Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “It was sort of like Krauss’s death—I mean, unexpected,” Colin Asch said, tossing the portfolio casually into the car and swinging in behind the wheel. “But sort of expected, too, in the context of the life. If you knew the life.” He took down a pair of Polo driving glasses from the sunscreen and fitted them on his face. Immediately he became the very blond very arrogant young man, a Greek god-like young man, in the fashion photographs. And he was wearing white: a white linen sports coat with a mint-green collarless jersey shirt. Dorothea Deverell, not knowing what he said exactly, was smiling uncertainly down at him. “If you know how to read it,” he said with an enigmatic smile.

  “Read it?”

  “Like, you know, Dorothea, things in code.”

  And then, in keeping with his glamorous persona, he drove off.

  Afterward, preparing dinner and awaiting Charles’s arrival, Dorothea Deverell reviewed her conversation with Colin Asch and felt increasingly uneasy. What had he been talking about? She seemed to have nodded there, at the end, and given him her hand in farewell. Had Colin Asch, for all his pride, really wanted Dorothea to “invest” in his career? Or had he been sincere in his dismissal of the very idea? He had spoken almost angrily, after all, of the prospect of peddling himself to his friends.

  No, Dorothea thought, finally, he can’t have meant it.

  She would not in any case mention the possibility—or even its impossibility—to Charles Carpenter.

  For Charles did not approve of Ginny Weidmann’s nephew; it seemed he had not approved of him from the start. Dorothea had several times tried to argue in Colin Asch’s behalf but Charles had remained unmoved. “But Colin is so appealing, so likable,” Dorothea said, “so eager, like a child, to be loved,” and Charles replied, “That’s in fact why I don’t much like him—why I resist.”

  That evening, at dinner, Dorothea described Colin Asch’s brief visit: his portfolio of photographs, the prospect of his new career. But Charles did hardly more than murmur in response, like a jealous husband. In exasperation Dorothea said, “Why don’t you like Colin? He likes you; he has told me. He very much admires you.”

  “Does he?”

  “He has told me so himself.”

  But Charles Carpenter was not to be drawn into discussing a subject against his will. He would rather, Dorothea supposed, settle into the sort of melancholy, tender, brooding exchanges they’d had for days on end, circling around the subject of Agnes and the degree to which they might consider themselves involved in her death.

  Impatiently, Dorothea said, “You don’t really have any reason to dislike Colin, do you?”

  After a brief pause Charles Carpenter said dryly, “Only my sense, darling, that the young man is a psychopath.”

  Dorothea stared, as shocked as if her lover had reached out suddenly and struck her. “A … what?”

  “You heard me perfectly plainly, Dorothea. A psychopath.”

  Dorothea Deverell had heard perfectly plainly but did not choose to consider her lover’s words. They were cruel and vindictive; they did not reflect very nobly upon him.

  Yet they abraded her nerves; and she had cause, a few days later, to remember them, meeting Susannah Hunt in a village store and having a painful conversation with the woman. Out of nowhere a voice rang out: “Dorothea Deverell! It is you!” She looked up startled to see Mrs. Hunt, floridly made up, elegantly dressed, headed in her direction, as if they were old, intimate friends—or enemies with a score to settle. In a louder voice than was required, Mrs. Hunt said, “I thought that was you, Dorothea, but you’re looking—well, you aren’t looking quite yourself somehow.”

  To this semi-accusation Dorothea Deverell could think of no adequate reply, so stood mute, smiling, expectant, a ream of typing paper in her arms. She had hurried into the Village Stationer’s to make a single purchase and truly had not time to linger and chat, as the formidable Mrs. Hunt seemed inclined. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you, you know, since the night of Colin’s party. Your party,” Mrs. Hunt said, as if Dorothea needed to be reminded. “Have you been well? And Charles Carpenter—has he been well? Such a terrible, terrible shock. I’m still shaken by it.”

