“Oh, my God, I wish you wouldn’t say that because you can’t mean it. You know what I want.”
It was true. I knew what he wanted and I wanted the same or stronger, and why wasn’t the wet bar set up yet? Where were Clayton and Rob?
The doctor’s bag lay almost within reach. Suddenly Albert over in his gigantic horsehair chair tapped a neighboring sofa leg with his blind person’s long white cane — official notice that he was about to speak, three loud strikes, as always. Albert cleared his throat and addressed the entire room: “Are drinks being served? If it’s no trouble, I’ll have a gin and tonic. Gilbey’s will do, and no twist, please. That is, if anyone is making a trip to the bar.” Hiram, at that very moment “walkering” himself past Albert’s chair, startled Albert by snorting, “Your stick’s in the way. Move it or lose it.”
“Unbelievable,” Virgil sighed.
“He is a piece of work,” I agreed.
“I love him, though,” said Virgil.
“Yeah.”
We resumed struggling toward the mahogany table defaced by coffee stains and water rings showing where people had spilled or placed glasses down time after time without a coaster. Virgil, still trying to pilot me away from the doctor’s bag, wrapped his arms around my middle, pushed his face against my chest, and hugged tight; his feet dragged. At some point I could brook this no longer. Other people’s terror is so exasperating. I carried him a final uneasy step or two before trying to wrestle free. I grabbed Virgil’s shoulders and pushed him away and his arms flailed but he seized my coat sleeves then lost his balance and we almost toppled, but I caught him. Virgil was showing no respect for physical force in relation to weight distribution: he did not seem to care if he tripped us both and brought me crashing down on his head. How can a person be so heedless of his body? I warned Virgil, “Wait a minute. Stop. Think about what you’re doing. Let me show you something. If you grab from the side and rotate your hips like that, we’re both going to go down, and I’ll probably get hurt but you’ll definitely crack your skull on that lamp. See what I mean? Spread your feet. Wider. You want to give yourself a strong foundation.”
“Like this?”
“Not exactly.”
“How’s this?” he whispered.
“No. You’re making it more complicated than it needs to be. The basic principles are simple. Imagine yourself rooted to the floor.”
“This way?”
“Lower.”
“Okay?”
“Better.”
“Now what?”
“Try pulling.”
“Nothing’s happening.”
“Well, I’m resisting. But, you see, with your center of gravity dropped, your position remains secure, and you can exert great force without losing equilibrium. Go ahead, pull as hard as you can.”
“I don’t feel very good, Doug.”
“Pull, Virgil. Remember, use your legs, not your back. Control the motion.”
“Feel really woozy, Doug.”
He’d sunk, now, to his knees, almost. Looking down, I saw Virgil’s feet splayed far apart and his soft arms embracing me, holding on awkwardly. I could feel, through his clothes and through mine, Virgil’s body’s distressing warmth, its fever. I can’t say it felt that bad.
“No more wrestling lessons, Doug. I don’t like wrestling.” He sounded out of breath. His voice was scarcely audible. A smell was rising from him.
“All right. But in the future if you’re not going to wrestle correctly, don’t wrestle at all, because you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t think about what you’re doing, and this is precisely what happens every time we wrestle, you don’t think, and that’s how people wind up in the hospital. Let go of my leg.”
“You’re going to put the dope in me.”
“I only want to look in the fucking doctor’s bag. Virgil! Please!”
The magic word. He let go. He tipped sideways and slumped to the floor with hands pressed between legs and his knees drawn close in a fetal ball, twitching.
I took a quick glance around the room. It would not do to be caught pilfering from the black bag. People wouldn’t understand, and I could be criticized for invasion of privacy or some equally vague infraction.
I stepped over Virgil. Brothers ranged all around. The library was busy with activity. Barry on the floor rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Jeremy on the purple divan complained loudly, “My neck, my neck.” Twins in pairs leaned over to stroke Jeremy’s face and his hands. “You’re going to be all right,” soft voices assured him. Immediately to the left of this, Siegfried, Raymond, Milton, and others watched Fielding gesture pathetically with his camera parts — the viewfinder, the battery pack, the cracked film canister — holding up these pieces for inspection, showing the damage, telling and miming his role in the conflict, building a narrative. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I’m sorry if I hurt him. You’ve got to believe me. Do you believe me?” I looked away then, over to my right, and saw that Seth and Vidal and Gustavus and Clay had quietly turned away from Fielding, away from Jeremy, Max, Barry, and the rest, and had returned to, were preoccupied with, erotic pamphlets and broadsheets. “Have you ever used this position, Vidal?” Clay asked his older brother. Vidal peered over Clay’s shoulder at Clay’s crumbling, dated bestiality scene. “Which position? The ‘Virgin in the Manger’?”
Quickly I snuck the doctor’s bag from beneath the table. What was here? Syringes? Nothing but syringes? A little cotton, alcohol, bandages, a stethoscope, and a sampling of stoppered vials containing liquids.
Virgil twitched. I dug a hand in the bag and lifted out a fistful of loose, unwrapped, probably used needles, and also a selection of vials. I did not, in my hurry, have time to read their labels.
All these things I distributed into my inside jacket pockets.
I closed the black bag and slid it back in place under the coffee table. Then, on a lark, I brought the bag out and unzipped it, quietly, again. Stethoscopes are great amusement, I think. Who can resist a stethoscope? I hauled this one out and inserted its rubberized earpieces. That’s when I noticed that I was, in fact, watched.
“Hello, Max.”
The opiated stare of the botanist was on me heavily. We gazed at each other’s face. I have to admit I was ready to turn away in sadness, or feelings very like sadness, when I saw Max’s mouth fall open. Max’s gray tongue came out and began licking. My tie had become wound about Max’s neck. A problem? Max’s arms and his hands were bony things reaching out from blazer and shirtsleeves pushed up and bunched in linen folds around the elbows. Max’s legs showed below trouser cuffs hiked almost to the knees, well above the socks. Their thinness was alarming and unnerving, because unexpected. When had Maxwell grown so frail, so brittle and waxy? Was it the drug? He looked as if he had been tossed onto his back from a great height and broken. One black loafer — a black, tasseled loafer that appeared, from where I stood, brand-new, very nice and comfortable, obviously soft to the touch — was hanging almost off its foot. The handsome shoe dangled from my brother’s toe.
“You look like you could do with a pick-me-up,” I said to him. His mouth leaked a dry gurgle and I took this delicate noise as affirmation. Certainly Clayton and Rob would soon be setting up the bar. The problem with getting a drink around here is fighting through the crowd at the drinks table. Perhaps our blood familiarity permits styles of behavior that most of us would probably suppress in other, less intimate settings — that is, shoving, elbowing, light punching, and related aggressive gestures. It is rare, at our drinks table, that one hears the invitation “After you.” For this reason I often buddy up to Spooner, who packs his own cognac. Live and let live. Spooner was nowhere in sight and Max’s tongue was sliding farther and farther out of his mouth and Virgil was showing signs of a possible seizure in the works and Hiram was as usual chastising someone who did not deserve it, and Albert was whacking his cane on the furniture and Jeremy was sobbing. The time now was shortly after seven o’clock. The Doberman was howling and each new yelp reverberated wildly and unremittingly inside the manifold ceiling vaults above our heads, a chorus of barking. Suddenly Barry clutched his forehead and moaned loudly before collapsing backward in one more failed bid to rise up and see straight.