Nude Men Page 17

  I am her boyfriend. Yes, I am her boyfriend. You are right to look at me. She probably wouldn’t have become famous if it wasn’t for me. She told me so herself that first night, when she said, “Maybe it’s you, maybe you bring me luck.”

  I’m very happy and content. I am a happy doggy, as one of my mother’s friends would say. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so well balanced in my life. Notice that I’m not talking to my cat anymore. Nor does she talk to me. This does not mean she’s not happy- No, she’s as affectionate as ever, but she simply stares at me dumbly most of the time, which makes me feel intelligent, normal, and sane. My greatest wish right now is for things to remain exactly as they are, and I do make that wish on my little white elephant. I’ve never made such a passive wish before, such an easy wish for you to accomplish. I’m not asking you to do anything. Rather, I’m sort of asking you not to do anything. Of course, there is the little cloud of Henrietta and Sara being unfriendly to me, but who cares? It’ll probably get cleared up by itself.

  At Laura’s shows, I sit in my chair and prop my feet up on another chair, to be supercomfortable. I’m the only one in the entire room who dares to do this. I even bring a nice little flat mushy pillow from home for my back, and it feels almost as if I’m in bed. My body tingles with warmth and comfort, and I sometimes fall asleep, which is why I always sit in a dark corner, to be less conspicuous. I drink Shirley Temples, hot chocolate, ginger ale, eat Jell-O. I don’t drink alcohol because I don’t like it, and I feel too comfortable to care what people think. If they ask me why I drink those childish sweet things, I can always say I’m an alcoholic and must abstain, which I think is more respectable than saying you just don’t like alcohol. I don’t like very prickly bubbles either, so I don’t drink Coke. I am basking: I think that’s the perfect word. Yes, I am basking.

  I look at the people to see if they are looking at me. I wonder if they know who I am, that I am the lover of the woman they love. I’m not jealous of her success. The pretension of the whole thing baffles me. I don’t feel she deserves her success, which makes it all the more wonderful. What could be better than getting something you don’t deserve?

  Her show has become a sort of cult, like The Rocky Horror Show, only infinitely more intellectual and dignified. Her magic is ever changing, ever improving, ever metamorphosing. She introduces tricks whose effect lies not in secondary function, as opposed to primary function, but rather in simple and slight unusualness. For example, she takes off her boots, and her feet are bare. She has spurned the expectation that one wears socks under boots. She pushes the top hat off her head and lets it dangle down her back like a cowboy hat. If not quite startling, this effect is at least uncommon.

  Laura also adds frills to her show. She comes down to the audience and takes things from people. The interest here lies in the fact that she chooses the one thing that each person will miss least, like a pack of cigarettes, a pen, a plastic lighter, a handkerchief, a shoelace, a button. And she is always right in her choice. The problem is that even the thing they will miss least is sometimes something that they will miss too much. Therefore, people start bringing wrapped presents for Laura, which they place on their tables for her to take, which she does. After the show, Laura and I unwrap the presents and find a nut, a pebble, a thimble, a coin. People often give her nice presents too, like silver lighters, gold earrings, silk scarves, makeup, tickets to musicals, because they love her. Sometimes the presents are bribes. One evening, accompanying a pretty pendant, there was a letter: “I am a middle-aged man with gray hair. At your next show I will be wearing a yellow tie so that you can easily recognize me. I would be grateful if you would do tricks that no one would normally clap at. I will clap at them enthusiastically, and you will smile in approval to make people think that I’m a talented and perceptive clapper. I need this boost in my social life right now. There’s plenty more where this necklace came from.” There’s an address and phone number at the bottom of the card. Laura does not accept bribes. She returns the pendant.

  One evening, among the presents, we find a diamond ring with a note that says, “Marry me,” signed by a certain Paul Tops. The following night she asks the audience, “Is Paul Tops here?” A man’s hand shoots up. She goes to him, returns the ring in its box, and says, “No. I’m sorry, I love him.” And she points to me, sitting in my dark corner, with my legs propped up on the other chair, a Shirley Temple in my hand and a dish of green Jell-O jiggle on my table, and everyone looks at me, and I am caught off guard, and I try to straighten up a little and look less as if I’m in bed, but it’s hard because of those feet of mine propped up on that chair. I smile at the people, and they clap at me. When their attention goes back to Laura, I sink back in my dark corner and sigh with relief.

  Another frill she adds to her show is to answer people’s thoughts. She asks everyone to think of a question that is important to them. She then comes down in the audience and plays fortune cookie. She stands in front of someone and says, “It all depends on if you’re healthy,” or “You would have to be more intelligent,” or “Don’t be in such a hurry,” or “Sometimes in life you can’t do that,” or “Okay, but first go to the hairdresser.” Although people do not seem displeased with her answers, one day I ask her to answer one of my silent questions, to see how good she really is. She accepts. I think: Will Henrietta ever love me?

  Not that I want her to. Just asking out of curiosity, out of lack of imagination, out of my inability to think of a more interesting question. “Not as long as I live,” Laura answers.

  Hmm. Interesting response. But it doesn’t prove her authenticity one iota.

