Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (19 page)

The passenger door opened with a
ca-thunk
, and Lionel, still staring at the steering wheel, heard the rustle of fabric as she slipped out of the car. He ran his finger up the steering wheel’s opposite side, and when it reached twelve o’clock the door slammed with such force that it knocked his hand from the wheel and onto the steering column. His heart did a quick game of hopscotch and then settled into a steady Gatling gun rhythm.

He dared a look. Tracy was storming up the front walk to her building. Her fists were balled, her heels made sounds like gunshots. He realized that as much as he dreaded her crying, he would have dreaded this anger more, had he been able to anticipate it.

And then she turned for one last look. Their eyes met, and hers were black like a raccoon’s, streaming with squid-ink tears; but her jaw was set. She wasn’t about to spare him any more anguish. He realized that she’d accepted his rejection of her, and had begun to convince herself that it was his fault, not hers. She was well on her way to sacrificing their friendship in order to rescue her self-esteem. And there was nothing he could do about it — nothing except follow her up those stairs, which was impossible, impossible.

She whirled, flung open the door to her building, and blew inside. The door threw itself back a moment later.

Gone. He realized that he was shaking, and that it wasn’t the motor idling that caused him to tremble so — or at least not that alone. He lifted his hand and looked at it, and it quivered and twitched, like a just-caught fish dying on a rock.

Lionel remembered nothing of the drive home. His mind was fogged by mortification. Sights, sounds, smells, all dissipated as soon as he experienced them. He likewise remembered nothing of parking, or of getting out of the car, or of letting himself into his building and climbing the stairs. And then Emil’s face appeared before him, and it took a solid eight seconds to realize that this really was Emil in the flesh and not some manifestation of his shame.

“Emil,” he said, the mists parting. “Hi.”

Emil had his hand on the railing and each of his feet on a different step. Apparently he had been coming down the stairs while Lionel was coming up. Now they stood facing each other, having taken each other by surprise.

“Home at last,” Emil said. “I’ve been waiting for an hour! I only just now gave up. What a coincidence!” He laughed nervously.

Lionel’s head had cleared enough for him to begin speculating on why Emil was here. A change of heart? An attack of romantic love? A homosexual epiphany? His heart revved up; then skittered to a halt.
Not tonight, for God’s sake,
he thought, Tracy’s scorn still ringing in his ears.

Emil nodded at his tuxedo and said, with endearing obviousness, “You’ve been out.”

Lionel shifted his weight. “The awards ceremony. I told you about it.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right.” An uncomfortable pause settled over them. Emil grinned, and Lionel attempted a smile. The only sounds were the creaks and moans of the building settling.

Emil finally broke down and said, “I came to apologize. I’m afraid I upset you yesterday. I tried phoning. I thought you were avoiding my calls, so I came over.”

“No, no,” Lionel insisted, shifting his weight again. “I wasn’t upset.”

Emil took a step closer. “I did; you mustn’t deny it, Lionel. But you mustn’t think I meant to hurt you, either. I wasn’t angry, although I must have seemed so. It was just that you made me recall Mircea, and — those memories — they’re very painful to me.”

He backed away. “I understand. I never thought — “

“You’ve been such a good friend,” Emil continued. “I am not well-liked by my countrymen here, you know, first because I’m an anarchist and not afraid to say so, but also, even more damningly, because I’m studying to be a doctor, and most of them are laborers of some sort. They don’t trust that I am one of them. I find myself always having to prove myself to them. I must always weigh my words, take care not to say anything that will provoke their jealousy. Aside from my uncle and aunt, you are the only one to whom I can speak freely.”

Lionel shook his head. “I’m flattered. Look, you don’t have to worry; I know you weren’t angry — not with me, anyway. There’s no need to apologize or explain.”

Emil grabbed Lionel and drew him into a smothering, musk-smelling embrace. Lionel felt his penis come blaring to life.
Where were you earlier?
he wanted to scream.

He’d lost his footing on the stairs, so when Emil released him he stumbled a little and had to grab the railing. He made a noise as he did so — a yelp of effort.

At this, the door off the landing just behind them opened and someone peered out. Lionel recognized the eyes; Yolanda’s. Till now, he hadn’t realized how far up the stairs he’d come.

