After Claude (16 page)

Roger held my shaking hands in his firm grip. “What’s happening, baby? You’re white as a sheet.” He sounded worried. “Are you on anything?’’

“It seems,” I said, when I’d regained my composure and with it the immediate obligation to relieve Roger’s guilt regarding his social lapse, “that I’m on a seesaw, but I’m okay now.”

“Henny Penny, get her a glass of wine.”

“Roger, you haven’t finished me,” the naked girl on the floor murmured.

“I told you to get her a glass of wine.”

“Oh, nuts,” the girl cursed softly, lugging herself off the rug. She seemed afraid to refuse him. She padded on bare feet to a long wooden table, replica of the monstrosity in my tiny cell, and dutifully carted a glass of red wine to me. She hardly raised her eyes to Roger.

“Are you going to finish me?”

“Is that a question? Are you questioning me?”

The girl’s neck got buried under her chin. “Lie down on the floor,” he added kindly. “I just want to make our guest comfortable.”

“Oh, thank you, Roger,” she said jubilantly, clasping her hands in the beginning of a childish clap. She was down on her back in a flash.

The low, monotonous bongo playing resumed. I would have welcomed an introduction to the musician.

“Drink,” Roger urged me. He released my hands. “Drink up and try to relax.” A small sob, for which I was totally unprepared, rose out of my tight chest. He watched me closely, which made swallowing the bitter potion no easy matter.

“Better?”

It was neither the time nor the place to send back the bottle.

“Much.” I thanked him. As Socrates remarked on the hemlock, It’s the intention that counts.

“Relax,” he repeated and gave my thigh a friendly squeeze.

The “ouch” sprang out of me as though I were a mechanical doll.

“Wow,” he said. “What tension. You’re a mess. It’s fantastic.”

I didn’t know if I should feel insulted or flattered at his conflicting enthusiasms, so I sat stiffly at the edge of the treacherous chair, recovering my customary poise. As I regained my calm, my conscientious mind went back on the job. Who was Henny Penny? What was he going to finish doing to her? Who was the couple on the couch? Who was Roger? And who in that darkened room was wishing me dead, due to Roger’s obsessive attentions?

“Lean back, but slowly this time.” He smiled.

Let me get the business of Roger’s teeth out of the way. They are the scars, the wounds of battles fought and won. They are the worn hieroglyphics of vulnerability. They tell you that this extraordinarily evolved man has known pain. I love Roger’s bad teeth. While staring at Roger’s teeth, as yet unaware that I was falling in love with them, I received an urgent message from my inner answering service. In essence the message was that if I tilted back, I would drop dead. Senseless as these threatening calls are, they demand absolute obedience or a willingness to face the consequences. Since the tariff is always so high, death or madness or paralysis if I think certain words or look at the sky or eat a particular food, whatever, I’ve never put the terrorist threats to the test and by cooperating have managed to stay relatively alive.

“In a minute,” I promised. Roger seemed to understand my predicament as though he had a wiretap inside my head.

“Take your time,” he said in that hushed voice, as though it hurt his teeth to talk.

“Here, Roger.” A familiar figure disentangled herself from the bongo player and moved toward us, a scarecrow in a fluttery negligee. She held a lit joint in her long, bony fingers, carried as far from her stick body as her stick arms would allow. It was as if she were transporting dirty socks or an equally choice tidbit. Her face was marked by what I instantly spotted as a perpetual sneer.

“Take a toke, darling.”

She clearly had appointed herself the sole proprietor of all the men in the room, if not the world. Hadn’t that very same sneer tried to intimidate me into buying a cheap hypoallergenic eye liner so I could look as embalmed as she?

“Haven’t I seen you modeling on television?” I blurted and was answered by her sneer twisting into a positive paroxysm of disgust. I would gladly have donated my tongue to Hebrew National. Along with looking as though she needed to throw up, she sucked in her severely sunken cheeks and passed the joint to Roger.

“I’m wrecked,” she bragged, as though it took a special talent to get stoned. Lord, spare me these dimpled darlings who are always congratulating themselves for not having any thoughts or feelings.

Roger accepted the offering, saying, “Thanks, Clarissa,” and inhaled with a casual expertise that informed me he was no amateur freak. Holding his breath, he gestured the joint to me, but I refused with a decisive nod.

