I spent the next week working on the basement and reading the books I had bought. Late every afternoon Ricky would call to crow about his further conquests with Bethany. One night they did it on the beach. The next night in an almost-empty movie house. Late late every night Bethany would call me. She just wanted to talk, she’d say. Every conversation would end with her worrying that Ricky was too much in love with her. She liked him and he was sweet, but he wasn’t the kind of man who could ring that bell. Twice she wondered if she could come over in those wee hours, but every time I was strong.
“I’d like to see you,” I said. “I really would, but Ricky likes you and I can’t see it to break his heart.”
“What if we broke up?” she asked me one night. “Could I come over then?”
“I don’t know.”
“ ’Cause you know it seem like that if you didn’t wanna hurt Ricky you’d let me come over and just not tell ’im. That way nobody gets hurt.”
I told her that I would think about what she said.
I didn’t care about Bethany and Ricky right then. The next morning Narciss Gully was due to come over to take the photographs. I had spent the day cleaning again. Actually I just moved whatever mess had collected into the pantry. I didn’t drink for twenty-four hours previous to her arrival, and I took a long bath and shaved.
When the doorbell rang I wasn’t expecting the twenty-something copper-toned Dominican Adonis of assistants.
“Hola,” he said to me. “I am Geraldo. Miss Gully sent me to set up for the shoot.”
I’m tall but Geraldo had me beat. He was six four at least, wearing only cutoff jean shorts and a white T-shirt. His muscles were well defined but not grotesque, except for calves that bulged. His hair came in big golden-brown locks. His face was beautiful.
“Huh?” I said.
“Preparation,” he said slowly, taking time over the syllables. He indicated a pile of paraphernalia behind him. Lighting, screens, rugs, and big camera boxes. “See?”
“Oh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Why don’t you come in here in the living room?”
Geraldo lifted the great pile of materials into a rippling embrace and carried it in. I showed him where to set up, and he spent a long time with a light meter looking at windows in order to find the exact right position for his rugs and screens. He examined my heirlooms, holding them up to the light and using his meter.
“Are you taking the pictures?” I asked after a lot of watching.
The boyish smile and manly shaking of his head must have broken many hearts before. “No,” he said. “Miss Gully takes the pictures. I just set it up.”
“You work for her?”
“We are friends. She loves my work, my painting, and so she gives me jobs when she can. I live at the house of Harry Lake in East Hampton. He is my master in oils. A great master. He sent for me from New York after seeing my show at the Rhinoceros Gallery on Avenue A. Do you know it?”
“Know what?”
“The Rhinoceros Gallery. It is a very important place. Harry found me there, and he lets me use his garage as a studio and to sleep.”
“So how do you know Narciss?” I asked.
“I was walking down the street,” he said, tossing his locks for effect. “Just walking and I see the most beautiful quilts hanging in her window. The designs are like the ones that I paint and I had to see them, touch them . . .”
There was a passion building up in Geraldo, and I couldn’t help but wonder what all he was touching up in Narciss Gully’s store.
“I know,” I said for no reason, “she sells quilts.”
“Sells?” he sneered. “It’s not a hot-dog stand. This is art. She collects, she shares, she teaches. Sometimes someone might pay for learning something, to live with beauty. But she does not just sell quilts.”
I’ve never really gotten the knack of talking to artists. You can’t talk to them about how much it pays or about what you think you like. If I think a painting is ugly, somebody just tells me that I don’t understand. If I think a painting is good, they tell me the same thing. It’s like artists see a different place, a higher place, whereas I’m on the level of some stray dog who only knows how to hunt for pussy and food in a world that’s black and white.
Geraldo sneered at me again and turned to his work.
I considered kicking him out of my house but then thought better of it. I didn’t want trouble with Narciss Gully. Just the opposite—I had begun to have deep feelings for the antique dealer. Every night after talking to Bethany, I would have lascivious dreams about Narciss. In those dreams we always started at the dinner table, either in a restaurant or at someone’s house, maybe a barbecue or a picnic. No matter where we ended up, we always started out eating. I’d bring the wine and she was barely dressed. She was shy about her small breasts and slender thighs, but I would console her by stroking her body and rubbing my face against her magnificent skin. In these dreams my excitement grew and grew, but always before we could embrace, something happened to interrupt. The waiter would arrive with the check, a downpour fell on our picnic, someone would come to the door—her mother or Clarance wanting to apologize. No matter who it was I’d get so angry that I’d wake up with a powerful erection. Awake, I couldn’t recapture the ardor of my dreams. And without passion there was no desire for the consummation of my lust.
“Mr. Blakey?” She had come in behind me while I watched her assistant and thought of her.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi, Narciss.”
“Hello, Geraldo,” she said, having satisfied her social obligation with me. “Have you been here long?”
“Not long,” the godling reported to his muse. He was holding up a terrible painting done by my aunt Blythe. “Is this really worth the film?”
