“You mean this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What will you tell your wife?”
“Nothing. It’s none of her business.”
Svetlana took a deep breath through her nose and then moved up so that she was straddling my face. My lips and nose were right there next to her sex. I could smell our lovemaking there.
“Make me come again,” she said.
The next morning found me walking down through Central Park a little before seven. Every time I stepped forward with my left leg, that testicle hurt with a deep aching that I hadn’t experienced in years.
It was early July and hot every day except that morning, which was cool, even a little brisk. Every sound and color was clear and crisp to me; my fingertips were alive at the touch of stone or bark or the thread-textured cloth of my jacket.
I kept slapping my hands together and then rubbing my fingertips. I was muttering to myself about sex and Hawaii, my wife and the sudden and unexpected crash and burn of our marriage.
Seela was old enough to weather the breakup. She had her roaches and her roommate.
Harvard Rollins wouldn’t stay with Mona very long but she’d find some minor celebrity to share her bed and accompany her to those interminable magazine parties.
I wanted a drink more than I ever had before in my life. But drinking would kill me, I knew that for sure. I had almost died twice in Colorado before I came out to New York. I’d put my fist through a plate glass shower door, ripping my forearm wide open and bleeding out at least two pints of blood. My neighbor, Charles Dagger, had saved me that time. Then, two months later, I drove my Dodge station wagon off the side of an embankment, totaled the car, and nearly fell down an eighty-foot drop. That’s when I decided to leave Colorado.
Drinking brought me to death’s door twice; the third time, I was sure, would be my end.
But I still wanted a drink. The mildly citrusy tang of tequila was on my mind. Tequila or cognac, either h i t y liquor would do just fine.
I started skipping at every fourth and then fifth step. I wasn’t aware of it at first but then I saw people shying away from me. I guess I looked kind of loony. I was a little nuts. But why shouldn’t I have been? My life was spiraling from its orbit for no good reason.
Abruptly I stopped to sit on a park bench. I jumped to the seat rather forcefully and the couple sitting there got up and left.
“You don’t have to leave,” I said after them, but they didn’t seem to hear.
What was wrong? How had I gotten to that place with no warning, no diagnosis? I was tapping my left foot and clapping my hands three-quarters off beat. It was a rhythm I had thought up years before, even before I left Los Angeles, but I had never been able to do it. It was a musical exercise and I was in no way musical. But on that bench I could keep up the tempo and even riff off of it, calling out notes again from the offbeat.
I guess I was getting pretty loud when the policeman walked up to me.
“Excuse me, sir,” the uniformed and armed cop said. “Is there a problem?”
I lost the cadence and this enraged me. I stood up from the bench, a little too quickly, and said, “No, Officer. What makes you think that?”
“You’re creating a disturbance, sir,” the officer said, holding his head to the side, searching my eyes for signs of alcohol inebriation or drug use.
“Got a lot on my mind, man. Wife left me yesterday. Twenty-two years and she bolted like a teenage girl.”
“Can I see some ID?”
I produced my employment card and the cop studied it.
“You have a license?” he asked.
“Don’t drive much. It’s in my bureau,” I said. “At home.”
“Try to keep it down, okay, Mr. Dibbuk? Your behavior is erratic and it’s causing some consternation.”
It was that last word that made me look closely at the peace officer. A white guy, maybe thirty, maybe not quite; he had light brown eyes and a brutal mouth. I would have bet a hundred thousand dollars that he would have never used the word consternation.
“Excuse me, Officer. I’ll try to calm down.”
The policeman walked away, taking all my nervous energy with him.
When I got home, it was a little after eight fifteen. I wanted to change for work. And even though I was going to be late, I was at peace again. The policeman cured me of my alcohol jones and my worries.
Mona was gone. That part of my life was over. I could accept that. Maybe Svetlana would be a better wife or lover. Maybe I could become a freelance expert in computers and double my salary so that the bite of alimony wouldn’t feel so bad.
I walked in and went right to the kitchen. I was looking in the refrigerator for an English m u h when Mona called out, “Ben? Is that you, Ben?”
She came from the bedroom hall wearing the same striped dress that had fallen down around her thighs when she was commenting on the flavor of Harvard Rollins’s cock.
I stood there listening to the hard breath blowing through my nostrils. My heart followed with a drumbeat. I imagined the knife on the counter buried in her chest.
All this felt like a second body rising out of the shell that I was: a man who I didn’t know, or at least did not remember, rising up to take control.
I held my breath and took a step backward.
“Ben? What’s wrong?”
“What are you doing here, Mona?”
“My mother is doing better,” she said. “I came home last night.”
“Better?”
“Yes. Where were you?”
“I... I thought you had left me,” I said quite honestly.
“Left you? Just because I went a few blocks away to take care of my mother?”
“You just left a note... hung up the phone on me...” I wanted to add that she allowed Harvard Rollins to use words that were strictly taboo between us, but I felt that speaking about her infidelity would expose me. I needed to keep my knowledge a secret.
“I was busy,” she said. “Is that what you think? That I’d just walk out the door and that would be it?”
“You were talking about divorce the other day at Augie’s. You were looking at Harvard Rollins like he was the man of your dreams.” Honesty as far as it would go, I decided.
“So where were you?”
“With Cass,” I said, realizing that the truth would only take me so fir.
“Who’s Cass?”
“A guy I work with.”
“What were you doing with him?”
“Getting drunk.”
“You had a drink? You said that you’d never—”
“So now will you leave me because I had a drink?”
“What’s wrong with you, Ben? Why do you keep on saying that I’m leaving you?”
“We got drunk,” I said. “I was too wasted even to take a cab, so I stayed at his place.”
Mona took a step toward me and I, afraid of the knife on the table and in my mind, took another step back.
“What’s wrong, Ben?”
“Why aren’t you calling me ‘Benny’?”
“You told me that you didn’t like it.”
“That never stopped you before,” I said in the voice of an accusing attorney. “It didn’t stop you from introducing me to Harvard as ‘Benny.’ ”
“What’s this thing about Harv?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s right, Harv,” I said. “I’m sure you’re on first-name terms with his dick too.”
“Don’t you use that kind of language with me,” she said, suddenly rigid.
“Okay,” I said. “Then try this: Fuck you, you cunt.”
I walked by her and out the door before anything else could well up out of me. I stormed down the street, walked all the way to work and right past the entrance. I just kept on going toward the west side of town.
I was swinging my arms like some kind of mentally challenged inmate suddenly free on the streets of New York.