The Great Night (26 page)
Authors: Chris Adrian
“I'm really more of a gardener,” Will said, which was what he always said when people asked him what he did for a living, because nobody knew what an arborist was, and the one time he had told some girl he was a landscape architect she had
asked him where he went to school to be one and then caught him when he lied about it. If he was still a writer he was the kind that didn't really write anymore, and to say that was his profession would have been like saying he was a kindergartener or a virgin. When he sat on a pillow in Carolina's sunroom, ostensibly working on a story while she worked on a painting, he usually ended up just describing what she was doing in a dozen different waysâshe mixed her paints languidly or anxiously or she attacked or stroked her canvas or the light made a triangle on her backâbut nothing he wrote about her painting or her life or his life or the life they shared ever added up to a story.
asked him where he went to school to be one and then caught him when he lied about it. If he was still a writer he was the kind that didn't really write anymore, and to say that was his profession would have been like saying he was a kindergartener or a virgin. When he sat on a pillow in Carolina's sunroom, ostensibly working on a story while she worked on a painting, he usually ended up just describing what she was doing in a dozen different waysâshe mixed her paints languidly or anxiously or she attacked or stroked her canvas or the light made a triangle on her backâbut nothing he wrote about her painting or her life or his life or the life they shared ever added up to a story.
Mrs. Perkins made as if to throw the book at him, and he flinched. “Oh, please,” she said. “It's every Wednesday afternoon at three. I'll set a place for you.”
“Is it lunch?” he asked.
“Of a sort,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “I'll bring my girlfriend. She's the real artist.”
“No guests,” she said. “Until you are a senior member of the salon. But promotions are easy and I have a feeling you'll go far and fast.” She lay back on the chaise with the book on her chest, face down and open to the place she'd stopped reading. She closed her eyes and adjusted her turban before she folded her hands over the book. “Such dispiriting stuff,” she said. “I need to take a little break.”
He ignored her for the rest of his stay in her garden that afternoon and didn't say goodbye or even ask to be paid. It bothered him that Carolina wasn't invited, and it bothered him when people said his stories were dispiritingâhe thought they were as hopeful as anybody could reasonably expect from a collection of stories about dead brothersâand he was thinking all the way home about how the salon, which he
imagined to be a circle of dried-up pretentious people stuffing Fabergé eggs up one another's asses all afternoon, could go fuck itself. He almost told Carolina about it, but she was in a sad mood when he got home, and he didn't want to make her any sadder with news of a rejection, no matter how inconsequential. At first he considered the invitation strictly as a rejection of Carolina, and he couldn't understand how anybody could fail to invite her to anything.
imagined to be a circle of dried-up pretentious people stuffing Fabergé eggs up one another's asses all afternoon, could go fuck itself. He almost told Carolina about it, but she was in a sad mood when he got home, and he didn't want to make her any sadder with news of a rejection, no matter how inconsequential. At first he considered the invitation strictly as a rejection of Carolina, and he couldn't understand how anybody could fail to invite her to anything.
But he got a little more curious about it as the week passed, and when Carolina scolded him for peeing all over the bathroom he had a moment of small resentment in which he very privately cherished the invitation that had excluded her. It passed in an instant but came again and again; she happened to be particularly scoldy that week. The anniversary of her brother's death was approaching, and she seemed to get angry at everything during that time. At first it seemed a fascinating contrast to the way he got sad and retarded around the anniversary of Sean's deathâeverything seemed to slow down and he felt like he wanted to sleep for the whole week that preceded and followed the eighteenth of Aprilâbut now she was starting to seem shrewish. It had to be its own special sort of crime, he thought, to withhold sympathy from the person with whom, of everybody in the world, he ought to sympathize the most, and when he tried to hide his annoyance from her he ended up acting sullen, which only angered her more. He started to dread breakfast, because again and again her beauty seemed to fall away over a plate of scrambled eggs or pancakes or the grapefruit he had prepared for her, carefully cutting out the triangles of flesh so she could lift them out with her spoon. He had put half a maraschino cherry in the center of the grapefruit and was waiting for her to say it made it look like a boob, but she only picked it up, squishing it with her thumb
and forefinger, and put it aside. It was an unlovely gesture, and she looked particularly unlovely doing it. “What?” she asked, because she saw him shaking his head. “I don't like cherries.”
and forefinger, and put it aside. It was an unlovely gesture, and she looked particularly unlovely doing it. “What?” she asked, because she saw him shaking his head. “I don't like cherries.”
