Lives of the Circus Animals (19 page)

M
E: Who do you see there?

YOU: Why do you want to know?

ME: I'm curious.

YOU: You're not jealous?

ME: No. I was never jealous. I don't have a jealous bone in my body. Have you met anyone famous?

YOU: A few, but not many. The unknown dead outnumber the famous a trillion to one.

ME: Who then? Tell me.

YOU: Janis Joplin.

ME: Why? You were never a Joplin fan.

YOU: I didn't
want
to meet her. I simply met her. Death is like life. You cannot anticipate what happens.

ME: So what's she like?

YOU: Short. Much shorter than I ever imagined. And confused. She spends her time looking for her mom, whom she adores. But Ma Joplin is tired of Janis and hides from her.

ME: What about people we knew? Do you see our friends?

YOU: Oh yes.

ME: Who?

YOU: All of them. And more. Guys whose names I never knew.

ME: Allen?

YOU: Yes.

ME: Stan?

YOU: Of course.

ME: Cook? Ethan? Danny?

YOU: They're all here.

ME: Phil Zwickler? Vito? Bob Chesley? Bob What's-his-name, the actor with the two-toned ponytail? Charles Ludlam? Tim—not Craig's Tim, but the other Tim, the Tim whose boyfriend died soon after he did and whose name I can never—

YOU: Tim Scott?

ME: No, he was a painter. This Tim was an actor. He produced the terrible plays his boyfriend wrote before they both died.

YOU: Whatever their names, they're all here. Every last one.

ME: And you hang out with them?

YOU: Not anymore. The first two or three years I saw some of them regularly. Especially Stan and Danny. We were what we knew. We wanted to finish telling our stories. We needed to compare notes.

ME: Notes on what?

YOU: At first we talked about hospitals. It was like those awful parties where businessmen talk about their least favorite airports. But what we mostly discussed was what it was like to “pass over.” The fear, the pain, the exhilaration, the relief. We all needed to tell that tale, even though we were afraid we were full of clichés. It's the dead person's answer to the coming-out story.

ME: And how people treated you? Do you talk about that? Who loved you, who didn't? Who was kind, who was cold?

YOU: There you go again. “What do the dead think of us?” The living are so biocentric.

ME: We think about you. We want to believe that you think about us. Even if you think about us badly.

YOU: The rules are like this: You have to think about us, but we don't have to think about you.

ME: Hardly seems fair.

YOU: Death, like life, is not fair.

ME: But you don't see our friends anymore?

YOU: No. I used to see everyone, then only Stan and Danny, then we grew tired of each other. Eternity is a long time. So I started meeting people I didn't know in life but had wanted to meet. Like Anthony Reisbach.

ME: Who?

YOU: A beautiful kid at school. I didn't teach him—he wasn't smart enough for advanced math—but I noticed him. Sweet, apple-
cheeked jock, soft-spoken and graceful. He drowned in a swimming pool the summer after he graduated.

ME: You were never a chicken hawk.

YOU: No, but one's tastes get more diverse in eternity.

ME: Are you in love with him?

YOU: The dead don't fall in love. Not in the way that you mean, lust and obsession. I enjoy his company.

ME: But you told the truth when you were alive and said you never fell in love with any of your students?

YOU: I told the truth. They were such babies. You would have heard about a crush if I had one, Cal. I always told you about each and every man I ever lusted after or tricked with.

ME: I'll say.

YOU: Don't pout. I never rubbed your nose in it.

ME: But you weren't shy about it either.

YOU: I wanted you to know that it was only lust, only sex. Our love stopped being about sex long before I got sick.

ME: I know. I'm sorry.

YOU: Don't apologize. I liked sex more than you did. It's as simple as that. And there was too much other life between us. It crowded out the sex. You gave me enough love in other ways.

ME: I have to ask. Is there sex in death?

YOU: That's funny. I'd made a bet with myself that your first question would be: Are there books in death? Libraries? Can the dead read?

