I staggered off across the Common, stumbling through the springtime mud and humming to myself, a dismal melody whose source I couldn’t quite place. I hummed it again and then it came to me, Daciana, it was hers, some Gypsy song, one she liked to wake me up with, it put me in the mood for pierogi and suicide. Here’s to you, comrade. Along Mass Ave, sodium lamps glowing orange gumdrops. The air smelled bleachy. Raw, excitable, I lurched, belching, toward Porter Square, ultimate destination unknown. I could keep going all the way to Davis Square. Why was every place around here a Square? City planner with a quadrilateral fetish. But they weren’t square, these Squares. Harvard Square was a triangle. Porter Square a trapezoid. Inman Square an intersection. I passed the building where I’d lived with Dorothy, Kelly, and Jessica, and I waved at their floor. I hoped they’d found a new roommate, a fourth to complete the square, what would her name be? Alison. Or—no. Myung. Her name would be Myung and she would be mmmpre-law, she’d be the loudest of all, her screams audible over a two-mile radius.
Outside a bar called the Thorn, a throng of people stood smoking. I was working my way through them when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey.”
I swiveled around loosely.
“Hey,” said the man again. His smile leaked smoke.
It was Eric.
Had I been in any other state, I would have kept walking, mortified to be caught out alone by him. As things stood, though, my mood was somewhat more expansive.
“Good evening,” I said, bowing deeply at the waist.
With him were two women, Boston Irish, blond and heavyset, their fingernails painted the same hair-raising purple. The only discernible difference between them was that one had a navel piercing and the other did not.
“Joe, right?”
I was embarrassed by how gratified I felt to learn that he knew my name—gratified enough not to correct him. His acknowledgment ought to’ve meant nothing to me. Yet it did. “Indeed. And you’re Eric. And you lovely ladies are.”
“Lindsay.” “Debbie.”
I hadn’t caught which name went with which girl, so in my mind they became Navel and Non-Navel. I bowed to both. “It is an honor and a privilege,” I said.
They laughed throatily. One of them offered me a smoke. I declined.
“I must guard my health,” I said. “It’s my birthday.”
“Cool,” Non-Navel said. “Happy birthday.”
I bowed again.
“Calls for a shot,” Eric said. He took Navel by the arm and they went inside. I looked at Non-Navel, who smiled and pulled me after them.
We cleared space in a corner, and Eric sent the girls for drinks. They seemed happy to do so, returning with a tray of overflowing glasses.
“Tequiiiila,” Navel said. She had a thick Boston accent.
Everyone salted and drank and bit. Then Eric told them to get beer chasers.
While they were gone, I asked if Navel was his girlfriend.
“Naw, I just met them.”
“Then why do they keep buying us drinks?” At my sloppiest, I could still find the hole in a situation’s logic.
He shrugged, then winked. The similarity to Alma was so striking that I almost yelped.
I can recall snatches of what followed. There were drinks and more drinks. Jokes I knew I should not find funny but that made me sputter with delight. Then everyone got around to comparing tattoos. Non-Navel had a dolphin on her ankle. Navel turned around and lifted up her shirt to show a “tribal” design across the small of her back. Eric had an AK-47 on one shoulder and a weirdly old-fashioned staghead on the other, as though he’d had the tattoo artist copy opposing pages out of Field & Stream. When I said that I didn’t have a tattoo, the focus then became which tattoo I would get when (not if) I got one. Navel lobbied in favor of barbed wire around the biceps. Non-Navel seemed to think I was more of a Chinese character kind of guy.
“I’d get Nietzsche,” I yelled over the music.
They looked confused.
I explained that he was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. They still looked confused, so I added that I, too, was a philosopher.
“Oooh,” Non-Navel said. “Say somethin deep.”
Later I tried to explain the Sorites Paradox to her.
“That don’t make no sense,” she yelled.
She had come to be sitting in my lap.
