“It was an illusion. Not what I wished, but what I did. Do you understand?”
She put on her other shoe, this time fitting it on her foot gently. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t kill my brother, but I know what it feels like to wish he was dead.”
She stared. Her mouth trembled. “You bastard,” she whispered.
“It’s not your fault, Halley. All you wanted was to be the most important person in the world to your father. But that’s impossible. So now you want to be the most important person alive to everyone you meet. I guess most people would think that’s a crazy ambition, but it isn’t really, it’s just a waste of your time. I know you can get Jack to want you so badly he’ll sacrifice anything. I know it, you know it, Stick knows it. Even Jack knows it. So what’s the point? Do you want him? If you want him, then there’s a point.”
Halley bent over, as if she were doing a stretching exercise, forehead pressed to the pine floor. She put both hands down and pushed up, hopping to her feet. Her mouth was set, talking tight. She was imitating Stick again, only this time it wasn’t conscious mimicry. “I didn’t do what you think. Okay? I didn’t do anything to Mikey.” She turned to the door ready to go, then wheeled back, adding, “I’m not a heartless bastard like you. I don’t know what Gene told you — he really loved me so I could talk to him, I could tell him things about Mikey and Dad and he wouldn’t throw it back at me so ugly — so many fucking ugly words! You asshole! I can’t believe you said that to me.” This was the closest I had seen her come to genuine rage. She forgot her self-possession. Her shoulders were hunched, her brow wrinkled, her beautiful lips in a snarl.
I was calm and unmoved. I said matter-of-factly, “All I’m saying is that they’re no match for you. Of course you can do what you want with Jack, of course you can pretend to become Didier’s mistress and end up running Europe. You could also run the U.S. and Japan. Even Stick is not your equal. That’s why I’m surprised he suggested you get to know Edgar. I thought he was smarter than that.” I slapped my thighs and stood up. “Well, I guess we should change and go down to the pool.”
“You know, you’re a sexist. That’s all. That’s all it is. You don’t think I can accomplish anything unless I take a man into my bed.”
I smiled, stood up, crossed to her, put my hands on her shoulders, turning her to the door. She jerked back stubbornly and called out, like a kid in the schoolyard, “Sexist pig, sexist pig …”
“You’re not taking them to your bed, Halley. Come on. That’s not what you do.”
“They don’t fall in love with me! That’s romantic bullshit men use as an excuse—”
I laughed over the rest of her tirade, opened the door and pushed her out, saying, ‘I know you don’t have to fuck them to get ahead. You’re the one who doesn’t.” She peered at me from the hall, listening skeptically. “I know you don’t have to make them love you. You don’t.” I patted her on the head. “I love you,” I said, casually closing my door. “Meet you at the pool.”
The conversation was satisfying — the less I gave her a real human being to play upon, the more she reacted to me with real feelings. But the toll on me seemed worse every day. I took three Tylenol (after all, I’m a big man) for my headache — the same sort of migraine-like pain I had been suffering from after the incest sessions. Those I attributed to mere physical frustration; if so, why did a talk session provoke one? The pain was nauseating. I bent over the bowl, but nothing happened. I drank some water and felt a little better. I put on the nylon shorts I used for tennis; actually, they were sold as a bathing suit. There was something worrisome about wearing them, and it concerned me that I was so drained from the scene with Halley I couldn’t make the association. The shorts were a hideous turquoise and black — perhaps I was reminded of Stick’s space-age tennis outfits. I also put on a white polo shirt. I was hardly less dressed than when I wore shorts and a work shirt to the office, so I expected Halley to be disappointed.
She was. By the time I met her at the pool, her anger had vanished, of course. She had recollected her false self. Anyone seeing her, small, slim and brown, hair slick, walking out of the shallow end, and greeting me—“Come in! The water’s great.”—would have thought we were the best of friends. In fact, we had no audience. There was a couple sunning by the deep end, but they seemed to be asleep.
“I’m gonna sit here and watch you,” I said.
She stood in a foot of water. She kicked some at me. “Oh come on. Don’t be a scaredy cat.”
I reclined on a white plastic lounge chair, and flipped my legal pad. “I’ve got work to do.”
She pouted and slunk backwards into the water, lewdly rocking her hips. “At least take off your shirt,” she called.
I ignored her. She began to do laps, slowly, savoring each stroke, the way she did everything, with tantalizing concentration and grace. I stared at the pad. The sun glared off the yellow paper and hurt my head, which was still throbbing. I decided that, since only nine people were coming to the retreat, there was no point in dividing them. The question was whether I could accomplish what I wanted with Stick in a group that large. Also, wouldn’t it be better to remove Halley? She might defend him at a crucial moment. But she was also on the verge of challenging him, my ultimate goal. She still hadn’t informed him of Didier’s offer, not significant because of the offer itself, merely her new secrecy. If she had really kept it secret. She was still capable of lying to me …
The tedium of checking and rechecking every word for manipulations tired me out. I drifted off, although my dream began at the pool, with Halley swimming, so I didn’t know at first.
She was in a yellow pants suit. I meant to shout that she shouldn’t be wearing her mother’s clothes in the water; instead I said, “I’m in a bathing suit.”
Then I knew I was dreaming because Halley was out of the pool, kneeling beside me at the white plastic lounge chair. She had an enormous version of my penis in her mouth. Her lips were distended as they widened to swallow the gigantic phallus. Her eyes watched me and crossed. “You’re a kosher pig,” she said, although talking should have been impossible.
“That’s not mine,” I said, meaning the penis.
A phone rang and Albert answered, telling the caller I wasn’t available. He told me to sleep and tiptoed out, shutting the door gently. It was night. I felt a cool breeze — I knew that was real — but in the dream the breeze was a relief because it was dark and close in the room. My mother was painting the walls of Andy Chen’s office, painting them a bright white that was fluorescent in the gloom. I was a very little boy, on the floor, looking up at her. There was a red X on her back. She glanced my way with a loving smile, an enchanting look that made me long for her to be real. She commented, “Remember, you don’t know.”
“How did you paint the X?”
“You don’t know how to drown,” she said and pointed the thick bristles of the brush at her face. A drop of white paint dripped onto her eye.
“No!” I cried out to stop her from painting her face because then she would disappear. And she did. I had become Francisco; he was chatting with Halley and the sleeping poolside couple, only we were on Grandma’s porch in Tampa, “Well,” Francisco asked, “what does political action mean in the context of physical bravery or cowardice? I am brave as to principle, a coward in kindergarten. I’m scared of my father.”