Back in bed, lights out, he’s holding her from behind, his left arm under his pillow. She’s clutching his right hand, kisses it several times, each time a little lighter, then lets go. Maybe that means she’s falling asleep. He should have started rubbing her buttocks and back soon after she turned over on her side—something she likes done because it relaxes her and it’s one of his signs he wants sex—but too late. If he did that now—well, like he said before (well, he said it, just as he’s done this routine before, so no more). Okay, there’ll be many nights and days for it, and it’s not as if this one’s an absolute must, so now just go to sleep. Closes his eyes. (“Shuts”? Prefers “closes” but “shuts” has only one syllable in its favor. Either, then; does it matter? Does. In this case, “closes” sounds better in relation to the sentences that preceded it. “Preceding sentences”?) After a minute, things—presleep things; he recognizes them, though they usually come when he hasn’t had anything or has had only a little to drink—flit through his head. The road, major highway, other cars alongside, some zipping by, cutting in front, tailing too close, kid in the passenger seat of a car next to his giving him the finger and saying something derisive. In this presleep it’s an exciting ride. Rest stop, like the one they were at a few miles into Maine, pulsing cups of coffee, counterman who got Sally her extra-crisp french fries. The road again, but as if the car’s stationary and the trees on both sides are flying past. Then some unfamiliar people on a conga line, a couple of cartoon characters from his youth on it and everyone laughing, and at the end of it the woman who a month ago invited him to the Magical Kingdom or whatever it’s called—he’d never heard of it before—in northernmost Vermont. On the phone—this isn’t in his head but actually what happened—knows people always say this in these circumstances but she’s been thinking of him … it’s been almost ten years. True, they didn’t part amicably, but she still has good memories of them and if anything he was always good for a laugh and intellectually energizing, and she bets things like that don’t change. Got his phone number from Information—lucky he’s the only Gould Bookbinder in New York, maybe the whole world. “Think of it,” she said. “If the world had its own Four-One-One, and you had to give the country, state, city or village, and street, and so on, I could just say ‘Gould Bookbinder, Earth,’ and get hold of you if you were listed.” “There’s got to be a few others somewhere out of four or five bil, and maybe even one with my middle initial.” Suddenly so bored in this kingdom, she said, but she’s made it her home and art studio and will never again set foot in loony-bin New York, and thinks he’d love it here for a week and pep her up and again be a good figure model, no matter how his physique and scalp’s probably changed, that is—and his only expense would be the bus fare; she grows all her own food and chops her heat—if professional and personal commitments permit it. He said his job’s not crucial—he’s a lowly teacher in poorly paid continuing ed—but he is seeing someone seriously and thinks it might lead to marriage and kids, and she said, “So, screw you, Gould; who needed to hear that?” and hung up. She hung up last time they spoke also after saying, “Who needs a cock to only crow after midnight?” Image of her fades, tries to bring her back nude because he remembers she had a big beautiful body, can’t, and in his head says goodbye. Another woman, this one much younger, dark-skinned from sun, which he liked then—and the white marks—but would now find unhealthy, hasn’t thought of her in maybe twenty years. Artie, her name was, on the first student ship he took to Europe. Slept with her the second and third nights of the trip and then started up with another girl, after they’d planned to youth-hostel and Eurorail around together for a month, and dropped this one for her. (Not quite clear and tough line, he sees, to make right, but it’ll come if he works on it; so far he thinks all of them have.) She sulked and looked away whenever she saw him after that, wrote him love notes and poems and had her friends or the cabin steward pass them on to him or leave them on his bunk bed. Penned in tears, one note or poem said at the end of it. So what did he think then? Probably very little or wished she wouldn’t be on the same deck as him so much or that her dining room sitting wasn’t the same as his and her table so close. Did she intend a double meaning with that “penned” which he wasn’t able to see at the time? Doubts it, but wouldn’t have made much of a difference to him. Wishes