He slid into a shadowed booth, blew out the candle in its metal shell, and waited for the waiter, hoping it would not be a waitress. It was a waitress. Pouf skirt, net-mesh opera hose, spike heels, quiet good taste.
He hid his face and ordered three doubles of McCormick bourbon, no water, no rocks, no glass if possible, just pour them in my hands. She stared at him for a long moment, started to say Don't I know you from some
And Nate croaked in a frog-like, hideous voice, You couldn't possibly, I just got out of Dannemora, serving eighteen-to-life for raping, killing and eating a choir boy, not necessarily in that order.
She fled, and the bartender brought the drinks, standing well back from the booth as Nate slid the bills across the table.
It went that way for the next three and a half hours, till Nate's buzz was sufficiently nestled-in to permit conversation with the odd little man whose yogurt-soft eyes preceded him into the booth. Nate found himself unburdening his woes, and the little man, who matched him drink for drink, offered various unworkable solutions.
Look, I like you, said the little man, so I'll try and help you out. See, I'm something of a lay analyst myself. I've done just a whole lot of reading. Fromm, Freud, Bettelheim, Kahlil Gibran, that whole crowd. Now what I'd say is this: see, everybody has both male and female in him, you know what I mean? I think the female part of you is trying to assert itself. Have you ever thought of having sloppy sex with a man? Nate felt a hand crawling up his thigh. It was impossible. Nobody had arms that long, to reach across a booth, under a table. He yelped and looked down. The waitress was crawling around down there on hands and knees.
Nate bolted from the bar and didn't stop till he'd reached a crowded intersection.
When the light changed, and Nate stopped on the curb, he knew he was in trouble. It was State Street, and the clubs were letting out.
They chased him fifteen blocks and he lost the last two women-a gorgeous black girl with an enormous natural and a fiftyish matron who kept trying to use her Emba Cerulean mink stole to lasso him-in a pitfall-riddled construction site. He heard their shrieks as they dropped from sight, but he didn't slow down.
There was a motor hotel on the comer of Ohio and the Shore Drive and he pulled the tattered remnants of his clothing about him, making sure his wallet with the credit cards had not been lost when the Girl Scouts-Girl Scouts!?!-had ripped the arms off his jacket.
Inside, safe for the moment, he registered. The desk clerk, a whispery young man with white-on-white shirt, white-on-white tie, white-on-white face, looked at him with undisguised affection and offered the key to the bridal suite.
A single, away from everything, Nate insisted, and went up in the elevator, leaving the desk clerk breathing heavily.
The room was quiet and small. Nate pulled the drapes, locked the door, wedged a chair under the doorknob, and slumped on the edge of the bed. After a while he felt moderately sober, moderately relaxed, and thoroughly sick to his stomach. He undressed slowly and took a hot shower.
Soaping himself, he thought. It was a good place to think, in the shower.
Life had been at least supportable in Toronto. He'd devised a way to live. It was a ghastly way to live, but it was at least, well, supportable. But after Lois and the three bottles of Dexamils, he knew he had to do something, to try and arrest this hideous condition that had been getting worse and worse as he'd grown older. Only twenty-seven years old, and my life is hopeless, he thonght. He'd thought that every year since he had reached puberty.
Then he'd heard of Dr. Bremmer and he'd been dubious. She was a woman, after all. But desperation knows no rationalizing deterrents, and he'd long distanced an appointment. Now that had gone bananas, and he was thoroughly peeled. It was getting worse. The trip to Chicago had been a lousy idea. Now what will I do? How the hell will I get safely out of this enemy territory?
He turned and looked in the full-length mirror.
He saw himself naked.
He did have a good body.
And he did have a pleasant face, really quite a handsome and compelling face.
As he watched, his image began to shimmer and flow. His hair grew longer, more blond, even blonde, and breasts began to bulge as the hair vanished from his body. The image altered, as he stared, into the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The words of the little man in the bar skimmed across his mind and were gone in an instant, lost in the adoration he felt for the fantastic creature in the mirror.
I love you, he said, finding it difficult to speak coherently.
He reached for her, and she drew back. Don't you put a hand on me you lecher, she said.
But I love you…I really love you!
I'm not that kind of a girl, she said.
But I don't just want your body, Nate said. There was an imploring note in his voice. I want to love you, to have you with me all my life. I can make a good home for you. I've been waiting for you all my life.
Well…she said, maybe we can just talk a while. But keep your hands to yourself.
I will, Nate promised, I will. I'll keep my hands to myself.
And they lived happily ever after.
Los Angeles, California; New York City/1971
ONE LIFE, FURNISHED IN EARLY POVERTY
And so it was-strangely, strangely-that I found myself standing in the backyard of the house I had lived in when I was seven years old. At thirteen minutes till midnight on no special magical winter's night, in a town that had held me only till I was physically able to run away. In Ohio, in winter, near midnight--certain I could go back.
Back to a time when what was now…was then.
Not truly knowing why I even wanted to go back. But certain that I could. Without magic, without science, without alchemy, without supernatural assistance; just go back. Because I had to, I needed to…go back.
Back; thirty-five years and more. To find myself at the age of seven, before any of it had begun; before any of the directions had been taken; to find out what turning point in my life it had been that had wrenched me from the course all little boys took to adulthood; that had set me on the road of loneliness and success ending here, back where I'd begun, in a backyard at now-twelve minutes to midnight.
At forty-two I had come to that point in my life toward which I'd struggled since I'd been a child: a place of security, importance, recognition. The only one from this town who had made it. The ones who had had the most promise in school were now milkmen, used car salesmen, married to fat, stupid dead women who had, themselves, been girls of exceeding promise in high school. They had been trapped in this little Ohio town, never to break free. To die there, unknown. I had broken free, had done all the wonderful things I'd said I would do.
Why should it all depress me now?
Perhaps it was because Christmas was nearing and I was alone, with bad marriages and lost friendships behind me.
I walked out of the studio, away from the wet-ink-new fifty thousand dollar contract, got in my car and drove to International Airport. It was a straight line made up of in-flight meals and jet airliners and rental cars and hastily-purchased winter clothing. A straight line to a backyard I had not seen in over thirty years.
I had to find the dragoon to go back.
Crossing the rime-frosted grass that crackled like cellophane, I walked under the shadow of the lightning-blasted pear tree. I had climbed in that tree endlessly when I was seven years old.