“You look sexy to me,” said Beaubien. “Very manly.” And though she was a whisperer and whisperers always put my guard up, I did feel aroused by her remarks. Most men are suckers for praise. Also, she was not without her charms—pretty face, slender shoulders, an elegant neck.
“Did he hit you in the eyes?” asked Mangrove, obviously an area of interest to him.
“No,” I said, “the black eyes are the runoff of blood from the nose.”
“You certainly took a beating,” said Mangrove.
“I've considered plastic surgery, just the wrinkles around my eyes,” said Lenora, “but what if they make a mistake?”
“You're not going in for plastic surgery, are you?” Beaubien asked me. “A broken nose on a man is a sign of virility.”
“No, I don't think I'll have surgery,” I said, and then at that very moment a woman came into the room and there was a rush of air. Her presence was so forceful that conversations, for the third time, became muted as we all noted her late arrival. This woman headed for the food.
“Ava,” said Beaubien with feline jealousy.
I took in the dimensions of this creature, and I have to say that all thoughts of Diane and my brief attraction to Beaubien were dismissed, displaced, and disregarded. I had never seen a more stunning female. She wore a simple white cotton dress that could barely contain six feet of Amazonian legs, glorious breasts, and a nose. A nose! The most incredible nose I had ever seen in my life. Enormous, bumpy, hooked, with flaring nostrils the size of shot glasses. The nose looked like some sort of mad knot on a tree, but it was in the middle of her face, which was an Italian face, an oval Roman face. Her hair was a thick brown pelt of curls, and as she swung her arms, I could see sexy hair coming out of her armpits, alongside her full Sophia Loren breasts.
But it was the nose. The nose is what did it. There's a French phrase that covers the experience of immediately falling in love with someone; it's called a coup de foudre, which I've always translated, perhaps incorrectly, as a piercing of the heart. Well, what I experienced when I saw Ava was just that, but with an added element—it was a coup de foudre par le nez. Her nose had pierced my heart. I was in love. Head over heels in love.
She filled her plate with food and walked across the room to the table behind us. I turned to look at her. She paused by her chair before sitting down and faced me directly. Rays of sunlight, coming through the windows, went right through her thin white dress. The tops of her legs were illuminated, and I don't know if I was hallucinating, but I thought I could just make out the hint of her mound, of dangling private beautiful hairs, as defined by sunlight, which would mean she was pantyless. Real or hallucinated, it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen—this forbidden glimpse of the silhouette of her mons. I was temporarily in possession of X-ray vision. Then she sat down. In shock, I finished my eighth glass of wine.
CHAPTER 18
In the drinks room with BeaubienSomewhere along the way a switch from wine to port has been madeI'm given something of a life story, while craving more portMy mustache gets another five-star reviewI come very close to taking decisive actionTinkle makes an entrance
I hadn't drunk that much, only about two bottles of wine altogether, but shortly after the vision of that nose, I lost nearly an hour and a half. This was not an unfamiliar experience during my drinking career, but my liver must really have been getting pulpy for me to go on autopilot after such a small amount.
I came out of this blackout to find myself alone with Beaubien in the drinks room, sipping a glass of port. It was half past eight and dark outside. The room was shadowy, two lamps in the corner were lit; the walls were painted a dark somber red, good for whiskey-sipping by nineteenth-century millionaires. There were various chairs and sofas keeping one another company. I scraped around in my mind for what had transpired over the last ninety minutes. Nothing floated to the surface. I must have finished my meal, had coffee and dessert, and then at some point found myself alone with Beaubien. She seemed to be in the middle of a monologue, a life story perhaps:
“… because of what happened, I ran away from home many times. Then in my twenties, I lived on a commune in the woods of Oregon. We were all vegetarians and everyone had many lovers …”
I nodded politely at this, it sounded rather As You Like It, but I was trying to get a grip on things and couldn't give her my full attention. I checked my sport coat for vomit. None. That was good. My hat was on the floor, but this didn't seem to indicate that anything too strange had occurred. My sunglasses were in my front sport coat pocket. I did feel rather sober, oddly enough, the blackout serving like some kind of alcoholic nap, but I cringed inwardly, thinking of how I was going to have to confess to Jeeves that I had fallen off the wagon with almost no resistance and had already blacked out. I hadn't even tried to conduct a masquerade of social drinking. Oh, God, I was doomed. Alcohol was going to kill me. To put such thoughts away, to recapture intoxication, I finished my glass of port, but I needed more.
