The World of the End (28 page)

“Eddie, Eddie, please excuse me … you have no idea who’s standing here in front of me.… Eddie, I’ll talk to you a bit later,” he said and threw his arms around Ben, eliciting loud cheers from the reporters.

“Perverts!” David yelled playfully. “He’s my nephew!”

“Now who’s the pervert?” one of them called out, setting off a ripple of laughter.

David, much impressed with the brawniness of his formerly rail-thin nephew, said that, momentary shock aside, he wasn’t surprised to see Ben in this world. Ben picked up on his reference to the “curse” and, trying to put off the question he had come to ask, spent hours chatting with his beloved uncle, who told him, among other things, about his job as a sportswriter for the paper, specializing in track and field, a discipline he’d already grown to love in the previous world. Smiling slyly, he added, “When you showed up, I was just in the middle of setting up a meeting with a sprinter from Trinidad that’s built like a black God.”

“So, I see you’re back to your old ways,” Ben said, joining his uncle on a tour of the flashy city.

“Back to my old ways?” David said, blushing and bowing his head as they passed an acquaintance from a forgettable night. “Ben, a renaissance is what I’ve had since I arrived here. One can sleep with the whole world—well, half of it anyway—and no longer has to worry. Thanks to that Finnish whore, I rediscovered the joy of sex, and if I come across her one day I’ll slap her on one cheek for the suffering of the previous world and kiss her on the other for the pleasures of this one.”

Ben laughed and hung on his uncle’s every word. “That massive structure over there is the Gay-ser, a building built with a nod to the ancient Roman baths, which serves as a spa favored by all those lovers of amphibian activities. Behind the acropolis-like façade are springs with supposedly unusual healing powers, and in fact the volcanic waters are intended to still the stormy souls of the insane, to quote my old pal Hesse. You know how it goes,
in corpora sano, mens sana
. But between us, some pretty sane swimmers have long ago flippered their way over to the Gay-ser and taken over the territorial waters of the lunatics. Even I sinned and took a rather pleasant dip with a Russian gymnast … oh, Dimitri, Dimitri.”

David continued to point out the eye-catching sights. There was Gayhinnom
,
the city’s largest sauna, a Gothic building with ornate chimneys that pumped fake smoke up and over the blackened roof, in order to give the building the appearance of being aflame, and, to its left, the strange pagoda that housed one of a few dozen sadomasochist temples, run by a disciplined group of male gayshas, who enjoyed catering to the needs of the queens.

“What’s the tall building at the end of the street?” Ben asked, pointing to the bluish structure ahead.

“The Gay Schläfchen, a hotel for straight people who come to visit gay friends and relatives. Maybe you’ll find it interesting, considering that every gay man has at least one good girl friend and most of them stay there. Some men stay there, too, but most of the rooms are occupied by women who prefer not to impose on their gay friends.”

Ben tried to remember if his wife had such a friend and, without giving it a second thought, asked his uncle if he’d like to get a cup of coffee in the lobby of that establishment. David shrugged. “Oh, hell yes. I’m happy to see you’re on the mend.”

*   *   *

A gaggle of smiling women approached Ben on the way to the hotel’s main entrance, unabashedly bumping into him under the guise of drunkenness. David chortled in appreciation of their brash forwardness. Ben smiled peevishly, without a flash of interest.

David cracked, “Hon, in Rome, you know, but don’t get carried away with the interpretations.”

“Excuse me?” Ben asked groggily, still stuck on the sentence about being on the mend.

They walked into the clamorous lobby and sat in a far corner. From there Ben could survey the women as they crossed the blue carpet on their way in and out of the unimpressive building, which very much resembled scores of uninspired hotels the world over, save the array of sleep-inducing blues: the ceiling, the chandeliers, the tables, the cutlery, the doors, and the long front desk were all stroked with different touches of indigo. Slightly disturbed, he looked into the cup of coffee that his uncle had brought him.

“Would you please stop staring into your cup like some coffeeholic and start paying attention to the world around you?” David said, turning his attention to the three sweetly smiling women seated nearby.

