Aphrodisiac

by Christopher Bram

The revolving drum of the multilith printer spun with a rhythmic chatter. Sheet after sheet of clean white paper shot beneath the drum, then jumped into a cradle, each page stamped with Carpenter’s face and politics.

It was unnerving. Imagine being in love, and suddenly the object of your affections begins to divide, multiply in a sort of amoebic frenzy, until the world holds a hundred duplicates of the unique person who’d earned your total devotion. What then?

The original Carpenter stood beside the machine, adjusting the feed of paper, correcting the ink flow, talking to me over the gentle noise of the machine. His smooth, boyish face was tilted forward and a sheaf of blond hair was caught behind one lens of his old-fashioned steel-rimmed glasses. Carpenter was twenty-eight, three years older than I, but the only thing about him that looked adult were his hands. They were oversized and tough, ridged along the edges. I have always had great respect for his hands.

“No. I’ve been meaning to come by and see you people,” Carp was saying. “Or at least let you know what was up. But I’ve been occupied with this.” He gestured at the stack of handbills rising in the cradle.

It was lunch hour, and Carp was using his free time to run off material for his city-council campaign. Every few years Carp ran for city council, affiliating himself with one or another of the left-wing groups that seemed to come and go in Richmond with the life expectancy of a fruit fly. He had vanished from view a month before; and although I knew about the campaign, I couldn’t quite believe that it was the only reason he was staying away. He had to know what was going on, and if he did, he would want no part of it. Carpenter had always been a terrible moralist. I had driven all the way across town during my lunch hour to learn how much Carp knew, and I stood there now in the empty print shop, watching Carp, feeling out of place in my three-piece suit.

“That’s the only reason you haven’t been around?” I asked. “There’s nothing wrong?”

He looked at me, surprised. “Not at all. What could be wrong?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled. I invented a reason. “Cathy thought you might be bored with us.”

“Bored? Lord, no. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see y’all. But this nonsense—”

“Good. Cathy’ll be glad to hear that. She was afraid you’d gotten tired of hobnobbing with the bourgeoisie.”

He prodded the last sheets of paper through the machine and cut off the power. “On the contrary.”

So he didn’t know after all. The news pleased me and I could enjoy watching the rubbery way he moved when he stooped to stack his bills and posters. “You like some help with that?” I asked.

“Nope. Friendship doesn’t require it.”

“For crying out loud, Carp. Carrying your propaganda’s not going to subvert me. Besides, that’s what you’re supposed to do,” I said, picking up a bundle and trying to hold it so that the ink didn’t rub off on my vest. “Subvert, pervert, and seduce. You’re not a very good socialist, you know.”

“I’m a r-r-rotten socialist,” he said with a grin and led the way out back to his car.

It took several trips to fill the trunk and I was able to brush clumsily against him each time we passed; for the moment, that was all the contact I needed. Carpenter and I shook hands, promised to visit each other as soon as the election was over, shook hands again and parted. My afternoon at the insurance office was spent reviewing claims, but the work soothed me; I knew I had another life hidden beneath my button-down respectability.

During the next few weeks we saw Carp only in the form of his campaign leaflets and posters. The bills I had seen being run off by the hundreds were suddenly all over town. There were other candidates, and a flood of other people’s posters, but it was only Carp’s that I noticed. The photo­graph was old, something saved from a previous campaign; he was dressed in a Robert Hall jacket and the kind of narrow necktie worn by working-class grandfathers. He looked exactly like a kid dressed up for church back home in Nansemond County. Printed beneath the picture were the words Socialist People’s Party. The incongruity of picture and caption made me think of the bland high school photos you see in the newspaper under such headlines as honor student slays own family.

The picture was suddenly everywhere; the whole world seemed to have been papered over with Carpenter’s face. Wherever I went, surfaces mocked me with his beaming-boy image, the boy in the Sunday school suit, the Socialist People’s candidate. He was on telephone poles, on alley walls, on the soaped-over windows of shops that had gone out of business. He even peered winsomely from a wastebasket in the downstairs lobby of the insurance office. Cathy thought it might be funny to peel a poster off and tack it up in the apartment; she called me a stuffy prig when I wouldn’t let her.

