How many times drifting through bookstores seeing books I knew Vernor Matheius would prize and thinking I would steal for him- would I? As I would never have stolen for myself: annotated editions of the works of Leibniz, Hegel, Heidegger; a new commentary on Wittgenstein; a new translation of Plato's dialogues; biographies of Kierkegaard and Jaspers; Ernst Cassirer's essays on the mythic nature of language. Holding one of these precious, expensive books in my hand thinking How happy it would make Vernor to own this. Wishing not to think What a transparent ploy to make the man love me.
Never stole a single book. Though I'd been labeled an outlaw, a sociopath, yet I never stole for Vernor Matheius, as I would never have stolen for myself; my pride was such, I couldn't stoop so low; nor could I work out how Vernor might respond if he discovered that books had been stolen for him; and he'd known I hadn't the money to buy them. Frequently he'd expressed disdain for any form of dishonesty, above all intellectual dishonesty; he scorned unoriginal thinking in philosophy; he scorned any form of petty crime.
"Petty crimes require petty souls."
Though I couldn't afford it, sometimes on impulse I bought Vernor gifts. Never in my life until then had I experienced that rhapsody of happiness: buying a gift for someone you love. The adrenaline rush I am the person who can buy this gift. Only I, so privileged.
These were thrift-shop treasures. I was patient, I could look through bins of cast-off things. I discovered a handsome old fountain pen, black with gold trim, that still functioned; a pair of fake-jade cuff links engraved with miniature sphinxes; a crystal paperweight (only just finely cracked, but still charming) that was also a magnifying glass. For Vernor's thirtieth birthday I gave him a silk vest in an elegant hounds-tooth check on a gray background gossamer as smoke; when he unwrapped and opened the box he didn't lift the vest out of the tissue paper for a moment, staring down at it, and I worried that such an item of apparel was too personal a gift and might offend him; but Vernor took it up, slipped it on, and frowned at his reflection critically in his single mirror, above his bedroom bureau-"Hmm. Not bad."The silk vest had come from a consignment shop in downtown Syracuse; it had been marked down numerous times, at last priced at $9.95. How beautiful it had seemed to me, the old-fashioned cut, a row of small black wooden buttons; a vest for a gentleman; for Vernor Matheius. He laughed when I told him it was secondhand; its label had been carefully removed. "What it is, no doubt, is a dead man's vest, recycled to me." "That's only logical," I said, "since you're alive." Vernor laughed again and asked, not for the first time, why I bought him things-"You don't have any money, Anellia." I ignored this saying proudly, "You look very handsome in your silk vest, Vernor, it suits you perfectly." Vernor said reprovingly, "I don't look 'handsome' and it doesn't suit me 'perfectly' and I surely don't need a vest but thank you, Anellia." Smiling at me, and my heart soared.
"A special occasion. And I have something special to tell you."
Vernor wore the houndstooth silk vest beneath his old gray flannel jacket that fitted him tight across the shoulders when he took me out to dinner for the first time (as it would be the last time) at a good, expensive restaurant in the city, the Brass Rail; he was clean-shaven and his face was sharp planes and angles like carved mahogany; his hair hadn't been trimmed in some time, and rose in a woolly penumbra around his head; one of the earpieces of his glasses had broken and was mended with adhesive tape, which gave him a savage yet scholarly look; he was handsome and swaggering in his best ironic style; he wore the vest, the jacket, a greasy-looking dark necktie and dark trousers with a haphazard crease and his shoes were brown leather, badly worn and water-stained. I wore a black silk dress that seemed to have a life, an identity, an idiom of its own; in the style of the Forties it had a flared skirt, long, tight sleeves and a V neck that drooped to show a portion of my narrow, pale chest and the edges of my pale breasts; the dress had a cloth belt that had begun to curl, to show its underside; the woman who'd owned the dress (of course it was secondhand) had had a waist thinner than my own for the belt had been mutilated as if with an ice pick to make extra holes in it, that it might be buckled tighter, and yet tighter; Vernor thought the dress "erotic"-"smelling of grave mold"; with it I wore a thin tarnished gold chain that had once belonged to my mother; at least, this was what I'd been told as a young girl by my grandmother who hadn't wanted it for herself. Nerves had caused my sensitive skin to break out in random rashes yet my face was radiant, I'd applied layers of makeup including rouge; my eyes shone with the glisten of madness; I thought This is the happiest day of my life. Yet could I trust happiness? I could not bear the suspense of what Vernor had to tell me at dinner; immediately he'd made his remark, offhand and casual, I forgot I'd heard it; I looked away, evasive and frightened.
It was a giddy thing, to appear so publicly with Vernor Matheius; the two of us dressed for the evening; his carved-wooden face, my beaming-bright face; his mismatched, rakish clothes and my black silk witchy dress; we walked along the sidewalks, crossed streets, and drew all eyes to us like magnets; I wondered if Vernor was making a declaration about me, about us, at last; we walked hand in hand sometimes, and at other times Vernor seemed almost to forget me; yet there was the glitzy facade of the Brass Rail, where my Kappa sisters' parents took them for dinners, there was Vernor opening the door for me, and the trepidation of stepping inside as if stepping out onto a stage, or into a pit. Vernor had made a reservation; as the maître d' frowned through his book, Vernor winked at me and said I looked the part; what part, I asked nervously; Vernor said, "The part of a young writer celebrating her first sale." And my heart contracted in disappointment for I'd believed he would say something else.
(The special occasion we were celebrating was my having placed a short story in a distinguished literary magazine; one of my flukes of good if improbable luck; I'd written a first draft of this story, back in December, miserable with insomnia in the basement of the Kappa house; because I'd been so desperately unhappy, I had made the story comic; bleakly, savagely comic; it was an excursion into madness even as flames of madness licked at my feet, hands, hair. When I shyly told Vernor this good news, which embarrassed me as winning a lottery would have embarrassed me, Vernor stared at me in frank surprise for a moment then smiled, whistled a congratulatory tune, and told me he "wasn't surprised" at anything I might do. I would wait for him to ask to read the story, but Vernor never asked.)
In the cool, tinted interior of the Brass Rail we were led to our table by the maître d' in his tuxedo; there was in the restaurant a ripple of, not sound, but the immediate absence of sound; a collective indrawn breath. The maître d' with an expression stiff and somber as a mortician's seated us at the very back of the dining room; a small table near the hallway to the rest rooms; yet it was an attractive table, with a lighted candle on it, and a small vase of carnations; the restaurant was beautiful, if undersea and dim; as soon as we were seated, Vernor reached over to take my hand and lifted it, as he'd never done previously, to kiss my fingertips; a gesture I supposed was meant to be playful, theatrical; yet I was moved by it; I was made uneasy by it; for I was aware of other diners observing us; eyes that, if I glanced around, shifted immediately away. Some time was required before our waiter arrived, and blindly I took from him an enormous menu; there was some fuss about our candle, whose flame had gone out; Vernor insisted it be relighted; a couple at a nearby table stared openly at us; middle-aged, very well dressed and white-skinned (of course); I was beginning to feel the oppression of white; the ubiquity of white; for everyone in the Brass Rail was white except the busboys in white (dazzling white!) uniforms, and these busboys were black. (And how steadfastly they looked away from us. Through the ordeal of our meal, they would not see us at all.)