“Don’t be upset. I don’t mind, really I don’t.”
“I’m not upset,” he said. He found the underpants and lifted them with his toes, keeping his back to her. Dyce was shy about letting her see him naked as long as he was flaccid. A natural modesty was compounded by his impotence. Helen, on the other hand, seemed to have no modesty at all. She paraded nude with as much indifference as if she were clothed. In his opinion, she didn’t look that good, either. Her breasts were full, he liked that, but so was the rest of her. Dyce had expected filmy peignoirs and full slips of the type he saw on television. He had not been prepared for this all-out assault of flesh and naturalness; it was not femininity as he thought of it. It was woman, but it was not feminine. Dyce would have preferred something with the lights out, something with soft music and gentle touches, perhaps some coy resistance on her part, a sense of conquest on his.
Instead, he was assailed by a woman who seemed to want to consume him, smothering him with her body and her mouth and her desire. Dyce felt overpowered by it all but did not know how to tell her so. His impotence was her fault, he knew it. He had done fine that first night when she burst into his house. With their clothes on and the unfinished business in the bathtub and the sound of the pot boiling in the kitchen and the air crackling with danger, he had performed like a champion. Helen had acted properly then, too, protesting that no, she mustn’t, and Mr. Dyce, it was too soon, and then, fairly swooning as she succumbed, oh, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Dyce! Afterwards he had escorted her to the door and out to her car and there was no question who was the master of the situation.
Later, he had been amazed at himself. He was a stallion, a champion, virile as a bull, cunning as a wolf. A small twinge of guilt for taking advantage of the girl had nagged at him. She clearly did not know what she was in for when she came into the lair of Roger Dyce; she had not been prepared. He had swept her along on the torrent of his passion and overwhelmed her. But his guilt was more than overcome by his pride. He had been faced with a dilemma and had dealt with it as masterfully as anyone could have.
But that was then and there. Since then they had been on her ground, in her tiny apartment, so small he could hear her going to the bathroom while he lay in bed two rooms away, and she had been acting as if she were the master. It was no wonder he could not perform under such circumstances. It was her fault.
Dyce stood in the bathroom and regarded his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. His body was smooth and virtually hairless except for the pubic area and the tops of his thighs. He took hold of his pathetic member and shook it angrily. Perhaps this was all a mistake, perhaps his involvement with Helen was an error in judgment. A tactical move that had dragged on too long. And was it really even involvement? She seemed to think it was; she spoke of them as if they were a permanent couple, already fixed and immutable. She regarded them as deeply in love, as needing each other, as being the answer to each other’s prayers. Dyce was not certain when all this had happened. One minute he had sat next to her on his own sofa and touched her hand and she had moaned and thrown her head back, and then his hand was on her breast and she was pleading with him to stop but too powerless to stop him even though her hand was atop his. The next thing he knew he was here, in this minuscule boudoir filled with pillows and a plump, naked woman who kept insisting that she didn’t think him any less a man because he couldn’t have sex with her. She spoke of togetherness and intimacy and cuddling and kissing, which sounded to his ears like so many gnats buzzing. He wanted her to turn the lights out and act more like a virgin, and she wanted to act as if they were an old married couple. And she wanted to watch him, as if he might dematerialize if her gaze faltered. She was perpetually probing. It seemed he could not say or do a thing without Helen’s instant, often lengthy analysis. Because they didn’t speak the same language, Dyce spoke less and less.
The differences between them were evident even here in the bathroom. The apartment was really a converted loft over what had once been a stable and was now a garage. Everything in the place was cramped and antiquated and the bathroom was no different. The room was not much bigger than a large closet to begin with, and an old claw-footed tub took up most of the room. What space was left she had crammed with shelves that groaned with powders, oils, unguents, creams, scents, and sprays. What a nudist like Helen was doing with all these cosmetics was more than Dyce could divine.
His eyes caught the can of talcum powder on the stick-on shelf over the bathtub. He had noticed it on previous visits but had not dwelt on it. That was one of the positive aspects of their relationship: He had not thought of the other thing since their first time together. It had been well over three weeks now and it had not even entered his mind. She was good for him in that way. She would keep him to the straight and narrow.
He had the talcum powder can in his hand and did not remember reaching for it. He should put it back, he knew he should put it back.
Dyce looked at himself in the mirror again. He shook his member but felt nothing, not a stirring. His gaze shifted to his face, then to the talcum powder in his hand. The lid was open. He shook some talc from the little holes into his palm. His breath caught in his throat, then shivered out.
Helen lay atop the covers, clutching a pillow to her chest. The air was just cool enough on her skin to make the goose flesh start on her thighs, a not uncomfortable sensation. Her eyes were on the ceiling where a hairline crack in the plaster spread in all directions like a spider web, but her ears were on the bathroom. He was so quiet.
Helen hated silence. It only reminded her that she was alone in life. She talked too much, she knew it, and when there was no one else in her apartment, she talked to herself She sang with the radio and had conversations with the television. When she read her magazines she did it with the radio or stereo or television playing. Her place was never quiet except when he was there. He was so quiet in everything he did.
She thought of him as “he.” She called him Roger, now, but the name did not fit him somehow. He could no longer be Mr. Dyce, of course; they were too intimate for that, but still she felt that the formal appellation fit him better than Roger. In her mind, he was “he” and “him,” and the two words filled her brain so that she could think of little else.
He had been in the bathroom so long she began to worry. The withdrawal seemed symptomatic of the relationship as a whole. She was losing him, he was pulling away from her. She could sense it but did not know what to do about it. His impotence was part of the problem, she was sure of it. God knows she had tried, she had done everything she could think of she had been positively brazen about it, flaunting herself, pawing him like a whore, but he had managed it only the first time. Of course she didn’t want him to brood about it since that would only make it worse, so she had reassured him constantly that it didn’t matter to her. It did matter, of course. She nearly ground her teeth with frustration as she lay next to him or on him or under him without so much as a suggestion of satisfaction. There were other things he could do to make her happy, but she sensed that even a hint would horrify him. He was so innocent, and so annoying. And yet he was her man, and she would cling to him no matter what. They were intended for each other; she knew that much even if she did not know what was wrong.
He had been gone too long and the apartment seemed to shrink in on her with the silence.
“Are you all right?” she called.
There was no answer. Perhaps he had fallen and hit his head on the tub.
Helen got out of bed. From the doorway to the bedroom she could see across the living room to the bathroom door, which was open a crack.