he could make it up to her in some way. If only to say it was nothing she did or could have prevented; that he was a two-faced bastard then, fickle as hell and out for what he could get. And if he couldn’t think of anything better to say—he can’t now, but he’s not giving himself the time—then something about his not deserving her one bit and adding that he’s being thoroughly sincere about it. He hopes when she thought of him after the voyage that she nailed him as a bastard too, not worth a minute of her sadness and regret…. His father, mouthing “Sing ‘God Bleth America, ‘ Juney Boy. You know yours is my favorite rendition of one of my all-time great tunes, and I’ll pay you a dime this time,” and picks up a boy who doesn’t resemble Gould and stands him on a kitchen counter as he used to do, usually when he had a few of his cronies over. Mimicking Gould’s speech impediment then, and the nickname he gave him when he was around five and teased him with another twenty years and was always evasive as to where it came from. “Not out of my inside coat pocket” was one of the things he said. In bathing trunks, no shirt on, brown chest and head hair instead of white and gray, since his face is old and has the same near-death look it had just before he sunk into his last coma. Then he stands back to listen, folds his arms, big biceps appear, and is gone…. His brother, sitting on the floor playing with Gould’s blocks. Gould in his head saying something to him, he can’t make out what, and his brother looks up and holds out a block with the letter T and mouths “Say it: ‘today,’” and crumbles the block in his hand and disappears…. Mr. Rich, his eighth-grade homeroom and music teacher, wanted him to take voice lessons and become a lieder and opera singer, sitting at the piano in class and about to crash down on the keys … but jump tr his mother: rocking in a regular chair, then sitting on a swing in his dream at what looks like the Central Park playground at West 77th Street she took him to a lot when he was a kid. (Did he make that shift to the dream okay? Maybe too wordy.) Saying, “She’s a genuine doll and a knockout, Sally, and I wholly approve of your sleeping together before you marry. Your dad and I didn’t and look what it got us: two boys who became one and all four hands unhappy. You don’t want to mismanage things; she could have her pick of the cream. I want to dance at your wedding before my knees dry up, and have grandchildren: two girls; boys will kill you. Even where I am they’d be mine by name and I’d watch over them as I still do you, though you didn’t know that till now.” “You’re not dead, if that’s what you’re saying. You’re in relatively good health and have plenty of reasonable years left,” and starts pushing her from behind. “Pump, pump; use your legs if you want to fly higher. You could even remarry, you’re still a very handsome woman. Though do what you want—you will anyway—but don’t make me even think you can die.” “Oh,” she says, rising more than six feet into the air, “I haven’t felt so giddy and free since you took me for a walk in the blizzard at night in this park. Higher, higher,” and he pushes her harder. “That’s more like it, Mom. And you like her, right? So I’ll do my best not to botch it.” “The others were so-so to very nice, but her I adore like my own daughter. Some unasked-for advice? Be smart, carry a stopwatch, think before you walk, keep your ears clean and fingernails spotless, and don’t talk tough or snipe, and then enhance your chances even more by not being a doormat for anyone to wipe his hands on.” “I don’t know what you mean, for when have I done that? Explete to me, Mom; I know it’s for my own good and you don’t want me to lose her,” and brings the swing to a stop and twists the chains around till she’s facing him. Wakes up, is still holding Sally. She’s blubbering in her sleep, then says, “Nustling and muscling”—or “musseling”—“Can’t fed up and gotta quid go. Help ham.” Maybe
this is a good time to speak to her. If she says why’d he wake her, he’ll say she seemed to be having a troubling if not a scary dream and he thought he’d be helping her—she even said the word “help” in her sleep—by getting her out of it, and now that she’s awake he wants to tell her something. Shakes her shoulder a little. She’s not talking or blubbering anymore. Shakes it harder. Leans over, and her right eye seems to be open and she says, “What, a storm?” and he says—