“Sorry,” she said, and she shut the door again.

“No,” he called out. “Yolanda!”

She opened the door again, wider this time, to reveal her entire visage. At the sight of her, Emil smiled widely.

“I heard your voices,” she said, looking at Lionel but taking a few sidelong glances at Emil. “Then it sounded like there might be a fight.”

“No fight,” Emil said jovially. “Not between me and my good friend Lionel!”

“Come on down and be introduced,” Lionel said, eager for a third party to join them and dispel the upsetting intensity of their encounter.

Yolanda opened her door a bit wider and stepped out. She was wearing hound’s-tooth flannel pajamas, about three sizes too big for her. They could only be Bob’s. And she carried her copy of
Feudalia
, with her index finger inserted to mark her page. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted lavender.

“Yolanda, Emil,” Lionel said. “Emil, Yolanda.” And as the two shook hands he breathed easier. They were focused on each other now, and wouldn’t expect too much from him. Mortification was, he found, a draining process. He had nothing left to offer them.

“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Emil, releasing Yolanda’s hand a second later than he should have. Lionel detected her giving it a little tug just before he gave way.

“Thank you, I am sure I feel the same,” she replied, and she stepped back a little. She turned to Lionel and said, “Did you have a good time? Is Tracy with you?”

“No, and no again,” he said. He wondered if Emil would find it strange that Yolanda was asking him about a woman, but Emil, he saw now, was too busy staring at Yolanda’s paperback.

“That’s St. Onge novel, isn’t it?” he asked.

She looked surprised at this. “Yes. Have you read him?”

“A little. My uncle sent me some copies of his books when I was a teenager. Miraculously, they made it through customs.”

“Emil grew up in Romania,” Lionel stage-whispered.

“Transylvania,” he clarified. “I didn’t like him at all. Too much of a primitivist. All his stories are about the benefits of an enlightened monarchy.”

“This one is the same,” Yolanda said, displaying the cover to him. “It is about a planet where a queen must fight off an invasion of socialist expansionists.”

“Feudalism versus socialism,” sneered Emil. “As if those were ever the only choices. A science-fiction writer has a duty, I think, to be progressive. He should be seeking to invent
new
systems, not glorifying the archaic old ones.”

Yolanda shrugged and looked at her feet. “I would have said his only obligation is to stimulate thought. Inspire the reader to consider existing realities in new ways.”

Lionel took a few steps up the staircase. “Glad you two could finally meet,” he said, “but I think it’s time to call it a night.” He was dying to be in his apartment, alone.

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Emil said, rather more forcefully than the situation warranted. “That’s such a subjectivist,
modernist
view. That definition extends the boundaries of the genre so far that it serves no purpose. It allows works of no moral weight to be called science fiction simply because they’re
clever
. Because they set a pretty
stage
.”

“I mean, it’s practically midnight,” Lionel said, displaying his watch to them. Neither one looked at him.

Yolanda straightened her back, but inched closer to her door. “I hear talk of this kind all the time,” she said heatedly. “It makes me so tired … all this expert advice on science fiction from those who have no stake in its future. You, for example, would keep it in a ghetto.
Other
forms of fiction are free to experiment, why must science fiction hold back?”

“Because fiction should
not
experiment. It should be
didactic
. Fiction is the autobiography of our culture, and if it’s rootless, meandering — if it fixes on nothing but itself — it loses its moral point of reference — loses sight of
us
 — and predetermines our intellectual decline. Our fiction — science fiction
especially
 — is a self-fulfilling prophecy! We must be vigilant as to the state of that art.”

“Tomorrow’s a work day, remember,” Lionel added more loudly.

“What would you do?” asked Yolanda, coloring and shaking
Feudalia
at Emil. “Burn books like this one?”

He grimaced. “No, I wouldn’t ever burn books. I think you mean to insult me. I
would
, however, encourage more open debate about the purposes and obligations of fiction such as this.”

“I have to put my bird to bed,” Lionel said, moving farther away from them.

“A debate about the purposes and obligations of fiction is a debate you would already have won,” Yolanda snarled, “because it requires that I admit that there
are
such purposes and obligations, which I do not.”

