by Ruby Namdar
Long, irritating minutes of waiting went by before a young, not unattractive nurse stepped into the room, her arms loaded with electric cables that made him think of the torture chambers of a mad scientist in an old horror movie. With a curt professional hello, she proceeded to wire him all over, taping the cables’ ends to his naked body. Her brusqueness, he imagined, came from an aversion to his sweaty, aging body. The cold in the room was unbearable, turning his sweat to ice. It was a hot day; the air-conditioning must be on full blast. He felt ashamed to complain or ask to have it turned down. It would be unseemly, unmanly. He lay in silence, shivering with cold, ignoring as best he could the obvious ineptitude that was keeping the nurse from getting the tape to stick. When he was told in an impatient, accusing tone that she would have to shave parts of him that were too hairy, he almost rebelled. How absurd! He wasn’t as hairy as all that. Nevertheless, he shut his eyes fatalistically and let the razor hastily shave off several patches of thin, grayish hair from his chest.
These smooth patches were still itching several hours later when Andrew flung his overweight, weak, sweaty self into a taxi and asked in a voice verging on a whine to be taken to West 110th Street. Shopping, visiting a gallery, and sampling Belgian chocolates were the furthest things from his mind. All he wanted was a hot shower and bed. Needless to say, there was nothing wrong with him. The cardiologist, who returned to announce this when the stress test was complete, sounded sanguine. There was not the slightest reason for anxiety. And yet Andrew felt no relief. The white, bloated stomach of the Indian corpse threatened to burst at any moment, spraying its sickening effluvia in all directions. The soft whisper of the recently discovered heart murmur fluttered in an inner cavity of his ear, trapped there like a frantic butterfly. Home! A hot shower! To bed! To sleep!
The taxi lurched uptown, accelerating madly with every green light and braking suddenly before every red one. Andrew leaned against the headrest and shut his eyes, trying to overlook his ridiculous feeling of guilt for sweating up the sticky fake leather seat. The taxi’s constant stops and starts made him nauseous. Even though he couldn’t wait to get home, he asked the driver to let him off on Broadway and 109th Street, desperate to put an end to this nightmare on wheels. The two-block walk would help him shake off the mad ride. A long line of customers stretched in front of the ice-cream stand on the corner. A pretty young mother leaned over a baby carriage, sharing her ice cream with a round-faced baby who looked at her with bright eyes and smiled with a vanilla-smeared mouth. A spoon for Mommy, a spoon for baby. Bliss. Perfect bliss. A large white drop trickled onto the infant’s chin. The mother wiped it with her hand and licked her finger clean, naturally, instinctively, without the least feeling of revulsion. Linda had shared the girls’ food the same way, with a primal instinct, sharing their saliva with spoons of applesauce or macaroni and cheese, or testing with her mouth the nipples of their bottles, even when there was no need for it. Although he had bottle-fed his daughters many times, he had never allowed himself to do such a thing. The thought of it disgusted him. For all his passionate love for Rachel, he couldn’t stand the slightest oral contact with her spittle, even on a finger. Once, when she was a year or a year and a half old, she had stuck a thumb wet with saliva and salty snot into his mouth. He had run to the sink, spat out what he could, and rinsed his mouth again and again, feeling guilty even then but unable to get over his disgust. A spoon for baby, a spoon for Mommy. The little mouth clamped down eagerly on the spoon. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup. A little, flat plastic spoon. A baby girl eating ice cream. What was there to cry about? Get a grip on yourself, get a grip! Breathe deep! Stop that upper lip from quivering!
Dry, sterile sobs, like the little, frantic, dry orgasm sneezes of a prostateless penis, racked his body. Home, hurry!
12
June 6, 2001
The 15th of Sivan, 5761
Five forty-five p.m. Glancing at his watch, Andrew was startled to see how late it was. Although Ann Lee was due to arrive in half an hour, dressed and ready to go, he felt an urgent need to call off their evening. He was not up to being with her—with anyone, for that matter, but most of all, with her. He was simply feeling too frazzled. The slightest friction with reality had become painful. He couldn’t possibly be her date tonight, couldn’t charm or entertain her for the life of him. He had to call her right away, before she left home. Yet he shrank from talking to her. Better to leave her a light, friendly message than get involved in long, complicated explanations that made no sense even to himself.
