Double Delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

  For what does bliss most desire, but blindness.

  As the list of candidates was cut, and a new, final list of winners established, Quincy Ryder sighed, and muttered to himself; seemed several times about to raise objections, and thought better of it; participated in the balloting, but with an ironic detachment. When others spoke, he looked rudely at his watch. (A watch so closely resembling Terence’s, with a black suede band, Terence checked to see that his own watch was on his wrist.) At four-thirty, in the final hour of business, when one might have thought that Ryder was no longer a threat, something set him off, and he said, “Are you satisfied!—the lot of you!—this list! It is shameful, and it is despicable! I know virtually no one of these ‘artists’ and those I do know I abhor!” Before Terence could interrupt, Ryder launched excitedly into one of those cruel, presumably witty monologues for which, in certain circles, he was famous. His small, merry eyes gleamed with malice as he ticked off names on the list: “—this has-been fag with his anti-American diatribes!—and this ‘feminist’ creature in combat boots and serape!—and this seedy arriviste with his Warhol-plagiarized ‘action paintings’!—and this bellyaching ‘ethnic’-Jew, wouldn’t you think the generation had died out by now?—phony Holocaust-exploiters writing treacly verse to make the goyim feel guilty but I refuse to feel guilty, and where poetry is trash I say it is trash. And this ‘environmental artist’—what passes for lesbian chic—balloon-phalluses on posts! And here we have one of our dear ‘persons of color’—and here, a ‘physically handicapped’—‘ethnic-American’—two for one!”

  Terence said angrily, “Quincy, that is enough.”

  “It is enough, ‘Ter-ence’!” Ryder said, tossing the sheet of paper down on the table, and pushing back his chair. “Conclude your contemptible business without me!” And he stalked out of the room, and slammed the door behind him.

  Terence sat stunned for a long moment: not because of Quincy Ryder’s departure, which was a tremendous relief to all, but because he seemed to have heard the man mock Ava-Rose’s pronunciation of his name—a lilting, derisive Terrence.

  But how could Quincy Ryder know?

  Quincy Ryder could not know, of course, and Terence quickly came to that conclusion, and dismissed the notion, in a flood of good feeling at the end of this long, exhausting day. The committee finally disbanded at 5:20; by which time only Marcia, of the Foundation staff, remained in the office. Terence sent her home, and worked at his desk another forty minutes, putting off his telephone call to Ava-Rose as if in teasing anticipation no: in fear of being denied her despite the good news he believed he might tell her now.

  He was just about to pick up the telephone when there came a buzz at the door of the outer office. Odd, a visitor to the Feinemann Foundation at this time of day—six o’clock. It had to be someone whom the security guard downstairs had cleared, so Terence felt no hesitation about hurrying out to open the door; even as he opened it, the buzzing continued, rudely. “‘Dr. Greene’! Ever the workaholic! May I come in?” It was Quincy Ryder, voice slurred and menacing.

  Terence would have liked to tell Ryder simply to go to hell, but rudeness was not one of his strengths. Unfortunately.

  Ryder, who had clearly been drinking, blustered past Terence, and, before Terence could prevent him, back into Terence’s private office; Terence had no choice but to follow him. “I want to see that final list, I want to check one or two names, where is that list, I want to see that list, Ter-ence!” Ryder muttered. “I want to see what you cunning people did behind my back, I want to see whether you omitted—” here naming the names of several candidates for whom he’d voted. Terence was appalled by the rude little man’s intrusion—how like a nightmare this was!

  Quickly Terence said, “Quincy, really!—you can’t seriously believe—”

  “Don’t think you’re going to defraud me of my fee”—there was a five-thousand-dollar honorarium for judges—“because I walked out at the very end, either! Oh, no! Where is that list, my friend?—I demand to see that list—”

  The typed-out list of award winners lay in full view atop Terence’s desk and there was no stopping Quincy Ryder from snatching it up, short of physical restraint.

  Fussing and muttering, peering nearsightedly at the names, with that look on his flushed face as if he were in the presence of a bad odor, Ryder scanned the columns; to Terence’s horror, he paused at the last name, and said, suspiciously, “What’s this—someone has typed in a name I’ve never heard of: ‘Ava-Rose Renfrew, artist, 33 Holyoak—’”

  Terence pulled the sheet of paper from Ryder’s fingers. His voice was loud and quavering. “Never mind, Quincy! That’s none of your business.”

