser?” asked someone from the top of the stairs. “In flight again?” Five or six anthropologists-at-large came trooping down the stairs, and Errol had no choice but to go down with them to get out of their way. “There’s no getting away from fame, Gray,” said their leader, a rangy guy of about forty whom Errol had run into before. Bob Something. His face was waxy and tan, for he’d done a lot of fieldwork in New Guinea, and handsome in that ageless American Western way.

  In no time fifteen people gathered in the basement, so there was no longer an intimate duo to interrupt; Errol stayed.

  Raphael and Gray had only been practicing shots; Raphael racked the balls for the upcoming game. Now, Errol asked himself as Raphael arranged the balls quickly and in order, how well do you think Sarasola plays pool? How well exactly? Tell me, Errol begged of whoever controls these things, tell me he is awkward. Tell me he talks a big line, but when his turn comes around he bounces the cue ball onto the floor. Tell me that in the middle of the game he frequently ruins the table by digging his stick into the felt, tell me this will happen tonight and we will all be embarrassed. Tell me, Errol pleaded as Raphael removed the rack and lined up the cue ball, that when he breaks the cue goes puh and meanders into a corner pocket and we will laugh—tell me, Errol heard screaming in his head as Raphael’s stick pumped quickly behind him, this guy can’t play pool.

  The cue whacked hard and fast just to the side of the one and bounced back. The balls sprang over the table. Two sank, and they were both solids. Errol sat down heavily. Big surprise. It was going to be a long night.

  The entire basement began to watch. Raphael went about the table, pock, pock, pock, simple and direct. No consideration, no angling, no figuring of dots. His game was fast and easy and sweet. The balls cracked against one another and followed mathematically perfect trajectories toward their pockets.

  “Looks to me like this guy grew up with a table in his parents’ den, Gray,” said Bob. “You’ve been suckered.”

  “No,” said Raphael coldly.

  Gray hadn’t taken her eyes off Raphael since he first chalked his stick. “Where did you pick this up?”

  “Rudy’s Blue Tip Billiards Parlor, North Adams, Mass.”

  “Played a lot of hooky, huh?” said Bob.

  “I went to school every day,” said Raphael, not looking up from the table. “Played pool late—three, four in the morning. In the winter.” He nicked a ball into a side pocket. />
  “So that was where the guys hung out when you were a kid?” asked Bob.

  “The guys”—Raphael shrugged—“were a bunch of old drunks. Never brushed their teeth. Breathed in my face. Put their hands on me.”

  “But you were willing to sacrifice anything to finagle their pool secrets?”

  “I was willing to sacrifice a lot, Mr. Anthropologist”—finally Raphael looked up at Bob—“to keep warm.”

  That shut Bob up. He didn’t understand, and he wasn’t going to.

  Raphael sank one more ball and turned gently to Gray. “This must be boring you.”

  “Not at all. You’re terrific.”

  Raphael leaned over and hit the cue into a beautiful setup for stripes. He handed Gray her stick. “All yours.”

  When she took the stick, her hand touched his. Errol was watching.

  This was not like the tennis game. Gray would not now tower over the table and shatter balls into the corners two at a time. Gray may have played pool twice in her life. She did sink this setup—who wouldn’t?—but she scratched.

  “When you want the cue to bounce back rather than follow the ball,” Raphael told her, “hit it a little below the center.”

  Raphael brushed her arm; their hairs intermingled. A light sweat broke out on Errol’s forehead.

  Again Raphael set Gray up. When she started to shoot he stopped her with a hand on her bare shoulder. “More over here.” Three fingers on her waist. “Lean over a little more.” Shoulder again. “And you might find it easier to rest the stick in this cradle here—” He traced the valley between the tendons of Gray’s forefinger and thumb.

