Sonny
Often, there are evenings out, unavoidable occasions. On these nights, I race home to fetch Nikki from aftercare, feed her, and, with luck, get her in her pjs. Then Marta Stern's live-in nanny, Everarda, an effervescent Nicaraguan immigrant, takes over. She has been filling in for me for years now, when Marta has no plans herself. Early to bed, Everarda prefers to stay over in the small first-floor guest room behind the kitchen, walking the three blocks back to Maria's at dawn. It's a wonderful arrangement for me. Nikki loves Everarda and her accent, which she imitates with uncanny accuracy, even, in her most pettish moments, to the woman's face. Everarda pays no mind. She is one of those women who knows that the real purpose of the world, unaffected by couturier dresses, rap albums, or political payoffs in the men's room of the Club Delancey, is the nurturance of children, and that in that critical field, no one exceeds her wisdom. She calls Nikki
'Nina' and moves her through her evening routine as smoothly as if my daughter were a puppet on strings.
With her overnight bag, Everarda comes in, shaking off the snow, which has just begun falling and lies thick on the false-fur collar of her coat. She is full of gossip. Marta, pregnant with her third baby, is varicose and swollen, and put out with her husband, Solomon, a management consultant. 'Solomon, he gone all de time? She war yellin, you know? He god to come home. He gib her kisses. He send her flowers. He just smile.' Everarda smiles too at Solomon's patience. He is a thin dark man. His family are expats, Jews from Cuba who arrived there in the seventeenth century. He's as dark as someone Maltese or Sri Lankan, a person bred of the blood of many nations.
Tonight's event is a retirement dinner for Cyrus Ringler, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, for whom I clerked for a couple of years right after law school. Law clerks spend their first year or two as lawyers, an intensely formative period, at a judge's side, seeing first-hand how the flesh of real life hangs on the raw bones of law-school learning. Much as racehorses are always identified by sire and dam, clerks are forever known by their judges, and it is perhaps my proudest heritage in the law to be a 'Ringler clerk.'
Accordingly, I must go tonight. I drive faster than I should through the pelting snow to the Center City, parking in the indoor lot at the Hotel Gresham. 1 walk across the street to the Parker, where Justice Ringler is being saluted by the City of Hope. It's the end of cocktails, just as the five hundred lawyers and pols and judges are moving to their seats, making their last efforts to work the room. I hold a number of conversations at bay, so I can get close enough to the elevated dais to make sure Cy Ringler sees me – he blows a kiss and waves. From his color, I can tell he's already a little drunk, enjoying his last hurrah. A former Kindle County PA, the Justice, as I will forever call him to his face, is one of those redoubtable men of the law who gathered respect as he rose by refusing to break the rules for political purpose. He was not inflexible or unrealistic; but he always knew the outer limits. Even so, he was a fabulous compromiser around the court. He hated dissents, felt they diminished the authority of decisions, and loved to find procedural gimmicks allowing divisive issues to be passed back to the lower courts. Marjoe, who's had cancer twice in the last five years, is beside him, wasted-looking, but bearing up. She must fly a hairdresser in from the corn belt. Where else could she even find somebody to do her hair like that, tightly curled and flattened down around her ears like a bonnet?
Oddly, in this environment, surrounded by most of the Tri-Cities legal notables, I feel more than anywhere else the extraordinary attention Nile Eddgar's trial has generated. My neighbors in U. Park are too circumspect to speak to me about my job, and it has been no task, given my schedule, to avoid the papers and the news. I've caught sight of headlines now and then, but it's only tonight I fully sense how closely the case is being watched. Everyone passes a word about it. 'Ooh, you got a hot one,' Manny Escobedo, another of the Supreme Court Justices, tells me. Cal Taft, a bar president, remarks, ‘I don't have to ask what you've been doing, do I?' I glow with the neon of celebrity. The judges all quietly inquire how the bastard cornered me into a bench trial. I smile and keep my answers nondescript, which, in the strange ballet of accepted mannerisms at work here, is taken as a perfect response.
