“I’m sorry,” he said to Helena, who was sitting next to him on the bed. “I don’t think I ought to get involved in things that are none of my business.”
“All right.”
He had expected more of a fight. Was she desperate or wasn’t she? “You’re going to have to face him eventually,” he said, hoping to ease her distress. “You’ll feel better if you get it over with.” He attempted a smile, his mouth intractable.
She didn’t answer, sucked nervously on the back of her wrist.
“Besides,” he said, “there’s no place for you to sleep here. Where would you sleep?”
“You’re right. No place.” Wearily, she climbed off the bed. ‘Where are you going?”
She shrugged airily, mock-curtseyed. “Good night.”
“You can stay,” he said impulsively—no one more surprised to hear it than Peter. “I’ll sleep on the floor. It’s really more comfortable on the floor.”
“No, no,” Helena said bravely, hoarding her martyrdom. “I wouldn’t think of taking your bed.” She put her ear to the door. “Shh!”
“I wasn’t saying anything.” Peter watched her butt jiggle as she concentrated on hearing what might be heard—a man who knows a good thing when he sees it jiggle. He blew his nose to pass the time, jiggled a bit himself. A tired lecher, a lover of mad witches.
“Shh! He’s out there,” she whispered. “I can hear him.”
“How do you know it’s Harry and not someone who lives here?”
Helena edged her way across an invisible tightrope to the bed. “I know it’s him,” she whispered. “He’s walking back and forth, working himself up into a rage.” She offered Peter a sad, conspiratorial smile, shrugging whimsically—a love gesture between thieves. “I’ll stay until he leaves. All right?” She smiled in the face of adversity. “Poor Harry. It must be terrible to love someone that way.”
With the rakish courage of a private eye—who needs movies?—Peter went to the door to see what he could hear, heard the toilet flush and nothing else. “There’s no one there,” he said, his ear still to the door.
“Shhh!” Helena listened next to him, a breast nudging him in the back. “Listen,” she whispered. Peter listened, sweated (sweat steaming out of him).
Helena moved to the other side of the room, beckoned to him. “Did you hear him?”
“No.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“I didn’t hear anyone pacing.”
“He’s standing outside the door to my room, waiting for me to come back. Every once in a while he paces around a bit. Didn’t you hear someone moving in the hall? He has a light step.”
“Do you want me to go out and look?” Peter asked. But when he thought about it, the idea of confronting Harry unnerved him. If Harry were unhinged, who knows what he might be capable of? At the same time he wondered if there was a real Harry—afraid of a man who possibly didn’t even exist. He called himself a coward, insulted to be called coward by a coward.
“You don’t have to go,” Helena said, sneaking a look out the window, then back to the door, now huddling against his arm, her breasts cozening him. “I appreciate you wanting to do this for me.”
Who wanted to? The truth was, he was ashamed of not wanting to go, but the private eye in him was curious and the bathroom was across the hall. Nervous, Peter felt the need to urinate—an old habit of the bladder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t talk to him. I’ll just go to the bathroom and come back.”
“Okay.” She begrudged him his departure, blew him a good-bye kiss. “Come back soon now.” She stretched languidly, stifling a yawn, her breasts flowering suddenly against the skyline of her blue sweater; she was wearing, he discovered, no bra underneath. (He left with a pastoral vision of nipples.)
When he got into the hall he was wearing the horny side glance of an erection—a fool’s fool. No one was at Helena’s door, but there was a man he hadn’t seen before hanging about the entrance to the kitchen, facing away from Peter toward the stairwell at the far end of the hall. The man turned quickly; their eyes met briefly without acknowledgment as Peter ducked nervously into the bathroom. For all Peter knew—people in rooming houses change faces regularly—the man at the end of the hall was one of his neighbors.
Peter was about his business—in the middle of things—when the door opened and someone light-footed came in. The man was standing somewhere behind him, tapping his foot, which made Peter nervous, regretful that he hadn’t latched the door. He finished in a hurry, a few reluctant drops staining his pants. Uneasy about meeting people in the bathroom, he washed his hands with the kind of concentration that jewelers affect when they anatomize a watch.
