I regret everything, p.16
I Regret Everything, page 16
The next / room holds / the key / to my / demise.
Demise? What? Where did that come from? The Iambic Pentameter Strategy did not always work perfectly.
I tried again.
In a / new room / a girl / waits to / be born.
I wanted to burst through the wall and land on Mr. Best’s lap, have him run his hands through my hair. I wanted to feel him get hard against my thigh, his tongue dancing with mine. But still I waited. On the street two guys were singing “Happy Birthday” to someone named Saffron, their voices marinated in liquor.
After I’d been lying in his bed for ten minutes with the lights out the fear was like a wild animal thrashing in a rickety cage. Trying to get at me, teeth gnashing, claws outstretched, wild-eyed. The terrifying images kept cycling through my brain and I became more and more unnerved. Why wasn’t Mr. Best in here with me? He had kissed me earlier in the evening so I knew he was attracted to me. And since I had been through something utterly horrible, didn’t I deserve some comfort? And didn’t he deserve it, too? He had done the hard part, literally saving my life. Why couldn’t he just lie here next to me and make everything stop vibrating? I wanted to bury my face in his neck, to hold him even if we didn’t have sex, but I wasn’t going to leave the bedroom because I didn’t want to make this about my needs. He had no family, no one he could depend on while he was trying to get well. The least I could do was not be the cause of more problems. But it was impossible to be alone. Perhaps it would be all right if I told him I was famished. We had skipped dinner. It made sense that I’d need food and if I said that he wouldn’t think I was an emotional basket case.
—I don’t feel like being by myself.
Mr. Best was hunched at the small kitchen table, a laptop open in front of him. He looked totally exhausted, as if the events of the evening had physically diminished him. But when he saw me he straightened his spine.
—I don’t blame you.
—Are you hungry?
At a local market, the kind with ten varieties of lettuce, we bought some chicken—yes, chicken, because I didn’t want to throw myself at him in his kitchen and he was still shell-shocked and all I had done was cause drama (and he had more than enough of that) so, yes, chicken—and new potatoes and some green beans that I could sauté with garlic. Mr. Best bought a large bottle of fresh-squeezed berry juice because he was on a new health regimen. We were quiet on the way back to the apartment, both of us wiped out from the evening, and the only words we exchanged were the kind you can’t remember because there’s a sense that you’re becoming more comfortable, more at ease, drawing closer and closer so the words become detached from their meaning as they float in the air all around you and quietly connect into a net that keeps the animating energy from lifting you both off the sidewalk.
While I seasoned the chicken I kept sneaking glances at Mr. Best at the kitchen table futzing on his laptop but he didn’t seem to notice. A desire to get to know him better, this savior, this poet and shield, fought with a fleeting sense of decorum that told me to leave him alone. But decorum never stands a chance with me. When I wondered if he would mind if I asked him a personal question, he told me to go ahead.
—You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want but this thing you have? How serious is it?
—It’s serious.
—You have great hair. Really super thick.
—Thanks.
—Doesn’t chemo make it fall out?
—Not always. When’s the chicken going to be ready? It smells great.
He closed his laptop and checked the stove. It was easy to see I had gone as far as Mr. Best was going to allow me to go right now. Neither of us said anything for a while. He just stood by the stove and stared at the kitchen timer. When he had his back to me I took a close look to see if I could notice anything different since he had started treatment. It was hard to tell. He didn’t look gaunt but you don’t lose weight instantly. And his coloring looked all right, not haggard or yellow, just maybe a little tired, understandable since it had been a super-stressful evening. When I realized what I was doing my chest got tight because that was the moment the whole situation sunk in. I was examining him. It was clinical, but it also felt sexual, and the whole sensation left me lightheaded. My nerves tingled, not because I didn’t think I belonged in this apartment but because I thought I did. At least I was pretty sure I thought I did. It was difficult to know. Was life without meds going to make me overthink everything?
He was looking at the chicken through the oven window. I rose, refilled my glass, and sat down again. I took a glug of the wine, so refined. Some of it dribbled down my chin and I wiped it with the heel of my hand. The kitchen timer shattered the silence. Mr. Best was taking the food out of the oven and placing it on the counter when I came up behind him and put my arms around his waist. He turned around expressionless and I began to stammer another apology when he smiled and that smile let me in and held me and crooned comfort and belief in me. It was confidence and resignation, connection and isolation, defeat and victory, possibility and nothingness, all of the complexity that only poets can put into words. He touched my chin and kissed me lightly. He opened his lips and I slid my tongue into his mouth. When his hands cupped my ass my doubts evaporated and I grabbed the hem of my dress and lifted it over my head. I stood in front of him in my bra and panties and I could feel he was already hard so I pulled his zipper down. He unfastened my bra and covered my breasts with soft kisses while I caressed his cock. I lifted my thigh and he split my fig and we had sex standing up in the kitchen. He supported my legs with supple hands and I came and then I came again and he came. He kissed my lips and my eyelids and my neck and my nipples. I remember thinking, Jesus, that took long enough, but it was worth the wait.