Cathy and I weren’t very happy in Richmond. We had never been very good at meeting strangers, but when we lived in Maryland we had Cathy’s family and a few of her friends from college. The only person we knew in Richmond was Andrew Carpenter. Carp and I had come from the same county in southside Virginia. When I met him, he was already halfway through college; I was still in high school. I trailed after him like a puppy, thinking I was only attracted to him because he was what I, foolishly, wanted to be: an intellectual. It was only now, after the insurance company had transferred me to Richmond, that I understood the real reason for the attraction; I understood only because I had tripped over backwards and fallen into it again. Here I was, happily married, and not only had I fallen in love with somebody else, I had fallen in love with a guy.

It bothered me, but not in the way I might have expected. There was no guilt, perhaps only because I was too busy wondering what I could do with this new feeling. I liked the feeling very much and did not want to throw it away. The obvious thing would have been to go to bed with Carp, but I wasn’t sure what you could do in bed with him. Even if I were capable of it, I thought there should be something beyond that, perhaps something like marriage. I wondered about adoption.

Several weeks without Carpenter passed. Cathy was as bored with Richmond as I was, so bored she finally overcame her snobbery and insisted we buy a television. We hunted for things to keep each other entertained. A week before the election we drove out to the University of Richmond to see Children of Paradise. I’d found out that a film society was going to show it and reported the news to Cathy as though it were a gift just for her. But I wanted to see it as much as she did. Our isolation in Richmond had made us very dependent on each other; all our pleasures and desires seemed to blur together. The blurring was nice, in a way, but I found myself missing the sharp edges things had had when we were first discovering each other. Now, we were too easy with each other, even at night when we went to bed.

Cathy was all shivery and excited after the movie. It was a clear, cold October night and we delayed our return home by walking around the campus. I tried to put my arm around her, but she kept breaking away to wave her hands and repeat a favorite line or remember some lush scene. I was very happy, too. Under a streetlight I stopped her and asked to hear the line Arletty uses to invite the actor into her room.

“Hmmmm? Which one?”

“You know. Right after he asks if her door is locked.”

She displayed her big teeth in an enormous grin. I often tease her for having a mouth like a cupboard full of china. “Oh, I love it!” She clapped her hands and grabbed me by the collar to pull me down to her level. She gave her head a shake, pretending to get into character. Eyeing me from beneath her hood of disheveled hair, she mimicked Arletty’s seductive purr: “What do I have that thieves can steal?” Then she burst out laughing and shoved me away.

I watched her parade down the walk, her head thrown back so far she couldn’t see. She nearly fell over a fire hydrant. I continued my amused strut behind her and didn’t catch up again until she had stopped in front of a kiosk plastered with one of Carpenter’s posters. She leaned against it and hooked one arm over the picture, pretending it was real. “Be nice to see Andy again. In flesh and blood, I mean.”

I clutched her hand and pulled her away. “See him soon enough,” I said.

We resumed our walk, leaning against each other’s shoulder for support. “You’re not bored by Carp?” I asked. It was a silly question, but I wanted an excuse to talk about him. From the start, she had made it clear she enjoyed his company. The first time we had had him over to dinner, Cathy was charmed by the way he had repeatedly interrupted his defense of socialism to identify each piece of classical music played on the stereo with the Warner Brothers cartoon he had first heard it in.

She clicked her tongue. “You keep insisting I should be bored by Andy. Believe me, Scott, I’m not. I actually like the goof. And not just because he’s your friend, either.”

“But why? You’ve got nothing in common.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I find him . . . exotic.” She growled the word. “I don’t know. Why does anyone like anybody else? Well for one thing, he’s not an insurance person.”

“Then you find me boring?”

“Oh, get out of here.” She butted my shoulder with her head. “Your friends, dope. Your friends and Daddy’s. Insurance people always seem the same. Cynical about everybody and everything except themselves.”

“They’re not really friends.”

“Okay then, acquaintances. Oh, you know what I mean. But don’t worry, Scottie. You’re different. You’re a mutant.”