“You seem unwilling to admit to
anything
.”

“This feels nothing like a debate to me. This feels like a brow-beating.”

Emil folded his arms. “That is a personal attack, and is outside the acceptable limits of polite disputation, as well as being, if I may say so, predictably womanish.”

Yolanda narrowed her eyes. “Good night, Mr. Emil,” she said, and she ducked into her apartment and slammed the door.

“Mr. Apostal,”
he called after her, oblivious to Lionel, who was almost a full flight above him now.
“Emil is my Christian name!”
Then he pounded down the stairs. Lionel heard the vestibule door slam.

He took refuge in his own apartment, slipped off his jacket, and hung it over a chair, then went into the kitchen where, at the sight of him, Spencer raised his crest high and emitted a shriek that could’ve shattered crystal.

“I’ve heard enough of
that
for one night,” Lionel said. He took up the battered beach towel he used as Spencer’s blanket and tossed it over the cage. “I don’t know whether it’s worse being screeched
at
or screeched
around
, but you’re not going to be the one to help me make up my mind.” He left the kitchen, dousing the light behind him as he went. He could hear the parrot rustling in his cage, grumbling and clucking angrily.

Lionel threw himself on his bed and buried himself I his pillow, where he allowed himself the luxury of a brief breakdown. He could only ever cry into a pillow, where even
he
couldn’t witness his own tears; a fitting predicament for someone so accustomed to hiding from himself.

The squall of emotion took all of ninety seconds to exhaust itself; then he lifted his head and sniffled, sat up, and paused to conduct a small but intense war between his better and baser natures, which the baser had more than sufficient stamina to win.

He picked up the phone and dialed 1-900-HOT-GUYZ. When he’d reached the operator he asked, in a voice still quivering with unleashed emotion, “Do you have someone who does a really
good
Franklin Potter?”

He awoke late, still in his dinner clothes. He refused to hurry himself, but undressed carefully, folding as he disrobed, then showered, put on a clean suit, ate breakfast, and drove to work, all with steady deliberation. When he got to the office, at a quarter to ten, Alice didn’t return his greeting, nor did any of the other secretaries as much as make eye contact with him. His bosses, jubilant at having so successfully schmoozed Magellan the night before, congratulated him many times on his part in it. But for the clerical staff, he had effectively ceased to exist. There were at least two moments when he rounded a corner only to have his sudden appearance instantly kill a hushed conversation.

Tracy, he learned, had called in sick. He couldn’t help wondering what else she’d called in.

His curiosity was satisfied a little while later when Donna stuck her head in his office, interrupting him in the middle of putting together a budget. She grinned wickedly and said, “Heard you chickened out last night. What a surprise.” Then she disappeared.

If the office’s only deaf employee had managed to hear the news, there wasn’t much doubt about anyone else. Even worse was Carlton Wenck’s reaction. Lionel spent most of the morning dreading the moment when Carlton would appear at his door, to chirp “Knock, knock” and then ask for every steamy detail about the night before. What could Lionel possibly say? He fretted about it for hours until, heading down the hall to make a photocopy, he ran into Carlton coming the other direction.
This is it,
he thought. But Carlton merely nodded and kept going.

Lionel felt a bad, cold kind of fear. Had Carlton heard that there were no details after which to inquire? Did the entire office know the score — or rather, the lack of a score?

There was nothing to do but harden his heart and go back to his fall budget.

And so he spent the rest of the day hunched over his calculator, pencil between his teeth, crunching numbers like an automaton. And before he knew it, Chelsea Motormouth was peeking through the door to say goodnight — Chelsea being, of course, the only secretary on staff incapable of adhering to a conversational boycott of
anyone
.

“I suppose you know it’s late,” she said accusingly, as though her inability to resist speaking to him might be absolved if what she said were only nasty enough. “I suppose you know I have to lock up since we just changed the security code and only
I
know it because only
I
had the brains to write it down the day Leona gave it to us before she had to go into the hospital for her ovaries. I suppose you
know
that.”

He looked up and discovered that the sky had darkened. It was almost eight o’clock.

“It’s all right, Chelsea,” he said. “You can go. Just give me the code.”

“
Ssshhhyeah
,” she said. “That will totally happen.” Facing defeat, he packed up his things.