Seated at a table of former Ringler clerks and their spouses, I endure the usual struggle getting a vegetarian meal. The waiters in their cutaways look at me as if I'm a heathen. Who wouldn't want that baked chicken, rigid as a hockey puck? I have asked to sit next to Milan Dornich, who was my co-clerk for a year. When I split with Charlie, Mike Dornich was one of those guys who came to my mind; mild, angular, witty. With Malta one night, watching Nikki play with Clara, Malta's older daughter, I confessed these thoughts. Marta was alarmed. 'Jesus, Sonny,' she whispered, 'he's gay.' I realized instantly she was right, and felt amazed by myself, the way we forever see others through the lens of our own needs. Always happy for one another's company, Mike and I whisper together, conspiring over the absurdity of the event. The $200 I spent for two tickets, one of them unused, is a mild extravagance. Many lawyers from our era have rounded the bend into plum law-firm partnerships. Daniella Grizzi, my immediate predecessor in Ringler's chambers, makes millions every year in her P.I. practice and is listed as a $10,000 patron of the event. Only Mike Dornich, now second in command at the State Appellate Defenders, and I remain in the public sector, the poor mice at a banquet of fat rats.
The dessert and speeches come together. It's a work night and everybody wants to be gone by 9:30. I kiss Mike and slip out before the crowd. In the vast, carpeted reception room where cocktails were served and name tags applied, I catch sight of Chief Judge Brendan Tuohey. Three highballs along, he is glad-handing and waving to other early escapees, as he returns from the men's room. He greets me in a mood of apres-work geniality, his nose red as sunburn from the lick of whiskey. He seems so happy I'm afraid he might even kiss me.
'Sonny, Sonny,' he says, 'how are you this evening?' He takes my hand and with the other grips me near the shoulder in an impressively neutral way. 'I've been meaning to give ya a call. So your trial is going on, Sonny?'
'Yes, Chief,' I answer, despairing, as ever, over the ludicrous salutation. Which tribe did I join? The judges all call each other by first names. Old-boy stuff. But I could never bring myself to 'Brendan' with this man.
'Seems to be quite a Donnybrook mess.'
'Yes, sir.'
He shakes his head in wonder at the tirelessness of human disputes. With a jolly smile, I beg off and hurry into the little corridor where the cloakroom and the Johns are secreted. In the full-length mirror, beside the coat check, I look myself over. Good enough. Black sheath and pearls. All those years of looking for a style of my own – not camp, not trite, not hippie or yippie or yuppie or commercial – have resolved themselves in a sort of residue of fashion that says I don't have the time to fuss too much with hair or makeup, a look of having let go gratefully of a little of the heat and glory of the past.
Just as the young girl hands back my coat, I hear my name once more from behind. Tuohey again. Something slipped his mind. I have one of those instants of alarm the Chief Judge always provokes. Brendan Tuohey can turn a corridor, even a well-lit one, into a sinister enclave. He comes one step too close.
'Glad I caught you.' His voice is lowered and he speaks between his teeth. 'Happen to see Matt Galiakos tonight?'
I've nearly asked 'Who?' when I recollect: Galiakos is the state chair of the Democratic Farmers amp; Union Party. The people who count with Brendan Tuohey would no more fail to recognize Galiakos's name than John XXIII's.
'Interested in your trial,' says Tuohey. ‘I guess he'd been lookin at tonight's news. Loves Lloyd Eddgar. Course we all do.' Lloyd? I marvel. Lloyd! Tuohey's tongue actually appears as he wets his lips. 'Says to me, he says, "What's that gal doing? Don't she know we're in the same party? I thought she was a friend of his.'"
Tuohey laughs – oh, he's merry. He shivers in glee and is gone at once, his step spry with power and feigned delight, never again meeting my eye. Not because he's afraid of what he's done; he can tiptoe down the line as precisely as Nijinsky. Or because he hopes to mute his message, invisible and awful as the odor of plague. No, he wants to give me time. So I recognize it's in my interests to comply. He's some kind of genius, this man, with his narrow, crafty, wizened face. He couldn't have done this better if he'd staged rehearsals. All the phony confidentiality. We love Lloyd Eddgar. We're in the same party. Thought you were a friend of his. I've been at the law a dozen years – a clerk, a prosecutor, a judge – in each role wearing the borrowed mantle of public power, and have never faced anything like this. I stand here in the hall, alone in the bank of deep shadow between the sconces, weakened by rage.
