“No. I mean, of course I felt sorry for you, but that’s not why I came in. It’s because your past gave me an excuse to forgive you. And I did want an excuse. I had been wanting one for a long time.”
“I can’t blame you for being selfish and keeping this from me. At first you were more selfless with me than I deserved.”
“I hope you’ll still feel that way after I tell you that your brother wants to resume contact with you. I’m sure it’s something you would have wanted to know sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”
I never saw Damon so surprised and excited. “Are you sure? Did he actually say it or are you assuming?”
“He said it. His words were, ‘Tell Damon I want to resume contact. Maybe it’ll help him regain some of his sanity.’ The reason he added that last part was because I told him you had kidnapped me and all that.”
Damon insisted that we pay for the bill right then, before we had finished our lunch, so he could go back to our hotel room and call his brother.
I offered to wait in the lobby to give him privacy while he talked on the phone, but he said he no longer wanted to hide any part of his life from me.
He was able to reach Philip at home, and they talked for about half an hour, catching up on the last eight years of their lives. He told Philip he’d been watching him on The Bold and the Beautiful every day, and then added, “Oh, she told you already.” He also told him about his invention of small clouds, and that he was trying to make them solid. “You’ll have to see them,” he said. Finally, he told Philip that we were in love, and then he laughingly informed him that I had kept him in a cage until just a few weeks ago. At that point Damon handed me the receiver; Philip wanted to speak to me.
“So,” said Philip, “you didn’t tell me you had my brother locked up while you came to visit me.”
I chuckled.
He quickly added, “I’m very happy for the both of you, and I hope you’ll come and visit me again. And don’t tell him you threw me off the diving board or he might get jealous.”
I laughed.
Damon discussed with Philip his plan to fly out to L.A. that evening to visit him.
As soon as he hung up, Damon made love to me, adoringly and cheerfully.
Then he wanted to go to Bloomingdale’s.
“Why?” I asked.
“I can’t keep wearing this outfit; it’s too embarrassing, this lace.”
“But I don’t think they have transparent clothes for men there.”
“I’m sure I’ll manage to find something better than this.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
At Bloomingdale’s, he headed for the men’s department, on the main floor, where there was not the slightest piece of transparent clothing in sight. I knew; I had searched before.
But Damon didn’t look around. He went straight to the turtleneck department and grabbed a very opaque, dark blue one. I looked at that piece of opaque clothing as if he had lost his mind and was handling a very dangerous material that he was highly allergic to and that could have disastrous consequences when handled improperly, like how a nut is, for people allergic to nuts. He took off his lace shirt with almost as much eagerness as he had taken off his clothes for my parents two days ago. He donned the hazardous turtleneck.
He then grabbed a pair of pants from a rack, took off the turtleneck and handed both items to the salesman in order to pay for them. The salesman eyed his bare chest, and mumbled some kind of disapproving comment like, “The store doesn’t approve of improper attire.”
“I understand,” said Damon. “Forgive me.” And Damon put the shirt back on as soon as he had bought it.
He then took off his lace pants, and for a few seconds was completely naked from the waist down, which caused the salesman to loudly say, “Excuse me sir, this is absolutely unacceptable in this store. If you don’t put your clothes back on this instant, I will call security, and action will be taken against you, which I can assure you will not be pleasant. You will be punished according to the policy of our store, which consists in being deprived of your privilege to return your purchases for a full refund.”
By the time the man had finished talking, Damon had finished putting on his new opaque pants. I took his lace clothes out of the wastebasket where he had deposited them. I thought this was wise, in case of clothing intolerance or a delayed allergic reaction.
But I wasn’t around him long enough to find out. We embraced each other — he passionately, me tearfully — and he was off to L.A.
Chapter Fifteen
Damon’s visit with his brother had lasted a few days and had gone well. It had left him feeling relieved that they had resumed contact, but pained at the sight of his mangled body. What was most upsetting, he said, was the extent to which the child’s death had scarred his brother’s expressions.
After visiting his brother and before returning to me, Damon worked on an invention that had nothing to do with trying to make clouds solid. Even though we spoke on the phone every day, he wouldn’t tell me more about it.
During Damon’s absence, I tried to persuade my parents to accept my relationship with him. I begged them; I even fenced with them willingly. They threatened to cut me off. I threatened to cut them off.
“He’s dangerous. You can’t be safe with him,” said my father.
“Yes, I can be, and I have been, and I will be.”
“Don’t you care what this does to us? You are ruining our health. Not one moment passes these days when we are not stressed.”
“He’s not dangerous anymore,” I said. “What made him dangerous has been resolved. He can even wear opaque clothing now.”
“Oh boy, the mere thought of that dinner and his striptease gives me a headache. It’s easy to say he’s not dangerous, until we find you lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“And then won’t you wish you had listened to us,” interjected my mother.
“He’s an extraordinary person,” I said meekly.
“Why? Because he can make small clouds?” said my father. “That’s the most useless thing anyone could ever do. What good is it to anyone?”
“And he’s working on an invention now that sounds very remarkable,” I said.
“I’m sure humanity can do without it.”
Neither they, nor I, made any progress. Perhaps they softened a little more than I did, but they refused to make any promises to behave in a more civilized manner, to stop chasing me in cabs, to stop stalking my building, etc.
The next person I had to deal with was Nathaniel. I had seen him on rare occasions, and he had been acting so miserable since I broke up with him, despite my willingness to remain friends of sorts, that I asked him about it. He finally said: “You broke up with me. I accepted it. You agreed to remain friends. But you haven’t been acting like a friend. You’ve become secretive and uncommunicative.”
“I told you it would be different,” I said. Nevertheless, to make him feel better — or worse, I’m not sure — I told him all about my involvement with Damon.
To my surprise, he was entertained by my story of the cage, and of my meetings with Damon in public places for safety reasons, and of my overall love affair with my own kidnapper.
The only thing he reproached me for was having introduced Damon to my parents.
“What were you thinking?” he said, a bit harshly. “That was an ill-thought-out move on your part; it was bound to fail miserably. Now you may have alienated him.”
I was annoyed by his pessimistic attitude, but said nothing. The visit ended well; Nathaniel seemed in good spirits — considerably cheered up, in fact — to my slight confusion. I wondered if I understood anything about people.