—Spaulding, he said, I don’t think you should call me Mr. Best anymore.
I started laughing because, really, what can you do when someone you’ve just had sex with for the first time tells you that?
He started laughing, too, and for a few seconds I forgot he was supposed to be sick, and that I was almost murdered, and there might be blood on the carpet in Stonehaven, and the Tesla had a dent in it. With his body next to mine, his chest rising and falling in easy rhythm, his tired eyes clear, it was impossible to remember any of that.
—Jeremy sounds weird, I said. But if you insist.
He kissed me.
—I’m afraid I do.
There was chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer and we put scoops on slices of the homemade pecan pie I had brought that afternoon. He turned a radio on. Classical music played as we sat naked at the kitchen table. Jeremy told me about the year he spent as a student living in Rome, his first attempts at writing poems, and the unexpected detail that he’d never had a serious girlfriend. When there was a pause in the conversation, I said,
—Was this a time-killer?
—What do you mean?
—You said, and I’m quoting, Sex is nothing but a time-killer, something you do when the conversation is exhausted.
—When did I say that?
—That night in the cab.
—When you’re trying to be clever and failing, sometimes bullshit comes out. That’s not how I feel. Look, when I jumped out of the cab and ran into the crowd in my lawyer costume and some guy cold-cocked me, I lay there in the street and for a moment I thought, why get up? If I stay on the ground all my problems will end under the feet of that mob. But I wanted to know that you were safe. Don’t read too much into what I just said. What I’m telling you is someone had to act like an adult. And I failed.
An unfamiliar sensation gripped me. It’s hard to know what to call it because certain words can get you in trouble, yet at that moment I was more intertwined and allied, yes, totally allied, with another human being than ever before.
—Why didn’t you tell me this?
He kissed my neck and said he’d be right back. I watched him go. Good shoulders that tapered into a trim waist and a compact ass. Lightly muscled like a dancer. A lightly muscled poet. And his manhandle was beautiful, too. It swayed as he walked back into the room a moment later holding a small object. He sat next to me so our shoulders touched and showed me a green carving the size of my open hand. It was a seated child with the head of an elephant.
—A friend of mine gave this to me. It’s a Hindu god called Ganesh.
—He’s cute. Is this jade?
—Soapstone. It’s not worth a lot of money or anything. I kept it for luck.
—How’s your luck been?
—Abysmal. Maybe it’ll work better for you.
He handed over the figurine. It was heavier than I had expected. When I put it on the table I noticed it was anatomically correct.
—He’s an uninhibited little elephant-boy-god, isn’t he?
Jeremy agreed that Ganesh was pretty freewheeling and led me to the bedroom. There was sex again and this time his tongue traced patterns between my legs and I shuddered and came and came and came.
JEREMY
Remover of Obstacles
My sleep was not untroubled and as I fought for consciousness in the early Brooklyn light I remembered there was a dangerous lunatic wandering Connecticut, traces of his presence were probably in Ed Simonson’s house, and the chemotherapy was starting to make me unsteady. But the attack had been reported, it would take a forensic team to uncover anything, and as for the chemo, I could only hope it was working.
Spaulding was sleeping on her side, facing me. Not only was this tableau entirely unplanned, assiduous attempts had been made to avoid it. That is not entirely true. The truth is that my will had incrementally crumbled and now that she was curled up warm in my bed, all of my protestations, hesitations, and fears seemed pointless. Her father or her mother would be expecting her but that could be sorted out later. The collapse of my resolve was not surprising, only that it had taken so long. Days without Spaulding were an endless stream of anodyne tasks peppered with intimations of mortality. To deny small joys no longer made sense.
When she stirred I gently touched her shoulder. The sharp intake of breath startled me. She contracted and made an involuntary noise, somewhere between a squeal and a grunt.
“You scared me.”
“I only touched you with my fingertips.”
“Remember what happened last night?”
“You’re right. I’m a dunce.”
Spaulding had dealt with the situation admirably and leftover fragments of fear and confusion were understandable. She was hungry so I scrambled some eggs. Draped in one of my old tee shirts, she sat at the kitchen table sipping orange juice and inspected the Ganesh.
“He’s supposed to be the remover of obstacles.”
“Are you Hindu or something?”
“I’m not religious.”
“At all?”
“When we die, we die,” I said as I handed her a plate of eggs. I served myself and sat across from her.
“Okay, so. We should go to Chinatown.”
“What’s in Chinatown?”
“There’s this healer down on Mott Street. I swear he cured my mother of alcoholism.” This information was imparted in the awestruck tone of one who had witnessed a miracle. “I went with her, the two of us. The guy said he could cure anything.”
“I’m not in the market for some kind of woo-woo cancer cure.”
“How do you know it’s woo-woo?”
“I’ll think about it, okay?” She grunted and told me that was something her parents would say.
I spooned shade-grown Sumatran into a large press while Spaulding tapped on her phone. The silence was unwelcome so, although it was none of my business, I asked what she was doing. She told me she was texting her father to inform him she had stayed with a friend from her writing workshop. The idea of deceiving Ed bothered me but I was on a new path and did not suggest she do otherwise.