Despite repeated tries, I can get only one arm into my coat. Half-frantic, I give up and ride down the escalator clutching the free sleeve against my side under my purse. But like the victim always, I feel cheapened and shamed. A few weeks ago, Brendan Tuohey was the one giving me all that malarkey: 'You're the right judge for this case, Sonny. Tricky situation, but it comes with the robes.' All the stuff I wanted to hear. And now he tells me the real reason: so I can smooth things out for my 'friend' Eddgar. For Godsake! I'm sick, as ill as if I'd stepped from a rocking boat, when I catch my reflection in the Parker's revolving doors and see the truth: I've compromised myself. I stayed on a case I should have given up, and now must stand still while a mangy alley cat like Brendan Tuohey rubs his flanks against me.
I rush across the street, high heels clacking on the glistening pavement of Mercer Avenue, which is rimed with salt and snow. By the time I reach the lobby of the Gresham, I'm actually shaking. I lay my hand over my chest and grip the pearls at my throat. In the old days, a judge who complied with a communication like this received a visit – and an envelope – a few weeks later from somebody connected, a lawyer, a councilman. Now discipline is a matter of negative reinforcement. Brendan Tuohey can send me to Housing Court, to listen to the endless lament of deadbeat tenants, or to Night Narcotics Court, so I'll never see Nikki during the week. Send me for the 'good of the court,' with no other explanation. That's what I'm supposed to think about, while he slides off to let Galiakos know the word has been delivered.
Can I even drive? I'm desperate, as so often, frantic for someone to talk to. I can't call Cy Ringler tonight. Sandy Stern! He'll know what to do. In fact, he already foresaw the very situation. There were a dozen friends, colleagues who were jealous when word leaked that Ray Horgan had called to sound me about the bench. Stern, alone among the persons whose advice I cared for, warned me against it.
'Pay no attention,' he told me. 'Dismiss what Raymond Horgan and his Reform Commission promise you.' Stern's soft face, with the tiny dark eyes surmounted in plump flesh, was suddenly reproachful, as I recited Horgan's commitments: A felony court assignment within two years. Complete independence. I must have sounded to him like Shirley Temple. Stern leaned across the linen cloth at the Matchbook, where we were eating, probably stifling the impulse to wag a finger. 'For today, Brendan Tuohey needs you and your spotless reputation. Two years from now the Commission will be an amusing part of history, one more toothless sop of briefly agitated public opinion, and they will force you to choose between your fine assignment or succumbing to their ways. You are not the first, Sonia. This, I remind you, is Kindle County, where great capacities of human invention have been set for a century on devising systems utterly invulnerable to reform.'
At the bank of telephones in an alcove, I probe the recesses of my purse. Nearby, the lobby of the Gresham, a towering space constructed in the Gilded Age, churns with sound and motion. Dramatic marble columns, the size of sequoias, offset by long curtains of green velvet, extend the entire height of the room. Five floors above, the ceiling is encrusted with gilt and cherubim and a poor Italianate mural of Venus and Cupid. On the marble shelf before the phones, I begin removing items. Kleenex. Lipstick. Where's the damned address book? When I was younger, I could have remembered the bloody number! Stern is not at home. I could call Marta, but she tends to show a tough, inflexible side on matters like this. She'll badger me to report it. To whom, for Godsake? And how do I keep these events from turning against me? Tuohey is too cagey to catch. He'll change a word or two and portray his remarks as innocuous and me as hypersensitive and unfit. Within a week, his minions will be clamoring for my resignation.
And then I realize that Seth is staying here, in this hotel. Seth! The thought of him – reliable, open, happy to help – is an inspiration. 'Mr Weissman,' I tell the operator when I move down two bays to the house phone. There is no Weissman. 'Frain,' I say.
It's rung twice, when I suddenly slam the handset down. Seth? I think. Am I crazy? Tell Seth? Hobie's friend? I lay my fingertips, bloodless, frigid, against my forehead. Leaning over the small shelf beneath the house phones, awaiting my composure, I catch, incongruously, a sudden pleasant scent of my own perfume. If I phone Stern's office, I'll get his service. A criminal defense lawyer is like a doctor, always on call, available for midnight bailings, visits to a crime scene. They'll locate him. He'll remonstrate mildly, say he told me so, then figure out what to do.