  Susannah Hunt was a powerfully attractive woman, tall and full-bodied, with an air of desperate chic. She had outlined her wide mouth in a chalky cranberry shade and colored her eyelids pale blue, but both her mouth and her eyes appeared puffy. Something stylishly severe had been done to her hair, which was dyed a flat, lusterless black, razor-cut close to her head. As she spoke Dorothea was vaguely aware of a gentleman friend waiting for her at the front of the store, an older, white-haired man, deeply tanned, in a navy blue blazer with a nautical look to it; but this friend Susannah Hunt herself seemed to have forgotten. She was standing close to Dorothea and smiling rather strangely at her, asking after Colin Asch, whom, it developed, she had not seen in a while—twelve days. Uncomfortably, Dorothea said, “As far as I know, Colin is well. He seems to have embarked upon a new—”

  “He’s a model. Isn’t that extraordinary? But so somehow right, don’t you think? Since he’s so very attractive and there’s so little a man can do with being attractive—a heterosexual man, I mean—except be. A model, or an actor, that’s about it,” Susannah said in a bright dazzling rush of words. She smiled at Dorothea but her eyes were cold. “Did you say you’d seen him? He’s always talking of course about you—how you gave him a start, so to speak, here in Lathrup Farms. When he’d just about been desperate—penniless. Working practically as a beach boy—in Florida, was it? Key West?”

  “I—I don’t know about that,” Dorothea said.

  “A very attractive young man, in any case,” Susannah Hunt said.

  “I suppose he is, yes.”

  “And sweet.”

  “Yes.”

  “But with such a violent temper! At times.”

  Seeing Dorothea’s disbelieving look, Susannah Hunt drew a hand lightly across her brow, as if to indicate an injury to her eye. She gave off a rich, disturbing scent: expensive perfume, red wine. Was the woman merely drunk? Drunk and histrionic? Dorothea wished to think so. “At times, indeed,” Susannah said, sighing.

  Dorothea would have moved on, but the woman blocked her way. She asked her now whether she had heard from Ginny Weidmann recently, whether Ginny saw much of her nephew these days. “I don’t like to call her, you know,” Susannah said. “She has become so sort of mother-henish over him. So proprietary.”

  Dorothea thought. She had not spoken with Ginny Weidmann in more than a week but was reluctant to convey this information to Susannah Hunt, whose intimate, rather belligerent manner she did not at all like. “I’m afraid I don’t know,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “He stays away overnight sometimes. Colin does. He never used to, you know—he was wild about that apartment. ‘The center of the universe,’ he called it. ‘My sanctuary.’ Now the little bastard simply disappears without explanation … a day and a night, two days, two nights … leaving me practically frantic. But you don’t know where he is, Dorothea, you say, or whom he might be with?”

  “No,” Dorothea said coolly.

  “Yet you and he are so close.”

  This too had the resonance of an accusation, to which Dorothea Deverell felt no inclination to reply. The heady discomforting scent of perfume and wine was now unmistakable, emanating from the other woman; Dorothea had the idea that Susannah Hunt, now regally drawn to her full height, swaying as if indignant in her high-heeled alligator pumps, was debating whether to challenge Dorothea head on or grant her a mocking sort of victory.

  Then, as if suddenly remembering her gentleman friend at the front of the store, she gave way and relented, allowing Dorothea to pass by to the cashier. She said, “Next time you do see him, Dorothea, tell him hello from me. From Susannah. And that’s all. And that’s all.”

  “Yes,” Dorothea promised. “I will.”

  So, with a shudder of repugnance, she escaped. Thank God, she
thought, Colin had eluded that terrible woman.

  11

  Where did the money go? Where, when Colin Asch had sure as hell earned it, sweated for it, did it go? The phrase “cash flow,” which he didn’t entirely understand, stuck in his brain: yeah, it flows, all right, sure does flow! “In one fucking direction.”

  In the Blue Ledger when he could force himself to sit still he made his calculations, in pencil, in pencil with a good eraser, but what he needed was one of those little Japanese pocket calculators. To take the burden of mathematics off his brain.… He’d try, God knows he’d try; then the injustice of it rose like vomit to the back of his mouth and he threw the Ledger down and walked fast through the rooms of the apartment, almost trotting, slapping at his bare thighs (hadn’t he gotten dressed yet? but what time was it?), trying to figure out why Colin Asch always needed money, money and more money, always more fucking money, when there was after all money coming in: flowing in. Or had been until the other day when he realized he’d better stop for the time being.

