Hide Fox, and All After

by Rafael Yglesias

  Alec lived in an old and still somewhat fashionable apartment house on West End Avenue. Raul saw only three rooms while he was there—the kitchen, the bathroom, and Alec's room. The latter was to become the focal point of Alec's and Raul's life: everything revolved about this room. Simple human needs were carried out here, all appointments were made here—it was the offstage sanctuary.

  It became all this beginning with those two weeks, beginning with Alec's most important offer to Raul. After all, despite Raul's objections, Alec had to limit his thinking to what else is there to do?

  "All right," Alec said to him, "forget your objections. Your interest is in art, isn't it?"

  Raul smiled vaguely, aware of Alec's frustration. "Well, I'm saying that it will develop you as an artist."

  "Look, I have no objections to taking it. None. However," Raul smiled, "one should be able to do without it to develop one's art."

  "What you say, from your premise, is logical. You're saying you have no objections to it but that one shouldn't need it."

  Raul, still smiling, nodded.

  Alec turned, going over to his desk. He dragged on his cigarette, placing it in the ashtray. He leaned on the desk, grunting while he thought.

  Raul's tension was one of expectation. His ideas were clear—well thought out, as yet to be disproven. But his face beamed with irony, and a high cackle seemed lodged in his throat, ready to come screeching out.

  Alec was angry. He did believe it would help Raul's art, though he. was not acting unselfishly. There was a strong desire in him to have Raul share his experiences Not very hopefully, he suddenly turned to him. "Do you wanna smoke?"

  Raul's cackle nearly leaped into daylight. Smiling, a curious little boy, he said, "Oh, you have some."

  Alec's dismay became consummate, tinged with paranoia. "Yes," he said.

  Raul was gleeful. "Sure."

  Alec was astonished but said nothing. Why the boy was agreeing against his principles could be asked later.

  Raul, his legs drawn up underneath him, anxiously watched Alec prepare. Alec took out three incense sticks, placing them strategically about the room. He opened the record player, took out a record, and put it on. He then opened his drawer, removing a plastic bag filled with marijuana and a package of Top cigarette papers. He put a piece of typing paper on the desk and lay a cigarette paper on top of that.

  Raul, his face suddenly serious, extended his hand and asked, "May I see?"

  Alec's face matched Raul's for solemnity. He passed the bag to him. Raul opened it, smelled it, ran the grains through his fingers, tasted it, and handed it back. He looked up as he did so, and they both laughed.

  Alec cleared his throat. He dragged on his cigarette, neatly returning it to the ashtray. He tipped the bag, some of the contents going onto the paper. It was a long process. Alec had to spread the grass evenly across the center of the paper and slowly roll it. He rolled three rather deformed, cigarettelike joints. He got up, telling Raul to follow him, and went over to a small window in a corner of the room. He opened the window, saying to Raul, "Listen, be sure to smoke a cigarette afterward."

  "Really?"

  "Definitely."

  Alec went to get a match. Raul, shivering slightly, looked out on the dark avenue beneath. His nervousness, building all this time, reached a climax as Alec returned, the joint between his lips.

  He lit it, the loose end going up quickly, and in-haled, keeping the smoke contained within his lungs. Silently, without breathing or stirring, he passed the joint to Raul. Raul followed his lead, the immediate effect being that he heard his loud sucking in of the smoke. He seemed to be dragging fruitlessly, until it suddenly pierced his lungs—he could feel the sharp stream descending into his chest. He quickly withdrew the joint, his throat seared from the heat. He coughed, his open mouth allowing a cloud of smoke to escape.

  Alec carefully exhaled. "Hold it in," he said. Raul raised his hand while nodding. He dragged again, knowing what to expect. His lungs filled, he passed the joint to Alec, an ember falling to the floor. Alec hastily stamped it out. Raul swallowed and into force the smoke deeper. Alec dragged easily, as if he were smoking a cigarette. He took it in abrupt spasmodic inhalations; Raul, in one drag, sucking it in until the heat was too much. The process was repeated, with only the butt of the joint left.