And then – naturally, isn't that life? – I spot Seth across the lobby. He's dressed casually, in the white dress shirt he wore to court and a pair of khakis. He has magazines in one hand and, I think, a candy bar. Observed from one hundred feet, he appears humble and appealing: a tall, slender man, blondish, bald, pleasant-looking. He is chatting with a desk clerk. After a week and a half in the hotel, he has acquaintances. He's being himself, wholesome and engaging. He laughs, and then, by whatever magic there is in this, feels the weight of my glance from a distance and actually jolts a bit at the sight of me. He comes my way so quickly that he's gone several yards before he recollects the clerk, to whom he tosses a departing wave. Arriving in front of me, he is perfectly still.
'Hi,' I answer. ‘I was at a dinner here. Across the street actually.'
'Jeez, you look fantastic' He does a real routine, mouth open, ending by quickly touching his heart. As if makeup and hair spray turned me into Helen of Troy. I manage an expression of pleasant tolerance.
'I'm not feeling fantastic at the moment. I had something really, really rotten happen to me just now.'
Beneath the fair brows, his greenish eyes search me. I hold up my hand. It quakes involuntarily, as if I'd been struck by palsy. The display nonpluses us both.
'You want a drink?'
God, do I! We set off together for the saloon across the lobby and actually reach its swinging doors. Mingled voices and the jazz piano well out of the dark room. Before my eyes adjust, I can make out only a large illuminated aquarium behind the bar, through which angel fish and other bright tropical creatures travel amid the bubbles. A quarter of the lawyers in Kindle County will be in here shortly, pausing for a nightcap before they ride up the parking elevator to collect their cars. Brendan Tuohey, who has watered himself in this place for years, is among the likely arrivals. Not the company I want to keep right now.
'Forget it,' I say. 'Bad idea.'
'What?'
'Appearances,' I answer.
'So come upstairs. We'll raid the mini-bar in my room. Come on.'
When I issue a prim look, he makes a face. 'Don't be ridiculous.' With my elbow in hand, he steers me into the old gilded elevator, a gorgeous cage of brass and mirrors. 'So what happened?' he asks as we are rising.
‘I don't know, Seth,' I answer, which is almost true. 'I had an unpleasant encounter with another judge. Something about this case.'
'Uh-oh.' His mouth narrows in a discreet pucker and he says no more until we reach his rooms. There, I fall into a barrel chair with a cane backing which is just inside the door. Seth's suite is the real thing, a relic of the grand era when suites were the refuge of the rich and not a promotional toy, offered like a free breakfast. There are mock-heirloom pieces with Queen Anne feet and satin-sheened wallpaper with a classic green stripe. Seth is at home here. He has a laptop computer open on the desk in the corner and the walnut doors of the armoire, which holds the mini-bar where he's bending, have been thrown back, revealing the dead eye of the TV. Newspapers from many different cities litter the room. In the bedroom, I can see a four-poster with those carved wooden pineapples atop the posts. Another pair of khakis has been heaved over one of them.
‘I just need to settle down for a second.' I bolt half the Chardonnay he gives me.
'You don't want to talk about this, right?'
‘I shouldn't, Seth. I just need some company. Somebody passed a remark about Eddgar. It's smarter not to get into it.'
'Yeah,' says Seth, 'that he belongs in the seventh circle of hell, right?' He laughs bitterly. 'God, I despise him. What a heinous creep he is.'
I do not answer, do not dare. What am I supposed to do for Eddgar? I wonder suddenly. I don't even know. A momentary fear takes hold that I might conform to Tuohey's wishes by accident. Considering that prospect, I emit a brief moan. But I have no choices now. With a few minutes to absorb all this, I can see that there's no backpedaling, no sidesteps. The only direction to go is forward. I have to finish as well as I can what I should never have started. As I cycle through these calculations, Seth watches, his eyes watery with uncertainty. I can't talk to him about this, I realize. Not him or anybody else. That's the only true thing Tuohey said to me. 'Comes with the robes.' It's my problem. Alone.
'I'm going to go, Seth.'
'Wow,' he says. 'Is this the Guinness record for brief visits?'
‘I just needed a second. I appreciate your being the port in the storm.' I stand, taking hold of the ornate brass doorknob. I drain the rest of the wine. 'Really,' I add. 'Thanks.'
'Just a second,' he says, 'I'll kiss you good night.' He makes no move to rise. He's in a wooden armchair, upholstered in satin to match the wallpaper, laughing at me, at both of us actually.
‘I think the last time will hold me for a while.'