I gave Cathy a squeeze around the waist and softly whispered in her ear, “And you’re my little mutant, too.” Our shoulders began to ache; we had to straighten up.

The walkway climbed a small hill and gradually swung to the left. There were fewer lights here and as we walked we saw a full moon slowly shift into the gap between the tall, black dormitories. Close to the horizon the moon looked enormous, as wonderfully theatrical and fake as the canvas disc used for the Pierrot mimes in the movie. I began whistling one of the tunes that had accompanied the mimes.

“Funny thing,” said Cathy, wearily, “but I’ve gotten so used to seeing Andy’s face all over town, I can’t even look at the moon without seeing that goof in it.”

I laughed with her over her silliness. My eyes, too, were twisting the lunar geography into a copy of Carpenter’s face, but I proudly believed my reasons were more dangerous and exciting than Cathy’s.

Love. Sloppy, romantic love. Love so clichéd you saw the loved one in the moon. It takes no talent to fall in love, but I was proud to be in love with Carp. I may have been disturbed that I didn’t know what to do with it, but I wasn’t bothered by the unnaturalness of the love. I was already familiar with natural love, the domestic kind I shared with Cathy. Love with her was love that justified, protected, soothed; it was as commonplace and necessary as a loaf of bread. No matter what tensions might develop between us, my dumb faith in the success of domestic love created the feeling that there was a safety net strung beneath us and that we were absolutely free from danger. It was my love for Carpenter—a sort of ecstatic nervousness—that now supplied me with the missing danger.

Election day. Cathy and I had not been residents of Richmond long enough to be able to vote, but after dinner I suggested we visit Carpenter and sit out the returns with him.

Cathy studied me for a moment, then screwed up her mouth and shook her head. “I don’t think we should. He’s probably off with some friends. Don’t you think?”

“If I know Carp, I’ll make a bet he’s alone reading. He could probably use some company.”

“You really think so?” She was skeptical. Cathy has always been leery of spending evenings with strangers. I promised and teased her into giving in.

Carpenter lived on the edge of the Fan district in a small upstairs apartment behind a shoe repair shop. I had seen the place only once before: walls painted a clinical shade of white, a few straight-back chairs and an unvarnished desk, a wooden floor with no carpet. Tacked above the desk was a solitary picture: an overripe figure of Death towed a frightened monk by his cowl toward places unknown. It was a morbid picture, but oddly it seemed a humanizing touch in the stark setting of the room. An exposed flight of stairs descended from his doorway to the alley.

“So this is where Andy lives?” said Cathy as she followed me up the rattling stairs. The flaking frame shook under our combined weight.

“I’ve pointed it out to you,” I said, rapping on the door.

“Have you?” Holding her embroidered purse against her throat, she looked over the rail at the pile of cans and flattened boxes below. “I don’t think so. Are there any rats down there?”

“Big black socialist rats,” I said, irritated by her sudden delicacy. She seemed to be in one of her prim and stuffy moods tonight.

The knob turned with a sharp snap and the door opened. A stocky woman with rust-red hair faced us. “Yeah?” she said, arrogantly cocking her head as though she expected us to sell her something. Pop music played in the room behind her.

A female. I was stunned to find a female in Carpenter’s doorway. It was a possibility I had never considered.

“Something we can do for you?” the woman asked impatiently, her eyes as black and tiny as the heads of carpet tacks.

“We’ve come to see Andrew Carpenter,” I stammered.

She bellowed into the apartment, “Hey! Turkey! You got visitors!”

“Don’t be rude. Ask them in,” Carp quietly commanded.

The woman shrugged her big shoulders, motioned us inside, and closed the door.

I advanced nervously, my head bent forward. All over the floor were empty beer cans and jar lids filled with cigarette butts. Next to Carpenter’s stocking feet was half a bottle of red wine. He sat rigid in a chair in the center of the room. I was afraid we had stumbled in on something that shouldn’t be stumbled in on, but when my eyes finally reached Carpenter’s face, I found his smooth cheeks pocked with two enormous dimples and a grim that lifted his eyeglasses halfway up his forehead. “Why, hello there,” he said warmly. “What brings you people down here tonight?”