  A smile of sinister glee slowly appeared on Alec's face. "It's time," he said, "for my number one roach holder."

  Raul smiled and laughed softly. Alec took out a long, thin plastic cylinder, with a funnellike opening, placing the butt there. He handed it to Raul, who put it in his mouth. Alec lit a match. "Take it easy on this, it's very hot."

  Alec held a match at the funnel's opening. Raul dragged, a small, sudden flare appearing at the bell of the funnel. Raul, at the back of his tongue, felt the charcoal remains of the roach.

  Alec laughed through his nostrils. Raul swallowed, looking at Alec in shock. "Raul swallowed the roach, man," Alec said.

  Raul, a silly, uncontrollable grin on his face, rocked forward, finding the movement deliciously comfortable. "I swallowed it?" he asked woozily.

  Alec laughed, a hand drawn absurdly across his mouth. "You're so stoned," he said through demented laughter.

  Raul, his body flowingly elongated beyond belief, drew himself up, his grin reaching a critical point. His hand gracelessly came up from his side, knocking hollowly on his chest. "Me?" he asked, collapsing into laughter.

  They both slid easily off their chairs, their frames quaking with senseless laughter. Raul, his head beneath the window, felt a breeze quietly pass over his face. He stopped laughing. Alec, a tempo behind, stopped too.

  Raul rose, a great calm in his chest. Alec sat up, drawing his legs beneath him. They looked simply at each other. "We must be serious," Raul said, each word somehow difficult to produce verbally.

  Alec nodded, reseating himself in his chair. Raul returned to his.

  As they smoked the second joint, the music on the record player slowly began to manifest itself.

  In daylight, Alec's room was obscene: it was made of subdued tones, only night went well with it. And now, in the soft light, with the music so eloquent as to become a presence itself, it seemed to give sway to any of Raul's movements.

  Alec smoked more of the third joint than Raul did. Raul took the joint only when the movement fit into the rhythm. He watched the tones of light in the room: the lava lamp, a mild stream of soft red, uniting with the moonlight from the window. He saw a strange and quiet melancholy in the shadow he cast: the desolation evident in the pale of the moon, the unsubstantial red to which he looked.

  Alec tapped him on the shoulder, the joint in an outstretched hand. Raul looked up bewildered, suddenly realizing where he was. He took the joint, saying, "It's okay," to explain. Alec nodded: "I understand."

  Raul dragged and dragged, not noticing or caring that he was getting anything, rocking silently with the music. He could feel a soft cloud descending; with great precision he felt the depth to which the smoke was going. Then, as an afterthought, the heat followed. And suddenly—the realization was charming—he knew he was going to feel all the heat at once. He quickly pulled the joint out of his mouth, Alec leaping forward to save it. Raul doubled over, coughing. He closed his eyes to pass the ordeal; the discomfort, he knew, promised the rewards.

  In a moment the heat passed, and his lungs were lined with gray. It seemed he had something great and inexplicable to say: a powerful love that he couldn't express, a moving, dry gray that taunted him with its mastery of him. He bowed and swung his head, the familiar movement now alien to him. For the grayness was now his body, the movement of his head a methodical deviation from a set stance. His neck needed loosening, it seemed, and he concentrated on moving his head more quickly. As he did so it took on the flowing movement of the music. A screen lit up before him, the minute details of movement charted carefully within his brain. Raul slowly, ritualistically rose and moved about the room—eyes shut, as if i
n a trance— omniscient, graceful. His self-consciousness was gone, he had real grace. Without—as he had thought was the only way possible—the lights and heat and intensity of the stage, the movements real and graceful through the practice of interpretation.

  He looked at Alec, seated quietly in a chair. "Do you know," he asked, his voice echoing with power, "that I am possessed by some devil? And I don't say that as some kind of perverse self-flattery. I am not, in truth, so much a convert of the greats, but a pervert of them. It is something I shall have to change."

  "What is it," Alec asked slowly, "that perverts you?"

  "I don't know." Raul moved to the desk, taking a cigarette and lighting it. He looked up at Alec. "I think it's that I use my insight into men as a weapon, as some sort of a Messiahlike power, rather than create with it. I am vicious and cruel with that that should be used to explain and heal."