He dragged himself home and up the stairs, and when he shoved open the door to his apartment the draft from the hallway sent a sheet of paper skittering down the corridor. He chased after it and, ignoring Spencer’s unwelcoming screams, read it. It said,
See me when you get home
and it was signed with a Y.

Moments later he was at her door. He was about to knock when he heard a voice from within — a male voice. He halted and listened, but by its speed and confidence (there were no pauses for responses from another party) he determined it must be coming from the television. He knocked.

The voice ceased instantly. It was followed by the sounds of stirring from within, and then by the door opening wide. Yolanda stood there, barefoot, her hair in her face, wearing only a Doctor Who T-shirt (extra-large; it hung to just below her kneecaps). “You are home so late, Lionel,” she said, admitting him.

“I can leave, if you’re getting ready for bed.”

“No, no; I have something I want to show you.”

“Must be pretty good, for you to have summoned me by royal invitation,” he said, following her into the depths of the apartment, which looked, if possible, more strewn with books than he remembered from his last visit.

She affectionately tweaked one of his love handles, which caused him to yelp. “I left the note for another reason,” she said, motioning him to follow her into her TV room. “Your friend Emil stopped by earlier to see you. I told him you were at work, and he said oh yes how stupid of me, and I said yes that was stupid.” She sat cross-legged in a large Naugahyde chair and picked up the remote. “He asked if I would leave a message for you and then followed me around until I found a pen and paper. And then when I was ready he said, ‘Ask him to call me.’ And I said, ‘I would not have had to write that down.’ And he said was sorry and just
stood
there. Eventually I had to ask him to leave.” She fondled the buttons and stared at the TV, which was blank. “He is a strange man, Lionel. You are not still in love with him?”

“Only a little.” He sat back on the corduroy sofa and started to kick off his shoes, then changed his mind and kept them on. “Turns out he’s not gay.”

Yolanda lowered her head and her hair fell into her face, obscuring it. “Oh, no?”

“No,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Are you surprised?”

She tossed her head up, sending her hair tumbling behind her shoulders. “No, just sad for you. But as long as you are here, I want to show you something.” She pressed the REWIND button and her VCR spun to life, its LCD readout spiraling numerically backward. “It is a tape of Nathan Beatty lecturing.”

“Nathan Beatty? The men’s movement guru?”

She nodded, tossing him a videocassette box emblazoned with the title
The Sacred Lyre
. Then she pressed PLAY. “Listen to this.”

Beatty — a robust, somewhat overweight man — appeared onscreen, standing in a forest glen. He had slicked-back, dark auburn hair, but his long, thick beard was rust-red. His single long eyebrow bridged the gap between his blue eyes, and he wore an Edwardian ruffled shirt open at the neck, under a floral-print silk vest.

“My God,” said Lionel, “it must kill Bob to have to follow someone with
that
fashion sense.”

“Ssh,” she said, staring intently at the screen, where Beatty was already declaiming in chasm-deep vowel sounds.

“The condition of being a man is the condition of wielding
power
,” he said. “But the farther the
source
of the power from the
arm
of the man, the greater the likelihood that his power will degenerate into brute force … hooliganism.” He turned and began walking beside a softly babbling brook. “The spear was the first weapon of skill that men took up, and without the strength of a man’s arm, it was inert — it had no no potential. Therefore, the spear was the expression of a man’s
moral
worth; how it was used reflected on the spirit of its user. The invention of gunpowder allowed for the creation of a weapon that depended only
partly
on a man’s arm. Its potential was inherent; it existed before it entered a man’s hand. If a gun can discharge by accident — achieving a destructive power that has nothing to do with the man who wields it, but everything to do with chance, or chemistry — it degrades a man’s responsibility for it; it gives him, to whatever small degree, deniability. And where deniability exists, lies will exist. Power becomes a murkier realm, prone to deceit and surreptitiousness.”

That makes a rough kind of sense,
thought Lionel. He propped himself up on his elbow and thought,
Maybe some of this isn’t as crazy as I thought.

