The Angel Esmeralda Part 9

"I don't know. It's complicated."

"Because I don't feel anything."

"I think I feel helpless. These paintings make me feel how helpless a person can be."

"Is that why you're here three straight days? To feel helpless?" he said.

"I'm here because I love the paintings. More and more. At first I was confused, and still am, a little. But I know I love the paintings now."

It was a cross. She saw it as a cross and it made her feel, right or wrong, that there was an element of forgiveness in the picture, that the two men and the woman, terrorists, and Ulrike before them, terrorist, were not beyond forgiveness.

But she didn't point out the cross to the man standing next to her. That was not what she wanted, a discussion on the subject. She didn't think she was imagining a cross, seeing a cross in some free strokes of paint, but she didn't want to hear someone raise elementary doubts.

They went to a snack bar and sat on stools arranged along a narrow counter that measured the length of the front window. She watched the crowds on Seventh Avenue, half the world rus.h.i.+ng by, and barely tasted what she ate.

"I missed the first-day pop," he said, "where the stock soars like mythically, four hundred percent in a couple of hours. I got there for the aftermarket, which turned out to be weak, then weaker."

When the stools were all occupied, people stood and ate. She wanted to go home and check her phone messages.

"I make appointments now. I shave, I smile. My life is living h.e.l.l," he said, blandly, chewing as he spoke.

He took up s.p.a.ce, a tall broad man with a looseness about him, something offhand and shambling. Someone reached past her to snag a napkin from the dispenser. She had no idea what she was doing here, talking to this man.

He said, "No color. No meaning."

"What they did had meaning. It was wrong but it wasn't blind and empty. I think the painter's searching for this. And how did it end the way it did? I think he's asking this. Everybody dead."

"How else could it end? Tell the truth," he said. "You teach art to handicapped children."

She didn't know whether this was interesting or cruel but saw herself in the window wearing a grudging smile.

"I don't teach art."

"This is fast food that I'm trying to eat slow. I don't have an appointment until three-thirty. Eat slow. And tell me what you teach."

"I don't teach."

She didn't tell him that she was also out of work. She'd grown tired of describing her job, administrative, with an educational publisher, so why make the effort, she thought, now that the job and the company no longer existed.

"Problem is, it's against my nature to eat slow. I have to remind myself. But even then I can't make the adjustment."

But that wasn't the reason. She didn't tell him that she was out of work because it would give them a situation in common. She didn't want that, an inflection of mutual sympathy, a comrades.h.i.+p. Let the tone stay scattered.

She drank her apple juice and looked at the crowds moving past, at faces that seemed completely knowable for half a second or so, then were forgotten forever in far less time than that.

He said, "We should have gone to a real restaurant. It's hard to talk here. You're not comfortable."

"No, this is fine. I'm kind of in a rush right now."

He seemed to consider this and then reject it, undiscouraged. She thought of going to the washroom and then thought no. She thought of the dead man's s.h.i.+rt, Andreas Baader's s.h.i.+rt, dirtier or more b.l.o.o.d.y in one picture than in the other.

"And you have a three o'clock," she said.

"Three-thirty. But that's a long way off. That's another world, where I fix my tie and walk in and tell them who I am." He paused a moment, then looked at her. "You're supposed to say, 'Who are you?'"

She saw herself smile. But she said nothing. She thought that maybe Ulrike's rope burn wasn't a burn but the rope itself, if it was a rope and not a wire or a belt or something else.

He said, "That's your line. 'Who are you?' I set you up beautifully and you totally miss your cue."

They'd finished eating but their paper cups were not empty yet. They talked about rents and leases, parts of town. She didn't want to tell him where she lived. She lived just three blocks away, in a faded brick building whose limitations and malfunctions she'd come to understand as the texture of her life, to be distinguished from a normal day's complaints.

Then she told him. They were talking about places to run and bike, and he told her where he lived and what his jogging route was, and she said that her bike had been stolen from the bas.e.m.e.nt of her building, and when he asked her where she lived she told him, more or less nonchalantly, and he drank his diet soda and looked out the window, or into it, perhaps, at their faint reflections paired on the gla.s.s.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was standing at the kitchen window as if waiting for a view to materialize. There was nothing out there but dusty masonry and gla.s.s, the rear of the industrial loft building on the next street.

It was a studio apartment, with the kitchen only partly walled off and the bed in a corner of the room, smallish, without posts or headboard, covered in a bright Berber robe, the only object in the room of some slight distinction.

She knew she had to offer him a drink. She felt awkward, unskilled at this, at unexpected guests. Where to sit, what to say, these were matters to consider. She didn't mention the gin she kept in the freezer.

"You've lived here, what?"

"Just under four months. I've been a nomad," she said. "Sublets, staying with friends, always short-term. Ever since the marriage failed."

"The marriage."

He said this in a modified version of the baritone rumble he'd used earlier for "the state."

"I've never been married. Believe that?" he said. "Most of my friends my age. All of them really. Married, children, divorced, children. You want kids someday?"

"When is someday? Yes, I think so."

"I think of kids. It makes me feel selfish, to be so wary of having a family. Never mind do I have a job or not. I'll have a job soon, a good one. That's not it. I'm in awe of raising, basically, someone so tiny and soft."

They drank seltzer with wedges of lemon, seated diagonally at the low wooden table, the coffee table where she ate her meals. The conversation surprised her a little. It was not difficult, even in the pauses. The pauses were unembarra.s.sed and he seemed honest in his remarks.

His cell phone rang. He dug it out of his body and spoke briefly, then sat with the thing in his hand, looking thoughtful.

"I should remember to turn it off. But I think, If I turn it off, what will I miss? Something so incredible."

"The call that changes everything."

"Something so incredible. The total life-altering call. That's why I respect my cell phone."