Beaubien and I were on an olive-colored divan, and her bare, attractive legs were pulled up beneath her. She was wearing an elegant gray skirt and a sleeveless, peach-colored tunic. Her naked shoulders continued to be naked. I noted that she was sitting rather close to me. I desperately wanted to get my hands on some more port, but I didn't see the bottle. She was still in the middle of her whispery monologue, which seemed rather difficult to interrupt:
“… I had my first show in Paris, which was a great success, but I was hysterical in my thirties and so I went for analysis. I slept with many younger men. That was flattering. Now I'm in my forties and not hysterical and would like to marry. Reginald and I used to date, but we're too alike…. Many women my age are having children. They say the forties are the new thirties…. One time I saw my analyst's notes when he had to leave the room. He had written only one thing and underlined it several times: ‘borderline personality disorder.’ I looked it up at the library and completely disagreed with him and stopped going. But I miss it sometimes. The things that happened to you in your childhood don't go away. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” I said. “Is there any more port?”
She pointed behind me to a sideboard with a number of bottles.
“Would you like some more?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Piloting myself over to the sideboard, my basic motor function seemed to be good. Legs were steady and my hand grasped the port in a commanding, purposeful manner. In my mind, I thanked my limbs for behaving so nicely. I came back with the bottle and refilled our glasses.
“Thank you, Alan,” she said.
I took a swig and felt some of my earlier blissful retardation return. “You were speaking of your childhood,” I said.
“My father was a terrible man. I was an unusually beautiful girl.”
She put her hand on my sleeve. This was the strangest seduction I had ever experienced, especially since I was more or less coming to at some penultimate moment. Though my senses were a bit dulled, I felt that she was cryptically referring to incest and sexual abuse—“things that happened in your childhood,” “terrible man,” “unusually beautiful girl”—while simultaneously making a play for me. She wanted me to both pity her and desire her. I wished I could return to my blackout. She should never have quit analysis. My mind reeled. Why were so many people sexually abused? I, for one, have never found children appealing in a sensual way. Well, one time at the ocean I did find a young girl's buttocks to be extraordinarily beautiful, the way they looked in her bathing suit; she may have been only nine years old, but this was purely an aesthetic reaction, though it was a powerful one, such that I still remember it. Regardless, I am certainly not a pedophile, and if I had a young daughter, I wouldn't go into her room, as I imagined Beaubien's father must have, and commit atrocities. Poor Beaubien!
“Your mustache is so attractive,” Beaubien whispered, and squeezed my arm. “I love it. I love men with mustaches.”
&
nbsp; She really did have a borderline personality disorder, though I wasn't sure of this condition's exact pathology. But I hypothesized it must have something to do with faulty borders, which was manifest in this loony confession/seduction. She was telling me too much about herself, making herself too vulnerable: she had no borders. But her hand on my arm was arousing. A woman's touch, even the touch of a woman who is nuts, can be very powerful. And the desire to console her—sexually and emotionally—activated my own lunatic sense of chivalry. Somebody had to save this mad beauty. Why not me?
But I sensed a classic dilemma forming: Do you take the woman you can have or do you try to go for the woman you really want? I wanted Ava and that nose, and short of Ava, there was still Diana and her dirty feet.
But I could have Sigrid Beaubien. Wouldn't have to risk rejection. Her hand was not lifting from my sleeve. She had praised my mustache. Her eyes were humid; they beseeched me. The pupils were so dilated there was just a rim of brown. She was insane. Possibly on drugs. She had very nice legs. She was a whisperer. Her shoulders beckoned to be grabbed in my manly fists. I imagined that she was quite good in bed in a hysterical, thrashing sort of way, though I also imagined her taking a letter opener or a scissors and gouging out one of my eyes as I lay in bed with her. I don't know why this particular image came to me, but then I wondered if maybe she had gouged Mangrove's eye.