“Nothing,” he said. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.
“What?”
she asked again.
she asked again.
“Nothing,” he said. “Belly trouble.” It was the first excuse that came into his head. He went and sat on the toilet, considering everything else he could have said, and remembering what he had said a few months before: that he wished he could give her brother back to her. He had told her that when she started crying one night the previous year, apparently for no reason at all as they lay cuddling in bed waiting to fall asleep. He had said it almost without thinking about it, the exact right thing, and that night, despite the fact that their brothers were dead and so much else was wrong in the world, everything had felt right between them in exactly the way that everything now suddenly felt wrong.
He went back to Mrs. Perkins as much to stay away from Carolina as for any other reason, considering that it was probably naïve to think there was only one right thing to do for her on the day her brother died, and it might be as right to leave her alone for a little while as it was to hold her while she cried. If he felt like a failure as he made his way up and down the hills on Broadway in his truck, maybe that had more to do with him alone than with him and her together, and maybe a little time spent in the company of pretentious fools was just what he needed to make him appreciate his girlfriend again. It was better, anyway, than going off to drink alone at a bar, something he felt pulled to do as well, and it even seemed better than drinking with a friend, because his friends had all been her friends first, and he was sure it would be very hard for
him to explain, and harder for them to understand, how there was something wrong with her, which was actually something wrong with him.
him to explain, and harder for them to understand, how there was something wrong with her, which was actually something wrong with him.
“Follow me,” said the butler at the door. It was the first time Will had rung the front doorbell since he had come to the house; he usually let himself into the garden through a side gate. The butler loped through five different roomsâWill barely keeping himself from aping him even though he hadn't said “Walk this way”âeach of which seemed perfectly serviceable for hosting a salon. They passed through the living room and dining room and library and some sort of parlor full of cat sculptures and finally the kitchen, where the butler held open a door that Will at first thought led to the pantry. The stairs behind the door led both up and down but the butler pointed down. “Thanks,” Will said, but the butler only blinked at him.
Funny place for a salon
, Will thought, though he had figured out, after only a few steps, what sort of party it was. With one foot still on the stairs he had a look at what was happening, and looked long enough to take it all in, and yet when he tried to remember what he saw it only came in pieces: a girl in a feathered Indian headdress down on her knees in front of a fat man wearing a Minnie Pearl hat, someone's hairy butt thrusting against the sort of vaulting horse that the Mary Lou Rettons of the world were always colliding off of, and Mrs. Perkins, naked except for a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, complete with nose and mustache, seated on a wicker throne smoking from a hookah and watching over it all. He walked slowly back up the stairs. It seemed like bad manners to run, and also he didn't want ridiculous Mrs. Perkins to think he was afraid.
, Will thought, though he had figured out, after only a few steps, what sort of party it was. With one foot still on the stairs he had a look at what was happening, and looked long enough to take it all in, and yet when he tried to remember what he saw it only came in pieces: a girl in a feathered Indian headdress down on her knees in front of a fat man wearing a Minnie Pearl hat, someone's hairy butt thrusting against the sort of vaulting horse that the Mary Lou Rettons of the world were always colliding off of, and Mrs. Perkins, naked except for a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, complete with nose and mustache, seated on a wicker throne smoking from a hookah and watching over it all. He walked slowly back up the stairs. It seemed like bad manners to run, and also he didn't want ridiculous Mrs. Perkins to think he was afraid.
He planned the conversation with Carolina in his head:
You won't believe what I just saw!
