“Like that. Had a feeling, had to say it. If I didn’t I would have lost it. Infantile attitude á la friend Sven, but you want to get married to someone very unlike me — someone who wants to get married but really and have a baby soon. That’s why you were so, well, sad at the balcony announcement, and later pissed off at Sven, besides what that Arthur fellow would make anyone feel.”
“My, you have quite the head on your hat, old buddy. You sure do.”
“Don’t have to get cynical.”
“Then why try to get me to say what you already know and what is probably still a sore point between us? That’s even worse turn-off behavior and talk than that turn-off talk from before. Maybe you had a change of mind about my coming up.”
“Most certainly not. I thought I was getting into something deep; I obviously wasn’t.”
“If you were saying has my attitude changed on the matter in the last year—”
“Maybe that’s what I was saying.”
“It wasn’t, but I’ll answer anyway, bluntly, not deep. It hasn’t. I still do ultimately want to have a baby with someone I care for very much, and I feel confident I will. And because of my age I should be thinking seriously about having one fairly soon, not so much because of the increasing risks of conceiving an unhealthy baby but because I want to be frisky enough to take care of it and play with it and continue to know it over a long period of time. But it’s not a serious problem with me. I’m not, in other words, if Mr. Love doesn’t come along, going to have one as a Miss Mom or jump into marriage with a loving schmuck who also wants to have a baby, just to have one. And it’s not going to stop me, your talk — at least what you’ve said so far, so this is a sincere petition not to say anymore about it — from making love tonight, if you still want to and we’re not too tired to, since right now that’s what I’d like to do. If I’ve broken your balls a little just now, I apologize, since that’s not what I wanted to do at all. Now give me my three-minute doze.”
“Granted.”
He taps my shoulder. “We’re here. Got a spot in front. Everything’s working for us. Not a mugger in sight. Even the moon can be seen and a number of meteorites knocking about in the wrong half of the hemisphere for the night. You’re not too sleepy?”
“Why, do you want me to be?”
“You harp back on that so much I think it’s you who wants me to be immediately asleep.”
“I don’t, so let’s get it over with. No, that isn’t nice or what I mean, so let’s put it this way: we’re kind of using one another tonight, but that also has to be the way it is sometimes if nothing better is around. No, that’s not nice or right either. How can I say what I have in mind to without irritating you and gumming up the goal?”
“I never heard you talk like that before.”
“You have so. Selective forgetting. Let’s go up.”
The doorman has to unlock the door to let us in. “Hey there, Helene.”
“Russell? Hi — It’s been so long I didn’t recognize you. You lost weight but it looks good.”
“Couldn’t feel better. Have a good night? Good.” He holds the elevator door open till we get in, presses the button for Peter’s floor. “Goodnight.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are having such wonderful doormen.”
“He had a bypass in his thigh this year that nearly finished him. Did I set the Chapman lock in the car?”
“You pushed something in under the dashboard.”
“That’s it. He even took last rites.”
“Then what’s he doing working this shift?”
“He sleeps, rests. We might be the last tenants in. If you had no wife, kids, education or skills, you’d be fighting for his job.”
He holds my hand and whistles something from a familiar aria as he watches the floor indicator flash the floors, kisses me when the door opens. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m not excited anymore. He’s not attractive to me anymore. His breath stinks from alcohol and some egg dish when it didn’t before. Mine probably does too but from another food. He’s handsome and slim and a good lover and I’m almost sure I’ll be able to lose myself making love with him, but everything I said before except my wanting to have a baby with someone I care for and who’s a permanent live-in was all wrong. False and fairly high and fagged-out champagne talk, if I wasn’t feeling so sharp and sober, so don’t fall for those excuses. But I do want to make love and after it’s over he’s a quiet guy to sleep with and he’ll let me leave with no big scenes at the door, no fake promises for more, just both of us appreciative of having some of our immediate needs met, and maybe after some late-morning love-making if I want and even if he doesn’t, because that’s what he was also good for. For not once would he admit he couldn’t or didn’t want to get an erection, and what a struggle sometimes when I’d have to say “It’s okay, we’ll try in the morning or another day or some other time tonight — I’ll wake you if I get the urge,” and he’d say “No trouble, lady,” and play with himself or me or whatever he’d do till he got one that stayed. But go through with it, since it’s been a few months and lately I’ve been feeling something very important and explicable has been missing from my life which no amount of masturbating or work can make up for.
First thing in he turns on the lights and record player. “Your eighteenth-century German flute, plus or minus a century and nationality, which I was listening to before I left — I wasn’t expecting you here. Sure no wine or beer?” No, so he goes. I look at the primitive sculptures and masks he’s acquired or has on loan since I was last here. All to some extent phallic or oral-anal-vaginal phallic-receptive. Though a few do have procreative or foreplay subjects and one’s of a bearded naked woman standing on a stool — what’s that mean? — and another is of a clothed young man strumming what looks like a lute, plus a five-foot high mask of an insane shaman with his mouth closed but two tongues coming out of his nose. I bet he’s had thirty different women here since my last visit. He used to keep a spermicide in his medicine chest for sudden conquests. Condoms too if he had to, which he ordered through a coupon in Playboy: specially ribbed. He comes back, says “Sit over here,” I sit on the couch, be sits beside me, I drink the club soda, he some wine, he kisses my neck. Good, it’s begun. “Why don’t we take off our clothes and go to bed,” I say.
“Sure, we should, but here. It’d be too unshipshape, undies all over the bed and floor.” He takes off his tie and starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Actually, want me to take off your clothes?”
“That’d be nice. No, let’s take off our own clothes, wash up and go to bed.” I stand.
“I’ve washed. Did you come with anything?”
“I’m like you, or as I remember you. I always keep one in my medicine chest,” holding up my bag.
“Interesting. You must be getting laid a lot these days. What do you know — said the wrong thing again.”
“Truth is, I’m not, and I don’t have anything with me — that was just a tease. I thought you, much as I hate the smell of those things, could use an ordinary condom at the last moment.”
“At the last moment I can’t.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been feeling my period coming on for two days.”
“Is it absolutely safe-positive-sure?”
“Always has been. I already got a few blood drops in my underpants. One go at sex and it should begin to flow.”
“Should I put a rubber mat under the sheet?”
“I’ll give you plenty of warning.”
“You have a tampon with you?”
“That I’m prepared for,” shaking the bag.
The phone rings. “Who the hell could that be so late? Maybe I shouldn’t answer it.”