“Cordial visit,” I said, working up a smile. Cathy stared at the red-haired woman. “We thought you might like company on your big election night. If we’re disturbing any—”

“Marsha’s my co-worker.” Carpenter waved his cup at Marsha, who was studying Cathy. “We had Marsha’s gang of undergrads over earlier, but they wanted to get drunk and we’d run out of beer. Political campaigns are supposed to be kept well oiled with alcohol. I keep forgetting that fact.” Carp himself did not seem at all well oiled; he spoke with his usual sober cheerfulness. “Marsh. These are the friends I was telling you about. That’s Cathy there. And her husband is Scott.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Marsha said with a smirk. She looked somewhere in her late twenties and wore jeans and a floppy, untucked shirt. Whenever she moved, her breasts bounced inside the shirt like a pair of cats squirming in a bag. She spoke with a deep, bearish voice. “You’re the insurance salesman.”

“Oh, nothing that adventurous,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I don’t do any actual selling. I just march figures up and down sheets of paper and make sure they all arrive at the same place. Like the exercises they gave you over and over again in third grade, only now I get paid for it.”

“If you don’t like your work, get out of it,” she said and turned to Carpenter. “You need more chairs. I’ll get the one in the bedroom.”

“You sit here,” said Carpenter, setting his own chair beside Cathy. She smoothed her coat behind her and cautiously lowered her bottom to the chair. She looked down at the radio that sat on the floor, tuned to an AM station. “Marsha’s,” Carp explained.

No, I didn’t like Marsha. And it worried me that she was familiar with Carpenter’s bedroom.

“Well, what do you think your chances are with the election?” I asked, trying to forget about Marsha.

“He doesn’t want to get elected,” Marsha snarled, bringing in the chair. She pushed the chair at me and added, “He’s chicken. If he thought he might win, he’d never run.”

Carpenter only smiled at the attack and drank his wine. More cups were brought out; Carpenter sat cross-legged on the floor and poured the rest of the bottle. “Marsha’s an interesting person,’’ he said, watching the liquid rise to the same level in each cup. “The token southpaw in the V.C.U. sociology department. According to her, I’m much too conservative, Tory radical. Oh well. I’ve been called worse.” Marsha snorted in agreement. “But it’s thanks to her that my name’s splashed all over town. She’s got the kind of dedication rarely found outside a meeting of Young Republicans.”

“Screw you,’’ said Marsha.

More insults followed, and the exchange turned into an argument on politics. Marsha insisted on the need for strong, decisive action. Carpenter advocated a quieter approach. They spoke as though Cathy and I weren’t even there. I was able just to sit and watch for clues to their relationship. It was Marsha’s strident tone that worried me most; she seemed positively marital, as if she already had him. In Carp’s voice, I found nothing. He spoke just as he always did, spinning his ideas with his slow, rural drawl. The southside Virginia accent didn’t match the ideology under discussion. It made me think of Gary Cooper cast as Trotsky. Cathy was looking lost and bored and I felt guilty for having misled her. Every now and then I tried to give her a special glance and a nod to let her know she had my sympathy. Her cup of wine sat on her knee untouched. She answered my concern with a brittle smile.

“I know you’ve heard me say it a hundred times,” Carp said. “But if you’re going to be a southpaw in this country, you’ve got to keep your goals limited.”

“Must be pitiful to be a defeatist at such an early age,” said Marsha.

“Perhaps. But when you have big plans, it’s easier to become disillusioned. You get disappointed, maybe over­react, and end up on the other side.”

“I hear you,” said Marsha. She greeted the possibility with a lip fart, then shifted her nail eyes towards me. “Is that what happened to you?”

“Me? What?” The need to answer took me by surprise. “No, I was never . . . I’ve been friends with Carp but I . . . at no time. No. I’ve not been a socialist. Never.” I looked around the room for help.

“No,” said Carp, smiling kindly. “Scottie’s always been a capitalist lackey.”

“I see,” said Marsha, leaning back. “Very good. I was afraid you were a sellout. But you’re the real thing, huh?”