Yet he never managed actually to have it with her. There was some minor degree of culpability
even in having only seen that flash of thrusting buttock and Mrs. Perkins's droopy breasts, and he felt guilty already for having gone to a party to which she was expressly not invited, even if the party he thought he was going to had turned out not actually to exist. It was a little too complicated to get into at the moment, but it was too good a story not to tell, and so he only delayed the telling, and delayed it again. At breakfast and lunch and at dinner and in bed, he failed again and again to tell her what he had seen, and he told himself that he kept thinking about the salon only so he could better describe it to her. It was vile and silly, he would say: a vile, silly scene. He didn't admit to himself that he thought it was just plain interesting until it made an at-first unwelcome intrusion into his mind as he was masturbating. He was having a nostalgic whack on the HMS
Pussywillow
, someplace he didn't return to that often, though he had been retreating to the bathroom to masturbate more and more in the past month. The
Pussywillow
was a little degraded from its former glory, or else he just saw it differently now: the curtains on the portholes shared a dingy quality with the petticoat chaps that Carolina wore, and he found himself noticing how dusty everything was, and how dark. It would be better, he thought, to do their fucking up top against a cannon or the ship's wheel, yet he could not make the exertion of imagination to move them there. Instead, the room got even darker, and rocked less and less, and there was a smell, like cat litter and mothballs and cedarwood, that he recognized from the basement, and the orgy theme from
Conan the Barbarian
started to play. All of a sudden it was Mrs. Perkins whom he was fucking in her petticoat. He dropped his cock, and let out a little yell, and slipped on the toilet, and waited quietly for Carolina, who was sleeping outside in the bedroom, to say something, but there wasn't a sound besides his frantic labored breathing.
You won't believe what I just saw!
Yet he never managed actually to have it with her. There was some minor degree of culpability
even in having only seen that flash of thrusting buttock and Mrs. Perkins's droopy breasts, and he felt guilty already for having gone to a party to which she was expressly not invited, even if the party he thought he was going to had turned out not actually to exist. It was a little too complicated to get into at the moment, but it was too good a story not to tell, and so he only delayed the telling, and delayed it again. At breakfast and lunch and at dinner and in bed, he failed again and again to tell her what he had seen, and he told himself that he kept thinking about the salon only so he could better describe it to her. It was vile and silly, he would say: a vile, silly scene. He didn't admit to himself that he thought it was just plain interesting until it made an at-first unwelcome intrusion into his mind as he was masturbating. He was having a nostalgic whack on the HMS
Pussywillow
, someplace he didn't return to that often, though he had been retreating to the bathroom to masturbate more and more in the past month. The
Pussywillow
was a little degraded from its former glory, or else he just saw it differently now: the curtains on the portholes shared a dingy quality with the petticoat chaps that Carolina wore, and he found himself noticing how dusty everything was, and how dark. It would be better, he thought, to do their fucking up top against a cannon or the ship's wheel, yet he could not make the exertion of imagination to move them there. Instead, the room got even darker, and rocked less and less, and there was a smell, like cat litter and mothballs and cedarwood, that he recognized from the basement, and the orgy theme from
Conan the Barbarian
started to play. All of a sudden it was Mrs. Perkins whom he was fucking in her petticoat. He dropped his cock, and let out a little yell, and slipped on the toilet, and waited quietly for Carolina, who was sleeping outside in the bedroom, to say something, but there wasn't a sound besides his frantic labored breathing.
He crawled into bed with Carolina, who didn't stir even as he put one arm around her belly and wriggled another awkwardly beneath her shoulder, but when he placed his fingers lightly around her bellybutton and moved them very slightly to and fro, she said, “What are you doing?”
“There's a jellyfish on your belly,” he said.
“What are you
doing
?” she asked again.
doing
?” she asked again.
“Nothing,” he said, not moving his fingers anymore but not letting her go, either.
It was a Wednesday morning and the anniversary of Sean's death. He declined to make breakfast, but she didn't remark on it, quietly pulling cereal from the cupboard, getting an extra bowl for him but not a spoon. He did not fetch the milk, either.
“I think I'll take the day off,” he said.
