“I like you too, Larry.”
“Good.”
“It’s very good. I like you. I love you, y’ bastard. You’re a good guy. And that’s the whole secret, Larry. Love. Not success and not beauty and not the gook in the sewer. Love. You know something?”
“What?”
“I’m gonna get married someday. I’m gonna kick all the tarts out of my apartment, and I’m gonna get a wife. A sweet little wife who doesn’t give a damn what the reviewers say, and who’ll cook me scrambled eggs.”
“You like scrambled eggs?”
“I hate scrambled eggs,” Altar said. “Let’s go down the Village and find some girls.”
“I’ve got to go,” Larry said.
“Sure, excuse me. Forgive me. Home to your wife. I know. You worked it out, didn’t you?”
“Altar...”
“Sure, I can see you worked it out. I told you, didn’t I? Don’t lose your head, just don’t lose it. Love, that’s the secret. Home to the wife, home to the woman. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take a woman to bed tonight.”
“That’s not love, Altar,” Larry said.
“I know, I know, that’s only the success carrot of love. You got love. What you got with your wife is love. I told you it’d work out, didn’t I? Sure. Jesus, I wish I could love some girl. Listen, I love your wife. What’s her name? Eve? I love her. I love Eve. The mother of all men, Eve, I love her. Listen, you go home to her, hear me?”
“I...”
“Hurry up, ’cause this bitchin’ storm’s gonna catch her all alone with the hurricane lamps. Hurry up, Larry. Go to her and love her, love that wonderful goddamn Eve! And keep designing those magnificent houses, man, let them pour out of you. And love your wife and bring forth men children only and love your wife! Fill the earth, Larry! Fill it with your houses and your kids and you’re on the road to eternity! Go home to Eve, man, and thank God your life doesn’t rise and fall on what a review says about a goddamn cloth binding stuffed with paper!”
Larry looked at his watch. “I’ve really...”
“Sure, sure. Wait for me. I’ll get my coat and then I’ll come down with you. I’m gonna get my coat and drive with the top down and let the damn storm crash all around me! And I’m gonna get me a woman and come back here and let the storm call the music!”
He got his coat and they walked downstairs and they stood together on the sidewalk. The storm was ready to break. The wind furiously hurled newspapers across the sidewalk. There was a sullen roar in the streets. The skies were swollen and ready to burst in fury.
“So the house is finished,” Altar said.
“Yes.”
“And now what?”
“I don’t know.”
“The age of uncertainty,” Altar said. He nodded bleakly, the wind whipping at his hair. “Only one thing’s sure, Larry.”
“What’s that?”
“People come and go. You meet as strangers... and most of the time you part as strangers. And if you ever really get to know another human being, it’s a miracle.” He took Larry’s hand in a firm grip. “I get the feeling I won’t be seeing much of you now that the house is finished. I get that feeling. Take care of yourself, y’ bastard.”
“I will. You too.”
Altar dropped his hand. Larry felt there was no more he should say, and he sought words, and then the moment was gone. Altar turned abruptly and started down the street toward his convertible, walking quickly for a big man, his broad shoulders pushing against the wind which swept sullenly through the narrow concrete canyon. Larry watched him as he climbed into the car. He heard the engine start, and then the top of the car came down slowly, slowly.
Larry went back to his own car and began driving toward the bridge.
35
He felt rather good when the storm broke around him.
It broke suddenly. There was a stillness one moment and then instant and absolute raging fury which shook the car. He was still miles from the bridge when the rain burst from the sky. He could feel the sudden lurch of the automobile as a stronger wind captured it. He clung tightly to the wheel, picking up the challenge of the storm like a dropped gauntlet, grinning into the suddenly flooded windshield. Rain swept across the glass in successive sheets, impervious to the sniping of the windshield wipers. The glass became a blurred dissolving pane of pinpoint lights through which he squinted to see the road. He did not slow the car. With the wind shrieking around him, shrilling at the windows, screaming over the roof, combining with the incessant rain which smeared red, green and white lights across the windshield, he felt he was locked in a safe metal chamber which hurtled straight and true into an indistinct tunnel of howling furies.
The night did not frighten him at all. As he drove into the rain, smiling and squinting through the blurred windshield, he felt in complete control of the vehicle. He felt as if he were starting a great adventure, a lively and interesting journey, at the end of which he would be rewarded for his courage and tenacity. Courageously, tenaciously, he tried to see the road, his foot on the accelerator, pushing the Dodge through the storm. He thought of how childishly naïve Altar’s concept of marriage was, wondered how fast the winds outside were, wondered if Maggie had left the house yet. And beneath all his idle thoughts, like a tingling undercurrent of anticipation, he had a sense of something about to happen. The windshield was dissolving before his eyes and he could barely see the road. He could feel the buffeting wind and water wrenching at each straining joint of the automobile, but he felt safely encased in a strong metal cocoon.
He supposed it was only the storm and the egotistical idea of puny man pitting himself against mighty nature; just that coupled with the feeling of aloneness as he pushed through the night, and yet he couldn’t shake the persistent feeling that he was on the verge of a magnificent realization. He drove hunched over the wheel, fully expecting a sudden illuminating light to burst into the automobile, exploding in incandescent brilliance around him, a roman candle of truth and revelation. He wondered about sudden truth, rejecting it as a stylized concept for the practitioners of Altar’s art. There was no such thing as sudden truth. Verity simply piled upon verity to form one day a shining edifice which only seemed to have materialized suddenly out of thin air. And yet, even rejecting it, he felt as if he were about to touch sudden truth, felt as if he would soon be able to see clearly through the raging storm, see through it into the core of life, and beyond that to death, and into eternity, and into the very soul itself.
He felt the way he’d felt in Puerto Rico, watching the funeral procession.
And suddenly he began to tremble.
His mind seemed crystal clear, brimming with thoughts, flooding with solutions. His mind grabbed for the scattered glittering pieces, clicking them into place until he thought he would burst with the sheer thrill of near-revelation. With luminous clarity, he could remember the first time he saw Maggie and everything that had followed afterward, the meeting of two strangers, the clasping of alien hands. With persistent logic, he wondered why they had reached for each other? What in him had not been satisfied? What in him and the thousands of others who broke the marriage contract caused the unrest? Was it the struggle for Altar’s prize, for success, for beauty in a world grown suddenly too complex for a simple animal?
Hadn’t his yielding to desire been a simple rebellion, a basic retrogression to something clearly understood in a world of incomprehensible things and ideas? Hadn’t the sex been a sure thing in a world of uncertainties? An accomplishment in a world of unrealized dreams and frustrated goals? Wasn’t that why he’d sought Maggie and found her?