To his relief, he was answered by Ann Lee’s voice mail. “Hi, it’s me,” it said, greeting him with the youthful high spirits that once had aroused him and made him desire her, “but if you’ve dialed me, you already know it’s me, don’t you?” He waited for the beep and took a deep breath, hoping to strike a casual note that would take the sting out of his sudden cancellation. “Hi, sweetie, it’s me. I’m awfully sorry, but I have to call it off for tonight. I’m not myself today, I’ll just bore you. Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?” The obligatory “Love you” at the end took a second too long to get said—a second in which the message time ended sooner than anticipated. The shock of the flat, penetrating tone that signaled its end was mixed with something else, unclear: a bitter, sterile feeling of loneliness that brought to mind again the white, bloated corpse in the Indian street. Should he call back? She was supersensitive. Nothing escaped her, not even the smallest detail. But to do so just because of that damn “Love you”? Wouldn’t it seem hysterical and suspicious?
The loud ring of the telephone, its receiver still pressed against his ear, spared him more absurd indecision. Startled, he held the phone at arm’s length, staring blankly at it for a second before recovering, pressing the incoming call button, and returning it to his ear. “Hi, Andrew, it’s me,” said Ann Lee. “I was in the shower and heard the phone.” Her clear, laughing voice rang like a bell, forcing him to distance the receiver again. What should he say? She had caught him off guard. His hastily blurted “Hi, sweetheart, how are you?” sounded nothing like the tone he had had in mind.
“Is everything all right?” Ann Lee asked. “Is anything wrong?”
Andrew hesitated. Although the sound of her buoyed him a bit, the thought of an evening of make-believe was intolerable. And what about the message he had left? How could he explain it if he now pretended that everything was fine? He had to stick to his original story. “It’s nothing, really. I just feel a bit tired. Maybe it’s a cold or some allergy. It must be an allergy! I just left you a message. Didn’t you get it?”
“Yes, I did.” Ann Lee did not sound particularly concerned. “It was cut off in the middle. My phone keeps doing that. I suppose I should find myself some young guy who knows how to fix these things, shouldn’t I?”
Her constant teasing was getting to be tiresome. Andrew forced himself to smile. “I suppose I’m old enough to remember my phone being installed by Alexander Bell himself.”
What had happened to them? This stale repartee! Where had the natural enchantment, the flow between them, gone?
“So what was the rest of the message?” Ann Lee asked, taking him by surprise again. Damn! This was the conversation he hadn’t wanted to have.
“Nothing. There’s no point in your wasting an evening, is there? You must have lots to do, and I’m sure that . . .”
Bad! Andrew knew how bad that sounded. Yet his voice, plaintive and unworthy of him, carried him along like an unstoppable mud slide.
“But we don’t have to go anywhere.” Her still cheery manner was unfazed. “We can spend the evening at your place. I’ll stop at Kim’s and pick out a video. How about Breakfast at Tiffany’s or My Fair Lady? Some Audrey Hepburn is just what the doctor ordered! We’ll order something in and stay home. What do you say?”
Andrew permitted himself a doubtful smile. It sounded too nice and domestic to say no. “Okay, sweetheart. If you’ll promise me not to mind having to amuse a cranky, self-cent
ered old man . . .”
Ann Lee sounded glad. “I’m used to that. See you soon.”
Her cheerfulness restored the warm feeling that the prospect of seeing her had always given him. Yet he couldn’t say he felt better. Something troubled him the minute he hung up. The warm feeling vanished, leaving him more irritable than before. What had he gotten himself into? He had called her to cancel the evening, hadn’t he? And yet why, really, shouldn’t she come? A movie, dinner, perhaps a glass of wine—what was wrong with that? No, he wasn’t up to it, not tonight. He wanted to be alone, to be left to himself, damn it all!
Andrew was taken aback by his belligerence. What did he want from her? Why was he avoiding her? He knew the answer. He had known it all along. He just hadn’t wanted to hear what an inner voice was whispering. He didn’t want to sleep with her. He wasn’t capable of it tonight. It was that simple and insulting, but it was true. He didn’t want her seeing him the way he was, with all those bare, shaved patches on his chest, all right? He had to call her back right away, before she left home and it was too late.