  Ryder said, “What? What isn’t my business? What’s going on here?”

  Terence could feel the blood rushing into his face. He stammered, “Why, any of this, any—anything.” He folded the list of names hastily, and shoved it into a drawer. “Now get out of here, will you?”

  “‘Ava-Rose Renfrew, artist’—I saw it, my friend. An address in Trenton, New Jersey. Trenton! What is going on here?”

  “Just get out, Ryder. Please.”

  Quincy Ryder stared up at Terence, hands on his hips. He was a short man who had long learned to stand with such aplomb as to make himself appear taller. Since departing Terence’s office, he had soiled the front of his dapper checked coat; a stain of what looked like ketchup or barbecue sauce was prominent on the left lapel. Ryder’s honeyed mid-Southern accent was particularly mocking—“Well, well! The upstanding Terence Greene, of all people! ‘Ava-Rose Renfrew, artist’—well, well!”

  “Please get out.”

  “I certainly shall.” Ryder turned on his heel, not so smartly as he might have wished—he was quite drunk—and stalked out of Terence’s office, and out of the outer office. A profound and terrible silence pulsed in his wake.

  Yes how like a nightmare, and how! how would it end!

  “We will have to run away together—Ava-Rose and I.”

  Terence sat back weakly on the edge of his desk. Never in his life had he felt so utterly exposed, humiliated, crushed. For some minutes he simply sat there, breathing quickly, perspiration broken out on his body. He tried to think, but could not. He fumbled for the telephone receiver, thinking to call Ava-Rose, but it slipped from his fingers.

  So desperate was Terence, he took the list of Feinemann winners out of the drawer, and checked the final name, in the hope that, somehow, it was not “Ava-Rose Renfrew” after all.

  But of course it was. For had not Terence Greene himself typed in Ava-Rose Renfrew, artist, 33 Holyoak Street, Trenton, New Jersey shrewdly positioning it in such a way as to blend in with the rest of the column? Ava-Rose Renfrew was designated as an “American of Promise.”

  Terence could have wept with frustration, anxiety. “God damn it, she deserves it. She is an artist, as much as any of the others.”

  It came to him again, more forcibly, that he and Ava-Rose must run away together. But where would he get enough money? Phyllis’s mother had entrusted Terence with investing several hundred thousand dollars out of her pension plan, and, indeed, some of this money Terence had siphoned off for Renfrew expenses; but to take a sizable chunk of it—“That would be theft. Grand larceny.”

  No, he could never steal outright from his own mother-in-law.

  Even though it was no secret that, in her will, Fanny Winston was leaving most of her money to the Greenes.

  Terence was on his feet pacing about his office, necktie askew, when, to his surprise, the buzzer to the office rang again.

  His heart leapt—“Maybe it hasn’t happened yet?”

  Maybe Quincy Ryder had not seen Ava-Rose’s name, and the last ten minutes or so had been a hideous waking dream?

  Again, Terence hurried to the outer office; again, he opened the door. Again, Quincy Ryder stood in the doorway, smiling.

  Terence saw at once, however, that of course Ryder knew: It had already happened, and
there could be no reprieve.

  This time, however, Terence did not invite Ryder into the office. Whatever Ryder had to say could be said in the corridor, since the building was deserted. (It was now 6:25 P.M.) Even if the drunken Ryder raised his voice, his words could not carry nine floors down to the foyer, where the single security guard on duty might hear; in the improbable case that the guard, a soft-spoken Haitian-American, did hear, he could have no idea what the white men’s quarrel was about.

  Ryder said, squinting his left eye in a semblance of a wink, “We could make a deal, Terence, my friend. I was about to climb into a cab when it occurred to me: T. C. Tucker too might be added to the list, and some trifling name crossed out that no one would ever miss—which is what you did, eh? What d’you say, ‘Dr. Greene’? Tit for tat?”

  Terence’s eyes swam with tears of rage and indignation. As calmly as he could manage he said, “Quincy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I suggest you go home.”

  Ryder laughed delightedly. “What an act! Who do you think you’re fooling? I saw the name, I didn’t imagine it—‘Ava-Rose Renfrew, artiste.’ What is she, your girlfriend? From Trenton, New Jersey?”

