Bereavements (20 page)

“Bruno?” The barest hesitation. At a second-hand bookstore—“both of us browsing; he was so cute, and curious . . . those beautiful eyes lifting each time I picked up a book—so interested to see what I’d found, that soon we were talking and, before I left, I invited him to tea.”

“Angel?” How resourceful she was! Instantly—“he was playing in Washington Square Park and his spinning what-is-it-now—frisbee—hit me square on the cheekbone.” She showed Robert a non-existent bruise, tossing her head away with “well, perhaps it’s gone by now. Anyway—about Angel . . .”

She’d saved his name for last because she wanted to talk about him first. He was, of the three, the only one who had really touched her deeply. Somehow, in his own strange way (she said) “he’s
important
to us; we think he’s
right.”

The doctor stared at her so long and peculiarly she began to feel uncomfortable. “Did I say something—wrong?”

“Well, the emphasis was on different words, but you said ‘he’s important to
us, we
think he’s right.”

She was baffled. A bit of coldness touched the back of her head. “Did I?” . . . wonderingly. In the next moment, she was irritated. “Oh Robert! Always picking, picking. Words, nuances! Yes—
us, we!
If Jamie were . . .
with us”
(she couldn’t manage the word “alive” with the implication that he wasn’t) “you’d not even have noticed! It’s a habit, that’s all. We did so many things together, it became second nature to say
us, we.
He said it, too. Surely you remember!”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do. Not that I ever considered it exactly healthy.”

How he spoiled everything, this man! No wonder she hadn’t married him! But seeing his sweet concern, the lines of worry on his forehead, the selfless look of love in his eyes, she knew in the next instant why she almost had.

But the time, the desire to talk about Angel, was over. She moved on casually.

Bruno? She’d probably never see him again, despite her promise. Or maybe she would. A decision of this kind was difficult. He was so disarming . . . and immensely entertaining—with his grand manners, and even grander vocabulary! She pitied him, of course, and he broke her heart. But—

The “but—” and the long silence that followed it seemed sufficient explanation. At least for the doctor who, after sighing, shrugged a small shrug and smiled a small smile.

“You don’t have a drug,” she asked, “that makes tiny men tall, and straightens twisted bones, and takes the bitterness out of fatally wounded hearts?”

Her question was sentimental and, yes, playfully cruel, and self-indulgent. It angered the doctor.

“Yes, we
do,”
he replied coldly. “Not a drug, exactly, but something that works equally well. It’s a human emotion. It’s called charity.”

She was stunned. Then—”Oh, Robert! You know I didn’t mean it that way! And if I did, I’m sorry. You forget how confused I am, and how . . . how brave I try to be . . . about everything. What illusions I must create! How I must smile, smile, smile until I think my jaw will break—just because I
am
so considerate of others. I had to eat . . .” beginning to cry “eat one of those dreadful petit fours of his—so dense, so thick with sugar I nearly strangled to death . . . all because he brought them. Charity, yes, but surely within the disciplines of one’s own natural or sorely acquired nature.”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Carma. All you want to do is escape with your sundry prescriptions. You’ve made a verbal shambles of the afternoon, and told me nothing—either as doctor or friend.”

“I’ve told you
everything
—from the time I was here last until this very moment.”

“What about this Martin Dzier . . . ”

“ . . . latka.”

“Yes.”

“You mean—you approve?”

“Of what? Is there something to approve?”

“Of my . . . seeing so young a young man.”

“Seeing, seeing . . .
what is that word?”

He with his “what’s
new!”
and “how do thinks
look!”

“Seeing,”
she repeated, “going
out
with . . . being,
being
with.”

His surprise couldn’t have been genuine; he faked it, exaggerating, to make his point emphatic.

“Of course I approve, if
my
approval has any meaning at all. It’s part of your recovery. I approve of your . . . being with . . . someone, anyone . . . preferably me, but if not, then Angel, Bruno, Martin . . .” He’d exhausted the list.

“Anyone,” she said, pushing his prescription pad toward him, “except
Jamie.”

The infamous tiger cages of South Vietnam were probably larger than the room in which Bruno David Carlson-Wade lived. Or, fond of hyperbole, so he imagined it when hating it the most.

Actually, it was adequate, and had been so all along.

The grossly-fat superintendent, strangled for breath after they’d initially climbed the five flights of stairs, hadn’t been able to resist a little joke: looking at the small room and his tiny prospective tenant, he remarked slyly, “Just your size. You don’t want to rattle around like the last pea in a Green Giant peapod.”

There was no window at all, but since the room was under a slanted roof and contained a large skylight, it was, in the daytime flooded with light. At night, through hazy glass, though he washed it often and tried to keep it clean, Bruno could make out a few faint stars.