'Well, that'll make a fella feel like Prince Charming.'
'Oh, don't do your wounded thing, Seth.'
'No, I'm not wounded.' He turns to the glass table beside him and pours himself more wine. 'By the time I got back here, I actually was pretty encouraged. You wanna know why?'
A person – a woman – who was going to remain aloof or at least unentangled would say goodbye right now. I know that, but I'm curious, of course. He takes a sip to steady himself and I feel myself make a measured nod.
'When I thought about it,' he says, 'really considered everything, I wasn't sure you ever found anybody better. You know, than me.'
In shock, I laugh, a shot of sound that rebounds off the grand old walls. The gall or something! And he means it. 'You don't understand,' he says.
'I don't. I certainly don't. I mean, Seth, really, some of the stuff you come out with.' 'Look,' he says.
'No, you look,' I say, feeling an intense flare of the anger that I suddenly see I've been holding at bay. 'I'm forty-seven years old. And I'm like you. I'm unhappy just like you are, Seth. I don't always enjoy the way my life turned out. I look back and wonder what happened to all the promise, just like you do. I envy people who are young and envision the future as something great. You're not the only one with angst. I'm tired of fucking up. I'm tired of making the same mistakes. At the worst moments, I'm sick of myself. And this, us, this isn't kidding around. And I'm running out of time for stupid things. I thought all weekend about how this would turn out and I can just see it: "Auld lang syne" and "Isn't it thrilling"; then, "Hey, I have a life." '
'Sonny.'
‘it's stupid,' I repeat. it's not' He puts down his glass and stands to calm me. i mean, I'm glad you're here. But you looked pretty damned happy to see me a minute ago.'
'Yes, I was relieved. I needed – need-a friend. But that doesn't mean it's not dumb to retread a childhood love affair.' it wasn't childhood,' he answers at once, 'and it's not dumb. One thing I've learned: I will not treat the rest of my life like it's meaningless, just because it's past.' In conviction, he briefly makes a fist, then takes a step forward and grips both of my shoulders. 'Look. I want you to take a deep breath. Okay? You know me. I'm maybe a quarter less crazy than I used to be. But I'm the same sincere dope. I think I know what I'm doing. I think I'm taking stock. Some things have mattered more than others. Some people have mattered more. You can fuck up with me like you can with anybody else. And maybe you will. But you're playing with a bigger bankroll if you get in the game with me. I knew Zora. I saw that whole scene. I saw your collection of black peasant blouses, so you wouldn't have to worry about what to wear, and how scared you'd get when you were afraid your skin was going to break out. And I've seen what you've accomplished off that start, which is a hell of a lot. There are maybe three billion men on this planet. Some are smarter. Some are better-looking. And most of them have more hair. But I've got one advantage over every single one of them: I know how great you are. And I'm not sure you've ever met another man who does.'
He takes the wine glass, which unconsciously I've continued holding, and gazes at me in a fixed way. The Look. All mating primates, I learned once, utilize this dilated, dead-on stare.
'You know what happens now?' he asks.
'You kiss me good night?'
'Not good night,' he says.
When he leans down, a trace of exasperated sound escapes me. But I do not resist. That great creature hunger begins to stir. In the cascades of longing, I will lose track of myself. And who will be here afterwards? I wonder. Who?
So, it happens. Outside, fresh snow clings to the city streets and within the bedroom of the suite the exterior light is softly refracted so the air seems enhanced by the glow, which includes darker, purplish shades from the lee end of the visible spectrum. Between us, it is surprisingly smooth. Memory, knowledge – the past brings its comforts. In the living room, urgently embracing, we shed our clothes. Some wary, calculating portion of me continues to stand guard, but I'm a slave now to sensation. Even that awful moment, the one I have numbed myself to with so many half-conscious mental rehearsals, when my bra slides off and the lopsided work of modern surgery is disclosed, sluices by in the currents of desire. This is one promise Seth has kept: he is not afraid, not of anything about me, or that the present is not the past. God, sex is great! The body made servant to the spirit. His tongue is everywhere. Finally, he bodies me down on the four-poster, my feet still on the floor, and stands before me, erect, pointing north by northwest, as he fiddles with the condom wrapping. Then the slow opening, enveloping, the pressure and pleasure of merger.
