“I don’t remember.” He actually seemed to be trying to talk to her, and this show of respect and humanity after his ugliness made him seem complex. “There was good sex in it, but that wasn’t all. I don’t know.”
The moment of genuine conversation seemed to leave him subdued. He sat facing the bar with his body in a curl, staring at his drink as though he’d just realized he had to be at work tomorrow morning. The jukebox was silent.
“What do you do for a living?” she asked.
“I’m an art director for Grab magazine.” Without his animating mask of sarcasm, his face was tired and pinched. “It’s dumb but I like it. The people are nice.”
To her dismay she was afraid he was about to get up and leave. “My name’s Justine,” she said with sudden extroversion. “What’s yours?”
“Bryan.” He turned towards her again, his face regaining its life. “Have you ever been to the Hellfire Club?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s an S&M club.” He watched her. “You know, master, slave, people being tied up and beaten, women getting fucked by dozens of guys. I’ll bet you’d like it.”
This was a jarring speech, but instead of pushing her away from him she felt it pull her towards him. A bolt of sensation zipped through her genitals and nailed her to her seat, and she felt much as she had when she was a prepubescent cruising the mall with a pack of boys at her heels; dislocated, aroused, and disturbed to be having such a personal reaction in a public place. Oh Christ, she thought. Not this again. Her heart beat arrhythmically against the bones of her rib cage. She looked for Alistair and saw him far, far away, at the other end of the bar, his big once-strong body in an absent-minded slump as he wiped some glasses.
“You would like it, wouldn’t you? I’d suggest we go except now it’s just queers giving each other AIDS.”
“I didn’t think it was legal anymore, for straights or gays to screw in public.”
“Murder isn’t legal either, but people do it.”
This frightened her. She suddenly remembered where she had heard the name of this club before; it was the last place a beautiful model had been seen before being ritually murdered. “I wouldn’t want to go anyway.” She frantically tried to make eye contact with Alistair, who smiled and waved.
“Hey, wait a minute, don’t be scared. Shit, you’re really scared!” He stood and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him; his small white face was neither sarcastic nor limp, but taut with an expression she couldn’t identify. “Don’t be scared, I’m not dangerous, I’m just a nut. Okay, I’m a little bit perverted, I admit it. But I wouldn’t really hurt you. I just like to shock people.”
“Yeah, you and Richard Speck.” She shook off his hand and pulled on her coat, digging in the pockets for dollars that flapped around elusively. Alistair moved towards them, slapping his trusty rag on the bar with a professional flourish.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
She got her coat and scarf under control while he reflexively navigated the world of commerce and hearty gestures. “Everybody who finds me attractive is a fucking maniac of some kind,” she thought. “Every time I meet somebody cute he wants me to pee on him or some goddamn thing.” She had the comforting thought that any minute now she would be at home, sobbing on her bed, alone but unmolested. She fought her way through the air, holding back her tears. She had just made her escape out the door when he appeared at her side.
“I hope you were kidding with that Richard Speck crack.”
“I just wanna go home.”
He grabbed her shoulders with both hands. If his grab had felt like the beginning of an attack she would’ve run; had it felt like a full attack she would have turned and hit him. But it was just powerful enough to hold her yet tender enough to paralyze her. “Don’t run away,” he said. “Please don’t be afraid of me.”
She turned to him and saw his face, drained and exhausted, his eyes wide with alarm. He pulled her to him and she collapsed against his small chest, exhausted. She felt his quick heart leaping urgently. He emanated warmth. His dick hardened against her abdomen. He stroked her hair. She began to cry. “Honey,” he said. “Darling.”