“That’s why it’s a paradox,” I yelled. The flow of blood to my lower extremities was being severely restricted.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” yelled Navel.
“Sand,” yelled Non-Navel.
“What fuckin sand?”
“It’s a metaphor,” I yelled.
Charisma is a mysterious and powerful thing. I have it in limited supply, and that which I do have functions under highly specialized conditions. A certain class of smart, strong-willed woman finds me endearing. In general, though, I’m not the type of person who wins people over in bars. Whatever Eric had working against him—that beard, for starters—he had a far more potent weapon coursing through his bloodstream, one unavailable to mere mortals like me. I’ve already mentioned that he was handsome in a predatory sort of way. When we’d first met he had been so sullen and uninterested in me that I had failed to credit him with anything more than a genetic hold on Alma. Under the influence of booze and despair, however, I now saw that I had been wrong: he was in fact preternaturally charming, oozing sexuality, and knowing instinctively what women wanted to hear and when they needed to hear it. It’s hard for me to remember exactly what he said, but in truth the words themselves are unimportant; in seduction, as in all forms of marketing, form supersedes content. I do remember struggling to formulate questions that would reveal something of his character to me. I wanted to know who this person was, this confidence man who had the potential to replace me. What molten substance bubbled at his core? But he had a way of making me feel awkward when I asked a question he didn’t want to answer. He would pretend not to have heard me; he would invariably be looking in the other direction, nuzzling Navel, whispering in her ear, making her giggle. I watched her finger skip across the hollow of his chest and up to his cheek, then down to hook under the droopy neck of his T-shirt. I watched as the finger traced around the collar to the nape of his neck, dancing then down his back, coming to rest near the top of his buttocks, where the elastic of his underwear rose over his waistband. He did not react to this advance: he expected it and did not seem the slightest bit surprised. Non-Navel was watching them, too. She may have been in my arms, but it was his power keeping her there. Drunk as I was, I could tell from the way they responded to him, their bodies open and inclined, that he had both girls bridled. In this way, they looked familiar to me. They looked the way women used to look when they talked to my father.
I WOKE with my face squunched. Warm, stale air washed over my naked back. Itchy-eyed, cotton-mouthed, I lay there running my fingers over the surface below me, which I tentatively identified as an unsheeted futon.
I heard snorting, felt shifting, became aware of a body next to me. Rising up on my elbows turned a simple headache into pure evil, so I eased myself back down, lying motionless until the world stopped crackling. Then I slid out of bed and began hunting for my clothes. This was a real challenge, as the room was dark and covered in heaps of dirty laundry, and I kept having to pause to let nausea pass.
I’d collected both shoes, one sock, and my still-buttoned shirt when from the next room came a shout.
“Mothafucka.”
Startled, I dropped my shirt.
The body in the bed stirred, sat up. It was Non-Navel. “Hey,” she said.
“Son of a bitch. ”
“Jesus,” said Non-Navel. She rubbed her nose, watching as I excavated around her butterfly chair. “What are you doing?”
“Mothafucka.”
“Simma down,” yelled Non-Navel. She told me to come back to bed.
I mumbled about needing to find my pants.
“Hey,” yelled Non-Navel. “People are sleeping, y’inconsiderate cu—”
The door burst open. I, pantsless, dove for cover. Navel had no such qualms. In she marched, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, her makeup smeared into war paint. She planted herself in the middle of the room—arms akimbo, thighs aquiver—and bellowed:
“Youbastidwhethafucksmyshit.”
I seized a crusty dishtowel, tried gamely to cover myself with it.
“Get the hell outta my room,” yelled Non-Navel.
“Bastid.” Navel was striding toward me. “Whez my shit?” She wrapped her beefy arms around me and swung me toward the floor, my superior size mooted by hangover and the element of surprise. Down I went, noting as I did another tattoo she’d failed to mention, a cackling shamrock and the words ERIN-GO-FUCK-YASELF inscribed on the inside of her left leg. I looked up to see her rearing back to strike me—and then Non-Navel came flying into the frame, tackling her, and the two of them went rolling across the room, caterwauling and yanking each other’s hair.