Of course I was tempted by its succulent aroma, but the truth is, I’m not so self-destructive as to turn on in a room with two hostile females, either one of whom could be my mortal enemy. Under such negative conditions, my powerful mind is likely to turn on me. I’ve learned to protect myself, meaning I get high with equals, men who can accompany the fantastic flights of my free-falling mind, not, I repeat, with a lackey such as Claude, whose only concern is whether you’re being charming.

Naturally I worried lest Roger interpret my refusal as a personal rejection. Nothing could be further from the truth. If drugs gave him the courage to relate to me, then I could only support his readiness to grab at any straw. Being an instinctive psychologist, I concluded that Roger gained confidence by serving my needs. Parallel with that insight was the discovery that I’d forgotten my Marlboros, due to my recent bout of heart failure. No sooner did I become aware of my oversight than I experienced severe withdrawal symptoms.

“I’d love a Marlboro. I’m afraid I left mine in my room, but any filtered brand will do.”

“Naughty, naughty,” Clarissa sang. “Roger doesn’t approve of commercial cigarettes. He thinks they’re a nasty habit, don’t you, Roger darling?”

Permit me to pause and reflect on my eternal enemy, female jealousy. As its number-one victim, I wish to go on record regarding female envy. It is the most destructive form of flattery ever invented. Its slings and arrows have caused me such trouble, I’ve sometimes wished myself invisible just to be rid of its tyranny. Go try to explain to a horde of furious women that my life, in spite of all appearances, isn’t perfect.

“Roger is exceptionally lucky to have you do his listening and talking,” I complimented her. “You’re like a seeing-eye mouth.”

“Roger, you promised,” a voice at our heels wailed.

“Are you still down there, Henny Penny? For God’s sake, get up.”

“But you didn’t finish me.”

“Are you arguing with me?”

She jumped up, her face hidden by her drooping hair.

“Get dressed like a good girl.”

“Yes, Roger.” She scampered away like a child avoiding punishment.

“What room are you in?” he asked me in another voice.

“Just across the hall, 228.”

“Is it locked? You heard, Henny Penny. Get her cigarettes, and fast.”

“I think they’re on the bed,” I started to say.

“She’ll find them. Anything else you need?”

I shook my head, a trifle unnerved by Roger’s reversible moods. Henny Penny in an Indian shirt that barely reached her thighs was already at the door.

“Thank you,” I called after her.

“Oh, Henny Penny is a great help. I couldn’t cut it without her.”

The girl took a second to smile at him before dashing on her errand.

Clarissa laughed. “Oh, darling, you’d make another Henny Penny.”

“I love Henny Penny,” Roger insisted. “She’s a part of me.”

“A mighty serviceable part, I must say.”

“Essential. That’s why she knows I’m completely Hers.”

It occurred to me that I had misread the situation or, at least, not read to the bottom of the page.

“Sweetie, you’re absolutely my favorite couple,” Clarissa crooned, confirming my worst fears. My heart sank at my neglect of Henny Penny, caused by my deficiency at making chitchat with a naked doormat.

The object in question came trotting in with the cigarettes, and while Roger graciously offered me a light, I tried to make contact with her. Forget it. I’ve looked into a few expressionless faces in my time, but beside Henny Penny’s they become silent-screen stars’. Big, round, gray, unblinking, luminescent eyes were the only evidence that the machine was plugged in. She had round eyes in a round face on a round head, all held together by a skimpy brown ponytail. Well, whatever Roger was, he was no sucker for a pretty face.

The bongo player called out, “Penelope, bring me a cigarette.”

Her unblinking eyes went first to Roger, and that communication accomplished, she jogged off into the shadowy corner, holding a single cigarette.

“She’s a lovely girl,” I said, because my silence felt rude.

“Enchanting,” Clarissa mimicked me. “I’d better go protect my property.” And with that the jealous harridan followed Henny Penny into the shadows.

Roger pulled a straight-back chair up close to mine. “Let’s talk,” he said, swiveling my recliner around so that my back was to the TV corner. From behind me I heard the melodious theme of the Late Late Show.

“Oh, fuck,” Clarissa said,
“The Glen Miller Story
again.”