ME: I'll get to that. But is there sex in death?

 

Caleb looked up from his notebook. The rain beat against the casement window. The traffic slurred in the street far below. The lamp cast a halo on his desk. He tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his mouth. Should there be sex after death?

He didn't know what he was writing here, if these night thoughts were therapy or a verbal exercise or useless nonsense. They definitely weren't art and would never become public, although his sense of craft could not stop him from revising and improving sentences. Last night, when he wrote the first pages, had been eerie and exciting, not eerie like ghosts but like what he had felt when he was sixteen and wrote his first paragraphs of pornography, creating bodies out of air and words.
He returned to the spiral notebook tonight feeling slightly guilty, like a kid who was about to jerk off. Writing and sex and necromancy were hopelessly tangled together.

But should the dead have sex? He didn't know. He decided to skip it. In his head he heard Ben toss out the next question.

 

YOU: When you remember me, do you think about the sex?

ME: Very rarely. Or no. Never.

YOU: How then? What do you remember?

ME: Strange. I've never sat down and tried to remember you on paper like this.

YOU: So try it now. What do you remember?

ME: Your smile. I know it sounds sappy, but the first thing I remember is your smile. Like when you laughed at a good joke. I knew you were happy, which made me happy, and the world was right with itself.

YOU: I'm like the Cheshire cat? Everything has faded except my smile?

ME: Don't put words in my mouth.

YOU: Why not? You're putting words in mine.

ME: Fair enough. But I remember your smile first because I'd prefer not to remember some of the other things.

YOU: Like?

ME: Your bad moods. Your bossiness. Your bully tendencies. Your habit of playing the schoolteacher even at home.

YOU: But you liked being bossed.

ME: Sometimes. I liked having someone make my decisions. So I could save all my thinking for my work. It wasn't good for me.

YOU: You should've bossed me back.

ME: Maybe. But it wasn't in my makeup. I thought you were so tough and wise and together.

YOU: I wasn't.

ME: No. But I didn't know that. Not until you got sick.

YOU: We don't have to talk about that.

ME: You want to avoid that, don't you? Because you were embarrassed to be sick. Humiliated. I remember the first or second time you were in the hospital, before we knew it wasn't a onetime thing but
was going to be our life for three years. And you shit on yourself. Big deal. So what? You were in your hospital gown. You couldn't get to the bedpan and you let out a squirt. Bright orange—

YOU: Don't!

ME: Shit. Highway-safety-orange shit. You got a splash on your nice argyle socks, and you went nuts. It was like the end of the world. You tore off your socks and told me to throw them, toss them, you never wanted to see them again. As if that would solve anything.

YOU: I wanted things to be clean. I needed things to be orderly.

ME: You were afraid of confusion. You were terrified of mess. Which was why you loved math. And Bach. And Japanese food. But you contradicted yourself, Ben. You taught math to
teenagers.
And you loved
me.
Who was a total mess. Emotionally, physically, mentally. You scolded me like I was ten years old, about leaving papers around or needing a haircut or not changing a dirty shirt—

YOU: You miss me, don't you?

ME: Of course I miss you. Why else would I be wasting my time on this stupid writing exercise? I thought I could write myself out of my bleak mood, but it's not working. I'm tired of being sad, I hate myself for being unhappy.

YOU: Why do you think you need to be happy?

ME: Aren't we supposed to be happy? Isn't that why we're here? We're obligated to be happy like we're obligated to succeed. Happiness is the point of life. Are the dead happy?

YOU: We transcend happiness. Unhappiness too.

ME: Wait a minute. “Why do you think you need to be happy?” I know that line. It's Osip Mandelstam. His wife quotes him in
Hope Against Hope.
They were sent to Siberia by Stalin. They were feeling suicidal, and Osip told her, “Why do you think you need to be happy?”

YOU: Death is a kind of Siberia. But you get used to it.

ME: No. Not that. What I'm saying is that you didn't make it up. You've been reading over my shoulder.