“He took my shit! He took my shit!”
“You crazy bitch, shut the fuck up.”
“My shit!”
Briefly, I watched, transfixed. Then I came to, grabbed what I had, and ran.
The kitchen was littered with glasses and overflowing ashtrays. My pants were splayed across the back of a folding chair. I had the presence of mind to check for my wallet and keys before stepping sockless into my loafers.
“Mothafucka.” Navel was coming at me, arms out like a zombie, dragging Non-Navel, who had her by the leg. “Mo. Tha. Fuck. A.”
Down a stairwell, skidding turns, slamming walls, daylight ahead; moving fast until a ghastly howl of pain brought me up short.
“Wait!” Non-Navel appeared, out of breath. “Heah,” she said, pressing a piece of paper into my hand. “Call me?”
WITH THE HELP of a bus stop map, I determined that I was in Arlington, five miles northeast of Cambridge. I set out on foot, repeatedly glancing back in expectation of one or both women barreling down the sidewalk after me. Stores were open; it was long after nine, and I felt sick, having missed breakfast with Alma. I picked up the pace, jogging along until I found a cab.
I came in via the back porch and tiptoed to my bathroom. As I scrubbed away smoke and grime, I thought about Navel and her accusations. If anything had happened, Eric was surely to blame, although I suppose in her mind that made me guilty by association. What, exactly, had he stolen? Her purse? Phone? Drugs? Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. I groped indignantly for bits and pieces of the previous evening, feeling sick all over again when I got ahold of them. I saw a drinking game at the girls’ apartment, everybody down to underwear; remembered grasping something sweaty and fleshy and not knowing to whom it belonged ... Had we all been in the same room? Had it been that bad? I could never know for certain, but whatever had taken place could not be revoked; it would stand between us eternally. I wanted to vomit. I was guilty—not of theft but of lowering myself. I stood indicted in my own eyes: I’d done as he had done, I had made myself his equal, and I hated myself for it.
In the kitchen, Alma had put out a plate of herring and a mug of black coffee.
“Good morning, Mr. Geist. I trust you had a nice party. I thought you might require this.”
Cheeks burning, I sat down to my Katerfrühstück.
13
There are few places more beautiful than Cambridge in its blooming days, days all the lovelier for the preceding months of misery. For Alma, however, whose attacks were triggered by heat, the spring thaw meant a greater likelihood of being knocked flat by pain. Twice in three days she failed to come down for breakfast, and when it happened again a few days later, I dialed Dr. Cargill. Her advice—wait it out—left me restless and dissatisfied, and to occupy my mind I set about making Alma some lunch, which I put on a tray and took upstairs. Her bedroom door was closed. Hearing nothing, I decided not to knock but to put the tray down, allowing her to take what she would whenever she was ready. I started downstairs again, then stopped and looked back. The tray was a few inches from the door. What if she came outside and stepped right into the food? Or worse: tripped and fell down the stairs? I nudged the tray back a few feet. But what if she was too exhausted to make it all the way over to the tray? I nudged it closer. But what if the food spoiled, sitting out here on the landing? She might get salmonella. I picked up the tray; I would take it downstairs and leave it in the fridge. But what if she was hungry and needed food and couldn’t call out to me? What if she did call out and I didn’t hear her? Sandwiches didn’t go bad, did they? I used to bring my lunch to school and keep it in my desk, where it sat all day long, fermenting. But I was a kid back then, I had a robust immune system, I never got sick. The elderly were especially susceptible to food poisoning. They could die. It was a curse, having these factoids at my disposal . . . But Alma was healthy. Sort of. But this. But that. Up went the tray; down it went; back it went, then forth. Finally I began to worry about waking her with all my futzing around, so I left the tray where it was, halfway between close and far, and went back down to the kitchen to call the doctor again. When I got there, though, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I didn’t want to cry wolf. I had to trust that her chosen course of action (i.e., inaction) was best. But she had said to call anytime.