The man—doubtless Harry—walked around, a tourist, inspecting the walls, occasionally glancing at Peter as though he wanted to talk, but saying nothing.
Peter kept washing his hands, waiting for Harry to do or say something. I’m not who you think I am, he was prepared to say in his defense—a lie in the service of truth; but recalling in a sweat of pleasure the touch of Helena’s breast against his back, he decided to keep his mouth shut. When he turned, Harry, feet apart, head forward, confronted him. “Do you live here?” he said solemnly—a strange question to ask a man in his bathroom.
“Here?”
“You know what I mean. Do you live in this building?”
Peter hesitated, looked around. On the wall above one of the urinals someone had written: Look where you’re going, squinty. Peter turned back to Harry, who had the face of a sensitive boxer: a thick-necked, curly-haired man, turning gray at the temples, who looked to have taken more than his share of beatings. It was, in all—the pitted skin, the scarlike hollows under gentle, tortured eyes—a sympathetic face. Peter almost liked him.
“I asked you a question,” the man said softly, belligerently reasonable, “and I’d sure as hell like an answer.”
“Why should it concern you where I live?” Peter said with equal reasonableness—the madness reflected in the mirror above the sink; he wondered if Harry would try to stop him if he moved toward the door.
“If you want trouble,” Harry said, backing up a step, “Ican help you out. I’ll tell you something. The way I feel now, there’s nothing I’d like more than to beat the hell out of someone.” He beat his fist into his palm. “What are you—some kind of idiot?”
“Who’s an idiot? I came in here to take a piss and you ask me if I live here. Get out of my way, please.”
Harry’s head jutted forward, his arms hanging at his sides like handles. “I think what you need, buddy, is a lesson in manners. Now tell me nicely whether you live in this building or not.”
“You got your answer.” When Peter took a step to the side Harry moved with him—Peter’s reflection—blocking the way to the door. “What are you—some kind of nut?” Peter fairly shouted. “Get out of my goddamn way.”
“Come on,” Harry taunted him. “Come on, you big bastard. I’m waiting for you.”
Four inches or so taller than the man facing him, Peter guessed that he outweighed Harry by, maybe, fifteen-twenty pounds; still, he was tired, his right hand out of commission, and Harry (the bastard) was raging for a fight. “Why should I fight you?” Peter said, stalling, looking for an honorable way out.
“Because you’re a big witless bastard, that’s why,” Harry said, feinting his head. “Come on. Yahhhhr!” He lowered his head as though he were about to rush him. Peter backed up as far as he could go, his back literally to the sink,
“I’m not going to fight you,” Peter said, the declaration coming out curiously like a threat. “I have no reason to fight you.”
It was over in a moment. Harry, an old schoolyard fighter, charged head-down. Peter, surprised into reflex, caught him in the side of the head with a roundhouse left that spun Harry half-around. Then, as if recollecting the impact of the punch, Harry went wistfully down. Peter waited for retribution.
Once down, however, Harry made no eff
ort to get up—or else remained down merely to recoup his strength, crouched on the bathroom tile (as though planning to get up eventually at some symbolic count of nine), his eyes averted, a bit shamefaced at his failure. Peter hovered, ashamed at the pleasure of the punch, nursing two sore hands. “Are you all right?” he kept asking, but Harry, giving him back his own, refused to answer.
“Can I help you up?”
The contempt of silence.
“Hey, let me help you up.” Peter extended his hand cautiously.
“Go away.”
“You’re all right, though?”
Harry growled something and Peter withdrew his hand in a hurry, as if afraid the man on the floor was going to take a bite of it.
Having no reason to stay, Peter started to leave, but when he noticed that Harry was not getting up, that he had covered his face with his hands, he came back, hovered over this stranger he had knocked down with a sense of pressing, if undefined obligation. “I live in this building,” he said, “What were you going to ask me?”