  “Miss Renfrew is not my—my friend. She is a serious, highly regarded visual artist—”

  “Oh, fuck! Nobody’s ever heard of her, and you know it,” Ryder said. In a playful though rather rough gesture, he poked Terence in the chest, as one boy might do to another. “At least my poet-friend Teddy-C. is known, and does have a national reputation. Yes?”

  Terence flinched at the man’s forefinger in his chest. A mist passed over his eyes tinged with blood.

  “I’ve told you—go home, get away from here. I can’t bear the sight of your face.”

  “What? Whose face? Who the fuck do you think you are, Greene? Your high moral tone doesn’t square with—what’s the girl’s name—‘Ava-Rose’—” Ryder spoke in a crude bullying singsong; he poked Terence in the chest again. He belched, and smelled of alcohol.

  White-faced, Terence said, “Don’t touch me, God damn you!” He shoved Ryder away, and Ryder shoved back, with surprising strength, sending the taller man back against the wall, hard. Now this was truly a nightmare, for in an instant Quincy Ryder seemed to have gone berserk, red-faced, bulging-eyed, shouting incoherently, striking Terence blows in the face and chest. In the confusion and horror of the moment Terence could make little sense of what Ryder said, hearing in his own ears a sharp, percussive voice If your opponent hits you, counterpunch. Roll with the blow, and counter-punch: a left hook to the head or the body. Once some bastard hurts you bad, he’ll need to hurt you again. If you don’t stop him and suddenly furious at being pummelled by Quincy Ryder Terence shoved him, hard—and the little man staggered backward, a look of rapt attention on his flushed face, and his mouth opened in a gaping O like a fish’s even as momentum carried him against the railing over the abyss of nine; against the railing with such force that, like an acrobat performing a quicksilver trick, he fell—arms flailing, legs in the black-and-white checked trousers kicking, black polished shoes showing their scuffed, sand-colored soles!

  Terence rushed to the railing, to grab at the falling man, but it was too late—he saw, appalled, Quincy Ryder’s body plummeting down like a dead shot, heard the strangulated scream, and then the echo of the scream, as his enemy fell nine floors to death in a gushing white fountain of classical pretensions.

  “… Because All Things Are Ordained”

  A prematurely hot May first. Bits of invisible grit flung about in the gusty Trenton air. There was a taste of something oily and sepia-sulphurous that coated the interior of his mouth. His smile which had been a lover’s smile of happy expectation was fading.

  Ava-Rose? Where—?

  Hadn’t he seen, yes certainly he’d seen, the canary-yellow Corvette descend Broad Street, to make a left turn into the parking garage adjacent to the Metropolitan Life Plaza where, inside the tall plate glass doors of the building, he was waiting patiently and hopefully as any lover. Smiling and then his smile faded for he was certain the Corvette must be Ava-Rose’s—his—that is, his gift to her on Valentine’s Day (the car was registered in Ava-Rose Renfrew’s name, of course)—but where was she? It would not require ten minutes for her to park the car.

  Already it was three-twenty-five. Ava-Rose had promised to meet Terence at three o’clock, promptly.

  He had not seen her in twelve days. Had not held her in his arms, kissed her. In twelve days.

  Had not made love to her for but why think in such terms, why enumerate, no point in keeping a record of such intimacy, the main thing was their love.

  Terence had taken a half-day off from work to drive to Trenton to meet Ava-Rose on this balmy, summery-warm first day of May. Since the tragic accidental death of Quincy Ryder in the Feinemann Foundation building, Terence Greene, as Executive Director of the Foundation, and as one of the last people to have seen Ryder alive, had had numerous interruptions of his work; police had questioned him of course, and even an insurance investigator; two-thirds of his telephone calls, it seemed, for days at a stretch, had had to do with Ryder. Terence’s nerves were so tightly strung he winced at the slightest unexpected noise, and so his devoted secretary Mrs. Riddle insisted he make an appointment to see a doctor, and Terence agreed—in principle.

  It had come to seem a brilliant idea, but one he felt guilty about exploiting—taking time off from work at the Foundation in order to see a doctor. Or to offer that as an excuse for driving to Trenton.

