Chapter 14

For Priscilla, Xavier was a change, something old and yet something new. And now it was time for “Dan and Xavier Enjoy a Rational Grown-up Discussion.”

Xavier’s boyish good looks could appeal to anyone, male or female, but in this case they appealed to Priscilla and not to Dan. However, this tennis entity of tangled, healthy, maturely white hair, generous smile with shining teeth, darting boyish shy unease, long legs—the whole Town and Country Academy Alumni Association gathered into one good sport—had planned ahead and was ready to make his case to Kasdan. He asked Kasdan’s okay. He intended to play square. All he wanted was to be an honest person.

I wasn’t ready to offer a blessing to the man who wanted my wife, even if he looked me forthrightly in the eyes and said he really cared, needed, hoped; even if he confessed that this conversation made him nervous; even if he cast down his long lashes, blushed and moved his footwear uneasily. Xavier was giving it a best effort. Like many a handsome lad before him, he felt sure his personal appeal could win the day. How could I fail to be convinced? He was so vulnerable.

“This is really embarrassing,” said Xavier.

“We can agree on that.”

“Um.”

“We can agree on that, too.”

With a warm grin, a toss of healthy mop, a winsome gleam in the eye, Xavier said, “You and I were sort of friends, sort of knew each other, so you could sort of think of this in terms of betrayal, or not betrayal, or maybe—”

Betrayal. Sort of. Yes. A piercing minty odor, alcohol and oil and tart, came off Xavier as his metabolism labored away, his sportsman’s cologne excited by the heat of conflict, shedding itself with green and yellow implications into the air. Probably he wasn’t really drenched in perfume. I was just oversensitive to my wife’s lover’s manly aroma.

Since I seemed unwilling to speak, cat got my tongue, Xavier had to do all the work around here, put the ball in play. “So I thought I should explain. It’s not like you think. I didn’t want to cause you difficulties. It’s hard for me, too, Dan. I mean, it’s not as if I had a choice about, about, about…” His voice deepened. “About Priscilla.”

Politeness at least obliged me to say something, and so I strangled out a few echoes: “About Priscilla you didn’t have a choice.”

A shower of smiles tumbled off Xavier in my direction; a vinaigrette wafting in the stirred-up, riled-up air. It was a multimedia avalanche of gratitude and anxiety. He was so appreciative because I favored him with a comment. “Since you and I were friends,” he said, prompting me to go on.

I was unwilling to grant him that. With the aid of all the therapy he had enjoyed, Xavier understood my wince and frown at the word “friends.” He had insight, he paid attention, he practiced the art and craft of sharing. Therefore, he amended the word “friends.” “Buddies,” he said, “acquaintances for a long time,” and peered hopefully up into my face. Would that be satisfactory? But trying to peer upward toward a being who was lower than he was gave this tall man an odd posture. Humble piety did not become him.

“I mean, anyway, these days, women tend to make their own decisions, too … Dan?”

“Listening.”

“I mean a strong-minded person like…”

He probably meant Priscilla. I was pretty sure of that. “Listening,” I repeated.

“Their own minds up,” he said.

“Half a sentence,” I said.

“Dan, I hear you. I’m upset, too. But it’s so much better…” The sentence trailed off. The minty cologne level rose. He found it difficult to share with me what was so much better.

“Listening,” I said. This was becoming my mantra. It was what I shared with him.

“Their own. Own. Level,” he said, moving now from half sentences to single words. “Um.” To a timid biding of time in the form of a sad, brave humming. A kind of grace note of vulnerability. An expression of Xavier’s total good feeling.

And so he rallied. He had manifested himself today in order to explain and lay himself open and ask my comprehension and sympathy. He spoke forthrightly, lover to husband; well, hopeful lover to estranged husband; whatever. Words were not important; deeds were what mattered, plus honesty and compassion and whatever. In short, he had come to ask permission to court my wife, openly, vulnerably, respectfully. He took a deep breath. He was ready to lay his cards on the table face up. He was ready to serve from the deep court, if that was the proper expression—and it wasn’t. He opened his mouth and then he closed it and then it came open again of its own volition. “I can’t get it up,” he said suddenly. “Dan, she’s gonna help me. She says she can do it and I believe her. She had me checked out at this clinic they run at Stanford … ran through urology, diabetes, plaque in the arteries, all those options … Guess you don’t need the detailed reports, but … Nothing physical wrong with me! I check out okay!”

He paused while I failed to congratulate him.

“So with care, with attention, with patience…” He shot me a Tom Sawyer grin. Shy freckles exploded on his cheeks. He twisted his hands together. He wished his kind-of colleague Dan Kasdan would say something more, even something disagreeable he might overcome by love and understanding. It was my turn to share.

