Dreams of Bread and Fire (6 page)

Ani, said Will.

She should be called Nelly, Eugene commented. Don’t you think Nelly suits her, William? She has the same mane as my son’s horse, called by that very name.

I like it, Eugene. I like it very much, Will responded.

Wait a minute, Ani protested. You’re going to call me Nelly after a horse?

There are many noble Nellies, including the horse, Will told her.

On Saturday evening Ani and Will met for dinner at a restaurant on Main Street. Will put away an enormous amount of food for someone as thin as he was. For dessert he ordered Mississippi Mud Cake and plunged in with gusto.

He glanced over at her. You know, Ani, you’re eyeing this cake with a strange combination of fear and longing. Have some. He extended his fork toward her.

She took the bite. Delicious. It’s weird. I’m used to Asa—

The itinerant, erstwhile, so-called boyfriend?

The human calorie counter. I don’t measure up to his physical ideal. He’s a rock climber. He wants me to lose weight.

Must be something the matter with the man’s eyes, Will said gravely.

Afterward he pulled her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, bending his face toward hers. Tasting of chocolate with a hint of beer, his kiss was lighter and quicker than Asa’s. She let him walk her home but didn’t invite him into the apartment. He lingered on the front steps until she agreed to see him the following evening.

The next night Ani crossed the rickety porch of an old house. Someone had painted
THE ARGOSY
in crooked letters on a piece of board and nailed it above the door. When Ani knocked, Will opened with a flourish and a grin.

Nelly, he said. Welcome to the Argosy. The crew has shore leave tonight. Come upstairs to my cabin.

She saluted him. Aye, aye, Captain.

They navigated a cramped, cluttered kitchen, up a flight of warped stairs, and down a narrow hall. She knew they were heading to his bedroom. As she followed she calculated that this was their third date—fourth, if you counted lunch. It seemed like a respectable number. His small room was painted a daffodil yellow and there were scraps and sheets of paper tacked to the walls from the low ceiling down to the dusty baseboards. They were poems, some of them photocopied from books, some written out in Will’s sloping hand. As heat rose from the registers, poems fluttered like leaves.

Any of these yours, Captain? Ani asked.

Not a one, he said, flicking back the fallen lock of hair. You want to dance?

Here? Ani asked. There was about a foot of bare floorboard bordering his mattress.

Pointing to the mattress Will instructed, Step out of your shoes.

With the cassette player blasting Talking Heads, Will took Ani’s hand and they pogoed around the bed. After he unbuttoned his shirt, Ani followed suit, and soon their clothes were on the floor. They twirled and hopped and swayed.

As Ani danced, the list of prohibitions in the cave of her skull withered until it was illegible, until it disappeared and she could do anything she wanted. She fell to the mattress laughing.

You’re crazy, you know, she told him.

He dropped down next to her and said soberly, Crazy about you.

During a thunderstorm the following afternoon Ani expected God was going to strike her dead with a bolt of lightning as she stood on the street corner. Or that a car would careen out of control and mow her down as she crossed the campus green. What was the Old Testament punishment for adulterers? Death by stoning.
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

For the next few days Ani startled every time the phone rang, sure it was Asa calling from Kashmir. He was feeding coins into a slot in a little glass phone booth set in the side of a snow-capped mountain, telepathically alerted to her treachery. But he didn’t call.

Ani stopped in the bookstore to buy a copy of Frank O’Hara’s poems. She found what she was looking for on the shelf and then stood reading from a new collection by a favorite poet. She wanted both books, but she didn’t have the money. Glancing around from the sides of her eyes, Ani checked that no one was watching. She unzipped the large center pocket of her anorak and slid one book inside. The zipper redone, she carried the other book to the register and paid for it. Her heart was thumping just above the purloined volume as she exited the store. She was on the road to becoming a career criminal. What was worse, Ani wondered, adultery or shoplifting?

One afternoon Will slipped a typewritten note under Ani’s office door.

Dear Nelly—In point of fact I believe I love you.
This feeling has nothing to do with roses, hearts,
or any of the usual. More along the lines of that dark
mare in Dell’s pasture grazing in rye grass and chicory.
I’ll say your eyebrows are vaults of the night sky
and your gray eyes the first stars, at the risk
of sounding poetical. I’ll say I love you, but you
already know this alleged fact. Your Captain Will

That night Ani and Elena met for supper at the student center café. Ani and Elena were sharing an off-campus apartment where their respective boyfriends drifted in and out. Ani had had only one boyfriend before Will. Elena was the one who played musical beds.

So you and Will are a hot item? Elena asked.

Ani admitted, I’m a little in love with him. He makes breaking up with Asa seem possible.

Does Will know he’s a human can opener?

Ani imagined herself trapped in a can of New England clam chowder. She shrugged. I told him about Asa.

He any good in bed?

Elena!

Oh, don’t be a prude, Ani. Is it better or worse than with Asa?

Six of one, half a dozen of another, Ani answered evasively.

Ani wasn’t even sure what the question meant. Were some people better at sex in the way that some people were better tennis players? She had to guess that Asa and Will were probably evenly matched. Kind of weird to think about sex as a competitive sport.

At the end of the term, Ani and Elena were in the kitchen drinking tea from steaming mugs when the phone rang. Will was asleep in Ani’s bed so she dashed to still the ringer.

Ani, is that you? It’s great to hear your voice. Asa sounded so close he could have been calling from next door.

