My arms were freed. I turned to see who was behind me. A bald light-skinned Negro, older-looking than the other, my briefcase between his legs. He dusted it off with his hand and, laughing, handed it to me as if it might blow up if it were dropped. “No hard feelings,” he said.
I smiled back, put my knee in his balls. His face turning white. Ran. Hiding out in the men’s room in the basement of Philosophy Hall at Columbia. Sitting in a booth, the door latched. Voices, people, going in and out, washing hands, looking for something. Washing hands. I stayed put. My black case between my legs.
At night, wanting to tell him something, I went to his house for dinner. The beginnings of a plan of action. I had a drink in a metal glass and some cheese and salami on Wheat Thins. (My briefcase on the couch next to me.) Sweat like acid in the raw lines of my hands. I didn’t ask where he was. Give up the peace movement, Curtis. Support our Boys in the Trenches.
Not listening to his wife, looking at her voice, I felt better than I had for a long time. Out of danger. She was nice to me.
I sat on the red-and-gray horse, tried my weight on it, rode back and forth. Gently. Pressing my knees to its sides.
“Curt built that,” she said. “It’s one of the few things he’s ever finished.”
His name in the room like a presence. I looked around; he was in his chair, a gray hat on his head, making a speech. If we all loved each other, he was saying, there’d be no more love.
Her anger, like the sudden touch of something cold, rode past me. “Have you seen him recently?” she said, her eyes behind me. The horse’s tail flying.
“Have I seen who?”
She gave me a cunning look. “It doesn’t become you to play dumb, Christopher. You’re going to break that horse if you keep riding it that way.”
She wanted it broken. “I haven’t seen him recently,” I said.
“Would you tell me if you had? Your activity on the horse is making me nervous. I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
I looked around the room again, the tilt of instinct. The furniture deformed, mad. Parks had gone.
Carolyn was laughing.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was gone?” I said. “I came here to see him.” I got off the horse, her anger pricking me.
Like a sleepwalker, her face clouded over, she walked away. Deserted me. The horse rocking, riderless, dying to a stop.
Unable to sit, needing to move, I walked around the room. There was a letter to Parks left out on top of the desk (a paperweight on it with two fishes head to head inside) from some magazine. Complimenting some essay he had written — “The Murders of Lincoln and Kennedy: The Assassins in Our Mirror”—but saying it wasn’t for them.
I called to Carolyn and got no answer, called again. Went through the drawers of the desk, which were full of useless things — souvenirs, photos, blank paper. A picture of Carolyn, much younger, in a bathing suit standing between two men in uniform, neither of whom was Parks.
I found her lying across the width of their double bed, her head in her arms, as if she were holding something breakable, the room without light.
As I approached, Carolyn lifted her head to see who was there, her hand shading her eyes to no purpose. “Sometimes I need to withdraw,” she said.
“Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
“Why don’t you go home, Christopher? I think I want to be alone now.” Her hips squirming. Wasn’t bad-looking for an older woman.
I wondered what it would be like to be against her body, to feel the heat between her legs. “I’m waiting for your husband,” I said.
She raised herself on an arm. “If that’s why you’re here, you’d better go. He’s not coming back.”
“I didn’t know that you weren’t living together. It’s not my fault.” I closed my eyes not to look at her, but they flicked open, staring irresistibly.
She put on the lamp next to her bed, trembled at something. At seeing the way I was looking at her. The light made her squint. “You didn’t know that Curt had moved out? I don’t know whether to believe you or not, Christopher. It’s possible, of course, that you didn’t know. If you hadn’t spoken to Curt, as you say, though I imagine you have other sources. Have you spoken to his girl?” Something broken in her face gleamed.
I felt the knife in my pocket, got out of the bedroom — the rest of the house in a fever of heat.
“Chris, don’t go,” Carolyn said, coming after me. My back to her. Not knowing where to go. “It’s not you I’m angry at. I’m sorry.” Her hand on my arm, rubbing, patting it, as if it belonged to her. “I’m not always this way, am I?”
“You don’t know what you’re sorry for.” I was suffocating, pulled her arm away so I could breathe, though it made no difference. Chest heavy.
“You hurt me,” she said, her head hung like a child’s.
I stood facing the wall, then I sat down on the couch, then I got up. “I can’t stay here.”
“I’ll fix you another drink. Dinner should be ready in at most five minutes. I promise. I left Jacqueline at my mother’s so we could talk without interruptions.”
“I don’t want any dinner,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“I’ll have to throw it out if you don’t eat it.” Wheedling voice. Charm tuned up to pitch of dog whistle.
When she said that, he used to get stiff with rage, banging his fist on the table, but then he would eat everything in sight. I used to move my hands from the table, afraid he would eat them too.
“Throw it out, god damn it. I’d like to see you throw it out.”
She was grinning, mouth twisted. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? I know, you can’t bear to see anything wasted.”
“You threaten to throw things out but you never do it.”
It was like a game. I went into the kitchen after her. She was tilting a yellow enamel pot over the garbage pail, brown stuff clinging to the sides. I took it away from her, twisting her arm to get it away.
Sitting in his seat, I ate his dinner.
CAROLYN: (Picking at her food, playing with it like some child.) Was Curt really a good teacher?
CHRISTOPHER: (Shrugs. Shovels food into his face.)
CAROLYN: Perhaps he was better than you were able to recognize. Isn’t that possible? One thing I’ve noticed about you, Christopher, is that you’re not very generous.
CHRISTOPHER: (Continues to eat. Chewing noisily with ravenous mouth open.)
CAROLYN: (Pops two tranquilizers in her mouth. Swallows them with wine, coughing.) I’m feeling like a person for the first time in years. (Sticking out her chest. Hate coming off of her in waves.)
Not hungry, I finish everything, hungrier now that I was done. Words buzz through, sticking to the skin like flies on a damp day. My senses like pins. I couldn’t shut her out though she didn’t care whether I listened or not, looked at me without sight. (I could have died in the middle of her story and she wouldn’t have stopped.) Too many voices ticking in my head, women’s voices — the words senseless — the sound like being kissed to sleep.
An all-out surprise attack in which all resources are devoted to counter-value targets …
CAROLYN: Nothing he does satisfies him. He sits around looking miserable, suffering, blaming it on us. He’s incapable of any kind of real pleasure. Self. Self. Self.
CHRISTOPHER: (Foot itches. Removes shoe to get at real pleasure.)
CAROLYN: (SNIFFING. BLOWS HER NOSE. CHANGES SEAT.) He may be happier with her for a while but his unhappiness has nothing to do with who he’s with, and eventually he’ll blame her for his discontent and tell her he wants his freedom and take off and leave her.