“We’ll do the paintings first,” she said. “And after that the clothes and then the hard objects.”
The crestfallen look on Geraldo’s face was worth a whole week of hard labor.
“Excuse us, Mr. Blakey, but we’re going to be working in here for a while.”
“If you call me Charles, I’ll let you alone.”
She smiled without answering and I left, grinning broadly at the sour-faced Geraldo.
The next few hours were tough for me. I was reading a book but wanting a drink. The book was about a prince who had been stripped of his memory and exiled from a magical kingdom to mundane Earth. There were agents trying to kill him, but in his confused state he couldn’t understand why. I liked the story because I often felt like that, like I was being persecuted but didn’t know why. Why was I alive and seeing and thinking and dreaming if everything was just stoplights and televisions, tests and failures, red wine and death?
But I didn’t want a drink to escape, not then anyway. I needed a drink because I wanted to ask Narciss for that rain check for the dinner we’d missed.
The first obstacle would be asking the question in the presence of the adoring Geraldo’s imposing physique. But I got over that. I could see that Narciss wasn’t all that interested in the Dominican artist. When he strutted and preened, she hardly noticed. He was actually just an assistant.
But even when I saw that he was no competitor, I still held back.
After being nearly crushed to death and then incarcerated in a mental hospital, the prince escaped and was running. I decided to go in and check on my guests.
“How’s it going?” I asked, entering the room.
Geraldo sneered but Narciss took off her glasses and smiled.
“We’re halfway through it,” she said. “It’s taking longer than usual because I’m taking a separate slide shot. Some of these pieces are so wonderful that I’ll have to send them for projection.”
“Oh,” I said. “Good. Good. Would you like to get d-dinner after this?”
Just that one small stammer made me want to bite off my tongue. One double skip on the letter d and I’d told Narciss all about my fears and weaknesses. Geraldo was standing behind me, but I’m sure he was grinning at my failed manhood. The smile on Narciss’s lips I took to be pity and pleasure at the discomfort of a child.
“I’m sorry, Charles, but I have plans,” she said.
“Uh-huh.” I nodded, putting an upbeat tone to the grunt and realizing too late that that made me sound even more pitiable.
“But maybe we can have coffee or something after we’re finished here. There are a couple of things that we need to discuss.”
“No problem. Just as long as we’re through before seven ’cause you know I got to get out and eat something.” Every word out of my mouth seemed calculated to make me look more like a fool.
I went back into the kitchen feeling as if I were descending into a pit. Every step brought me lower. And all it was was just that double d. A stuttering skip and my fingers were tingling, the light in the room refused to illuminate. I didn’t feel hungry; I didn’t want a drink. My months of unemployment, my loneliness, my drunken poverty all came to the surface then. I would have liked to cry but I couldn’t. The prince in my novel was reduced to a mass of unreadable words.
The minutes went by and I kept sinking. At some point Narciss came in. She had sent Geraldo away, but I didn’t care. She wanted coffee and I made it, but the brew was unbearably weak and she took no more than a sip.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I mean, you look kind of sad.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Is this a good time to talk?”
“Sure.”
“It’s about those masks.” Narciss was excited. She took a large book from her shoulder bag and opened it. Because I didn’t move my head, she pulled her chair next to mine and opened to a page marked by a red ribbon. On the page was a carven mask that resembled the three masks on my windowsill.
“Passport masks,” she said. “That’s what this is and it’s also what we found in that box. They were used as identification but also as a way of bringing home along with you when you were away on a long journey. It’s hard to say, but the masks you have could represent a family, maybe three brothers or friends who set sail for America as indentured servants. The majority of passport masks are made of wood, so the fact that these are ivory might have special significance.”
“Uh-huh,” I said because she seemed to be waiting for some kind of response.
“They might have belonged to rich men, maybe even royalty. Your family might descend from a direct bloodline of kings.” The emphasis she put on kings was dramatic and full of feeling.
But if I was a prince, I too had forgotten.
“I’m getting hungry.” It was almost impossible for me to get out those few words. “Why don’t you write me or call about the stuff, you know, that you’re selling.”
“But these masks —”
“I have to talk about it later. Later.”
I was looking at the book, the picture of a longish face carved from wood. The eyes were gouged out, making a ridge for the nose. The forehead was high and the mouth was just a slit. Narciss’s hands closed the book and then pulled it away. I heard her chair sliding backward. As she moved away the air on that side seemed to cool, as if her body heat had been keeping me warm.
I didn’t want her to go but I couldn’t even look up—much less ask her to stay.
“The boy so retarded he sit on the toilet waitin’ for inspiration to wipe his ass.” That’s what my uncle Brent used to say about me on report-card day four times a year. That’s how I felt.
I heard the front door close.
My descent progressed even though I didn’t move a muscle for a very long time.