  Raul stretched his right leg forward, pausing. "That sounded a bit too much like Salinger's Seymour to -suit my tastes."

  Alec laughed, Raul smiling quietly. "I love Seymour, but… I'm not putting Seymour down, man." He laughed outrageously, picking up his cigarette.

  The laughter seemed to quiver in its wake, recalling the gray, now ticklish, in his lungs. The cigarette was a great dry billow of smoke, tasting of the grass. Leaving his mouth, the smoke twisted and danced like a charmed snake, lying passive, a blue-gray mass, in the air. His voice, husky, sensuous, in both formation and tone, rose like the smoke. "Oh, God. You know, you're right. I mean, smoking a cigarette stoned is very, very good."

  Alec, drowsily leaning forward, limply pointing a finger at Raul, slurred his words. "I told you."

  Raul broke out laughing. Alec then immediately broke into laughter. Imitating Alec's drunken voice over and over, their laughter became uncontrollable, hysterical, and cleansing.

  The record stopped, and their cackles echoed hollowly, inanely. They stopped, shocked at their ugly, drunken revelry.

  Alec stood up and walked about; Raul slid himself into a chair.

  " 'You made me look ridiculous in there.' "

  " 'You looked just as ridiculous as I did.' "

  Their voices were sharp, Elizabethan, and contemptuous.

  Raul, in a half-moaning, tearful voice said, " 'Conis all I ask.' "

  Bitter, cynical, unmoved by his own tragedy, Alec said, " 'Give us this day our daily mask.' "

  And, as a return, the music began again. Alec lowered, in a slow consecrating move, his hands to the floor; Raul stretched his upward, defiant yet pleading.

  Raul stood facing the window, a breeze of cool sorrow lightly brushing a hair across his forehead. The intense, empty, static theater lights rapidly passed, as the room in lights, form, and tone became subdued.

  He sat on the floor, humble and at peace. Dark forms loomed about his shoulders, twisting about, and then before his eyes; and when the music climaxed, so the forms pressed hard, and when softly, lightly it played, they were brief, insupportable touches of sensuality.

  He nodded, as if in recognition of their presence, their power, or their meaning. He rose, somehow the wiser. Alec looked up at him.

  "Should anyone ask you," Raul said, "what it is you do, you answer: acting is my faith."

  "That doesn't answer the question."

  "And what would?"

  "That I act."

  "You may, you may not. What you do is your faith."

  "That doesn't follow. What I have faith in is acting. That is what I do."

  "No, you don't catch my meaning. It doesn't work in this language: what you do is faith itself, not what you have faith in."

  "That's very spiritual."

  "You're right. That's what's distasteful about it."

  "Then why do you say faith?"

  Raul turned about quickly and swung back, his voice severe. " 'Everything has to be taken on trust. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honored. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?' "

  Alec smiled again, the satisfaction of the obscure.

  He moved to Raul and said, "I assume that I am an actor."

  " 'We pledged our identities!' "

  " 'Secure in the conventions of our trade,'" Alec said, turning despondently away.

  " 'That someone would be watching.' "

  Alec's hand went upward, curved in a bow, falling, gracefully, to his side. "A quote for all occasions."

  "Very good." Raul smiled pleasantly. "That's very good."

  They feasted, beginning with Ritz crackers topped with tuna fish and Russian dressing, then going to a luncheonette, eating cheeseburgers and steak sandwiches. They relaxed, smoking, the multiple tastes of the evening lingering on their palates.

  Alec, cigarette poised, smiled at Raul's smile. "Doesn't it make everything marvelous? Cigarettes, food…"

  "Poetry, thought. Yes, it does." Raul took a sip of his Coke, lightly smacking his lips. "Do you feel with what detail the Coke's descent is outlined?"

  "The Coke's descent," Alec repeated, laughing.

  Raul looked away. "I always thought," he said wistfully, "that grass made one inarticulate."

  "If you're very, very stoned, it does."

  "Yeah, I can see that, but if you gear yourself to it, it has a tendency to increase one's descriptive powers."

