Fall Love

  He heard the kitchen window being flung up. He saw Bryce’s face peer out. “Aren’t you coming in?” Bryce asked again, this time querulously.

  “I guess so,” replied Paul, with a note of reluctance.

  “It’s damn cold,” Bryce emphasized. And the window went back down.

  But I’m from Minnesota and Michigan, not Mississippi, Paul thought to himself. I’m in my element. He lingered a moment longer, feeling the night around him, black and bold, full of stars he could barely discern through the city’s aura and the clouds. A quarter moon peeked out, hanging low in the sky. Making noise, flashing its lights, a plane flew over the Hudson River. There’s something odd about the shape of that plane, Paul considered. I bet it’s a military plane, down from West Point, on a midnight joy ride. His deduction contained a criticism, even contempt, yet he had to admit the idea of such a flight was appealing. Maybe, for the party, I ought to hire a plane to carry a banner, like at the beach, he thought: “Welcome, 1981.” At night, the sign would have to be lit up. Just imagine.

  He was lost in his thoughts, as he went around to the front door, which was unlocked, and let himself in at last. The foyer was dark and empty. He locked the door behind him and followed the trail of light down the hallway. Bryce was in the bedroom, sitting at the little table, apparently at work.

  “What are you doing?” Paul asked.

  “Writing out checks to worthy causes. It’s that time of year,” Bryce replied without looking up.

  Impulsively, Paul clasped the nape of Bryce’s neck. Under his soft skin, Bryce’s spine felt strong and delicate. In response, Bryce arched his neck. Paul welcomed the pressure against his open palm. “Put the checkbook away,” he urged. “It can wait until tomorrow. Come have a nightcap with me.”

  “Haven’t you had enough to drink tonight?” Bryce teased. In the far distance, Paul perceived, like an echo, the hoot of a passing train. Bryce laid his pen aside.

  In the living room, they were hit by a blast of cold air. “Oh dear, we left the Aeolian harp in the window. It was there all afternoon and evening during the snowfall. I expect it’s been ruined,” Bryce lamented.

  “Get it out of the windowsill and shut the window. It’s freezing in here. Bring it over to the coffee table,” Paul ordered. As he spoke, he was reminded of Don, the old man who’d showed him an Aeolian harp. He recalled how knowledgeably Don had examined that other damaged harp. I, on the other hand, am not truly knowledgeable. I am only peremptory, he thought. He lowered himself from his crutches onto the couch while Bryce meekly did as he was told. “I suspect it was my fault,” he confessed. “I must have left it in the window.”

  “I should have remembered it, too,” said Paul, absolving Bryce.

  Bryce placed the harp on the table in front of Paul and plucked one of the strings. The sound was like a muffled thud. “I expect we’ll need to have it restrung,” he said.

  Carefully, Paul touched the cold, damp wood. “And have the sound board replaced, too. The wood is warped,” he added. “I’ll call the company I ordered it from.” He also considered, Or I could try to find Don’s number through Boston Information. But the old man spooked me. I’d sooner try the first solution.

  Having decided on a course of action, he put the harp out of his mind. “How about a brandy?” he suggested. “Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

  * * *

  They sat at opposite ends of the green velvet couch, Paul’s feet—both the good and the damaged one—resting in Bryce’s lap, drinking brandy from big snifters. Paul felt peaceful at last. The warmth of the liquor and a knitted afghan helped chase away the chill that still hung in the air. He’d found the contentment that had been eluding him all evening. But his tranquility was disturbed when Bryce remarked, “I read the reviews of Savage Landscape. I wish I’d seen you in it.”

  “It’s too late now,” said Paul.

  “The reviews seemed odd to me,” Bryce went on. “There was no consensus, which made me think that perhaps you’d done something great.”

  “God forbid,” Paul replied. “Heaven is for greatness. No, I’m just a trivial footnote in a very obscure subject—small modern dance companies.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like that,” said Bryce.

  “What do you mean?” Paul felt himself growing tense.

  “You could become a choreographer, as many dancers do when they get older. As you’d already begun to do.”