So despite every possible warning signal—whispering, inappropriate confession, admission of psychiatric diagnosis, bragging about numerous lovers—that hand on my sleeve was a siren's call, which I was going to answer. I've always chosen the wrong romantic partners, and now was no time to change. Life is circular and repetitive; both Nietzsche and Shakespeare have confirmed this.
“I'm glad you like my mustache,” I said in a hushed, seductive tone, indicating with my emphasis that we were talking about more than mustaches here, and I knew that I could lean forward and kiss her. I was about to put my hand in her dark hair, to push it away from her face as an opening move. This would be my first caress, followed by the leaning in with my port-flavored mouth, but Tinkle came into the room just as I had sent out the orders to my nerve endings to begin action. With his intrusion, though, all military-sexual advancement came to a sudden halt. I did lurch a little on that divan, rocking forward as if with a myoclonic jerk, the spasm that occurs right before sleep, and Beaubien's lips, which she had just noticeably parted, were now re-formed into a tight-lipped smile.
“Am I interrupting?” asked Tinkle.
“No,” said Beaubien, though she was unmistakably irritated.
“I wanted to offer Alan a welcome to the Rose Colony cigar,” Tinkle said, “if he likes to smoke.” Then addressing me directly: “That is, if you'd like a cigar.”
“Yes, a cigar would be very nice,” I said.
“We have to smoke outside. No smoking in the Mansion,” he said. “But if you two are talking, I can find you later.”
“Yes, we're talking,” said Beaubien rather coolly.
“Could we continue later?” I asked. “I've had quite a lot to drink and going for a walk and smoke would be good for me.”
This was a lie, of course. A cigar might make me very ill, but I had immediately perceived Tinkle's arrival as a sign from the gods that to kiss Beaubien on my first night at the Rose was to court disaster. Putting aside the issue of the women you want versus the women you can have, in this case Ava versus Beaubien, I knew that Beaubien was just too much for me. She was older and sexy and beautiful, but before my lips had even touched hers, I knew it would all go horrifically wrong, which, naturally, had been part of the attraction. To put my hand in a flame. So Tinkle had saved me. I stood up before Beaubien could actually grant me permission to leave, which forced her to do so.
“All right,” she said. “Go smoke your cigar. But I want to keep talking to you. I'll be in here or the mudroom. Find me.”
I could see there was already hurt in her eyes, that she was injured, but if I went further, it would only get worse. I was drunk, but I had some wits about me. I wasn't going to come find her later, but she'd forget about me soon enough. And I had behaved, more or less, like a gentleman, so I was in the clear. I bent down to pick up my hat and left the drinks room with Tinkle.
CHAPTER 19
Drinking and smoking with TinkleI provide counsel, playing the rôle of Ernest HemingwayTinkle tries to kill me
I was in Tinkle's room on the third floor of the Mansion, smoking one of his cigars and drinking his whiskey. After we left Beaubien, I had casually mentioned the need for more alcohol, so we had come up to his room to smoke instead of going for a walk, since it was in his room that he could properly introduce me to his bottle of Wild Turkey, which is not the most expensive whiskey, but in the right light it can look very attractive, and Tinkle's room had the right light.
At first I had refused the cigar, but then after a sip of Tinkle's Wild Turkey, I had put one in my mouth and was reminded of Hans Castorp's affection for cigars in The Magic Mountain, which, as I may have mentioned, is one of my favorite books of all time. When Hans finally kissed Claudia Chauchat around page 600, the book literally flew from my hands in ejaculatory pleasure. For six hundred pages Mann had teased us with an attraction between those two! He had been sadistically patient. Well, it was worth it. Only one other time has a book flown from my hands, and that was when Sancho Panza vomited in Don Quixote's mouth after Don Quixote had vomited in Sancho's mouth. I highly recommend reading Don Quixote just for that passage.