  Running needless risks, jeopardizing his future. And now Dorothea Deverell had trusted him with an executive position at the Institute; he didn’t want to disappoint her.

  Still, it was a task for Colin Asch in this weird electric kind of state that’d settled onto him to sit quietly to figure his next moves out in the Ledger, let alone meditate as his soul urged—“The kingdom of God is within! Within!”—let alone endure with grace the shooting sessions, the protracted scenes of passivity, even helplessness, the photographers giving him instructions, herding him here and there like a clumsy calf, or actually positioning, touching him—arms, legs, head. The other day he’d caught the fuckers exchanging glances behind his back but gave no sign, just continued smiling—compliant—“professional” in every regard. When all he wanted to do was tear their throats out with his teeth.

  In a year, he’d been promised, he’d be one of the top Boston-area models. Thus he was trying—subordinating himself to his intellectual inferiors.

  “Colin Asch is learning. A lot.”

  Also with Susannah: screaming at him, threatening to go to the police or to her lawyer, actually daring him to hit her like it was Colin Asch’s manhood and dignity she challenged, though the cunt liked it, being bit, fairly hard but not too hard, never any blood—“They tend not to like actual blood.” But he’d backed off from her, laughing, saying, Wow. Wow. Wow. Saying, Lady, you don’t know. The first time she’d started hinting about wanting her money back, her “investment,” he’d had the quick sort of floating idea why not strangle this woman and dump her body out in the dunes, but it wasn’t a serious thought; after all there was Dorothea Deverell in his life now—just thinking of her calmed him, to a degree. So he’d kidded Susannah out of her rage or whatever it was—“All she ever needs is a good hard fucking”—and afterward in the steamy bathroom he wrote in the mirror in tall block letters HEY I WANT TO BE GOOD!!!!

  The money, though. Did Freud say money is shit? For it is shit. Surely. Money-grubbing capitalist-imperialist society where human beings are forced to peddle themselves in the market.… if not their actual flesh (like your million-dollar fashion models) then their talents, their brains, their souls. If Susannah followed through with her threat to stop paying her share of his rent at the Normandy Court he’d have that added expense, plus the payments on the furniture et cetera and incidental expenses and of course the $$$ he wished to hide away as a nest egg … for the Emergency. (For Colin Asch sensed that the time rapidly approached when he would feel the need to terminate this phase of his life, as, in the past, he’d terminated other phases; he’d maybe have to go into hiding at an hour’s notice, with Dorothea Deverell as his friend and companion perhaps or maybe just alone: thus $$$ sequestered safely away hidden right here in the apartment was of the utmost priority.)

  “The money, though.”

  In the secret Ledger’s account there was D.T./2300/“M” (meaning that Tracey Donovan, the perky little plump-assed reporter for the local weekly, had handed over to Colin Asch a check for $2,300 payable to “T. Manatee”—her notion of his professional modeling name); and there was W.G./3500/“A” (meaning that a Lathrup Farms widow named Gladys Whiting, to whom in fact Dorothea Deverell had recently introduced him, had invested $3,500 in his career as “A. Avalon”), and there was C.A./7000/“Al” and C.A./8500/“Al” (meaning that Agnes Carpenter before her death had invested a total of $15,500 in Colin Asch’s projected career as a handsome if temperamental blond model named “Alva-rado”)—yet still it wasn’t enough.

  Was he adding wrong? Subtracting wrong? Monthly expenses multiplied by twelve plus incidentals plus 15 percent set aside for the Emergency.… It seemed that, the more cash flowed in, the more cash flowed out, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. “Sometimes I feel, Dorothea, as if the top of my head is about to explode. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

  Bare-assed on his tacky little balcony leaning against the railing, his eyes filling slowly with tears. A soft spring breeze stirring his hair … but which spring was it? When I’m thirty I will cut my throat. I don’t want to live past thirty. Not knowing what the fuck to do next … sensing he hadn’t better try to see Dorothea Deverell for another few days, though he could try to calm his thoughts thinking of her. And it came back to him in a flood of warmth how one day Mr. Kreuzer had placed his hand over his when he was writing or doing algebra, guiding Colin Asch’s thin hand with his, his cold faltering hand enclosed in the other’s big-knuckled hand that carried such heat, guiding Colin’s pencil that way, helping him, and all the trouble to come wasn’t so much as a premonition then; he’d felt his eyes fill with tears … what kindness, what relief. Just to know somebody gives a fuck about you.