Why doesn’t she go home? I almost said out loud, but instead gave Roger my attention. The closer he got to me, the more I felt the intensity of his powerful personality.

He gave me his devastated smile. “Let’s start real easy. What’s your name?”

To some, particularly to some with names like Benton or Prentice, that might seem a simple enough question, but to me, it was a hole that I might or might not crawl out of. I paused.

“Okay,” he said smoothly. “Be the mystery guest. I like girls who don’t blurt out their whole story. But we have to call you something. Suppose I give you a name.”

“That depends,” I responded cautiously. The fact is, I was afraid that what with our almost eerie rapport, he’d come up with Harriet.

“I see you as foreign.” He felt for my identity with the sensitivity of a blind man fingering a Braille Bible. “Secretive, artistic, sensual, and highly intuitive.”

Would that my own mother had foreseen my temperament with such uncanny precision.

“I’m also highly intelligent,” I confessed.

“Baby,” Roger murmured in a tender moan, and I realized once and for all that with him the obvious would never need to be made explicit. A radiation of relief spread throughout my body. I knew that I was unthawing from my six frozen months with Claude. Roger put his hand on the front of my neck and squeezed his thumb against the pulse beating in my throat. This produced such a havoc of heat in my arms and chest that I became frightened of defrosting prematurely. Of melting into a shapeless blob on the comfortable recliner.

“Watch it with the hands,” I said sharply.

“Yes,” he said gently, removing the offending member. “It’s been too long since you were touched with any skill or love. That’s the sickness that brought you to my door, Leela.”

“Who’s Leela?”

“Leela is ancient Indian for God’s play.”

“I don’t like it,” I said flatly.

Roger shrugged.

“It’s a bit too ancient.”

“You’re absolutely right. You’re a child of our time. Don’t worry it,” he advised me. “The right name will come.”

“What was this sickness of Leela’s that you referred to?”

Roger appeared momentarily overcome. He put one hand over his pale eyes and raised the other in the air, snapping his fingers. Henny Penny rushed up to us, stuck a joint in Roger’s lifted hand, and as promptly left us undisturbed.

Roger calmly lit the joint, inhaled, and offered it to me with a silent insistence. I just didn’t have it in me to issue one more refusal. A look of satisfaction spread over Roger’s bland face, telling me what I already knew: that he longed for us to be joined in all things.

We sat quietly passing the joint back and forth, except I had two or three puffs to Roger’s one.

“Don’t be afraid. It will help us to cut through the bullshit.”

I felt its benefits almost immediately, what with the wine and the not eating.

“What are you doing?” I asked, because Roger had bent down and I heard a distinct mechanical click.

“It’s nothing, baby.”

“Let me decide.” I leaned over to see what was happening.

“It’s a tape recorder,” he admitted.

I didn’t like it. “Listen, are you a cop or something?” Let’s face it, the police force had been in on my last three changes of address.

“Why would the cops be interested in you?”

That he would imagine me vulnerable to such trickery almost caused me to stand up and march out of the room. A flash image of the empty, stultifying cell across the hall convinced me to give him a second chance.

“Turn that thing off,” I said, lighting a regular cigarette. The F.B.I, were welcome to a mile of tapes of Harriet blowing smoke rings.

“You’re tough,” Roger said and did as he was told.

It was our first disagreement, and I knew from the rush of angry tears how much I had been hurt. Roger reached out and took my free hand. He placed his thumb in the palm of my hand and pressed until I felt this dull ache that seemed to travel into my heart. It was as if he were opening my heart so that I could listen to him and not to the objections of my tired brain. I looked up and found him studying me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, because I sensed that he was doing something remarkable.

“I’m asking your body to trust me.”

“That’s a weird thing to do.”

“Believe me, little girl, if you would learn to listen to the wisdom of your body, you would instantly know everything about me and I think you’d trust me. You’d know that I love you, and your struggle to guard yourself from me and the rest of the world would end. Give the victory to your body. Call a halt to the battle of questions and answers, and you’ll know everything.”

My body, captured by his thumb, responded, but my shell-shocked mind fought on.

I protested. “My body is just as opposed as the rest of me to a sneaky tape recording of a private conversation. Unlike other bodies you may have met lately, my body knows a rat when it smells one.”