He said in the car while she was kissing his hand, “I wish I could kiss your hand too, but I’m driving. Put it by my mouth but not over my eyes?” He said later in the car, “Even with this traffic, I don’t know when I’ve felt so good. It must be the company, and I’m not talking about the cats. Say something original, right?” He said later in the car, “I know this is sort of sudden, but something I would really like is my mother to come up for a few days, let’s say a week, to make the trip worthwhile for her. I just don’t want her sticking it out in the city all summer while I’m enjoying the pleasant temperatures and smells and sights and stuff up there.” He said in the restaurant after she put down the sandwich she was eating, “You look beautiful, chewing food, not chewing food, in every way with or without food, even your swallowing. I’ve never seen you not look beautiful; what can I say? Again, silly talk, huh? and I should be whispering it.” He said, when she was about to switch radio stations in the car, “Please, I think it’s Sibelius, a symphony, but I want to know which number, and it’s not one I think I’ve heard. We can always hear the news. And this slow movement I can imagine myself putting on at night while walking my very young baby around the apartment to get her to sleep.” He said in the kitchen, “You don’t have to tell me what you’re thinking or what you want to ask me. I’m gonna guess. Or I’ll just give the answer. Yes, I think this place is great and I couldn’t be more delighted at being here, I swear I’m not just saying it, so whatever it’s worth to you, I’m glad to give my half of the rent. Now come on, food’s about ready, let’s eat.” He yelled up the stairs, “Really, Sally, don’t you want to have dinner? After a certain evening hour passes, my starved stomach turns into a fortress, and you’ll have to decipher that on your own upstairs or come to the table to find out what it means.” He said to his mother on the phone, “Hi, how are you, did it get as hot in the city as they predicted, not that you need reminding of it if it did? Listen, I have something good to tell you. First off, we’re here, safe, trip was easy, cats didn’t take it badly, and the place and air and everything here is wonderful, and I don’t say that to rub it in. We want you to come stay with us for a week, which would really mean seven days and six nights, though several hours of two of those days you’d be traveling. I’ll make the plane reservations from here. Just let me know when you can come—any other week but the one ending with July seventeenth in the weekend, as that’s when Sally’s mom will be here—and I suppose I’ll need your American Express card number and the expiration date.” He said to Sally at the table, “I still can’t believe my luck in knowing you. I know ‘luck’ might be the wrong word for it, and I’d never go so far as to say ‘blessed.’ But that’s how I feel, somewhere in between lucky and blessed. I can’t guarantee I’ll always feel like this but I bet I always come back to it if we stick together, what do you say?” He said in bed, “Your skin. I’m sure you’ll say or think this is another of my silly inane compliments you’d rather not hear and I should have quashed, but it’s so soft and I love running my hand over it. There’s not an unsmooth spot anywhere except on your head, where there are a couple of bumps that should be looked into, and that’s more your scalp than your skin, if we can distinguish them.” He said later, in bed, “Because I almost always say it, I’m going to say it, but you don’t have to respond to it in any way: good night.” He said after he’d had a series of short dreams and she was probably asleep, “Sally, if you’re up, do you think you’d like to make love again? I would, but if you’re too sleepy to or for any other reason don’t want to—and I’ll only make this request once and after that I promise not to bother you with any further entreaties or physical signals—then believe me, it’s okay.” He thinks she said in his dream, “Did we forget something?” and dropped her bathrobe, had nothing on, and joined him in bed. He said over the side of the bed, “You’re not lying there, I hope.” He said down the stairs, “Sally, you okay? You’re not feeling sick or anything? Because if you are, let me know if I can help you.” He said after he shook her, “You awake? I know you have a problem with my impulsiveness, but there’s something very important I want to say to you that can’t seem to wait. If you don’t answer me, I’ll assume you think it’s the wrong time for me to say it or you’re just too sleepy to listen to it or make heads or tails of it, which would also make it the wrong time to say it, or you’re asleep, which would mean you’re not hearing what I’m saying so of course wouldn’t hear what I think’s so important to say.” He thinks he forgot one of the “he says—.” Oh, so what. Ah, so what? Just stop it.
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