TEN
On a late October afternoon, Alan Mackenzie stood at the window of a Manhattan apartment, gazing east across Central Park. Back in Corinth the trees were unsightly and bare; but here they still kept their leaves, and from the tenth floor the view was of a broad sunlit carpet of chrome yellow and ocher and flame-colored chrysanthemums, rippled by a gentle breeze. Indoors, however, there was little to see. This two-room apartment, the occasional pied-à-terre of an acquaintance of Delia Delaney, was furnished in a bleak, minimalist style, all smoky gray mirrors and black leather and chrome.
For Alan, the last twenty-four hours had been strange: alternately exhausting and exhilarating. It was his first trip alone since his illness. Jane had offered to come, but he had refused, partly but not wholly because he knew she disapproved of his purpose and was reluctant to ask for a leave from her job. But without Jane’s help he had been burdened with invalid equipment: the cane, the wheeled carry-on, and the clumsy black nylon bag containing his medications, his two icepacks, and the three foam rubber chair pads that he needed to make almost any chair tolerable. Even so he could not sit for more than fifteen minutes without pain, and the flight to New York had been hideous. The seats on the little commuter plane were narrow and hard, and its wind-buffeted motion made him ill. The ride to the city in the jolting taxi was even worse, and by the time he reached his destination he was in agony.
Jim Weisman and Katie Fenn, the friends with whom Alan was staying near Columbia, were among his oldest and closest. They had been on sabbatical all last academic year, and had not seen him since his back trouble. They were clearly disconcerted to find him walking with a cane, and even more when he asked almost at once if he could put his icepacks in their freezer and lie on their sofa, with a tapestry pillow under his head and another between his knees. As he explained his condition, they listened with concern and dismay. They turned with relief to their own immediate history, describing with enthusiasm a Fulbright year in Southeast Asia, where Alan would now probably never go, and New York theater and opera productions that he would never see.
After half an hour his exhaustion and pain were so great that he had to retreat to his friends’ spare room. For over an hour he lay there, unable to sleep, listening to their murmured voices. He could not distinguish the words, but it was clear from the tone that Jim and Katie were distressed. He realized that he should somehow have prepared them for the change in his condition and appearance, which for people back in Corinth had come more gradually.
By the time Alan emerged from the spare room, there had been a seismic shift in his friends’ attitude. They were now warm and solicitous, offering vodka and wine and bourbon, and then chicken curry and fruit sherbet; but for the rest of the evening they spoke mostly of the past, recalling their mutual adventures in college and graduate school and several European countries. Though he joined in, laughing and reminiscing, he became more and more aware that invisibly his friends had taken a step or two away from him. He had become a beloved character from their past rather than their present or future.
Alan and Jim were almost exact contemporaries, but he had always been just a little ahead: published sooner, promoted to tenure sooner, married more successfully (Katie was Jim’s second wife). Now it was clear that he had lost this edge. He was no longer ahead of his friends or even parallel with them, but a member of another, inferior species: an invalid. His project for a book on religious architecture was old news, and he could see that they were surprised that it was not yet completed.
Out of superstitious motives, he did not say that he might soon be having a show of his watercolor paintings. Delia had been enthusiastic and optimistic, but she was not part of the New York art world. It was quite possible that she had exaggerated her friend’s interest in Alan’s work, or that his gallery was only a shabby small-time operation. That at least was what Jane suspected. She had been doubtful about the whole project. (“If that dealer really wants your pictures, why doesn’t he come here to see you? He knows you’re ill, doesn’t he?”) Of course, Jane had also been prejudiced against Delia from the beginning, for some reason, and suspicious of her motives. (“She’s always flattering people and wanting them to think she has a lot of power and influence.”)
Last night Alan had slept badly, in spite or perhaps because of all the wine and bourbon he had drunk and the various pills he had taken. At four a.m. he staggered into the guest bathroom in a state of dizzy, blurred pain and despair. Unlike the bathroom at home, Jim and Katie’s was brilliantly lit, and in the mirror he could see himself with hideous clarity as they must have seen him: a sick, worn, overweight, prematurely aging man with a scruffy haircut. That wasn’t his fault: for almost a year and a half he had been unable to sit in a barber’s chair, and at monthly intervals Jane had climbed on a stool to cut his hair. She had done the best she could; but by New York standards her best was not very good.
