“Your movies are bad!” a voice called at him from the far side of the room.
“You use people and things and you don’t care who gets hurt! Is that your idea of love?” heckled an unidentifiable other from the darkness over by Sociology.
“My camera! Oh, my poor camera. Look at my camera,” the filmmaker grieved.
From the vicinity of the fireplace came a voice harsh and familiar to us alclass="underline"
“Knock it off.”
Who else but Hiram. Here he came on his walker, haltingly one-handing it along, lame and clattering and now giving, I thought, uncharacteristically generous counseclass="underline" “Look here, Fielding, it’s not the end of the world. What is broken can be mended. A lot of people don’t have movie cameras and they don’t complain, they’re happy. Perhaps you might take this opportunity to exercise some self-control. Stand tall and be a leader. Set an example the rest of us can follow.” And then, gesturing toward Jeremy: “Someone help this unfortunate young person off the floor. Can’t you see his suffering? Can’t you hear his crying? How many nights have I spent listening to the dry whimpering of the young in this house? How many mornings have I woken to thoughts of death, the pounding of boots in the hall. I would offer our brother assistance myself, but, as you can see, this is not possible”—pausing to lean on his walker and wheeze a few breaths before raising his injured wrist for all to witness—“tonight I was almost murdered, and my hand has been destroyed.”
Hiram’s fist in the air was vermilion and swollen. Talking had fatigued him. With his good hand he gripped the walker, and his body collapsed heavily against its metal railing. Now with brittle hips he gave a push, and the walker scooted a tiny distance forward. Clack clack. Hiram held on. We watched him shuffle feet. Next he hoisted himself up. “Clear out of my way. I’m not in my grave yet, though I am sure there are many in this room who might wish I was,” Hiram croaked. The Doberman — leashed in place to the art nouveau chair he’d overturned at the outset of Maxwell’s screaming episode — barked a high-pitched bark, as if trumpeting Hiram’s arduous journey around the reading lamps and across the room.
In the meantime, a small mob containing mostly twins convened around Jeremy. Matching hands reached out to palpate Jeremy’s shoulders and his back and, very gently, Jeremy’s head. Matching voices inquired, “Where does it hurt?” “Is it your neck?” “Are you able to breathe?” “Do you feel dizzy?” “What’s your birthday?” “Jeremy? Look at me. Can you look at me? Jeremy, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“Kind of dizzy. January eleventh. Two,” Jeremy said between sobs. Helping hands helped Jeremy stand, and he was able to walk enough to make it, with an escort, to the cigarette-burned purple divan, where he reclined, a velvet pillow supporting his head, his feet dangling off the end.
“Oohhh,” he said.
This was no time to be playing doctor, but with Jeremy so helpless — he’d remembered his birthday incorrectly (it’s the eighth or the ninth, I think) and miscounted Winston’s fingers held only inches before his eyes (looked to be three from where I was standing, not two) and should not have been walking—and with Barry temporarily out of commission (precipitous double vision sending him to his back whenever he tried to get up), that is exactly what I decided to do. I honestly cannot say what possessed me, exactly. Jeremy’s pain was, undeniably, great. It was true that the whole night lay before us, drinks and dinner. Shouldn’t we all, under such circumstances, be happy? I saw Barry’s black bag beneath a table — it must have been kicked there in all the commotion — and I thought it would be easy to locate the suitable anti-inflammatories or painkillers and administer to the lame and the halt. Medical ignorance did not seem an impediment. I was thinking, I think, that if I could get that doctor’s bag and root around in it a minute, my hand would be guided.
While I was at it, I could maybe slip Virgil a tranquilizer. I know I had promised, earlier in the evening, that no such plan would cross my mind. But what can you do with a person as unrelaxed as Virgil? Why not give him a little candy to help him through the night?
How to persuade Virgil to go along with this. Virgil’s aversion to health-care paraphernalia is well known. Getting the doctor’s bag would not be simple. It was possible that I could release my grip on Virgil’s arm, then violently wrench Virgil’s hands free from my own, cast him off and abandon him, so to speak. How often had I promised myself, on these evenings of ours, a sabbatical from Virgil’s clinging? But things are never so simple. We seem, Virgil and I, always to find one another. It is true that he craves sympathy. I imagine his anxiousness, his frailty, his bleak and misanthropic outlook, as intimations of a sophisticated personal style — Virgil’s Artful Guardedness — evidence not of weakness but of thwarted vitality: Virgil’s will to thrive masked by a public demeanor of hopelessness, inadequacy, emotional and moral dereliction. And I imagine, probably wrongly, that if I just push him, if I goad him in the right way and with the appropriate insistence, he will forswear this deception and fight his way through the range of his adult feelings, whatever they may be, rage, disgust, elation, gratitude; and, in gratitude, become the kind of person I need and want him to be, the kind of man I most desire for fellowship in this room peopled with loud, assertive types — a genuine and strong ally.
Tonight he was looking more and more sickly. His proximity was becoming stifling. I longed to break loose from him. If I did, if I left Virgil unattended, he would very likely fall dizzily to the floor, and if he did not fall down, he would certainly run away and lock himself in the rare-book room, and I would have to come after him and talk sweetly to him through the door, and then I’d want to beat the crap out of him.
“I want your help,” I told him.
“What for?”
“To do something.”
“What?”
“Will you help me?”
“It depends.”
“Oh, come on, Virgil. I’m begging you. Christ. Jesus. I’m standing here holding on to you all night, keeping the bad spirits away, taking your temperature, being a friend. Do me a favor already.”
“All right.”
“We’ve got to get that doctor’s bag. It’s right over there. See it?”
“Wait a minute, Doug.”
“Let’s get the bag,” tugging him toward the mahogany coffee table with leather satchel underneath, Virgil in tow but frantic.
“What are you going to do, Doug? Doug, what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t you want to check on Max?”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Max isn’t sleeping. His eyes are open. Look. He needs you.”
“We’ll check on Max in a minute. Now come on,” yanking Virgil by the arm — hard.
“You want to give me an injection. Don’t stick me, Doug. Please don’t stick me,” he whimpered. We were all tangled up with each other. My feet stumbled over his. He said, “Doug, I’m thirsty. I’m so thirsty.”
I felt it important to hurry. Things seemed critical. Virgil’s face wore a bad color. “Just a little farther, Virgil. Cooperate with me. Fortitude. I know you have it in you. Don’t disappoint me, Virgil, and I’ll bring you a drink.”