He paused then added, “I’ve said what I came to say. And now I’m going.” He stood up. “Forgive me, but I have to get out. Fast.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“What can anybody do?”
“We can always pray.”
“I already did. And look what happened.”
Father Dunphy bowed his head.
A huge man wearing gray sweatpants and a dark green T-shirt with only one sleeve was standing at Johnny’s elbow.
In his hands he held a tray with the remains of his Tuna Terrific. “I knew you was going to eat. Coming in, coming down the line, you said you wasn’t going to eat, but now I see you. You eating more than anybody.” The man laughed. “Here,” he said. “Eat this.” He slapped a coffee-soaked piece of bread on Johnny’s tray and, cackling, went to the garbage can and threw in his tray, his plate, his cutlery and whatever food was left. His cackle rose in pitch, and the man managed to sustain it until he was beyond Johnny’s hearing.
Father Dunphy didn’t raise his head. Johnny took the tray to the garbage can, emptied what was left of the coffee and the soaked tuna, set the tray on the rack, and started toward the door.
The man who’d spit at him was near the entrance. He waited until Johnny got closer, then spit again, this time hitting Johnny’s shoe. Johnny looked down at the shoe, at the spit, then at the man. Slowly he nodded his head. “I don’t blame you, my friend. I don’t blame you at all.” As the man continued to glare, Johnny went out the door.
13.
The burial shroud for The Raising of Lazarus scratched, especially against Johnny’s neck and back. Dempsey had spent almost half an hour draping the winding sheet so it would look as if he was, at this moment, bursting out of it, resurrected. First Johnny had looked too much like a Roman senator about to give a speech, then an Egyptian mummy ineptly wrapped, next a failed exercise in Red Cross bandaging.
Johnny was a fairly patient model, his patience derived mostly from the pleasure he felt as Dempsey’s hands, like two small animals in pursuit of each other, fluttered and scrambled all over his body, across his chest, around his thighs, tugging, lifting, resting in the curves and angles, the crevices and hollows that would never become indifferent to her touch. Twice in her fussing she had come upon places of thrilled response that Johnny hadn’t known were there—despite their unending explorations of safe sex. And once she had hit on a reflex that, through some circuitry of nerve and vein, brought excitement to his shoulder blades. He had been reminded that a knee was capable of yearning and that a thighbone could have wants that would never be satisfied. Although, since the day of her cure, she did not like him to touch her; she was obviously now allowed to touch him, but only out of necessity. This was a painting desperate to be painted.
“Can you hold it just like that?” Dempsey asked. “I won’t take long.” She sat down on the low stool she used when sketching and picked up the pad and pencil. Johnny tried to keep the pose, but he’d made the mistake of rising onto the ball of his left foot. His heel was off the floor and the bent toes began to ache. He wished he hadn’t lifted his head quite so high. He should also have brought his upper right arm closer to his side so it could rest against his ribs. Now it was held out, half raised so his opened hand, angled toward his chest, could suggest the first moment of awe and surprise, as if he were trying to shield his heart from its own reactivated beat. If he could manage to forget that he wasn’t supposed to move, he could probably hold the pose indefinitely, but as usual, he couldn’t take his mind off the task he’d been given. His job was to hold still and therefore all concentration, all thought, all feeling, were given to holding still.
Dempsey’s tongue was sticking out, caught in the corner of her mouth. This meant she had become completely involved in what she was doing.
Sitting on the stool, she moved her head from side to side, then looked directly at him. “Try to imagine you’ve been in a deep, deep sleep where you’ve been given a dream of the deepest contentment and peace. And now, suddenly there’s a sound! A voice is demanding not only immediate and full awakening but an even more insistent command that you abandon your slumbers and surrender completely. Even the memory of the bliss is eradicated. Intrusion, disruption all senseless and beyond comprehension. Wake up! Get up! No appeal. No complaint! Arise! Arise to an unappeasable wrath!”
Two, three times, Johnny tried, but Dempsey refused to be satisfied. “Rage! Wrath! All you are is annoyed. Listen! You’ve been robbed! All you had been given is gone! Never to be found again. Arise! Arise!”
Then in a more challenging voice, she said, “Have you never had taken from you all that was a completion of yourself? You experienced the complete fulfillment of all that you truly are and it’s been obliterated forever! Gone! Gone! Have you never experienced that?”
Johnny slowly lowered himself off the ball of his left foot and wiped his forearm over his face. He swayed the upper part of his body back and forth three times. Then in a frightening voice Dempsey had never heard from him before, he said, “I’m ready. Are you?”
Forward his body went, as he drew himself up to his full height, the left hand held out, the right hand raised to his temple, but held away from him. He parted his lips and widened his eyes to a menacing rage.
“You’re getting it! You’re getting it!” Dempsey called out, “Rage! Wrath! Feel it. Know it. Be it!” She grabbed her sketching pencil and aimed it at the pad opened on her lap. “Don’t move,” she warned in a low voice. “You’ve got it. You’ve got it. Don’t move. Don’t move.”
Johnny had found the way to hold fast, not only to his risen body but to all the anguish, all the inextinguishable rage he felt for what had happened to him and to the bewildered woman he loved with a love that gave a measure to infinity.
He could hear the rough scratch and rub of the pencil, determined and brisk lines. If the sound didn’t end soon, he would go mad.
14.
The painting was finished. Johnny had come and gone from the loft for the sessions needed to complete it, when his schedule allowed. All of his attempts to persuade Dempsey to allow him to move back in were met with the repeated response, “No. I know it’s terribly selfish. And it makes me sadder than anything, but I still can’t say yes. I can’t.”
The true sorrow he saw so often on Dempsey’s face shamed him, and he knew he had to give precedence to her needs rather than his own.
He did, however, have one last request. Since at the beginning of their collaboration, they had walked together from the ferry, would she—to observe the completion of their shared enterprise—walk with him back to the ferry? Her quietly amused answer was, “Of course. And thanks for asking.”
Now they were in Battery Park, walking slowly toward the harbor. It would be a while before the departure of the next ferry. Johnny wanted nothing more than to do whatever he could to prolong this time they would have together. In what he knew was an all too obvious ploy, he said as they passed the pizza concession, “How about a slice?”
Dempsey, to Johnny’s pleasant surprise, shrugged and said, “You want one?”
Johnny smiled to congratulate himself for his success and answered, “I won’t know until I get it.”
With yet another shrug, Dempsey said, “What better reason? Let’s do it.”
The pizza was sloppy. They had to hold it away from themselves so it wouldn’t drip on Johnny’s polo shirt or Dempsey’s clean blouse. “They’re so competitive,” Dempsey said. “The pizza business. Each one keeps piling on more glop than the next. Look at this. It’s intestinal. The cheese, it’s like viscera. The whole mess, a surgical retrieval on a doughy crust. Ugh. Delicious.” She took another bite.