Sparta (40 page)

The headache was hovering off his right temple, though he was ignoring it. He was ignoring it, though his head was beginning to pound as if someone were beating on it with a stick. He wondered if Claire would want to spend the night; he couldn't manage sex when the headache was there. And he didn't want to tell Claire that he didn't want sex because he had a headache. He opened the bottle and filled everyone's glasses.

“Let's talk about Go-Go,” he said. “What's he up to? Claire, you need to send me his email address.”

“Done.” Claire pulled out her phone and tapped at it. “He's around. You should call him.” She turned to Jenny. “This is a friend of ours,” she began, “who was the most radical, out-there guy we knew.”

“Let me guess,” Jenny said. “He's now on Wall Street. Maybe we should all be on Wall Street.”

When they had finished the second bottle, Claire pushed back her chair.

“Okay, guys,” she said, “I'm going home. Early day tomorrow.”

Relieved, Conrad asked, “You sure you don't want to stay?”

“No, I've got to go.”

“I'm paying, remember,” Conrad said, getting out his wallet.

“Okay, I'm whacked,” Jenny said loudly. “I'm heading to bed right now.” She stacked a load of dishes and took them out to the kitchen. “Good night, guys.”

“What do I owe you?” he asked, feeling awkward.

“Forty,” she said.

Paying made him uncomfortable. And now that Jenny had so ostentatiously given them privacy—she was banging loudly in the kitchen—now that he and Claire were left alone and it was the moment to ask her to stay, his cock was curled and inert against his leg. The headache beat sullenly at his temple.

“Sorry you can't stay,” he said.

“Me, too. But not tonight.” She smiled at him, pulling on her jacket. It was padded, with a high Chinese collar and little twisted tie-things instead of buttons.

“I'll take you down and put you in a cab.” Conrad picked up the takeout bags and stuffed the empties into it.

On the sidewalk, they walked without speaking. The street was dim and shadowy, the air cool and damp, with a faint autumnal undertone. Their footsteps echoed against the stone housefronts. The streetlights shone down, bright stars on tall black columns. Above them the nighttime sky held the powdery glow that came from the city itself. The sidewalk was lit by the streetlamps, and the sky was illuminated by the city, but between them were the brownstones, dim and obscured, their dark façades rising up in the darkness to high black cornices against the sky. The lighting was dramatic, the acoustics intimate: it was like a stage set. Claire was close beside him, the light glinting off her hair.

“Do you ever see Jenny alone?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, apart from me?”

“No,” she said. “Why? Would you mind?”

“No,” he said. “I just wondered.”

A man came toward them. He was in his thirties, unshaven, with a bland, open face. Despite the stubble he looked affluent: khaki pants, white T-shirt, dark blue running jacket zipped halfway up his chest.

When he was past, Conrad said, “What's the no-shaving deal? The stubble? All these guys look like losers.”

“It's European,” said Claire. “Or South American or something.”

“One of the rules in the Corps is ‘Eccentricity in mustaches will not be tolerated,'” said Conrad. “We take facial hair seriously.”

“We?” said Claire. “Do you still think you're one? I thought you were out.”

“I misspoke,” Conrad said. “I'm out. I'm a former. I still don't like stubble.”

He listened to their footsteps. He wondered suddenly if Claire was going on afterward to meet up with the Wall Street guy. He looked at her sideways. Once the idea was in his head, it seemed certain to be true. She hadn't looked at her watch, but why had she said she had to leave? It wasn't late, only just past ten.

Wouldn't she want to get laid at the end of the evening? Or didn't women care as much? You couldn't tell. You heard everything: women didn't care as much about sex as men did, which was a problem among lesbian couples, because each waited for the other to initiate. Or you heard that women actually cared exactly as much about sex as men did, but just didn't let on, because men didn't like women to initiate. Or that the big secret was that women actually liked sex more than men did. It was one of those things that was impossible to know. It was one of those things everyone lied about, so how would anyone know?