His kind-of colleague said nothing.

“So it’s all psychological, Dan! That’s the only problem! And all this time I was worrying, I was distraught, I felt actual despair, Dan!”

Now he decided, in this difficult moment for a man explaining that he would like to make love to his friend’s wife but is having difficulties beyond loyalty and other such interpersonal concerns—he guessed it might be appropriate to make a little joke. He might try to lighten up. “You know what Priscilla said last night?” He lowered his voice to a respectful baritone hush. “She said a girl should train for oral sex by learning how to roll a bowling ball up a flight of stairs, using only her tongue.”

His lips were wet and parted. His mouth was open. He hoped Kasdan would join him in a moment of male sharing.

“I mean, that’s strenuous, Dan. It takes a real woman like Priscilla, not a girl—a woman. Point is, here I’ll just say it point-blank, I need her a lot and since you were kind of separated already, nothing to do with me … And I really like, he’s a terrific kid, Jeff, your son—”

I knew who Jeff was. My son. Our son, Priscilla’s, Dan’s. I didn’t require this instruction.

“—because he’s the offspring of a real woman who means the most to me in the whole known world, who really cares about me—isn’t that something?”

“Something.”

Xavier beamed. He was relieved that I was speaking again. He sought to encourage self-expression. “I fully recognize your rights of fatherhood, because you’re the dad,” he stated. “I mean, there’s room for lots of relationship for everybody. I don’t suppose I’ll have a kid, though who knows? But I love him too, Dan, in my own way. I hope you appreciate that.”

“’Preciate. Sure do.”

Xavier sighed. This difficult encounter was drawing to a close. He had carried it through in a way that a man destined to chronic impotence never could have done. “Not angry, Dan?” he asked.

It seemed that I didn’t hear him. Xavier’s face darkened a little and I noticed his fists clenching, fingers whitening. He had expected that I would fight back and since I was being—what?—passive-aggressive, it was time for him to rally other emotions, play the full organ of my humanity, get a rise out of me. “What you do, your métier, it’s a fulfilling occupation—”

“Métier,” I said.

“—for a man with cleverness, probably a clever man, had some sort of education, and Priscilla used to think it was glamorous, you know, a self-employed dick—private eye—but now she’s a grown-up woman. Exploring people’s secrets and dark sides might not be such a temptation anymore.”

“You think trust fund is a more grown-up temptation.”

“Say background, Dan.” The smell I smelled was the vinaigrette smell of nice sportsmanship and appeal to better nature shutting down. “Say a certain tradition. Anyway, I’ve diversified my investments. You’d be surprised. With the real estate market the way it is here, I had to and I did. Whatever my family happened to be good enough to leave in my care, I’ve done more than increase it at market rates, I can assure you of this.” (Didn’t require proof.) “I have been enterprising. Venture capital you don’t even suspect. Try to give me credit for being worthy of Priscilla, certain qualities I have, even as I give you full credit for making an outstanding choice in wife when she was young and easily impressionable.”

This was a surprise to me. There was a man there for Priscilla despite his manners, his smug longing. The guy had an edge. Xavier played WASP wimp as well as George Bush did, but inside there was a killer. Kind of had to respect that. Before I came around, Priscilla saw a glimmer of firmness beyond difficult erections, something I was too prejudiced to see.

“I wish I could get through to you, Dan. We share a love, even if not in a temporal sense, so in some way we must be similar as temperaments. Despite appearances, don’t you think, Dan?”

It seemed that Kasdan wasn’t thinking. I was looking at a space just in front of me. Temporal sense? That couldn’t have occurred. I saw a mote floating across my eye, I saw Xavier in a little cloud beyond. Fully confident that he was passing the test of masculine forthrightness with colors snapping in the wind, that he would want to tell Priscilla in detail what he had gone through, how he had led Dan step by step into the path of rationality and sharing, how they had consequently resolved the matter in a dignified and open fashion, Xavier showed me another boyish ducking smile, asking nothing more than understanding, fellowship, and decency in one of those complicated human relationships that so enrich our time on earth.

“So, not angry, Dan?”

And then I hit him. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that earlier.

After due deliberation, the former wimp Xavier, misinterpreted by me and inspired by love, would have hit back. Shaking his head and bleeding a little, thick blood oozing from a nostril, he would have risen. I saw him more clearly now. He was making the proper psychic adjustments after a jarring shock to the cerebellum. Deeper masculine needs were working their way to the fore as nose muck surged and the unseen mechanism of clotting strived to check in. It would take a moment or two. He was thrashing his legs and working to complete his thought about whether violence just now was really something to which he wanted to acquiesce. I hesitated above him as he lay awkwardly, still somewhat dimmed out. A sourness in the vinaigrette cologne. Then I didn’t wait around.