  Paul was tempted to give Bryce a flippant answer. But he deserves better, he thought, and so he replied carefully. “I’ve thought of it, of course,” he admitted, “but so far I’m resisting. There’s an enormous difference between choreographing a solo for myself and undertaking a career as a choreographer. I don’t know if I want that, if I have the talent or vision for it. Maybe I don’t want that much control. I don’t relish the responsibility. Do I really want to be involved in dance if I’m not a dancer? Do I want to serve other dancers?” He shook his head.

  “One could argue that dancers serve the choreographer,” Bryce countered.

  “They are his instrument; it’s not quite the same,” Paul clarified.

  “When I come to think about it, I realize I can’t encourage it,” mused Bryce, in a sudden change of heart, “not unless you’re desperate to be a choreographer, which you clearly aren’t. Maybe you ought to do something entirely different.”

  In what Bryce was saying, Paul sensed a subtext. He guessed that Bryce had something to reveal to him. “What are you going to tell me?” he wondered.

  Bryce gazed at him intently. “Why do you think I have anything to say?”

  Paul smiled. “But you do, don’t you?” He thought to himself, I bet it’s about the lawsuit.

  His attitude towards the lawsuit had changed. He was intensely interested in it. He was also nervous and superstitious. If I act as if I care too much about it, he believed, I’ll lose. I’ll only get what I want if I act as if it doesn’t matter.

  But Bryce’s reply surprised Paul and disappointed him. His news was about himself. “I’m thinking of looking for a job in a law firm. For the first time in my life, I really want to work at something. And the law is what I’m trained to do.”

  Paul dissimulated his first, selfish reaction. It behooved him to encourage Bryce, and so he did. But he couldn’t resist asking him, “What has inspired you?”

  “Although I didn’t anticipate it at first, I ended up taking the autumn off. I’ve had a lot of time to think. So far, professionally, I haven’t taken myself too seriously; I’ve picked up what’s come my way. I haven’t tried to make real money or establish a reputation. But my uncle’s death and some other events have caused me to realize, What am I waiting for? This afternoon, while we were on Park Avenue, I started to think about all the law firms in the buildings around us. I thought, Here’s a world I’ve never been part of, a future I’ve rejected out of hand. Yet, until I join that world, I think I’ll feel that I never grew up. A part of me believes that I’ll never be serious until I do my stint in it and see where it takes me.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to find a job?”

  “I expect so,” replied Bryce, responding to the doubt, while overlooking the hint of cruelty in Paul’s question.

  Paul felt betrayed by Bryce’s decision. It’s almost as if, in becoming buttoned-up instead of bohemian, Bryce is deserting me, he reflected. I’m afraid he’s going to leave me behind.

  The irony was not lost on him that, not too long ago, he seemed the one ready to leave Bryce behind. I can’t afford to let him go now, Paul realized, with some pain. How I hate feeling needy! In the past, I took care of the apartment and the garden and Bryce, too, and in return Bryce took care of the bills. When the cast comes off, and I’m back on my feet, I’ll do it again. That’s not what’s troubling me now, Paul realized. When I was performing, I possessed a glamour that attracted Bryce, like a moth to a flame. It was what was special about me, what made me worth the trouble. But now it’s gone. I�
��m a moth, too.

  “Are you turning conventional on me?” Paul asked Bryce.

  “In some ways I’ve always been conventional or at least conservative,” Bryce replied.

  Paul thought the conversation was growing deadly dull. Besides, his curiosity was too strong to be squelched. “Speaking of the practice of law,” he said, “is there any news about my lawsuit?”

  A slight smile curved Bryce’s lips. “I’m expecting to hear of an offer to settle any day now.”

  “Any idea about how much it will be?”

  “It’s premature to speculate now.” And Bryce’s smile grew broader.

  Paul suspected that Bryce was toying with him. “You devil,” he said. “You’re giving me a hard time on purpose.” Will Bryce throw my earlier attitude up in my face? he wondered, already feeling beset.

  But Bryce didn’t. “I thought you’d come to your senses,” he said.

  “Will I be a rich man?”

  “What’s your injury worth, do you mean?” asked Bryce, laying his hand over Paul’s foot in the cast, which rested in his lap. “Whatever you can get for it.”