He reached for the phone and pressed the redial button. Ann Lee answered at once, her voice different now, guarded. She knew, she knew everything! He had to talk fast, be firm, get it over with. “I know, sweetie, it sounds lovely, but why don’t we put it off till tomorrow? I’ll be lousy company tonight.”
There was no answer. Her injured silence crackled on the line like an electrical interference. A second passed. Another. He had to say something. He had to fill the void before it swallowed them both like a black hole. “All right,” said Ann Lee. “If that’s what you want. I thought it would be nice to be together, but never mind. Whatever you say. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She was hurt. It thickened and disfigured her voice, making her sound older, almost his age. What now? What should he do? Call again and apologize? Tell her to come after all? He stared at the phone in his hand. It broadcast the end of the abruptly broken-off conversation like some cold, dark matter. No, he couldn’t do that. It would be crazy. He had wanted to be alone, hadn’t he? Well, now he was. When you want to go, go. When you want to stay, stay. Just don’t waver. As if he had a need for three-penny Zen philosophy!
The phone suddenly rang. There was a digital message. “If you wish to make another call, please hang up and dial again. Thank you.”
13
June 7, 2001
The 16th of Sivan, 5761
Linda’s legs are spread-eagled, her ankles in metal stirrups attached to the two sides of the operating table, her naked body a greenish hue beneath the brutal spotlights of the delivery room. A bright metal sheet beneath her gleams like a carnival mirror, magnifying her torn vagina and gaping anus. I look away from the ugliness of it as if she were a strange woman rather than my wife. She screams. Her voice is inhuman, a savage’s. “He’ll die! My baby will die! Andy, do something! Something terrible has happened to the baby. Half its flesh is gone from its bones. It’s being eaten by bubbling acid. How did this happen? My God, he’ll die! Do something, he’s burning up! Andy, help him! Please! Please don’t let him die!”
14
June 7, 2001
The 16th of Sivan, 5761
Six thirty p.m. The kingdom of day was slowly fading. With their pedestrians gone, the avenues reverted to their clear geometric lines. The soft afternoon light lengthened the shadows of the skyscrapers, sending them ever eastward. But in the magnificent ballroom of Cipriani 42nd Street, across the street from Grand Central Station, the kingdom of night, bold and seductive, was in full reign with its bewitching artifice of eternal evening, its mysterious dance of twilight silhouettes. Dark scarlet curtains hung on the Venetian stained-glass windows that never opened and looked out on nothing. The mosaic walls and gold and silver fluting of the marble columns gleamed in a dimness cloyingly perfumed with the sickly sweet incense-like smell of rotting fruit and the exotic scents of expensive, ponderous flower arrangements that sat in the center of the tables like tropical birds of prey.
Andrew glanced at his watch. How odd. Hadn’t the invitation been for 6:30? He groped for it in his pocket: it was the right date, the right place, the right time. Where was everyone? He was about to return to the lobby and ask the doorman if there had been some last-minute change when something strange caught his eye. Fascinated by it, he was drawn, step by timid step, to the center of the large room. The long, thin, shockingly white neck of a large water bird—a swan? a heron? an albino flamingo? God only knew—hung lifelessly over the edge of a large table. Forlornly dangling from it, the half-open beak of its little, glassy-eyed head practically touched the waxed black marble floor. Someone had created an entire still life around it. An antique crystal decanter half-filled with amber wine stood in the center of the table, surrounded by an artful arrangement of red, yellow, and green apples in various stages of overripeness. Crystal goblets, some perfect, some cracked, stood amid the rotting fruit. The half-wilted petals of French tulips, fallen or placed by the skillful hand of a decorator, floated in several of them. Three small quail, their little feet tied with a brown drawstring, rested in the lap of a large pheasant whose colorful plumage gleamed in the dusky light like contraband gems, completing the composition.