  Errol watched as Raphael molded Gray’s game, arranging her body, taking her arm to show her the length of the stroke, standing behind her to help her position the bridge so that the tips of his nipples touched her back through his white shirt. Gradually her accuracy improved as he set up more sophisticated shots, but Errol paid less and less attention to the game itself. Instead, he watched Gray’s shoulders round out of her sleeveless dress, as folds of white silk traced the curves of her body. Errol might even have enjoyed this game if it weren’t for the frequent obstruction of his view: a hand on her back, an arm against her dress—the insistent eclipse of Mr. Helpful.

  Errol noticed that the rest of the basement was following, like Errol, the progress of those hands: placed, removed, placed again, lightly, a finger—so deliberate, these moves, more like chess than like pool, deft, here, again, here, again, square to square. It was incredible to see: Gray Kaiser, tall and piercing and white like the icicle they all knew her to be, Gray the Snow Queen, who had sliced them all, swish, to the quick at one time or another, can you imagine, touched like that—Who is this guy?

  Errol started.

  “I said, who is this guy? Do you know him?” Bob repeated, sidling up beside Errol.

  “A grad student,” said Errol.

  Raphael stepped back to watch Gray shoot. “You’ve already got a nice stroke,” he told her. “Sharp, quick. Not timid. You play like a man.”

  “And that’s the ultimate compliment?”

  “If all women were like you, it wouldn’t be,” said Raphael. “But most of them aren’t. So it is.”

  “You know, McEchern,” Bob muttered, “there’s something intensely irritating about that guy.”

  “What exactly?”

  “For one, the way he shoots pool.”

  “You mean, because he’s so good.”

  “No, it’s the way he’s good,” said Bob. “Smooth. It’s creepy.”

  What’s creepy, you son-of-a-bitch, is that his little fingers are padding all over that white dress and that you’ve been after Gray Kaiser off and on for ten years yourself—that’s what’s creepy, cowboy. But Errol only replied blandly, “I don’t know what you mean, Bob. He seems like a perfectly nice kid to me.”

  Seething, Bob went to find a more sympathetic audience and another drink.

  A few minutes later, as Raphael leaned over Gray to explain a difficult shot, Bob and his friends laughed; something in their tone made Raphael turn abruptly toward them.

  “Care to share the joke, gentlemen?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, young man,” said one of them. “I guess you just had to be there.”

  “I am there,” said Raphael.

  The basement grew quiet.

  “We were just wondering,” said Bob, “how your Ford Fellowship proposal was coming.”

  “Quite well,” said Raphael.

  “That was the joke.”

  No one spoke.

  “But that isn’t a funny joke,” said Raphael distinctly. “Do you notice? No one is laughing.”

  Bob squared his chin and tugged his belt down on his hips with a Shootout at the OK Corral posture sufficiently ridiculous to make you swear off alcohol for the rest of your life. “I just couldn’t help but wonder if you know who you are playing with,” Bob slurred. “Who exactly.”

  “We’ve been introduced,” said Raphael.

  “Well, that’s nice,” said Bob. “But do you realize you’re playing games with a mature woman?”

  “Excuse me,” said Raphael, smiling. “I don’t quite know what you’re getting at. Please explain.”

  “Bob,” said someone next to him, “maybe you’d better—”

  “I’ll explain,” said Bob. “I’ll explain that this lady is old enough to be your mother, and while we think it’s pretty funny when we make jokes at your expense, what is not funny is your screwing around for fun or profit with a woman who has friends. A lot of friends.”

  “So many, it seems,” said Gray at last, exhaling, “that I can afford to lose one this evening.” Quietly she set her cue on its rack. “Mr. Sarasola, would you care to escort the Ancient One to her car? Then maybe you can manipulate this declining moron into funding your own irresponsible projects. Errol?”

  In a line the three of them filed up the stairs, and Errol had the strange sensation of himself as a member of a trio of cartoon superheroes.

  When they got outside Gray shook her head. “I could have sworn Robert Johanas was smarter than that.”

