The prospectus seemed to him temperate, logical, and convincing. But he recognized that it lacked enthusiasm. It was as stirring as an insurance policy, as inspirational as a corporate law brief; he poked it across the table and sat staring at it.
The fault, he knew, was his; he had lost interest. Oh the plan was valid, it made sense, but it no longer seemed to him of much import.
And he knew the reason for his indifference: Celia Montfort. Compared to her, to his relations with her, his job at Javis-Bircham was a game played by a grown boy, no worse and no better than Chinese Checkers or Monopoly. He went through the motions, he followed the rules, but he was not touched.
He sat brooding, wondering where she might lead him. Finally he rose, took his trench coat and hat. He left the prospectus draft on the table, with the garbage of his dinner and the dregs of cold coffee in the plastic cup. On his way to the executive elevator he glanced through the window of the Computer Room. The night shift, white-clad, floated slowly on their crepe soles over the cork floor, drifting through a sterile dream.
The rain came in spits and gusts, driven by a hacking wind. There were no cabs in sight. Blank turned up his coat collar, pulled down the brim of his hat. He dug toward Eighth Avenue. If he didn’t find a cab, he’d take a crosstown bus on 42nd Street to First Avenue, and then change to an uptown bus.
Neon signs glimmered. Porno shops offered rubdowns and body painting. From a record shop, hustling the season, came a novelty recording of a dog barking “Adeste Fidelis.” An acned prostitute, booted and spurred, murmured, “Fun?” as he passed. He knew this scruffy section well and paid no heed. It had nothing to do with him.
As he approached the subway kiosk at 42nd Street, a band of young girls came giggling up, flashing in red yellow green blue party dresses, coats swinging open, long hair ripped back by the wind. Blank stared, wondering why such beauties were on such a horrid street.
He saw then. They were all boys and young men, transvestites, on their way to a Halloween drag. In their satins and laces. In evening slippers and swirling wigs. Carmined lips and shadowed eyes. Shaved legs in nylon pantyhose. Padded chests. Hands flying and throaty laughs.
Soft fingers were on his arm. A mocking voice: “Dan!”
It was Anthony Montfort, looking back to flirt a wave, golden hair gleaming in the rain like flame. And then, following, a few paces back, the tall, skinny Valenter, wrapped in a black raincoat.
Daniel Blank stood and watched that mad procession dwindle up the avenue. He heard shouts, raucous cries. Then they were all gone, and he was staring after.
She went away for a day, two days, a week. Or, if she really didn’t go away, he could not talk to her. He heard only Valenter’s “Mith Montforth rethidenth,” and then the news that she was not at home.
He became aware that these unexplained absences invariably followed their erotic ceremonies in the upstairs room. The following day, shattered with love and the memory of pleasure, he would call and discover she was gone, or would not talk to him.
He thought she was manipulating him, dancing out her meaningful ballet. She approached, touched, withdrew. He followed, she laughed, he touched, she caressed, he reached, she pulled back, fingers beckoning. The dance inflamed him.
Once, after four days’ absence, he found her weary, drained, with yellow bruises on arms and legs, and purple loops beneath her eyes. She would not say where she had been or what she had done. She lay limp, without resistance, and insisted he abuse her. Infuriated, he did, and she thanked him. Was that, too, part of her plan?
She was a tangle of oddities. Usually she was well-groomed, bathed and scented, long hair brushed gleaming, nails trimmed and painted. But one night she came to his apartment a harridan. She had not bathed, as he discovered, and played the frumpish wanton, looking at him with derisive eyes and using foul language. He could not resist her.
She played strange games. One night she donned a child’s jumper, sat on his lap and called him “Daddy.” Another time-and how had she guessed that? — she bought him a gold chain and insisted he link it about his slim waist. She bit him. He thought her mad with love for him, but when he reached for her, she was not there.
He knew what was happening and did not care. Only she had meaning. She recited a poem to him in a language he could not identify, then licked his eyes. One night he tried to kiss her-an innocent kiss on the cheek, a kiss of greeting-and she struck his jaw with her clenched fist. The next instant she was on her knees, fumbling for him.
And her monologues never ended. She could be silent for hours, then suddenly speak to him of sin and love and evil and gods and why sex should transcend the sexual. Was she training him? He thought so, and studied.
She was gone for almost a week. He took her to dinner when she returned, but it was not a comfortable evening. She was silent and withdrawn. Only once did she look directly at him. Then she looked down, and with the middle finger of her right hand lightly touched, stroked, caressed the white tablecloth.
She took him immediately home, and he followed obediently up that cob webbed staircase. In the upstairs room, standing naked beneath the blaring orange light, she showed him the African masks.
And she told him what she wanted him to do.
6
Daniel Blank inched his way up the chimney of Devil’s Needle. He could feel the cold of the stone against his shoulders, against his gloved palms and heavy boots. It was dark inside the cleft; the cold was damp and smelled of death.
He wormed his way carefully onto the flat top. There had been light snow flurries the day before, and he expected ice. It was there, in thin patches, and after he hauled up the rucksack he used his ice ax to chip it away, shoving splinters over the side. Then he could stand on cleated soles and search around.
It was a lowery sky, with a look of more snow to the west. Dirty clouds scummed the sun; the wind knifed steadily. This would, he knew, be his last climb until spring. The park closed on Thanksgiving; there were no ski trails, and the rocks were too dangerous in winter.
He sat on the stone, ate an onion sandwich, drank a cup of coffee that seemed to chill as it was poured. He had brought a little flask of brandy and took small sips. Warmth went through him like new blood, and he thought of Celia.
She went through him like new blood, too; a thaw he knew in heart, gut, loins. She melted him, and not only his flesh. He felt her heat in every waking thought, in his clotted dreams. His love for her had brought him aware, had made him sensible of a world that existed for others but which he had never glimpsed.
He had been an only child, raised in a large house filled with the odors of disinfectant and his mother’s gin. His father was moderately wealthy, having inherited from an aunt. He worked in a bank. His mother drank and collected Lalique glass. This was in Indiana.
It was a silent house and in later years, when Daniel tried to recall it, he had an absurd memory of the entire place being tiled: walls, floors, ceilings plated with white tile, enamel on steel, exactly like a gleaming subway tunnel that went on forever to nowhere. Perhaps it was just a remembered dream.
He had always been a loner; his mother and father never kissed him on the lips, but offered their cheeks. White tiles.
The happiest memory of his boyhood was when their colored maid gave him a birthday present; it was a display box for his rock collection. Her husband had made it from an old orange crate, carefully sanding the rough wood and lining it with sleazy black cloth. It was beautiful, just what he wanted. That year his mother gave him handkerchiefs and underwear, and his father gave him a savings bond.