  But so Terence had done today.

  In hot May.

  He’d gone to Manhattan in the early morning, and, shortly after noon, he’d taken the commuter train back again, to Queenston. Running the risk of being seen by someone who knew him, even, if luck ran against him, by Phyllis—“But it can’t be avoided.” He owed it to Ava-Rose to do this for her. He knew she would be grateful.

  So he returned to Queenston, and to the commuter parking lot, and drove south on Route 1 to Trenton, into the interior of the city. The plan was to meet Ava-Rose at three o’clock sharp at the Metropolitan Life Plaza. He’d made an appointment to meet with a Mr. Post at three-fifteen and already they were late and where was Ava-Rose?

  Terence hurried out onto the windswept plaza, shading his eyes. He’d seen the Corvette turn into the parking garage and had lost sight of it but there was a slash of yellow on an upper level of the concrete structure, maybe that was it?—but where was Ava-Rose?

  It was true, and yet not true, that Terence Greene was unwell. Certainly, the strain of the past several weeks in particular showed in his face, which was looking gauntly handsome, like a face in an old etching; his hair, until recently a silvery-sand color, was now almost entirely silver. It was observed that he ate cautiously, and sometimes wincingly, with that look of rapt attention and apprehension that sufferers of stomach trouble show. (And hadn’t he lost weight? It wasn’t just his face that looked gaunt.) Nights were unpredictable and turbulent—he squirmed, and kicked about, and ground his teeth, and perspired so that his pajamas were soaked through. (Phyllis had had to ask him please to sleep in the guest room.) In public, as at home, his manner was persistently affable off in a world of his own. His smile was so fixed that deep creases had begun to bracket his mouth. Never had he been so happy.

  To Terence’s way of thinking, he was in excellent health. He ate quite normally. He drank perhaps slightly more than he had in the past—his life before Chimney Point. No matter what Phyllis said, he slept deeply every night, and sometimes had difficulty waking, his sleep was so profound. Several times a week he swam laps at the Athletic Club and his time for one mile was more or less what it had always been.

  Even his beard seemed to be invigorated!—by the latter part of the day, sharp little silver-glinting hairs pushed through his skin, so he had to shave another time. This unexpected virility, a second coming-into-manhood.

  “Ava-Rose—?”

  Terence half-ran down the st
eps to the parking garage. He did not want to shout loudly, and call attention to himself. (In his lightweight gray suit, carrying his leather attaché case, he looked very like other professional men of his age and background who worked in and near the multimillion-dollar Metropolitan Life Plaza, one of Trenton’s most publicized new urban complexes. Such men never shout—at least in public.) Terence debated whether to take the stairs or the elevator up to the fourth level, where the yellow Corvette was parked; he did not want to miss Ava-Rose, and cause them to be even later for their important appointment with Mr. Post.

  He decided to take the stairs, and, as he turned a corner, now beneath the low, girdered roof of the garage, he saw her—not twenty feet away, in conversation with a light-skinned black man in a uniform. Ava-Rose was in profile, laughing happily, as the uniformed man was laughing too; Ava-Rose brushed her wind-blown hair out of her face with quick, nervous movements of her beringed hands, and the uniformed man stood with the heel of one hand resting lightly against the holster at his waist. Terence, drawing quickly back, recognized the man—he’d been one of the Mercer County sheriff’s deputies assigned to the courtroom at the time of the trial of T. W. Binder.

  Ava-Rose was wearing one of her filmy-layered gypsy costumes, the predominate color that bright arterial crimson of Darling’s tail feathers. There was something drooping in her hair—a creamy satin rose?—and her feet in flat black ballerina slippers had an adolescent narrowness and length to them. Bracelets flashed and chimed on her arms, strands of glass beads shone on her high, small breasts, loose inside her muslin, somewhat transparent shirt. How beautiful she was! The sight of her seemed to hurt Terence’s eyes.

  The sheriff’s deputy wore his smart, olive-gray uniform with a slight swagger. When he smiled at Ava-Rose, he looked boyishly handsome as one of the teenaged rock stars in the posters on the walls of Kim’s room; he might have been thirty years old. As Terence stared, the young man scribbled something on a card, and handed it to Ava-Rose, who put it in her gaudy woven over-the-shoulder bag.