YOU: Yes. And you read such gloomy books. No wonder you're depressed. You need to lighten up. You should go to the movies. Or the theater. See a nice comedy. I hear this new musical,
Tom and Gerry,
is very funny.

T
he rain fell all night. There was rain in her sleep, rain in her dreams. Rain was gargling in the downspout by her window when Jessie woke up the next morning.

Perfect, she thought. Shitty weather for my shitty life.

She lay in bed for the longest time, remembering all the awful things that had been said last night: “You self-hating asshole.” “You righteous loser.” “You love fags because you hate yourself.” “Well, you love me because you love your own failure.” And so on and so on. Not those words exactly, but ugly, poisonous words with the same effect.

What an idiot she'd been to open herself to Frank. You think sex will be fun, a good time, a vacation where you can climb out of your head and into your body. But a man gets you with your pants down when he gets your pants down.

And this warm, smelly bed was the scene of the crime. That fact was enough to get Jessie moving. She rolled off the futon and stumbled down the ladder. She went into the kitchen, turned on the shower, and stepped in, hoping the hard spray would wash away her sour stupidity. It felt wonderful for the first minutes, until she looked down at her pale white legs and pictured a pair of crocodile eyes watching from between her thighs.

 

The city was slick with rain, its colors bright and runny. Smears of red and yellow light floated on the bleary khaki pavement under the shop windows on West Fifty-fifth Street.

“Good morning,” Jessie sang at the doorman of Henry's building. She shook her umbrella dry, then closed and tightly furled it while she
waited for the elevator. She was glad that she had a job to go to today, relieved that she had work to do.

She took out her keys as she went down the hall. She found the right key and unlocked the lock. She opened the door and heard the clank, clank, clank of the Nautilus machine.

“Good morning,” she called out. “You're certainly up early on this dark and shitty morning.”

There was no answer, not even Henry's usual grunt.

She turned on her computer and hung up her raincoat. Pressing the palms of both her hands against her cheeks, she rubbed her face, as if to rub away all anger or bitterness, and stepped around the corner to ask Henry if he wanted—

But it wasn't Henry on the weight machine. Henry did not have a burly, porpoise-smooth body. Or wear such snug white underpants. A stranger—it
was
a stranger—straddled a bench with his beefy back facing Jessie. He lifted a column of weights with two thick arms. Black cordless headphones covered his ears. The music was turned up so loud that Jessie could hear it buzz like a dance club full of bees.

He finished his set, stood up, and turned around. He jumped six inches in the air when he saw Jessie.

“Toby?”
He looked like Toby Vogler, but Jessie had never seen Toby undressed. Everyone looked different naked. And she never expected to see
him
here.

He caught his breath with one hand pressed over his heart. “Jessie?” He squinted at her, then lifted the muffs of his headphones an inch off his ears, as if that would help him see. “What are you—Oh!” His eyes darted down and he saw he wasn't dressed. He clamped the headphones back on, as if the music could clothe him. His face turned pink, then his neck and shoulders. “Sorry. Forgot that you—Mmmm!” He hunched down, not completely but just enough to suggest modesty. He fled into the bathroom and closed the door.

Jessie stood there with her mouth half open, adding it all up. Her brother's ex-boyfriend was here? In his underwear? In the morning? After spending the night with Henry? The little gold digger. Allegra joked that he was more cupcake than beefcake, but the cupcake was sleeping his way up the food chain.

She couldn't wait to tell Frank. But then she remembered that she and Frank hated each other. She was angry all over again.

The bedroom door popped open. Henry strolled out in his terry cloth bathrobe. “Oh? Jessica. You're early this morning.” He peered into the dining room at the Nautilus machine. Rain tapped against the plate-glass windows. “What a dreary day,” he said. “It's like bleeding Edinburgh out there.”

“If you're looking for your guest,” said Jessie, “I scared him off. He's hiding in the bathroom.”