  In her frilliest gimmick, Laura comes down to the audience and touches faces. She’ll stand in front of people, her face very close to theirs, squinting, scrutinizing their features while breathing softly on their nose, and finally, with the tip of her index finger, she’ll touch a particular spot on their face. It is the most aesthetically pleasing spot to touch on that particular person, on that particular day, at that particular moment.

  Perhaps she was inspired by our game of secretly touching.

  She’ll touch a spot on a chin, on a jaw, in the hollow of a cheek, above an eyebrow, on the tad of an eye, on the horizon of a mouth, on the sorrow of a nose, on the joke of an eyelash, on the imagination of a mustache, on the laziness of a beard. I get carried away. The men find it very exciting, I’m certain, when she breathes on their eyes and squints into their pores. One evening she does it to me in front of all those people, who are holding their breaths at the romance of it, and my heart melts with love, and so does my stomach, and I become aroused and feel as though I’m wilting. I wait with anticipation while she makes up her mind as to where she’ll touch me. I hope it won’t be somewhere funny, like the tip of my nose. I don’t want this to be comical.

  She touches my right temple. My throat constricts. I’m slightly disappointed. I was hoping she might do something different, something special, to me, like kiss me, but she obviously wants to be professional, wants to show no favoritism, no lack of discipline, no flagging, meandering, or pussyfooting. She takes her touching seriously.

  * * *

  One day, in the subway, a man is doing magic tricks. We watch him pull a rabbit out of a hat, and Laura laughs.

  “Why are you laughing?” I ask.

  “I’m thinking of what my audience would think of that. They would find that so vulgar, so base.”

  Laura has eliminated the dancing from her show, as you might have noticed by now. (“The more cultured the person, the more stark they like it,” she explains to me.)

  Articles come out on her magic.

  There are imitators, but they are not accepted by the most cultured people. She is considered the best, because the first.

  Two ballet companies have been fighting to get her.

  “But it’s not ballet,” I tell her. “You don’t even dance anymore.”

  “That’s the whole point. Just as it’s not magic.” Ne
vertheless, people still call her “The Dancing Magician.”

  Laura has raised magic to equal the most important art forms.

  How big are her powers? Can she make people love her? Are we under her spell?

  * * *

  I often catch myself not wondering if I can have a happy life with a woman who may have cast a love spell on me. I really should wonder about such a thing, logic tells me. So I wonder about it.

  chapter nine

  The Circus

  I haven’t visited Lady Henrietta in almost two weeks; she hasn’t invited me. When I tried inviting myself, she said she was too busy. She sounded depressed. Now she finally says I can come, so I am entering her apartment, about to go say hello to her in the kitchen, but I am arrested by the sight of Sara, standing at her mother’s easel, painting men’s clothes, which is not what arrests me, because she often does that. She is wearing a sparkling yellow floor-length dress with a huge crinoline. I have never seen anything so radiant. A large blue and white parrot is perched on the easel.

  I go up to her and say, “What is all this?”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “You can meet my new parrot. Mom bought it for me yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted it.”

  “That’s nice. It must have been expensive.”

  “Ten thou.”

  I’m pretty knowledgeable about pets, so I know that she’s probably not lying.

  “All you’re interested in is money,” she says. “Don’t you want to know his name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Richard.”

  “Why Richard?”

  “It was the name of my old dog, who was named after my previous dog, who was named after my previous cat, who was named after my blue blanket, who was named after my father.” Ah, her father, that mysterious thing called her father. What a strange foreign word coming from her mouth. Well, that should certainly satisfy people who think this little girl’s father is an important absence in her life, you Freudian jerks.

  “Say hello, Richard,” she tells her parrot.

  The parrot is silent.

  “He hasn’t learned to talk yet,” she explains. “Ask me how much my dress the color of the sun cost.”

  “How much?”

  “Two thou. All you’ve ever given me was a Jane doll. Do you realize that?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it, but now that you mention it, you’re right.”

  “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “It hasn’t been your birthday or Christmas yet.”

  “Typical!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I want something from you. I certainly deserve it, and not only that, I also demand it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Wait a second, I have to decide.” A second later, she says, “I want a Humpty Dumpty made of gold, another one made of platinum, and a third one made of gold and platinum, with diamond eyes, an opal mouth, and sapphire dimples, wearing an emerald earring, a ruby necklace, and a hat of dried flowers, with yellow straw hair sticking out under, and I want him to be sitting in a crystal dish of potpourri.”

  “Is it okay if I just get you the potpourri?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think such Humpty Dumpties exist.”

  “Oh really Jeremy? Well I thought you could get them at any old supermarket,” she says sarcastically. “I don’t want something that already exists, except for Richard.” And she kisses her parrot. “These Humpty Dumpties must be custom-made. Like this dress the color of the sun.” She slowly turns around to model her dress.

  I squint, blinded by the sparkling fabric. “It’s lovely,” I tell her. “You look like a queen.”

  “You’re stupid! I’m not a queen; I’m a princess. Queens are old and thick. So, will you give me those Humpty Dumpties? I love custom-made. I never knew it existed before.”

