The operation would have to be carried out in darkness or not at all — hence the command to switch off the light — but now that Ferguson had risen from the chair and was beginning to take off his clothes, the light went on in the hall, the minuterie (one-minute light) that was turned on again and again by different people throughout the day, and because there were gaps between the door frame and the edges of the ill-fitting door, light was suddenly coming in, just enough light to make it not dark enough now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, enough light for him to make out the lumpy contours of Fleming’s now naked body, and consequently Ferguson looked down at the floor as he lifted himself onto the high wooden platform bed with the deep built-in drawer under the mattress, and then, once he was on the bed, he turned his eyes upward and looked at the wall as Fleming began kissing his naked chest and sliding a hand onto his slowly stiffening cock, which, after some intense fondling, was eventually inserted into Fleming’s mouth. Further on, when the unresisting Ferguson found himself on his back and was no longer able to look at the wall, he turned his eyes toward the window instead, thinking that a view of the outside might help him forget he was inside, trapped inside his too-small room, but just then the light in the hall went on again, turning the window into a mirror that reflected only what was inside, and there he was with Fleming on the bed, or rather there was Fleming on top of him on the bed, with the old man’s flat, flabby ass thrust into the air, and the instant Ferguson saw that picture in the window that was a mirror, he shut his eyes.
He had always made love with his eyes open, always with his eyes wide open because he loved looking at the person he was with, and barring Andy Cohen and some of the streetwalkers in Les Halles, he had never been with anyone he had not felt powerfully attracted to, for the pleasure of touching and being touched by a person he cared about was enhanced by looking at that person as well, the eyes had as much to do with the enjoyment as any other part of the body, even the skin, but now for the first time since he could remember being with anyone Ferguson was going at it blind, which cut him off from the room and the present moment, and even as Fleming was asking Ferguson to take hold of his cock and spit on it, Ferguson wasn’t fully there anymore, his mind was producing images that had nothing to do with what was happening on the bed in his top-floor room on the rue de l’Université, Odysseus and Telemachus were weeping in each other’s arms, Ferguson was running his hand over the round, muscular half-moons of Brian Mischevski’s lovely ass, which he would never see or touch again, and poor Julie, whose last name he had never even known, was lying dead on a bare mattress in her room at the Hôtel des Morts.
Now Fleming was asking Ferguson to go inside him, please, he said, yes, if you will, thank you, deep inside him, all the way in, and as the still blind Ferguson eased his hard-on into the invisible man’s capacious hole, the professor grunted, then began to moan, then went on moaning as Ferguson’s cock moved around inside him, a wave of agonizing sounds that couldn’t be blocked out because Ferguson had not been prepared for them, unlike the visual things, which he had been prepared for and had managed to erase, but even if he covered his ears the sounds would still be heard, nothing could ever stop them, and then it was suddenly over, Ferguson’s erection was softening and shrinking, it was no longer possible to keep it up, neither the erection nor what he was doing, it was all over now, he was slipping out, he was done without being done, but done for all that, done for good.
I’m sorry, he said. I can’t go on with this.
Ferguson sat up in bed with his back turned toward Fleming, and all at once an enormous inrush of air filled his lungs, filled him to the point of choking, and then the air was rushing out of him in a single prolonged sob, a retched-up sound that was as loud as a loud cough, as loud as a dog’s bark, a chopped-off howl that shot through his windpipe, burst into the space around him, and left him gasping for breath.
No feeling ever worse than this one. No shame ever more terrible.
As Ferguson wept quietly into his hands, Fleming touched his shoulder and said he was sorry, he never should have come up to the room and asked him to do this, it was wrong, he didn’t know how it could have happened, but please, he said, you mustn’t let it get you down, it’s of no importance, they’d had too much to drink and weren’t in their right minds, it was all a mistake, and here is another thousand francs, he said, here is another fifteen hundred francs, and please, Archie, go out and spend it on something nice for yourself, something that will make you happy.
Ferguson climbed off the bed and picked up the money from the desk. I don’t want your stinking money, he said, as he crumpled up the notes in his fist. Not one bloody franc of it.
And then, still naked, he walked to the northern edge of the room, opened each half of the long double window, stepped onto the balcony, and tossed the wad of bills out into the cold January night.
5.4
He was eighteen, and she was sixteen. He was about to start college, and she was at the beginning of her junior year of high school, but before he lost any more time thinking about her, before he gave another second to imagining the possible future they might or might not have been destined to share one day, he decided the moment had come to give her the test. Linda Flagg had flunked that test three years ago, but Amy Schneiderman and Dana Rosenbloom had both passed it. Those two were the only girls he had ever loved, and while he still loved both of them in their different ways, Amy was his stepsister now and had never loved him in the way he loved her, and although Dana had loved him more than he had ever deserved to be loved by anyone, Dana was gone now and living in another country, gone from his life for good.
He knew there was something mad about the whole business, a wobbly four-in-the-morning logic to the idea that he could undo the curse of Artie’s death by falling in love with his dead friend’s sister, but there was more to it than that, he told himself, a genuine attraction to the ever more lovely Celia, who took after her lean father and bore no genetic resemblance to her stout, overweight mother, but beautiful as Celia was becoming, and sharp as her mind undoubtedly was, he had never been alone with her, not once since the day of the funeral had he ever talked to her without also talking to her parents at the same time, and it was still uncertain what she was made of, whether she was the demure and compliant middle-class girl who sat quietly at the dinner table during Ferguson’s visits to New Rochelle or whether she was a person with spirit, someone with the stuff to make him want to pursue her when the time was right.
He called it the Horn & Hardart Initiation Exam.
If she was as entranced by her first visit to the automat as he had been, as each of his high school loves had been at approximately her age, then the door would remain open and he would continue to think about Celia and wait for her to grow up.
If not, the door would shut, and he would abandon his foolish fantasy about trying to rectify the wrongs of the world and never think about opening the door again.
He called the house in New Rochelle on the Thursday after Labor Day. He wouldn’t be going down to Princeton for another two weeks, but the public schools were already in session, and he was hoping she might be free for an afternoon rendezvous this Saturday, or, if not this Saturday, the next one.
When Celia picked up the phone and heard his voice, she assumed he wanted to talk to her mother about arranging another dinner at the house. She nearly put the receiver down before he had a chance to tell her that, no, she was the one he wanted to talk to, and after asking her how it felt to be back in school (so-so) and whether she was taking biology, physics, or chemistry this year (physics), he asked whether she would be willing to meet up with him in Manhattan this Saturday or next Saturday for lunch and a movie or a visit to a museum or anything else she cared to do.