“Oh?” Henry acted so nonchalant, so irritatingly innocent.

Jessie refused to play along. “How do you know Toby?”

“What?
You
know him?”

“Of course, I know him! He was my brother's boyfriend!”

“Oh dear.” He lowered himself onto the nearby sofa, as if this were a great shock. “New York certainly is a small town.”

“You didn't know?”

He began to chuckle, a sincere, humorous noise joined by a guilty smirk. “Oh I learned it soon enough,” he admitted. “But I didn't know it when we met. We met in a club, you see. A couple of nights ago. It never crossed my mind that
you'd
know him too.” He continued to laugh as he shook his head at himself. “Oh what a tangled web we weave. But it's nothing serious,” he insisted. “Not in the least. Just a friendly, one-night, hello-good-bye sort of thing.”

“I didn't think it was serious. Not with Toby.”

He lifted his eyebrows at Jessie, intrigued by her comment.

But she declared the conversation over. “I got work to do. And today is Wednesday. You have a matinee today.”

“Oh yes,” Henry said wearily. “Work, work, work. It never ends, does it?” He slowly stood up. “I should get him out of the loo.”

Jessie went into her corner and sat down. She heard Henry at her back, lightly knocking on the bathroom door.

“Toby? Toby? It's safe to come out. We really should be going.”

He was being so nice to his little trick, his conquest. Jessie was startled by how hurt and angry she felt. It wasn't out of loyalty to Caleb—no, Caleb was finished with Toby. And it was no business of hers who Henry fucked. It was just annoying that the boy had made his way here, into
her
world,
her
turf.

She checked the answering machine. She thought there might be a message from Frank but was glad that there wasn't.

“Jessica. Dolly Hayes here. It's Wednesday evening here so it must be morning there. I just spoke to Adam Rabb. We have something that needs to be discussed sooner rather than later. Have Henry call me immediately. This is no time to play phonesie.”

The bathroom door opened and Jessie heard Henry say, “I'd love to ‘hang,' but I have a matinee. Don't you have a job to get to?” The bedroom door closed and the voices were reduced to mumbles.

I should've been a man, Jessie told herself. Fags have it so easy. Look at Toby. Dull, vague, not-so-bright Toby. But because he has a dick and a pretty face, men like her brother and Henry Lewse fall all over him. Henry never paid that kind of attention to
her
. And to think she wanted Henry's respect. How can you respect the respect of a man who could follow his wiener into spending hours and hours with Toby Vogler? What could they possibly talk about? All right, they probably didn't talk. Toby must be good sex. He was too dull to be anything else. But she had gotten her own ashes hauled the night before, and orgasms now seemed as meaningless as sneezes.

The bedroom door opened and Henry escorted Toby through the living room. Toby looked surprisingly dressed up in a blue blazer and good slacks. “Uh, see you later,” he told Jessie as they walked by.

“Yeah, right,” said Jessie.

She heard them exchange good-byes at the front door. It sounded like they were setting up another date, but she couldn't be sure. There was a teeny
tsk,
like a kiss, and the door closed.

Henry walked back through the living room. “Buba ba, bu ba, bu ba, bu baba”—he mumbled “Sentimental Journey” again, but in a dry, joyless manner. Which was odd for a man who'd just gotten laid.

“Henry,” said Jessie, saying his name flatly, as if saying,
Hey you
. “Dolly called. She wants you to call back. She says it's important.”

“I'm in no mood to talk with that cunt,” he muttered.

He was as irritable this morning as Jessie. By what right? He'd spent the night with a pretty boy bimbo. And he used the
c
word, which Jessie hated. Often it was just thoughtless, but today it sounded deliberately vicious.

“That ‘cunt,' as you call her,” said Jessie, “stood by you loyally for
years. Just because you're planning to dump her doesn't mean you can't call her by her name.”

“What was that?” Henry stood across the room, scrunching one eye at her. “Oh please. I'm in no mood today for your oh-so-American sensitivities.”