My first days of work for Beau Bradley were so fraught with reverence and vigilance that I existed in a strange state that was both hyperaware and muddled. I arrived that first morning in such a sleepless fever that the physical perfection of tall, smiling Bradley didn’t awe or excite me—I, who usually saw beautiful males as species from a hostile planet. He seemed like nothing less than de rigueur for this storybook I’d stepped into. I was trying with all my flabby concentration to absorb the details, to be a good employee. I’m not sure why I wasn’t too disoriented to function at all, except that my entire life had been made up of incredible situations in contrast to which this one seemed unusual only in that it was positive. The very bizarre and extreme nature of finding myself employed by my idol the day after meeting her was what made it, in a sense, natural to me. The experience was so charged, so heady that I lived those days in my head, my breath high and quivering on the pinnacle of my deserted body. Anything more mundane would’ve sunk me back into my chest and pelvis, right onto my legs where I would’ve felt my old creaking soul slowly doing the hoops and ladders of my life.
But Beau Bradley was anything but mundane. He had black hair, silky, almost feminine white skin, the cleft-chinned square jaw of a movie star, and blue eyes that matched Granite’s. Even more unusual, his kindness equaled his beauty. When I entered the office—medium-sized, clean, sparely furnished with modern furniture and stark steel sculpture, located in an oblong building that also housed the Philadelphia Mah-Jongg Society—he smiled at me as if it were utterly natural for me to enter his sphere. His hand enveloped mine with warmth and pressure that was respectful and protective as a father is supposed to be. “Anna has told me so much about you,” he said.
I nodded, realizing that he probably knew my secret. I didn’t find this probability shaming or even inappropriate. “Then you know I haven’t had experience,” I said.
“From what I’ve heard, that doesn’t matter. Anna can tell from speaking with someone for five minutes what they’re made of, and she says I should jump at the chance to hire you.”
The phone rang and Bradley, with an “Excuse me,” disappeared into his private office, leaving the door open. I stood in the outer office, in front of what was probably to be my desk, holding my purse against my body, feeling my heart beat against it. I absorbed the cream-colored walls, the skeletal bookcases and their books, the bindings of which seemed to vibrate with color and significance. I stared at a spiney, determined-looking little sculpture of a man hoisting the world on his shoulders and thought, “That’s me.” I knew it was a silly thought, but I excused it on the grounds that it was emblematic and that it was a prefiguring of the new direction my life would now take.
Bradley spent about fifteen minutes explaining my duties to me. They seemed, in spite of Granite’s description of their arduous nature, to be pretty easy. Answering the phone, typing letters, photocopying, dictation, an occasional run to the post office or deli—all in a quiet office that appeared to receive a phone call every two or three hours. The apparent simplicity bewildered and then panicked me—what if it seemed simple because I was not grasping the entire picture but only seeing the most obvious elements in a complex mosaic! I spent the rest of the morning sweating in my woolly skirt, spot-checking the filing system, cleaning the coffee filter, roaring through a letter, pouncing on the phone whenever I could. Noon arrived and Bradley went out saying, “Take a breather, have some lunch!” I ate my cheese sandwich, potato chips, and candy bar at my desk and allowed myself an hour of feeling superior. If this was hard work then other jobs must be softer than anything I’d ever experienced in my life—and no wonder Granite had such contempt for the common people! I ate my sandwich with one hand and straightened the Rolodex with the other, marveling at my own efficiency.
> By the time Bradley had returned from lunch, however, I was again full of self-doubt, which was later exacerbated by a typing mistake which Bradley jovially brought to my attention.
The next two days—half days both—followed the same pattern, except that they were enlivened by the appearance of Definitists from other parts of the country who had long conferences with Bradley. There were three of them, two men—one rotund with a receding hairline, the other weirdly tall, his sensitive brow a-twitch with the weight of heavy glasses—and a big woman with small eyes and a bun of brown hair who breathed in strange broken sighs.
On the fourth day Bradley asked me to join him for lunch. We closed the office and went to a plain, clean luncheonette with speckled table tops. I dimly remember a jukebox playing dramatic love music as we sat across from one another, smiling over our menus. He asked me how I was enjoying the work. I said very much. We ordered our sandwiches. For the first time I felt self-conscious about being fat before him and refrained from ordering the milkshake and double fries I would’ve liked. We ate without speaking for several moments, but rather than feeling isolated from him, I felt bonded by our mutual silent intensity. Besides, this way I didn’t have to worry about saying something stupid.
