Part 13 (1/2)

He always kept his eyes closed when he touched me. I always watched him, and I always let him do all the work. I would never touch him voluntarily. He would have to take my hand and move it as if it were asleep, as if I'd fallen asleep from boredom. He'd hold my hand and place it on his body, then he would move underneath it. He was fair and freckled, and his p.e.n.i.s seemed wrinkled and unfresh to me, like the white of a fried egg cooked in a too-hot fat. Finally, in a kind of stoic despair at my lack of response, he would let go of my hand, enter me, and satisfy himself. Before he satisfied himself, though, he would work hard at satisfying me. And he did. But I was never grateful to him, as I was to the boys who took only their own pleasure and then hurried out the door. After he separated himself from my body, he would lie next to me and hold my hand. We would be on our backs, looking at the ceiling as if we were s.h.i.+pwrecked, as if we were waiting quietly for help to come.

After a few months of sleeping with Walt, it became clear to me that it hadn't become a topic of conversation among my new friends. They hadn't even noticed. I was beginning to find my own behavior to Walt insupportable; all his wanting was exhausting me, making me feel inadequate and cruel. And I was cruel to him all the time; I couldn't stand any longer how easy he made it for me to be cruel. I told him we shouldn't see each other over the summer so that we could think things over, just cool off.

He came to my house on the Fourth of July. ”A friend of yours is on the phone,” my father said. I hadn't let my friends know I was staying in Queens for the summer, working for Con Edison in the billing department. When they'd asked what my plans were, I'd said vaguely, ”Traveling, I guess.” So I heard my father with an alarm, an alarm that turned to irritation when I heard that it was Walt.

”I'm in your neighborhood,” he said. ”I'm on your corner.”

He tried to make it sound casual, as if it weren't an hour subway ride from his house to mine.

I said absolutely nothing because I couldn't think of what to say.

”Can I come over?” he asked. ”I'm at the candy store on your corner.”

”Well, if you're here, you have to come, don't you?” I said in the cruel voice I always used.

In ten seconds he was at the door. He was unshaven, his eyes were red, and his breath smelled as if he hadn't eaten or slept in days. He had a harmonica in his back pocket, and he kept whipping it out and playing s.n.a.t.c.hes of melodies, then wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and putting the harmonica away. He didn't say anything. He kept walking around the kitchen table, around and around it like a dog trying to find a comfortable place to rest. My mother stood by the kitchen sink offering him various things to eat and drink which he refused. Finally she just stood in front of the refrigerator wringing her hands.

”I came out here to tell you something,” he said, pacing around the table. ”You, I mean,” he said looking at me. ”You two can stay and listen to it, you're her parents, I mean. I don't have anything to say that you can't hear.”

I was terrified that he was going to tell them we'd had s.e.x. I believed that my parents could deal with my being a college student, traveling in an orbit that would take me from them, once and for all, only if they could convince themselves that I was still a virgin.

”I mean, you're her parents, you're the people in the world that care the most about her. Even if she doesn't understand that, I understand it.”

My parents thanked him for saying that. This gave him the signal to address his remarks only to them.

”This is why I'm here: because I figured something out. You know, I always thought she was better than I was. She treated me like she was better than me, and I believed her. I mean, she's so beautiful, and she knows everything, and everybody likes her. And she's a great artist. I mean, she's a really great artist. In a hundred years everyone will know her name. Everyone. So I always believed she was better than me. But now I know she isn't. Now I know I'm just as good as she is. l.u.s.t as good. I always was and always will be. l.u.s.t as good.”

He sat down at the table, and he put his head in his hands. He began to weep. He wept in a way that told us he had forgotten we were there, as if he were in the room by himself. My parents and I looked at one another. None of us knew what to do. We just let him sit there, weeping, his whole body shaking with sobs. None of us went near him, or said anything to him, offered him anything: a handkerchief, a drink, a phone call, an embrace. Finally, my father stood up. He put his thumbs in his belt loops and walked over to the chair where Walt was sitting. He put his hand on Walt's shoulder. ”I'm going to take you home now, son,” he said.

Walt pulled himself together. He took his handkerchief out and blew his nose. He began playing his harmonica, some song like ”Home on the Range.” My father backed the car out of the driveway to the front of the house. My mother shook Walt's hand at the door. I don't remember what I did.

That was twenty-five years ago, and I hadn't seen him since then. He'd dropped out of school. I didn't know where he went, and since I didn't know anyone who knew him, I thought there was no way of my finding out. There might have been ways for me to find out about him- I could have called his parents' home- but I'd had no inclination to try.

I looked at him standing at the other side of the counter. He hadn't changed in twenty-five years. He was still boyish, amateurish in his body, as he had been then. I remembered what his body looked like without clothes, that it had been inside mine, had taken pleasure from my body and given pleasure to me. I remembered that I had not been kind to him. Not once.

I understood that if he'd come to the store to hurt me, it would have been, somehow, his right. I showed him into the office. I closed the door. I told the young man working in the front of the store that we were not to be disturbed.