He'd read that women thought about sex two or three times a day; men, two or three times a minute. That sounded about right. Even in a combat zone. At Haditha, up the dam, it had been a lot quieter than at Sparta. The guys there mostly just stood guard duty, and it was boring. Two of them sent away for penis enlargement pills. They had a competition, measuring themselves every day, and then decided to take all the rest of the pills at once. They ended up with dicks so swollen they couldn't walk. What amazed everyone was not that they'd done it, but that the pills worked. The guys were actually in pain, but of course no one felt sorry for them. There were a lot of nicknames.

There he was again, thinking about sex.

“How's your brother doing?” Conrad asked.

“Howdy's fine,” Claire said. “He's at Swarthmore.”

“He always was a brain,” Conrad said.

“He's an idealist,” said Claire. “Wants to save the world.”

“What do your parents think about that?”

“They support him.” She looked at him. “Like your parents.”

“Yeah.” He didn't exactly think of himself as an idealist now.

“How are your parents?” she asked.

“Good,” he said. “I'm going out to see them this weekend.”

At the corner, Conrad stuffed the empty bags into a trash can and stepped off the curb, raising his hand. He looked at Claire. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

“My pleasure,” she said, and gave him a little smile.

Now he got it: she was making such a point of leaving on purpose so that he wouldn't have to worry about sex. She wanted him to know that she liked his company, she'd come over just for that. It was a gift she was giving him, and when he realized it, he felt again the lift of his heart.

A cab swerved toward them, sliding across the lanes and cutting off a delivery van and a small red sedan before jerking to a stop not quite in front of them. The chassis rocked, and the driver stared at them.

“Do you want this one?” Conrad asked. “Will you survive?”

Claire nodded, and he opened the door.

“I'm paying for the cab,” he said, and pulled out his wallet again.

Claire slid past him, onto the back seat. Settled, she turned and smiled at him through the open door.

“No,” she said. “You're not paying. That would make me feel like a hooker.” She raised her hand and gave an odd wave, palm flat, her fingers opening and closing like a starfish. She waited for him to close the door, but he leaned in toward her.

“Thanks for coming.” He meant for all of it, for thinking of it in the first place and bringing over those aromatic white bags of food, and for running up the stairs and turning her face up to him, smiling, and for the way her earrings made little whispery sounds against her beautiful smooth jaw, and the way her skin looked, supple and gleaming, and for the way she had put her hand on his arm, which had felt like a kind of forgiveness. He wanted to say he was sorry for not being able to get it up, sorry not to ask her to stay the night.

She smiled again and shook her head, and he kissed her briefly, just a child's kiss on her soft, sweet mouth, he couldn't risk anything else. Then he drew back and closed the door. She leaned forward to tell the driver where to go, her dark hair falling over the blue jacket, and he wondered again if she was going home or somewhere else. The driver pulled out right in front of a black town car that honked furiously and slammed on its brakes, and then the cab sped up and was lost in the weaving lanes of traffic.

Conrad turned and walked back down the street. When he reached Jenny's block, he saw the woman from next door standing on the sidewalk. The first time Conrad had seen her, he'd thought she was homeless, or maybe crazy. She had short whitish hair and she'd worn a raincoat over her nightgown, the folds showing below the hem. She'd stood motionless, staring down with a fixed psychotic gaze. It wasn't until Conrad was nearly past her that he'd seen the leash leading from her hand to the small, shaggy terrier straining at the end of it, nose pressed intently against a tree.

Now she was wearing her trench coat and her nightgown, flip-flops on her feet. He wondered if she owned any daytime clothes. The light from the streetlamp gave her a halo, irradiating her wild pale hair. One hand was sunk deep in her pocket, the other held the leash. The terrier was parked meditatively next to the streetlight, staring straight ahead, his ears pricked, his hind leg lifted.

Conrad nodded to the woman as he passed; she nodded back.

There you go,
he thought.
I'm a member of the community.

*   *   *

On the morning of his first class, Conrad woke early.

