In December, just before Christmas, Lee showed up at the Metastasio without the tell-tale bulge of the insanity belt spoiling the line of his trousers. His romance with Bladebridge was over, and so, pretty much (and not coincidentally) was his friendship with Daniel.
Life, to be fair, was not all striving and yearning and certain defeat. In fact, barring those frustrating sessions hooked up with the Fluchtpunktapparat, Daniel had never been happier, or if he had, it was so long ago he couldn’t remember what it had been like. Now that he had a registered job, he could take out books from the public library, though with Mrs. Schiff’s enormous stock of books at his disposal that dream-come-true was almost a superfluous luxury. He read, and listened to records, and sometimes just lazed about without a care. The whirl of his social life only accounted for two or three evenings a week, and he worked out at the gym with about the same regularity.
Living out of the way of nightly temptation, he found his appetite for sex much reduced, though his life-style was still a long way from strict celibacy. When he did feel like mixing in, he went downtown to his old haunts and so preserved his reputation at the Metastasio for friendly inaccessibility. As a result, there was a decided falling-off of active interest among those patrons of the opera who, quite understandably, hoped for a better quid pro quo than Daniel was prepared to offer. What with the rationing that had gone into effect in January, it was beginning to be a buyer’s market for good-looking boys. His life grew still quieter, which suited him just fine.
Strangely (for he’d feared it would be a source of upset, or at any rate of depression), Daniel found he liked living with Boa and looking after her. There was a set of exercises he went through each morning, moving her limbs so as to keep the muscles in a minimally functional condition. While he worked her balsa-light arms in the prescribed semaphores, he would talk to her, in somewhat the half-conscious, half-serious way that Mrs. Schiff would talk to Incubus.
Did Daniel think she was listening? It wasn’t out of the question. Unless she’d left the earth utterly, it stood to reason that she might sometimes come back to see how her abandoned vehicle was getting on — whether it might, conceivably, be driven again. And if she did, it didn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that she would also take an interest in Daniel, and stop for a while to hear what he had to say. He knew now that they’d never truly been husband and wife and that he had, therefore, no legitimate grievance at being left in the lurch. What he’d thought had been love for Boa was just being in love. Or so he would tell her while he manipulated her light, lifeless limbs. But was it really so? It was hard to remember the exact feelings of twelve, no, thirteen years ago. As well to recall the vanished weathers of those few months they’d been together, or the life he’d led in some previous incarnation.
So it did seem strange to find himself actually feeling a kind of fondness for this bag of bones that lay in the corner of his room, breathing so quietly that she never could be heard, even from close by. Strange to suppose that she might be with him, nevertheless, at any moment of the night or day, observing, and judging, like a bonafide guardian angel.
14
Marcella, being a season subscriber, continued to turn up at the Metastasio every Tuesday. Finding that Daniel had become an usher, she couldn’t resist seeking him out at intermission or (after he’d been transerred to the Dress Circle) lingering out on 44th Street to waylay him after the show. “Just to say hello.” What she wanted was gossip about the singers. Any little scrap she accepted with the reverence of one being initiated into solemn mysteries. Daniel thought her a fool, but he enjoyed the role of high priest and so continued to supply her with crumbs and tidbits about her demigods. After a while he took to sneaking her into a good seat that he knew to be standing empty. These attentions did not go unnoticed by his colleagues, who affected to believe him smitten with Marcella’s very deniable charms. Daniel went along with the joke, praising her in the gross hyperboles of libretto verse. He knew that despite their banter the friendship did him credit among his fellow-ushers, all of whom had a friend, or set of friends, whose adulation and envy was a principal source of their own self-importance. That Daniel had his Marcella showed that for all his airs he wasn’t above such quotidian transactions. Indeed, his involvement went beyond merely basking in the false glory of an unmerited esteem; Marcella insisted on expressing her gratitude to Daniel by bringing him five-pound cannisters of Hyprotine Nutritional Supplement, which she “shoplifted” from a deli where she had established an understanding with the clerk at the check-out counter. What a world of mutuality it was!
One evening, after Daniel, with the collusion of Lee Rappacini, had managed to get her into the orchestra to see the last two acts of what was billed as Sarro’s Achille in Sciro (though, in fact, the score was Mrs. Schiff’s creation from first to last, and one of her best), Marcella accosted him at the corner of 44th and 8th with more than her usual urgency. Daniel, who was wearing only his uniform and freezing his shapely ass off, explained that tonight was out of the question, since he was on his way to a dinner at La Didone (with, once again, the constant Mr. Carshalton, whom nothing, it seemed, could discourage).
Marcella, insisting she needed only a minute, reached into a duffle-sized handbag and took out a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates with a big red bow around it.
“Really, Marcella, that’s going too far.”
“Oh, it isn’t for you, Ben,” she said apologetically. “It’s a Thanksgiving present for Ernesto Rey.”
“Then why don’t you give it to him? He’ll be singing tomorrow night.”
“But I’ll be working then, you see. And anyhow I couldn’t. I really just couldn’t. And if I did get up the nerve, he probably wouldn’t take it, and if he did take it, he’d probably throw it away as soon as my back was turned. That’s what I’ve heard, anyhow.”
“That’s because there might be poison in it. Or something unseemly. It’s been known to happen.”
Marcella’s eyes began to glisten. “You don’t think because I’ve said a word or two in praise of Geoffrey Bladebridge, that I’m part of some clacque, do you?”
“I don’t think it, no, but Rey doesn’t know you from Adam. Or Eve, for that matter.”
Marcella wiped her tears away and smiled to show that her heartbreak was of no account. “That’s why—” she snuffled, “—if it came from someone he knows, it wouldn’t be so futile. You could tell him the chocolates are from someone you know. And trust. And that they’re just my way of thanking him for the pleasure of so many beautiful performances. Would you do that for me?”
Daniel shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
If he’d stopped to think he might have answered that himself and been spared what was to come. The wise thing to have done would have been, as Marcella suggested, to dispose of the box of chocolates as soon as she was out of sight, or to eat them himself, if he dared. Instead he did as he’d promised and gave the chocolates that same evening to Rey, who was also dining at La Didone, with his agent Irwin Tauber. Daniel explained the situation, and Rey accepted the gift with a nod, not even bothering to ask him to thank his benefactress. Daniel returned to his escargots and Mr. Carshalton’s descriptions of the Vermont wilderness, and he thought no more about it.