“What?” said Ann.
“Well, instead they eat each other. There’s some incidence of cannibalism. The cannibalism stands in for the fucking. It’s the lesser taboo.”
“Kind of like the other white meat?”
I nodded then reconsidered. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” said Ann. “Look, there’s Boris.”
Sure enough, Boris had materialized across the street. He was holding a bunch of flowers.
“Katherine,” said Ann, “do you and Boris…”
“Do we what?”
Ann sighed. “I want to ask you about your sex life, but I’d like to think that I’m above it.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I mean it is Boris groaning and wriggling, smelling like an onion.”
“No need to be vulgar,” said Ann.
“Sex is vulgar,” I said. “Vulgarity is sex’s best quality. And if its too vulgar for you…”
“Well, I could always replace it with cannibalism,” said Ann.
The traffic stopped and Boris made his way across the street. He stopped in front of us and looked past the doorway into the still gallery. “Am I too late?” he asked.
Ann and I looked at each other, than back at Boris.
“Who are the flowers for?” I asked.
“They are for Ann,” he said.
“Then,” I smiled, “you are just in time.”
On the two-month anniversary of our meeting, Boris took me to the opera again, a production of Salome. It wasn’t very good, although I’m no judge of operas. I tend to go from aria to aria, set change to set change. I’ve noticed that I like operas where the tenor is bigger than the soprano, which isn’t all that often. And there were no recognizable arias in Salome, or any set changes. All the characters milled around a pit in the middle of the stage. From this pit would come righteous, howling baritone. Finally John the Baptist slunk onto stage, shaking his great hairy head at people. Then they decapitated him offstage and brought his head back glued to a platter. They’d done a good job with the head, the great drooping lips and meaty cheeks. The soprano sang to the head for close to half an hour. I looked over at Boris. He was tapping on the floor with his foot. His pants had ridden up and the sock on his right foot—a thin black nylon sock—had slid into his shoe. There was about a two-inch space of exposed fleshy ankle. I reached down, carefully, slowly, and pulled up Boris’s sock. Boris looked over at me but didn’t care, and soon—without much explanation—the opera ended.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “Let’s leave before the curtain call.”
That night we dined at Boris’s favorite restaurant. I ordered the osso buco. I ate quickly—although there was too much rosemary, which made the sauce taste metallic—and was happily sucking the marrow out of bones when I noticed Boris’s eyes trained on me with more than the customary intensity.
“What?” I asked.
Boris chuckled. “You’re still such a child, Katherine.”
“And what does that make you?” I asked. I smiled sarcastically.
“Lucky,” he said.
I’d become disillusioned with our relationship over the last week—something to do with Ann, or maybe the beguiling Perugino peering down at me while I drank my morning coffee. I was no longer satisfied and was trying to figure out how I’d managed to convince myself that I was. I had a roof over my head and food and entertainment, although it was all Boris’s idea of fun—I hadn’t been to a movie in months—but I was giving him the prime of my life. Maybe I even had reason to resent him. I ate my food quietly. Boris had met with his lawyer the previous week. I’d asked if it had something to do with book contracts, but he’d denied this. His agent took care of all that. He’d been smiling in an annoying, patronizing way and it occurred to me that he might have changed his will. Maybe he’d made me a beneficiary, or sole beneficiary. I didn’t know how much Boris was worth, but he wasn’t a big spender. Soulless Man had been in print for more than fifteen years, although none of his other books had done as well. One—The Drowning Boy—had been made into a movie.
“Boris, why did you see your lawyer last week?” I asked.
“Oh, the usual,” he said.
“But you don’t usually see your lawyer.” The waiter appeared to refill the water glasses and Boris and I were momentarily silent.
“Why this sudden interest?”
“You worry me when you don’t tell me things,” I said. “People go to their lawyers to arrange wills. People arrange their wills when they’re,” I paused here for effect, “when they’re ill, Boris.”
Across the room a woman was laughing maniacally. Boris chewed in silence. He was old enough to have a heart attack, but in the two months I’d been watching him, his health seemed to have improved. I wondered if there was a cyst blocking something that was responsible for the rosy glow—a glow that we would later attribute to blood clogged up in his face.
“How’s your health?” I asked him.
“I’ve never felt better,” he replied.
“Do you ever think about death?” It had occurred to me that Boris might one day become suicidal. Maybe I could drive him to it. I’d seen Gaslight on cable late the night before. “Sometimes it seems easier to end it all.”
Boris looked at me with a fatherly expression.
“One day you could just die, Boris,” I smiled. “One day, you’re working on a novel, the next you’re in a casket with neatly folded hands.”
Boris raised his eyes to me and tilted his head. He was studying my face. “Katherine, don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic?”
“Are you depressed?”
“No,” I said.
“I can send you to a doctor. I hear the drugs are good. People like them.” He reached across the table and held my hand. “I understand that maybe I have been too busy and that you might feel neglected.”
“Oh, shut up, Boris,” I said, retracting my hand. “You don’t understand anything.”
“Is that productive?” Boris raised his eyebrows. He pursed his lips.
“You don’t know me.”
Boris shrugged. “Can anyone know another?” he said, which sounded like something I’d heard before, only stated in a better way.
“I know enough about you to know that I know enough about you,” I said. “I can’t stay here, with you, in New York, any longer. I think I’m losing my mind.”
Boris started looking annoyed. “Katherine, I can’t leave right now. I’m in the middle of a book.”
“Fascinating.” I smiled blandly. “So what’s the next Nobel Laureate writing? What’s The Little Vagrant about?”
Boris relaxed back into his chair. He seemed to think our equilibrium had just been restored. “You will like The Little Vagrant. It’s about a young woman in Italy. She is searching for security, for warmth, for someone to really care. Instead she meets careless man upon careless man. In the end she feels desolate.”
“Desolate?” I studied my hands on the tablecloth. “Boris, how could you?”
“How could I what?”
“I told you those stories in confidence.”
“What stories?”
“What were you thinking?” I stared in disbelief. “I find your marketing of my life in poor taste.”
“See? Childish.” Boris crossed one leg over the other, which took some effort, due to the girth of his thighs. “You automatically assume that the book’s about you.”
I was speechless.
“Yes, yes, admit it, Katherine.” He dismissed me waving his hand in the air. “There’s a bit of the narcissist at work here.”