She wanted to look at the clock.

"That wasn't your interview just now, was it? Canceled?"

He said it wasn't and she sneaked a look at the clock on the wall. She wondered whether she wanted him to miss his interview. That couldn't be what she wanted.

"Maybe you're like me," he said. "You have to find yourself on the verge of something happening before you can begin to prepare for it. That's when you get serious."

"Are we talking about fatherhood?"

"Actually, I canceled the interview myself. When you were in there," he said, nodding toward the bathroom.

She felt an odd panic. He finished his seltzer, tipping his head back until an ice cube slid into his mouth. They sat awhile, letting the ice melt. Then he looked directly at her, fingering one of the dangled ends of his necktie.

"Tell me what you want."

She sat there.

"Because I sense you're not ready and I don't want to do something too soon. But, you know, we're here."

She didn't look at him.

"I'm not one of those controlling men. I don't need to control anyone. Tell me what you want."

"Nothing."

"Conversation, talk, whatever. Affection," he said. "This is not a major moment in the world. It'll come and go. But we're here, so."

"I want you to leave, please."

He shrugged and said, "Whatever." Then he sat there.

"You said, 'Tell me what you want.' I want you to leave."

He sat there. He didn't move. He said, "I canceled the thing for a reason. I don't think this is the reason, this particular conversation. I'm looking at you. I'm saying to myself, You know what she's like? She's like someone convalescing."

"I'm willing to say it was my mistake."

"I mean we're here. How did this happen? There was no mistake. Let's be friends," he said.

"I think we have to stop now."

"Stop what? What are we doing?"

He was trying to speak softly, to take the edge off the moment.

"She's like someone convalescing. Even in the museum, this is what I thought. All right. Fine. But now we're here. This whole day, no matter what we say or do, it'll come and go."

"I don't want to continue this."

"Be friends."

"This is not right."

"No, be friends."

His voice carried an intimacy so false it seemed a little threatening. She didn't know why she was still sitting here. He leaned toward her then, placing a hand lightly on her forearm.

"I don't try to control people. This is not me."

She drew away and stood up and he was all around her then. She tucked her head into her shoulder. He didn't exert pressure or try to caress her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or hips but held her in a kind of loose containment. For a moment she seemed to disappear, tucked and still, in breathless hiding. Then she pulled away. He let her do this and looked at her so levelly, with such measuring effect, that she barely recognized him. He was ranking her, marking her in some awful and withering way.

"Be friends," he said.

She found she was shaking her head, trying to disbelieve the moment, to make it reversible, a misunderstanding. He watched her. She was standing near the bed and this was precisely the information contained in his look, these two things, her and the bed. He shrugged as if to say, It's only right. Because what's the point of being here if we don't do what we're here to do? Then he took off his jacket, a set of unhurried movements that seemed to use up the room. In the rumpled white s.h.i.+rt he was bigger than ever, sweating, completely unknown to her. He held the jacket at his side, arm extended.

"See how easy. Now you. Start with the shoes," he said. "First one, then the other."

She went toward the bathroom. She didn't know what to do. She walked along the wall, head down, a person marching blindly, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door but was afraid to lock it. She thought it would make him angry, provoke him to do something, wreck something, worse. She did not slide the bolt. She was determined not to do this unless she heard him approach the bathroom. She didn't think he'd moved. She was certain, nearly certain that he was standing near the coffee table.

She said, "Please leave."

Her voice was unnatural, so fluted and small it scared her further. Then she heard him move. It sounded almost leisurely. It was a saunter, almost, and it took him past the radiator, where the cover rattled slightly, and in the direction of the bed.

"You have to go," she said, louder now.

He was sitting on the bed, unbuckling his belt. This is what she thought she heard, the tip of the belt sliding out of the loop and then a little flick of tongue and clasp. She heard the zipper coming down.

She stood against the bathroom door. After a while she heard him breathing, a sound of concentrated work, nasal and cadenced. She stood there and waited, head down, body on the door. There was nothing she could do but listen and wait.

When he was finished, there was a long pause, then some rustling and s.h.i.+fting. She thought she heard him put on his jacket. He came toward her now. She realized she could have locked the door earlier, when he was on the bed. She stood there and waited. Then she felt him lean against the door, the dead weight of him, an inch away, not pus.h.i.+ng but sagging. She slid the bolt into the chamber, quietly. He was pressed there, breathing, sinking into the door.

He said, "Forgive me."

His voice was barely audible, close to a moan. She stood there, and waited.

He said, "I'm so sorry. Please. I don't know what to say."

She waited for him to leave. When she heard him cross the room and close the door behind him, finally, she waited a full minute longer. Then she came out of the bathroom and locked the front door.

She saw everything twice now. She was where she wanted to be, and alone, but nothing was the same. b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Nearly everything in the room had a double effect-what it was and the a.s.sociation it carried in her mind. She went out walking and when she came back the connection was still there, at the coffee table, on the bed, in the bathroom. b.a.s.t.a.r.d. She had dinner in a small restaurant nearby and went to bed early.

When she went back to the museum the next morning he was alone in the gallery, seated on the bench in the middle of the room, his back to the entranceway, and he was looking at the last painting in the cycle, the largest by far and maybe most breathtaking, the one with the coffins and cross, called Funeral.

MIDNIGHT IN DOSTOEVSKY.

We were two somber boys hunched in our coats, grim winter settling in. The college was at the edge of a small town way upstate, barely a town, maybe a hamlet, we said, or just a whistle-stop, and we took walks all the time, getting out, going nowhere, low skies and bare trees, hardly a soul to be seen. This was how we spoke of the local people: they were souls, they were transient spirits, a face in the window of a pa.s.sing car, runny with reflected light, or a long street with a shovel jutting from a s...o...b..nk, no one in sight.