My image of the two of them in each others arms popped like soap bubbles.
"Now if you were the guy," she said, "it would be different."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Just what it sounds like. If you asked me, I'd go to bed with you."
I tried to keep my composure. "Thanks," I said. "I'll keep that in mind. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"
"Charlie, I can't figure you out. Most men like me or not, and I know it right away. But you seem afraid of me. You're not a homosexual, are you?"
"Hell, no!"
"I mean you don't have to hide it from me if you are, because then we could be just good friends. But I'd have to know."
"I'm not a homosexual. Tonight, when you went into your place with that guy, I wished it was me."
She leaned forward and the kimono open at the neck revealed her bosom. She slipped her arms around me, waiting for me to do something. I knew what was expected of me, and I told myself there was no reason not to. I had the feeling there would be no panic now—not with her. After all, I wasn't the one making the advances. And she was different from any woman I'd ever met before. Perhaps she was right for me at this emotional level.
I slipped my arms around her.
"That's different," she cooed. "I was beginning to think you didn't care."
"I care," I whispered, kissing her throat. But as I did it, I saw the two of us, as if I were a third person standing in the doorway. I was watching a man and woman in each other's arms. But seeing myself that way, from a distance, left me unresponsive. There was no panic, it was true, but there was also no excitement—no desire.
"Your place or mine?" she asked.
"Wait a minute."
"What's the matter?"
"Maybe we'd better not. I don't feel well this evening."
She looked at me Wonderingly. "Is there anything else?… Anything you want me to do?… I don't mind…"
"No, that's not it," I said sharply. "I just don't feel well tonight." I was curious about the ways she had of getting a man excited, but this was no time to start experimenting. The solution to my problem lay elsewhere.
I didn't know what else to say to her. I wished she'd go away, but I didn't want to tell her to go. She was studying me, and then finally she said, "Look, do you mind if I spend the night here?"
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I like you. I don't know. Leroy might come back. Lots of reasons. If you don't want me to…"
She caught me off guard again. I might have found a dozen excuses to get rid of her, but I gave in.
"Got any gin?" she asked.
"No, I don't drink much."
"I've got some in my place. I'll bring it over." Before I could stop her she was out the window and a few minutes later she returned with a bottle about two-thirds full, and a lemon. She took two glasses from my kitchen and poured some gin into each. "Here," she said, "this'll make you feel better. It'll take the starch out of those straight lines. That's what's bugging you. Everything is too neat and straight and you're all boxed in. Like Algernon in bis sculpture there."
I wasn't going to at first, but I felt so lousy that I figured why not. It couldn't make things any worse, and it might possibly dull the feeling that I was watching myself through eyes that didn't understand what I was doing.
She got me drunk.
I remember the first drink, and getting into bed, and her slipping in beside me with the bottle in her hand. And that was all until this afternoon when I got up with a hangover.
She was still asleep, face to the wall, her pillow bunched up under her neck. On the night table beside the ash tray overflowing with crushed butts stood the empty bottle, but the last thing I remembered before the curtain came down was watching myself take the second drink.
She stretched and rolled toward me—nude. I moved back and fell out of bed. I grabbed a blanket to wrap around myself.
"Hi," she yawned. "You know what I want to do one of these days?"
"What?"
"Paint you in the nude. Like Michelangelo's 'David.' You'd be beautiful. You okay?"
I nodded. "Except for a headache. Did I—uh—drink too much last night?"
She laughed and propped herself up on one elbow. "You were loaded. And boy did you act queer—I don't mean fairyish or anything like that but strange."
"What"—I said, struggling to work the blanket around so that I could walk—"is that supposed to mean? What did I do?"
"I've seen guys get happy, or sad, or sleepy, or sexy, but I never saw anyone act the way you did. It's a good thing you don't drink often. Oh, my God, I only wish I had a camera. What a short subject you'd have made."
"Well, for Christ's sake, what'd I do?"
"Not what I expected. No sex, or anything like that. But you were phenomenal. What an act! The weirdest. You'd be great on the stage. You'd wow them at the Palace. You went all confused and silly. You know, as if a grown man starts acting like a kid. Talking about how you wanted to go to school and learn to read and write so you could be smart like everyone else. Crazy stuff like that. You were a different person—like they do with method-acting—and you kept saying you couldn't play with me because your mother would take away your peanuts and put you in a cage."
"Peanuts?"
"Yeah! So help me!" she laughed, scratching her head. "And you kept saying I couldn't have your peanuts. The weirdest. But I tell you, the way you talked! Like those dimwits on street corners, who work themselves up by just looking at a girl. A different guy completely. At first I thought you were just kidding around, but now I think you're compulsive or something. All this neatness and worrying about everything."
It didn't upset me, although I would have expected it to. Somehow, getting drunk had momentarily broken down the conscious barriers that kept the old Charlie Gordon hidden deep in my mind. As I suspected all along, he was not really gone. Nothing in our minds is ever really gone. The operation had covered him over with a veneer of education and culture, but emotionally he was there— watching and waiting.
"What was he waiting for?
"You okay now?"
I told her I was fine.
She grabbed the blanket I was wrapped in, and pulled me back into bed. Before I could stop her she slipped her arms around me and kissed me. "I was scared last night, Charlie. I thought you flipped. I've heard about guys who are impotent, how it suddenly gets them and they become maniacs."
"How come you stayed?"
She shrugged. "Well, you were like a scared little kid. I was sure you wouldn't hurt me, but I thought you might hurt yourself. So I figured I'd hang around. I felt so sorry. Anyway, I kept this handy, just in case…" She pulled out a heavy book end she had wedged between the bed and the wall.
"I guess you didn't have to use it."
She shook her head. "Boy, you must have liked peanuts when you were a kid."
She got out of bed and started to dress. I lay there for a while watching her. She moved in front of me with no shyness or inhibition. Her breasts were full as she had painted them in that self-portrait. I longed to reach out for her, but I knew it was futile. In spite of the operation Charlie was still with me.
And Charlie was afraid of losing his peanuts.
Today I went on a strange kind of anti-intellectual binge. If I had dared to, I would have gotten drunk, but after the experience with Fay, I knew it would be dangerous. So, instead, I went to Times Square, from movie house to movie house, immersing myself in westerns and horror movies—the way I used to. Each time, sitting through the picture, I would find myself whipped with guilt. I'd walk out in the middle of the picture and wander into another one. I told myself I was looking for something in the make-believe screen world that was missing from my new life.