They sat in The Red Chimney on Broadway and 103rd, trying to come to some decision, compromising. “We can watch an old movie on television,” Carol suggested in desperation, “which is a fun thing to do sometimes. Don’t you think?”
Miserable and lonely, his beard itching, Curt had his heart set on a real movie. “You make the choice,” he said. “Whatever you want to see, we’ll see.” He handed her the Cue magazine as if entrusting his life to her.
She turned blindly through the pages, distracted, bored. “Why don’t we wait until there’s something we really want to see?” she said. “We don’t have to go, do we? There are other things to do.”
He might have been — stung by the coincidence — having the same discussion with his wife.
“What else is there to do?” he asked, the joke on himself — the movie all, or there was nothing. Nothing else he wanted to do. Except move, run, fly, go to a movie. He took the Cue and went through it again as if he expected to find something there that hadn’t been there before. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Torn Curtain,” he said.
She pouted. “I wasn’t crazy about it the first time, Curt. If you really want to go, I’ll see it again, but … Is it really necessary for you to go?”
Who could say what was really necessary? What he wanted was necessary at the moment of his wanting it. “Let’s go back to your place,” he said, swatting her on the behind with a rolled-up Cue. It was something he had never done to a woman before.
“I don’t want to,” she said, hurt at his callousness, but they went.
Not to bed. They watched an old movie on television between commercials. Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba. Curt dozed on the couch during a deodorant ad, which merged for him into the movie, became the movie, Gregory’s peck (his own) odorless, cool, inoffensive.
“Should I turn it off?” she asked, Curt dreaming of Susan Hayward, who was seducing him, trying. “Do you want to sleep, sweet?”
He didn’t know whether he did or not, didn’t know what he wanted — the responsibilities of kingship weighing on him. “I’m watching it,” he said, dreaming his eyes open to watch, wide awake in his dreams.
“You’re not watching,” she said.
“I am,” he insisted. Bathsheba, Susan Hayward, Rosemary, his wife, others, fanning him, the breeze perfumed, tapestries on the wall of a deer hunt — Curt the hunter, also the hunted, an arrow embedded in his navel. His shoes coming off, his socks.
Bathsheba’s kiss. “You can sleep on the sofa,” she said. “Or the bed, whichever you prefer.” Kissing his ear. “Where would you rather sleep?” An arrow grazing his flanks, a flight of arrows.
“Anywhere,” he dreamed himself saying. “I want to see how it comes out.” Awake for a moment — his eyes flickering, open, shut. The light dying.
Carol drifted in and out of the room, a performer in the movie, in his dream of the movie, her presence a necessary violation. He missed her when she was gone. It woke him.
“I think maybe you ought to go home,” she said gently. “This isn’t such a good idea.”
He had trouble for a moment remembering where home was; wherever it was, he didn’t want to go.
Stalling, looking for a reprieve, he put his shoes and socks back on, not sure what Carol wanted from him, not sure he wanted to know. “What time is it?” Aware at the same time that it made no difference.
“Do you know what I was thinking?” she said.
The question was unexpected. “What?” Not caring, curious.
She held his hand. “I was thinking that we hardly know each other and …”
“And?”
“And — you’ll be angry at my saying it — we’re like an old married couple. We really are.”
“That’s crap.”
“You’re very domestic, Curt — you are. Don’t be angry. It’s one of the nicest things about you.”
In his spirit, where it counted, he had already left, shutting the door irrevocably behind him, running down flights of stairs to the undomesticated freedom of the street.
He was finishing the coffee Carol had brought him, forcing it down, something inside him burning, unappeasable.
“Curt?”
It struck him, looking at Carol, who was (her feet tucked under her) watching him, that he missed his wife, missed at least the fact of having a wife, missed something. It was a feeling he often had, with people or without them. He felt alone.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” she said, “before. Forget I said it, Curt.”
Forget what? He was worrying about it, annoyed at himself for misunderstanding, when the phone rang. She took his hand, made no move to answer.
It kept ringing, persisted beyond reason. “You can answer it,” he said, feeling violated by the phone — whoever it was on the other end his enemy.
Whoever it was (it didn’t matter), he was jealous of the man who had the presumption to call his woman, this stranger he had made love to, at twenty minutes to twelve — the fact of the call an intimacy in itself. He eased himself up from the couch, stiff, tired, a man who had been sitting, it seemed, in the same position all his life.
The longer he waited — a matter of decency to say good-bye before he left — the less desirable the idea of leaving became for him. Where was there to go? Yet he had the sense that while he stayed he was missing something that was happening somewhere else. It hurt him to be left out — there was nothing more painful. If he stayed the night, it would be hard for him to leave in the morning, he would hang around out of guilt and obligation. And if he stayed, committed himself to staying, he would be missing something on the outside — the opportunity for some new experience (all that mattered in the history of his life taking place away from where he happened to be).
Impatient, he went into the bedroom; Carol curled up on the bed, her back to him, holding the phone as if it were a love object, whispering into it. She turned, waved to him.
“I’m going,” he whispered.
“Wait,” she mouthed the word, holding out her hand to him.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said into the phone, and, frustrating his sense of having been wronged, hung up.
“Who was it?” he asked.
Carol raised her eyebrows at his presumption, studied the hand she was holding. “A friend,” she said, kissing the palm of the hand as if she were offering it a reward, the hand itself. He kissed her on the neck, her flesh like sour milk. A mole winking at him just above the shoulder.
Curt saw his alternatives — a move was necessary, some move, leave or stay, one way or another. So.
He got up, took a step toward the door, two steps, returned to the bed. “I want to make love to you,” he announced.
“No,” she said. “I want you to leave.”
He had his answer. Yet he had the sense that he could have her if he wanted to, and more than that, that all acts, all possibilities of action, were in the will of his power. And so there was nothing to prove. Freedom lay for him — what a discovery! — in the refusal of action, in the denial of need. “I’ll go,” he said. “It’s late.”
THIRTEEN
WHAT DID HE MEAN by leaving him with his wife?
Her face had turned to rubber, and, frightened, not that she was hurt but that she was not real, he had run. Leaving his briefcase with all that mattered behind. Her blood flowing in thin streams, lips plastic, as if she were having a period in her mouth. He was innocent. He hadn’t done it to her. He would not be put to use to plow her field like any beast of burden, he would not be misused. They had tricked him into wanting what he didn’t want. He didn’t want Parks’ clothes or his wife or the hobbyhorse of their kid 01־ their bed. The dumb shock on her face when his fist struck was enough.