As he stood before the mirror a great wash of despair and self-disgust came over Alan. Why am I kidding myself? he thought. My back is not getting better. I am not teaching or working on my book, only wasting time making drawings of imaginary ruins. I am the ruin of a professor, the ruin of a scholar, the ruin of a man. It would be better if I were dead. In a drugged blur of self-hatred he turned to the bathroom window and tried to lift the sash. But the building was old, and the window had warped shut; he could only raise it a couple of inches before he had to give up and lie down on the guest room bed again, giddy and gasping with the effort, wracked and wrecked with pain.
It’s a good thing I couldn’t get that window open last night, Alan thought now as he stood looking over the field of flowers that was Central Park. I must have been a little crazed from all those drugs. For one thing, Jim and Katie’s apartment was on the second floor, and probably he would only have injured himself further, not to mention causing them lifelong remorse. (“What could we have said to make him do that?”)
After breakfast Alan had taken a painful taxi ride to the rather grand building on Central Park West where Delia was staying, and waited in the lobby for fifteen increasingly painful minutes. Finally she appeared, strangely transformed. Her mass of hair had been compressed into a chignon from which only a few gold-red tendrils escaped; she was elaborately made up and dressed in fashionable New York black: a long-skirted suit, a black silk blouse, a trailing black lace scarf, and dangerous-looking pointed black high-heeled sandals. She did not apologize for making Alan wait, only gave him a New York air kiss near one cheek.
“I hardly recognized you in that getup,” he said as they started across town in another horrible jolting taxi.
“It’s protective coloration. I’m having lunch with a new editor; I want to scare him a little.”
“I was hoping to have lunch with you myself,” Alan said, attempting without total success to keep disappointment and jealousy out of his voice.
“Sorry. Business before pleasure.” Even Delia’s voice seemed different. Then she turned toward him and gave her familiar low, warm laugh. “You have to dress to distress in this city. And by the way, you should get rid of that tie before Jacky sees it. Artists don’t wear ties here, only businessmen.”
“You really think—?”
“Absolutely. Anyhow it looks too academic. Jacky doesn’t want to meet a professor, he wants to meet a genius. You should really have on jeans and a black sweater.”
“Well, all right.” Alan laughed. After all, what had he to lose? He pulled off his striped tie, rolled it up, and put it in his pocket.
“Oh, and when you’re at the gallery, you should be the strong silent type. Don’t talk much. And don’t sign anything.”
“You’re suggesting that Mr. Herbert is a crook,” Alan said.
“No, no. Jacky’s a very charming, kind man. I adore him.”
“Really,” Alan said, this time managing to keep the irrational rush of jealousy out of his voice.
“But of course he’s also an art dealer. So if he gives you a contract, just say you’d like to show it to your lawyer first.”
“In other words, let him know I don’t trust him.” Alan winced as the taxi jolted over a pothole.
“No, not at all. He’ll respect you for it.”
Contrary to Jane’s suspicions, the gallery, in a Madison Avenue office building, seemed prosperous, and the work on the walls was interesting. And Jacky Herbert was an unlikely object of jealousy, being a heavy, elderly gay man with a shiny pink bald head surrounded by pale gray curls. He was impeccably dressed in a pale gray suit and shiny pink silk tie, and his handshake was fleshy but firm.
After an exchange of compliments and news about mutual friends that Alan could not follow, Jacky expressed his admiration for Alan’s art. He would like, he declared, to put four or five of the big drawings into his December group show. Indeed, he had already shared some of the slides with one or two privileged patrons (“I don’t like the term ‘customers’ ”) and might make a sale even sooner.
“And, the best news!” he enthused in a rumbling near-whisper. Apparently, one of these patrons might be interested in having Alan design a ruined tower for his Connecticut estate. “All materials and expenses paid, naturally, and the reward (I don’t like the term ‘fee’) would be in the neighborhood of thirty thousand.” If Alan could view the site next time he was in the city, the patron would be happy to send a car.
Recalling Delia’s advice, Alan spoke very little; indeed, he hardly knew what to say. He allowed that the project might interest him, and, when presented with a contract, mentioned his lawyer.
At the gallery Alan had almost been able to forget his pain. It was only when he and Delia again stood on Madison Avenue that he realized how bad it had become, so that when she suggested they go for a quick cup of coffee before her lunch he had to decline. “I’m very grateful to you,” he told her. “Amazed by everything. But I’m not feeling too good. I’ve got to get a taxi back to Morningside Drive and lie down.”