  But that sort of tender solicitude is rare.

  “If you know how to read it.”

  Watching her face: and she’d blinked at him, mildly puzzled it seemed, her brown gaze imperturbable, opaque. Silent but squeezing his fingers as if in warning don’t say it, as if to warn yes—but don’t say it. And he’d sped off from the curb exhilarated as a smart-ass teen-aged kid—couldn’t help showing off in the Porsche.

  Though Dorothea Deverell had disappointed him too. Not inviting him to stay a while longer … not inviting him to stay for dinner when he had a strong hunch that Charles Carpenter would be coming over and the three of them would have gotten along so well, Colin just knew it. Actually, that was his plan. Sort of. Like Dorothea Deverell and Charles Carpenter would take in Colin Asch like married couples sometimes do, especially older married couples with no children or with grown-up children like the Weidmanns. Now that Carpenter’s wife was safely out of the way, the two of them owed Colin Asch a favor, after all. If only they knew.

  (Did they know? Did she know? Sometimes Colin believed she must … like about Krauss; he was certain she knew about Krauss … but the other he wasn’t so sure about, actually.)

  “It’s the stillness in her.”

  That night, after the celebration party where they’d all been so happy, Colin Asch had come to her house in secret like a sleepwalker drawn to his fate. Not knowing what he would do but knowing, trusting; his instinct would guide him, for what did not, in this blessed state, emanate from the soul? In her presence Colin Asch was elevated he was refined he was purified like the petals of a flower opening innocently in the sun. High on champagne and red wine and one or two other factors, the smiles and warm handshakes of his good friends—I want to love and be loved! Is that too fucking much to ask? And Dorothea Deverell had kissed him on the cheek, thanking him for his kindness. And flying high but fully in control he had followed her afterward to her house in the night and with a miniature screwdriver he forced the lock of the rear terrace door; then he was standing inside in the dark that was so familiar to him as if he’d been living here all his life just as she was living here, as much at ease. This fact he would later note in the Blue Ledger. With a penalized flashlight he illuminated his path
to the stairs and upward … a narrower staircase than he recalled, and strangely steep, like a staircase in a dream … and maybe he was dreaming, for there was no fear in it: Colin Asch ascending to Dorothea Deverell unhesitating and lithe as a panther knowing no harm could come to him or to her as all emanated from the soul.

  In her bedroom in the shadows he felt his breath quicken, for there, suddenly, she was … asleep and breathing heavily, hoarsely, as if straining for oxygen … there, only a few feet away, unknowing! “Dorothea. I won’t hurt you.” He drew nearer, stood above her, staring in amazement in rapture nothing raw or crude, nothing sexual—though, yes, there was that (feeling the blood rush into his penis like a faucet turned suddenly on), but so much more than merely that.

  Wouldn’t touch himself. It wasn’t like that at all.

  The thin beam of light darted and snaked about the room. Seeing that the room too was familiar, the low ceiling slanted at the front windows, the shape of the windows, the doorframes, teasingly familiar as if without being conscious of their union he’d seen them for years through her eyes. Thus he could not be touched! could not be stopped! Standing above Dorothea Deverell as she slept staring at her sleep-struck face as (when? where? he thought, yes, it had been recent) in one of the hospitals where he’d made his way by stealthy night to a young woman’s room thus to contemplate her in her sleep and that too a heavy drugged sleep, a sedated sleep, the kind mimicking death but it isn’t the real thing of course. The skin like alabaster; the dark disheveled hair on the pillow; the eyes (so beautiful! so knowing!) shut in sleep; the lips moist and open; the breath coming deep, rhythmic, labored … to which he tried to fit his. “Dorothea. It is I, Colin Asch: it is I.” Why was he trembling, when he wasn’t frightened or even unduly excited? Why did his heart pound so heavily, as if he felt he were trespassing, doing something wrong? Through the fragrant dark dense as water Colin Asch could plunge to her, dive to her, take her up in his arms … rescue her from all harm. It was his mission, his fate. He’d never have hesitated. My life for hers! he thought gaily.