Acquainted with the Night (21 page)

But all that was over now and we were just friends, as they say. Because he kept turning up, hungry, bearing tributes of food, even after she came back with her wealth of information on grand staircases of the eighteenth century. He said we had something special, I occupied a special place in his life, he even loved me—this he brought out with difficulty—and would hate to do without me though he remained deeply in love with the architect.

My telling him how he had made me feel made him very uncomfortable—for he was, to some extent, the decent moral being he aspired to be; I don’t wish to give the impression he was heartless, not at all, the problem was the opposite, he indulged in an overextension of the heart—so uncomfortable that he got up and washed our dinner dishes sitting in my sink, just for something to do. This was not one of his more inspired changes of subject; still, it had its merit. He was a man who took the initiative around the house, never an exploiter. The shapers of feminist doctrine would have approved of him, domestically, at any rate. I leaned against a counter near the sink and watched. Over the running water he said,

“It’s funny you should be telling me this. You should really be telling someone else these things about me, someone who could take your part wholeheartedly and give you some satisfaction.”

“You have a point,” I said. “But it’s so convenient. You know the situation. I don’t have to fill you in. And besides, you understand me better than anyone else.”

“True. It’s because we are true friends, aren’t we?” He looked up from the sink anxiously. He was always anxious about this, always wanted reassurance of my friendship and my good opinion. Maybe he feared that someday he would turn up as usual and I would not wish to see him. He knew that would be perfectly logical. Maybe someday I wouldn’t.

“Yes, yes, I just told you so. Listen, we’ll pretend we’re talking about someone else, that it’s some other man I’m complaining to you about.”

“That’s a little hard to do when I know that other man is me.”

“Just pretend. See what you can come up with.”

“Okay.” And he sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll try.” We went into the living room. I sat in the easy chair with my feet up on the coffee table and he lay down on the couch with his hands locked behind his head, as he always did. It was a couch we used to make love on, in the era when we were making love, and inevitably when I saw him lying there I could not help recalling that era. On the couch or else the floor right below, partly under the coffee table unless we took the trouble to push it aside, but it was marble and very heavy. The couch was not especially comfortable as couches go, and floors in general are not. ... But often when it happened it would happen fast and there was no time to spare to get up and walk to the bedroom. It would happen so fast because he had been resisting the impulse for so long, hours maybe, floating high on words, being the best of friends, resisting exactly this happening, and then all of a sudden—he might even be getting up to say good night and priding himself on a virtuous evening—he would have no more resistance. Or maybe it was a game he liked, a private spiritual battle where till the very last moment the outcome is touch and go. It was not my game, but then lovers do play separate games. And maybe he would be thinking about the traveling architect all through it, but I never asked. Not that I didn’t feel free to, but I was afraid of hearing the possible truth, the complexities of it—how I might have been standing in for her like an understudy giving so fine a performance the audience almost forgets its disappointment; or more likely how the architect and I both in body and spirit might have been merging and unmerging in his mind in some far subtler way like chemicals or, better still, representations of the real and the ideal, each of us partaking of both but in different aspects, with now one and now the other of our images advancing to the foreground and receding; and, most of all, I was afraid of how interesting he would make it sound—it was painful enough already. For afterwards he would hate himself and not be too enamored of me either, since I was the provocation, merely by existing. But he knew too it wasn’t entirely my doing and so he’d feel guilty for turning away; between his guilt towards the architect and his guilt towards me and whatever others dragged along from the past, he had constructed a nice cozy little cell of guilt where he could be all alone after his indulgences, which is perhaps what he really wanted. Of course it was not always like that; thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise, as in Wyatt’s famous poem of love and rage, twenty times better, naked in my chamber, something in that vein; many times we even made it to the bedroom, but that was mostly at the beginning. Later it was as if, given the time it would take to walk to my chamber, he might change his mind.

He had made himself a cup of coffee and set it on the marble table, and now and then I took a sip. Coffee makes me sick but sometimes I get a yen for just a little. I liked to drink out of his cup and he never minded. He was good that way. A generous soul, not fastidious. Never chary of those forms of intimacy.

