All that remains to speak of is Anne, my tortured, demonic Anne. It was seeing her again, after so long, that impelled me to write all this down.
She was on a train to Long Island. I remember staggering down the aisle of the moving train, looking for a seat mext tp someone who wouldn’t bother me with attempts at conversation, and seeing her sitting pressed against a window by a fat lady who was eating her lunch from a paper bag. She was staring listlessly out the window, quite properly dressed in matron’s weeds. I thought at first that it was a game, that she was in disguise; but I took the first available seat and watched her from behind an opened newspaper.
Of course she was different; it had been years since I had seen her in the house of surgeons. She had filled out, and her face was rounded, and sporting makeup. But there was no mistake: It was Anne. I had given up on her so long ago that her very presence revived in me all the old rhythms of our short time together.
Let me explain my presence on that train though: I was on my way to a party on Fire Island, which promised some relief—some dynamite—from the pressures and sameness of a dull job. I had come to the straight path by a series of unmarked doors and moonless nights. I shaved regularly and showered twice a day. I hadn’t been laid in three months and felt no urges in that direction. My prick lay in my lap like a peaceful infant, cooing at me every once in a while, but seldom making the demands of the past. I felt very civilized, and my only suit, a proper three-button affair, was dry-cleaned once a week, regularly. How we cling to normality!
Two news items broke through the silence and the rumbling of the train, via a portable radio in the fat lady’s lap:
“Ramu, the wolf-boy of India, died today at the age of twenty-four. He had been raised by wolves from birth and had developed a unique ability to smell fresh meat at great distances.”
“An eighteen-year-old janitor was arrested today on charges of murdering four children in a park in Charlotte, Virginia. He was caught with a lunch pail full of human parts....”
There was no way to stop them. A stiff prick is never compassionate—but sharp as a caveman’s primitive knife.
I glanced at the citizen next to me. Raincoat in his lap, he was rubbing himself with his hand and doodling on the steamed-up window. I was sure he was doing it absent-mindedly, while thinking of a business deal, or how to get the wife into bed. I wondered if he had heard the newscast. If anyone in the country heard what was going on. Well, if they didn’t, they’d be washed away in a flood of semen and blood....
Speculations about Anne: that she had married a stockbroker and entered the hall of mirrors; that she was only more sophisticated—a call girl on her way to an assignment; that she was visiting a grave, in some anonymous Long Island cemetery full of everyone’s relatives.
When the train reached Suffolk, I made my move. The fat lady left, and I took her place. Anne didn’t look around. I didn’t want our first contact to be verbal, but I had forgotten all the signs. Like a beginner, my hand moved across the seat and onto her thigh. She looked around but didn’t see me; she grimaced and removed the hand. The train started up, and again we watched the cracker boxes of suburbia blur by through the fogged-over windows.
My hand moved again, this time more boldly: up her thigh under the proper skirt, remembering the touch of her flesh. She moved quickly: Her hand cracked against my cheek, and it was like being at that bar where we first met again.
“Don’t do that!” she said quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the other passengers. Then she looked at me for the first time. Her eyes dilated, and her nose flared.
“Cross the world; you’re still around!”
“Did you cross the world?”
“Practically. You see me in my traveling suit.”
“It must have been a small room you traveled.”
“They’re all small rooms. You must have learned that, even dumb as you are.”
“What is it?”
“He’s a lawyer. One kid, but I’m pregnant again.”
“Nice house?”
She turned away, as if I were mocking her. “The best, buddy.”
“What about what you used to tell me?”
“That was for you. I wasn’t talking about myself. I was never there.”
“How do you feel?” Looking at me, she took a book of matches from her purse and lighted one. She held it under her palm and let it cook.
“That’s how I feel,” she said, blowing it out.
“It’s been a long time.”
“I never look back.”
“Well ... yes.” What could I say? I reached out for her again, and this time she didn’t stop me. I put my arm around her, and found her breast under her jacket. Her nipple hardened immediately.
“What happened—about the operation, I mean?” I asked.
“I’ve still got them, if you mean the men’s furnishings.”
All I could think of to say was a weak: “I don’t want to hear about it.” At that, she brightened.
“What’s the matter? Afraid to look at twentieth-century pussy? Take a look.” And with that she pulled up her skirt and put my reluctant hand between her legs. I jerked my hand away and moved down the seat from her.
“Give it up, Anne. Take off the mask.”
“You’re crazy. You always were. If you don’t know what happened, I can’t tell you ... not now, at least.”
And that’s all she said.