Nude Men Read online

  Henrietta insists on dressing up in men’s clothes every day now. With a jacket and pants and shirt, and a very formal, tight tie, and men’s shoes, and sock garters.

  “Men’s clothes meant a lot to her,” she explains.

  “They only meant a lot to her because you omitted them from your paintings,” I tell her.

  “That doesn’t make any difference. She drew them and loved them, and that’s all that matters.”

  Henrietta often doesn’t cry now but just sits motionless, as though deep in thought. I ask her what she’s doing. She says, “I’m trying to figure out why Sara died. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “What sort of explanation are you talking about? Do you mean spiritual?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Do you mean supernatural, or magical, or astrological?”

  “No, not that at all.”

  “Do you mean scientific?”

  “Probably.”

  “But we know the scientific reason.”

  “No, that was the medical reason.”

  “Well then, what sort of scientific are you talking about?”

  “Unknown scientific.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s unknown.”

  “But I mean what area of science?”

  “It could be any area, though I would think it’s probably space, and life, and the mind.”

  “Life as in ‘life on other planets’?” I say, trying to be funny. She looks at me, not amused, but not hurt, as I was afraid she might be. “No, not that at ad,” she says serenely.

  * * *

  Henrietta wants to go back home, says she’s not feeling better at my mother’s. I don’t think she should give up so soon. It’s only been a week. I feel terrible, totally powerless. If anything could have helped her, it would have been to paint. That was the best chance she had. As soon as this thought enters my mind, I realize I’m lying. I haven’t done quite enough for her.

  A tiny idea germinates in my mind. It remains very little and almost subconscious, because I suppress it. But it’s there, nagging at me: I could offer myself to her. That might be the most helpful thing I could do. She probably wouldn’t accept, but it’s the gesture that counts. But then I tell myself: Jeremy, your body is not a cake. You don’t offer it to be polite. You are not a cigarette either, and should not expect her to say, “No thanks, I don’t smoke,” or “Yes, thanks a lot.”

  I just feel it’s my duty to do this. I love my girlfriend, Laura, but I feel as though I’m not a true friend to Lady Henrietta if I don’t offer myself completely. I know this reasoning sounds demented. It does to me too, but the idea is planted in my brain, and I can’t get rid of it, no matter how hard I try.

  That afternoon, she tells me, “Before she died, I was wondering how it would be for me once she was gone. I knew it would be horrible, that I would be in terrible pain, but I thought I would be strong enough to get through it. I even imagined that, a day or two after her death, I would sort of turn to stone and be very unemotional, especially outwardly. But that’s not what happened. I can’t stop crying, and I feel as though I’ll never be able to stop.”

  I hug her and stroke her hair, and yet I think that now is not the right time to offer myself. Tonight would be better. I’m very nervous about the idea, but I feel I should at least try, knowing that I would later be ashamed if I hadn’t.

  That night, she is lying on her bed, her back to me. I lie down next to her and wrap one arm around her. She hugs my arm, and I feel the tears on her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry. Turn around,” I tell her.

  She snivels but doesn’t move.

  “Turn around. I want to tell you something.” I gently pull her shoulder toward me. She turns and looks at me. She looks like a child. Grief has swollen her face, giving the impression of baby fat. She seems vulnerable and helpless.

  Now that she is facing me, I don’t know what to say, so I just kiss her. She does not push me away. I hug her and kiss her, and nothing is said. It seems as though nothing is thought either. For some strange reason, everything feels very right and appropriate, as if this will solve ad our problems, will take away our sadness. But then I realize it’s not true, it can’t be true. Pain doesn’t go away just like that.

  Maybe it does. The next morning Lady Henrietta smiles at me for the first time in a long time. She says, “We can go back home now. Would you mind if we left tomorrow?”

  “Don’t you think you should stay here a little longer, to get through this hard period?”

  “I’m okay now. I feel much better and at peace, as though something has been resolved and things are the way they’re supposed to be.”

  She puts the lid on the box of tangled hair and says, “What happened between us last night made me feel as though we were in touch with Sara. It brought us closer to her. I think it was right.”

  A moment later, she adds, “You did not betray your girlfriend. You were not unfaithful to her.”

  chapter eleven

  I decide not to call Laura before going back to New York, because I want to open our apartment door unexpectedly and catch her off guard. This might not seem very nice, but ever since two nights ago, when I betrayed her with Henrietta, I have been overcome by doubts about her faithfulness and love for me. I’ve even started doubting the supposed greatness of her personality. Is she ready as wonderful as I thought? Could she be hiding something dreadful, like an evil character trait, a man in her bed, or contempt for me? Part of me is nevertheless looking forward to being with her and being consoled by her, but I just can’t shake off this nagging fear that I might be disappointed, which is why I haven’t called her.

  I’m in the elevator, going up to our door. My heart beats quickly, and I take deep breaths. I try to imagine what she’ll be doing when I enter the apartment. The worst possibility I can think of is finding her in bed with a man. The best possibility is finding her sitting at her piano, composing a piece just for me, with Minou lying on top of the instrument, listening rapturously.

  But then again, she could be doing much more ordinary things, like running errands or drinking orange juice in the kitchen.

