The heating and cooling unit ticked and clanked. Gil’s leg twitched. That guy. His father had been a French horn player. He could sleep through anything. The men — Trent, Steven, Andy, Chad, and Myron — felt compelled by tradition to go ahead and try the shaving cream trick on Gil.
“THERE YOU ARE, Charles,” Nate called from the foot of the crowded bed.
Charles was sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard. He waved negligibly to Nate. The room was hot and loud. The men around the bed compared their devastating commute times with a kind of pride, converting liability, momentarily, into triumph.
“Could we step outside for a minute?” Nate said.
“No,” Charles said.
Nate slid between Randy and Wesley, and then shuffled down the narrow alley between the wall and the bed. “I’m glad you’re here, Charles.”
“I like those boots,” Charles said, wondering what size they were, and whether Nate might give them to him in barter.
Nate looked down at his boots and shrugged. “Robert said I was not responsible for my thoughts,” he said. “But that doesn’t seem right to me.”
Charles could not comfortably make eye contact with Nate from his seated position. His neck ached when he looked up at such a severe angle. He felt like a child, or a baby bird. This was no position from which to adjudicate pathology. Nate had a hairy throat, and a strong, though not unpleasant scent. Charles was the expert here, and this would not do.
“Switch places with me, Nate.”
Nate climbed over Charles’s legs as Charles spun them toward the wall, and stood. “Excuse me, Gil,” Nate said. “Sorry about that.”
Now Nate sat against the headboard, and Charles stood beside and above him. This was much better.
“You can help me, right?” Nate said.
“Yes,” Charles said, “I can.”
“What I said to my wife was that I was curious. That’s all I said. Sexually curious about them. And she acted like I had a big problem.”
“Slow down,” Charles said.
“Sexual curiosity is completely normal, right?”
“Generally speaking, yes,” Charles said.
“That’s what I told her,” Nate said. “That’s exactly what I said.”
“But it does depend to some extent,” Charles said, “on the object of your curiosity.”
“What?”
“About whom are you sexually curious, Nate?”
Nate looked across the crowded room. He waved, though Charles could not see anyone waving back. Then Nate turned his face toward Charles’s hip. “The women in children’s books,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t hear you, Nate,” Charles said, though he had.
“The women in the children’s books I was reading to our kids.”
“I see.”
“The illustrated women. You’ve seen them, right?”
“Some.”
“I mean, they’re women. There they are with breasts, hips, legs. The illustrators made them, not sexy, I guess, but definitely feminine. And I suppose technically speaking, these are not all human women I’m talking about. Some are squirrels or mice or rabbits, but they are female and they walk upright and they’re gentle, and in the drawings we see their housecoats and blouses and the definite suggestion of the female form. I wouldn’t say this about just any creature in the woods on a nature show. I’m not interested in animals.”
“What are you interested in?”
“These characters in the books have had children, so you know they’re sexually active. That’s not some sick thing I’m imposing on the book. And in some of these old books the mothers are so. . Like in Blueberries for Sal? Do you know that one, Charles?”
Charles said that he did know Blueberries for Sal.
“So lock me up,” Nate said. “That mother is definitely someone I’m curious about.”
“The woman,” Charles said, “or the bear?”
“The way McCloskey crosshatched her long skirt? That’s all I’m saying, Charles.”
“And her sweater,” Charles said.
“I guess one thing I’m saying is that in trying to make these drawings not at all risqué or suggestive, the illustrators made them very risqué and suggestive. Does that make sense?”
“Go on.”
“I read the books to our kids, and occasionally I am curious about the women. Or the female animals. I didn’t say attracted to them. I didn’t say turned on. I said curious. The drawings are not indecent, and I would say my thoughts are not all that indecent, either. We have this old book that belonged to my wife when she was a kid. It’s my favorite. It’s about an elephant.”
“In terms of my expertise—”
“There’s this scene in the book when the elephant is performing at a circus, and there is a crowd of delighted people in the bleachers behind the ring. And if you look really closely, Charles, you can see these women sitting in the bleachers. They’re wearing tight knee-length skirts, and they have nice figures, and they look happy. Almost ecstatic, Charles. The picture isn’t vulgar, but. . it stimulates the imagination. I’ve read the book a thousand times. I notice the women behind the elephant, right? Big deal. I think about their sexual histories. I wonder what they like to do in bed, either alone or with others.”
“And this is a drawing?”
“Colored ink. The old four-plate process, I think. But fairly realistic. It’s clear how happy the women are.”
“Okay.”
“And yes, these women are depicted at an elephant show, but we know that’s not all there is to them. We know they have a private life that is off the page, away from the circus. So that makes me a pervert? Their sexuality seems to me to be, I don’t know, part of them. Right? It’s not something I. . It seems. .”
“Intrinsic?” Charles said.
“No,” Nate said.
“Yes,” Charles said.
“It’s not like it’s something I would ever act on,” Nate said.
Charles pressed the back of his head against the wall. He had no idea what that would entail. “Why did you tell your wife?”
“I just pointed out the women at the elephant show,” Nate said. “I don’t know why I did that. She didn’t seem to understand.”
“I’ve seen this before,” Charles said, and Nate looked up at him with an expression that shifted from surprise to relief to disappointment. The room was hot and agitated. “You are processing this experience as sexual, but it is not.”
“Yes, it is,” Nate said.
“It’s not sexual,” Charles said, trying to earn the boots. “What you find provocative is the women’s happiness, and their privacy. You’re longing to know them, and they are concealed. Your curiosity is not fundamentally erotic. There’s nothing wrong with you, except the normal stuff.”
“But I look at their breasts,” Nate said.
“Your mind,” Charles said, “strives to put these images and feelings in a familiar context.”
Nate suddenly seemed despondent. He would rather, it occurred to Charles, have been diagnosed as an untreatable pervert than as someone who was just lonesome. Apparently, he had forgotten that he had sought out Charles for reassurance or explanation. Nate had finished talking, and it also appeared that he had finished listening. He seemed miserable.