It wasn't quite light. It was September, and the days were growing shorter. In the dimness, Conrad pulled on a T-shirt and shorts, then sat down to put on his running shoes. He remembered putting on his boots at Sparta. In the dark, his hand knew exactly where they stood beside his bed. He knew the feel of the leather: smooth side in, rough side out. He thought of Carleton's boots at his memorial service, side by side on the gritty floor, helmet and rifle beside them. The roll call, and Carleton's name called out in the silence. By then Anderson was at Landstuhl.

The past,
Conrad told himself, standing up.
That was the past
.

The thing was to stop letting these things into his mind. Unless he could just let them flow through until they ran out, dried up. Would they stop, eventually? Would he find himself living wholly in the present, getting dressed like this in the early dimness and finding this moment the real one, even though the past was so much more vivid? Even though the past was painted in those unbearable colors and the present was shadowy and colorless? Even though the past carried so much more weight and meaning?

But if the past was not so important, if he was meant to forget it and close himself off from it forever, then what had been the point? What was the point of what he'd done there? Olivera, Carleton, all of them?

Okay, though. That was the past. He was putting it behind him, he was pushing on.

He moved quietly to the front door, holding the knob so it wouldn't snap noisily shut. He jogged down the creaking stairs and landings. In the front hall, the light from the transom made a wide stripe on the stained marble floor. The hall was high-ceilinged, shadowy and secret. He opened the heavy door and stepped outside. It was a good moment: The cool air, the run waiting for him. The moment before the plunge.

He headed up the block. The street was quiet now. There was no traffic and only one or two people on the sidewalk, footsteps tock-tocking sharply in the crisp air. The woman from next door was standing outside. They nodded to each other and Conrad jogged up the block toward Broadway. He was heading east, toward Central Park, and the sun was still down near the horizon, its rays slanting low across the city. He ran toward the light. The streets were quiet, and once he passed inside the big red stone gates of the park, the air changed. It became soft and rich with the scents of autumn: damp earth, the deep, complicated smells of mold.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
.

He reached the reservoir at its northwestern corner. A path led up the bank and onto the raised track that circled the water. On the track, he slid into the stream of runners.

A lot of people ran the reservoir in the early morning. They were mostly men, many in serious running gear: fancy shoes, crisp shorts, bright shirts with bold logos. Techie stuff: stopwatches and little strapped-on contraptions to measure distance and monitor heartbeats and cholesterol and every other thing.

There were women, too, most of them lean and taut-limbed, looking great in their running gear. Their clothes were more varied, regular loose shorts or black spandex shorts or knee-length tights. Tank tops or T-shirts, or those stretchy running bra–shirts with crossed straps that went halfway down the torso, flattening but revealing their breasts.

Girls always looked great, that was the thing. They always looked great, with their supple bodies and their flying hair. Even if they didn't know you and didn't want you and didn't want to know you, they still had those bodies and their unknowable interior selves, and unbelievably, they didn't mind showing you their wonderful bodies. They ignored you absolutely as you passed them or they passed you, headsets on, some private music or audiobook driving secretly into their brains, not giving you the time of day, but giving you, amazingly, complete privileges for looking at their entire bodies, top to bottom—tight, rounded asses; flat mounds of breasts; long, clean legs and pumping arms; smooth, supple backs. They jazzed up the whole world just by running around the reservoir in those tight, stretchy things, not looking at you, their expressions concentrated, their faces and necks slick with sweat, their arms and legs moving fast, their feet pounding on the soft track.

There was one woman he watched for. She had short blond hair and wore a pale green headband. She had long legs and wore loose, silky, colorful shorts or long spandex ones, usually one of those crossover tops. Conrad watched for the green headband among the bobbing heads. The crowd was loose, everyone bobbing along at their own pace. But when Conrad saw the green headband ahead, he began slowly to increase his stride until he caught up with it.

He'd been nearly through his first lap, up on the straight northern stretch, heading west for the stone pumping station, when he saw the bright flash of green. In front of him was a loose configuration, two women running side by side (women often ran together, men almost never), then several people alone. It was a slalom course. Conrad lengthened his stride and moved on the inside past the first two, then pushed on until he was parallel with the next runner. This was a short guy in glasses, wearing a white handkerchief tied around his forehead and an expression of desperation.