'Slow, baby,' I whisper, 'slow,' unable to recall if it's an honest memory or merely fantasy that I whispered this to him long ago.
I come last, throbbing by the end on the wilted heap of him. Afterwards, we lie together in the bed. He grabs the quilted spread, which we did not bother to remove, and wraps it around us. We are surrounded by the smells of hotel linen.
'That didn't take long,' I finally say. 'To get back there.'
'I'd say I was right about everything.'
'I'd say I was homy.'
We laugh. Just giddiness. Life can be all right. 'What do you think the biological function is of female orgasm?' I ask.
'You mean how it happens?'
'From a Darwinian perspective. Men have to come to spill their seed. It's directly related to reproduction. But what do you think nature gets out of letting women feel so good?'
‘I think it's what they call an incentive. Remember Green Stamps?'
'But as long as men were so inclined, and women had this profound desire to be mothers -' Considering, I pause. 'Sex isn't pleasurable for all species. Aren't there cats – panthers, I think -the male has a barb at the end of his business and as he withdraws, she actually snarls and screams. It's the barb that causes ovulation. I learned that ages ago. Wasn't it with you?'
'Wrong boyfriend.'
'No! I'm sure we used to go to the zoo and watch those large cats make it.' He laughs. He was putting me on.
‘I didn't realize voyeurism was the motive,' Seth says. 'My recollection, Judge, is that we were taking Nile.'
'Jesus,' I mutter. He's right. My heart, in reflex, freezes over and I grow silent with the complications. Beneath the coverlet, his fingers trace and retrace the grooved stretch marks left years ago on the good breast by the period of explosive growth I went through at ten, eleven, twelve. I have asked all the doctors if there could be a relationship between that hormonal surge and cancer. They only shrug.
Seth sits up now swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The sight of the older man remains marginally surprising. He is still lean, but his skin holds less color, less tone. There is the inevitable fleshy gathering at the waist, and his back, as he slumps, shows the slightest bow. He is pensive, as we both are, in the aftermath.
‘I don't think much of this Darwin stuff,' he says. 'What would Darwin say about music? What's the survival function of that? And it exists in every culture.'
'It makes me happy.'
'Like your orgasm.'
'Maybe nature wants us to be happy after all, Seth. Do you think that's possible?' He doesn't take an instant. 'Nope.'
'Don't happy people live longer? Isn't there research? Isn't there something tonic to the organism in enjoying the whole grand show?'
'Then I'm doomed,' he says. 'I'm on borrowed time.' His delivery is good and I feel light-hearted and laugh as he intends. 'You still think you can achieve Nirvana?' he asks me.
'Not Nirvana.'
'But you're happy?'
'Happier than when we were young. Like you said, I feel I've accomplished things. I love my child. I'm proud I'm a good parent. I'm a good judge.' I wait then to see if I believe what I have said, if some internal truth meter will buzz in disbelief, but it goes down without a tremor. Seth, in reply, is quietly shaking his head.
‘I don't know many happy anythings, Sonny. Not lawyers. Not journalists. Not Indian chiefs.'
'You're in no position to assess that, Seth. After what you've been through. It's too soon.'
'Two years? I would have thought -' He lifts a hand. 'When it happened'- he takes a breath – 'when he died, there was so much of that disconnected feeling from nightmares, you know, where you're reaching inside to grab hold of whatever part of your soul provides reassurance the terror isn't real? But, of course, what I recognized four times a day was that I wasn't getting out of this one, there was nothing better to wake to. I walked through months like that, and there are times now when I realize that period has never really ended.'
Even now, back in Seattle, he cannot walk north from the house, he says. Down the block a few doors there's a house where they poured a new walk four years ago and Isaac, in a typically ungovernable mood, wrote his name with a stick, carving the ragged letters half an inch deep with his own special mix of strength and fury. The neighbors were so angry they stopped speaking to Seth, even to Lucy. Now the boy is dead and the name is still there. He has gone by once or twice, Seth says, and just dissolved. What a sight: a man in a trench coat, standing on an empty walk before a house where the occupants still hate him, weeping so fiercely that you know he feels he will never remember how to stop.
‘I comfort myself in the most ridiculous ways. I mean, this is nothing compared to the legendary blows of history. I think about what my parents went through. But, you know' – he looks at me – 'there's no relativity to suffering.'
