"I'll pass this time," said Althea.
"We'll go back to the living room."
"How many bedrooms are there?" Althea asked, as they crossed the hallway.
"Just one. The other door's the bathroom," he gestured over his shoulder.
"This is such a nice place," she remarked once they were sitting at the coffee table again. "Won't you be sad to leave it?"
"No. I told you, I'm ready to leave New York."
"What will you do with this apartment?" To protect herself from disappointment, she pretended to herself that she was asking the question idly.
"My lease isn't actually up until next August, but I imagine it won't be too hard to get out of it. It's not easy to find an apartment these days, and the landlord will be able to ask a vacancy increase."
"Have you thought of holding onto it? What if you don't like this professor after all? What if you want to come back?"
"Why," he said slowly, fixing his eyes on hers, "I believe you'd like to live here."
Althea felt herself blush.
"Wouldn't you?" he probed.
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Do you think I could sublet it from you? Whenever you came to town, you could still stay here."
Yet no sooner had she asked him than she despaired. "I don't even know what the rent is. It's probably too expensive for me."
"It's not too bad—three hundred eighty dollars a month."
That's only about sixty dollars more than what I'm paying now, Althea thought. The increase will be around eight percent- she calculated rapidly—that adds up to about ninety more dollars a month, or a little over a thousand per year.
"I can handle it," she said softly, embarrassed. Her finances were a most vulnerable subject. "If I were subletting from you, you could keep things here that are hard to transport, but which you want to hang onto. Like your butcher block table, for instance. I'd take care of them for you until you were able to take them."
"I bet you would," he said.
I can't believe I said that. I could sink through the floor with shame, she berated herself. Unable to face his ridicule, she hung her head. "You've already promised the apartment to someone else, haven't you?" she mumbled, desolate. "To your friend Christina?"
He laughed at her. "No, Christina already has an apartment and a studio outside of it, too."
He's enjoying himself, Althea realized. At my expense.
"As a matter of fact," he continued, "I'd given it some thought, but I hadn't yet decided what to do about the apartment. You're serious, aren't you?" he asked her. "You really want it?"
She nodded.
"What about it appeals to you?"
"The light, the space, everything. It's so much nicer than where I live now," she admitted. "My apartment is so dark it depresses me to be there. I know I'd be happy here. I would work right in this room, with the two long windows; I can picture it. And I can afford the rent; I won't have to get a roommate."
Still sitting cross-legged, he stretched his arms above his head. His litheness reminded Althea of the cat, whom she had forgotten while it had disappeared in some recess of the apartment. But now it reappeared again. Cam addressed it, "Come, Barney."
But the cat curled up on the rug a short distance away. "He's jealous of you," Cam explained. "He senses you're invading his territory."
"I guess he's right."
It's a relief to join in the joke, Althea thought. Now I just have to prepare myself for the refusal.
"It would be better if the lease was signed over to you. If you were subletting, you'd risk losing the apartment when the lease expired. You'd have to pay a little more up front—a vacancy increase plus a renewal—but it would be secure."
Althea couldn't believe her ears. "Are you offering me the apartment?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Why not? You really seem to want it. And I don't need it anymore."
"And you're willing to transfer the lease? Do you think the landlord would consent?"
"Well, that would depend on you, too. You'd have to prove you could pay for it. You'd probably have to get someone's signature to back you up."
"I'd get my parents to sign. They did it before. But what's your landlord like? How will you arrange it?"
"He's an old Jewish immigrant. From Berlin. He's—shall I say—eccentric. But he likes me. There were five applicants for this apartment, and I got it. I think there's a good chance he'd give it to you, if I told him about you and brought you into the office personally. But I'll have to give you a few tips on behavior. You can't come on as strong to him as you did to me."
"I know you won't believe it," Althea said, "but I've never done this before. It's out of character." She paused. "I'm overwhelmed by your offer. I was afraid I'd offended you by asking. It's unbelievably kind of you. I wonder—why would you want to do this for me? You've only just met me."
Cam smiled. Althea thought he looked utterly relaxed. "Let's just say I like the idea of masterpieces being created in this room," he said.
"But you haven't seen my paintings. How do you know you'll like them?"
"How about this: if I don't, I'll rescind the offer."
"No." Althea shook her head.
* * *
Althea was jubilant as she left Cam's. She practically bounced down the short flight of steps in the lobby. Gazing at her passing reflection in the art deco mirror, she thought, I may soon live in this building. It seemed that energy was welling out of her to meet the cold and dark outside. A new year, a new life, she told herself. Maybe my fortunes are really turning.
These thoughts buoyed her up as she stopped to buy some groceries at the Cathedral Market. This evening the errand seemed a pleasure. She lingered over her selections. The elation lasted until after she returned home. Setting down the grocery bags, she looked around her apartment with the thought that she would soon be leaving it.
Yet doubts soon beset her. What if Cam's landlord turns me down? she worried. And can I afford the extra rent? I sounded more confident than I really am. At least I already know I can handle living here. It's not really so bad. I've gotten used to it.