Andrew stared, mesmerized, at the tableau of living death. Its exquisite eye for detail filled him with a mixture of admiration and abhorrence: the grotesqueness of it! Were the birds real? Did city law even allow it? He supposed it must. After all, poultry was eaten, wasn’t it? It took talent, daring, and a total lack of inhibition to create such an arrangement. All of New York was like that now, youthful and without boundaries. This was no city for men over forty. Still, it was an odd choice of theme: vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas! vanity of vanities, all is vanity, the aesthetics of decay, decomposition, and dissolution. It didn’t fit the season of the year, nor was it appropriate for the occasion. In fact, the whole event was rather odd: “The Friends of the Douglas-Sallon Museum of Romantic Continental Art Invite You to Its Official Reopening.” The Douglas-Sallon Museum was a small, ephemeral institution with decadent taste that specialized in huge, bombastic, early nineteenth-century oil paintings by unknown artists who gave the romantic movement a bad name. Occupying three incredibly expensive floors in the heart of New York’s swankiest neighborhood, its directors, rumor had it, were fronting for some shady Russian oligarchs engaged in nefarious practices—money laundering, most likely. After having been shut down under mysterious circumstances, it was now being opened to the public again under even more mysterious ones. New York hadn’t seen such a gala cultural or artistic event in years. Romantic Continental art? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark! Yet every one—every one of us, that is—was planning to attend. They would wear their fanciest clothes and play their assigned roles in the world of the high and mighty, eating, drinking, lusting for each other’s partners, hobnobbing with the rich and the famous, and serving as their moral and cultural fig leaves.
Where was the bar? Andrew was an old hand at events of this sort, well versed in the social and professional rituals of grand openings, cocktail parties, and fund-raising dinners, starting with the scotch on the rocks (summer will soon be here—why not enjoy its little pleasures like ice cubes?), the hors d’oeuvres, the meaningless small talk, and the prepackaged smiles. From there, the well-oiled machine of institutional public relations would churn merrily along on waves of adrenaline, expensive perfume, and alcohol. But where was the bar? There had to be one somewhere. Did he need a drink to calm his nerves? Not him! Well, yes, maybe a wee bit. Yet why be nervous? It was just another opening. Ann Lee should be here any minute. She should have arrived by now, in fact.
Andrew found the bar in the northeast corner of the ballroom, half-hidden behind a massive pseudo-Mesopotamian column that looked like the large leg of a prehistoric beast, covered with onyx and sapphire scales. He surveyed the selection of liquor with a practiced eye. First-rate, absolutely first-rate! Price was n
o object, somebody was hell-bent to impress! There were over a dozen kinds of scotch, nearly all premium brands; all the leading cognacs—not just in their popular, lower-priced versions but in their superb, aged XOs; rare Armagnacs, interesting calvados; boutique-distillery Tequila, rum and gin, exotic varieties of grappa, and a large variety of intriguing European digestifs. It was Romantic Continentalism at its best, Exhibit A being a crushed ice bucket in which stood, not your ordinary, yellow-labeled champagne bottles of Veuve Clicquot but the diabolical-looking, round-bellied bottles of the legendary Dom Perignon. It went beyond the desire to impress; it could only be called the desire to overwhelm. Andrew scanned the labels on the scotch bottles. No comfortingly cheerful clink of ice cubes for him tonight: the single malts were simply too good! It was all a well-disguised display of power. Hesitating for a moment before a formidable row of bottles, he picked the amber nectar of a small distillery with an unpronounceable name that was touted by the bartender as “the next big thing.” Although he considered asking for a double, he decided—a bit sheepishly, it might be—against it. His craving for whiskey had been getting stronger lately. Was it too strong? Nonsense! Not everything called for editorial comment. The party was just beginning.
The ballroom had suddenly filled up. Many of the men were in black tie. It was a different city, a different league. Someone had changed the rules of the game, turned around the equations of power and its representation. He sniffed his glass, inhaling the deep, complex aroma of the noble drink. It was indeed perfect, not too smoky and not too bland, a new blend he was not familiar with. He wasn’t actually feeling nervous, was he? It was an event like any other: a bit more dramatically staged—a lot more, to tell the truth—but still, it was just another party.
He had hidden behind the column long enough. It was time to take his nose out of his glass and start mingling. Let the show begin! What time was it? Already seven. She still hadn’t arrived. Where the hell was she? They didn’t appear together in public every day, not at something like this, at any rate. It was important to both of them, so why was she doing this to him now after demanding, even twisting his arm, at a time when their relationship had cooled, to be his dinner partner on an evening at which the entire Who’s Who of his professional life would be present? Never mind. He would manage. He always did. He just had to get ahold of himself, breathe deeply, take a nice sip of whiskey, arrange a smile on his face, and go forth to meet the world. The whiskey was truly excellent. It was too bad he had been embarrassed to ask for a double.