I assured her I was, and attempted a few jokes about the sins I’d committed in the name of the oppressor class. None of the jokes took, and Marsha began to hammer at me about the half-heartedness of my beliefs. Why this? What did I really think about the world I lived in? Carpenter had never violated me in this way, never poked and forced me to twist my feelings into ideas I knew nothing about. I waited for him to come to my aid again, but he simply sat there, amused by what was going on. He had a misplaced faith in my ability to defend myself. Cathy was too lost or bored to help me. I was left to myself, and trotted out the only argument I have ever used on the subject of revolution. “Suppose . . . suppose you’re a fish living in a dirty bowl. You got the choice of either putting up with the filth and mess of the dirty water or you can jump out, flop around on the carpet. Maybe get eaten by the cat. So I’ve decided to stay in the bowl and accept all the imperfections as part of life.” I have always been a little proud of that argument without completely believing it. I folded my arms together, assuming that would be the final word and that we could move on to more interesting questions. Such as was Marsha sleeping with Carpenter?

Marsha slammed her heel against the floor. “You can change the bowl you live in, you smug little jerk.”

Cathy suddenly woke up “What’re you two getting so nasty for?” she muttered to her shoes. “You’re only talking about ideas. Nothing to get nasty about.”

“That’s only what they want us to believe,” said Marsha, leaning closer to Cathy and speaking to her as if to an equal. “That these things are only ideas. They want us to believe that there’s real life over here, and ideas over there, and no connection between the two.” Marsha glared at me. “And they want us to think that real life is only a dirty fishbowl you can never change but only talk about. Like the weather.”

“In Marsha’s mind, they are men,” Carpenter explained, shaking his head and not making it clear whether or not he agreed with her.

Marsha began to twist a strand of her hair around one finger. “That’s a vulgarization of what I believe,” she muttered, then picked up the wine bottle and examined it. “Empty,” she said. “Pitiful the party has to end so soon. We ought to get some more wine.”

I jumped out of my chair and rubbed my hands together. “No, it’s getting late, I’m afraid. Cathy and I should be moving on.”

Cathy looked up at me over her shoulder. “We don’t have to go, do we, Scott? It won’t hurt us to stay a little longer.”

“You want to stay?” She surprised me. I looked her up and down, wondering about her motives. It seemed masochistic for her to want to stay any longer. “Well. Whatever you say,” I said reluctantly. I was afraid of making a scene by insisting we leave. “Uh, since I’m up,” I said to Carpenter, “why don’t
I go get the wine?”

Marsha rose, clomped over to the desk and picked up an Army jacket. “I’ll go too.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Hey, Marsh. Why don’t you stay here?” said Carp.

“Nope.” She turned to me. “I can show you the best place,” she insisted, and before I could object again, Marsha and I were outside, headed for the car. With her sneakers planted on my dashboard, Marsha gave directions.

As soon as we were moving down the street she turned to me and said, “Tell me. I’m curious. How come you’re foisting your wife on poor old Carp?”

I couldn’t understand what she was talking about and spent a good twenty seconds trying to understand before I finally said, “Come again?”

“She’s in love with him, isn’t she? I always thought your kind kept their wives locked up whenever something like that happens. Never imagined a husband would offer personal delivery. I guess I should find it admirable.” She tittered through her nose. “Unless it’s just bourgeois kinkiness.”

This was hilarious. I couldn’t believe it. I nearly choked trying to hold back my laughter. She was so damn right in her general picture of what was going on. And so damn wrong in the particulars. “You know, you’re nuts,” I said. “What gives you a crazy idea like that?”

“Come off it. You don’t have to pretend with me. Sweet little things like that can never hide their feelings. Soon as she walked in, the place smelled like love and kisses.”

“My wife is no ‘sweet little thing,’” I said, dutifully going to Cathy’s defense.

“But she is. Sweet, frail, Cosmopolitan girl. Not her fault, though.”

I didn’t like to hear Cathy mocked like this. “I can’t . . . I can’t imagine how you’d see what you see. You wouldn’t talk like that unless you were in love with Carpenter yourself.”