  When I arrive at the door, instead of ringing or knocking, I quietly use my keys. Since part of me strongly suspects that she’s too good to be true and is betraying me behind my back, even hating me perhaps, I suddenly get a vision of her sitting at her piano and holding a little voodoo doll of me, sticking pins into it and setting its hair on fire. And then, when I come in, she would quickly hide the doll inside the piano, not even caring that the ash of the burnt hair gets all over the little felt hammers of her piano and ruins them.

  I open the door and look straight at the piano. My heart sinks a little when I see that she is not sitting there composing a piece for me. I am about to head for the bedroom, because the possibility that she might be in bed with a man does not seem too unrealistic. But suddenly, a movement in the corner of the living room catches my eye. It’s her. She’s sitting on her piano bench, but not at the piano; she’s at the file cabinets, the ones she gave me when I first moved in, to make me feel more at home. I never touched them, or used them, and I wasn’t aware that she had filled them. But obviously she had, because one of the drawers is open and her delicate fingers are dipping through the manila folders. I am suddenly jealous of those ghostly gray file cabinets, which have haunted my life in various reincarnations and which are now stealing my girlfriend, or at least placidly receiving her caresses. I have always found them sinister, menacing, sneaky, depraved, heinous, bureaucratic, their cold metal bodies lurking in the shadows of the living room like sinful thoughts. Minou, who is lying on top of them, is watching me approach, but Laura is not yet aware of my presence.

  “Hello, Laura,” I say.

  She turns around and exclaims, “Jeremy!” in complete joy. She gets up and hugs me. “I missed you,” she says.

  She is wearing my raincoat and boots. I open the coat a little
, because I see a piece of breast and wonder if she’s completely naked underneath. No, she’s wearing my Jockey shorts.

  She smiles and partially explains her attire: “At first I was only wearing your underwear, but then I got cold, so I put on your coat.”

  “And boots?” I offer.

  “Yeah.”

  I hug her and put my hands on her backside out of curiosity. Just as I suspected, she is wearing nothing under my Jockey shorts, which, come to think of it, is normal.

  She looks extremely beautiful, even without makeup, though she is wearing the diamond earring I gave her, the one I found on the sidewalk one evening. But she always wears it, so that’s nothing special.

  “What are you doing with the file cabinets?” I ask her.

  “I open them sometimes, when you’re not here. They make me feel as though I’m in touch with your soul, your mind, and your essence.”

  I’m touched and insulted at the same time. I’m not sure I should be flattered to remind her of a file cabinet, or rather to have a file cabinet remind her of me.

  I noticed but didn’t really register the fact that there is a mattress on the floor, next to the file cabinets. Now I register it.

  “You’ve been sleeping here?” I ask, concerned.

  “Yeah; it just made me feel closer to you. Don’t worry, it’s no big deal,” she says, waving at the mattress dismissively.

  In a way, I have been betrayed. She did not sleep with a man, but she did sleep with a file cabinet. And she petted a file cabinet very affectionately and even erotically and sensuously, staring at it lovingly, flipping through its files.

  I wonder what she’s filled the files with. Probably ordinary dull stuff. Bills. But then, as I’m standing there, I start fantasizing. It wouldn’t be so bad to remind her of a file cabinet if she’s filled it with very interesting files. That would make me feel good, in fact. Maybe the files are empty but labeled with elements of our future life together, like “Car,”

  “House,”

  “Son,”

  “School.” How charming that would be. It would show her devotion to me, her love for and near obsession with me.

  Or each file could be labeled with a quality of mine.

  Or maybe she labeled them with parts of our past, things we did together, and each file might be full of souvenirs from a particular evening, or restaurant. For example, maybe in one file she keeps my dirty Kleenexes from when I cried.

  She’s obsessed with me, I think to myself, flattered. This beautiful creature, even more beautiful than Lady Henrietta, whom most men would kid for, is obsessed with me. But then again, maybe the cabinets are full of files of her male conquests, with pictures and complete reports of their sexual prowess, and I’m just one of the files....

  I must see what is in the files, because then I’ll know what she thinks of me.

  I glance at them, not wanting to seem indiscreet, but I don’t see anything written on the folders, so I bend down and look closer. They are not labeled, so I open one, and then another. They’re empty. I look at her, bewildered, and doubly insulted, and worried about her sanity.

  “So,” I say, “not only am I a file cabinet, which is bad enough, but I’m an empty file cabinet?” Is that what she thinks of my mind? That I’m very stupid and have nothing in my head? I ask her as much.

  “No; on the contrary,” she says. “You have plenty of things in your head, but they are mysterious and intriguing things, which no one can know but you.”

  We kiss and lie down on the mattress.

  “I’m so glad you’re back. I missed you infinitely,” she whispers, her eyes closed as she kisses my neck.

  I feel great desire for her at this moment. I love her. But I know that before we go too far, there is something I must ted her.

  “How has your show been going?” I ask, to delay having to tell her what I have to tell her.

  “It’s going great.”

  “Are you tired of the clapping yet?”

  “I predict not as long as I live.”

  “I know, I heard you say that on TV.”