They had stepped on each other's toes before, but then there were always apologies or laughter or something to soothe the insult. That wasn't happening today. Jessie was actually glad that they weren't making nice.

“No, you're right,” she said. “English bluntness is more honest. Let's call a cunt a cunt, and a fag a fag.”

Henry tilted his head to one side, as if he hadn't heard right. “What's this tone? Why are you talking like this? Are you angry because I slept with—” He had to snap his fingers at the front door while he rummaged in his memory.

“Toby.”

“I know
his
name! Your brother, I mean.”

“Caleb.”

“Yes, him. You're angry because I slept with your brother's ex-boyfriend. Is that what this is about?”

“Why should I give a fuck who you fucked? He's nobody to me. Just a big twink. If you want my brother's sloppy seconds, it's no skin off my nose.”

Henry took a deep breath. “None of this is any of your damn business.”

“No. It's not,” said Jessie. “So why don't you let me get on with your business that
is
my damn business and stop talking about this other business.” She turned around and faced the computer, letting her body declare the discussion over. But her mouth could not help adding, “Gay or straight, all men are the same. The little head is always thinking for the big head.”

Henry was silent for a moment. She could feel him behind her. He stood six feet away, but she sensed a rise in temperature.

“Yes, well,” he began, “you might try following your own little head sometime—or whatever the
womanly
equivalent is called.” He loudly avoided the
c
word. “Because then you might have a life of your own and wouldn't be such a nosey parker fag hag about mine.”

“Fag hag?” She turned around. “Fag hag? I'm just a cunt and a fag hag to you?”

Sticks and stones, she thought, and the rest of it. And they were only words, and she used them herself, and they rarely caused real pain. But today they felt like deadly weapons.

“You old queen,” she continued. “I balance your books. I write your letters. I buy you your pot. And do I get respect? Do I get thanked? No. I get called a fag hag and a cunt.”

“I never called you a cunt!”

“No, but you thought it!”

“I'm certainly thinking it now!”

“See! See!” She jumped to her feet and waved her hands at him, at the room, at the world, without knowing what she'd say with the gesture. “I'm tired of this bullshit. I'm sick of being invisible. A third-class citizen. A nobody. I'm done with you, Henry. Finished. I quit.”

He became very still. All the life went out of his face, except for his eyes, which looked straight at her, a sad, calm gaze that held her while he hunted for the right words, the right emotion.

“Good,” he finally said. “Because this old queen is done with you.” His eyes turned small and black and angry. “This old,
old
queen does not need to see your cunty puss ever again.”

Jessie was shocked by his response. Her words actually meant something to him?

“Go ahead! Quit! You think I'll miss you? You and your cunty competence? Your cunty condescension. This cunty city and its cunty theater. A man can't even get laid in this cunty, huggy, touchy-feely town. I don't need any of you in my life!”

Anger poured off him like the heat of a fire. It was all words, hot yet controlled, with more emotion in the pitch of his voice than in the meaning of his words. Imagine being cursed by Richard Burton or Jeremy Irons. The anger of Henry Lewse was both a terror and a privilege, like standing under a roaring lion. His morning breath was as foul as a lion's.

Jessie sustained her own anger so she could hold out against him. “And I don't need you!” she said. “Or your shitty job and its shitty paychecks. Good-bye. I'm gone.” She reached for her raincoat, she grabbed her umbrella.

“Who are you to walk away from me?” he demanded. “You're nobody important. You're only a secretary! An
assistant
!”

His words should have stung, but she recognized she was hurting him by quitting. She took her satisfaction there.

“Right. I'm just a cunty cunt and a faggy fag hag.” She opened the door and stepped into the hall. “And you're a total asshole.”

She plunged down the hall, ecstatic with anger, drunk with rage. She felt more real than she had felt in years. She had done it. She was free. She didn't need Henry.

She wondered if he were watching. She wanted to see the look on his face, but did not dare turn around.

She heard the slam of the door at the end of the hall.