Mid-sandwich he spoke. “I asked you to lunch for a reason.”
I nodded and my heart sank.
“We—Anna and I—need you just now to do more than your usual duties. You’ve noticed the three people I’ve been meeting with. They are three of the top Definitist intellectuals in the country, and two of them—Doctor Wilson Bean, the English professor, and Wilma Humple, the banker—will be meeting with Anna and me along with Knight Ludlow, a financier from New York, to do intensive conference work for about two weeks. We would like to have our discussion transcribed, and Anna and I would like you to be the one to do it.”
Mentally I reeled while physically I nodded. I put down my sandwich.
“It will be arduous work and will involve long hours—very long hours. Anna can stay up all night discussing ideas; the others will probably sleep in shifts, but you will be expected to stay up as long as there is discussion. Think you can handle it?”
I nodded and said, “Yes.” My adrenaline rose, and suddenly, I wanted to order a piece of lemon meringue pie.
“Good.” Bradley smiled. “We both know it’s a lot to ask of a beginning secretary, but we felt you would welcome the opportunity to learn more about Definitism. It is the chance of a lifetime in that respect.”
“I’m . . . I’m honored that you asked me,” I replied in all sincerity.
“Wonderful.” Bradley smiled again. “Let’s finish these sandwiches and get back to work.” He said it as though we were about to return to the office and do hours of heavy construction.
I bit my sandwich, mentally scorning the lemon pie as a frivolity that would be stripped off the streamlined life of an intellectual.
The conferences began a week or so later. Bradley and I stayed an uncharacteristically full day at the office then ordered sandwiches which we ate with our feet on his desk, then we took a cab to Granite’s apartment. I felt extreme anxiety on the way up in the elevator. This was not after all, a fantasy or a TV show, even if it felt like it. I was going to be among the most intelligent people in the world, and I was terrified of disappointing them, even if only in a secretarial capacity.
Out of the elevator we marched, entering the apartment with determined purpose. Granite opened the door, her eyes afire and her forehead locked. Mercifully, we were the first to arrive. Unsmiling, she gestured for us to sit on a stiff square-pillowed gray couch before a small, proud coffee table devoid of anything but a pitcher of water, some glasses, and three ashtrays. I would’ve sorely loved to see a decorative jar of French creams or even the cheapest peppermints, but I realized that such an item in Granite’s home would’ve disappointed me. Granite left the room briefly, and I noticed that she was again wearing her billowing purple-lined cape. Did she wear it around the apartment when no one else was there? How marvelous! When she returned with a sheaf of papers, she sat in a chair opposite us, gazing slightly over our heads as though she were furious about something. Bradley sat against the back of the couch, very relaxed. I found it odd that on this occasion, the first time I had seen Granite since our original meeting, she hadn’t yet spoken to me. But I sat obediently and waited, unable to decide if a slouch or an upright position was most appropriate.
“So, Anna,” said Bradley. “What is the topic for tonight?”
“The conflict between the individual and society, focusing on whether or not the will of the individual genius can ever be compatible with that of society.”
Having spoken, she sharply adjusted her line of vision to include us and seemed to see me for the first time. Tenderness suffused her eyes as thoroughly as had determination a moment before. “So little one,” she said, “how are you?”
Little one! When had I ever been called that? “Very well, ma’am,” I answered absurdly.
She smiled at me and then her expression shifted, her eyes again assumed their martial energy, and she began talking to Bradley. I was relieved; her maternal words somehow strained the moment we had had in the hotel.
The others arrived, and the only thing worth noting about their perfunctory arrival, greeting, and seating arrangements was that the wonderful man who had smiled at me at the lecture was among them. Knight Ludlow, financier, nodded at me with incomplete recognition and turned away—then turned back and smiled with full acknowledgment of our last contact.
He turned from me again to talk to Granite, and the room fractured, my ears were filled with the buzz of my own internal circuitry, and I was afraid that the building was going to collapse, catch fire, or be struck with lightning.