“But that’s so far,” Delia protested. “Why don’t you go to where I’m staying, right across the park? I’ll come back there as soon as this stupid lunch is over.”
“Well—”
“Look, here’s the key.”
“Well—thank you.”
Once he reached Delia’s friend’s apartment, Alan had taken a strong painkiller and collapsed on the hard black leather sofa. Half an hour later, when the drugs had begun to work, he realized that he was hungry. He couldn’t go out to buy lunch, however, because he had Delia’s key, and she would surely be back soon. He explored the minimalist kitchen and found nothing to eat except a box of crackers, a can of anchovies, a bottle of tonic water, and one of gin.
Presumably Delia was having all her meals out. He remembered Jane saying that she didn’t cook: her househusband, Henry Hull, took care of all that. The thought was unpleasant to Alan. A woman, he felt, should be able to cook and even enjoy cooking. Also he had never liked the idea that Delia was married to Henry Hull. Henry was a negligible person, a freeloader with no real job, who seemed to have accomplished nothing in over fifty years, and yet somehow projected an ironic, negative attitude toward everything, including his beautiful and gifted wife.
When an hour and a half had passed, Alan began to feel aggrieved. He took the contract Jacky Herbert had given him out of his jacket and discovered that according to it the gallery would get fifty percent of any sales and the exclusive right to market his work. He felt more aggrieved than before. Where the hell was Delia? Was she just going to abandon him here, starving in this minimalist box? He recalled a remark of Jane’s, that Delia was a complete egotist, who saw other people only in terms of their relation to herself. It was true that his damaged physical condition, his constant pain, did not appear to register with her as it did with others. Until now Alan had found this strangely soothing. Unlike less self-focused persons, she did not see or treat him as an invalid. Now it had become clear that she also did not consider him as someone who needed lunch.
Well, the hell with her. Angrily he ripped open the box of crackers and the can of anchovies, and made himself a strong gin and tonic. He looked about for something to read to pass the time, but all he could find was a pile of expensive fashion magazines and a few paperback thrillers of the Woman in Peril type, a genre he despised. In his experience, women were seldom in peril.
He lay down on the sofa again. It was harder than ever, and made his back ache worse. Why had he ever come to New York? Or, at least, why hadn’t he let Jane come along and take care of him? She had offered to do so, after all, though without much enthusiasm. Alan knew the answer to that one: he had wanted to spend time alone with Delia Delaney, who clearly had no interest in spending time alone with him.
He rose and went into the adjoining room, which was as minimally furnished as the other, but messy rather than bare. A suitcase lay open on the thick gray carpet, spilling multicolored debris. The king-sized bed was a welter of crumpled gray silk sheets and pillows, and clothes, clearly Delia’s, were strewn everywhere. They were lacy and silky, colored like a rose garden at dusk: velvety darks, glowing dusty pinks and reds, creamy beiges and whites. It was an entirely different palette from that of Jane’s closet, a tidy ranked range of blue and khaki and navy. And even when Jane traveled, her clothes were always hung up or folded in a drawer.
Usually Alan preferred order, though he had sometimes been inconvenienced by Jane’s far greater devotion to this principle. Now he had a sudden despairing desire to add to the disorder of this room. He lowered himself painfully onto the unmade bed and buried his head in a pillow that smelled both spicy and sugary. Under his left hand was something slippery—a white satin nightgown, he realized, pulling it toward him and imagining heat rising from it. Probably this is the nearest you’ll ever get to Delia, you pathetic fool, he told himself. She might be interested, but if you make a move, she’ll find out you can’t carry through.
All right, why not? he thought. Holding the satin nightgown against his face, he turned on his side, fighting a short spasm of pain, then dragged down the zipper of his pants. Why not be as near as I ever will be to her, while I can? he thought feverishly.
Half an hour later Alan woke from a blurred sleep, still a little drunk. The apartment was still empty. The hell with her, the hell with everything, he thought. He stood up dizzily, returned to the sitting room, and began to gather his things. But as he did this the doorbell chimed. It was Delia, looking far less urban and formidable than before: more wiry golden tendrils had escaped from her chignon, and her lipstick had been smudged off.