  “Then why are you asking?” she whispers, kissing me.

  “To delay having to ted you what I must ted you.”

  “Oh?”

  We are entwined in each other’s arms, and I am wondering if I should bother telling her this thing at ad. I know I must, so I reluctantly disentangle myself from her.

  “Before we go further, there’s something I must tell you.”

  “Yes, you said that already, poor Jeremy, poor Mr. Acidophilus,” she says jokingly, stroking my hair.

  I take her hand out of my hair and clasp it in my palms. I must not be distracted. “When I was in the country with Henrietta, she was very depressed,” I begin. “I thought she would never recover. I tried to distract her and ease her pain in every way I could think of. Nothing worked. I felt so helpless that I finally decided to comfort her in a more personal, intimate way.”

  Laura is lying on her back, motionless, staring at me with unblinking eyes. Has she understood, or do I need to elaborate? I find the silence very uncomfortable, so I decide to kill it again.

  “I made love with her, out of total desperation and sadness. I wasn’t sure it would help her, but it did. The next day she seemed less sad. She said she felt she had been in touch with Sara. And she also told me that I had not been unfaithful to you.”

  As each word comes out of my mouth, I feel it is vicious and bad. I guess I have just ended my relationship with Laura. But even now, if I could go back a few minutes in time, I would not withhold the confession from her. I’ve done enough wrong in the past. I don’t want to commit the additional, though comparatively pathetically minor, fault of being false.

  I look at her, and there are tears in her eyes. My heart constricts.

  Finally, she speaks: “I don’t know you as wed as I thought I did. I never thought you could do something like this. I don’t know anyone else who could. You’re noble and generous.”

  Does she mean I’m noble to have confessed, or is she being sarcastic?

  She moves closer to me and rests her head on my chest. “I love you so much,” she says. “I’m glad you were able to help Henrietta.

  For a moment I am surprised, but then I realize that it makes sense. Her response fits with her extraordinary, angelic personality. It’s the side of her that’s more human than any human I know, and therefore not quite human. I hold her delicately, respectfully, as though I’m holding a sacred object, or a saint. But then our awe becomes more sensual, our tenderness more violent: our behavior sinks into the more mundane pattern of making love.

  Just as we finish, the phone rings. Laura answers it.

  “Hello?... Oh hi, Henrietta,” she says, looking at me significantly. “I’m fine, and you?... Was it nice in the country?... You must be exhausted after the drive.... Yes, he’s right here.” She hands me the phone.

  “Hi. How are you feeling?” I ask Henrietta.

  “Pretty good, actually. What about you, are you tired?”

  “A bit.”

  “Oh well,” she says, “I suddenly got this craving to paint, and I was wondering which model I felt like calling over, and it turned out to be you.”

  “I’m flattered, but are you sure? When you tried painting me at my mother’s, you seemed totally uninspired.”

  “It had nothing to do with you. I just didn’t feel like painting at the time. But now I’m dying to.”

  “I’d love to pose for you,” I tell her, glad to hear that she has regained her taste for painting and eager to help in any way I can.

  “Ready?” she says. “Like even now?”

  “You mean today?”

  “If you could, I’d love it.”

  “Hang on a second.” I cover the mouthpiece with my hand and say to Laura, “She wants me to pose for her, but I wanted to spend the evening with you. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Go pose for her. She sounds like she’s in pretty good
spirits, so you should help her keep them up.”

  I take my hand off the mouthpiece. “How about in a couple of hours?”

  “Thank you. Be hungry,” Henrietta says, and hangs up.

  She greets me at the door, wearing some sort of dressing gown or kimono. A goldish kimono.

  In the middle of the room is set up the largest canvas I have ever seen her use. It is square, as tad as me. She says she will do a vertical, life-size portrait of me. She wants me to pose standing up.

  I feel strange just standing there, stark naked, without even leaning against anything, without the slightest thread of satin to decorate me, to hide me, to pull one’s attention away from my nakedness. Next to me, Henrietta has placed a stool, on which is a tray of canapés. There is also a glass of champagne and the inevitable marzipan, which today is in the shape of little pink elephants. She has an identical tray next to her easel.

  She teds me I’m allowed to move my right arm and my jaw, to eat the food. I eat a pate canapé, lick my fingers, and say, “I’m glad you feel like painting again,” just to make conversation. “Are you now going to concentrate more on your serious art than on your commercial art?”

  “Don’t talk,” she says. “Let’s just appreciate the food and the sensual pleasure of creation.”

  So we pose and paint and eat in silence for a few minutes. Then she starts talking. Light, pleasant, amusing, unmemorable, insignificant conversation. I feel good, even though I’ve been standing virtually motionless now for about half an hour. I feel I could stand here many more hours, as long as there’s a steady supply of canapés, champagne, marzipan elephants, and unmemorable conversation.

  She gets up once in a while, to change my position slightly. One inch to the right, feet closer together, one step back— Wait! I don’t want to get too far from my stool of marzipan elephants and insignificant conversation. We’ll bring the stool closer, she says. Yes, closer, I sigh, comforted, as I bite off the trunk of a little pink elephant.