It was early fall when he took the room, and since he was not to live out the winter, he had no knowledge or warning of the unbearable bite of the summer sun through the skylight, the insufferable build-up of heat that throbbed in the room, making it literally, unliveable without air-conditioning, even at night.

After the Y, where he had lived so publicly for months, having to shower and shave in a kind of dormitory or army-type lavatory with many others, the room was at first a heaven of seclusion and privacy. True, it had no bathroom, but that wasn’t so bad, since he used the one in the hall on the floor below, and that, at least was private, and had a stout lock on the door.

The room itself was badly furnished, but contained the essentials’, a small, studio-style bed which opened to accommodate two (should that miracle ever occur!), an electric stove with a pint-size oven, and a sink. In addition to these, there was a kitchen-type table with a stained, cigarette-burned formica top and two single straight-back chairs,

No TV, but a radio for a time-check and the news, and his typewriter, plus ten (ten!) reams of manila paper—awaiting the transposition of his novel from longhand. Little more. Oddly, no closet at all, the few clothes he owned simply hanging on a make-do pole along one wall.

Meager. Spartan. But for a writer it was, for a while, entirely sufficient for his bodily needs.

He had no body for this world anyway. Only a head and a heart. And talent; yes, great talent he was sure. If it wasn’t for his belief in that, he would have killed himself long ago, or, not finding the kind of courage suicide required, surrendered: becoming a clown in a circus, jumping and tumbling in the sawdust every night, and in the daytime cleaning out the animal cages, carrying endlessly all that slop and stink.

So nothing hurt, really, until he looked into a full-length mirror. And this he managed never to do, unless one happened to catch him unawares. Then, the full impact of what he saw almost felled him.

However, late one night, soon after his tete-a-tete, rendezvous, tryst, divine dialogue with the fantastic Mrs. Evans, something else, something more and much different began to hurt—though he didn’t know for a day or two quite what it was, or why.

But suddenly the aspiring, hopeful, functioning writer became the dazed, day-dreaming, plodding writer, and nights that used to produce pages of manuscript, now turned out only short paragraphs, sometimes a mere sentence or two.

Ultimately Bruno knew why, and, of course, the answer was extremely simple. No mystery at all to the lovely, growing, bittersweet ache of his emotions. If, along with this, went an occasional dizzying shock of feeling in (like his head and his hands) his full-size, man-size genitals, his unconscious wouldn’t give birth to its meaning, allowing it to escape only in the mystery of dreams, and the flood of sweetness against a hugged-to-his-heart midnight pillow.

To make ends meet, though they never did, Martin Dizerlatka had a roommate, Grover Davis, a licensed cab-driver, but also an actor when he managed to find a job: twenty-four years of age, long-haired, homely, lazy, generous and loving.

He was apt to be found at home at odd hours, day or night, since he cruised the streets when taxis were most in demand, his life regulated to the flow of human traffic, not the tick of a clock.

He was also a dedicated pot-head, and when Martin came in was greedily nursing the last quarter-inch of a glowing joint on a toothpick.

“How’d it go?” he asked, crosseyed to keep his mouth from a burn.

“Oh—” the elation and confidence Martin had felt as he bounded down the steps of the Evans home had disappeared, “I’m not sure. I behaved like an idiot for the first ten minutes but—” he shrugged “—at least I didn’t get thrown out.”

“A cold reading is tough,” Grover squeaked, sucking down air, treating the subject as he would have a report on an audition. “Will you get a callback?”

Without removing his topcoat, Martin threw himself into a chair. “The other way around. That’s what worries me. I’m supposed to call
her.”

“Well
man!?
What more do you want? You got it made. Tell me, what was the feel of it? Talking to her; what’s she like?”

“Fabulous. Everything you’ve ever heard.”

“I never heard nothing’”—enjoying the two negatives. “Only what you said; I don’t read no society page. Come on, love, is she ass or not, and when do we start dividing the bread? One for you, one for me, one for you . . . ”

Martin had a clean mouth but was suddenly so angry at Grover, he said, “Fuck off, will you! I’m sick of your dirty talk. And that stink in here.” He glanced about the living room—at scattered pages of the
Daily News,
empty coke cans, a half-eaten restaurant sandwich with balled wax-paper next to it, the slice of pickle and curled apple skin on the floor. “When you’re here, the place always looks like a shithouse. If you have to fuck up like this, why don’t you do it in your own room!” And with that, Martin rose, walked straight to his bedroom and slammed the door.

“Wow!”—from Grover; softly, underbreath. He went to Martin’s room, knocked softly.

“Hey man! I’m sorry. I got a big mouth. But no offense; you know that.”

He tried the door but found it locked.

And after a few minutes silence, gently: “Hey man! I’ll clean up. And use a whole goddamn can of that new air-spray shit we bought. Room’ll smell like a rose. You’ll see.”