But but but but but.
As I stood there, arguing with myself, my finger poised over the keypad, the doorbell rang. I hurried to answer it before the noise woke Alma.
Eric stood on the front porch, leering at me in a way that confirmed everything I’d feared. We were connected now, whether I consented or not.
“Hey,” he said. “Is my aunt around?”
“She’s not feeling well.”
“One of her . . .”
I nodded.
“That’s too bad.”
I said nothing.
“Cause I was kind of hoping to see her.”
“She’s not up for that.”
“Hm.” He smiled, as though it was my duty to move the conversation along.
“Was there something else I could help you with?”
“I need to see her,” he said. “It’s important.”
“She’s resting.”
“No, I know. You know what, though, I think I’ll wait for her.”
“It could be hours.”
“Right.”
“And,” I said, “and she needs it quiet.”
“Okay.”
A silence.
“So you’d really be better off coming back.”
“Look, man, I’m not going to throw a party. It’s hot as hell out here.” And he brushed past me, crossing the living room toward the kitchen. I followed.
“Can I get some water?” he asked.
“Help yourself.”
He started opening all the wrong cupboards.
Annoyed, I fetched him a glass.
“Hey, thanks.”
He drank, animal lapping sounds. When he faced me next his shirtfront was wet.
“Told you it was hot.” He tossed me the empty glass. “But it’s always cold in here, right?” He laughed, then lifted the plastic cake cover, beneath which sat the remaining third of that week’s Sachertorte.
“That looks fantastic. Lemme get some of that?”
With the thinnest composure, I handed him a plate and utensils.
“Nice,” he said, cutting a big slice. “She loves her chocolate. She used to order it from Switzerland.”
I indicated the bars on the counter.
“Really? She still does that?”
“So it would seem.”
“Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “Some things never change, huh.”
“I guess not.”
“You guess not.” He laughed again. “You guess right.”
He bent to take in a forkful, knots of spine poking up beneath his T-shirt. I realized with repulsion that it
was the very same shirt he’d worn that night in the bar. Whether it had been washed since, I could not tell.
Correctly made, Sachertorte is too dry to eat on its own; unsweetened whipped cream makes the traditional accompaniment. We had a bowl in the fridge, but I didn’t mention it, leaning against the counter with my arms folded, advertising indifference.
The truth was otherwise. For although I hated the way he had barged in, disrupting my solitude, making me self-conscious by reminding me of our drunken escapade; hated his impertinence (lemme get some of that); hated what he stood for, the part of Alma to which I had no access, the knowledge that I was a visitor here—while all that was true, it would be an oversimplification to say that I hated him, or wanted him gone. At many points I could have denied him entry. I could have refused to let him in the house. I could have ordered him to leave once he’d finished drinking or eating. I didn’t, because another part of me still sensed in him an opportunity for information. And I admit that I am not immune to the purely chemical effects of charisma. I could no more deny it than pretend that the night in Arlington had never happened: I wanted him to like me.
He pushed the plate away, wiped his mouth on his wrist. “You’re a philosopher.”
I nodded.
“That’s cool. She must love that. Huh?”
I shrugged.
“I mean ...” He passed his hand over his head, laughed again. “You know? I never did get any of that stuff.”
“Is that right.”
“Oh, sure, yeah. I have learning disabilities. I mean, she used to get really frustrated with me.”
I thought of something Alma had said during our first conversation. It is a terrible thing to be stupid.
“How long did you live with her?” I asked.
“Nine years.”
“Did you like it?”
He smiled. “I was a kid. What was I supposed to do?”
“Has she always been sick?”
“Ever since I’ve known her.” He paused. “She used to wake herself up. I’d hear her walking around upstairs, two, three in the morning. Sound familiar?”
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