Anyway, Tinkle's lead-paned windows were open and we had a fan blowing our cigar exhaust out into the night, since smoking wasn't allowed in the Mansion, due to the fire hazard it posed to such an old building. The dark summer sky was visible to me. I felt rather at peace. I was holding my liquor, and guilty thoughts about falling off the wagon had been banished. The cigar was making me feel good, not nauseous. All was well.
Like my own accommodations, Tinkle's chamber was somewhat monastic: a bed, a desk with a typewriter (Tinkle, I surmised, was an old-fashioned writer), and an easy chair, which I was at the moment inhabiting. It had a stick shift on the side for a footstool. I popped the stool, extended my legs, and admired my wing tips. I put my hat on the floor. Tinkle sat at his desk.
“Thank you for saving me from Beaubien,” I said.
“Why saving? You looked to be in a good position. I feel bad for interrupting. I'd go for her in a heartbeat.”
I had misspoken—had nearly besmirched Beaubien's character. To rally out of that, I compensated with an admission. “Well, you see, I have my eye on Ava. Her nose is extraordinary.”
“You have a thing for her nose?”
“I think I do.”
“I also have sexual problems,” said Tinkle.
“I'm not sure my thing for Ava's nose qualifies as a sexual problem. It's a very beautiful nose.”
“I'm sorry,” said Tinkle.
“That's all right,” I said.
“But I really do have sexual problems,” said Tinkle.
“I understand,” I said.
“Can I talk to you about something personal?”
I was enjoying the man's tobacco and whiskey, the least I could do was to provide some counsel, though I wondered if everyone at the Rose was so forthcoming. First Beaubien and now Tinkle. But it made sense: I was new on campus and they were probably desperate for a friend. I popped the footstool down, to show that I was serious and sympathetic. “Tell all,” I said to Tinkle.
He leaned forward. His posture was confessional. “I'm like a broken water pistol,” he said. “I fire sideways.”
“Have you seen a urologist?” I asked, and I didn't say it, but I wondered if Tinkle's name had subconsciously caused him to suffer in this area. Growing up, I knew a girl with the surname Hiney, and this probably shaped her destiny. She was relatively normal-looking but she was reviled. I remember her singing a solo in the fourth-grade choir and someone screamed out derisively, “Hiney!” Everyone in th
e auditorium laughed and the poor girl's will was broken. Up until that point she had been singing beautifully. I had even thought for a moment, with some kind of nine-year-old's intuition, that her lovely singing voice might erase the years of ridicule. But some bully must have sensed the same thing—Hiney!—and robbed her of her triumph. I wonder what's become of her. Her family moved after the fifth grade. Maybe they went to a foreign country where the name Hiney wasn't a detriment. That's the best one can hope. A name can determine a great deal. Look at Jeeves, poor fellow. Very hard for people to take him seriously.
“My problem isn't physical,” said Tinkle. “It's not something a urologist could help me with.”
“Well, if you're shooting sideways, that sounds physical to me. … I'll have some more whiskey.”
In my mind, this was like when Fitzgerald had consulted Hemingway on the size of his—Fitzgerald's—genitals, at least that's what Hemingway reported in A Moveable Feast. So I played Papa to Tinkle's Scott. He poured me some more whiskey.
“Now explain to me how shooting sideways is not a urological, physical issue?” I asked, and I wondered if I should bring up, after all, the Hiney story, point him in the direction of uncovering the possible name-related psychosomatic root to his problem, but it also occurred to me that perhaps his organ had somehow become bent. Maybe a bicycle accident? Or perhaps a rapidly descending toilet seat had gotten the best of him. I had heard of such things happening and had narrowly avoided that guillotinish fate myself a few times. Every now and then people idiotically put rugs or some kind of quilt-work on the back of toilet seats, and such coverings cause the lids to be unpredictable and spastic. Only lightning-quick reflexes have saved me during these crises. Perhaps Tinkle didn't have such good reflexes.
Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel Page 16