Harry looked up, his mouth opened and closed without sound, its movement like the rip of a seam. His fingers touched gingerly the side of his head where Peter’s punch had landed, and smiling savagely at some private irony,, muttered something either to Peter or to himself.
“What was that?”
“Fuck you,” Harry said, no longer smiling.
Peter returned the compliment. At which Harry, unaccountably, burst out laughing. And laughed. And laughed. Tears coming to his eyes. (And maybe it wasn’t even Harry.)
“Where have you been all this time?” Helena said when Peter returned. She was lying in state on his bed, her shoes off, as though she was planning to stay for a while.
“This may be hard for you to believe,” Peter said, “but the truth is I had a fight with a man in the bathroom.”
“You what?” Helena was torn with laughter; then, afraid of being overheard, she covered her mouth. “Was it Harry?” she wanted to know, unable to stop giggling.
He had no way of knowing for sure, unable offhand to distinguish Harry from any other stranger looking for a fight in his bathroom. Helena described Harry for him. Peter described his man. There was a resemblance.
“He’s much shorter than I am?” Peter asked.
“Not much. A little.”
“This man was about five inches shorter.”
“Maybe.”
“Does he have thick curly hair?”
“Sort of. He has hair sort of like yours.”
They decided finally that it must have been Harry (who else would behave so irrationally?), and then sat guiltily on the bed together, their fingers laced, the joke of Harry’s performance a pact between them.
Peter took out a fifth of Macy’s Blended Whiskey which he had stored away in the bottom of his desk for the emergency of a friend dropping over. He ripped the seal and removed the cork with his teeth, offering the bottle first to Helena, who refused it with a witch’s smile. Peter took the first drink, the rawness of the stuff tearing his throat, and handed the bottle to the small dark-haired girl on the bed next to him. Helena took a drink, then held the bottle to Peter’s lips while he drank. It was hard work, the stuff burned its way down. Each held the bottle for the other while he drank—a matter of rite. They exchanged glances, an indecent, almost obscene pleasure in Helena’s face, as if in the intimacy of sharing the whiskey they were sharing Harry’s blood. The more they drank, the less it seemed to matter.
Without a word, the silence a part of their pact, they drained the bottle between them, killed it, buried it under the bed. Helena smiled and smiled. Peter preserved his grief with a mourner’s gravity. It was a tacit joke between them.
It was getting dark, but neither seemed to notice. Truck lights illuminated the room for a passing moment, crosses of light melting across the walls. He closed his eyes.
“Who’s going to sleep on the floor?” Helena said, her voice thick, dreamy.
“Harry,” he said.
She squeezed his arm, her breath too near—minutes, seconds away. There. She giggled.
“Shh.”
“Shh,” she parodied him, still giggling, caught in its terror. “There’s room for Harry under the bed. Hello, Harry,” she said giddily to the shadows. “How’s the weather down there?”
Peter laughed, the sound breaking from him, full of grief, night cries, loss, almost a wail for the souls—the ungrieved souls—of the lost.
The sight of Harry sprawled helplessly on the bathroom floor seemed, the more he dwelt on it, a miraculous joke. “He insisted on fighting,” he said, in pain from laughing, “and then he didn’t even land a punch.” He kept laughing, hating himself. “What happened to the bloody bottle?”
Helena bowed her head solemnly, mourned for its loss. A laugh, a giggle of laughter, escaped.
“You want a drink?” she said.
“Where …?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.” A laugh from somewhere in the room, from one of them.
He leaned toward her, a man without expectation—the room dark, her face flattened by a veil of shadows. “There’s nothing to drink,” he insisted, amused that she thought there was.
“Yes.” She gave him her mouth, her tongue, sour with blended whiskey and other bad memories. “Good?”
He wasn’t sure. “The truth is—” he started to say.
Interrupting him, she flashed her pickled tongue into his mouth, taking it back before he had made its acquaintance. “More?” She licked his closed mouth, but when he tried to kiss her she pulled her head back, laughing at him. Did he need it? He found a breast in the dark, a lamb’s-wool sweater separating the nipple from the love of his fingers.