“Okay,” he said. “This other man.” And he looked at me with great brown sad dog eyes. “I’ll tell you what I think. This other man you’re talking about is a fop, a cad, a pretentious, self-indulgent joker.”

He kept staring, and I could see that he meant it. I could see in the lush brown of his eyes the torment he used to speak of but no longer did. And in the recesses of the irises, grand staircases to remote, inaccessible chambers. I couldn’t speak. Our bodies had touched each other and interpenetrated in nearly every imaginable way, but I felt this moment was the most naked we had ever had. And I felt vastly sorry for him, more sorry, finally, than I did for myself.

He grinned; it was hesitant and shy, like a boy’s grin. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

I told him what I had been thinking, about the nakedness and closeness.

“Do you really think so?” he said.

“Yes, I do. And maybe you’re right, what you said. Maybe he is all that. But the thing is, you see, I liked him. I was crazy about him.”

G
REGORY ALLOWED THE LINES
controlling the Sunfish sail to rest loosely in his hands as he looked around with contentment at the placid lake ringed by dark, lush greenery, its shores dotted with cottages partly hidden by shade trees. At one of these cottages he was a weekend guest, and he located it from time to time, to keep his bearings.

The Sunfish was small—simply a flat deck about fourteen feet long and four feet at its widest point, with a shallow well in the center. Its silken, royal-blue sail billowed just now in the wind, making Gregory grip the line and tiller tighter and steer against the air currents. Near him lay an orange life jacket, one strap held down firmly by his foot. Gregory would feel foolish wearing it, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go out on the lake without it. The wind calmed; he relaxed his hold. He loved the feel of the coarse line in his fingers, taut or loose, and the sure knowledge that by applying the slightest pressure he could control the motion of the boat.

Steering cautiously, he headed back towards the house. He shouldn’t be greedy—Joe or Jean might want to take a sail. The Sunfish was theirs, after all. The Franks were close friends; he had known Joe for several years at the office and Jean had become almost like a sister. Some ten years older than he, they babied him whenever he came to the lake, fed him and watched over him as though he needed special care. While Gregory protested, in secret he liked it. He had been a small boy when his mother died, leaving a void, and though he was not self-indulgent in other matters, he could never have his fill of older women fussing over him.

He was securing the boat to the small dock when he saw a station wagon crammed with people turning into the driveway. Arms waved from the side and back windows as Joe appeared from the house to greet the guests.

“Hi, Greg.” Jean, smiling and energetic as always, was setting out lawn chairs. “How was your sail? The Carsons are here.”

“So I see. I didn’t know you were expecting such a crowd.”

“They said they had people staying over, so I told them the more, the merrier.” Gregory went to help with the chairs, stifling a pang of envy at how easily Jean could face meeting a carful of strangers. He had been looking forward to a tranquil afternoon with the Franks and another married couple. If only Margaret had come. With Margaret nearby it would be easier—they would make a pair, a safe, closed unit.

“We can do this later. Come—let’s say hello.” Jean reached out her hand to take him along.

There were six of them, all wearing bright, splashy bathing suits with bright-hued beach towels slung over their shoulders. Laughing and talking chaotically, they piled from the car, tanned legs and arms jumbled up and spilling out. One man wore dark glasses that were mirrors; they caught the sun’s rays and became two splotches of flashing light. Dazzled by the glitter and the array, Gregory shook hands, knowing he would not remember their names five minutes later. Except that one, the last to be introduced, made such a rare and poignant impact, he felt his scalp tingle as he smiled hello.