“Oh, I’m so tired,” she wailed, heading for the black leather sofa and crumpling onto it. “These awful, awful shoes.” She kicked them off.
“Did you frighten your new editor?”
“I hope so.” She smiled. “But he’s essentially dense. His ideas for the anthology of fairy tales he wants me to edit are so banal, so brainless. It’s hard to frighten people like that.”
“Did you get a good lunch, at least?” Alan asked, hoping not so much for an answer as for the question, Did you?
“Oh, yes. Salmon and snow peas and mango sherbet. First-rate Chablis too. New York has such great restaurants.”
“I ate the crackers and anchovies your friend left, it was all I could find. And my back was giving me hell, so I had a couple of drinks.”
“Mm.” Delia showed no interest in or objection to this fact. As Jane had said more than once, she was completely self-centered. But now it occurred to Alan that for him Delia’s egotism, her self-centeredness, was one of her great attractions. She might not notice or sympathize with his pain and disability, but she also never treated him as an invalid, a member of a different, inferior species.
“I adore the city at this time of year,” she breathed. She half sat up, pulled off her black jacket, and flung it on the floor, then stretched out on the sofa, extending rounded legs encased in sheer black tights. “It’s such a relief to be here, where nobody notices me and I can be anonymous.”
“Really?” Alan said, looking down at her—both admiring the view and angry at its effect on him. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t be noticed anywhere.”
“Well, it’s true, I am sometimes recognized in New York,” Delia admitted, misunderstanding. “But it’s not oppressive, the way it’s getting to be in Corinth. Ever since those posters went up everywhere, announcing the reading next week.”
“Ah?” Alan had seen these posters, which featured a photo of Delia in low-cut white lace, all swirling hair and huge eyes, definitely provocative—though less so than at this moment.
“All of a sudden people know I’m in town, and if they’ve ever read one of my stories they feel they have the right to call me and bomb me with e-mails and come to the Center any time of the day with books to be signed. And I know it’s going to be worse after my reading.” She shuddered visibly, causing her black chiffon scarf to flutter and subside.
“Maybe not,” Alan said. “Once they’ve heard and seen you, maybe they’ll quiet down.”
“I doubt it,” Delia said with a movement of her head and wavering glance away that might have been either vanity or fear. “And I’m awfully afraid of the reading too.”
“Really? You must have done so many.”
“But I’m always terrified beforehand, though I know it’s out of my hands. I stand there, and either the spirit descends, or it doesn’t. When it doesn’t I’m lost, ruined. I hear my voice going on, blah, blah, blah, like some imbecile radio announcer, and I want to die.”
“I know what you mean,” Alan said, thinking of some unsuccessful lectures of his own.
“But if the spirit descends, I’m like a wild goose. Flying, soaring. I want to keep on forever, to fly out of the window and vanish into the sky.” She sighed, first on a rising, then a falling note. “But then it’s over. I have to descend to earth. And then comes the awful question period. There’s always hunters there, wanting to shoot you down, you know?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, remembering some of his own lectures.
“And I’m a sitting goose.”
“Duck,” Alan corrected automatically. “A sitting duck.”
“No. Absolutely not a duck,” Delia said coldly. “Don’t be such a professor.”
“All right. A sitting swan,” he suggested. Delia did not reply, but with her head turned away on her long white neck, she did resemble an angry swan.
“And then I have to sign books and go to the reception and meet the audience. They all crowd around like hunting dogs, shoving and barking, wanting to eat me alive. I feel so besieged, so invaded.” She laughed nervously. “I can’t bear that.”
“I know what you mean,” Alan said, trying not to stare at the shiny full curves of Delia’s thigh, rose-pink under sheer black, where her slit skirt fell apart—or at least not to be caught staring.
“It’s already beginning to be like that back in Corinth. I’m more and more afraid to go to the Center.” She gazed up at Alan, widening her silver-gray eyes. “You know, if you wanted, you could do something wonderful for me.”
“Yeah? What?” Still hungry, Alan was not yet mollified enough to promise anything. Besides, his back hurt.
“You could trade offices with me. That would baffle them.” She giggled.
“But if I were in your office, I’d be besieged and invaded.”