  A melancholy thought seized Paul: Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. But he argued with himself, Maybe that’s not true. Maybe this is my big chance to collect. I didn’t have so many years left as a dancer anyway.

  But he was afraid to go on, lest he seem to contaminate his hope with greed, and so he fell silent.

  “When I know of anything, I’ll tell you,” Bryce promised. He reached over to clasp Paul’s hand, to reassure him.

  Paul automatically withdrew before they touched. Then, embarrassed by his action, he covered it up by lifting his glass to his lips. He drained the last sweet drops of brandy and set the snifter down, beside the warped harp, on the coffee table.

  In response, Bryce shifted away, extricating himself from under the weight of Paul’s legs. He stood up abruptly and walked over to the window, turning his back on Paul, facing out into the dark night. “The sky’s cleared up,” he announced. Then he turned around.

  Inadvertently, he collided with the display shelf set into the wall next to the window. He knocked down the Indian ceramic bowl, which he had bought for Paul and had placed there. He watched helplessly as the bowl broke into pieces. He looked utterly dejected.

  “We’ll glue it back,” suggested Paul, “and then it will look authentic. Didn’t you say that the original ones were smashed and buried?”

  Slowly, Bryce gathered up the fragments. He laid them on the coffee table opposite the harp and the empty glasses. He knelt and began to fit the pieces of the bowl together. Only a few tiny chips were missing. “I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do,” he apologized. To Paul’s surprise, he had tears in his eyes.

  “It’s all right,” Paul soothed him. “Things can break, and they don’t hurt.”

  Paul thought of how, after the suicide attempt, he had wept in Bryce’s arms. Days after that, when they had made love, he was painfully aware of his broken foot. And it wasn’t only his foot; there seemed something more—as if his life and not just his foot was in pieces. And how will I gather them up? he wondered.

  Months ago, I pictured Bryce in my thoughts, and I dreamed of him in the act of betraying him, Paul recollected. The memory of these visions, which troubled me with pain and longing, is sweet. Because of them, I feel that Bryce was somehow complicit, and I wonder what he has guessed, what he already knows.

  Paul’s impulse was irresistible. The secret which he’d thought he’d never tell Bryce, the secret about Jeanne and Althea now rose to his lips.

  Chapter 27

  On New Year’s Eve, Althea was one of the first guests to arrive at Bryce and Paul’s party. Only the Kurt Matthews Dancers were there before she was, and that was because they’d been there for hours, hard at work setting up. They were still putting on the finishing touches when she walked out on the roof. Under her coat, she wore a kimono of heavy silk brocade, a gift from an uncle who, years ago, had been stationed in Japan.

  She recognized the Dancers at once from the performance at the Joyce Theater, though they had never met. There was Eric Fuller, standing on a ladder, weaving a string of bells through a trellis. He looked enormous in a cowboy costume—boots, spurs, chaps, vest, and a ten-gallon hat. At the foot of the ladder was Michiko Kinoshita, with more bells in her arms. Perched on her head was a glittering star. She wore an oversize down jacket for warmth over an ivory silk sheath with a straight skirt that hung to the ground. Pamela Katz, back from Seattle, the danger past and her mother recuperating, wore ordinary jeans and a heavy sweater. She and Jane Vaughan, elegant in a fur coat, sheer stockings, and high heels, were patiently winding streamers from a striped pole. Hector Prado, in a red devil costume with a forked tail, was tacking up garlands of greenery. They greeted Althea; they introduced themselves. With their typical friendliness, they made her feel welcome.

  She volunteered to help, preferring to join the Dancers rather than navigate the party alone. They accepted her, and, even after the party began to grow, she stuck with them. As one of their inner circle, she had more fun than she had thought she would. She was in on their jokes and privy to their plans.

  At last they were done except for Paul’s garden. They invited her to witness the transformation. On two raised flower-beds, covered with heavy black plastic, they poured dozens of bags of sparkling white sugar. Then they took pairs and pairs of worn toe shoes from boxes. Impulsively, she joined them, as they balanced the shoes upright in the sugar. With deliberate pleasure, she handled the old shoes, broken in by use until they were unusable. Limp, torn and restitched, faded and stained, the toe shoes seemed to Althea to shine with a proud, illiterate life. In their marks of wear were recorded all the dances of their pasts.