She appeared about nineteen or twenty but couldn’t possibly be that young; her soft, candid face showed experience and discernment. She had a mass of wavy, dark-red hair that billowed about her face and hung down her back. It must make her very hot, Gregory thought, and he noted how often she tossed her head to get it off her face or lifted it off the back of her neck with her left hand, her chin tilting slightly upward. He had never seen eyes like hers, extremely large and luminous and colored pure aqua, matching the splashes of gaudy flowers on her bikini. She was very suntanned, brown and glossy. He was glad, though he couldn’t see why it should matter to him, that she didn’t get pink, like most redheads—he didn’t care for that seared-pink look on fair-skinned girls. The upper part of her face was gentle and relaxed—wide, inquisitive eyes and wide brow; the lower part more vivid and stern—narrow, curving mouth, squarish, assertive jaw and chin. She focused on him when she said hello as she focused on everything around her, with unabashed penetration and assessment. Watching her, he felt set apart, lifted out of the procession of time and in the presence of something he had waited for patiently, in his usual silence.

Her first words were not extraordinary at all, however. “God, it’s hot here in the sun!” Looking up at the sky, she shielded her eyes, then flung off her blue denim shirt and carried it by one sleeve towards the chairs, letting it trail carelessly on the ground.

They sat languidly sipping iced drinks. Gregory, lying on the grass, stared up at her. She had kicked off her sandals, then crossed one brown leg over the other and swung it restlessly as she talked. Hypnotized, he regarded the roundness of the calf muscles, slack now as the leg swung from her knee, and the flesh of the thigh underneath, which stirred slightly from the friction. The rest of her body was calm. One long, narrow hand held a drink and the other lay flat on the arm of the chair. Only that leg, swinging in tiny, relentless motions like the flickering of a compass needle, hinted at turbulence. She talked too much, talked and laughed and gazed benevolently at her listeners as though her speech were a personal gift. Her voice was low-pitched, faintly husky, a shade too loud. When she was about to laugh, her tone grew higher and melodious, easing into the laugh like a singer easing from recitative to an aria. He wondered if she was an actress. A life-of-the-party type, he decided as she told an amusing story about how she and Phil—she leaned over and put her hand on Phil’s arm when she mentioned his name—got their car embroiled in a wedding party that morning on the way up. There was a convertible with a bride and groom, she said, and a trail of twenty honking, singing carloads. She and Phil had woven in and out among them, waving and shouting congratulations, until finally they passed them all and felt they had been part of the happy celebration.

Instinctively he disliked Phil, whose face was concealed by the flashing glasses and a beard. He seemed meager and unworthy of her. Gregory suspected that most bearded men were hiding weak jaws or chins. He, of course, was clean-shaven, but he let his dark hair grow fashionably long. He hoped she wasn’t serious about Phil, and then chided himself. What business was it of his? For all he knew, they might be married, although he doubted it. Her radiant quality, the smooth texture of her flesh, made her appear pure and unused, unpossessed, despite the loud talk and overconfidence.

She set her drink down and glanced towards the water. “Ooh, you’ve got a boat!” she exclaimed, and half rose from her chair to peer at it.

“Our Sunfish,” Joe said proudly. “Neat little thing.”

On impulse, Gregory rose to his feet. He was pleased to be tall and muscular—that always put people a bit in awe at the start. “Would you like to go for a sail?” he asked. “I’d be glad to take you out on it.”

“Oh, go with him, Deirdre. Gregory will give you a marvelous sail. He adores the Sunfish,” said Jean.

“He’s in love with the Sunfish—that’s a fact,” said Joe, leaning back lazily, puffing on his pipe.

“All right,” she said, turning to Gregory directly for the first time since they met. “Why not?” And leaving her shirt hanging from a corner of the chair, she followed him down to the dock.

Deirdre, he was thinking. Even her name was outrageous, too much. Everything about her was overblown and overstated. She took up more space and charged the space surrounding her more than a young woman should. And this nagged at him: unfair that one person should exude such vibrating orange light while others were drawn and illumined inward, crouching, almost, in the dim, spare space allotted. Margaret, for example. Probably a much finer person, all things considered, but her body did nothing to the air around it. Then he felt guilty, making comparisons on such foolish, intangible grounds, thinking this treacherous way about Margaret, of whom he was so fond. Anyway, Deirdre wasn’t his type at all; she was a quite dangerous type, he suspected. It would be like playing with quicksilver or juggling bolts of lightning. His interest was mere curiosity, he assured himself: how did a girl get that way?