  "Oh, okay."

  "Ah, shit. You mock me."

  "No, I'll prove it. We'll go home and get zonked." Raul laughed. "I see, there's a distinction between being stoned and being zonked."

  "Yeah, there is."

  Raul's laughter doubled. "Okay, what?"

  "It's very simple. You can get high, you can be stoned, or very, very stoned, you can be wasted, and finally that ultimate state—zonked."

  The night air was cool and breezy. Raul nodded and winked walking home, hands patting his belly— well satisfied. They entered into the soft light of the room, Raul lying on the bed, never having felt so comfortable. Alec lit new incense and searched in his drawer, coming up with a small, ornate pipe.

  Raul leaned forward. "Let me see." Raul handled the pipe carefully as Alec took a small cardboard box out of the drawer. He turned in his chair, opening the box and extending it to Raul. There were a few small gray chunks. "What is it?"

  "Hashish."

  "Hash. What's the difference between that and grass?"

  "It's the flower of the plant. Much stronger, more concentrated."

  "Good?"

  "Excellent." Alec took the smallest chunk, putting it in the bowl of the pipe, then offered the pipe to Raul.

  He shook his head. "You go first. I have to see you do it."

  Alec put the pipe in his mouth, Raul holding a match to it. He inhaled much the same way as with the grass. He handed the pipe to Raul, gray smoke billowing from the bowl. Raul inhaled, a corner of the chunk burning as ember. The searing smoke was quick this time—richer, huskier. Raul couldn't handle it for more than a few seconds; coughing, he returned the pipe to Alec. For a moment the smoke was insupportable, but he tried to swallow as much as he could. He took another toke. This time the smoke irritated a center of his lungs, producing a momentary nausea, and then penetrated to a newer depth.

  Raul continued smoking, although overcome by its strength. The chunk, for its size, lasted a long time. When it was gone, Alec rolled a joint. Raul smoked little of the joint, having had enough. He fell back, trying to absorb the hash's power. He lit a cigarette, surrounded by the rich gray. His lungs were palpitating, his body couched in comfort, ease, and sensuality. The music played as a sweet, soft undertone; the light was quiet, somber.

  Alec finished, raising the volume on the record player, lighting a cigarette, and settling down. The music filled and overwhelmed the room, its many repercussions desperately final, its movements absorbing and natural to Raul's. The music made real their scenes as they did them, their tones hopeless echoes in the full joy of music. And all sounds and all words had latent in them cou
ntless meanings, countless symbols. These meanings were spoken now.

  The production rose up behind them, the audience before them—ambiguous with insult and pity, the long seduction sure in the grace of their movements.

  Alec turned, his body contorted by it. Without losing his cynicism, quietly, like a low flute, he filtered in despair. " 'Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are… condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one—that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost.' " As if out of reverie, he twisted back suddenly and sat down.

  Raul looked almost accusingly at him and said, "We are trapped by the images defined for us."

  "Exactly. Very good."

  "Okay, good. That's settled."

  "What's settled?" Alec asked, with a quizzical look.

  Raul bolted, smiled, and asked, "Don't you know?"

  They laughed in complementing crescendos, in. mounting waves of a hysterical recognition of irony.

  Alec, between gasps, asked, "Why do you ask?"

  "Why should you question my question?"

  "Why not?"

  "Are you dumb?"

  Alec bent forward, asking quite naturally, "What?"

  "Are you dumb?"

  "Foul! No repetitions. One-Love."

  Raul grimaced, muttering low curses. Alec lit a cigarette. "Whose turn is it?"

  "It's mine," Raul said.

  "Statement. Two-Love. Game point."

  "That's not fair!"

  "Why not?"

  "It was my turn, you can't…"

  "Statement. Three-Love. First game to me." Alec smiled, goading Raul into greater irritation. Slowly, an insidious grin dawned on Raul's face.

  "Why," he began, "are you trying to play this game, knowing that I can only be annoyed by it, that I am unable to win, unable to sustain your constancy in questions, in the rules, that all I can do is ask a question that never ends, which… ?"