I hold him for quite some time, something I have yearned to do since he first told me. Then he goes out to the living room. He brings wine back for both of us.
'Have you tried therapy, Seth? Was that a joke the other day, about treatment?'
'I've been in therapy longer than Woody Allen. What about you?'
'Surgery? Divorce? I took my turn. It helps.'
'It helps,' he says, but shakes his head. Then he puts the glass down somewhat precipitously on the Louis-something night table, saying he knows what he needs. When he returns, he stands naked before the bed, that fox amid the bushes still red and glistening. He sings a few bars from Steely Dan: ' "The Cuervo gold, the fine Columbian, make tonight a wonderful night." ' He opens his palm, displaying a joint. I actually jolt a bit.
'Where did that come from? Is this a habit?'
'Hobie,' he says. The one word is explanation enough. 'How about it? Old times' sake?'
'You're kidding.'
'Sure, I'll get my guitar. We can have a hootenanny.' 'Don't forget the red lightbulb and the towel to stuff under the door.'
I fear he's gone to get them, but when he returns from the living room again it's merely a pack of matches he's brought. He surrounds himself in a bouquet of smoke. I haven't been this close to the odor in years. Occasionally, there's an amusing fugitive whiff as some teenaged goof passes on the street, or a single breath taken in as something wafts in from the distance in a park or at a concert.
‘I don't,' I say, when he offers it. 'I haven't since I got my law license.'
'Oh bullshit,' he answers in disapproval, not doubt. I'm being conformist, still a generational sin. 'Something has to count, Seth.'
'I suppose,' he answers and picks up the pillows and seats himself behind me on the bed, pulling me back so that I lounge against him as he smokes, snug within the warmth of his legs and the leisure of our nakedness. And what is it that counts, I wonder suddenly, what great absolute can I name? In the land of laws, the one thing I promised myself would not occur has happened. In the great new age, I have found a way to bring myself to shame like the heroines of old-time novels, fucked my way to ignominy like Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina. And for just this moment it does not seem to matter. No, that's not right. It matters even now that I'm not better or more honorable. It matters that I've tried and failed by some measure all my life. It will always matter. But it is, right now, just a fact like many others. Like the glow of the moon or the paths of the migrating birds. When he brings the joint back to my lips, I take it from him. The pungence and the raw taste of the smoke, more or less forgotten, for some reason make me laugh.
'Seduced you,' he says.
'You seem to be an expert.'
'Oh, please.'
'Have you fucked around a lot, Seth?'
He answers that he doesn't think of this as fucking around.
‘I meant before.'
He takes another hit and peeks cutely around my shoulder. 'Is this an AIDS check or character assessment?' 'The latter. I hope.' 'What do you think?' he asks.
'I don't know. I suppose I think yes. But maybe I'm trading in stereotypes. You know, sort of famous, sort of rich. I always think people like that get loose. Were you?'
The ember of the joint brightens like a lightning bug. 'You first,' he says.
'I don't have anything to tell. Once, when I was a prosecutor, I fell half in love with the defense counsel in one of my cases, but that was temporary insanity. It only lasted a couple of days. And nothing came of it. He's fat and a lot older, and I was pregnant.' Even telling the story, though, it occurs to me that what's going on right now fits my pattern. I only fall for men at the most unlikely moments – as if I need a time when my own security systems are not on high alert.
'That's it?'
'That's it.'
He tokes again.
'Tell,' I say.
'Among the many sad ways I've spent time in the last twenty years have been a couple of really hopeless affairs with women who offered me very little except an admiring audience and the usual animal thrill. And what I discovered is that life offers nothing more depressing than a relationship conducted solely within the wallpapered dimensions of an expensive hotel room.'
'Did Lucy know?'
'Yeah, but it was complicated. This was all before Isaac was born. We had a pretty rough spell then.' 'Like this one?'
'This isn't the same. Not at all. We're not angry. We just seem to be out of gas.'
'Why were you angry then?'
'Why was I angry?' he repeats. 'Lots of reasons. But let's just say that Lucy's arms aren't her only limbs that have been open to humanity.'
'Ah.' Their problems are getting clearer to me all the time. 'That makes people angry.'
'I suppose. But I didn't start wandering to get even. I loved the idea of it. Of falling. For someone. I still think it's the most thrilling thing in life. Does that sound corny? Or just weak?'
'Weak.'