Where are you, Asa? Ani asked.

Home. Got back last night. When are you coming down?

In a few days.

Can I drive up and get you?

Asa. I’ve been seeing someone for a couple of months.

His voice was tight. Anybody I know?

No. Her voice was flat.

You can’t do this to me, Ani. I love you, he whispered hoarsely.

Later Will counseled her. He’s going to put you on a diet of Wheat Thins and water, Nelly. Don’t let him do it. Your breasts are pleasing the way they are.

Elena shook her head and warned, As soon as Will is out of the picture, Asa’s going to be up to his old tricks again.

Ani refused to allow Asa to come fetch her. She also wouldn’t make a date to see him in Boston. She knew she was weak.

She took the Vermont Transit bus south and Baba met her at the depot. On the way home when they drove right past Asa’s street in Cambridge, Ani forbade herself to glance down the block at his house. Asa called four times within hours of her arrival, his voice whittling at her resolve until it was less than a matchstick. She finally agreed to meet him the next afternoon at a café in Cambridge.

When he walked into the Algiers Coffeehouse and she saw his handsome face she knew she was lost. Twenty minutes later she agreed to go home with him. She fell into his arms as soon as they made it back to his family’s conveniently empty house.

The next day he came to Watertown, where they sat chastely on the living room couch. At his behest Ani had taught Asa a few words of Armenian so he could win over her grandmother.

Medz mairig,
inchbes es
? Asa asked. His accent was atrocious.

Lav em, lav em, char dghah,
Grandma said, breaking into a smile.
Toun inchbes es
?

Kesh chem,
he replied. Not bad at all.

Ani was invited to the Willards’ New Year’s Eve party. Asa introduced her as his girlfriend to his pals from prep school and to his parents’ well-heeled friends. Asa, his sister Lizzie, and some of the younger set put on coats and fled into the winter garden to get stoned. Ani ended up at the kitchen table talking with the caterer and the student waiters, who hustled in and out with trays of canapés.

When Peggy discovered Ani she pulled her aside. We’re all so happy that you can be here with us, Ani. Asa loves you very much. She stared at Ani meaningfully. Then Peggy led Ani by the hand back to the party.

In the New Year she returned to school, and even though Ani told Asa she wouldn’t stop seeing Will he moved in with her and Elena. At night Ani trudged down the snowy hill to the apartment where Asa was waiting. He cooked supper. He read her poems. He gave her a massage.

When she arrived at her office in the morning there was a note on the floor just inside the door:

Nelly,
I may go bald from tugging on my hair and tossing
against the white pillow that still smells of you.
Please come back to the Argosy and sail
with me under the prayerful sighs of the poets.
The moon is a laughing fool and the stars broken
shards of a jam jar in my hands when you are not.

Love, Will

Minutes later Will knocked on her door, and they had sex on the leather armchair in her office.

After a month Asa said, I can’t take any more of this shit, Ani. It’s me or him. And she understood. She called Will and told him to meet her at the Inn.

Ani and Will left the Inn and walked across campus. They passed the library and headed toward the pond, where snow along the roadsides gleamed under tall streetlights. Beyond the pines there was a sheet of mist hanging over the frozen water. Ani and Will moved through fog onto the snow-covered golf course. In the slow dark Will reached for Ani’s hand, but she withdrew it, shoving it into her jacket pocket.

I can’t do this anymore. Ani’s voice was muffled and sad.

It’s King Asa, isn’t it? He’s been bullying you. Damn him, Nelly. He doesn’t deserve you.

I’m tired, Captain. I can’t get any work done. You should be seeing other people.

Now that you mention it, I’ve taken a liking to this girl. Name’s Sissy.

A long hatpin of jealousy shot through Ani. Sissy? she asked.

Will eyed her slyly from under a lock of fallen hair. Freshman, he said. Blond. Awful cute. He flicked the hair out of his face.

Ani said, Okay, so I’m jealous. But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t sleep with you anymore.

The thing is, Nelly, Will said, I love that black mane of yours. I love the soft skin right here. . . . He leaned in close, running his finger under her chin and down her neck.

She almost relaxed into his caress, but then she remembered. Stop it, Will, she admonished.

He leaned forward and tried to kiss her.

I said stop it. There was steel in her tone and she pushed him firmly with the heel of her hand.

Goodbye, Nelly. Will turned from her, walking deeper into the fog toward the woods that ran the edge of the golf course. Ani watched as he vanished into the night.

He slid a final note under the door:

Oh Nelly,
When Eugene heard about us he said, William
that was a beautiful girl you had there, won’t
find another quite like Nelly. But then there’s
a lot of fillies in the pasture. Damn all this talk
of animals is what I say. Damn your ersatz
boyfriend. If love had any sense it would shoot
itself in the head and bleed in the goddamn snow.
Remember me, Nelly, and don’t much mind
the girl you see on my arm; she knows nothing
about how I am always your Captain Will.

Will and Sissy hadn’t lasted past spring, but then he had a new girlfriend, a redhead. And a month after graduation Ani had gone to Seattle with Asa.

“Played me like a yo-yo,” Ani repeated bitterly. It was late afternoon, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and she was still in her nightgown. She savagely brushed her hair and jerked on some clothes. Little Sydney was waiting.

a long tongue makes for a short life

Ani found Sydney in the bathtub arguing with her dolls. Tacey called to Ani from her bedroom, where she was applying magenta lipstick at her dresser.