Ben brought his cup to his lips, his eyes fixed on a new group of women striding into the hotel. David followed his gaze. “What’s going on, Ben? Why are you ignoring their invitations? Wasn’t that why you wanted to come here? These women are drooling all over you and you’re doing your best imitation of a eunuch.”

“I’m a bit surprised by how eager you are to get me to respond to these women’s come-ons when you know full well that there’s only one woman in the world for me.”

“Oh,” David groaned, shaking his head, “you’re talking about the lovely Marian.”

“Yes, I’m talking about her,” Ben said, “of course I’m talking about her. Who the hell else could I be talking about?”

“All the others,” David said, nodding in the direction of the threesome, which had just grown into a sextet, all of them engaged in unspoken competition for his graces. “I thought you were over the whole Marian thing.”

“That’s what you meant when you said that shit about being on the mend?”

“Of course. Your mom told me that Marian died a while ago. I didn’t think that a year and a half after her death you’d still be…”

“In love, David, same as I was on the day we met,” Ben said.

“How can you be in love with a ghost? Too much time’s gone by. I’m sure she’s over losing you.”

Seeing the wounded animal rise in his nephew’s eyes, David diluted his statement. “I don’t mean to come off as cruel, it’s just that I can’t see someone as wonderful as Marian living like some old, forlorn woman. It’s got nothing to do with how she feels about you. She proclaimed her love for you from just about every mountaintop, but she got here way before you. What do you expect her to do? Sit with her hands in her lap and wait for her knight from the land of the living?”

“That’s why I came to see you. I wanted to know if you’d heard from her. If she’d visited you…”

David smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, darling. Till I heard from Deborah, I had no idea she was dead.”

Ben nodded, mumbling, “That’s what I thought.”

David tried to think of some appropriate gestures of sympathy, but they all felt strained, especially as he watched Ben spring out of his seat, his face reduced to a convulsing muscle and his eyes casting terror in the direction of the coiled pack of women.

“You alright?” David asked, pondering the fast-moving clouds traveling across Ben’s face.

Ben marched over to a nearby table and barked at the six smiling women, “What the fuck are you looking at? What do you want?!”

David couldn’t believe the way the women continued to track him, utterly undeterred by the attractive man’s display of bubbling rage, when it dawned on him that all the temptresses in the indigo room were ogling his nephew with glossy eyes and incontrovertible poses, weaving unseen webs around their recalcitrant prey. Ben looked around to make sure his eyes were not leading him astray. Fifty women were employing all of their God-given wiles. Perhaps it was the black hole that glared in Marian’s absence, a void that couldn’t be filled by fifty blue orifices, the poignant unfairness dictated by the vast supply and the monogamist’s meager demand; or it could have been the foreseen frustration provoked by his uncle’s laconic response, which starkly stated that he had almost reached the end of his search; either way the result was the same. Before his uncle had the chance to restrain him, Ben opened his eyes wide and, with the kind of impulsiveness that characterized his dashing epilogues, forgetting that, in art, an act of madness draws rave reviews, but in life the same act elicits derision, he roared and flipped over the nearest table, then ran to the one just beyond that and sent it cartwheeling across the lobby. Pleased by the panic-filled room that had been rendered devoid of women within a matter of seconds, the one-man mob—and a single uncle, who was transfixed by the rampage of his gentle peace-seeking nephew—roused the
schläfchen
from sleep, breaking lamps, tossing chairs across the room, flinging plates, smashing vases, and ignoring the staff, who would not accept such behavior even from a heartbroken man and managed to get a hold of him, not letting go even as he thrashed at them as though they alone were responsible for his current state, until they carried him away from the scene of his tantrum, holding his head still and photographing him, placing his Polaroid in an album alongside other undesirables and marking him with an X, which, for the rest of his days as a dead man, will bar him from entering the peaceful hotel.

Once the undercover security staff forcefully calmed him and made sure that he understood he was persona non grata, David ran toward his nephew, who stood on the sidewalk like a fire-breathing warrior, and screamed at him to cease and desist from his insane behavior.

Ben buried his head in his hands. “God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me in there. I’ve never done anything like that. Like some kind of thug … but did you see the way they were ogling me?”