She removed his hand. “Be good, sweetie.” Kissing him.
“You’re a witch,” he said, half in anger.
She giggled, a witch’s laugh, pleased. “How did you know?”
He laughed villainously, put his hand inside her sweater.
“You have more hands than an octopus,” she said sullenly. “Did I tell you I’m really afraid of men?” A witch’s laugh—a child-witch’s laugh. “I like you, Peter.”
He took another drink from her store, squeezed her breast.
“It’s tender,” she said, a whining song. “Don’t …”
He accepted it as his luck, removed his hand. “Ahhh!” he complained.
“Let’s just sleep for a while,” she said.
“Ahhh!” he said, almost too tired to care. Almost.
They were lying back to back, crowded together on the small cot, their asses touching, desire like a warm breath denying him rest.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my saying this—but I misjudged you.”
“Yeah?”
“My first idea of you was that you were out only for yourself, but now I feel—it’s taken me a while to understand you—that you’re someone one can trust.” She waited, glowing with self-approval, for some response.
“Cut the shit,” he said.
“I mean it,” she said tremulously. “You’re …”
He turned her over onto her back, held her down. “What do you want from me?” he said.
She stuck out her tongue in ironic defiance.
There was something in him, a sudden flood of rage, some memory of desire, of need, of something, that was unappeasable. Holding her down, he climbed on top of her.
“You’re beautiful,” he warned her.
“Do you love me?” she said.
“Who else?” he said, staring at her mouth.
“How do I know who else?”
“Only you,” he said savagely, rage burning him. “You.” He struggled, with more force than skill, to open the belt of her jeans; Helena helping him, their fingers getting in each other’s way.
“Let me,” she said.
Even in the dark, the grace of her movement was evident. She kicked off her jeans, wriggling out of them, and lifted her sweate
r over her head in one amazing acrobatic gesture. He watched with sullen admiration, a man with a diners’ card in a strange country, hungry, trusting no one. He thought to applaud, but didn’t.
“I love you,” he assured himself, lying in his throat.
She didn’t care, or if she did, kept it a secret from herself. “That’s nice,” she said wistfully. “Why don’t you take your clothes off?”
He got undressed—Helena helping, the buttons on his shirt offering minor resistance.
Still, he was distrustful; he had no right to expect anything but grief, which was the price (his own) of living in this world. It worried him that someone—who knows who?—might walk in on them without warning. He listened for footsteps.
“Is sweetie tired?” she said, stroking him. “Is he?”
So, without pleasure, he submitted to love—without pleasure, not without need—and made the best of his pains, a conservationist with nothing to conserve.
Exhaustion drove him. Witch, witch, witch, witch, witch, witch. He worked like ten (dying) men, expecting in his madness to get somewhere he had never been before.
She dug her nails in his back, directed traffic. “Not so fast,” she crooned. “Slowly. A little slowly.”
Too tired to slow down, Peter increased his pace—the energy of violence keeping him alive.
Helena rocked back and forth, dreaming of a surprise birthday party given her when she was eight or nine.
Peter kissed her face, fell in love with her briefly. Stalled.
“Keep going,” she advised.
In the middle of things—Peter, an alchemist, transforming base metal into dreams of gold, Helena also dreaming—there was a banging on the door, two heavy knocks, followed by two more, urgent and assertive.
Helena cursed Harry, scoring Peter’s back with her nails.
Peter froze—a secret penitent—awaited discovery.
Strangers hating each other, they separated.
The knocks continued.
Helena shook her head at him to make it clear that he was not, under any circumstance, to answer the door—and he was not to make a sound. She blew in his ear the breath of love, held his hand.
Nervous, impatient, sweating his guilt, Peter would have liked to answer the door, just to get it over with—the knocks like blows inside his head. He resisted—for Helena’s sake—he would have had to fight her to get to the door.
A Man to Conjure With Page 18