'Yeah.' He knows it. He looks down between his knees. 'That was the lesson I learned from you, though. The thrill.' 'Right.'
'I mean it,' he says and touches the joint to my lips again. 'It sounds like the song. What was his name. Something, something "the thrill of it all – I'll tell them I remember you." '
'Frank Meld.'
He rolls back. 'I would. You know, say that.' 'When the angels ask me to recall -"'
I turn away – I will not let him. What is this old fear? I still don't know, but I feel suddenly the presence of all the men – Seth and Charlie and a number in between – whom I turned from with the same morbid fluttering of the heart. I look at him squarely.
‘I don't know a man who believes less in angels.'
'But I believe in you, Sonny,' he answers, and draws my hand down between his ruddy thighs to appraise the transitory emblem of his faith.
I had forgotten the aphrodisiac magic of marijuana, the forging sensation, like a river current, rippling outward, ever outward to the fingertips. Afterwards, I am sore and spent; the dope makes me sleepy. I wake in a flush of immediate embarrassment. I am laid out amid the rumpled bedding, thick with our musk, without a stitch of clothing, legs wide, oblivious, like somebody on a bender. The overhead fixture, old-fashioned milk glass festooned with silky cobwebs, burns blindingly.
'Two-fifteen,' he says, when I ask the time. I groan and cover myself with the top sheet, then sit up. I always try to check with Everarda.
Seth is seated at the foot of the bed, still naked, his legs crossed. My purse has been emptied onto the spread and he is looking through it, all the telltale detritus of my life. My credit cards are laid out. Photographs. Business cards I've forgotten to throw away. My checkbook. He is eating an apple, a glossy Red Delicious, which looks to be one he bought the other day at Green Earth. Staring at him, I find that I'm no longer stoned. My mouth is stale, dry as a withered leaf.
'May I ask?'
'I'm amusing myself,' he says. ‘I was alone.' I could tell him he's intruding. But that would be hypocritical. I knew he meant to intrude all along.
'And? Are you amused?'
'A little.' He offers the apple and I take a bite.
'Did you do this when we lived together?'
'Of course not.'
'Any surprises?'
‘I have cards from two different travel agents and a brochure on the Philippines from a third. I thought that was interesting. Are you traveling?'
'Not with a six-year-old.'
'But you'd want to go?'
'I'd love to go back. I'd love to go everywhere. Someday.' I shudder with the thought: Travel. Free. Freed of custom, language, everything known. For me, the thought has always brought with it some delicious, unpronounceable fantasy that lurks in me, a tantalizing secret not fully known by anyone, even me. Another life!
'That's where you ended up when we split, wasn't it? The Philippines?'
'With the Peace Corps. I hoped they'd send me to some village, but I taught birth control to women in Olangapo City, near Subic Bay. It was disillusioning at times. I was basically helping a lot of them be whores. But I loved the country and the people. They have tremendous self-respect, in spite of all the colonization. The revolution didn't surprise me.' I recall momentarily the English-language movie houses, the dampness, the fish, the sleek dark boys.
‘I was flabbergasted, you know.' 'Were you?'
'When you joined? I had no idea you'd want to do that.' 'I also applied to be an astronaut.' 'Come on!'
'No, I wanted to go to the planets. Venus, Mars. I'm dead serious. And I was sure it was going to happen. Somehow. In the future. It's strange to realize I'm never going to get there. I really thought I would.'
How had that changed? When I was twenty-two, that destiny had seemed so real. The wish, the need to be a parent, to leave the species better off by one, and everything that came with it -house and things, job and schedule – had blown it all away. That's how it is for everyone. But did I ever really say goodbye to the girl in space who was going to make something spectacular of her desire to get a million miles from her mother? It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'm going home now. Not to the stars.
Seth hugs me as I dress, a silly burlesque of being unwilling to let me go. As I gather the last things, he waits by the door. Suddenly, inexplicably, the future is upon us. There is now a next move. I tell him to come for dinner tomorrow, Nikki will be thrilled. Then he catches me in one final embrace, and in the sheer delirium of weariness I am nearly knocked cold by the unexpected surge of passion, his and my own.
'How do you feel about this?' he asks as he finally lets me go.
After a second, I answer, 'Better than I thought I would.'
Smiles. God, he smiles.
'Great,' he says. Then I'm gone.