  The joking and laughter of the dancers melded with the brittle music of the bells. Althea couldn’t resist; she tasted the sugar. It was sweet and gritty. One of the toe shoes fell over, and she had to poke it in again.

  “This was all Paul’s idea,” Eric Fuller told her. “It came to him in a dream.”

  Just as she was about to ask him what he meant, Kurt Matthews arrived. She noticed that all the dancers suddenly looked up from where they knelt, planting toe shoes in sugar. A pale crescent moon in the sky above him, under the glare of a spotlight, he appeared in a harlequin costume. From around the side of the house drifted the bells’ tinkling music.

  Kurt began to laugh. “You’ve done it,” he congratulated them. He made them stand up so that he could comment on their costumes. Then he noticed Althea. “I’m Kurt Matthews,” he said, extending his right hand, “I’m the ringleader of this conspiracy. And who are you?”

  His blue eyes twinkled at her. His handshake was firm, his smile welcoming. Though he was not a tall man, he emanated vitality. He stood with his legs slightly apart, showing off how well, at his age, he filled his costume. Yet there was a shy quality to his vanity, a sweet, lopsided expression on his face, as if he were about to blush.

  “This is Althea. She’s one of the crew,” said Hector, claiming her. “A friend of Paul’s,” he added.

  “A dancer?” Kurt sounded puzzled.

  “No, a painter,” Althea said.

  “Is that so? We’ll put you to work painting a backdrop for one of our dances,” Kurt said.

  “I’d like to do it,” replied Althea. “Plenty of artists have—Picasso, Chagall, de Chirico.”

  “I’ll come see your paintings, and we’ll talk.”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  Kurt nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Althea was astounded. Can this be so easy? she wondered. “This isn’t a volunteer job, is it?” she demanded sharply.

  “Of course not. We’re a legitimate company. We may not pay well, but we pay.”

  “You’ll have to tell me what you want. I’ll try to paint what you like,” Althea said.

  Kurt scratched his head thoughtfully. “We’re interested in your vision,” he said. �
��The unifying vision of an artist. But come, come! We’ll talk more about this later. I’m here to get you all, now you’re chilled and exerted,” he said, addressing everyone with a nod of his head, “to bring you inside. It’s time to open the bar.”

  A mingled shout came up, and everyone, Althea included, came into the house. The party had begun. Lots of people were arriving, and soon the bar was in full swing. Bryce stationed himself by the front door. Paul was ensconced in a chair in the living room. Althea had not yet spoken to either host, nor did she feel like approaching them now. She had found her niche at their party, and she was having a good time without them.

  * * *

  It was past ten o’clock at night when Jeanne and René were walking down Broadway, on their way to the party. They were late. Under their coats, they wore costumes. Other people, looking festive, passed by. “Maybe some of them will end up at Paul’s,” Jeanne speculated. She confessed to René, “I don’t think I’ll know anyone there, except Althea and Bryce and Paul. And I don’t know Bryce well at all.”

  “Then why are you so eager for us to go?” René asked..

  “I’m starting to wonder about that myself,” Jeanne confessed. “I’m having jitters. But we’ve gone to the trouble to get dressed up. If we don’t like it, I promise, we’ll leave.”

  “We’ll think of a way to signal each other. How about this: tap the side of your nose once with your index finger?” René suggested. “Then we’ll know to confer about leaving.”

  “That sounds so stagy. Like something from a grade-B movie.”

  “It all depends,” replied René, as he slipped his arm around her. “Perhaps no one will even notice.”

  Soon they turned the corner of Broadway. As they entered Paul’s building, Jeanne told René, “I’ve never seen their house before, but I’ve heard about it. Althea thinks it’s a palace.”

  The lobby was garishly decorated for Christmas: tinsel streamers of red and silver were looped on the walls; there was an artificial Christmas tree with blinking lights. Jeanne and René passed these without comment. They called the elevator and began their ascent to the top floor.