“I figured.”
“It cost me a round trip from Chicago that I can’t even afford. Asher, I ask you, do I owe them anything?”
Asher wasn’t even willing to take the question seriously. “Nobody owes nobody nothing.”
“Not when they ate my guts out,” Paul said, and found appetite for his breakfast.
Asher was tapping his forehead with his fingers. “You think too much in conditions. Same old story, you miss the point.”
“And I’m leaving my wife,” said Paul, because he had to finally, because that was the corollary: He would not see his father. He would leave Libby. Though two sentences were needed to convey the information, he saw it as only one act, arising out of some new direction of the will. He was moving instinctively toward an unburdening. Even deciding — instinctively again — to come to Asher’s seemed somehow a part of it. “It’s beyond choice,” he said, and felt better than at any moment in the last twenty-four hours.
Asher blinked several times, as though watching Paul’s words fall into the proper slots. “No kidding,” he said.
Nausea reached up a quick hand for the freshly ingested egg. Paul swallowed. “That’s what it looks like,” he said.
“She sleeps around?” Asher asked. “She doesn’t keep the place straightened up nice?”
“You’re just the same, Asher.”
“You went away a few years, you think everybody went all over the place taking courses in tact, awaiting your homecoming?”
“Well, I’m not after sympathy, Asher. So never mind. I just ran into several bad breaks. The marriage hasn’t worked out. Let’s leave it at that.”
“But the girl is still ideal, huh?”
“I’m getting out, Asher, but I’m not kidding myself where the blame lies. I was young. Things came up. I made some terrible errors of judgment that threw a pall on the thing. I didn’t know a hell of a lot. And then there’s the matter of one’s constitution. I mean what you are; the facts about oneself.”
“I don’t like to tell a man over his breakfast coffee, Paul, but it’s your whole philosophy that stinks bad.”
“Please do me a favor, don’t feel you have to spend time cheering me up. I’ve arrived at my decision and I’ll take the consequence. This is the consequence,” he said, with a slight sense of discovery. “It hasn’t been very pleasant, believe me it hasn’t.”
Asher was no longer giving him all his attention; he had picked up Paul’s plate and was walking toward the kitchen, a frazzled outline in the sunlight. His hair needed cutting, his trousers a good pressing. “Love,” he said over his shoulder, “is unnatural. Most of the guilt in the world is from cockeyed thinking.” He disappeared around the flowered screen that cut off the sink from Paul’s sight.
“Asher, we see life as two different things. As I remember”—and he did, which compromised his position, and smothered him in gloom—“we went over this ground a long time ago. We disagree.”
“Paulie,” came back a voice, “I’m going to save you a couple thousand dollars and give you a fast college education, plus a psychoanalysis thrown in.” He stepped back into the light and began flicking a dish towel at the leaves of his plants.
There was the same old lack of seriousness in his uncle. He did not know if he was up to it. “You gave it to me already.”
“What can I do?” Asher asked. “You don’t listen.”
Paul rose from the couch, which was to have been his bed. What was there left for him to do but sweat it out in some cheap hotel? But in some cheap hotel, under a bare bulb, would he survive? Better to take all the money they had left in the bank, the money they would no longer be needing for a baby, and go uptown and get a nice room that looked out on Central Park. A little class, a little comfort, might get him through. However, one does not learn to spend money overnight … And suppose Libby should want the baby anyway? He sat down again, as though he had only been taking a stretch to aid digestion. “Is that a condition of staying here?” he asked with a smile on his face. “Paying attention?”
“Kiddo,” said Asher, “no conditions. That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t go in for conditions. I’m at one with life. Only guy I know.”
Paul couldn’t understand his uncle now any better than he had years ago. “And that little girl you had here, years and years ago—”
Asher looked up from across the room where he was watering his plants. Wasn’t there water shining in his eyes as well? “My little Patricia Ann?”
“She made you happy? That’s an example of oneness with life? Please, Asher, let’s not make light of each other’s problems.”
“Ah you, you don’t understand loss.”
“I thought you’ve been telling me you’re happy?”
“Putz, I’m miserable. What kind of issue is that? I thought we’re going to have a little talk about first principles.”
His suitcase wasn’t far from the door. Right downstairs, Third Avenue was lined with hotels — but none of them, he knew, would be too pleasant. Then spend a dollar, he told himself, you deserve it … However, on that last point there must have been some inner debate; immediately he was back to thinking of himself holed up in some sleazy hotel. It seemed appropriate, yet he knew he didn’t have the strength. He could get through, though, with just an ounce of companionship, someone to take a meal with and sit next to in a movie. Then, free! “Maybe later, Asher.”
Asher was unhooking his sports jacket from the back of the door. “Paul, I got a new girl friend who is right up your alley. A very nifty little number with a nice pair of sloe-eyes — Washington Park is stocked with them — but gradually I’m draining out of her head all the cotton candy. See, this is a new thing for me. I don’t go in for education. I prefer the thing in the pure state. You know what I’ve been up to for years, Paulie?” He had taken a tie from his inside pocket and was working it around his neck. “Can you take a guess? Getting the thing in its pure state. You follow me? I want to feel the precise quality of the shit against my skin. Do you get the picture? Your Uncle Asher is the child of the age. Ecce Asher!” His tie in place, he raised his arms. Behold! His shirt inched up out of his trousers. Realizing he was beltless, he went off toward the kitchen.
He likes being a slob, he prefers life outside the ordered world, Paul thought. One more attitude he did not share with his uncle. When he was sloppy it was because his mind was elsewhere. Then what did the two of them share? It was Asher he had chosen to seek out, after all; he had not even thought of Uncle Jerry and his big air-conditioned apartment. “Anyway,” Asher called back, “what troubles her is her interpersonal relationships. These are actual quotations I’m giving you: she is incapable of love. She is a destructive personality. She has never really communicated with another human being. I ask her, whatsa matter, you never lift up the phone when it rings? But she doesn’t get the truth in what I’m saying. She tells me nobody can love anybody because we are all of us living in the shadow of The Bomb, and also God is dead. I want you to meet this girl, Paulie, she’s got a very involved case of what you got, only you’re smarter.”
“I never worry about The Bomb, Asher.”
“I’m talking about the disgusting load you’re placing on the heart. Overworked. Misunderstood. Terrible.”
He was fully dressed now, standing over Paul. “I take it, Asher, that you’re in favor of emotional anarchy, separation, a withdrawal of people from people. A kind of moral isolationism.”
“Very inventive,” said Asher. “But what I’m in favor of is getting back in tune a little bit with nature. All this emphasis on charity and fucking. Disgusting.”