She gazed around her room. What I am experiencing is the fondness of the prisoner for his cell, she thought, and she was filled with disgust. Working in this apartment sometimes I have felt like a wraith. Toiling away in this dark space, this true obscurity, I have ceased to exist. But paradoxically I have also felt at those times most like an artist—an invisible creator, like God.
What will it mean to me, she thought, to shed the dark, close, camouflaging skin of this apartment? Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, spreading its crumpled wings. What will it mean to me to live in that larger, lighter space? What will it mean to my work?
She pictured Cam's living room as she had first seen it, at dusk, with the dim light falling on the page of the book and the reader in shadow. She recalled the lovely shape of the long windows. From the moment I entered the space, I seemed to belong to it, she thought, even if I don't feel the same joy or sense of encompassing freedom that met me on a cliff on Block Island with a 360-degree perspective. But it's a vantage on the city, all the same—one I don't have now.
She thought to herself, This move will signify that, even in a small way, I am aspiring to a greater station in life. That my existence is becoming more material, encumbered with a greater obligation. In the past I've avoided this, as if my creativity depended on a sense of myself as somehow floating, uncommitted, not quite real. But in fact whatever I'm giving up I'm glad to give up. I'll be more creative in the new space, not less. In truth, working here, I've more often felt like a ghost than like a god.
All during the autumn, it seems to me, I was living a dim, unreal existence. I believed in the inflated value that I placed on my love for Paul, and I felt so desperate. It was really just the ghost of a love, Althea admitted to herself, the longing without the fulfillment.
And it's more complicated than this, she realized, for part of my desir
e for Paul was a yearning for his comfortable life, which Bryce made possible. How often I pictured Paul in his roof garden and envied him! I wanted what he had, but by falling in love with him, I resisted it, too. For he was obviously never going to provide such a life for me.
Althea sighed. If I were to get Cam's apartment, I would have—if not quite what Paul has- then something comparable, along more modest lines. I won't have to envy him any longer or anyone else. I will have to make more money so I can afford it, she concluded. The thought of putting myself out on a limb—in reality a rather low one—no longer frightens me. It excites me.
* * *
Yet Althea woke startled the next morning with the impression that she had forgotten something crucial. Drinking tea at breakfast, she remembered it: her plans for her next painting, derived from her hemmed-in view from her window. If I move, will my ideas have to be abandoned? she wondered. Mug in hand, she stood before the window, but the images which had inspired her several days before were missing, though she still looked upon the same scene.
I responded to a certain quality of light, she remembered. Because I can still see it in my mind, I can take it with me. Because I see it in my mind, I can hope to paint it. Besides, if I get Cam's apartment, I have a month until I can move, and the first two weeks of that are vacation. In that time I can accomplish a lot.
Inspired, she decided to begin right away. She took out a sheet of fine, thick, soft paper and sticks of charcoal and colored chalks. She moved her table before the window and organized her supplies there. I'll work today, tomorrow take an early train to Greenwich, and spend Christmas with my family. I'll stay two or three days and then come back, she planned. Today I'll begin to work out a composition.
But before she could make a mark on the page, she was distracted by thoughts of Cam. He's really very good-looking, she reflected. I'm attracted to him. I wonder—is he involved with Christina? Did he mention her as a subtle way to tell me to keep away? He actually revealed little about his personal life, except that he's moving away. Yet already he feels like a friend.
Her forehead creased in concentration, Althea drew a pink chalk line down the page.
Chapter 26
Christmas had come and gone. On Monday, December 29, Bryce accompanied Paul to his appointment with Dr. McNab. Five weeks had passed since the accident. The cast was to be taken off, the foot X-rayed, and a new cast fitted on.
It was a dark gray cold day. The wet smell of snow was in the air. In the afternoon, when they left for the doctor's, the sky, smothered by clouds, had a pewter, ominous glow.
Dr. McNab's office was in one of the low Forties, in a building east of Park Avenue. Bryce sat in the waiting room, leafing through magazines, while Paul saw the doctor.
At five o'clock, Paul came out on crutches to the waiting room. He said little to Bryce; he was anxious to leave. Soon they stood on the sidewalk. While they had been inside, a light snow had begun to fall.
"What did the doctor tell you?" asked Bryce.
"That I'm doing okay," Paul replied, and then fell silent.
Slowly they went towards Park Avenue. Soon they came to a long stretch of grillwork in the sidewalk. Sidestepping it with his crutches, Paul stopped to look down.
"Look, we're really not standing on the ground at all, but on a roof," he said. "Down there are railroad tracks. You can see the dusting of snow that has filtered down through the grills and fallen on the ties. And here comes a train, moving slowly."
In silence they both watched the dark scene below the street, until the train had passed, and then Bryce said, "Because of what's underneath, this is a mysterious part of the city. The whole edifice seems to hover—the massive buildings, the streets and sidewalks and all they hold."
"That's true," agreed Paul. After a pause, he confessed, "You know, I'm not ready to head home right now."
"Where would you like to go?"
"I've hardly been anywhere. I haven't even seen the Christmas tree this year at Rockefeller Center."
"Well, we're close by," replied Bryce. He hailed a cab, and soon they were being let out next to the plaza, which, they discovered, was thronged with sightseers. The tops of the buildings disappeared in dense clouds. Even the massive tree was like a mirage.