“In the nineteenth century, the Japanese samurai caste, recognizing this, gave up guns entirely and reverted to weapons of skill and strength. They restored themselves to individual sovereignty over their power — restored themselves to
chieftaincy
. Today, men
must
do the same. They must give up not only the modern weapons that define them, but the other implements that have removed true power from their grasp. For power resides not only in weapons, but in words, in music, in medicine — in all creative fields. Men must, for example, put aside the stereo systems with which they seek to seduce women, and take up instead the sacred lyre and demonstrate their worth
as
men, as
sources
of seductive energy. In this debased modern world, the only certain chieftains are
musicians
.
Honor
them.” And here he reached offstage and produced a flute, which he began playing, producing a good eighteen seconds of the most execrable music Lionel had heard in quite some time, before Yolanda pressed the STOP button and banished him from the screen.

“Did you hear the part about the spear?” she asked, dropping the remote onto a coffee table littered with copies of
Vogue,
Elle
, and
Isaac Asmiov’s Science Fiction Magazine
.

“Uh-huh,” he said, yawning. “Kind of made sense to me.”

She grimaced. “Well. I suppose. But, you know, it can be taken too far.”

“How so?”

“The reason I bought this tape is that I had another phone call from Bob two nights ago.”

“Snuck back into H.Q., did he? Becoming a regular renegade, that one.”

“You do not know the half of it, Lionel. He told me that the elder chieftains — he mentioned Mongoose and Stork by name — had shown the younger men how to make their own spears so that they could achieve chieftaincy as well.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lionel cried, a laugh coloring his voice. “Can you imagine Bob Smartt
smelting metal
?”

“The spearheads are made of stone,” she said mirthlessly. “Bob sculpted his from a nugget of flint, affixed it to a handle, and made himself a weapon, which he now calls his ‘soul.’”

“Yolanda, if you’re putting me on, I’m going to pull your hair. This whole business about Chieftains Moose and Squirrel —”

“Mongoose and Stork.”

“— and making spears … it sounds like a bad TV movie.”

“I wish I
were
joking, Lionel. What is more, to demonstrate the moral responsibility each man assumes with his spear, they were made to write a poem about it.”

Lionel was dumbstruck for a moment. “Yolanda. Come
on
.”

“It is true. To the samurai, making poetry was as crucial a skill as making war. Bob’s new friends are very big on the samurai ethic.” She took an envelope from the coffee table and handed it to him. The Naugahyde sighed as he leaned over to take it. “Bob sent his to me. It arrived today.”

Lionel took the sheet of paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and read.

Ode to My Spear
by Gander

      
Bright as platinum, lightning-bright

      
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth

      
Oh! how you do rend the dawn

      
When by chance I heft you skyward.

      
Heart-piecer! Your awesome power

      
Is to me more terrible than your beauty

      
Which is finer than silk, richer than port wine

      
More distinguished than an empress’s diadem

“Bit of the old Bob showing through here,” Lionel paused to comment.

“Keep reading,” she commanded him.

      
With thee I feel such stirrings

      
Of potency and promise

      
That were I to lose you, be of you bereft,

      
My sweet maleness would be forfeit,

      
My honor a passing thing, my glory perished,

      
My spine not at all straight, my noble hair limp and flat,

      
And I would be a miserable thing to behold

      
Dazzling to the eye no longer

      
And pitiful in the sight of the soul.

He put down the paper and raised his head; his eyebrow was cocked.

“Do not laugh,” she said. “Lionel, if you laugh, I will pull
your
hair.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he lied.

“He is bringing home his spear. He is under the impression that Nathan Beatty recommends men from all walks of life carry one. That is when I thought I should perhaps investigate this Nathan Beatty myself.”

“I’m guessing Nathan Beatty was speaking metaphorically.”

“I agree. But Bob cannot resist a direct command to accessorize.” She fell back in the chair, clearly frustrated and exhausted. “I am sure he will not be home long before he realizes he cannot actually carry a five-foot-long weapon with him to visit customers or to his favorite French café for lunch. And then he will discard it. But what about the things he brings home that are in his head? The things convenience alone will not make him discard?”

Lionel, having no answer to his, could only shrug. “Wish I could tell you,” he said, “but I can’t predict, I can’t speculate. I’ve given up on the future.” He stopped himself from adding,
Just like it’s given up on me.