  “They would be too expensive.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Jeremy. You are little. You are a little piece of nothingness.”

  I do believe my hair is standing om end. She picks up her skirts, grabs her parrot like a teddy bear, and calmly marches into her room, slamming the door behind her, majestically.

  I’m gonna tell on her. I go to the kitchen. Henrietta is sitting at the table, on which is lying a large pink fish with blue eyes and green fins. A marzipan fish. The biggest marzipan thing I’ve ever seen. A striking resemblance to the Humpty Dumpty with sapphire dimples. Resemblance in mentality and roundness.

  The fish’s right fin is half eaten. Henrietta is picking off some more with her fingers. I am so full of my tattletale plans that I don’t pay attention to her sullen air.

  I begin, “So, was that custom-made too?” I point with disdain at the fish.

  “Yes, actually.” She keeps eating the fin.

  For an instant, I feel like tearing off the whole tail, but then I don’t, because I’m usually not the type who does uncontrolled violent things when I’m angry. So all I do is eat a piece of fin, without asking her permission.

  “Why did you buy Sara that ten-thousand-dollar parrot and custom-made dress?” I ask.

  “To make her happy.”

  “You’re ruining her personality. She’s acting like a spoiled brat, to say the least.”

  “But is she happy?”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s happy, but she’s mean.”

  Henrietta continues picking at the fin and mutters, “As long as she’s happy...”

  “Yes, but next thing you know, she’ll ask you for a dress the color of the weather, like in her movie Donkey Skin, and then what will you do? If you don’t give it to her, she’ll hate you.”

  “She already did ask me for one. And I did give it to her. She prefers the one the color of the sun.”

  I tear off a little piece of the tail and chew it angrily in front of her. Immediately, I feel sad for having ruined an uneaten section of her custom-made fish.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But you can’t keep buying her everything she asks for.”

  I suddenly notice tears running down her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting down next to her and putting my hand on her shoulder.

  “Sara is dying,” she says, staring at the marzipan fish.

  “What?”

  “The doctor says she has a brain tumor.”

  “No.”

  She nods at the fish. I want her to look at me.

  “She had pains in her head,” she says, “and nausea. He did tests.”

  “Are you sure about this? Did you get a second opinion?”

  She nods at the fish. As long as Henrietta keeps staring at that fish, I have trouble believing her words are not insane.

  “There are cures,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head and tells the fish, “It’s too far advanced. It can’t be cured at all. She has only a few weeks or months left.”

  “Oh my God.”

  We sit in silence, both of us staring blankly at the fish.

  “Does she know?” I finally ask.

  “No.”

  There’s a movement in the kitchen doorway. We look. It’s Sara, standing.

  A small voice in my head says: She does now, ladies and gentlemen.

  We stare at her, stunned, waiting for her to speak, not knowing if she heard us talk. We soon realize from her expression that she did hear.

  “Is that true?” she asks.

  Is what true? I want to ask in return, but I remain silent instead.

  Henrietta is unable to reply, which is a clear enough answer for Sara, who turns around and disappears into the living room. Henrietta rushes after her. I follow. The mother and daughter are holding each other, crying.

  That night I tell Laura the news about Sara, and I cry. Her first reaction is incomprehension. Then she cries, too, and tries to comfort me.

  The next day Henrietta asks me to come over whde Sara is at school, so we can talk in private. We sit on the couch
.

  She says, “When the doctor told me the bad news, I recorded it.”

  “Why?”

  “I can deal with bad news better if I own it and can play it whenever I wish. It makes me feel I can alter it, even though I know it s not true.” She takes out a little tape recorder. “If you ever have bad news to tell me, please warn me beforehand, so I can record it.”

  She turns on her tape recorder, and from it comes the doctor’s voice: “During the next two weeks the pain in her head will become much worse and will be constant, not just seizures like now. I cannot stress, sufficiently, how excruciating the pain will become.”

  “Oh, no,” gasps Henrietta’s voice from the tape recorder.

  “Yes. But”—the doctor pauses—“there will be another symptom going on at the same time as the pain, which will make the pain more bearable.”

  He waits for her to ask “What?” The jerk.

  “What?” she asks.

  “This secondary symptom is nicknamed the Happy Symptom. It’s rather rare, but it occurs in certain cases of brain tumor, such as Sara’s.”

  “What is the Happy Symptom?”

  “It is what it sounds like, which is, happiness. During the next two weeks or so, her tumor will be growing through a part of her brain that will cause excruciating pain, but it will also be growing through a part that will cause tremendous happiness. The more the pain grows—and it will grow each day, I assure you—so will the happiness become more intense.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Pain and happiness, just like pleasure and unhappiness, can coexist without discord. Notice that I did not say pain and pleasure, which form a different combination altogether, the pain usually killing the pleasure, beyond a certain point. The reason people have a hard time realizing that pain and happiness can live in perfect harmony is simply because that particular coupling of feelings does not happen very often. The most frequent cases in ordinary life of pain and happiness are women in labor, women who want their baby very, very much. You’ll see, it’s a fascinating phenomenon. People with the Happy Symptom often say uncommon things when they are in pain.”