“Is this a real Andy Warhol?”
Spaulding stood by the fireplace in the living room with her hands on her hips and scrutinized the lithograph. I told her it was. “Who’s the subject?”
“That would be my father.”
“Really? Your father knew Andy Warhol?”
“He did legal work for him. Sometimes they socialized.” Spaulding waited. She wanted to hear more.
“It sounds like he was cool.”
“In the most superficial way. A week before I was going to leave for college he accused me of siding with my mother in the divorce and told me he wouldn’t be contributing a penny to my tuition. So his timing wasn’t that cool. And he did ruin my mother’s life but I didn’t take sides. I got that he was gay, that he’d been repressing it for years and needed to be true to his nature. But it didn’t make him noble and that’s how he wanted me to think of him.”
“So why did you hang his portrait?”
“Because it’s a Warhol? I don’t know. That’s a really good question. It’s the only thing he ever gave me, other than a biography of Winston Churchill.” My feelings about my father were not entirely resolved and I didn’t want to explore the surge of emotion I was experiencing. “Let’s not talk about this.”
Spaulding wandered around the apartment, trailing eros. Without asking she put a Pixies CD in the player and sank into the sofa with The Collected Works of Allen Ginsberg on her lap. I asked if she’d ever read Frank O’Hara.
“Who?”
“He’s a poet who wrote a lot about New York City.”
I handed her a paperback copy of Lunch Poems.
“Read this instead of Ginsberg. No one better captures New York City. Killed by a dune buggy on Fire Island.”
“That’s so random.”
“He was forty.”
I wanted to tell Spaulding that he was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art who would take walks during his lunch break then return to the office where he would coax poems about what he’d seen from an old Royal typewriter. That a high school teacher gave me this book and it was one of the reasons I became a poet. But I began to feel like I might start to cry again. What was at the root of these waterworks? My father? The uncertain nature of my illness? Or was it the dawning realization that after years of believing it to be impossible and nearly giving up hope someone could see what I saw, apprehend it the same way, that she was for me and because I wasn’t dead yet there was still time to do something about it.
Spaulding closed the Ginsberg volume and opened the O’Hara. One leg crossed over the other, she flexed her toes. As the Pixies’ jittering yip filled the apartment I fell to my knees and from sheer gratitude covered her feet with kisses. She giggled.
“Don’t tell me you’re a foot guy.”
“No,” I said, as she slipped the tee shirt over her head and my kisses migrated from her toes up her ankles to her calves, knees, thighs, pussy, stomach, ribcage, breasts, neck, ear, cheek, and lips and I swept Frank O’Hara out of the way.
In my obsession over last night, the most astonishing occurrence of all was elided: Spaulding had offered to cover for me. No one in my life had ever done anything so selfless. Yet Spaulding Simonson stared death in its rheumy eye and offered herself up. Had I not gone back to the house, Karl Bannerman would have killed her. Contrary to my dire view of myself, I had acted courageously. Dragon vanquished, maiden saved. The sensation of well-being I experienced was further intensified by the earthquake of my orgasm.
Whether because I was uncomfortable with this valiant role or with anything resembling actual intimacy, when we finished a familiar visitor arrived in the form of guilt and the condition of Karl Bannerman took on fresh urgency. Since I had nearly killed him, I wanted to know that he was getting medical attention.
After sluicing several cups of coffee down my throat I did an Internet search of every hospital in a ten-mile radius of Stonehaven. I told Spaulding that it was important from a moral perspective to find out if this man had survived. Maybe it was more paranoia but it didn’t seem like a good idea to call the hospitals from my phone. When I mentioned I needed to go out for a few minutes and explained why, she did not tell me it was unreasonable and announced she would come too.
At an Arab-run store on Court Street I purchased a disposable cell phone, the kind favored by drug dealers and terrorists, and as Sunday morning Carroll Gardens ebbed and flowed around us called the two hospitals in the Stonehaven area. Neither would give me the information. We began to walk back to the apartment.
“Best. Freeze.” The voice was an assault. I froze. Across the street a school playground with Sunday morning kids cavorting on monkey bars. Ahead of me an old lady walking a small dog.
I slowly turned my head and saw—Margolis? He wore a frayed tee shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals.
“Do I look like a land baron?”
My expression must have been one of almost cartoonish incredulity since he immediately asked if I had forgotten our expedition to Montauk this morning.
“The house. Yes, yes, the house.” My head nodded violently.
“I’m Spaulding.”
In my nervous attack I had completely forgotten she was there.
With feigned élan I declaimed, “Spaulding, yes. This is Margolis.” He gave me a quizzical look then greeted her the way someone might greet a maid cleaning a hotel room to which they had returned after having forgotten a pair of sunglasses. Ordinarily this would have bothered me—Couldn’t he have been friendlier? Why the snobby reaction? Was he judging me for being with someone Spaulding’s age?—but under the circumstances it barely registered.
