“I think it’s sick.” Maria went on, “The whole older man — younger woman thing gives me the creeps. Tom may be a man, but he’s also married to a wonderful woman.”
“He must create his own choices in life. Maria, you know this. You counsel people in their, how do you say, relationships. We must not tell Tom how to be a man.”
“The girl will be the one who gets hurt, Manuel. She’ll have to live with this after Tom has forgotten all about her.”
“I don’t know. I think that maybe you are, I think the word is ‘generalizing,’” said Manuel. This was, of course, a vague and ineffectual rebuttal, and therefore a possible concession to Maria’s vision of psychosexual reality. She sensed the European’s uncertainty about ordinary domestic interpretations of the power structures in love. She played her trump card.
“What would Jane think?”
“That is none of our business.”
“I might just make it my business,” said Maria.
Hearing this, I had a real desire to vacate the premises, as they say. Maria, it seemed plain, was enraged over my seduction of Rebecca, a woman half Maria’s age. But was that all there was to it? Was Maria also distressed over Rebecca’s seduction — expressed symbolically as flying, vomiting into the iron pot, showing me the little dog, and so forth — Rebecca’s seduction of me? Was Maria declaring a vestigial attachment, an expectable reluctance to watch her former lover function erotically in a context that excluded her? Did I, in other words, have a chance, someday soon, of sneaking with Maria down the windowless, creaking stairwell, through the cellar and past the old boiler, into the Krakower Institute book and manuscript vault?
There was no way to find out. Talking sweetly to Maria would cause Bernhardt to crush my ribs.
It was, I felt, under the circumstances, best to remain safely above things, to keep Rebecca close, and travel, if we could and her stomach might allow this and her boss would not fire her, up through the ceiling and into the sky, out of the pancake restaurant and away beneath the stars, over the misty city with its river coursing through and its hospital roof shining above everything like a pharaoh’s grave.
How far could we go? How high? I gave Rebecca’s hand a tug, and her body obeyed. She rested against me. We were snuggling. I could smell the vomit on her breath, faintly, and her black hair’s fireplace scent; and I could smell Bernhardt, of course, his clothes and cologne and his breath; and the bitter cigarette exhaust clouding the room above Dan Graham. Ceiling lights in smoky air looked yellow and greasy; and the lights gave off a perfume of their own — the sugary funk of electrical wiring cooking its rubber insulation. I smelled coffee and something acrid baking in the kitchen. Roaches? I had Bernhardt behind me and Rebecca in front of me. We were all pressed together. Rebecca was tall and long. She was a good fit. I did not, I realized at that moment, know her last name. I made a mental note to ask her later. Her hair was fantastically thick, and I could not see through it to Brueghel’s dog.
Bernhardt’s arms were untiring. I admired the man. Admiration was not something I’d ever felt for Richard. I said to him, “Richard, your panama hat is digging into the back of my head.”
“Sorry, Tom.”
“It’s all right. If you angle your head. A little.”
“Is that any better?”
“Well…”
“How about if I go this way?”
“That’s good. Much better. Are you comfortable with your neck twisted that way?”
“No problem, Tom.”
“Great.”
“I’m not squeezing too hard, am I?” Bernhardt asked me. I frankly thought Richard was squeezing a bit assertively, but as he had been considerate enough to inquire regarding this matter, I felt I should mind my manners and answer, politely:
“No.”
“You’re sure, Tom?”
“I’m positive. It’s nice.”
“You feel secure?”
I took a raspy breath. “Pretty much.”
“Because in my opinion, Tom, that’s the most important thing there is in life. A feeling of security.”
“I agree, Richard”—wheezing.
“You speak up and let me know if there’s anything I can do that will make you cozy,” offered Bernhardt in his low, low voice; and once again I felt the thing that must have been, I was certain of this, the man’s erection against my back.
Yes. There it was. There was no getting away from it.
On the other hand, was it truly, actually Bernhardt’s erection? Given that Bernhardt was holding me in a bear hug, and that Bernhardt’s stomach and the fronts of his legs were utterly mashed into my back and the backs of my legs, it was also and therefore the case that I was — in bodily, purely “physical” terms — at least half a foot higher off the ground than he.
I might have felt Richard’s boner against my leg, but not, probably, against my back. I could be mistaken, though.
Rebecca turned her head and said, over my shoulder, to Bernhardt, “Hi, we haven’t really met. I’m Rebecca. I was your waitress.”
How rude of me to have forgotten introductions. And how stupid. It was too late, now, to control their meeting, and to keep Bernhardt’s contact with Rebecca at a minimum.
Bernhardt said, “I remember you. You had a wonderful way of helping Tom here get through a tough decision about his dinner. Not many people can show such calm in a crisis. That’s a real talent you have. You might think about a career in psychology.”
“Really?” asked Rebecca.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” said the big man to the young girl with the dog on her neck. This got me mad. Why couldn’t I have been the one to say nice things about Rebecca’s prospects?
I countered Bernhardt. “Don’t rush into a profession, Rebecca. It’s important to experiment and find work that’s right for you. What you want to do is go to a decent liberal arts school and take a variety of courses in different fields. Enjoy yourself, read a few good books, play some intramural sports, and see what interests you.”
She said — and made the idea sound absolutely depressing—“My mom wants me to go to Kernberg.”
“Hmm,” I said.
Bernhardt practically shouted, “Kill ’em, Colonels!” Then he quieted down and said, “The place has changed since I went. There’s the brand-new veterinary school. Coed dorms.”
Was this supposed to be incentive? It was not at all surprising to hear Manuel, seated and drinking coffee with Maria at the vinyl-and-Formica booth immediately behind Richard — it was not surprising to hear the Kleinian pipe up and exclaim (to the extent that this man ever exclaimed anything), “Resist the mother! Taste the forbidden pleasures in life!”
“You’re such a prick, Manuel,” said Maria. “Why don’t you just invite her to lie down here on the table so you can have your way with her on top of our plates?” Maria peered up at Rebecca and said, “Listen, honey, don’t pay any mind to these creeps. They see you as a sexual object. They’re threatened by your vitality.”
What could be said about this? Maria was right, up to a point; and it was inevitable, I suppose, that she would create a job for herself as Rebecca’s alternative, “good” mother.
Maria gave the girl some advice about sex and power. In doing so, she sounded an unwittingly contradictory and revealingly carnal note, ironically undermining her cherished position as a mature, financially independent woman who can take or leave men.
“Fuck ’em,” she told Rebecca.
It might be useful, at this juncture, to pause and study, for a moment, the developing interpersonal situation: the weary old allegiances in decline, the new erotic configurations taking precedence; the relational matrix in flux around the question of a young waitress’s college plans. As every educated person these days knows, our criticisms and judgments of others’ lives are at least occasionally meaningful — in the opinion of some workers in my field, almost always so — as covert communications about our own attitudes, dispositions, and needs. However, some of what we say about ourselves when we babble sentimentally or resentfully about family and friends (or about institutions like the Krakower Institute, or even made-up characters populating a story) expresses more than the solitary Self in action; rather, offhand commentary and gossip about others reveals insights and perceptions that are unarguably public and universal, common to humanity.