“I saw it all, not that that justifies your behavior. I’m not sure Marian would be too pleased to hear that you turned a hotel lobby upside down like some rock star in the throes of an infantile rage.”

“If she was with me…”

“You can’t use that excuse forever.”

“I can use it till I find her,” Ben retorted, looking back at the scene of destruction, still unable to believe what he had done.

“I’ve got a stupid question, but it’s one I need to ask,” David said. “When was the last time you’ve been with a woman?”

“Our last night together,” Ben said. “It was…”

“I don’t want to hear what it was like,” David said, hardly concealing the dread in his voice. “What you’re telling me is that you haven’t had sex in fifteen months? Nothing?”

“Mm-hmm,” Ben affirmed.

“And yet you’re surprised that you’re ripping apart lobbies with no advance warning? Fucking-A, you’re a terrorist dressed up as a romantic. Ben, what happened in there is the tip of the iceberg. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. When I came here I had five months of abstinence under my belt and soon enough I realized that if I kept on starving myself I’d lose the point and would be going to the Gay-ser on a daily basis. Ben, what happens if you only meet her ten years down the road? You’re prepared to wait for a decade?”

“Alright! Enough already with the lectures,” Ben yelled, moving away from his uncle. “You’ve got one mechanism for solving problems and I’ve got a different one. At this point, do me a favor and give my sex life a rest.”

“What would you prefer to discuss?”

“Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m going to be fine,” Ben said, eking out a smile. “I think I’m going to head back to my apartment.”

“So soon? We haven’t even had a chance to do anything…”

“Don’t worry, next time I’ll be much better company.” Ben hugged his uncle, exchanged thumbprints with him, and whispered in his ear, “And please let’s just keep the madman-in-the-café incident between us.”

David nodded, caressing his nephew’s head. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself, okay?”

Ben forced himself to smile again and then set off for the faraway pink closet, his thoughts muffled as he trudged on, sights, smells, and voices mingling of their own volition, like a bustling marketplace.

Four hours later he mistakenly got off the multi-wheel at April 2001, and walked, his body slack, his mood bluer than before, toward the skyscraper that would have been his had he committed suicide two months earlier. Focusing on the uninteresting lay of the land beneath him, he tried to forget it all, to walk just for the sake of walking, like his grandmother on her final jaunt, with no destination in sight.

An unexpected jostle woke him from his melancholy trance. He mumbled an apology and carried on as though he hadn’t touched anyone.

“Can’t you see where you’re going?” the woman said, grabbing her arm.

The next three steps proved unnecessary. Something in him brought the walking motion to a halt. That voice, that familiar voice. And not just the voice, the entire situation. Years ago, in a faraway and different world, under a driving rain, he met a woman with that honey-coated voice. He turned around and surveyed the bustling scene around him. So did she. Their eyes met.

23

Tom’s Friend

Kobi and Tali took the “friends” approach to parenthood. They provided for their only son but tried to avoid any and all doctrine that smacked of typically parental behavior. His peers were madly jealous of the way Tom was able to discuss any topic under the sun with his parents and of the way he was given their true and undivided attention. Tom was the best student in his class, but he was in no way one of those kids who were all brains and no friends. His popularity skyrocketed when he vowed never to cut his hair. Boys and girls whispered whenever the ten-year-old breezed past, his long honey-blond hair accentuating his every movement. The skinny, inquisitive child was every parent’s dream: sharp, funny, polite, modest, and kind. Tali once confided in her husband that she worried that in the future some kind of hidden flaw would materialize. Kobi laughed and nodded. “We’re either raising a psychopathic killer or a Nobel Peace Prize winner.”

When told about Tali’s pregnancy, the boy hugged his mother and said, “Finally I’ll have a little brother to share some of your attention with.”

Kobi made a face. “Does our attention bother you?”

Tom winked at his mother. “All I’m saying is, brace yourselves for some pretty terrible fits of jealousy. It’ll sure be interesting.”

Kobi laughed. “Tali, who did he get his sarcasm from?”

Tali got all serious and then spelled out the name of the old neighbor. “It was when you were away on business. I was lonely and…”