At Fiftieth Street and Rockefeller Plaza, they stopped above one of the flights of stairs that led down to the balcony overlooking the rink. Paul told Bryce that he did not want to attempt the steps, made slick by the snow. For a while they watched the skaters from the curb, but they were too far away; the fine snow, like mist, obscured the scene before them. Particles of snow stung Bryce's face, and so he was grateful when Paul suggested that they have a drink somewhere.
An empty cab instantly materialized on Fifth Avenue, and they got in. They crossed Forty-ninth Street and headed up Madison Avenue. At Fifty-third Street, they turned west. As they crossed Fifth Avenue, Bryce saw that people were entering St. Thomas Church. A notice posted beside the door advertised a "choral evensong" at 5:30 pm. "Let's go," Paul said to Bryce.
"What?" Bryce was unsure he'd heard Paul correctly.
"Driver, we'll get off here," Paul ordered.
"Why did you do that?" Bryce asked, once they were out of the taxi.
"I don't know. It was an impulse."
"How will you climb the steps to the church?"
"I won't. Some good Samaritan will help me."
Paul was right; a man came and let them through a small side entrance at street level into a vestibule. He took them up in a narrow elevator to the entrance to the sanctuary. Bryce and Paul sat in a back pew, Paul on the end, his foot in a cast sticking out into the aisle.
The air was rich with incense. The nave seemed as long to Bryce as a street. At the other end of it was the altar, where a priest stood, and a choir sang a heavenly music. In spite of himself, Bryce warmed to the religious spirit. A silent communication seemed to emanate from his heart. He could not have told what it said. If not to God, then to whom? he asked himself. Perhaps I have faith without belief, he considered. His skepticism returned, detaching him from devotion. He grew attentive to Paul. Without seeming to, he observed him, a picture of piety—his bent head in sharply-drawn profile, his eyes cast down.
They had been inside the church for about a quarter of an hour when Paul clasped Bryce's hand. "I'm ready to go," he whispered.
They left by the way they had come. On the street, against the dark backdrop of the city at evening, Paul looked radiant to Bryce. "I was praying," he said, his voice rising breathlessly.
"I think everyone could tell," replied Bryce, consciously cultivating a tone of mild amusement. My way of resisting Paul's self-dramatization, he thought. "Let's get that drink," he suggested.
Inside the bar of the Hotel Dorset, Paul changed again. Leaning against a black leather banquette, while Bryce sat across from him in an upholstered chair, Paul said, "This bar is so much more inviting than the church, don't you think? The church is cold, but it's warm and comfortable here. If churches were more like bars, they'd attract more worshippers." He looked at Bryce to see if he would smile, and so Bryce did.
Soon Bryce was supplied with a Scotch on the rocks and Paul with a vodka martini. Before them were two small plates of canapes and a bowl of peanuts to take the edge off their hunger. While they nibbled hors d'oeuvres, Bryce said, "I can't believe the party's in two days. It's the biggest one we've ever given, and it's come together so quickly. I wish more people had R.S.V.P.'d, though. It's hard to plan when you don't know how many will be there. We could have forty or sixty or even more, if people bring uninvited guests."
Paul took a sip of his drink. "In my opinion," he said, "you can only plan so far. The party will take on a life of its own. It will fall flat, or it will soar."
"I still haven't decided on my costume. What are you going as?" asked Bryce.
"I already have the costume," Paul replied. "I'm wearing a blue velvet cloak. I'll be a rogue—a pirate, or a highwayman."
"What should I be?" Bryce appealed to Paul.
"We could go as a theme," Paul suggested.
"If you plan to be a pirate, like Captain Hook, for example, and you think I'm going to be Tinkerbell or Peter Pan, forget it."
"You always stand back, you never want to join in."
Bryce knew there was justice in what Paul was saying. Maybe I should just put myself in his hands, he considered. "All right, who do you suggest I be?"
"If Peter and Tinkerbell are out, what about one of the Darlings—Wendy?"
Bryce shook his head. "I'm not into drag."
"The first mate? That should be a suitably masculine role."
"I'm not brawny enough."
"The crocodile?"
"There's an idea, but I don't think I'm up for it."
"I give up," said Paul. "Come as yourself. See if I care."
"I'll surprise you," said Bryce.
"I'm not sure I want to be Captain Hook anyway," said Paul. "Why should I parade my injuries?"
"I know what you mean," agreed Bryce. He was wondering if he would like another drink. Recklessly, he ordered one. "And you?" he asked Paul.
"Why not?" Paul replied. Once fresh drinks had arrived, he took a long sip. "When the doctor took off the cast, the smell was dreadful," he confessed. "The skin underneath was dried up and decayed. I'm drinking to forget it."
A look of mortality, of dread shone in Paul's eyes. Bryce realized that he had not really joined with Paul in his fears. The suicide attempt upset me too much, he told himself. The extravagant, histrionic gesture I have never allowed myself.
He realized that he was still angry, but now, as he reconsidered, his anger melted. After all, Paul's gesture was as ineffectual as I could have wished, he concluded. It was a joke, really.
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