“Not me,” she said, holding a hand up high over her head with her wrist flexed to ninety degrees. “Work up to here.”
“We could go for a bike ride. Or a museum.”
“Up to here,” she said, straining higher with her hand.
“A movie?” he said, and she only grunted, dropping her hand and raising her bowl to the lips to drink the gray dregs of milk. He went outside when she went into her studio, and sat for a while underneath the grand, weird tree, pretending to read. The orgy theme kept playing unbidden in his mind, and he found himself thinking at length about Grace Jones, even though she wasn't in the orgy or even in that particular Conan movie. He thought about the outfit that she wore and the fierceness of her haircut and how at odds it was with the surprising, furry tail that hung down from the straps of her loincloth. “Want to take a break?” he asked Carolina inside, as he opened an uncharacteristic 2 p.m. beer.
“Sorry,” she said, cutting a giant picture of Ryan into confetti-sized pieces. “I think I'm on to something here.”
“Alrighty,” he said. “I'm going to go pedal around for a while.”
“Have fun,” she said, but none of it was really fun, not the laborious bicycle ride over the many tall hills between the Mission and Russian Hill, or the way it felt like he was pedaling his mind around and around on the same circuit of thoughtâthat it was poor taste for her to be concentrating so devotedly on her dead brother on the deathiversary of hisâor any part of the silly vile spectacle at Mrs. Perkins's, the masked girl in the sling or the game that was like Whack-a-Mole with blow jobs or the sixteen-hand massage. He didn't have fun, though he participated with a focus of attention that felt requisite to enjoyment, and nothing frightened him off, not the bad music or a smear of poop, blithely ignored by her, on Mrs. Perkins's leg, or even what appeared, in the dim light of the backmost back room, which everyone called the treasure chamber (as in, “Haven't you visited the treasure chamber yet?” or, hands hefting his cock, “Here's one for the treasure chamber!”), to be a man (or woman) in a strap-on poodle, nuzzling and shoving at the ass of a man tied to a whipping post.
When he came home, Carolina had dinner waiting for him, a meal made up entirely of foods that Sean had liked, that they could enjoy together on his behalf, the menu assembled over the past few months from questions she'd asked so subtly that he had no recollection of answering them. She handed him a note that said
Surprise
, because it wasn't the sort of occasion where that should be shouted out, or to which one invited guests, and yet she had wanted to surprise him with something nice. “Well,” she said, lighting candles all down the table, “nice is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean.” And taking his hand as she sat him down she said, “You are probably the only person who knows what I mean.” He nodded at that, though he didn't think it was trueâweren't
there countless millions of bereaved brothers and sisters out there who would know just how it was pleasant and unpleasant in exactly the right way to sit down to such a feast on the anniversary of a death, to not exactly celebrate the death and not exactly mourn the life with carrots and Pop-Tarts and mashed potatoes and Mississippi Mud Pie? But maybe he only wanted it to be untrue, because he didn't deserve to be so distinguished, and did not deserve this gesture of something related to but much, much better than sympathy, and was not worthy of anything of hers, not her beauty or her generosity or her home or her wonderful tree or even, eventually, her woundedness, her fury, her disgust.
Surprise
, because it wasn't the sort of occasion where that should be shouted out, or to which one invited guests, and yet she had wanted to surprise him with something nice. “Well,” she said, lighting candles all down the table, “nice is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean.” And taking his hand as she sat him down she said, “You are probably the only person who knows what I mean.” He nodded at that, though he didn't think it was trueâweren't
there countless millions of bereaved brothers and sisters out there who would know just how it was pleasant and unpleasant in exactly the right way to sit down to such a feast on the anniversary of a death, to not exactly celebrate the death and not exactly mourn the life with carrots and Pop-Tarts and mashed potatoes and Mississippi Mud Pie? But maybe he only wanted it to be untrue, because he didn't deserve to be so distinguished, and did not deserve this gesture of something related to but much, much better than sympathy, and was not worthy of anything of hers, not her beauty or her generosity or her home or her wonderful tree or even, eventually, her woundedness, her fury, her disgust.
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