“Me?” There was a laugh like pebbles dropping onto a snare drum. “If I ever fall in love—and I won’t—it’ll never be for the likes of good old Carp.”

“Then why are you being such a bitch about it?”

“I merely report the obvious.”

We pulled up in front of a delicatessen. Marsha ran inside with long, leaping strides. Cathy in love with Carpenter. Husband delivering wife. Sweet little thing. Very droll. I kept turning it around and around in my head until Marsha returned with the wine.

Marsha kept her mouth shut for several minutes. I was hoping for complete silence, when she suddenly shifted sideways in her seat and confessed, “I’m needling you. Scott. Can’t you see that? I have no objections to what you’re doing. It goes along with everything I believe. Sexual democracy.” She came closer to me. “But I’m curious why you’re doing it. It’s not the norm for people of your ilk. Something like this runs against the grain, doesn’t it? Or are you and your wife so bored you’ll jump at anything?”

“My ilk? You think you have me pegged, don’t you?”

“I know you a lot better than you think. You’re one of those types who thinks to himself, ‘I’m complicated. I’m so wonderfully complicated.’” She mimicked my thoughts with a squeaky whimper. “And you take great pride in it. Cozy sensitivity. But, you know? You’re not really so complicated. A few contradictions, a few hypocrisies. Things you could reconcile if you put your mind to it. Only you don’t want to bother. It would put an end to the cozy notion you’re a deep person.”

Marsha settled back into her seat. I was relieved to have some distance between us again. I took refuge in silence.

“Of course, you realize your wife doesn’t have a black man’s chance with Carp.”

I refused to rise to the bait.

“Perfect nickname. Carp. He’s a cold fish, all right.” She waited for a reply, then snidely added, “Your wife might as well be flirting with a fag.”

“Carp’s gay?” I asked, trying to hide my sudden interest.

She shifted her big shoulders. “I don’t know. You know him better than I do. Is he?”

One of the many idiotic things about the whole idiotic mess was the fact that I did not know Carpenter’s sexual affiliation. Through all the years of our friendship, all the letters and visits, there had never been mention of a girlfriend and never any mention of the alternatives. Whenever the subject of love or lust came up, Carpenter only smiled and wiggled his head until the subject went away.

“Don’t know,” I said to Marsha.

“Might as well be for all the luck she’s going to have. Couldn’t get him to do anything with me,” she said, and sighed, “much less fall in love. Not that I’d want that. The love part, I mean.”

“You asked Carpenter to go to bed?”

“Why not?” she said, wistfully indifferent.

“And what did he say?”

“I think he laughed. Carpenter can be a jerk.”

When we arrived at the apartment, Marsha made a big show of stomping noisily up the stairs, as if to warn them of our return. There was a clownish grin on her face.

We entered and found Cathy and Carpenter exactly as we had left them, seated six feet apart. Cathy’s look of discomfort was gone; she appeared relaxed and easy, and not even Marsha’s return disturbed her. The radio had been changed to an FM station: a baroque fanfare of trumpets added to the happiness.

“Mountain chablis,” Marsha announced proudly, stripping the bag from the bottle. She broke the seal and the wine was passed around while we returned to our positions in the circle. I tried to be sociable by asking for news of the election.

“Andy’s writing a book,” Cathy declared. She was quite excited that Carpenter had confided this to her; the outcome of the election seemed to interest her as little as it did the candidate.

“He’s always writing some book,” I said. “What’s this one about?”

“It’s, uh, fictional institutions.”

Carpenter politely corrected her. “Institutional fictions. Assumptions about reality that make up the basis of different social institutions.” He gave himself an embarrassed sigh.

Marsha smiled at me, apparently reading my thoughts and highly amused by them. But she could not have been reading them correctly. I gave no consideration at all to her goofy ideas about Cathy’s affections. Marsha was a joker, I decided. I felt a fondness for her now that I knew she had failed and that I wouldn’t have to compete against her. And I felt a great fondness for Cathy because she seemed happy now and I no longer had to feel responsible for her discomfort. I was set free to sit back and enjoy the fact that I was in love with Carpenter.