  “I felt sorry for him, Gray,” said Errol. “He was drunk, and besides, he was defending you.”

  “From what?” Gray looked from Errol to Raphael.

  “Pool sharks,” said Raphael.

  “Mister, after tonight I’m going to become one.”

  They laughed and walked toward the street, and again Errol had a flash of TV, though this time, with Gray’s hair loose in the night breeze as she strode between the two men, of old Mod Squad reruns.

  “Honestly, Errol,” said Gray, “do I really seem so gullible, so fragile? What’s there to be afraid of?” She handed Errol the keys to the coupe. “Would you take the car home? Thanks.” With that the two of them disappeared, and Errol was left with the keys dangling in his hand and her questions still unanswered; Errol considered them as he drove back, unexpectedly, by himself.

  Well, did she seem fragile? Errol didn’t hesitate: absolutely. Gray was a walking Titantic, coolly and permanently afloat. She would not watch out. She would not send out regular sonar to test for cold and dangerous diversions, but would slide along the surface of her life as if, unlike mere mortals, her prow did not plow into any deep sea. Certainly if Gray were a vessel she would be a great ship. But great ships sank big. That was a matter of historical record.

  And what’s there to be afraid of?

  Suddenly one of those images again. Errol had to remind himself to keep his eye on the road. Of Gray. She was sitting in that big leather chair in the den, small and thin. She looked as if her face had been tacked up for years and someone had finally pulled the pins out. Her shoulders drooped; her skin was slack. This was an image of Gray Kaiser that Errol didn’t want in his life. Don’t ever, Gray, sit in that chair that way. Call me, anything. Just keep the pins in. Keep those eyes flecked and darting and elusive. Remain, though I know I tire of it, amused. Play games wi
th me and keep me in my place. Humiliate your peers. Be busy. Be easily bored and impatient and make single deadly remarks. Whisk across the floorboards of that manse of yours, and hurry. Be late, make people wait. Sear the courts of this city with serves in the far corner of the square. Fly to foreign countries and let me watch you carefully explain to tribal leaders you cannot marry them, not this trip. Errol drove a little faster. He didn’t want her to be rammed in the hull, sink, fill, and grow cold. He didn’t want her to grow old.

  Errol arrived at the house in a protective mood. He swung out of the coupe and slammed the door, eager to stay up late, have another drink. Gray wasn’t back yet, so Errol switched on the lamp by the walkway, went into the den, and rummaged through the cabinet for glasses. Through the window beside him he heard a powerful motor surge and die; he pushed the curtain back to see Gray and Raphael pull themselves out of a gleaming, low-lying car. Their steps lingered. Raphael said something; they laughed and stopped, turned to one another and stared. Each was wearing white; they glowed in the light of the lantern. Raphael’s cheeks rose high and bleached like raw bone. His eyes fell to black shadow. The stray ends of his hair shone in a faint halo around his head. Gray walked toward him. The folds of her dress rippled. There was a quiver to her profile, a tremor, a bending like a straight line seen through curved glass.

  Errol saw something long, white, and shining rise in the night.

  Quietly Errol switched off the light in the den so he couldn’t be seen. Was this masochism? he wondered. No, he decided. He wished to live in the world as it actually existed. Out of some sad loyalty to exterior reality, then, he pushed the curtain back aside.

  That left hand was still where Errol had seen it last, or perhaps a little farther into her hair. Their bodies were closer. The other hand (he’d watched these all night, hadn’t he? Why stop now?) was at the small of her back. Up the left fingers crept into her scalp. Errol could see awfully well. Nice of them to stand right by the lamp.

  Their lips met so gently that the lamp shone in the diamond space left between them. Raphael turned her toward the light. Gray went white, Raphael to shadow. Errol could see her expression now. She looked terrified. Her body seemed to crumple. Raphael pulled her so that his back rested against the lamppost. So braced, he assumed the full weight of her body against him.