“No, because we’d keep your name on the door. A lot of them would get confused and go away. And besides, your office is so lovely and shadowy, with that big tree in front of the window. It would be so much better when I have a headache: the light wouldn’t cut me like knives the way it does now. Please.” Delia raised herself to a sitting position and leaned toward him, dropping her scarf on the floor. Her black silk blouse was also semi-transparent, revealing the flushed pale skin and black lace bra beneath.
“Well . . .” Alan imagined the pain and inconvenience of moving, the loss of his northern light.
“Just for a little while. Till they get discouraged and stop coming.” She smiled warmly, pathetically.
“Well—all right.”
“Oh, you darling.” Impulsively—or with calculation?—Delia sprang to her feet, then reached up and kissed him lightly. “I’m so, so grateful.” She sighed and subsided onto the sofa again. “And I’m so, so tired. Did you use up all the gin?”
“No, there’s some left. Shall I make you a drink?” he added, when Delia did not move.
“Oh, thank you. Light on the tonic, please.”
In the minimal chrome kitchen, Alan made a stiff drink for Delia and another for himself, thinking that it was a long time since he had done this for anyone.
“That okay?”
“Lovely.” Delia took a long swallow and lay back. “Much better. If only my feet didn’t hurt so. I wonder. Could you possibly rub them a little?”
“Well—all right, sure.” Equally excited and uncomfortable, he lowered himself to the edge of the sofa and took one warm high-arched foot in his hands.
“Ahh. That’s so nice.” Delia sighed and stretched. “Go on. More.”
Trying to recall the (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts of a new-age reflexology therapist he had consulted last summer on the advice of his back-pain pal Gilly, Alan smoothed and pressed Delia’s broad but graceful feet and stubby round pink-nailed toes, strangely sexy beneath the sheer black hose.
“Yes, lovely,” she repeated, stretching luxuriously. “My legs are sore too.”
“Okay.” Alan began stroking the ankles and full, rounded calves with a slow upward motion.
“Oh yes.” Delia sighed. “Could you—a little higher.”
“Right you are.” He moved to her round rosy knees, then, since she did not protest, beyond.
“Higher,” she murmured a few moments later.
“Higher than this?” He looked at Delia, who lay with her eyes closed and her legs spread, breathing slowly and deeply.
“Yes, please.”
Alan hesitated. He felt the approach of what seemed like delight but was in fact danger. If this event continued, he would soon be expected to assume a position that would cause agonizing pain in his back, and he would falter and fail.
“But remember what I said,” Delia whispered. “I can’t bear to be invaded. Never in any way. You understand.”
“Yeah,” Alan said, and his heart and cock both gave a great leap of relief as he realized what this meant: that if he did as Delia asked she would never find him out. “I understand.” He lay down beside her; then, turning toward her with a wrench of pain, kissed her softly. Delia opened her mouth at once, though not her eyes, and gave him a warm, full-lipped kiss.
“But anything else—everything else,” she murmured. “Yes. Oh yes.”
“That was wonderful,” she murmured a little later, opening her long-lashed eyes and stretching.
“Yes,” Alan agreed, still a little dizzy with surprise and pleasure—pleasure received as well as given. He ran one hand over the amazing baroque curve of Delia’s hip.
“Hey. I scored some codeine from my New York doctor. You want any?”
“No thanks, not now.” But then he raised himself on one elbow so he could look down on Delia’s flushed face and tangled mermaid hair, and felt a vicious twinge in his lower back. “Well, maybe, if you have a couple extra.”
“Sure. In my bag.” She gestured at a big soft tapestry carryall on the floor by the door. Alan rose slowly and painfully and brought it to her. It was against the law, he knew, to use someone else’s prescription drugs; Jane would have been appalled. Nevertheless, among his back-pain pals this was not uncommon. Gilly had given him many packets of dried herbs (some mildly effective), and he had reciprocated with orthocodone.
“Do you have any grass?” Delia asked, passing over a handful of pills.
“Not here. I didn’t want to take it on the plane, after what happened to Davi Gakar. They have dogs now that can smell the stuff, a friend of mine says.” Gilly’s husband Pedro occasionally gave Alan a joint, the last of which he had—very riskily—shared with Delia in his office, causing them both to have a fit of giggles over one of his latest drawings, a slightly suggestive fountain.
You are a bad influence on me, he thought now, looking at Delia as she lay flushed and disheveled on a black leather sofa on Central Park West. And I am a bad influence on you. And I don’t care.