Marsha left shortly after midnight, and things became very peaceful. There were times when there was nothing to say, but there was no embarrassment over the stretches of silence.

As Cathy and I got ready to leave, Carpenter said he was pleased the nonsense was over and that he’d be free to see us more often. There was a prolonged exchange of smiles and handshakes, then Carp watched from his open door as Cathy and I made our way down his stairs.

The interior of the car was cold as a refrigerator; the heater did not begin to ease the cold until we were halfway to the suburbs. Cathy stretched over the console and huddled close to my side.

My head ticked with possibilities. In the narrow space of a couple of hours, I had found my path blocked and then had found the obstacle totally imaginary. Carpenter was available after all; my love had come through the ordeal stronger than before and I knew I would have to act on it. I would take my chances; I would actually do something with this incredible feeling I carried. There would be love, out in the open, dangerous love, love so strong it would be indistinguishable from fear. The only question was how to move Carpenter to join me in it.

“You’ve certainly been spacy tonight,” said Cathy, her face buried in my coat.

“Yeah? Just toward the end. I got to thinking about things. You were pretty spacy yourself. At the beginning.”

“Was I?” she asked sleepily. “Yeah, I guess so. We’re not the world’s greatest guests. Wonder if we could get tutored somewhere on social charm. Take night classes in party behavior, maybe.”

“Don’t know.”

“Oh, doesn’t matter. I think we could’ve acted any old way and Andy wouldn’t have minded. Scott? Did you think that girl and Andy were lovers? I mean when we first walked in, did you think that?”

“Hard to imagine her being anyone’s lover. Too dogmatic. Too much the—you know.” I wanted to say “bitch” but the word angers Cathy. “Why? Did you think that?”

“At first. But I talked to Andy while you were out and I got the impression they were barely friends. She really was too dogmatic. I feel sorry for people like that. They must be very lonely before they can go and get like that.”

I had heard Cathy express similar sympathy for her father, for my older brother, and before she had met him, for Andrew Carpenter. When I stopped at the next traffic light, I was able to bend over, kiss the top of her head, slip my hand beneath her long hair, touch the down on her neck.

There was eerie energy in our lovemaking that night. Sex again became the invention of two teenagers petting under the bushes, only with adult privacy now, and no restraints. Each intimate move was smoothly answered and there was a slippery, licensed roving of hands and mouths. I did not fake any of it. I could not pretend it was Carpenter who shared me. No, it was definitely Cathy whose knees and shoulders, breasts and hair were the targets of all my energy and it was irrelevant that the energy had been created by my feelings for Carpenter.

In that extended instant after sex, before you remember you are not alone, I felt pleased with myself and the life I lived. Gradually, I reawakened to Cathy, and found her looking at me with one open eye.

“You—” she began lovingly, and never finished. Suddenly, she rose up on her knees and stretched her body like a cat. She sank down again and rested her chin on my chest.

We lay like that for a very long time. I could look past the loops of her hair and see our legs, stacked together like hand­ dipped candles.

“Know what?” she finally said. There was a bit of flirtation in her voice, and the warm breath with the words tickled my chest.

“What?”

“Kind of funny but—”

“Yes?” I closed my eyes and brushed my hand up and down the solid muscles on either side of her back. I was waiting to be teased or complimented.

“I think I have a slight crush on your Andrew Carpenter.”

She spoke too soon to disguise it. And all along I had thought her excitement had been in response to mine, that it had been something I created in her. “Do you mean . . . you’re in love with him?”

“Noooo. Nothing stupid like that. Do you think I’d tell you if it was something like that?” She hugged me around the waist and giggled, then looked up at me with her lower lip sucked behind her front teeth, grinning while she watched and waited for me to share her amusement.

My hand drew tiny circles on the cooled mounds of her bottom.

“No,” she said. She had to shift her eyes away from my face. “No. It’s just a silly crush. All in my head. Nobody could really fall in love with Andy.” There was a tremor in the pupils of her eyes as they looked straight into mine again. “You dope!” she suddenly laughed. “You have nothing to fear,” and she reached up to sweep some hair back from my forehead.