Fortunately I went emotionally blank—I say fortunately because the meeting was beginning and my mind is more acute when my feelings are gone.
“Let me introduce to you our new secretary, Dorothy Never.” The standing Granite indicated me with a sweep of her arm. “She will be taking notes as the meeting progresses.” She then gazed at me, exuding support and confidence. “You understand, Dorothy, I don’t want you to take it down word for word; it would be too much. Just the important ideas, yes?” I nodded, heart in throat. I had never taken dictation before.
Granite stood and paced the room as she talked, her cape framing her, a cigarette sprouting from an elegant arm. She spoke at length while the others listened, and I plunged blindly into that state of refined consciousness necessary for taking dictation or any other highly concentrated task. So many words so quickly! All of them seemed to be important! Granite’s phrases were so complicated, by the time I had determined that something was important, and went back to retrieve it, I found that other important words had bounded far ahead of me and I was thus in a continual breathless chase. I trembled, my hand sweated and ached, I wanted to cry, I can’t do it! I can’t! But fast after this feeling came another, a deep dark surge of “Oh yes you can” that seemed to come from my lower body, my stomach, ovaries, and bowels. It was a proud, stubborn, angry feeling that made me picture a harsh thin-lipped mouth setting itself in determination. My will, usually wandering my body in various pieces, suddenly coalesced, and I waded among the words like a Viking in a foreign swamp, sword aloft, striking hither and yon, mercilessly, instinctively, without analyzing whether or not they were important. I felt my pupils dilate. The others began to talk.
“But, theoretically, society is made up of many individuals,” said the woman banker. “Theoretically one could pose the problem that it is the violation of many individuals when one imposes his will—”
“Bosh! Illogic!”
“Hitler, Anna, Hitler. Fascism is the antithesis of individuality, yet Hitler was an individual who imposed his will—”
“You have answered the question yourself, Wilma. Hitler was a weak collectivist as is clear from his doctrine of the Volk, the blood, the irrational belief in the innate superiority
of a nationality. This belief in and of itself is anti-individual.”
“It is something you will have to deal with, Anna.” Him! His voice! “As well as the misconception that thieves and thugs are truly acting selfishly.”
After the first hours had passed, my frayed perception forked into two—one navigating the landscape of words, phrases, and ideas, the other absorbing the sounds, inflections, and tonal habits of the voices. This secondary perception transmuted words and phrases into sounds that took on shapes of gentleness, aggression, hardness, softness, pride, and happiness, shapes that moved through the room, changing and reacting to one another, swelling and shrinking, nosing against the furniture, filling the apartment with their mobile, invisible, contradicting vibrancy, then fading away. With a half-conscious puzzlement I absorbed these sounds; Wilma Humple and Wilson Bean did not sound like I would’ve expected, and their voices often seemed to contradict their words.
“We don’t have to placate anyone,” said Dr. Bean. Yet his voice had the dry raspy sound of defeat and passivity; it moved sluggishly, with a great aggrieved effort.
“Of course,” said Wilma Humple, “there is the issue of judgment—the indoctrination of ‘judge not lest ye be judged,’ the willful paralyzation of the intellect!” She projected the words stridently, but there was an effort in her projection that was like a child yanking its mother’s hem and whining, afraid it won’t be heard.
Of the three strangers, only Knight’s voice was full and buoyant; it reminded me of the easeful support a body of water, miles deep and full of ferocity, can give a human relaxed enough to trust it.
I sat among these diverse energies feeling them clashing against and complementing each other while my mind resolutely held its beam of light on the business at hand. It was beginning to be difficult to go on when Granite called for a break. There was a moment of silence during which Granite lit another cigarette, and then Wilma H. and Wilson B. rose and paced to the windows. Granite asked if anyone was hungry. I was, but when everyone said they weren’t, I was too embarrassed to say so. Granite sat near Knight on the couch, and they talked. I was surprised to see a girlish quality come into her face as they spoke; she even slid her feet out of her shoes and flirtily tucked her legs up against her body in my mother’s habitual way.
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