Looking more closely, I could see that his hair had thinned, and it made the bones of his skull seem a feature as expressive as eyes or lips. I kept trying to decide if I liked his looks, if other people would consider him attractive, if his looks would appeal more to women or to men. But I couldn't bear to rest my eyes on him too long. He looked so unhappy; most people try to hide their unhappiness as if it were a wound that should be bandaged, covered up. Walt looked at me, freely exposing his unhappiness as if he thought it was something I had a right, or a duty, perhaps, to see.

”I know you're married,” he said. ”You said so once on television. Who'd you marry?”

”A man.”

”What man?”

”A lawyer. We live near Battery Park. I like the view.”

”Does your husband like your food?”

”Everyone asks me that. He's usually on a diet.”

I looked down at the papers spread on the table. I shuffled them to indicate that I didn't have much time.

”That's nice that you live near the water. You always liked the water. You always wanted a view.”

He mentioned the names of all my friends, and he sounded pleased when I said I still saw some of them.

”Keep that up,” he said. ”It's important to keep up old friends.h.i.+ps.”

I said I thought it was.

”Do you think I should get married?” he asked. ”I never can get married. I would like to.”

”Anyone can get married,” I said. ”It's the easiest thing in the world.”

”I wanted to marry you,” he said. ”But I don't anymore.”

”That's good,” I said.

”You never wanted to marry me. Not for one minute.”

He looked at me with great fixity, as if he were daring me to say yes or no. Then I began to feel again what I had always felt when I was with him. It was anger, anger that I could never feel only one thing with him, that it was always two, and always at the same time, and always exactly the opposite of each other. I knew perfectly well that he was right, that I hadn't ever wanted to marry him, but at the same time, I seemed to have some fleeting sense that I'd thought it would be comfortable to marry someone who could understand my parents so that I wouldn't have to tell funny stories about them, savage tales that would make them comprehensible. I could tell him that, that part of it. He would be happy, and I always partially wanted to make him happy. Then I remembered that he would always ask the kind of question that no one with good manners would ask and then not listen for the answer. While I was worrying about what to say, his attention had wandered to something else. So I just waited, looking down at the papers on my desk.

”I bet your parents are really glad about the way things turned out with you,” he said. ”That you have a good business, secure and everything.”

”My parents are both dead,” I said, hoping the words were brutal enough to banish their image, which I didn't want right then.

”Well, they'd really be impressed with this food if they were alive. That's some terrific food you have out there,” he said, turning his back toward me, staring at the closed door.

I could tell by the way he'd looked at the food that he was really hungry, that hunger had perhaps been a problem for him, and might be once again. That he was hungry in a way that none of my customers was: a hunger that could lead to starvation. I didn't ask him what he'd been doing all those years; if I had seen the details of his life, the small disasters following one after the other, piling up, I'd have entered his life and allowed him to enter mine. As it was, I had to allow the possibility that someone who had entered my body actually needed my food to keep alive. He was clean, but except for that he might have been one of the people who ripped open the garbage bags and made such a mess on the street that the other storeowners were complaining. One of the people who went to the shelter where we gave our leftover food.

”It isn't my fault,” I wanted to say. I escorted him out of my office. I was about to ask him what he might like to take home. Truffles? Eggplant terrine? Chicken with olives and artichoke hearts?

As I was imagining the combination of foods he might like, planning their arrangement in the dish, my eyes fell on his hands, freckled, hairless, dried out a little now with age. I began to wonder what they would feel like on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the rough surfaces twisting my nipples, teasing them into arousal. I thought of sitting on the floor, taking my shoes off first, and then my panty hose, then slowly, tantalizingly my bra, holding my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in my hands, proffering them to him like two floury potatoes. Then I thought of lying back, my arm underneath my head, opening my legs, gradually, deliberately, revealingly, watching him want me, listening to him say he'd do anything, anything, opening my legs a bit more, thrusting my hips up so he'd have to see, so he'd be able to see everything, so everything he wanted would be available to him, and he'd only have to approach and enter, that would be all he'd have to do. Abject, trembling with hunger for me, he would shudder soon inside me, and I would demand some satisfaction, indicating with an angry, imperious gesture (and no words) what I would have him do. I'd make him go on and on till I was finished, then I'd make him leave.

He was drumming his fingers on the counter, whistling noiselessly, then rubbing his hand over his mouth. I couldn't stand the sound of it; I just couldn't stand it one more minute. I was going to have to make him leave.

”Well, I hope you'll be able to try some of our stuff sometime. Maybe sometime if you're having a party, give me a call.”

He looked at me in shock, almost in horror. ”A party's not the kind of thing that I would have.”

”Yeah, well, you never know,” I said, looking down at my papers. ”It's been great seeing you, but I'm up to my neck in work. Stop by again some time.”

He turned his back and walked out of the store.

”Who the h.e.l.l was that,” asked jasmine, six feet tall, from Madagascar.